Oscar Wilde

by Leonard Cresswell Ingleby

For our own part let us examine a little into the relation between art and morality for ourselves.

When we hear it asserted that morality has nothing to do with art and that moral considerations are quite beside the mark in æsthetic criticism and judgment, such a statement is simply equivalent to saying that actual life has nothing to do with art. The main demand that we can make from art of all kinds is the demand of truth. Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. By truth in this connection we mean that higher and more ideal truth which is inherent in the realities of things and contained by them, but which is brought out, explained, made credible, and visible by the artist in this or that sphere of art, and through the process of his art purified from the accidental obscurities which cloud it and hide it in the realm of actual life. If we are to demand truth from the artist, and let us always remember, as Keats realised so strongly, that in demanding truth we demand beauty also, we must insist that the artist must give us nothing in which a false psychology obtains, must, for example, paint no passions that do not occur in actual life. It is, therefore, equally necessary, on a logical conclusion, that when the subject of a work of art requires it, the moral should be represented as it really is—that is, according to its truth—and that the moral law should not be misrepresented. If we require of the artist that he should give a vivid representation of the illusions of human life, of the struggles and rivalries of men for objects and ends of imaginary value, we must equally demand of the artist that he should know and be capable of describing that which alone has true and absolute value in human life. Surely it is a truism that every drama from beginning to end contains a moral. It is a lie that art is immoral or can by its very nature ever be so. To say so, to pretend that art has a separate existence, is to say something which even the most brilliant paradox cannot prove and which immediately suggests to the mind of the thinking man an apologia or reason for licence of personal conduct. As a great German writer on æsthetics and the relation to the ethics has said, all human actions do of necessity presuppose a norm, a rule to which they conform, or from which they depart; and there is nothing which can be represented, whether as criminal or as ridiculous, or as an object of irony, otherwise than under this assumption. Hence every artist enforces some kind of morality, and morality accordingly becomes of chief moment for æsthetic judgment.

Aristotle himself, from whom Oscar Wilde frequently quotes, and incidentally from whose poetics he attempts, by means of brilliant paradox, to infer an attitude which is not really there, has pointed out that art is a means of purification. If the morality of a work of art is false and wrong, if the artist is either ignorant of the subject with which he deals or deliberately misrepresents the morality of it, then his work is viewed merely as a work of art—and therefore as a thing whole and complete in itself—is a failure in art. In many respects it may have æsthetic excellence, but as a complete thing, as a work of art, it must inevitably fail.

Sibbern in his "Æsthetik" tells us very sanely and wisely that art need not be limited by choice of subject, but depends for its artistic qualities upon the attitude of the artist in dealing with it.

That art must not be limited by choice of subject is a great point of Oscar Wilde's own philosophy, and here he is perfectly sound. But he goes further in his paradoxical view, and shows that the artist must hold no brief for either good or evil, and that the excellence of a work of art depends entirely upon the skill of presentation.

The German student, on the contrary, writes:

"There are dramas in which the moral element is not brought into special prominence, but just hovers above the surface, and which yet have their poetic value. What must, however, be absolutely insisted on is, that the artistic treatment should never insult morality. We do not mean that art must not represent the immoral as well as the moral, for this is, on the contrary, indispensable, if art is truly to reflect life as it is. But immorality must not infect and be inherent in that view of life and those opinions which the poet desires by his work to promulgate; for then he would injure morality, and violate that moral ideal to which all human life, and therefore art itself, must be subordinated. Plays and novels which depict virtue as that mere conventionality and Philistinism which is but an object of ridicule, or which hold up to our admiration false and antinomian ideals of virtue, representing e.g., the sentimentality of a so-called good heart as sufficient to justify the most scandalous moral delinquencies or 'free genius' as privileged to sin, which paint vice in attractive and seductive colours, portraying adultery and other transgressions as very pardonable, and, under certain circumstances, amiable weaknesses, and which by means of such delineations bestow absolution on the public for sins daily occurring in actual life—such plays and novels are unworthy of art, and are as poison to the whole community.

"Equally with all untruth must all impurity be excluded from art. Purity and chastity are requirements resulting from the very nature of art. But it is just because art is so closely connected with sensuousness, that there is such obvious temptation to present the sensuous in false independence, to call forth the mere gratification of the senses. The sensuous must, however, be always subordinated to the intellectual, for this is involved in the demand for ideality, in other words, for that impress of perfection given by the idea and the mind in every artistic representation. And even if æsthetic ideality is present in a work of art, it must be subordinated to ethic ideality, to the moral purity in the artist's mind, a purity diffused throughout the whole."

Enough has been said and quoted to prove to all those who believe that art, while it is the chief regenerative force in life, cannot possibly be dissociated from morals, that Wilde's view of art in its relation to morals is entirely unsound and dangerous to the half-educated and those who do not know how the greatest brains of the world have regarded this question. It is not necessary to continue or to pile proof upon proof, easy though this would be.

From the people who have a little culture, imagine they have much more, and are dazzled by the splendour and beauty of Wilde's execution, it will be idle to expect an assent. Those who believe in art for art's sake as an infallible doctrine, may be divided into three classes.

First of all there are the very young, whose experience of life has not taught them the truth. They have not seen or known life as a whole, and, therefore, no sound ethical view can possibly disabuse them of the heresy.