'The awful shadow of some unknown Power
Floats, though unseen, among us, visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.'
Shelley.
A philosophical theory of poetry and the fine arts should consider, in the first place, the fundamental and general laws of Beauty; in the second place, analyze the faculties necessary for the perception or creation of the Beautiful; and, in the last place, should strive to account for the pleasure always experienced in its contemplation. Such an analysis is necessary, as an introductory study, to the full and complete comprehension of any specific branch of art.
On the other hand, every specific art has its own special theory, designed to teach the limits of its means, and the difficulties peculiar to the medium through which it is to manifest the Beautiful, with the various rules by which it must be regulated in its realization of the fundamental laws of Beauty.
A clear, deep, and comprehensive view of the origin and nature of the Fine Arts, is the work most needed by the readers and thinkers of the present century. Some noble attempts have indeed been made in this direction, but, valuable as such essays may be, they do not yet correspond to the growing, requisitions of the public mind. It is true such a work would be one of great difficulty, exacting immense stores of information, and highly cultivated tastes. The writer must possess the logical power requisite for the most subtle analyses; he must have the creative genius to combine the scattered facts of natural beauty, with their varied effects upon the human consciousness, into one great whole; while, at the same time, the tenderness and susceptibility of the receptive genius must be equally developed in him. He should blend the loving and devout soul of a Fra Angelico with the logical acumen of a Bacon. How seldom is the creative genius sufficiently tender and humble to be, in the full sense of the term, at the same time, receptive!
After its treatment of the philosophical theory of Art, such a work should also throw its light upon the special theories, and more general rules of specific arts; for such rules, when true, are never arbitrary, but spring from the fundamental laws, of universal Beauty. They are but the external manifestation, through material mediums, of eternal laws.
The compiler of the present article can offer no such great work to the reader. An earnest effort will however be made to bring together the related thoughts upon Art and Beauty. They are found scattered almost at random over so many pages; to link them together by arranging them in their logical sequences, placing them so that they will illustrate and mutually corroborate one another: and, working up with them the thoughts suggested by them, the author has labored to form of them a compact and easily perused whole. For the ideas selected are essentially related, and, scattered as they may have hitherto been, naturally gravitate round a common centre. No longer drifting apart through the chaos of multitudinous pages, they are now formed into a system of order, a galaxy of which the central sun is—the Divine attributes as manifested through the Beautiful.
If the writer shall succeed in suggesting to some lucid and comprehensive mind the fact that a noble field for the culture of the human heart and soul remains almost unexplored, and induce one worthy of the task to undertake its cultivation; or if her humble work shall induce one lover of pure art to direct his attention to the glorious promises which it reveals to him of a closer communion with the Great Artist, the beneficent Creator of the Beautiful—she will feel herself more than compensated for her 'pleasant labor of love.'
All true art is symbolic; a thought, an idea, must always constitute the significance, the soul of its outward form. The mere delusive imitations, the servile copyings of the actual shapes of reality, are not the proper objects of art. To form a master work of art, the idea symbolized must be pure and noble; the technical execution, faultless. No heavier censure can, however, be passed upon an artist, than that he possesses only the technic or rhetoric of art, without having penetrated to its subtle essence of forming thought.
Man is chiefly taught through symbolism. Living in a symbolic world of sensuous emblems, he seeks in them a substitute for the wondrous powers of immediate cognition which he lost in his fall. His highest destination is symbolical, for is he not made in the Divine image? Through the symbolism of the matter is the soul taught its first lessons in the school of life: when it is known and felt that nature is but the symbol of the Great Spirit, the instinct of our own immortality awakes. In the Old Covenant, the twilight of faith was studded with the starry splendor of a marvellous symbolism; and the new era of the ascending and ever-brightening dawn still bears on its front the glittering morning star of symbolic Christian art.
Notwithstanding its earthly intermixture, however it may have wandered from its true source, however sensuous and worthless it may have become, art, in its essence, is still divine. Men devoted to the pursuit of mere material well being, have been too long in the habit of regarding poetry and the arts as mere recreations, to be taken up at spare moments, pursued when we have nothing better to do; as a relief for the ennui of idleness, or an ornament for the centre table; without remembering how many good and great men have given up their whole lives to its advancement; without considering into how many hearts it has borne its soothing lessons of faith and love.