draughtsman can rival the camera in bare accuracy; but every draughtsman is bound to do what the camera cannot do, by introducing a subjective quality into the reproduction.

We must not pause here in our analysis of what the draughtsman brings of ideality to his work. I have tried to show that the bare attempt by a human being to imitate what he sees before him, introduces of necessity the element of mind into his transcript from nature. But no human being stands alone in this world. His own particular mental quality is influenced by the thought of his race and epoch. The intellectual atmosphere in which he lives determines him. He cannot help being to some extent the creature of his age, the child of antecedent ages. Thus, in addition to the specific quality introduced by an artist into his imitation of any object, there are universal elements, tending toward Idealism, which affect the whole function of art in each race and each epoch. Should sculptor or painter try to be merely imitative, crudely realistic, he cannot succeed so well as the photographic camera does. Should he never so obstinately cling to the art for art principle. he cannot avoid suggesting thoughts-good, bad, or indifferent, noble or ignoble, pure or foul-through the form his thinking brain and intelligent fingers have evolved from studies of reality. Artists, their works, and the people who survey their works, are environed by a common atmosphere of ideas, which makes an art devoid of ideality impossible. In art spirit communicates with spirit, the spirit of the artist with the spirit of the spectator.

The demonstration of this deep-seated bond between Idealism and Realism is so important that I must approach it from a somewhat different point of view. Twenty draughtsmen, we have seen, will not imitate the same object with the same identity of result as twenty photographic cameras. The draughtsman cannot be so literally realistic as the machine; he is bound to modify his reproduction of the object by some note indicative of his own mental and moral nature. He will not rival the machine in accuracy; but he cannot avoid adding something which the machine is powerless to give. It is precisely by

In

emphasizing this quality which differentiates the draughtsman from the machine that the arts arrive at Idealism. Art supplements its mechanical deficiencies, and exerts the specific faculties of human beings, by seeking after beauty and by aiming at the expression of thought. It deliberately cultivates the subjective element which is inevitably present in every reproduction of an object by the human brain and hand. acting thus it utilizes what might be described as man's inferiority to a machine in graphic accuracy, while it exercises man's superiority to the machine in power of intellectual suggestion. To turn defects into forces by the exertion of mind is the privilege which man possesses, rendering him the lord over brutes and the controller of mechanical instruments. So Idealism in art is the ultimate elaboration of that comparative inaccuracy and that imported subjective quality, both of which distinguish the most literal drawing from a photograph.

Artistic beauty is mainly a matter of selection, due to the exercise of those free mental faculties which the machine lacks. The sculptor or the painter observes defects in the single model; he notices in many models scattered excellences; he has before him the most perfect forms invented by his predecessors. To correct those defects, to reunite those excellences, to apply the principles of those perfected types, becomes his aim. He cannot rival Nature by producing anything exactly like her work, but he can create something which shall show what Nature strives after. BоúλɛTαι μὲν ἀλλ' οὐ δύναται, wrote Aristotle about Nature; "she has the will but not the power to realize perfection. The mind of man comprehends her effort, and though the skill of man cannot compete with her in the production of particulars, man is able by art to anticipate her desires, and to exhibit an image of what she was intending. As Tennyson wrote in The Two Voices:—

"That type of perfect in his mind

Can he in Nature nowhere find."

"To disengage the elements of beauty," says Sainte-Beuve; "To escape from the mere frightful reality,' says Joubert. That is the function of the arts. Reality, however, is never,

in a true sense, frightful. Reality is always the sole sound schoolmaster which brings us to a sense of ideal beauty. Sculptor and painter are indeed found to pass beyond the model. They cannot, as I go on reiterating, even if they would, abide by it as the camera or the plaster cast does. The mere touch of the brush or the chisel, of the hand which obeys the intellect," prevents that. What they can do, and what a mechanical process cannot do, is to interpret it; not to contradict it; nay, rather to obey its leading; but to supplement its shortcomings, to elucidate its latent suggestions of significance and loveliness. They do not aim at producing a mere bare copy of their subject at some accidental moment, for they know that the thing itself is better than such a copy would be. They attempt to seize and reveal its character at the very best, to represent what it strives to be, to express its truest truth, not what is transitory and conditioned by circumstance, but what is permanent and freed from limitations in it.

