CHAPTER IV.

THE RELATION OF THE FINE ARTS TO RELIGION.

ART, in the broadest sense of the term, denotes simply the use of means for the accomplishment of some desired end or purpose. It is not applied to the activity or products of nature, although it is closely related to those products. Strictly speaking there is no picture till man paints it, no music till man makes it, no poetry till man composes it. Nevertheless, nature furnishes all the material for art to work upon, and is the guide of man in its pursuit.

It is not the mission of any art to invent new elements. Its only function is to put the old into new forms and combinations. No genius in art, however gifted, can add a new species to either the animal or vegetable kingdom, or a new aspect to land or sea or sky. All any artist can possibly do is to make use of the boundless variety of elements that nature has already presented to him, and he has neither the ability nor the opportunity to transcend these limits.

For this reason, art must always at first be imitative. It is in this sense, and this only, that it is the business of art to "hold the mirror up to nature." Not until art has first mastered the material that nature offers and discerned its law and method of working, can it go forward and reproduce it in new combinations with something like the freedom and boldness of nature. For she scorns to imitate, and never repeats herself. No art can be true to nature, in the proper sense of that

term, until it has so perfectly acquired a knowledge of nature's elements and ways of working that it goes infinitely beyond imitation; until, indeed, the power of creating new forms has so developed that all need of imitation has ceased to exist.

For the real artist is not held down by the limitations of the individual characteristics of the object before him, but he sees the specific or typical in it, and this it is that he endeavors to express. The actual in its precise historic existence has appeared but once, and will never appear again. In its essentials, however, it is continually reappearing and ever repeating itself. Hence it is that the ideal is of far more value than the real. As another expresses it, "There is more truth in that which may often be than in that which is known to have been but once." Any work of art that tells us what has been a thousand times and what may be a thousand times again has gained a mastery over the actual, and for that very reason captivates the heart.

All the arts that man has devised are conveniently divided into those that minister to his material necessities or convenience, and those that are intended to arouse and satisfy his higher æsthetic powers. The former are properly called useful or mechanical arts, and their number and variety greatly vary with the progress of a people in industry and wealth. The latter, because they appeal to and delight the sense of beauty, have come to be known as the beautiful or fine arts in all the languages of modern civilized lands. The fine arts are often found in combination with the useful arts, but it is usually an easy matter in such cases to separate the part that is beautiful from the part that merely serves a practical purpose.

By common consent the five principal fine arts are

Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, and Poetry. But how they should be arranged or classified is still far from settled. Some would treat them from the standpoint of their conformity to nature; others from the point of view of their historical development; and others still from the psychological impulse which called them into being. But the classification of Hegel is the most satisfactory for our purpose, for he treats them from the standpoint of the ideas that they express, and the amount of matter that is needed to express them. Architecture is therefore the lowest of the fine arts. It is primarily a useful art, and only secondarily a fine art. Stone is its most natural material. Large quantities of it may be used in its constructions, which are held together by the great universal force of gravity. Massiveness, silent earnestness, immovability, are its fundamental characteristics.

Sculpture is a higher art than architecture. For although its chief material is also stone, it advances from the inorganic world to the organic. It fashions the stone into a bodily form, and makes every part of it a vehicle of thought and feeling. In any genuine piece of sculpture there is nothing left of the material that does not serve in some way to give expression to the thought of the artist. Every part of the Apollo Belvedere, for example, breathes forth a magnificent defiance and disdain of the enemy, just as the writer of the Iliad depicts him. Even the scarf on his arm is instinct with passion.

With painting the medium is no longer a coarse material substance like stone or bronze, but merely a plain colored surface; and yet on that surface it can represent all the dimensions of space. It expresses its ideas and feelings by the mere play of light and shade.

On a small bit of canvas can be compressed a multitude of individual forms, each animated with his own characteristic thoughts, and giving vent to his own peculiar passions.

Music manifests itself through sound alone. It is a mode of motion, and motion is the natural language of emotion. It arouses the mind to activity through the ear, just as architecture and sculpture and painting do through the eye. Certain aërial vibrations falling upon the auditory nerve give rise to regularly varying mental images, called sensations of tone. "Of the ten or eleven thousand tones which may be distinguished in consciousness, music uses a comparatively small number. Our own elaborate musical system includes only eighty-five or ninety, ranging from about forty to four thousand vibrations per second; something less than seven octaves." Through this exceedingly limited medium music makes its appeal to all the mental powers. For it arouses thought and action, as well as feeling. The hearer may be stirred by it to form imaginations, retrospections, and resolves as truly as emotions and desires.

Poetry is the tongue of art let loose, so to speak. It can represent everything by mere words, and a word is a sign or representation of an idea. In a certain sense it can make all the other arts contribute to its purpose. With the least amount of matter it can communicate the greatest variety of ideas, extend itself over the greatest range of feeling, and most powerfully affect the will.

Here we need to note the fact and point out in some detail its importance to our subject that the fine arts described above, even when carried to the climax of their development, include only a portion, and that a

small one, of the field of the beautiful. As Plato has wisely said, all beauty is the outshining of the truth. Wherever any truth shows itself in some concrete form, there is beauty. All the truth there is in this world is manifested to us in the works of God. All beauty, therefore, is the expression of his thoughts, and man is enabled to express beauty as he gets acquainted with those thoughts. The fine arts are merely the attempts of man to embody as best he may some of the thoughts of God. In other words, every object in the universe, whether the product of God or man, is beautiful just in proportion as it reveals ideal perfection.

Matter alone is not beautiful. It is only the idea or thought that the matter expresses that is beautiful. Hence it is that objects in nature or art are beautiful in different degrees. The ideals they represent are of higher or lower grades according to the value of the elements that enter into their composition. The ideal of a human being is higher than that of any animal, and the ideal of a tree than that of a pebble. Even one Madonna differs from another Madonna in glory. For some represent merely the happy mother, while others chiefly magnify the sense of relationship to the divine. Although any object is beautiful that reveals ideal perfection, the perfection it reveals must be of its own kind, and in harmony with its own character. A dog, if represented as a dog, is beautiful, but if given the neck of a giraffe or the proboscis of an elephant, he becomes ridiculous, because fantastic and unreal. For the same reason the human form with wings attached to it is actually grotesque, although the term angel is often used to designate the combination.

Many limit the beautiful to objects perceivable by the senses, but there is no rational basis for such a position.