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Page 22
[Footnote 15: Letter to C.E. Norton, June 30, 1904.]
[Footnote 16: _Le Perception de Changement_, 30.]
[Footnote 17: _L'evolution creatrice_, 55.]
Here is a philosophy which obviously may be both as antihumanistic and
as irreligious as any which could well be conceived. Here is license
in conduct and romanticism in expression going hand in hand with
this all but exclusive emphasis upon relativity in thought. Here is
disorder, erected as a universal concept; the world conceived of as
a vast and impenetrable veil which is hiding nothing; an intricacy
without pattern. Obviously so ungoverned and fluid a universe
justifies uncritical and irresponsible thinking and living.
We have tried thus to sketch that declension into paganism on the
part of much of the present world, of which we spoke earlier in the
chapter. It denies or ignores the humanistic law with its exacting
moral and aesthetic standards; it openly flouts the attitude of
obedience and humility before religious mandates, and, so far as
opportunity offers or prudence permits, goes its own insolently wanton
way. Our world is full of dilettanti in the colleges, anarchists in
the state, atheists in the church, bohemians in art, sybarites in
conduct and ineffably silly women in society, who have felt, and
occasionally studied the scientific and naturalistic movement just far
enough and superficially enough to grasp the idea of relativity and
to exalt it as sufficient and complete in itself. Many of them are
incapable of realizing the implications for conduct and belief which
it entails. Others of them, who are of the lesser sort, pulled by
the imperious hungers of the flesh, the untutored instincts of a
restless spirit, hating Hellenic discipline no less than Christian
renunciation, having no stomach either for self-control or
self-surrender, look out on the mass of endlessly opposing
complexities of the modern world and gladly use that vision as an
excuse for abandoning what is indeed the ever failing but also the
ever necessary struggle to achieve order, unity, yes, even perfection.
To them, therefore, the only way to conquer a temptation is to yield
to it. They rail nonsensically at all repression, forgetting that man
cannot express the full circle of his mutually exclusive instincts,
and that when he gives rein to one he thereby negates another;
that choice, therefore, is inevitable and that the more exacting
and critical the choice, the more valuable and comprehensive the
expression. So they frankly assert their choices along the lines of
least resistance and abandon themselves, at least in principle, to
emotional chaos and moral sentimentalism. Very often they are of all
men the most meticulously mannered. But their manners are not the
decorum of the humanist, they are the etiquette of the worldling.
Chesterfield had these folk in mind when he spoke with an intolerable,
if incisive, cynicism of those who know the art of combining the
useful appearances of virtue with the solid satisfactions of vice.
Such naturalism is sometimes tolerated by those who aspire to urbane
and liberal judgments because they think it can be defended on
humanistic grounds. But, as a matter of fact, it is as offensive to
the thoroughgoing humanist as it is to the sincere religionist.
They have a common quarrel with it. Take, for example, the notorious
naturalistic doctrine of art for art's sake, the defiant divorcing of
ethical and aesthetic values. Civilization no less than religion
must fight this. For it is as false in experience and as unclear in
thinking as could well be imagined. Its defense, so far as it has
any, is based upon the confusion in the pagan mind of morality with
moralizing, a confusion that no good humanist would ever permit
himself. Of course, the end of art is neither preaching nor teaching
but delighting. For that very reason, however, art, too, must
conform--hateful word!--conform to fixed standards. For the sense of
proportion, the instinct for elimination, is integral to art and this,
as Professor Babbitt points out, is attained only with the aid of
the ethical imagination.[18] Because without the ethical restraint,
the creative spirit roams among unbridled emotions; art becomes
impressionism. What it then produces may indeed be picturesque,
melodramatic, sensual, but it will not be beautiful because there
will be no imaginative wholeness in it. In other words, the artist
who divorces aesthetics from ethics does gain creative license, but
he gains it at the expense of a balanced and harmonious expression.
If you do not believe it, compare the Venus de Milo with the Venus de
Medici or a Rubens fleshy, spilling-out-of-her-clothes Magdalen with
a Donatello Madonna. When ethical restraint disappears, art tends to
caricature, it becomes depersonalized. The Venus de Milo is a living
being, a great personage; indeed, a genuine and gracious goddess. The
Venus de Medici has scarcely any personality at all; she is chiefly
objectified desire! The essence of art is not spontaneous expression
nor naked passion; the essence of art is critical expression,
restrained passion.
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