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Title: What Is Art?

Author: graf Leo Tolstoy

Translator: Aylmer Maude

Release date: March 23, 2021 [eBook #64908]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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WHAT IS ART?

WHAT IS ART?
BY
LEO TOLSTOY
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL MS.,
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
AYLMER MAUDE
NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
1904

Introduction

What thoughtful man has not been perplexed by problems relating to art?
An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt the charm of the
music and ritual of the services of the Russo-Greek Church so strongly that
she wished the peasants, in whom she was interested, to retain their blind
faith, though she herself disbelieved the church doctrines. “Their lives are
so poor and bare—they have so little art, so little poetry and colour in their
lives—let them at least enjoy what they have; it would be cruel to
undeceive them,” said she.
A false and antiquated view of life is supported by means of art, and is
inseparably linked to some manifestations of art which we enjoy and prize.
If the false view of life be destroyed this art will cease to appear valuable. Is
it best to screen the error for the sake of preserving the art? Or should the
art be sacrificed for the sake of truthfulness?
Again and again in history a dominant church has utilised art to maintain its
sway over men. Reformers (early Christians, Mohammedans, Puritans, and
others) have perceived that art bound people to the old faith, and they were
angry with art. They diligently chipped the noses from statues and images,
and were wroth with ceremonies, decorations, stained-glass windows, and
processions. They were even ready to banish art altogether, for, besides the
superstitions it upheld, they saw that it depraved and perverted men by
dramas, drinking-songs, novels, pictures, and dances, of a kind that
awakened man’s lower nature. Yet art always reasserted her sway, and to-
day we are told by many that art has nothing to do with morality—that “art
should be followed for art’s sake.”
I went one day, with a lady artist, to the Bodkin Art Gallery in Moscow. In
one of the rooms, on a table, lay a book of coloured pictures, issued in Paris
and supplied, I believe, to private subscribers only. The pictures were
admirably executed, but represented scenes in the private cabinets of a

restaurant. Sexual indulgence was the chief subject of each picture. Women
extravagantly dressed and partly undressed, women exposing their legs and
breasts to men in evening dress; men and women taking liberties with each
other, or dancing the “can-can,” etc., etc. My companion the artist, a maiden
lady of irreproachable conduct and reputation, began deliberately to look at
these pictures. I could not let my attention dwell on them without ill effects.
Such things had a certain attraction for me, and tended to make me restless
and nervous. I ventured to suggest that the subject-matter of the pictures
was objectionable. But my companion (who prided herself on being an
artist) remarked with conscious superiority, that from an artist’s point of
view the subject was of no consequence. The pictures being very well
executed were artistic, and therefore worthy of attention and study. Morality
had nothing to do with art.
Here again is a problem. One remembers Plato’s advice not to let our
thoughts run upon women, for if we do we shall think clearly about nothing
else, and one knows that to neglect this advice is to lose tranquillity of
mind; but then one does not wish to be considered narrow, ascetic, or
inartistic, nor to lose artistic pleasures which those around us esteem so
highly.
Again, the newspapers last year printed proposals to construct a Wagner
Opera House, to cost, if I recollect rightly, £100,000—about as much as a
hundred labourers may earn by fifteen or twenty years’ hard work. The
writers thought it would be a good thing if such an Opera House were
erected and endowed. But I had a talk lately with a man who, till his health
failed him, had worked as a builder in London. He told me that when he
was younger he had been very fond of theatre-going, but, later, when he
thought things over and considered that in almost every number of his
weekly paper he read of cases of people whose death was hastened by lack
of good food, he felt it was not right that so much labour should be spent on
theatres.
In reply to this view it is urged that food for the mind is as important as
food for the body. The labouring classes work to produce food and
necessaries for themselves and for the cultured, while some of the cultured
class produce plays and operas. It is a division of labour. But this again
invites the rejoinder that, sure enough, the labourers produce food for
themselves and also food that the cultured class accept and consume, but

