It is only natural that a systematic induction should present itself somewhat late in the history of Science. At first, when the world is new, the process of exploration must necessarily be hazardous and tentative: the discoverer must walk with uncertain steps, and must find his way by the sole aid of his own personal qualities. Hence his method is a part of himself, and can no more be communicated than keenness of sight, or delicacy of touch, or rapidity of instinct; he reaches his conclusions with only a half-consciousness of the road by which they have been attained, and imparts his results more as separate individual dogmas than as interdependent parts of an ordered and coherent scheme. His followers, dazzled by the brilliance of his intellect, and unprovided with any test for distinguishing between facts and fancies, accept everything that he has said, and carry on the work, not by any presumptuous attempt to map out the ground that he has already covered, but by deducing further application of his laws and further development of his principles. It may be that the route which he suggested was purely conjectural; they follow it loyally in the full confidence that it will bring them to the goal. It may be that some assertion was a mere hypothesis—a rough and ready explanation which its propounder never lived to correct; none the less, they take it as axiomatic, and force the facts into compliance by some subtle and ingenious interpretation of its terms. The master's word is paramount, and if he and Nature disagree, it is so much the worse for Nature.
For a time, no doubt, there is a real value in this attitude of subservience—this unquestioning acknowledgment of the prescriptive rights of genius. In science, as in political history, it is good that the earlier steps should be autocratic, and that men should not claim a share in the constitution until they have in some measure qualified themselves for its exercise. When the state is small, a posture of constant criticism is dangerous; when the populace is ignorant, it will pass no very reasonable judgments upon the code. But as the area widens, and the mental activity increases, it becomes more and more impossible to accept as law the untested utterances of an absolute monarch: subjects begin to feel their power and to arrogate their due position; they wish to understand the system which they obey, and, it may be, to revise such of its injunctions as have grown outworn or obsolete, until at last they find their champion, and some Novum Organum appears as the constituted representative of the popular voice. And so the story passes into its third and final stage; the judge himself is tried before a jury of the people at large, his enactments are criticised point by point, and his administration remodelled upon a charter of liberty to which all succeeding kings are amenable.
It is hardly necessary to say that such criticism, if it is to be of any avail, must be moderate in tone and reverent in spirit. The inductive method does not 'equalise all intellects'; there will still be contrasts of hill and valley in the levels of the human mind; there will still be peaks of genius standing, remote and solitary, above the snow line. But it is equally certain that criticism is idle unless it be entirely honest and fearless. When it is uncertain, it should confess its uncertainty without reserve; when it is opposed by some consensus of great names, it should be prepared to acknowledge itself in the wrong, and should keep an open mind for conviction; but in no case should it insult with an unthinking assent any scientific law of which it understands neither the principles nor the application. Of course, not all men have time or inclination or capacity for all topics; some things must necessarily be left on one side in the press and hurry of life; but if we are interested in a subject, we are bound to take some measure of the responsibility which that interest entails. It is a poor occupation to look upon the conflicts of thought with an aimless dilettante wonder, and bear no hand, even in our own field, to maintain the cause with which we profess ourselves in sympathy.
There have been some attempts to bar this rule with an exception. Science, we are told, is concrete, systematic, rational; a proper field for the exercise of analytic judgment and critical examination; but in art, as in Religion, there is a mystery into which it is impious to penetrate. The great doctrines of the Church should be exempt from criticism, because it is not given to man to comprehend them; the principles of art should be accepted in silence by a public which knows nothing of the inspiration from which they come. This dogma is probably the most dangerous half-truth that has ever helped to retard the progress of mankind. It is, of course, beyond all question that behind art, as behind Religion, there lies the unfathomable mystery of life: that, in estimating both, there is a point at which reason ends and faith begins; but it is equally sure that, before that point is reached, there is a wide and fruitful field for critical activity. Science itself has its mystery—its limit of explanation; yet no one regards Darwin as a traitor to biology, or Newton as a profane violator of the mathematics. It was no unchristian authority who bade us 'give a reason for the faith that is in us'; it is no inartistic teacher who tells us that the springs of true appreciation must flow from ourselves. And more: it is because Religion has been regarded as only a mystery that it has so often withered into a dead superstition: it is because art has been so regarded that generation after generation has stultified itself by false judgment. Grant that the production of a work of art demands certain qualities which are beyond the reach of analysis, it still remains true that the work itself can be fairly criticised if only we will find our standpoint. Prometheus may have stolen his fire from Heaven, yet, before we accept it at his hands, we should know something of its attributes, and form some measure of its value. Above all, we should have some means of distinguishing the true spark kindled at a divine flame, from the wandering marshlights that gleam and flicker with the phosphorescence of corruption.
