CHAPTER XV.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS RESPECTING THE THEORETIC FACULTY.

our

no sources of

beauty more than those

visible.

Or the sources of Beauty open to us in the visible world, we have now ob- § 1. There are tained a view which, however scanty in its detail, is yet general in its range. the emotion of Of no other sources than these visible ones, can we, by any effort in present condition of existence, conceive. For what revelations have been found in things made to humanity inspired, or caught up to heaven, of things to the heavenly region belonging, have been either by unspeakable words, or else by their very nature incommunicable, except in types and shadows; and ineffable by words belonging to earth, for, of things different from the visible, words appropriated to the visible can convey no image. How different from earthly gold the clear pavement of the city might have seemed to the eyes of St. John, we of unreceived sight cannot know; neither of that strange jasper and sardine can we conceive the likeness which he assumed that sat on the throne above the crystal sea; neither what seeming that was of slaying that the Root of David bore in the midst of the elders; neither what change it was upon the form of the fourth of them that walked in the furnace of Dura, that even the wrath of Idolatry knew for the likeness of the Son of God. The knowing that is here permitted to us is either of things outward only, as in those it is whose eyes Faith never opened, or else of that dark part that her glass shows feebly, of things supernatural, that gleaming of the Divine form among the mortal crowd, which all may catch if they will climb the sycamore and wait: nor how much of God's abiding at the house may be granted to those that so seek, and how much more may be opened to them in the breaking of bread, cannot

a sort by ima

movable.

be said;

but of that only we can reason which is in a measure revealed

to all, of that which is by constancy and purity of affection to be found

§ 2. What im- in the things and the beings around us upon earth. Now among perfection exall those things whose beauty we have hitherto examined, there has ists in visible things. How in been a measure of imperfection. Either inferiority of kind, as the gination re- beauty of the lower animals, or resulting from degradation, as in man himself; and although in considering the beauty of human form, we arrived at some conception of restoration, yet we found that even the restoration must be, in some respect, imperfect, as incapable of embracing all qualities, moral and intellectual, at once, neither to be freed from all signs of former evil done or suffered. Consummate beauty, therefore, is not to be found on earth, neither is it to be respecting humanity legitimately conceived. But by certain operations of the imagination upon ideas of beauty received from things around us, it is possible to conceive respecting superhuman creatures (of that which Which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived) a beauty in some sort greater than we see. Of this beauty, however, it is impossible to determine anything until we have traced the imaginative operations to which it owes its being, of which operations this much may be prematurely said, that they are not creative, that no new ideas are elicited by them, and that their whole function is only a certain dealing with, concentrating, or mode of regarding the impressions received from external things that therefore, in the beauty to which they will conduct us, there will be found no new element, but only a peculiar combination or phase of those elements that we now know; and that therefore we may at present draw all the conclusions with respect to the rank of the theoretic faculty, which the knowledge of its subject

§ 3.

however affects

not our present conclusions.

§ 4. The four

which the sense

derived are all divine.

matter can warrant.

We have seen that this subject matter is referable to four general sources from heads. It is either the record of conscience, written in things exof Beauty is ternal, or it is a symbolizing of Divine attributes in matter, or it is the felicity of living things, or the perfect fulfilment of their duties and functions. In all cases it is something Divine; either the approving voice of God, the glorious symbol of him, the evidence of his kind presence, or the obedience to his will by him induced and supported.

All these subjects of contemplation are such as we may suppose

will remain sources of pleasure to the perfected spirit throughout eternity. Divine in their nature, they are addressed to the immortal part of men.

conclusion.

There remain, however, two points to be noticed before I can hope § 5. What objections may be that this conclusion will be frankly accepted by the reader. If it made to this be the moral part of us to which Beauty addresses itself, how does it happen, it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and how is it possible for such to desire or conceive it?

On the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral culture are often insensible to the influence of material beauty; and insist feebly upon it as an instrument of soul culture?

These two objections I shall endeavour briefly to answer; not that they can be satisfactorily treated without that examination of the connection between all kind of greatness in art, on which I purpose to enter in the following volume. For the right determination of these two questions is indeed the whole end and aim of my labour (and if it could be here accomplished, I should bestow no effort farther), namely, the proving that no supreme power of art can be attained by impious men; and that the neglect of art, as an interpreter of divine things, has been of evil consequence to the Christain world.

At present, however, I would only meet such objections as must immediately arise in the reader's mind.

:

Typical beauty may be

Instances.