The figurative arts are thus led to what is after all their highest function, the presentation of thought and feeling in beautiful form. Statues and pictures must fall short of life in flesh and blood reality. But these same works of human industry can transfigure particular realities by infusing into them the elements of generalization, selection, sympathetic emotion, interpretative insight. These elements, in the language of discredited schools, are expression and idealization. According to the demonstration I have attempted in this essay, they may be better described as the final outcome of those qualities-partly defect of manual ability, partly addition of mental sensibility-which distinguish a drawing from a cast or a photograph. They are the deliberate elaboration of the subjective ingredient which is inevitable in every imitation by the hand of man.

Figurative art, in its most vital epochs, lent itself to the expression of religious ideas. The artist had to find corporeal investiture for the generalized and divinized qualities of human nature. Such exact corporeal investiture for a spiritual type of human energy or passion is rarely, if ever, offered by a single living

44

person. Who, for example, has seen a man or woman of whom he could say, There goes Zeus," or "There goes Aphrodite?'' What we do say is rather, Majestic as Zeus, beautiful as Aphrodite. In other words, the living person suggests hints to the artist for working out that type of perfect in his mind." The artist, then, is compelled to create a body for the idea he has to express; more majestic or more beautiful than any single body he has ever seen; more completely adequate to the idea; more thoroughly penetrated with the specific qualities of the spiritual type in all its parts. At the same time this form must not, at any point, be discordant with the structure of the human body as he learns to know it from his models. It must, on the contrary, be most faithful to those models, enhancing and accentuating their suggestions, interpreting with loyal conscientiousness nature's effort to effectuate perfection. Here at last we touch Idealism in its essence. But such Idealism, when sound and healthy, is only Realism in the intensest phase of veracity; it is truth quintessenced and raised to the highest power. And such art is the ultimate expansion of those factors which we found to be co-existent in the simplest sketch from nature.

In the right understanding of this correlation between Realism and Idealism the Greek sculptors are our surest teachers. It was incumbent upon them to create images of gods and goddesses and heroes, each of whom represented in perfection some one psychological attribute of human nature. For these spiritual essences they were bound to find fit incarnation through the means available by art. They therefore always had before their minds the problem how to invest such isolated attributes with appropriate forms-how to fashion a Zeus who should be all-majestic, a Herakles who should be strength personified, an Aphrodite who should be the consummation of feminine attractiveness, a Faun who should be light and active as the creatures of the woodland without ceasing to be man in shape. The solution of this problem forced them to idealize, while their exquisite sense for the beauty, grace, and dignity of the living model kept them realisti

cally faithful to minutest facts in na

ture.

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In order to illustrate how the best Greek work exhibits that right blending of the ideal with the real, on which I am insisting, I will quote a passage from Haydon's autobiography, which records the impression made upon his mind by the first sight of the Elgin marbles. It must be remembered that Haydon grew up in England at a time when Reynolds, Fuseli, and West had saturated the art schools with false doctrine about "the beau-ideal," the grand style,' the superiority of art to nature.' Haydon, though he never worked out the problems of design successfully in his own practice, was convinced that Realism, or truth to actual fact, formed the only solid basis for sculpture and painting. Consequently, when he found the closest observation of nature combined with the loftiest heroic style in the fragments of the Parthenon, these had for him authentic inspiration; they delivered him from what was specious and misleading in the Idealism of his epoch; they confirmed him in his own instinctive belief that genuine grandeur was not only compatible with the most painstaking imitation of the model, but that such devotion to the truth of nature formed an indispensable condition of masterly creative work. Here was an apocalypse of the right method for all art and in all ages. Here was a demonstration of the indissoluble and organic link between the sublimest Idealism and the humblest Realism.

There is so much of a curious sort of pathos, combined with so much of passionate and sudden enthusiasm, in Haydon's narrative, that I venture to reproduce a large portion of it textually. It should not be forgotten that to this man, in no small measure, English people owe the presence in their midst of the Parthenon sculptures, and all that flows therefrom for better and for

for I had never seen them hinted at in any female wrist in the antique. I darted my eye affecting the shape as in nature. I saw that to the elbow, and saw the outer condyle visibly the arm was in repose and the soft parts in relaxation. That combination of nature and idea which I had felt was so much wanting for

high art was here displayed to midday conviction. My heart beat! If I had seen nothing else, I had beheld enough to keep me to nature for the rest of my life. But when I turned to the Theseus and saw that every form was altered by action or repose-when I saw that

