Literature has one great superiority over the plastic arts. Like Music, it can render the movement of life. In the dramatic form this movement can be brought to bear directly upon the senses. It resembles Painting and Sculpture in being able to deal with concrete objects of sense, though, as we have seen, its method of dealing with them is not strictly representative. It stands absolutely alone in the fact that it can render thoughts[186] as well as passions or moods. I should, then, be inclined to reckon Drama as the greatest of all the arts in its range of expression, while at the same time it cannot be claimed for it that it approaches Music in the control of moods or in the intensity of effect which audible rhythm alone seems to command. The conclusion drawn by Wagner, that the supreme art must be sought in a combination of Music and Drama, is a tempting one, but I doubt its validity. The question arises whether in this combination one or other of the united arts does not surrender much of its own special power. So at least one great poet seems to have felt. “C’est defendu,” announced Victor Hugo about his dramas, “de mettre des notes de musique le long de ces vers.” The poetic use of language has its own conventions and laws, and these, when used by a master, are so subtle and so powerful that to set his words to music is often to produce an effect of distortion. What is most truly poetic in the language is turned into an empty mask by withdrawing the underlying substance to place it under the control of another convention, another law. One can, no doubt, as in the case of a Greek chorus, set great poetry to the measure of a simple chant, or one can unite rhythmic diction of a broad and simple character with great music, but the highest poetry and the highest music do not seem to combine to good purpose.
In this rapid survey of the arts there are, of course, large and attractive fields of exploration which have not been even glanced at. It has been sought on the present occasion merely to give the clue by which the arts may be related to the main thesis of this book. Ethics and Art constitute the two great fields of what we may call the disinterested activity of man. They engage his highest powers, they set him on fire with ardour and sympathy, yet they do nothing, directly at least, towards satisfying the primary and personal needs of his nature. Our problem has been to relate them to life, and to give them a place in a scheme of organic unity. Both have been seen to have that place only by reference to something which in one sense is immanent in nature, and clearly perceptible there, but which in another aspect is outside “the realm of clock-time and measuring rod,” the transcendent Whole. All spiritual ethics, all art which is not of the nature of a mere record, must in the last resort rely on this wholeness of things for their justification. But in the earlier parts of this study we have tried to show that even the physical organization of nature must rely on it too; for the driving force of evolution, as well as the framework of law in which it works, have been both interpreted as a manifestation of the Will to live, to act; of the impulse towards the richest and fullest development of the material, animal, and spiritual life. It is in this life-impulse that God reveals Himself in the world of time and space. This is the visible aspect of His all-embracing unity; this is His essential relation to earthly things; and this is the clue to their rational interpretation as parts of a divine cosmic Order. To learn to apprehend the vast Purpose with conscious intelligence, to further it with conscious will and with deliberate faith, is the sweet and wholesome gospel which Nature preaches to all who have ears to hear.
APPENDIX A
SUM ERGO COGITO
NOT to encumber the text with too much abstruse metaphysics, I place here what seem to me some important corollaries of the position stated at the close of Chapter I.
If the Universe is not a mere aggregate but a coherent Whole, then it follows of necessity that the units which compose it will have relations not only with each other but also with the Whole. When any of these units reaches the stage of consciousness it may be expected that it will become conscious of these relations, and that this consciousness will, like other things, develop in time to greater and greater fulness.
But here, from the analytic side of the Kantian philosophy, comes the warning which tells us that all we can really know is the stream of sensation which passes through our mind and which derives the order and coherence it seems to possess from the laws of that mind. How can we transcend this apprehension of fleeting appearances, and attain knowledge of the One, the Real, and of our relations with It?
To answer this question we must look a little deeper into the basis of this doctrine of the subjectivity of human knowledge.