I suppose I have been selected to speak on art because I can speak on that subject without prejudice, knowing nothing about it. I have on this subject no hobbies, no pet theories, and consequently will give you not what I know, but what I think. I am an Agnostic in many things, and the way I understand art is this: In the first place we are all invisible to each other. There is something called soul; something that thinks and hopes and loves. It is never seen. It occupies a world that we call the brain, and is forever, so far as we know, invisible. Each soul lives in a world of its own, and it endeavors to communicate with another soul living in a world of its own, each invisible to the other, and it does this in a variety of ways. That is the noblest art which expresses the noblest thought, that gives to another the noblest emotions that this unseen soul has. In order to do this we have to seize upon the seen, the visible. In other words, nature is a vast dictionary that we use simply to convey from one invisible world to another what happens in our invisible world. The man that lives in the greatest world and succeeds in letting other worlds know what happens in his world, is the greatest artist.
I believe that all arts have the same father and the same mother, and no matter whether you express what happens in these unseen worlds in mere words—because nearly all pictures have been made with words—or whether you express it in marble, or form and color in what we call painting, it is to carry on that commerce between these invisible worlds, and he is the greatest artist who expresses the tenderest, noblest thoughts to the unseen worlds about him. So that all art consists in this commerce, every soul being an artist and every brain that is worth talking about being an art gallery, and there is no gallery in this world, not in the Vatican or the Louvre or any other place, comparable with the gallery in every great brain. The millions of pictures that are in every brain to-night; the landscapes, the faces, the groups, the millions of millions of millions of things that are now living here in every brain, all unseen, all invisible forever! Yet we communicate with each other by showing each other these pictures, these studies, and by inviting others into our galleries and showing them what we have, and the greatest artist is he who has the most pictures to show to other artists.
I love anything in art that suggests the tender, the beautiful. What is beauty? Of course there is no absolute beauty. All beauty is relative. Probably the most beautiful thing to a frog is the speckled belly of another frog, or to a snake the markings of another snake. So there is no such thing as absolute beauty. But what I call beauty is what suggests to me the highest and the tenderest thought; something that answers to something in my world. So every work of art has to be born in some brain, and it must be made by the unseen artist we call the soul. Now, if a man simply copies what he sees, he is nothing but a copyist. That does not require genius. That requires industry and the habit of observation. But it is not genius; it is not art. Those little daubs and shreds and patches we get by copying, are pieces of iron that need to be put into the flame of genius to be molten and then cast in noble forms; otherwise there is no genius.
The great picture should have, not only the technical part of art, which is neither moral nor immoral, but in addition some great thought, some great event. It should contain not only a history but a prophecy. There should be in it soul, feeling, thought I love those little pictures of the home, of the fireside, of the old lady, boiling the kettle, the vine running over the cottage door, scenes suggesting to me happiness, contentment. I think more of them than of the great war pieces, and I hope I shall have a few years in some such scenes, during which I shall not care what time it is, what day of the week or month it is. Just that feeling of content when it is enough to live, to breathe, to have the blue sky above you and to hear the music of the water. All art that gives us that content, that delight, enriches this world and makes life better and holier.
That, in a general kind of way, as I said before, is my idea of art, and I hope that the artists of America—and they ought to be as good here as in any place on earth—will grow day by day and year by year independent of all other art in the world, and be true to the American or republican spirit always. As to this picture, it is representative, it is American. There is one word Mr. Daniel Dougherty said to which I would like to refer. I have never said very much in my life in defence of England, at the same time I have never blamed England for being against us during our war, and I will tell you why. We had been a nation of hypocrites. We pretended to be in favor of liberty and yet we had four or five millions of our people enslaved. That was a very awkward position. We had bloodhounds to hunt human beings and the apostles setting them on; and while this was going on these poor wretches sought and found liberty on British soil. Now, why not be honest about it? We were rather a contemptible people, though Mr. Dougherty thinks the English were wholly at fault. But England abolished the slave-trade in 1803; she abolished slavery in her colonies in 1833. We were lagging behind. That is all there is about it. No matter why, we put ourselves in the position of pretending to be a free people while we had millions of slaves, and it was only natural that England should dislike it.
I think the chairman said that there had been no great historic picture of the signing of the Constitution. There never should be, never! It was fit, it was proper, to have a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That was an honest document. Our people wanted to give a good reason for fighting Great Britain, and in order to do that they had to dig down to the bed-rock of human rights, and then they said all men are created equal. But just as soon as we got our independence we made a Constitution that gave the lie to the Declaration of Independence, and that is why the signing of the Constitution never ought to be painted. We put in that Constitution a clause that the slave-trade should not be interfered with for years, and another clause that this entire Government was pledged to hand back to slavery any poor woman with a child at her breast, seeking freedom by flight. It was a very poor document. A little while ago they celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of that business and talked about the Constitution being such a wonderful thing; yet what was in that Constitution brought on the most terrible civil war ever known, and during that war they said: "Give us the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." And I said then: "Curse the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was. Don't talk to me about fighting for a Constitution that has brought on a war like this; let us make a new one." No, I am in favor of a painting that would celebrate the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution that declares that there shall be no more slavery on this soil.
I believe that we are getting a little more free every day—a little more sensible all the time. A few years ago a woman in Germany made a speech, in which she asked: "Why should the German mother in pain and agony give birth to a child and rear that child through industry and poverty, and teach him that when he arrives at the age of twenty-one it will be his duty to kill the child of the French mother? And why should the French mother teach her son, that it will be his duty sometime to kill the child of the German mother?" There is more sense in that than in all the diplomacy I ever read, and I think the time is coming when that question will be asked by every mother—Why should she raise a child to kill the child of another mother?
The time is coming when we will do away with all this. Man has been taught that he ought to fight for the country where he was born; no matter about that country being wrong, whether it supported him or not, whether it enslaved him and trampled on every right he had, still it was his duty to march up in support of that country. The time will come when the man will make up his mind himself whether the country is worth while fighting for, and he is the greatest patriot who seeks to make his country worth fighting for, and not he who says, I am for it anyhow, whether it is right or not. These patriots will be the force Mr. George was speaking about. If war between this country and Great Britain were declared, and there were men in both countries sufficient to take a right view of it, that would be the end of war. The thing would be settled by arbitration—settled by some court—and no one would dream of rushing to the field of battle. So, that is my hope for the world; more policy, more good, solid, sound sense and less mud patriotism.
I think that this country is going to grow. I think it will take in Mr. Wiman's country. I do not mean that we are going to take any country. I mean that they are going to come to us. I do not believe in conquest. Canada will come just as soon as it is to her interest to come, and I think she will come or be a great country to herself. I do not believe in those people, intelligent as they are, sending three thousand miles for information they have at home. I do not believe in their being governed by anybody except themselves. So if they come we shall be glad to have them, if they don't want to come I don't want them.
Yes, we are growing. I don't know how many millions of people we have now, probably over sixty-two if they all get counted; and they are still coming. I expect to live to see one hundred millions here. I know some say that we are getting too many foreigners, but I say the more that come the better. We have got to have somebody to take the places of the sons of our rich people. So I say let them come. There is plenty of land here, everywhere. I say to the people of every country, come; do your work here, and we will protect you against other countries. We will give you all the work to supply yourselves and your neighbors.