It is not from the great artists that one hears this plea for the mystery of their calling. Homer, Dante, Shakespear wrote to be understood, they did not wrap up their meaning in recondite phrase and elaborate symbolism. Raphael sent his drawings to Dürer, not to exhibit their intricacy of conception, but 'to shew their handiwork.' Beethoven, on his deathbed, can trust the popular verdict, and know that his new quartett 'will please some day.' And it is idle to say that these men undervalued the religion in which they held the priesthood. Only they knew that its Theology was on broad, simple lines, that its gospel consisted of truths which could find a ready echo in the heart of the world; that its temple was one in which the humblest worshipper could find his appointed place. It is the sciolist, the dilettante, the half-educated amateur, who professes this Gnosticism of art, and replaces the teaching of the Church by some mystic subtleties of Æons and Pleroma.
We of the general public are in a great measure responsible for the existence of this heresy. The seed has no doubt been sown by the arrogance of the minor artist, but it has found a fostering soil in our own cowardice and our own indolence. We may set on one side those men who are altogether outside the influence of any given art, men who have no feeling at all for music or for painting or for literature: they, at any rate, maintain the honest doubt in which lives more faith than in half the creeds, and, whatever their position, they lie wholly outside the limit of our present purpose. It is the rest of us that are really to blame, we who profess to care for painting or music, and yet lack the courage to express our own likes and dislikes, who wait timidly for some authoritative opinion, that we may gain the credit of agreeing with it, if it is right, and, if it is wrong, may divert from ourselves the responsibility of the error. No doubt this attitude has found some degree of excuse. Artists, like other enthusiasts, are apt to
Rush on a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind;
nor does anyone like to be called blockhead, even by the representative of an opposing party. But we may reflect that free judgment is our best remedy against the intolerance of partisan spirit, and that, whatever be the issue, we are bound in common fairness and honesty to think for ourselves. Of all diseases to which the appreciation of art is liable, hypocrisy is the most fatal and the most insidious.
More particularly is this true of music, the whole criterion of which is, in a sense, subjective. That is to say, in music we have no external standard of comparison, such as exists in the representative arts; we must draw all our rules of guidance partly from the constitution of our own mind, and partly from the established practice of the great masters. If the two conflict, we must weigh the evidence before summing up on the one side or on the other. It may be that a work is great, but not great for us, that it makes its appeal to some psychological feature or faculty in which we are deficient. In that case, we must rest content to be out of sympathy with it, unless, indeed, we can train ourselves to a wider and more catholic admiration. And this we are most likely to attain if we analyse the cause and material of our enjoyment, if we find out, first, what are the elements in our nature to which music attaches itself, and, second, what are the factors in musical composition to which our nature, as a whole, most readily responds. Here, then, are two questions for the inductive method to consider: the first a matter of pure psychology, the second a matter of pure æsthetics. Of course, the two questions are complementary: indeed, they may almost be regarded as two aspects of the same problem: but it will be convenient to take them separately, and to illustrate each by the other. The reader may be warned at the outset that there is not going to be any attempt at exhaustive analysis. Æsthetics, even more than ethics, are 'too complex to admit of accuracy'; and, in dealing with the conditions of beauty, we must be content to leave much to individual judgment and individual perception.