self-confident. It would admit far greater difficulties in presenting its picture of the universe than would have occurred to Spencer. The fact is that scepticism has turned on itself and has gone behind a great many of the axioms that seemed self-evident to the earlier rationalists. I do not see that it has at any point threatened the superstructure of the rationalist position, but it has led us to recognise the necessity of a continual revision and reconstruction of these data. Rationalism has become less arrogant and less narrow in its vision. And this is partly due also to the adventure of the scientific spirit into new regions. I refer to all that immense body of study and speculation which starts from Robertson Smith’s “Religion of the Israelites.” The discovery of natural law in what seemed to earlier rationalists the chaotic fancies and caprices of the human imagination. The assumption that man is a mainly rational animal has given place to the discovery that he is, like other animals, mainly instinctive. This modifies immensely the attitude of the rationalist—it gives him a new charity and a new tolerance. What seemed like the wilful follies of mad or wicked men to the earlier rationalists are now seen to be inevitable responses to fundamental instinctive needs. By observing mankind the man of science has lost his contempt for him. Now this I think has had an important bearing on the new movement in art. In the first place I find something analogous in the new orientation of scientific and artistic endeavour. Science has turned its instruments in on human nature and begun to investigate its fundamental needs, and art has also turned its vision inwards, has begun to work upon the fundamental necessities of man’s æsthetic functions.
But besides this analogy, which may be merely accidental and not causal, I think there can be little doubt that the new scientific development (for it is in no sense a revolution) has modified men’s attitude to art. To Herbert Spencer religion was primitive fear of the unknown and art was sexual attraction—he must have contemplated with perfect equanimity, almost with satisfaction, a world in which both these functions would disappear. I suppose that the scientific man of to-day would be much more ready to admit not only the necessity but the great importance of æsthetic feeling for the spiritual existence of man. The general conception of life in the mid-nineteenth century ruled out art as noxious, or at best, a useless frivolity, and above all as a mere survival of more primitive stages of evolution.
On the other hand, the artist of the new movement is moving into a sphere more and more remote from that of the ordinary man. In proportion as art becomes purer the number of people to whom it appeals gets less. It cuts out all the romantic overtones of life which are the usual bait by which men are induced to accept a work of art. It appeals only to the æsthetic sensibility, and that in most men is comparatively weak.
In the modern movement in art, then, as in so many cases in past history, the revolution in art seems to be out of all proportion to any corresponding change in life as a whole. It seems to find its sources, if at all, in what at present seem like minor movements. Whether the difference between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will in retrospect seem as great in life as they already do in art I cannot guess—at least it is curious to note how much more conscious we are of the change in art then we are in the general change in thought and feeling.
Note.—The original lecture was not illustrated, but the opportunity of publishing this summary of it has suggested the possibility of introducing a few examples to illustrate one point, viz., the extent to which the works of the new movement correspond in aim with the works of early art while being sharply contrasted with those of the penultimate period. This will be, perhaps, most evident in [Plate I], where I have placed a figure from the cloisters of S. John Lateran, carved by a thirteenth-century sculptor—then one of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, and then Matisse’s unfinished alto-rilievo figure. Here there is no need to underline the startling difference shown by Rodin’s descriptive method from the more purely plastic feeling of the two other artists. Matisse and the thirteenth-century artist are much closer together than Matisse and Rodin.
In [Plate II] I have placed Picasso beside Raphael. Here the obvious fact is the common preoccupation of both artists with certain problems of plastic design and the similarity of their solutions. Had I had space to put a Sargent beside these the same violent contrast would have been produced.
| Raphael. “La Donna Gravida” | Pitti Palace, Florence | Pablo Picasso. Portrait of Miss Gertrude Stein | Miss Gertrude Stein | |
| Plate II. |