In the art of painting this mimetic principle tends to be lost among the descriptive elements. The direct transmission of feeling is replaced by an indirect and associative one. Still, there are few works, if any, in which the histrionic factor is entirely lacking. It may be detected with especial clearness in sentimental or comic figure-painting, which often literally infects us with the emotions it represents. When looking at a Japanese caricature, for instance, of the gods of happiness, we often laugh with the laughter of the picture long before we have realised the cause of it, or formulated any judgment as to the artistic merits of the representation.
It is true that pictorial art has many branches in which the human figure does not appear at all. But this absence does not by any means entail a complete loss of mimetic suggestiveness. As our perceptions, whether of animate or inanimate objects, are always accompanied by a complete or abortive imitation, any kind of form or movement may call forth in us activities distinctive of some emotional mood. Just as a rhythmic series of simple acoustic or visual impressions may occasion in us the functional modifications accompanying simple feeling, and thereby arouse in us the mental state of which this rhythm is an exteriorisation, so the mimic movements which are the physiological counterparts of distinct emotion may be, so to speak, translated into lines and forms, by which the emotion is reproduced in other minds. Thus even an object of handicraft—a vase, for instance—may, by the suggestiveness of its shape, affect our emotional life in an almost immediate way. And geometric ornament has an equal, if not even greater, power of conjuring up in us emotional states, which we read into the angles and volutes. Finally, the concrete objects of nature are full of “expressive qualities” which make them available as a means of conveying our feelings. The whole world of visual reality can thus be used in a kind of indirect mimetism,—a dramatic expression, so to speak, in which natural and abstract forms replace the human body.
The course of our argument has led us to emphasise the lyrical and dramatic elements in artistic activity. But we do not by any means wish to underrate the fact that it is only a very small minority of works the nature of which can be exhaustively described by these two qualities. With increased importance of the intellectual elements accompanying the emotional states, direct emotional suggestion must unavoidably appear an inadequate means of communication. A joy or a sorrow, together with a notion of some objective cause of it, rapture or admiration, anger, hate, or despair,—all these and similar states can be completely conveyed to an outsider only in so far as they have been accounted for to his intellect. As the theoretically latest manifestation of the craving for social expression there will thus appear an impulse to represent or describe objective events or things, by which a feeling similar to that of the producing artist may be called forth in his audience. And thus in almost all art-forms, in ornament and music as well as in painting and novels, there will be found an imitation of nature which serves what in the widest use of the term we may call an epic purpose.
The intellectual justification of a feeling by representation of a cause and the orderly form of its direct or secondary expression are, however, in themselves insufficient to secure a response; the attention and goodwill of the audience must first be conciliated. A sympathetic rapport always presupposes a state of compliance in at least one of the parties involved. When seeking by means of a work of art to obtain a response to an overmastering feeling the artist is thus constrained to exercise persuasion upon his real or fictitious public. As M. Sully-Prudhomme has finely remarked, it is only by first caressing our senses that art rouses our feelings and awakens our thoughts.[138] Besides that element of beauty which can be immediately derived from the expressed content, and that element of gracefulness which follows as result of the psychical freedom attained by expression, there are in nearly all works of art qualities whose aim is exclusively to please. If we may risk a somewhat audacious parallel, we may say that the work of art, in the same way as a living organism, an animal or a plant, entices the attention and charms the senses with the beauty of its “means of attraction,” not for the sake of these attractions themselves, but for the secret they at the same time conceal and disclose. All these allurements might easily cause a superficial observer to lose sight of the simple fact which lies at the bottom of the artistic work, viz. the feeling-state which demands expression and response. We thus see why the impulse to attract by pleasing has been considered as synonymous with the art-impulse.
As has already been remarked, such an interpretation cannot account for the coercive force of the artistic impulse. And equally with the theories based upon the epic or descriptive elements in art, it is incompatible with the principle of the unity of art. If the logical evolution of the art-forms is conceived in the way we have described, all the various manifestations of artistic activity can be derived from one common principle. And by the aid of this one principle we are able to explain the force of that impulse which, with similar coercive force, urges to creation within the various art-forms.
