Let us now suppose this broad principle which the Greeks applied to form, ethically carried out, and made the basis of all education—the training of men as a race. Suppose we started with the general axiom that all propensities which we have in common with the lower animals are to be kept subordinate, and so far as is consistent with the truth of nature refined away; and that all the qualities which elevate, all the aspirations which ally us with the spiritual, are to be cultivated and rendered more and more prominent, till at last the human being, in faculties as well as form, approaches the God-like—I only say—suppose?——
Again: it has been said of natural philosophy (Zoology) that in order to make any real progress in the science, as such, we must more and more disregard differences, and more and more attend to the obscured but essential conditions which are revealed in resemblances, in the constant and similar relations of primitive structure. Now if the same principle were carried out in theology, in morals, in art, as well as in science, should we not come nearer to the essential truth in all?
97.
“There is an instinctive sense of propriety and reality in every mind; and it is not true, as some great authority has said, that in art we are satisfied with contemplating the work without thinking of the artist. On the contrary, the artist himself is one great object in the work. It is as embodying the energies and excellences of the human mind, as exhibiting the efforts of genius, as symbolising high feeling, that we most value the creations of art; without design the representations of art are merely fantastical, and without the thought of a design acting upon fixed principles in accordance with a high standard of goodness and truth, half the charm of design is lost.”
98.
“Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanising nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation. Colour, form, motion, sound, are the elements which it combines, and it stamps them into unity in the mould of a moral idea.”
This is Coleridge’s definition:—Art then is nature, humanised; and in proportion as humanity is elevated by the interfusion into our life of noble aims and pure affections will art be spiritualised and moralised.