that the artists seem too often to produce their spiritual food for the cultured
only—at any rate that a singularly small share seems to reach the country
labourers who work to supply the bodily food! Even were the “division of
labour” shown to be a fair one, the “division of products” seems remarkably
one-sided.
Once again: how is it that often when a new work is produced, neither the
critics, the artists, the publishers, nor the public, seem to know whether it is
valuable or worthless? Some of the most famous books in English literature
could hardly find a publisher, or were savagely derided by leading critics;
while other works once acclaimed as masterpieces are now laughed at or
utterly forgotten. A play which nobody now reads was once passed off as a
newly-discovered masterpiece of Shakespear’s, and was produced at a
leading London theatre. Are the critics playing blind-man’s buff? Are they
relying on each other? Is each following his own whim and fancy? Or do
they possess a criterion which they never reveal to those outside the
profession?
Such are a few of the many problems relating to art which present
themselves to us all, and it is the purpose of this book to enable us to reach
such a comprehension of art, and of the position art should occupy in our
lives, as will enable us to answer such questions.
The task is one of enormous difficulty. Under the cloak of “art,” so much
selfish amusement and self-indulgence tries to justify itself, and so many
mercenary interests are concerned in preventing the light from shining in
upon the subject, that the clamour raised by this book can only be compared
to that raised by the silversmiths of Ephesus when they shouted, “Great is
Diana of the Ephesians!” for about the space of two hours.
Elaborate theories blocked the path with subtle sophistries or ponderous
pseudo-erudition. Merely to master these, and expose them, was by itself a
colossal labour, but necessary in order to clear the road for a statement of
any fresh view. To have accomplished this work of exposure in a few
chapters is a wonderful achievement. To have done it without making the
book intolerably dry is more wonderful still. In Chapter III. (where a rapid
summary of some sixty æsthetic writers is given) even Tolstoy’s powers fail
to make the subject interesting, except to the specialist, and he has to plead

with his readers “not to be overcome by dulness, but to read these extracts
through.”
Among the writers mentioned, English readers miss the names of John
Ruskin and William Morris, especially as so much that Tolstoy says, is in
accord with their views.
Of Ruskin, Tolstoy has a very high opinion. I have heard him say, “I don’t
know why you English make such a fuss about Gladstone—you have a
much greater man in Ruskin.” As a stylist, too, Tolstoy speaks of him with
high commendation. Ruskin, however, though he has written on art with
profound insight, and has said many things with which Tolstoy fully agrees,
has, I think, nowhere so systematised and summarised his view that it can
be readily quoted in the concise way which has enabled Tolstoy to indicate
his points of essential agreement with Home, Véron, and Kant. Even the
attempt to summarise Kant’s æsthetic philosophy in a dozen lines will
hardly be of much service except to readers who have already some
acquaintance with the subject. For those to whom the difference between
“subjective” and “objective” perceptions is fresh, a dozen pages would be
none too much. And to summarise Ruskin would be perhaps more difficult
than to condense Kant.
As to William Morris, we are reminded of his dictum that art is the
workman’s expression of joy in his work, by Tolstoy’s “As soon as the
author is not producing art for his own satisfaction,—does not himself feel
what he wishes to express,—a resistance immediately springs up” (p. 154);
and again, “In such transmission to others of the feelings that have arisen in
him, he (the artist) will find his happiness” (p. 195). Tolstoy sweeps over a
far wider range of thought, but he and Morris are not opposed. Morris was
emphasising part of what Tolstoy is implying.
But to return to the difficulties of Tolstoy’s task. There is one, not yet
mentioned, lurking in the hearts of most of us. We have enjoyed works of
“art.” We have been interested by the information conveyed in a novel, or
we have been thrilled by an unexpected “effect”; have admired the
exactitude with which real life has been reproduced, or have had our
feelings touched by allusions to, or reproductions of, works—old German
legends, Greek myths, or Hebrew poetry—which moved us long ago, as
they moved generations before us. And we thought all this was “art.” Not

