In illustration of this we need only refer to one instance: his celebrated description of the lion.[157] Objections may be raised from the zoological point of view to his selecting the lion as a representative of animal strength, and from the anatomical point of view to his deducing its whole configuration from the structure of its jaws. But it is impossible to deny that precisely by such a one-sided and exaggerated portrait Taine has succeeded in giving an expression to his admiration for elementary force better than would have been possible by a scientifically faithful description. Accordingly Taine’s lion, in spite of its faults from the point of view of science, remains a classical illustration of the æsthetic importance of dominant qualities.
If we try to explain why it is that the subordination of all characters under one “faculté maîtresse,” although unfavourable to scientific comprehension, is nevertheless so useful for artistic representation, we shall be unavoidably led to that distinction between scientific and artistic purposes which has been overlooked in the intellectualistic systems of æsthetic. The work of art does not claim to give us, nor do we expect to receive from it, increased knowledge as to the real nature or predominant characters of things and events. We only wish to get the clearest and strongest impression of the feelings with which an object has been contemplated by the artist. It is therefore to the psychological conditions for conveying a feeling-state by help of intellectual mediation that we should look for the explanation of those laws of artistic composition which Vischer and Taine have interpreted in a manner exclusively intellectualistic, and therefore unæsthetic.
The desire to fix a passing emotional state—in order to facilitate either the revival of the same state or its transmission to outsiders—by help of intellectual elements with which the feelings have been associated, is not restricted to the purely artistic mental processes. In religion and in love this endeavour to evade the transience of feeling is especially evident. And here we may observe a selection of the intellectual elements and a mode of treating them, which, although it cannot be called artistic, is nevertheless somewhat analogous to the selective treatment of nature which takes place in artistic representation. The institutors of religion have all been well aware of the fact that it is not immaterial what kind of ideas and sensations are chosen to embody a feeling. They have understood how impossible it is to impress an emotional state on the mind by the mediation of complex conceptions, which, to be fully apperceived, necessitate a particular activity of the intellectual functions. When seeking a means of conveying and perpetuating their deepest teaching, they have always, more instinctively perhaps than by any process of conscious search, been led to intellectual notions of the simplest possible kind. A single impression of sight, touch, or even of taste, may thus, by artificial association, be made the bearer of an emotional content which could not possibly be conveyed with anything like the same fulness by a less concentrated medium. In virtue, therefore, of their very simplicity, the vehicles and symbols of religious ritualism are the most powerful of all means of emotional suggestion. They offer us a simple impression which we can easily embrace with our senses, and by the aid of which we can infuse into our mind a rich complex of all the moods, such as reverence, ecstasy, and awe, which enter in the religious state.
In its most abnormally exalted developments love may give rise to a fetichistic adoration of objects connected with the beloved which is psychologically analogous to the cults of religion. And the same tendency to select some single representation or object as vehicle of a psychical state, which is so manifest in the case of these high-strung emotions, may also be noticed in connection with feelings of lower intensity. In all departments of psychical life we may thus find a corroboration of the assertion, which was already expressed by Hemsterhuis in his speculations on our desires, which always aim at “un grand nombre d’idées dans le plus petit espace de temps possible.”[158] We need only consult our memories—for example, of landscapes we have seen—to find that the emotional element of the recollection, our admiration, is always closely bound up with some single feature of the impression. We may indeed be able to revive the visual image itself by allowing the mind’s eye gradually to pass along all its details. But the subjective feelings in which we appropriated the impression and made it our own will not be resuscitated until we arrive at one particular detail—a single tree, or perhaps a figure—and concentrate our attention upon that. The experience of this law of emotional mechanics teaches us to look with a selective attention on everything of which we wish to preserve a vivid remembrance. The more emotional our intuition of a given whole, the greater is always our desire to concentrate it upon a single impression which supports and reconstitutes the original vision. The art of arranging great complexes of intellectual and emotional elements around single focal points, so to speak, may undoubtedly be greatly developed by exercise. But the procedure itself does not presuppose any conscious intention. It occurs almost as an instinctive expedient for escaping the incompatibility between diffused intellectual attention and strong feeling. On purely psychological grounds, therefore, we may adopt the aphorism of Teufelsdröckh: “For the soul, of its own unity, always gives unity to whatever it looks on with love.”[159]
