WHAT IS ART?
| Translator's Preface | [339] |
| Author's Preface | [341] |
| CHAPTER I | |
Time and labor spent on art—Lives stunted in its service—Morality sacrificed to and anger justified by art—The rehearsal of an opera described | [345] |
| CHAPTER II | |
Does art compensate for so much evil?—What is art?—Confusion of opinions—Is it "that which produces beauty"?—The word "beauty" in Russian—Chaos in æsthetics | [351] |
| CHAPTER III | |
Summary of various æsthetic theories and definitions, from Baumgarten to to-day | [360] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
Definitions of art founded on beauty—Taste not definable—A clear definition needed to enable us to recognize works of art | [376] |
| CHAPTER V | |
Definitions not founded on beauty—Tolstoï's definition—The extent and necessity of art—How people in the past have distinguished good from bad in art | [383] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
How art for pleasure has come into esteem—Religions indicate what is considered good and bad—Church Christianity—The Renaissance—Skepticism of the upper classes—They confound beauty with goodness | [389] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
An æsthetic theory framed to suit this view of life | [396] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
Who have adopted it?—Real art needful for all men—Our art too expensive, too unintelligible, and too harmful for the masses—The theory of "the elect" in art | [401] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
Perversion of our art—It has lost its natural subject-matter—Has no flow of fresh feeling—Transmits chiefly three base emotions | [406] |
| CHAPTER X | |
Loss of comprehensibility—Decadent art—Recent French art—Have we a right to say it is bad and that what we like is good art?—The highest art has always been comprehensible to normal people—What fails to infect normal people is not art | [412] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
Counterfeits of art produced by: Borrowing; Imitating; Striking; Interesting—Qualifications needful for production of real works of art, and those sufficient for production of counterfeits | [436] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
Causes of production of counterfeits—Professionalism—Criticism—Schools of art | [446] |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
Wagner's "Nibelung's Ring" a type of counterfeit art—Its success, and the reasons thereof | [455] |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
Truths fatal to preconceived views are not readily recognized—Proportion of works of art to counterfeits—Perversion of taste and incapacity to recognize art—Examples | [468] |
| CHAPTER XV | |
The quality of art, considered apart from its subject-matter—The sign of art: Infectiousness—Incomprehensible to those whose taste is perverted—Conditions of infection: Individuality; Clearness; Sincerity | [476] |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
The quality of art, considered according to its subject-matter—The better the feeling the better the art—The cultured crowd—The religious perception of our age—The new ideals put fresh demands to art—Art unites—Religious art—Universal art—Both coöperate to one result—The new appraisement of art—Bad art—Examples of art—How to test a work claiming to be art | [479] |
| CHAPTER XVII | |
Results of absence of true art—Results of perversion of art: Labor and lives spent on what is useless and harmful—The abnormal life of the rich—Perplexity of children and plain folk—Confusion of right and wrong—Nietzsche and Redbeard—Superstition, Patriotism, and Sensuality | [497] |
| CHAPTER XVIII | |
The purpose of human life is the brotherly union of man—Art must be guided by this perception | [507] |
| CHAPTER XIX | |
The art of the future not a possession of a select minority, but a means toward perfection and unity | [510] |
| CHAPTER XX | |
The connection between science and art—The mendacious sciences; the trivial sciences—Science should deal with the great problems of human life, and serve as a basis for art | [517] |
| APPENDICES | |
| Appendix I | [528] |
| Appendix II | [530] |
| Appendix III | [537] |
| Appendix IV | [542] |
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS
WITHIN YOU
OR,
CHRISTIANITY NOT AS A MYSTICAL DOCTRINE,
BUT AS A NEW-LIFE CONCEPTION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
In this book I have endeavored to show that our modern Christianity has been tried and found wanting, that the armed camp of Europe is not Christian, but Pagan, as is latter-day religion, of which the present state of affairs is the outcome. The book contains three principal ideas,—the first, that Christianity is not only the worship of God and a doctrine of salvation, but is, above all things, a new conception of life, which is changing the whole fabric of human society; the second, that from the first appearance of Christianity there entered into it two opposite currents,—the one establishing the true and new conception of life, which it gave to humanity, and the other perverting the true Christian doctrine and converting it into a Pagan religion, and that this contradiction has attained in our days the highest degree of tension which now expresses itself in universal armaments, and on the Continent in general conscription; and the third, that this contradiction, which is masked by hypocrisy, can only be solved by an effort of sincerity on the part of every individual endeavoring to conform the acts of his life,—independent of what are regarded as the exigencies of family, society, and the State,—with those moral principles which he considers to be true.