clearly understanding what art is, and wherein its importance lies, we were
not only attached to these things, but attributed importance to them, calling
them “artistic” and “beautiful,” without well knowing what we meant by
those words.
But here is a book that obliges us to clear our minds. It challenges us to
define “art” and “beauty,” and to say why we consider these things, that
pleased us, to be specially important. And as to beauty, we find that the
definition given by æsthetic writers amounts merely to this, that “Beauty is
a kind of pleasure received by us, not having personal advantage for its
object.” But it follows from this, that “beauty” is a matter of taste, differing
among different people, and to attach special importance to what pleases me
(and others who have had the same sort of training that I have had) is
merely to repeat the old, old mistake which so divides human society; it is
like declaring that my race is the best race, my nation the best nation, my
church the best church, and my family the “best” family. It indicates
ignorance and selfishness.
But “truth angers those whom it does not convince;”—people do not wish
to understand these things. It seems, at first, as though Tolstoy were
obliging us to sacrifice something valuable. We do not realise that we are
being helped to select the best art, but we do feel that we are being deprived
of our sense of satisfaction in Rudyard Kipling.
Both the magnitude and the difficulty of the task were therefore very great,
but they have been surmounted in a marvellous manner. Of the effect this
book has had on me personally, I can only say that “whereas I was blind,
now I see.” Though sensitive to some forms of art, I was, when I took it up,
much in the dark on questions of æsthetic philosophy; when I had done with
it, I had grasped the main solution of the problem so clearly that—though I
waded through nearly all that the critics and reviewers had to say about the
book—I never again became perplexed upon the central issues.
Tolstoy was indeed peculiarly qualified for the task he has accomplished. It
was after many years of work as a writer of fiction, and when he was
already standing in the very foremost rank of European novelists, that he
found himself compelled to face, in deadly earnest, the deepest problems of
human life. He not only could not go on writing books, but he felt he could
not live, unless he found clear guidance, so that he might walk sure-

footedly and know the purpose and meaning of his life. Not as a mere
question of speculative curiosity, but as a matter of vital necessity, he
devoted years to rediscover the truths which underlie all religion.
To fit him for this task he possessed great knowledge of men and books, a
wide experience of life, a knowledge of languages, and a freedom from
bondage to any authority but that of reason and conscience. He was pinned
to no Thirty-nine Articles, and was in receipt of no retaining fee which he
was not prepared to sacrifice. Another gift, rare among men of his position,
was his wonderful sincerity and (due, I think, to that sincerity) an amazing
power of looking at the phenomena of our complex and artificial life with
the eyes of a little child; going straight to the real, obvious facts of the case,
and brushing aside the sophistries, the conventionalities, and the
“authorities” by which they are obscured.
He commenced the task when he was about fifty years of age, and since
then (i.e., during the last twenty years) he has produced nine philosophical
or scientific works of first-rate importance, besides a great many stories and
short articles. These works, in chronological order, are—

My Confession.
A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, which has never been translated.
The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, of which only two
parts, out of three, have as yet appeared in English.
What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion.
The Gospel in Brief.
What are we to do then? sometimes called in English What to do?
On Life, which is not an easy work in the original, and has not been
satisfactorily translated.[1]
The Kingdom of God is within you; and
The Christian Teaching, which appeared after What is Art? though it
was written before it.

To these scientific works I am inclined to add The Kreutzer Sonata, with the
Sequel or Postscript explaining its purpose; for though The Kreutzer Sonata

is a story, the understanding of sexual problems, dealt with explicitly in the
Sequel, is an integral part of that comprehension of life which causes
Tolstoy to admire Christ, Buddha, or Francis of Assisi.
These ten works treat of the meaning of our life; of the problems raised by
the fact that we approve of some things and disapprove of others, and find
ourselves deciding which of two courses to pursue.
Religion, Government, Property, Sex, War, and all the relations in which
man stands to man, to his own consciousness, and to the ultimate source
(which we call God) from whence that consciousness proceeds—are
examined with the utmost frankness.
And all this time the problems of Art: What is Art? What importance is due
to it? How is it related to the rest of life?—were working in his mind. He
was a great artist, often upbraided for having abandoned his art. He, of all
men, was bound to clear his thoughts on this perplexing subject, and to
express them. His whole philosophy of life—the “religious perception” to
which, with such tremendous labour and effort, he had attained, forbade
him to detach art from life, and place it in a water-tight compartment where
it should not act on life or be re-acted upon by life.
Life to him is rational. It has a clear aim and purpose, discernible by the aid
of reason and conscience. And no human activity can be fully understood or
rightly appreciated until the central purpose of life is perceived.
You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you keep one bit in a
wrong place, but when the pieces all fit together, then you have a
demonstration that they are all in their right places. Tolstoy used that simile
years ago when explaining how the comprehension of the text, “resist not
him that is evil,” enabled him to perceive the reasonableness of Christ’s
teaching, which had long baffled him. So it is with the problem of Art.
Wrongly understood, it will tend to confuse and perplex your whole
comprehension of life. But given the clue supplied by true “religious
perception,” and you can place art so that it shall fit in with a right
understanding of politics, economics, sex-relationships, science, and all
other phases of human activity.
The basis on which this work rests, is a perception of the meaning of human
life. This has been quite lost sight of by some of the reviewers, who have

