Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook: Ten Lectures on Social Subjects

by Laurence Housman

Taking, then, these natural embryonic beginnings as our starting point, I would be inclined to trace out the living value of art and ornament somewhat upon these lines: Exuberance—the emergence of beauty and adornment, in addition to the mere functional grace arising out of fitness for use—has always been going on through the whole process of creation among animate nature. We see it established in a thousand forms, not only in bird, beast and reptile, but in the vegetable world as well. The tendency of all life that has found a fair field for its development, is to play with its material—to show that it has something over and above the straight needs imposed on it by the struggle for existence, which it can spare for self-expression.

It has been lured on to these manifestations mainly by that “will to live” which underlies the attractions of sex. That exuberance is an essential feature of the evolutionary process at the point where self-realisation by self-reproduction is the game to play. Under that impulse the selective principle begins to assert itself, and straightway the outcome is ornament. Self-realisation (by self-reproduction under all sorts of images and symbols) is the true basis of ornament and of art: self-realisation!

The spirit of man, moving through these means, impresses itself reproductively on the spirits of others with a far better calculation of effect than can be secured through bodily inheritance. For in physical parentage there is always the chance of a throw-back to tainted origins; the sober and moral citizen cannot be sure of sober and moral children in whom the desire of his soul shall be satisfied. They may be drawn, by irresistible forces, to take after some giddy and disreputable old grandfather or grandmother instead of after him; for in his veins run the parental weaknesses of thousands of generations; and over the racial strain that passes through him to others he possesses no control whatever. But the man who has given ornament to life in any form of art—though he commits it to the risks and chances of life, the destructive accidents of peace and war—is in danger of no atavistic trick being played upon the product of his soul; he is assured of his effect, and so long as it endures it reflects and represents his personality more faithfully than the descendants of his blood.

Now for the satisfaction of that instinct, the perpetuation of name and identity is not necessary. The artist would not (if told that his self-realisation was destined to become merged anonymously in the existence of fresco, or canvas, or mosaic)—he would not therefore lay down his mallet or his brush, and say that in that case the survival of these things to a future age was no survival for him. The maker of beautiful inlay would not lose all wish to do inlay if the knowledge that he, individually, as the craftsman were destined to oblivion. Let the future involve him in anonymity as impenetrable as it liked, he would still go on expressing himself in ornament; self-realisation would still be the law of his being.

That is the psychology of the artist mind—of that part of humanity which produces things that come nearest, of all which earth has to show, to conditions of immortality, and so presumably are the most satisfying to man’s wish for continued individual existence. The makers of beauty do not set any great store on the continuance of their names—the continuance of their self-realisation is what they care about.

But the possessors of these works of beauty do very often make a great point of having their own names perpetuated, even though the vehicle is another personality than their own. And so very frequently we have the names passed down to us of these parasites of immortality—the tyrants for whom palaces, or arches, or temples were built—but not the names of the artists who designed them, whose immortality they really are. And though the official guide may refresh our memory with snippets of history, and say this, that, or the other about the name to which the temple remains attached—the really important thing that lives, survives, and influences us is not the externally applied name, but the invested beauty which has no name, but is soul incarnate in stone to the glory of God—the self-realisation of a being who (but for that) has passed utterly from remembrance.

That, as I have said before, is the nearest thing to immortality that we know. And it comes to us, in a shape which, (so to be informed with immortality) cannot limit itself to the demands of use. When all the claims of use are satisfied, then the life of personality begins to show—the fullest and the most permanent form of self-realisation known to man on earth lies in ornament.

Of course, when I say “ornament,” I use the word in a very wide sense. What I have said of sculpture, painting or architecture, applies equally to poetry, music or philosophy. I would even go further, and apply it in other directions where no material matrix for it exists. Every department of mental activity has its ornament—the culminating expression of that particular direction of the human will. Faith is the ornament of destiny, Hope the ornament of knowledge, Love the ornament of sex. Without these ornaments destiny and knowledge and sex would have no beauty that the soul of man should desire them. Those additions or glosses were quite unnecessary to existence—up to a point; for millions of years the world did without them, and Evolution managed to scramble along without faith, without hope, without love. But Evolution itself brought them into being; and then for millions of years they existed in germ, without self-consciousness; but steadily, as they germinated, they produced beauty and a sense of design in their environment. Co-ordination, dovetailing (peaceful word!), the harmonising and gentle effect of one life upon another, as opposed to the savage and predatory, began to have effect. And in response came ornament; faith, hope and love showed their rudimentary beginnings even in the lower animals.

One of the most perfectly decorative objects that I have ever seen in the animal world (you will find it in still-life form in our Natural History Museum) is the device by which a certain small possum has taught her young to accompany her from branch to branch. Along her back she seats her litter, then over their heads like the conducting-wire of a tram-line she extends her tail—and then (each like an electric connecting rod) up go the little tails, make a loop, adjust themselves to the maternal guide-rope, and hang on. And there, safe from upset, is the family-omnibus ready to start!