Tears of the created, the finite, for the Creator, the Infinite!
Every phenomenon of the material world is not a sign of the divine thought, when considered apart from its relations with other things, as every isolated word in a language is not, in itself, a sign of our thought. There is something in the nature of things which constitutes the visible sign the symbol of the Invisible. To reveal or suggest the Absolute, it is not sufficient for the artist to combine fortuitously mere natural phenomena; he must be able to select those in which God has incarnated His Idea. Where is he to find a guide through this labyrinth of sounds, forms, tones, and colors?
He must strive to realize the ideas given him by the Creator; he must surround us here with the memories of our lost Paradise; he must repeat to us the mysterious words and tones which God confides to his heart in his lonely walks to the holy temple, in his solitary musings in the dim forests, or in his prayerful hours under the starlit heavens of the solemn midnight.
'With whose beauty (of created things) if they being delighted took them to be gods, let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first Author of Beauty made all those things.'—Book of Wisdom.
'And they shall strengthen the state of the world; and their prayer shall be in the work of their craft, applying their soul, and searching in the law of the Most High.'—Ecclesiasticus.
Here, then, is the secret—gratitude and love are to be the teachers of the artist. Naught save love will enable him to read the wondrous runes of God's creation; nothing but sympathy can catch the strange tones of mythic music; there is nothing pure, which can be painted, save by the pure in heart. The foul or blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies; it will see Beelzebub in the casting out of devils; it will find its God of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment; in faith and zeal toward God it will not believe; charity it will regard as lust; compassion as pride; every virtue it will misinterpret, every faithfulness malign. But the mind of the devout artist will find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of dens and caves; it will believe in its being, often where it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; it will lie lovingly over all the foul and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, yet catching light from heaven for them to make them fair—and that must be a steep and unkindly crag, indeed, which it cannot cover.
The artist must direct his eyes to the spheres of Sovereign Beauty; he must lend his ears to the harmonies of the Eternal World, that he may be able to decipher the symbolic signs which manifest the Being of beings, and recognize the voices which murmur His Name; for in humble reverence, yet joyful gratitude, it may be said that God Himself is the First, True, and Last Master of the Artist.
Poetry and the arts have an end, ordained by Providence, with respect to the extension of social intercourse; a sacred duty to fulfil to humanity at large. The signs of the times are startling; religions and governments seem driven by a whirlwind, and it is of vital importance that everything should be cultivated which has any tendency to bring men together, to link multiform variety to unity; the national variety to its distinctive unity; the variety of these distinctive unities, these national governments of all races and peoples, to one great Unity of government, freedom, development, justice, and love. There seems to be but little doubt that our own country is destined to become the central heart of this marvellous unity. Is not the very war, now raging over her fair fields, a war for Union? A false element allowed to exist in our code of universal freedom, we mean slavery, like all Satanic elements, has struggled to bring division, faction, disintegration, death, in its train. It has convulsed, but awakened our country. Its reign is almost over; its powers to dissever and destroy are now being rapidly eliminated from a Constitution whose basic meaning is justice, equality, and love. The battle is waging in this vast area of freedom, not for spoil, dominion, vengeance, or ambition, but simply for Union even with our enemies! Liberty, union, life, are parts and portions of God's own law; slavery, dismemberment, death, belong of old to Lucifer. Where God and Demon combat, can the strife be doubtful?
We suffer that we may be purified; but a Union broader, juster, and more beneficent than any the world has yet seen, is to bud, bourgeon, and bloom from this bloody contest. The rose of love is yet to grow upon this crimson soil, and brother yet to stand with brother to insure the union of the world. The glory of our present struggle for the happiness of humanity, will yet be hailed by every living soul!
This is the unity sung by prophets, felt by poets, and foreshadowed in the writings of statesmen, historians, and metaphysicians. Industry, politics, commerce, science, and the arts, are the means which God has placed at man's disposal to aid him in the accomplishment of this mighty work. Man is one in the fall of Adam; one in the redemption of Christ. Individuality and solidarity are but man's variety and unity.
It is certain, however, that a mere combination of commercial interests does but little for the heart; science, with its exact formulas, is almost equally powerless; they form together but the bony skeleton of a lifeless union; poetry and the arts must clothe it with the soft and clinging flesh, quicken it with the throbbing heart, and warm it with the loving soul of an all-embracing humanity; and it is, to say the least, very remarkable how exactly this important task is in keeping with the nature of the arts, because they alone express the feelings, the distinctive individualities of men and nations, while the sciences reveal only the 'impersonal' of the intellect. That a man may demonstrate mathematical problems tells us nothing of his heart; if he paint a single violet rightly, it tells of truth, sympathy, and love. Men never leave in their scientific researches the traces of the different phases of the soul, the imprint of their own personality; the sciences have everywhere the same character, because they contain discrete and abstract ideas, necessarily the same in all minds.