merely misrepresented what Tolstoy says, and then demonstrated how very
stupid he would have been had he said what they attributed to him. Leaving
his premises and arguments untouched, they dissent from various
conclusions—as though it were all a mere question of taste. They say that
they are very fond of things which Tolstoy ridicules, and that they can’t
understand why he does not like what they like—which is quite possible,
especially if they have not understood the position from which he starts. But
such criticism can lead to nothing. Discussions as to why one man likes
pears and another prefers meat, do not help towards finding a definition of
what is essential in nourishment; and just so, “the solution of questions of
taste in art does not help to make clear what this particular human activity
which we call art really consists in.”
The object of the following brief summary of a few main points is to help
the reader to avoid pitfalls into which many reviewers have fallen. It aims at
being no more than a bare statement of the positions—for more than that,
the reader must turn to the book itself.
Let it be granted at the outset, that Tolstoy writes for those who have “ears
to hear.” He seldom pauses to safeguard himself against the captious critic,
and cares little for minute verbal accuracy. For instance, on page 144, he
mentions “Paris,” where an English writer (even one who knew to what an
extent Paris is the art centre of France, and how many artists flock thither
from Russia, America, and all ends of the earth) would have been almost
sure to have said “France,” for fear of being thought to exaggerate. One
needs some alertness of mind to follow Tolstoy in his task of compressing
so large a subject into so small a space. Moreover, he is an emphatic writer
who says what he means, and even, I think, sometimes rather
overemphasizes it. With this much warning let us proceed to a brief
summary of Tolstoy’s view of art.
“Art is a human activity,” and consequently does not exist for its own sake,
but is valuable or objectionable in proportion as it is serviceable or harmful
to mankind. The object of this activity is to transmit to others feeling the
artist has experienced. Such feelings—intentionally re-evoked and
successfully transmitted to others—are the subject-matter of all art. By
certain external signs—movements, lines, colours, sounds, or arrangements
of words—an artist infects other people so that they share his feelings. Thus

“art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same
feelings.”
Chapters II. to V. contain an examination of various theories which have
taken art to be something other than this, and step by step we are brought to
the conclusion that art is this, and nothing but this.
Having got our definition of art, let us first consider art independently of its
subject-matter, i.e., without asking whether the feelings transmitted are
good, bad, or indifferent. Without adequate expression there is no art, for
there is no infection, no transference to others of the author’s feeling. The
test of art is infection. If an author has moved you so that you feel as he felt,
if you are so united to him in feeling that it seems to you that he has
expressed just what you have long wished to express, the work that has so
infected you is a work of art.
In this sense, it is true that art has nothing to do with morality; for the test
lies in the “infection,” and not in any consideration of the goodness or
badness of the emotions conveyed. Thus the test of art is an internal one.
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving, through his
sense of hearing or sight, another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of
experiencing the emotion that moved the man who expressed it. We all
share the same common human nature, and in this sense, at least, are sons
of one Father. To take the simplest example: a man laughs, and another,
who hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears, feels
sorrow. Note in passing that it does not amount to art “if a man infects
others directly, immediately, at the very time he experiences the feeling; if
he causes another man to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning,” etc.
Art begins when some one, with the object of making others share his
feeling, expresses his feeling by certain external indications.
Normal human beings possess this faculty to be infected by the expression
of another man’s emotions. For a plain man of unperverted taste, living in
contact with nature, with animals, and with his fellow-men—say, for “a
country peasant of unperverted taste, this is as easy as it is for an animal of
unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs.” And he will know indubitably
whether a work presented to him does, or does not, unite him in feeling
with the author. But very many people “of our circle” (upper and middle
class society) live such unnatural lives, in such conventional relations to the