However much the artistic impulse may become differentiated with the progress of culture, its innermost nature will always remain the same. However complex its manifestations, their aim is always to secure a faithful response to an overmastering feeling. The more accomplished the work of art, the more its creator will become independent of the chance audience, which by its sympathetic expression produces an enhancing retroaction on his feeling. He learns to give his mental states an embodiment which facilitates their reproduction in wider surroundings. Thus the expressional impulse directs him to place himself in sympathetic rapport with a fictitious public. He creates, that is to say, expresses himself, for an ideal spectator,—for posterity or for himself. With a proud indifference to his most immediate social environment, he may thus consider his own production as perfectly exempt of any social motivation. The aphorism of Mill, “All poetry is a soliloquy,” would no doubt be accepted by many of the most eminent poets. But the psychological observer cannot help remarking that in such soliloquies the ego serves as a substitute for an external public. The artist has in a sense a double capacity; and artistic creation in solitude may be always explained by the fact that the creator exists also as his own spectator.
The production of even the most individualistic and most isolated artists can therefore be explained only by sociological considerations. And the same is the case with those artists who work only for posterity. It would be wrong to say that art in any one of its higher manifestations aims at transmitting a feeling. Its purpose is far rather an immortalisation. But this very desire to perpetuate a mental state, this desire which constrains the artist to strive indefatigably for the attainment of a form, capable of imparting to all men of every country and every age the same enhancement and the same rapture which he has himself experienced—this highest manifestation of the expressional impulse—can be fully explained only by reference to the enhancing and relieving power of social expression. In whatever light the art-impulse may appear to the reflecting consciousness of the producing artist, this is the only consistent interpretation at which we can arrive by an examination of the artistic activity on psychological grounds.
CHAPTER VIII
ART THE RELIEVER
In the endeavour to secure the transmission and perpetuation of a feeling, the expressional activity gradually loses its purely impulsive character. From an almost reflex outlet for abnormal nervous pressure, it is more and more transformed into deliberate artistic production, which is conscious of its aim as well as of the means for attaining it. The elaboration of a work of art, in which the expression of a feeling-state is to be concentrated, and concentrated in a way which not only facilitates but even enforces in the spectator the assimilation of this state, is a complicated operation which cannot of course take place without the effectual co-operation of intellectual and volitional activities. And their co-operation, on the other hand, must evidently exercise some influence on the primordial feeling.
It is a familiar observation, duly emphasised in all psychological handbooks, that strong feelings make clear thought impossible. Everyday experience, as well as scientific experiment, gives unmistakable evidence of the influence which abnormal excitement or depression exercises, not only on our ideas and their associations, but even on the perceptions. The converse has perhaps not been stated so often. Still, it does not admit of doubt that intensified intellectual activity may, in some cases, even more effectually than motor reaction, overcome the tyranny of a hypernormal feeling. It is true that every mental state becomes more distinct as a phenomenon of consciousness when our thoughts are directed towards it. Feelings of low and moderate intensity may even be enhanced in their purely emotional aspect if we let our intellect play on them. But as soon as a greater intensity of feeling is reached, this relation is reversed. Joy which is so great as to be a burden, “Die Noth der Fülle,”[139] and numbing despair, must inevitably decrease when there is an increase of distinctness in their intellectual elements. The more we can compel ourselves to contemplate with cool and clear attention the causes and manifestations of such high-strung states, the more we are also able to master them. It is a familiar experience to everyone that strong fear can be vanquished, if only we can succeed in diverting all our attention to its objective source, and “stare the danger in the face.” When the attention is concentrated and intensified to the utmost degree, it may even, as in the case of fascination, entirely prevent, to our own danger, the very rise of this self-preserving emotion.