the two sides of his back varied, one side stretched from the shoulder-blade being pulled forward, and the other side compressed from the shoulder blade being pushed close to the spine as he rested on his elbow, with the belly flat, because the bowels fell into the pelvis as he sat-and when, turning to the Ilissus, I saw the belly protruded from the figure lying on its side-and again when in the figure of the fighting metope I saw the muscle shown under the arm-pit in that instantaneous action of darting out, and left out in the other armpits because not wanted-when I saw, in fact, the most heroic style combined with all the essential detail of actual life, the thing was done at once and forever. . . . I felt as if a mind, and I knew that they (the marbles) divine truth had blazed inwardly upon my

would at last rouse the art of Europe from its slumber in the darkness.”

III.

At this point it is necessary, for the sake of clearness, to attempt the definition of Realism and Idealism. We have already learned that every work of figurative art contains both elements, whether this be a simple pencil-drawing from a single model, or a composition so complex as the friezes of the Parthe

non.

Yet it is clear that the artist may lean more to the one side than the other. He may choose to concentrate his powers upon the literal imitation of objects rather than upon the development of subjective qualities. Or, on the other hand, he may devote his whole attention to the refinement of an intellectual type of beauty or to the expression of thoughts, remaining content with slovenly execution and feeble grasp on fact. At one period of art, and in one school, tendencies in favor of crude Realism will prevail; at another time, or in another region, the bias will be toward unsubstantial Idealism. We cannot always expect that perfect synthesis which makes the work of Pheidias exemplary. It is therefore profitable to define the two factors which are forever

being brought by the practice of art into more or less complete accord.

Realism is the presentation of natural objects as the artist sees them, as he thinks they are. It is the attempt to imitate things as they strike the senses.

Idealism is the presentation of natural objects as the artist fain would see them, as he thinks they strive to be. It is the attempt to imitate things as the mind interprets them.

I may pause to remark that the distinction implied in these definitions is as old as Aristotle. In the Poetics we read: "Sophocles used to say that he depicted men as they ought to be, Euripides as they are." In other words, Sophocles regarded himself as an ideal ist, Euripides as a realist. Again: "Polygnotus painted men better than they are, Pauson worse than they are, Dionysius as they are." In other words, Polygnotus was an idealist, Pauson a caricaturist, Dionysius a realist. Once again, speaking more generally of painters, Aristotle gives a clear account of idealists: "While making men like men they paint them fairer.

Now this distinction, which is based upon the fundamental properties of human as distinguished from mechanical imitation, has been fruitful of results both in the practice and the theory of the arts. Draughtsmen very soon discover that they cannot wholly eliminate an idealistic or subjective element from their work; but they are able either to keep this in abeyance or to emphasize it. They can swerve more to the side of literal delineation, or more to the side of imaginative selection. Theorists and writers upon art, noticing this power of choice, have divided into hostile camps; and the doctrines of the schools have reacted upon practice. Notwithstanding the impossibility of separating the twin-born factors of every human imitative product, antagonistic standards of the Real and the Ideal came thus into existence. The warfare of opinion on this crucial point diverts practical artists from consistently aiming at that just balance between the careful study of nature and the effort to interpret nature, which is the mark of supreme art.

*These passages will be found in cap. xxvi. and cap. ii.

I will illustrate my meaning by referring to European art in the last three centuries. When sculpture and painting declined in Italy, after the death of Michelangelo, artists began to withdraw from the study of life. Theories were promulgated to the effect that nature hampers the freedom of genius, and obscures the inspiration which illuminates the artist's soul. It was maintained that he ought only to know so much of nature as would save his work from monstrosity. He was told that art bettered nature, and that the painstaking imitation of details lowered style. This led to superficial, slovenly, conceited compositions being palmed off as sublime. The frigid abstractions of the Bolognese Eclectics passed for heroic, because they avoided literal painstaking transcripts from reality. The doctrine of the beau-idéal was preached in France. Sir Joshua Reynolds dilated on the grand style. David, with his pseudoclassicism, imposed on Paris as the reviver of the Greek manner. West in England, vacuous and feeble, took rank among the great religious painters. A spurious Idealism reigned supreme; and through the starvation of her twin sister Realism, art fell into decay.