As the artistic representation of nature, according to our view, expressly serves the purpose of perpetuating an emotional state, we should expect to meet with such a unity in every work of descriptive art. And this assumption may be amply corroborated by reference to art-history. We need not go for examples to such extreme schools as that of those modern French painters who endeavour to make every line in their pictures converge towards a point or a sharp angle. Within the domain of universally recognised art we may observe how the artist always tries to create a centre of gravity by accentuating some single feature in the event, the landscape, or the figure which serves as his model. The principle is the same as that of which we avail ourselves when endeavouring to preserve an emotional state in our memory for future enjoyment. But the procedure must necessarily be somewhat changed when the task is added of enabling outsiders to partake of the moods we have experienced. It is not then a matter of indifference which particular detail of a complex impression we single out as focal, and in which way we arrange the bulk of the impression around this focus. Indeed, any random quality, if it is given prominence and emphasis, may serve as a means of attracting attention to the work. But if one wishes to impart to spectators the exact emotional mood, of which a given fragment of nature acts as a representative, it is not sufficient to attract the attention of the spectators. We must also induce the spectators to look upon the whole of our model from our point of view. Instead of the casual connection by which in our own mind emotional memories may be bound up with some single sensation memory, we must try to introduce a causal connection which persuades the outsider to agree with our choice of the focal quality. The features selected for accentuation are to be made central, not only in the technical, but also in the logical sense. Figuratively speaking, it is not enough that the lines in a picture should converge towards a certain part; this part must also appear to the spectator as the one in which all other parts have their cause and their explanation. Thus the artistic imitation of nature will necessarily be connected with a search for a predominant quality, and an endeavour to represent this quality as a “faculté mère.” The things and events which are selected for the embodiment of a given emotional state become displayed in such a way that their whole being appears to be derived from the one quality which is most suited to represent this emotional state. The imitation is transformed into a construction, or rather reconstruction, by which objective nature is adjusted so as to harmonise with the subjective point of view.
Such a process of adjusting nature to the requirements of emotional transmission need not always lead to any definite and concrete work of art. It may also, as an unrealised tendency, accompany our intuition. And it is only by virtue of this creative element that the feeling for nature may be placed on a level with artistic production. If we are to explain, with Richard Wagner, the æsthetic attention of the layman as the result of a natural poetic gift (“Natürliche Dichtungsgabe”), we cannot possibly—as he does—base the artistic value of this attention on the fact that it is “concentrating” and “isolating.”[160] For so is necessarily every emotional way of looking at things. Artistic treatment of nature, on the other hand, whether abortive or carried to completion, always involves an endeavour to make the concentrated and isolated view acceptable to others. As we cannot explain the creation of concrete works of art without reference to a craving for social expression, so we cannot distinguish the artistic from the non-artistic intuition without assuming a tendency—unconscious and unintentional it may be, but none the less powerful—to socialise the emotional content, which is connected with a given intuition. The potential poet or painter, whose embryo work is bound to remain for ever a fact only of his own experience, is seldom apt to realise the purpose of his endeavour; he is not aware that he is composing a poem or a picture for himself as spectator or audience. Instinctively, however, he pursues in the adjusting of his intuition an end which is essentially similar to that of the actually creating artist. In both these cases of creation the impelling motive is, we believe, an emotional one. And in both cases the creative activity aims at making an emotional mood independent of the accidental and individual conditions under which it originally appeared. Instead of an intuition, the emotional content of which is concentrated in a conventional symbol, comprehensible only to the initiated, or in arbitrary centres of association, significant only for those by whom they have been selected, the artistic imagination tries to construct an intuition which, if embodied in external form, would by its own force impress itself, with all its accompanying emotional elements, upon any spectator. It tends, in short, whether consciously or unconsciously, to perpetuate and to transmit a complex of feeling.
