Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman. Alexander WalkerЧитать онлайн книгу.
a simile, the angler chooses not to see the fish he angles for, until it is fairly caught.” He meant of course—“the fish chooses not to see the angler, until it is fairly caught!”
Be it known then to all, even the most aristocratic as to sexual association—I say the most aristocratic, and not the most religious, because religion is in some countries made the pander to aristocracy—be it known that the critical judgment and pure taste for beauty are the sole protection against low and degrading connexions.
Home observes that “the sense of beauty does not tend to advance the interests of society, but when in a due mean with respect to strength. Love in particular arising from a sense of beauty, loses, when excessive, its sociable character: the appetite for gratification, prevailing over affection for the beloved object, is ungovernable, and tends violently to its end, regardless of the misery that must follow. Love in this state is no longer a sweet agreeable passion: it becomes painful, like hunger or thirst, and produces no happiness but in the instant of fruition. This discovery suggests a most important lesson, that moderation in our desires and appetites, which fits us for doing our duty, contributes at the same time the most to happiness: even social passions, when moderate, are more pleasant than when they swell beyond proper bounds.” Payne Knight says: “When, at the age of puberty, animal desire obtrudes itself on a mind already qualified to feel and enjoy the charms of intellectual merit, the imagination immediately begins to form pictures of perfection, by exaggerating and combining in one hypothetic object every excellence that can possibly belong to the whole sex; and the first individual that meets the eye, with any exterior signs of any of these ideal excellences, is immediately decorated with them all, by the creative magic of a vigorous and fertile fancy. Hence, she instantaneously becomes the object of the most fervent affection, which is as instantaneously cooled by possession: for, as it was not the object herself, but a false idea of her raised in heated imagination, that called forth all the lover’s raptures, all immediately vanish at the detection of his delusion; and a degree of disgust proportioned to the disappointment, of which it is the inevitable consequence, instantly succeeds. Thus it happens that what are called love-matches are seldom or ever happy.”
Now, nothing can more effectually prevent even the existence of the mania described by these two philosophers than a critical judgment and a pure taste for beauty, which again therefore are the sole protection against low and degrading connexions.
A just sense of this truth will give high encouragement to sculpture and painting—arts which may everywhere be looked upon as the best tests, as well as the best records, of civilization. Such encouragement they need in truth; for the monstrous monopoly of landed property and the accumulation of wealth in few hands—the great aim of our political economy—renders art poor, indeed.
I am aware that the vulgar among artists think otherwise; from the few rich they obtain employment; and, like the dog with his master, they look not beyond the hand that doles out their pittance. But the rich are few; and their palaces are already filled. A diffusion of wealth alone can give encouragement to art; nor can this ever be while British industry is crushed under the weight of enormous taxation.
Having removed some objections to art, I would add a few words to artists on the cause of the fine arts in Greece, from a paper I, two years ago, contributed to a monthly periodical.4
That the mythology of Greece had an influence over its arts, is generally granted; but I am not aware, that it has either been shown to be exclusively their cause, or that its mode of operation has ever been explained.
Religion, I may observe, is as natural to man as his weakness and helplessness. There is not one of its systems, not even the vilest, which has not afforded him consolation. Of its higher and better systems, some are equally admirable for the grandeur and the beauty of the truths on which they are founded, the simplicity and the elegance of their ostensible forms, the power and applicability of their symbols, and their sympathy with, and control over, the affections and the imagination.
These high characteristics peculiarly distinguished the religion of ancient Greece.
By bigots, we are indeed told, that, though Homer is our model in epic, Anacreon in lyric, and Æschylus in dramatic poetry—though the music of Greece doubtless corresponded to its poetry in beauty, pathos, and grandeur—though the mere wreck of her sculpture is never overlooked in modern war and negotiation—though the mere sight of her ruined Parthenon is more than a reward for the fatigue or the peril of a journey to the Eternal city—though these products of art are the test of the highest civilization which the world has witnessed—though to these chiefly Rome owed the little civilization of which she was capable, and we ourselves the circumstance that, at this hour, we are not, like our ancestors, covered only with blue paint or the skins of brutes—though all this is true as to the arts of Greece, we are told that, by the strangest exception, the religion of Greece was a base superstition.
That religion, however, was the creator of these arts. They not only could not have existed without it, but they probably could never have been called into existence by any other religion.
The personification of simple Beauty, Valor, Wisdom, or Omnipotence, in Venus, Mars, Minerva, or Jupiter, respectively, was essential to the purity and the power of expression of these attributes in the worship of the deities to whom they respectively belonged. The union of absolute beauty and valor in one being, is not more impossible than their union in one expression of homage and admiration. Delicacy, elegance, and grace, were as characteristic of the statue, the worship, and the temple, of the goddess of beauty, as attributes nearly opposite to these were of the statue, the worship, and the temple, of the god of war. Thus, were the fine arts in Greece created by the personification of simple attributes or virtues as objects of adoration; and thus is excellence in these fine arts incapable of being elicited by any system of religion in which more than one attribute is ascribed to the god.
They must be ignorant, indeed, of the wonderful people of whom I now speak, who allege, that the Greeks worshipped the mere statue of the god and not the personified virtue. Even the history of their religion proves the reverse. It was the tomb which became the altar, and retained nearly its form. It was the expression of love, of regret, and of veneration for departed virtue, which became divine adoration; and, as individual acts and even individual names were ultimately lost in one transcendent attribute, so were individual forms and features, in its purified and ideal representation. Here, then, instead of finding the worship of men or of their representations, we discover a gradual advance from beings to attributes—from mortal man to eternal virtue—and a corresponding and suitable advance from simple veneration to divine adoration.
When, in great emergencies of the state, the sages and the soldiers of Athens, in solemn procession repaired to the temple of Minerva, turned their faces toward the statue of the goddess, and prostrated themselves in spirit before her—let the beautiful history of Grecian science tell, whether in the statue they worshipped the mere marble structure, or, in its forms and attributes, beheld and adored a personification of eternal truth and wisdom, and so prepared the mind for deeds which have rendered Greece for ever illustrious. Or, when returning from a Marathon, or a Salamis, the warriors of Athens, followed by trains of maidens, and matrons, and old men, returned thanks to the god of victories—let the immortal record of the long series of glorious achievements which succeeded these, tell, whether gratitude to their heroes was not there identified with homage to the spirit or the divinity that inspired them.
True it is, that, whenever physical or moral principles are personified, the ignorant may be led to mistake the sign for that which is signified; but one of the most admirable characteristics of the Grecian religion is, that, with little effort, every external form may be traced to the spirit which it represents, and every fable may be resolved into a beautiful illustration of physical or moral truth. So that when mystic influences, with increasing knowledge, ceased to sway the imagination, all-powerful truths directed the reason.
The natural and poetical religion of Greece, therefore, differed from false and vulgar religions in this, that it was calculated to hold equal empire over the minds of the ignorant and the wise; and the initiations of Eleusis were apparently the solemn acts by which the youths and maidens of Greece passed from ignorance and blind obedience to knowledge and
“The Magazine of The Fine Arts,” No. VI, for October 1833.