CHAPTER IX

ART AND THOUGHT

I

THOUGHT, Whose claim is to enlighten, has for a century served to dull the taste for architecture, if the vision of her history it has spaciously enlarged. That perception of the beautiful, which to a simple view was clear, has, by thought itself, been darkened. Taste, the very function for whose sake it is worth while to criticise, criticism has aided to destroy. For criticism has changed. Once buoyant upon ignorance, it now is heavy with unheard-of learning. Once the flatterer of a king, it is now the pedagogue without inspiration of a scholar without impulse. It was the plume upon the crest of art; now, with long but leaden shackles, it clings about its feet.

Architecture in Arcadian days was the mistress of Taste, and arrayed herself, for her lover, in artful yet unconscious beauty. Taste, with a skill no less unconscious, knew how to win, and could enjoy her charms. He altered his moods to the variety of hers, which, indeed, were infinite, but to him all pleasing. Criticism was the Nurse in this old play-a small

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part, but accepted. She had a store of wise sayings, not new, but gratefully heard, and as constantly repeated. And sometimes she would whisper her too practised instigations in the ear of her lady; sometimes correct her lack of guile. But most, she sang to Taste the praises of his mistress and spread her portrait before his eyes.

But the time came a hundred years ago—when Taste grew wanton and sighed for earlier loves. He occupied his thoughts with far-off songs; his mind grew busy with forgotten fancies; he dreamed of the maidens of strange lands and times. Thereat, his mistress, dismayed, sought to learn their arts, and even imitated, as she could, their quaint, oldfashioned garments. Wild weeds clothed her, and curious aprons. And for a while the pair kept up this too fantastic dalliance.

But soon, as needs must, they fell out. Architecture, in these simulated graces, grew self-conscious and too little charming; and anxious yet to please, but pleasing now no longer, studied fresh poses, still unlovely. She bared her limbs, though in truth they were gaunt; she made herself heavy with unimagined jewels, and devised the most astonishing costumes. But Taste regarded her with a jaded and soon vacant eye. He took no delight in these new vestures. And one day, with loud shouts and a noise of many people following, came Commerce and

Science in a lordly equipage. And, as they were flushed with wine and full of the gayest and most ingenious proposals, Taste joined their company and went in search of new adventures. And whether these were to his liking, or whether some mischance befel, it is certain at least that he never returned.

Criticism was now no more the go-between. But she was never so busy or so garrulous. She wrote the longest letters and addressed them to Taste. She went and gossiped with his new companions. She became tiresome: no one cared to see her. But Architecture, at last, was weary of the struggle, and said aloud that Taste had grown corrupt; whereby her pride was made easy, and Arcadia was forgotten quite. But the minor actors in the play, Commerce and Science (with Romance and Morality, for these also-even the last-were boon companions in Taste's debauches), have different accounts to give of the matter, that are full of scandal. They have suborned the Nurse to say that Taste was but their creature, and that they and not he were the lovers of Architecture-which, indeed, is now true, but in Arcadia she cared for nobody but Taste, as any one can discover by inquiring.

For which reason, and in order that the story of what there happened may later be told without prejudice, this book has sought to set out the causes of the quarrel and may in conclusion be permitted some

reflections, both in general and with special reference to the Nurse, whose garrulous and giddy nature was a large part of the mischief, and the part for which there is the least excuse.

Criticism, in the arts of form, when it ceased to be a trifling comment, became, most often, a pernicious logic. At no time in history has so much logic been expended on the arts as during the past hundred years. At no time in history have the arts themselves sunk so low, or opinion been more ludicrously divided. This failure of criticism comes from a lack of clearness on an essential point. It is still too seldom and too little vividly considered how opposite in their nature are the arts of form to the intelligence which reasons on them.

Art itself, and our thought about art, proceed from diverse origins, through differing channels, and seldom join effective issue. Sufficient to itself in its methods, and satisfying men with its results, art is the last of all human activities to call for the scrutiny of the reasoning intelligence. More obstinately than any other of our interests, beauty still continues to elude the reason's search and contradict its inferences.

There is nothing in this that need surprise us. Rational understanding, at its birth, turned to solve the vital problems which called it into being. Primi

tive ethics, science and theology, from their practical reference, first became and long remained the reason's principal preoccupation. When, in its turn, the mind's disinterested thought arose, its speculation was inevitably spent upon the contradictions which primitive ethics, science and theology, were seen, either singly or in combination, to contain. But the impulse along this path which the intellect received in the beginning, and so long maintained, still circumscribes its use. It is by habit inattentive, by nature unsubmissive, to the process which all this time was silently moulding and transfiguring the arts of form.

The arts, after all-save on technical questionshave never sought, or have not sought till now, the reason's interference. Reason supplied the means; they of themselves defined and fixed the end. For art itself is a species of thought, having its own dialectic, arriving by its own processes at its own conclusions, and through the language of its own forms made capable of communication. The artist, by immediate and spontaneous preference, rejects one form and substitutes another, and demonstrates thereby the rightness of his emendation. That is his dialectic. Argument may confirm, but does not of itself supply, his choice. In so far then as his fellow-men are brought, by sympathy or imitation, to share these preferences, artistic canons and traditions will arise. But traditions do not exist in vacuo: they manifest