We may now understand why it is that the artistic activity has so often been interpreted in an intellectualistic spirit. The search for an all-conditioning and all-explaining “faculté mère” by the help of which to convey in the most forcible way a representation of things and events, may, of course, easily be taken for an endeavour to discover the real nature of these things and events. And, in point of fact, every artist who has a true and keen eye for nature and life will necessarily light upon qualities which, while affording the most appropriate centre of gravity for his representation, are, also in the intellectualistic sense, explanatory of the subjects represented. By making every feature of his model converge towards this selected quality, he may thus produce an imitation which, even if it deviates from the visible reality, may appear truer than this reality itself. In proportion as his representation thus convinces us of its conformity with the actual or essential nature of things, it will, other things being equal, elicit a readier response from the spectator. It is only natural, therefore, that the very works which have exercised the most powerful influence on mankind should afford apparent support to the views of intellectualistic philosophers. Nor can it be wondered at that critics, in apportioning censure and praise, have attached so great an importance to the degree of exactness with which a work of art represents things or ideas.
Such an attitude on the part of art-judges becomes the more explicable when one takes into account the historical conditions under which the several forms of descriptive art have developed. Poetic and pictorial representation have both been extensively used for intellectual purposes. And it cannot be expected that the essential aims of artistic activity—as they appear to us when we theoretically distinguish this activity from other forms of life—should be clearly comprehended as long as the concrete works serve a non-æsthetic purpose. In proportion, however, as more exact and convenient methods replace the poetic and pictorial means of thought-conveyance, art will become freer to realise its own ends and consequently be judged more and more on its intrinsic merits. As rhythmic form and rhyme gained in distinctly artistic character from the time when the invention of systems of writing relieved them from the mnemonic task of preserving a record of events, so an æsthetic emancipation of the formative arts will necessarily follow as a result of increased efficiency in the mechanical means of recording sights. And in point of fact recent movements in art have already shown us how painting has grown more conscious of its essential aims, from being compelled to give up competition with instantaneous photography.
It is only the most narrow forms, however, of naturalistically imitative art that are thus made superfluous by scientific inventions. Those artists whose aim is, not to attain the level of nature by servile imitation, but to rival it by idealisation, will always be able to point to their task of representing essential qualities as one which remains for ever a prerogative of artistic production. But there are other signs which make us believe that even this form of intellectualistic purpose will gradually lose importance for creators as well as for spectators. The currents of thought which now prevail are scarcely such as to favour the continuance of professedly or covertly metaphysical doctrines of art. And even if philosophical opinion, which, after all, only has to do with the secondary justification of feelings and impulses, had remained unchanged ever since Hegel’s time, the changes which have taken place in the very personality of modern man could not but exercise an important influence on the production and estimation of art.
The intellectualistic illusion that every artistic representation has something to teach us about the essential nature of the things represented, can only arise on condition of there being a certain agreement between the world-view of the artist and that of his public. It presupposes a certain uniformity in the intellectual make of the individual creators and spectators. This condition, however, is fulfilled less than ever in modern life. By the influence of the increasing division of labour, characters become more and more differentiated; and these different characters naturally develop different ways of looking at things. The deviations from actual nature which are to be met with in the work of an individual artist have therefore a poor chance of convincing each individual spectator that they are in conformity with essential reality, as he is apt to conceive it from his individual point of view. Instead of the “eternal truths” so often spoken of in earlier æsthetic literature, we now read about the “illusions particulières” of the several artists. This sceptical attitude would of course exclude all vivid æsthetic life if the motives of artistic production and enjoyment were such as intellectualistic authors declare them to be. It cannot be observed, however, that the changed conceptions of art-activity have exercised any influence on the practice of artists. The same eagerness with which works were created when they were thought to represent the essential nature of things is now displayed by those who are endeavouring to produce works which often do not even pretend to give more than their personal impressions. And the critical public has shown itself ready to adopt a corresponding attitude in estimating the value of artistic manifestations. It no longer lays the chief stress on the intellectualistic requirement that artistic representation should be true to nature. It demands before all that the work of art should give a faithful rendering of the feelings with which the represented fragment of nature has been comprehended by the artist. Sincerity, as involving poetical truthfulness, thus becomes the chief claim which is set up for a work of modern art.