These objectless beliefs, which though merely attitudes seem to be knowledge, are not difficult to explain. Some system of impulses not ordinarily in adjustment within itself or adjusted to the world finds something which orders it or gives it fit exercise. Then follows the peculiar sense of ease, of restfulness, of free, unimpeded activity, and the feeling of acceptance, of something more positive than acquiescence. This feeling is the reason why such states may be called beliefs. They share this feeling with, for example, the state which follows the conclusive answering of a question. Most attitude-adjustments which are successful possess it in some degree, but those which are very regular and familiar, such as sitting down to meat or stretching out in bed, naturally tend to lose it. But when the required attitude has been long needed, where its coming is unforeseen and the manner in which it is brought about complicated and inexplicable, where we know no more than that formerly we were unready and that now we are ready for life in some particular phase, the feeling which results may be intense. Such are the occasions upon which the arts seem to lift away the burden of existence, and we seem ourselves to be looking into the heart of things. To be seeing whatever it is as it really is, to be cleared in vision and to be recipients of a revelation.
We have considered already the detail of these states of consciousness and their conjectural impulse basis. We can now take this feeling of a revealed significance, this attitude of readiness, acceptance and understanding, which has led to so many Revelation Doctrines, not as actually implying knowledge, but for what it is—the conscious accompaniment of our successful adjustment to life. But it is, we must admit, no certain sign by itself that our adjustment is adequate or admirable. Even the most firm adherents to Revelation Doctrines admit that there are bogus revelations, and on our account it is equally important to distinguish between ‘feelings of significance’ which indicate that all is well and those which do not. In a sense all indicate that something is going well, otherwise there would be no acceptance, no belief but rejection. The real question is ‘What is it?’ Thus after the queer reshuffling of inhibitions and releases which follows the taking of a dose of alcohol, for example, the sense of revelation is apt to occur with unusual authority. Doubtless this feeling of significance is a sign that as the organism is for the moment, its affairs are for the moment thriving. But when the momentary special condition of the system has given place to the more usual, more stable and more generally advantageous adjustment, the authority of the vision falls away from it; we find that what we were doing is by no means so wonderful or so desirable as we thought and that our belief was nonsensical. So it is less noticeably with many moments in which the world seems to be showing its real face to us.
The chief difficulty of all Revelation Doctrines has always been to discover what it is which is revealed. If these states of mind are knowledge it should be possible to state what it is that they know. It is often easy enough to find something which we can suppose to be what we know. Belief feelings, we have seen, are parasitic, and will attach themselves to all kinds of hosts. In literature it is especially easy to find hosts. But in music, in the non-representative arts of design, in architecture or ceramics, for example, the task of finding something to believe, or to believe in, is not so easy. Yet the ‘feeling of significance’ is as common[*] in these other arts as in literature. Denial of this is usually proof only of an interest limited to literature.
This difficulty has usually been met by asserting that the alleged knowledge given in the revelation is non-intellectual. It refuses to be rationalised, it is said. Well and good; but if so why call it knowledge? Either it is capable of corroborating or of conflicting with the other things we usually call knowledge, such as the laws of thermodynamics, capable of being stated and brought into connection with what else we know; or it is not knowledge, not capable of being stated. We cannot have it both ways, and no sneers at the limitations of logic, the commonest of the resources of the confused, amend the dilemma. In fact it resembles knowledge only in being an attitude and a feeling very similar to some attitudes and feelings which may and often do accompany knowledge. But ‘Knowledge’ is an immensely potent emotive word engendering reverence towards any state of mind to which it is applied. And these ‘feelings of significance’ are those among our states of mind which most deserve to be revered. That they should be so obstinately described as knowledge even by those who most carefully remove from them all the characteristics of knowledge is not surprising.