people around them, and in such artificial surroundings, that they have lost
“that simple feeling, that sense of infection with another’s feeling—
compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to sorrow in another’s grief, and
to mingle souls with another—which is the essence of art.” Such people,
therefore, have no inner test by which to recognise a work of art; and they
will always be mistaking other things for art, and seeking for external
guides, such as the opinions of “recognised authorities.” Or they will
mistake for art something that produces a merely physiological effect—
lulling or exciting them; or some intellectual puzzle that gives them
something to think about.
But if most people of the “cultured crowd” are impervious to true art, is it
really possible that a common Russian country peasant, for instance, whose
work-days are filled with agricultural labour, and whose brief leisure is
largely taken up by his family life and by his participation in the affairs of
the village commune—is it possible that he can recognise and be touched
by works of art? Certainly it is! Just as in ancient Greece crowds assembled
to hear the poems of Homer, so to-day in Russia, as in many countries and
many ages, the Gospel parables, and much else of the highest art, are gladly
heard by the common people. And this does not refer to any superstitious
use of the Bible, but to its use as literature.
Not only do normal, labouring country people possess the capacity to be
infected by good art—“the epic of Genesis, folk-legends, fairy-tales, folk-
songs, etc.,” but they themselves produce songs, stories, dances,
decorations, etc., which are works of true art. Take as examples the works
of Burns or Bunyan, and the peasant women’s song mentioned by Tolstoy
in Chapter XIV., or some of those melodies produced by the negro slaves on
the southern plantations, which have touched, and still touch, many of us
with the emotions felt by their unknown and unpaid composers.
The one great quality which makes a work of art truly contagious is its
sincerity. If an artist is really actuated by a feeling, and is strongly impelled
to communicate that feeling to other people—not for money or fame, or
anything else, but because he feels he must share it—then he will not be
satisfied till he has found a clear way of expressing it. And the man who is
not borrowing his feelings, but has drawn what he expresses from the
depths of his nature, is sure to be original, for in the same way that no two

people have exactly similar faces or forms, no two people have exactly
similar minds or souls.
That in briefest outline is what Tolstoy says about art, considered apart from
its subject-matter. And this is how certain critics have met it. They say that
when Tolstoy says the test of art is internal, he must mean that it is external.
When he says that country peasants have in the past appreciated, and do
still appreciate, works of the highest art, he means that the way to detect a
work of art is to see what is apparently most popular among the masses. Go
into the streets or music-halls of the cities in any particular country and
year, and observe what is most frequently sung, shouted, or played on the
barrel-organs. It may happen to be

“Tarara-boom-deay,”

or,

“We don’t want to fight,
But, by Jingo, if we do.”

But whatever it is, you may at once declare these songs to be the highest
musical art, without even pausing to ask to what they owe their vogue—
what actress, or singer, or politician, or wave of patriotic passion has
conduced to their popularity. Nor need you consider whether that popularity
is not merely temporary and local. Tolstoy has said that works of the highest
art are understood by unperverted country peasants—and here are things
which are popular with the mob, ergo, these things must be the highest art.
The critics then proceed to say that such a test is utterly absurd. And on this
point I am able to agree with the critics.
Some of these writers commence their articles by saying that Tolstoy is a
most profound thinker, a great prophet, an intellectual force, etc. Yet when
Tolstoy, in his emphatic way, makes the sweeping remark that “good art
always pleases every one,” the critics do not read on to find out what he
means, but reply: “No! good art does not please every one; some people are
colour-blind, and some are deaf, or have no ear for music.”

It is as though a man strenuously arguing a point were to say, “Every one
knows that two and two make four,” and a boy who did not at all see what
the speaker was driving at, were to reply: “No, our new-born baby doesn’t
know it!” It would distract attention from the subject in hand, but it would
not elucidate matters.
There is, of course, a verbal contradiction between the statements that
“good art always pleases every one” (p. 100), and the remark concerning
“people of our circle,” who, “with very few exceptions, artists and public
and critics, ... cannot distinguish true works of art from counterfeits, but
continually mistake for real art the worst and most artificial” (p. 151). But I
venture to think that any one of intelligence, and free from prejudice,
reading this book carefully, need not fail to reach the author’s meaning.
A point to be carefully noted is the distinction between science and art.
“Science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such
knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most
important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the
region of emotion” (p. 102). Science is an “activity of the understanding
which demands preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge, so that
one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing geometry.” “The business of
art,” on the other hand, “lies just in this—to make that understood and felt
which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and
inaccessible” (p. 102). It “infects any man whatever his plane of
development,” and “the hindrance to understanding the best and highest
feelings (as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in deficiency of
development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development and
false learning” (pp. 102, 103). Science and art are frequently blended in one
work—e.g., in the gospel elucidation of Christ’s comprehension of life, or,
to take a modern instance, in Henry George’s elucidation of the land
question in Progress and Poverty.
The class distinction to which Tolstoy repeatedly alludes needs some
explanation. The position of the lower classes in England and in Russia is
different. In Russia a much larger number of people live on the verge of
starvation; the condition of the factory-hands is much worse than in
England, and there are many glaring cases of brutal cruelty inflicted on the
peasants by the officials, the police, or the military,—but in Russia a far
greater proportion of the population live in the country, and a peasant

