THE RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE ON BEAUTY AND TASTE.
THE Rev. Mark Pattiaon's clever diatribe at Oxford yesterday week against the modern carpets, coal-boxes, and out-glass, shows that he understands how to take down the conceit of the middle-classes in more directions than one. The other day at Liverpool he undertook to show us how very little the middle- elasses value the possession of knowledge simply for its own sake ; now he has supplemented his humiliating lesson by illustrating his belief that the same classes are degenerating in taste. In both lectures he has, we fancy, erred a little on the pessimist side. It is easy, indeed, to show from the latter lecture itself that this is the side to which he inclines, for while he was lamenting the dis- appearance of the old Smyrna carpets, "whose graceful patterns and deftly-associated tints left nothing to be desired," he declared that these patterns and tints were themselves "education to the eye." But when he came to discourse of graceful patterns and tints which, instead of being lost to us, have been gained within the last thirty years,—the patterns and tints of the Crockery designed for the use both of the table and the bedroom,—of which he admitted that it was quite undeniable that they had been vastly improved in the same period, in- stead of congratulating himself and his audience that these, too, were, in their way "education for the eye," he proceeded to argue very elaborately that they were nothing of the kind. He was com- pelled, he said, entirely to dissent from the doctrine. It "seemed to him psychologically erroneous." "The presence of beauty alone," he declared, "does not educate the eye to see it." Either, then, his first admission was made inadvertently because it was a trilinte to the Net generation at the expense of the present, or the second carefully elaborated doctrine was a mistake. Whichever alternative we take to be the true one, Mr. Pattison here clearly indicates that slightly pessimist bias of which, se he eonfeases, he is likely to be accused. If he carelessly allowed himself to declare that the beautiful objects we have discarded were "education to the eye" of those who made use of them, though he emphatically denies the same doctrine in relation to the beautiful objects which we have recently introduced, it is clear that his bias is to estimate as losses, when deducted from the one side of the amount, what he declines to estimate as gains when they are added to the other. If he is not really going to insist on his asserted psychological principle, his prejudice is still deeper ; in that case, he must have been too eager to accept a hasty exemp- tion only because it told against the taste of the present generation. However, we believe the truth to lie between the view which Mr. Pattison took when he was lamenting over what we had lost in the past, and the view which he Wok when he was endeavouring to take down our conceit in the present. It is surely true that to some extent the con- stant presence of grand or beautiful forms and colours is "education," not merely to "the eye," but to the mind, which often sees, and is capable of seeing, even a greater grandeur and beauty behind these forms and colours. It is surely also true, not, indeed, that "the presence of beauty alone does not educate the eye to see it," but at least that it need not do so. Often it does not, while oftener probably it does. In the great majority of cases, we do not doubt that the presence of beauty does exercise a very active educating influence on those who live amongst its sights and sounds, while it is absolutely cer- tain that it need not do so, and hardly can do so without other favour- able conditions. Still in the majority of eases which arise amongst civilised nations, these other favourable conditions are present. Mr. Pattison himself would not deny for a moment that an atmo- sphere of refinement refines, that an atmosphere of freedom enfranchises, that an atmosphere of excellence ennobles, that an atmosphere of industry makes industrious, that an atmosphere of taste elevates. But he would distinguish, and point out the great difference between an atmosphere of active sympathies which draw the more passive minds with them, and magnetise them into a certain amount of similarity, and the mere presence of external objects more or less congenial to these sympathies. And we entirely admit the distinction. Fine taste, even with the presence of very little to gratify it, can do more to educate taste, than the presence of a world of beauty without the human insight to make use of it. In a grimy city, where all the vegetation is killed, and where there is nothing but light and shadow, dawn and sunset, and starlight, to fill the mind with noble objects, a man's deep love of sublimity and beauty will do more to generate it in the obtuse natures around him, than the presence of all the treasures of Italian art, and
natural Italian loveliness, could slo to generate itin a mind equally obtuse, which was shut out from communication with minds of higher taste. So far Mr. Pattison is certainly right. The more active element, which is ennobling in every way, is the living feeling which goes out to meet what is great or good, not the mere vision of the external object which satisfies that feeling.