Traditionally what is said to be known thus mystically through the arts is Beauty, a remote and divine entity not otherwise to be apprehended, one of the Eternal Absolute Values. And this is doubtless emotively a way of talking which is effective for a while. When its power abates, as the power of such utterances will, there are several developments which may easily be used to revive it. “Beauty is eternal, and we may say that it is already manifest as a heavenly thing—the beauty of Nature is indeed an earnest to us of the ultimate goodness which lies behind the apparent cruelty and moral confusion of organic life. . . . Yet we feel that these three are ultimately one, and human speech bears constant witness to the universal conviction that Goodness is beautiful, that Beauty is good, that Truth is Beauty. We can hardly avoid the use of the word ‘trinity’, and if we are theists at all we cannot but say that they are one, because they are the manifestation of one God. If we are not theists there is no explanation.”[†]
Human speech is indeed the witness, and to what else does it not witness? It would be strange if in a matter of such moment as this the greatest of all emotive words did not come into play. “In religion we believe that God is Beauty and Life, that God is Truth and Light, that God is Goodness and Love, and that because he is all these they are all one, and the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshipped.”[†] No one who can interpret emotive language, who can avoid the temptation to illicit belief so constantly presented by it need find such utterances ‘meaningless.’ But the wrong approach is easy and far too often pressingly invited by the speakers, labouring themselves under misconceptions. To excite a serious and reverent attitude is one thing. To set forth an explanation is another. To confuse the two and mistake the incitement of an attitude for a statement of fact is a practice which should be discouraged. For intellectual dishonesty is an evil which is the more dangerous the more it is hedged about with emotional sanctities. And after all there is another explanation, which would long ago have been quietly established to the world’s great good had men been less ready to sacrifice the integrity of their thought and feeling for the sake of a local and limited advantage.
The last movement of this machine to think with is now completed. I am too well acquainted with it, and have spent too many hours putting it together to suppose that it can be worked equally well by every reader. Half these hours have in fact been spent in simplifying its structure, in taking out reservations and qualifications, references to other views, controversial matter, and supernumerary distinctions. From one point of view, it would be a better book with these left in, but I wished to make it manageable by those who had not spent a quite disproportionate amount of energy in reflection upon abstract matters. And if to some readers parts of it appear unnecessary—either irrelevant, in the one case; or over-obvious in the other—I have nothing to add which would make them change their opinion. The first I can only ask to look again, with the hope that a connection which has been missed will be noticed. The second, I would remind that I write in an age when, in the majority of social circles, to be seriously interested in art is to be thought an oddity.
APPENDIX A. On Value
A friendly reviewer, Mr. Conrad Aiken, complains that my theory of value is not sufficiently relativistic, that it inevitably involves the surreptitious re-entrance of the ‘absolute’ value which we had been at such pains to exclude. Except for the word ‘surreptitious’ and the suggestion that the ‘absolute’ value we arrive at is the same thing as the ultimate idea discussed in Chapter VI., I agree to this. The purpose of the theory is just to enable us to compare different experiences in respect of their value; and their value, I suggest, is a quantitative matter. To put it briefly the best life is that in which as much as possible of our possible personality is engaged. And of two personalities that one is the better in which there is more which can be engaged without confusion. We all know people of unusually wide and varied possibilities who pay for their width in disorder, and we know others who pay for their order by narrowness. What the theory attempts to provide is a system of measurement by which we can compare not only different experiences belonging to the same personality but different personalities. We do not yet know how to make the measurements required. We have to use the roughest kinds of estimates and very indirect indications. But to know at least what would have to be measured if we were to reach precision and how to make the comparison is a step towards the goal. The parallel, though I am not fond of it, between the new absolutism which Relativity has reached and this quantitative way of comparing the experiences and preferences of individuals may perhaps be helpful. But whereas the physicist has measurements to work from, the psychologist as yet has none. And further, it is likely that modes of mental organisation which are at present impossible or dangerously unstable may become possible and even easy in the future with changes in social structure and material conditions. This last consideration might give any critic a nightmare. Nothing less than our whole sense of man’s history and destiny is involved in our final decision as to value.