usually has his own house, and tills his share of the communal lands. The
“unperverted country peasant” of whom Tolstoy speaks is a man who
perhaps suffers grievous want when there is a bad harvest in his province,
but he is a man accustomed to the experiences of a natural life, to the
management of his own affairs, and to a real voice in the arrangements of
the village commune. The Government interferes, from time to time, to
collect its taxes by force, to take the young men for soldiers, or to maintain
the “rights” of the upper classes; but otherwise the peasant is free to do
what he sees to be necessary and reasonable. On the other hand, English
labourers are, for the most part, not so poor, they have more legal rights,
and they have votes; but a far larger number of them live in towns and are
engaged in unnatural occupations, while even those that do live in touch
with nature are usually mere wage-earners, tilling other men’s land, and
living often in abject submission to the farmer, the parson, or the lady-
bountiful. They are dependent on an employer for daily bread, and the
condition of a wage-labourer is as unnatural as that of a landlord.
The tyranny of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy is more dramatic, but less
omnipresent—and probably far less fatal to the capacity to enjoy art—than
the tyranny of our respectable, self-satisfied, and property-loving middle-
class. I am therefore afraid that we have no great number of “unperverted”
country labourers to compare with those of whom Tolstoy speaks—and
some of whom I have known personally. But the truth Tolstoy elucidates
lies far too deep in human nature to be infringed by such differences of
local circumstance. Whatever those circumstances may be, the fact remains
that in proportion as a man approaches towards the condition not only of
“earning his subsistence by some kind of labour,” but of “living on all its
sides the life natural and proper to mankind,” his capacity to appreciate true
art tends to increase. On the other hand, when a class settles down into an
artificial way of life,—loses touch with nature, becomes confused in its
perceptions of what is good and what is bad, and prefers the condition of a
parasite to that of a producer,—its capacity to appreciate true art must
diminish. Having lost all clear perception of the meaning of life, such
people are necessarily left without any criterion which will enable them to
distinguish good from bad art, and they are sure to follow eagerly after
beauty, or “that which pleases them.”

The artists of our society can usually only reach people of the upper and
middle classes. But who is the great artist?—he who delights a select
audience of his own day and class, or he whose works link generation to
generation and race to race in a common bond of feeling? Surely art should
fulfil its purpose as completely as possible. A work of art that united every
one with the author, and with one another, would be perfect art. Tolstoy, in
his emphatic way, speaks of works of “universal” art, and (though the
profound critics hasten to inform us that no work of art ever reached
everybody) certainly the more nearly a work of art approaches to such
expression of feeling that every one may be infected by it—the nearer
(apart from all question of subject-matter) it approaches perfection.
But now as to subject-matter. The subject-matter of art consists of feelings
which can be spread from man to man, feelings which are “contagious” or
“infectious.” Is it of no importance what feelings increase and multiply
among men?
One man feels that submission to the authority of his church, and belief in
all that it teaches him, is good; another is embued by a sense of each man’s
duty to think with his own head—to use for his guidance in life the reason
and conscience given to him. One man feels that his nation ought to wipe
out in blood the shame of a defeat inflicted on her; another feels that we are
brothers, sons of one spirit, and that the slaughter of man by man is always
wrong. One man feels that the most desirable thing in life is the satisfaction
obtainable by the love of women; another man feels that sex-love is an
entanglement and a snare, hindering his real work in life. And each of these,
if he possess an artist’s gift of expression, and if the feeling be really his
own and sincere, may infect other men. But some of these feelings will
benefit and some will harm mankind, and the more widely they are spread
the greater will be their effect.
Art unites men. Surely it is desirable that the feelings in which it unites
them should be “the best and highest to which men have risen,” or at least
should not run contrary to our perception of what makes for the well-being
of ourselves and of others. And our perception of what makes for the well-
being of ourselves and of others is what Tolstoy calls our “religious
perception.”