A reaction was necessitated. The world had been filled with manneristic technicalities and with shallow academical pomposities-with ideal figures, ideal faces, ideal draperies, ideal landscapes, ideal trees, which were only ideal because they resembled nothing real precisely. The reaction assumed many forms; it showed itself earliest in a revived admiration for Dutch painting and in the English school of landscape; it took definite shape in the Romanticists of France and Germany and in the preRaphaelite brotherhood of England. But that which principally concerns us here is its final manifestation in what is now called Realism. This, of a truth, is rather a phase of literature than of figurative art; yet it may be studied in contemporary sculpture and painting no less than in poetry and fiction.

Realism, being a revolt against the false principles of that phthisical Idealism which claimed the empire in despite of Nature, has attached itself to the ugly, the commonplace, the vicious in human existence; it has set its face steadily

against selection and interpretation; it has striven to represent things merely as they are, and not the best things.

In so doing the Realists have chosen an illogical and untenable position; for nothing is more manifest than that beauty is as real as ugliness, purity as obscenity, virtue as vice, health and harmony as disease and discord. Indeed, as I have remarked above, the whole history of the world proves that the good possesses more of reality, more of permanence, than the bad. Reactions and revolutions, however, are never just. And thus it is with contemporary Realism. Conscious that Idealism, in the effete forms of the last century, was a sham-conscious that this impostor claimed the monopoly of beauty, purity, virtue, harmony-the reactionaries studied reality where it is most painfully apparent and least capable of being confounded with the idealistic object of their hatred. They chose the sphere of vulgarity and pathology as though this were eminently real. Philosophers, meanwhile, can welcome even Zola's Nana for the sake of its reactionary force. We know that the pendulum must swing back from that extreme point. The arts are bound to recognize the truth that it is not their duty and their glory to represent deformity. But the arts will have been the better for those drastic studies which force them to face their problem in its crudest shape.

Resuming what I have attempted to establish, we find in the art-history of the present century a false Idealism superseded by a false Realism. Both are false, because neither recognizes the correlation of those elements which in the work of Pheidias we have seen to be supremely harmonized. The idealist sought to dispense with the necessary interrogation of Nature; the realist seeks to ignore the fact that art must aim at selection and must disengage the elements of beauty inherent in Nature. The one regarded man's incapacity to rival a machine with pride, and deemed his power of independent imagination sufficient for itself. The other, indignant at the miserable consequences of such arrogance, strives to reduce man's mind, so far as possible, to the condition of an imitative machine. *

* Many writers of fiction appear, in their

Meanwhile, this uncompromising Realism is by no means the most hopeful or the most prominent feature in the art of our age. On various lines, in many divers ways, since the reaction against false Idealism set in, have attempts been made to solve the problem of combining the twin factors in a due and vital correlation. Together with improved conditions of study in our artschools, the attention paid to the monuments of Sculpture and Painting in their best periods (Hellenic, mediæval, early Italian, Flemish, French), has been progressively helpful; while no one can exaggerate the importance of such teaching as Mr. Ruskin gives so copiously to the student.

The task of forming a sound style is one of peculiar difficulty under the conditions of our epoch, because the arts have no longer a sphere of such thoughts to work in as will stimulate the exercise of the highest imaginative faculties. We saw how Greek sculptors were compelled to idealize by their obligation to incarnate the Olympian divinities, and how at the same time their exquisite feeling for nature kept them within the limits of sober realistic truth. Like them, the earlier Italian painters dealt with the mythology of an anthropomorphic religion; their task was only a trifle less favorable to the right elucidation of the ideal from the real than was that of Pheidias. But we live at a period when theistic conceptions or, in other words. the most deeplv-penetrating and universally-accepted thoughts of the race, no longer lend themselves to æsthetic presentation. entation. They have grown too rarefied, too abstract, too purely intellectual, for adequate treatment by the figurative artist. In the place of Hellenic myth and Christian legend, the vast scientific theory of the Cosmos has arisen, itself pregnant with a new metaphysic and a new theology, but as yet imperfectly appropriated and ill-adapted to the plastic presentation of its fundamental ideas. Science, moreover, has made one fact manifest, that the more we come to know instead of dreaming about things, the less can we tolerate to have those things misrepresented in accordance with some whimsical or obso

dialogue, to be vainly competing with the phonograph.