But surely Mr. Pattison goes greatly astray when he assumes —probably from noble rage against the vulgar self-satisfac- tion of the day in its own progressiveness, a self-satisfaction which evidently lashes him to fury--that even the mere ac- customing of the taste to hideous objects is not debasing, and the accustoming of it to noble objects not, so far as it goes, goo& Those who live amidst squalor and deformity will take a vast deal more of elevating sympathy to make them feel revolted by squalor and deformity, than those who live amidst pure and harmonious scenes. Again, the taste which is educated by habitual protest against the ugliness ef surrounding objects is not nearly so happily circumstanced for a natural and healthy growth in discriminating perception, as the taste which is fed habitually upon that which satisfies, or is capable even of raising it. You might as plausibly say that you could spread the love of science in a world where there were as yet no seientilie discoveries from which to illustrate and exemplify the significance and beauty of science, and spread it, moreover, as' rapidly as you could in a world like our own, full of illustrations of the variety and beauty of scientific achievements, as say that you could spread the love of beauty in a world of ugliness 84 rapidly as you could spread it in a world of natural grandeur and noble artistic achievements. It is at least quite certain that the purest love of beauty will suffer negatively from the absence of that beauty, and more than this, that positively it will easily be accustomed to acquiesce in what is bad, unless it be trained in the constant association with what is good. Is it a mere accie dent that the Dutch school of painting has developed few very high characteristics except those which are due to the study of great effects of light and shadow, while the Italian school has de- veloped the highest idealism? Is it not certain that the presence of much higher natural beauty, both as regards the forms of the external world and the grace and freedom of the human body, has been one of the most favourable conditions for Italian art, while the absence of that beauty has been of the least favourable for Dutch art ? Every student of art hold a the greatness of Greek sculpture to be due to the opportunity which the Greeks had for studying the human, form in all its easiest, freest gesturee. Yet this is just such a merely external condition as Mr. Pattison, in the latter part of his address at Oxford, treats as comparatively insignificant and irrelevant, at least when compared with the love of beauty, which can alone use the models so obtained. It cannot reasonably be doubted that the constant presence before the eye, of great and noble standards of beauty is in the highest degree educating to those who have the least natural faculty for this kind of discrimination ; while even in those who have that faculty in a very high degree, the most enthusiastic love of beauty can hardly sow the germs of a true artistic feeling, without having free access to objects of beauty from which to illustrate the principles of artistic choice.
Mr. Pattison says,—we think quite truly,—that mechanism is in many very important respects the enemy of true art. "Imitation kills art." "The artist-spirit is a spirit of enjoyment, of rejoicing in the work of our hands." When you are merely imitating, striking off a mere copy of what has gone before, that spirit of rejoicing is not and cannot be present. There can be no "expansive joy of soul" over the purely imitative process. That is perfectly true, and shows, we think, why, in a day when machines can do so much which men, except by the help of carefully constructed machines, could never do, the artist-element in man suffers. Men become Ministers to machines. Look at the difference between the mower and the man who works the mowing-machine. Both the scythe and the mowing- machine are machines, but the former is a machine in which the largest possible room is left for the free, and easy, and intelligent movement of the human arm and body ; while in the latter, the man dwindles, and is little more than a needful accessory to the machine. Hence there is true and graceful art in the work of the mower, and there is hardly more than mechanical industry in the work of the attendant of the mowing-machine. Mr. Pattison would, we fancy, agree with us in this, and even eagerly maintain that we are right. But how does the fact which this illustrates apply to Mr. Pattison's argument ? Why, as we think, in the very, opposite direction to the use which he makes at the hostility between Machinery and Art, lie holds that it is the loss of the love for beauty which has deterio- rated modern taste, so far as it has been deteriorated. We hold that while that love has, on the whole, gained ground, it is rather the relative diminution in the number of beautiful objects, of objects suitable for the artistic impulse, which has caused any deterioration which we may have suffered. The multipli- cation of machines, and the increasing number of men who, instead of directly producing, have necessarily become the mere ministrants and attendants of more powerful machines, has necessarily diminished the ease and variety and freedom of the actions which excite artistic study and im- pulse. The steam-factory is far less beautiful than the water-mill, because man and nature are far less at their ease, far more con- strained to act in the grooves of mechanical necessity, in con- nection with the former, than they are in connection with the latter. For the same reason, the steamer is far less artistic than the sailing-ship, and even the railway than the coach. But all this goes to prove that deterioration, so far as there has been deterioration, is rather in the objective than in the subjective world. The conditions of life which are unfit subjects for art, on which man and nature act in constrained and mechanical lines, are relatively far more numerous than they were. The conditions of life which are fit subjects for art, in which man and nature act freely and with a certain ease and pliancy, the conditions which can be re- produced with an "expansive joy of soul," are fewer than they were, and in more complex and less simple regions of experience. In other words, the opportunities for art—at least, for the simplest art—are fewer. But, on the other hand, we believe the love and appreciation of it are greater. We take just the opposite view from Mr. Pattison. We are inclined to ascribe such deteriora- tion as there is, in the middle-class at least, to the influence of the outer world onwhich the power of mechanism has made vast inroads. On the other hand, the improvement is due, we believe, to the culture of the inward love of the beautiful. And this must be the region in which we must fight against the inroads of the mechanical on our free life. Surely literary art was never so truly valued as it is now. And that is a region in which the aggression of mechanism need not at present be feared. Yet if the appreciation of true literary art is greater than it ever was before, it can hardly be said that it is the degradation of taste Which has lowered our artistic achievement. In the simplest region of art, no doubt, the higher objects of artistic appreciation have diminished relatively in number. But in all regions of art we venture to hope that the love of beauty has been enhanced.
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