Therefore the subject-matter of what we, in our day, can esteem as being the
best art, can be of two kinds only—
(1) Feelings flowing from the highest perception now attainable by man of
our right relation to our neighbour and to the Source from which we come.
Dickens’ “Christmas Carol,” uniting us in a more vivid sense of compassion
and love, is a ready example of such art.
(2) The simple feelings of common life, accessible to every one—provided
that they are such as do not hinder progress towards well-being. Art of this
kind makes us realise to how great an extent we already are members one of
another—sharing the feelings of one common human nature.
The success of a very primitive novel—the story of Joseph, which made its
way into the sacred books of the Jews, spread from land to land and from
age to age, and continues to be read to-day among people quite free from
bibliolatry—shows how nearly “universal” may be the appeal of this kind
of art. This branch includes all harmless jokes, folk-stories, nursery rhymes,
and even dolls, if only the author or designer has expressed a feeling
(tenderness, pleasure, humour, or what not) so as to infect others.
But how are we to know what are the “best” feelings? What is good? and
what is evil? This is decided by “religious perception.” Some such
perception exists in every human being; there is always something he
approves of, and something he disapproves of. Reason and conscience are
always present, active or latent, as long as man lives. Miss Flora Shaw tells
that the most degraded cannibal she ever met, drew the line at eating his
own mother—nothing would induce him to entertain the thought, his moral
sense was revolted by the suggestion. In most societies the “religious
perception,” to which they have advanced,—the foremost stage in
mankind’s long march towards perfection, which has been discerned,—has
been clearly expressed by some one, and more or less consciously accepted
as an ideal by the many. But there are transition periods in history when the
worn-out formularies of a past age have ceased to satisfy men, or have
become so incrusted with superstitions that their original brightness is lost.
The “religious perception” that is dawning may not yet have found such
expression as to be generally understood, but for all that it exists, and shows
itself by compelling men to repudiate beliefs that satisfied their forefathers,

the outward and visible signs of which are still endowed and dominant long
after their spirit has taken refuge in temples not made with hands.
At such times it is difficult for men to understand each other, for the very
words needed to express the deepest experiences of men’s consciousness
mean different things to different men. So among us to-day, to many minds
faith means credulity, and God suggests a person of the male sex, father of
one only-begotten son, and creator of the universe.
This is why Tolstoy’s clear and rational “religious perception,” expressed in
the books named on a previous page, is frequently spoken of by people who
have not grasped it, as “mysticism.”
The narrow materialist is shocked to find that Tolstoy will not confine
himself to the “objective” view of life. Encountering in himself that “inner
voice” which compels us all to choose between good and evil, Tolstoy
refuses to be diverted from a matter which is of immediate and vital
importance to him, by discussions as to the derivation of the external
manifestations of conscience which biologists are able to detect in remote
forms of life. The real mystic, on the other hand, shrinks from Tolstoy’s
desire to try all things by the light of reason, to depend on nothing vague,
and to accept nothing on authority. The man who does not trust his own
reason, fears that life thus squarely faced will prove less worth having than
it is when clothed in mist.
In this work, however, Tolstoy does not recapitulate at length what he has
said before. He does not pause to re-explain why he condemns Patriotism—
i.e., each man’s preference for the predominance of his own country, which
leads to the murder of man by man in war; or Churches, which are sectarian
—i.e., which striving to assert that your doxy is heterodoxy, but that our
doxy is orthodoxy, make external authorities (Popes, Bibles, Councils)
supreme, and cling to superstitions (their own miracles, legends, and
myths), thus separating themselves from communion with the rest of
mankind. Nor does he re-explain why he (like Christ) says “pitiable is your
plight—ye rich,” who live artificial lives, maintainable only by the
unbrotherly use of force (police and soldiers), but blessed are ye poor—
who, by your way of life, are within easier reach of brotherly conditions, if
you will but trust to reason and conscience, and change the direction of
your hearts and of your labour,—working no more primarily from fear or

greed, but seeking first the kingdom of righteousness, in which all good
things will be added unto you. He merely summarises it all in a few
sentences, defining the “religious perception” of to-day, which alone can
decide for us “the degree of importance both of the feelings transmitted by
art and of the information transmitted by science.”
“The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most practical
application, is the consciousness that our well-being, both material and
spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the growth
of brotherhood among men—in their loving harmony with one another” (p.
159).
And again:
“However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world may
define the destiny of man; whether they see it in human progress in
whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in a socialistic realm,
or in the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward to the
union of mankind under the guidance of one universal Church, or to the
federation of the world,—however various in form their definitions of the
destination of human life may be, all men in our times already admit that
the highest well-being attainable by men is to be reached by their union
with one another” (p. 188).
This is the foundation on which the whole work is based. It follows
necessarily from this perception that we should consider as most important
in science “investigations into the results of good and bad actions,
considerations of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of human
institutions and beliefs, considerations of how human life should be lived in
order to obtain the greatest well-being for each; as to what one may and
ought, and what one cannot and should not believe; how to subdue one’s
passions, and how to acquire the habit of virtue.” This is the science that
“occupied Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Confucius, Mencius, Marcus
Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who have taught men to live a moral life,”
and it is precisely the kind of scientific investigation to which Tolstoy has
devoted most of the last twenty years, and for the sake of which he is often
said to have “abandoned art.”
Since science, like art, is a “human activity,” that science best deserves our
esteem, best deserves to be “chosen, tolerated, approved, and diffused,”