And first, it will be remembered that I have, throughout the ex- § 6. amination of Typical beauty, asserted our instinctive sense of it; aesthetically the moral meaning of it being only discoverable by reflection. Now this pursued. instinctive sense of it varies in intensity among men, being given, like the hearing ear of music, to some more than to others and if those to whom it is given in large measure be unfortunately men of impious or unreflecting spirit, it is very possible that the perceptions of beauty should be by them cultivated on principles merely aesthetic, and so lose their hallowing power; for though the good seed in them is altogether divine, yet, there being no blessing in the springing thereof, it brings forth wild grapes in the end. And yet these wild grapes are well discernible, like the deadly gourds of Gilgal. There is in all works of such men a taint and stain, and jarring discord, darker and louder exactly in proportion to the moral deficiency; of which the best proof and measure is to be found in their treatment of the

human form (since in landscape it is nearly impossible to introduce definite expression of evil), of which the highest beauty has been attained only once, and then by no system-taught painter, but by a most holy Dominican monk of Fiesole: and beneath him all fall lower and lower in proportion to their inferior sanctity, (though with more or less attainment of that which is noble, according to their intellectual power and earnestness), as Raphael in his St. Cecilia (a mere study of a passionate, dark-eyed, large formed Italian model), and even Perugino, in that there is about his noblest faces a short coming, indefinable; an absence of the full out-pouring of the sacred spirit that there is in Angelico; traceable, I doubt not, to some deficiencies and avaricious flaws of his heart, whose consequences in his conduct were such as to give Vasari hope that his lies might stick to him (for the contradiction of which in the main, if there be not contradiction enough in every line that the hand of Perugino drew, compare Rio;1 and note also what Rio has singularly missed observing, that Perugino, in his portrait of himself in the Florence gallery, has put a scroll into the hand, with the words “ Timete Deum," thus surely indicating what he considered his duty and message :) and so all other even of the sacred painters, not to speak of the lower body of men in whom, on the one hand, there is marked sensuality and impurity in all that they seek of beauty, as in Correggio and Guido; or, on the other, a partial want of the sense of beauty itself, as in Rubens and Titian,

;

§ 7. How in- exhibited in the adoption of coarse types of feature and form terrupted by false feeling. sometimes also (of which I could find instances in modern times), by a want of evidence of delight in what they do; so that, after they have rendered some passage of exceeding beauty, they will suffer some discordant point to interfere with it, and it will not hurt them ; as if they had no pleasure in that which was best, but had done it in inspiration that was not profitable to them; as deaf men might touch an instrument with a feeling in their heart, which yet returns not outwardly upon them, and so know not when they play false and sometimes by total want of choice, for there is a choice of love in all rightly tempered men; not that ignorant and insolent choice which rejects half nature as empty of the right, but that pure choice that fetches the right out of everything; and where

1 De la Poesie Chretienne. Forme de l'Art.

this is wanting, we may see men walking up and down in dry places, finding no rest; ever and anon doing something noble and yet not following it up, but dwelling the next instant on something impure or profitless with the same intensity and yet impatience, so that they are ever wondered at and never sympathised with, and while they dazzle all they lead none; and then, beneath these again, we find others on whose works there are definite signs of evil desire, ill repressed, and then inability to avoid, and at last perpetual seeking for, and feeding upon, horror and ugliness, and filthiness of sin; as eminently in Salvator and Caravaggio, and the lower Dutch schools, only in these last less painfully as they lose the villainous in the brutal, and the horror of crime in its idiocy.

and truth are

But secondly, it is to be noted that it is neither by us ascertain- § 8. Greatness able what moments of pure feeling or aspiration may occur to men sometimes by the Deity susof minds apparently cold and lost, nor by us to be pronounced through tained and what instruments, and in what strangely occurrent voices, God may spoken in and through Evil choose to communicate good to men. It seems to me that much men. of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did; and that many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb or discordant, but that God knew their stops. The Spirit of Prophecy consisted with the avarice of Balaam, and the disobedience of Saul. Could we spare from its page that parable, which he said, who saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open; though we know that the sword of his punishment was then sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of Moab? or shall we not lament with David over the shield, cast away on the Gilboa mountains, of him to whom God gave another heart that day, when he turned his back to go from Samuel? It is not our part to look hardly, nor to look always, to the character or the deeds of men, but to accept from all of them, and to hold fast, that which we can prove good, and feel to be ordained for us. We know that whatever good there is in them is itself divine; and wherever we see the virtue of ardent labour and self-surrendering to a single purpose, wherever we find constant reference made to the written scripture of natural beauty, this at least we know is great and good; this we know is not