which treats of what is supremely important to man; which deals with
urgent, vital, inevitable problems of actual life. Such science as this brings
“to the consciousness of men the truths that flow from the religious
perception of our times,” and “indicates the various methods of applying
this consciousness to life.” “Art should transform this perception into
feeling.”
The “science” which is occupied in “pouring liquids from one jar into
another, or analysing the spectrum, or cutting up frogs and porpoises,” is no
use for rendering such guidance to art, though capable of practical
applications which, under a more righteous system of society, might greatly
have lightened the sufferings of mankind.
Naturally enough, the last chapter of the book deals with the relation
between science and art. And the conclusion is that:
“The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the
realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in being united
together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom
of God, i.e. of love, which we all recognise to be the highest aim of human
life.”
And this art of the future will not be poorer, but far richer, in subject-matter
than the art of to-day. From the lullaby—that will delight millions of
people, generation after generation—to the highest religious art, dealing
with strong, rich, and varied emotions flowing from a fresh outlook upon
life and all its problems—the field open for good art is enormous. With so
much to say that is urgently important to all, the art of the future will, in
matter of form also, be far superior to our art in “clearness, beauty,
simplicity, and compression” (p. 194).
For beauty (i.e., “that which pleases”)—though it depends on taste, and can
furnish no criterion for art—will be a natural characteristic of work done,
not for hire, nor even for fame, but because men, living a natural and
healthy life, wish to share the “highest spiritual strength which passes
through them” with the greatest possible number of others. The feelings
such an artist wishes to share, he will transmit in a way that will please him,
and will please other men who share his nature.
Morality is in the nature of things—we cannot escape it.

In a society where each man sets himself to obtain wealth, the difficulty of
obtaining an honest living tends to become greater and greater. The more
keenly a society pants to obtain “that which pleases,” and puts this forward
as the first and great consideration, the more puerile and worthless will their
art become. But in a society which sought, primarily, for right relations
between its members, an abundance would easily be obtainable for all; and
when “religious perception” guides a people’s art—beauty inevitably
results, as has always been the case when men have seized a fresh
perception of life and of its purpose.

An illustration which Tolstoy struck out of the work while it was being
printed, may serve to illustrate how, with the aid of the principles explained
above, we may judge of the merits of any work professing to be art.
Take Romeo and Juliet. The conventional view is that Shakespear is the
greatest of artists, and that Romeo and Juliet is one of his good plays. Why
this is so nobody can tell you. It is so: that is the way certain people feel
about it. They are “the authorities,” and to doubt their dictum is to show that
you know nothing about art. Tolstoy does not agree with them in their
estimate of Shakespear, therefore Tolstoy is wrong!
But now let us apply Tolstoy’s view of art to Romeo and Juliet. He does not
deny that it infects. “Let us admit that it is a work of art, that it infects
(though it is so artificial that it can infect only those who have been
carefully educated thereunto); but what are the feelings it transmits?”
That is to say, judging by the internal test, Tolstoy admits that Romeo and
Juliet unites him to its author and to other people in feeling. But the work is
very far from being one of “universal” art—only a small minority of people
ever have cared, or ever will care, for it. Even in England, or even in the
layer of European society it is best adapted to reach, it only touches a
minority, and does not approach the universality attained by the story of
Joseph and many pieces of folk-lore.
But perhaps the subject-matter, the feeling with which Romeo and Juliet
infects those whom it does reach, lifts it into the class of the highest
religious art? Not so. The feeling is one of the attractiveness of “love at first
sight.” A girl fourteen years old and a young man meet at an aristocratic
party, where there is feasting and pleasure and idleness, and, without

knowing each other’s minds, they fall in love as the birds and beasts do. If
any feeling is transmitted to us, it is the feeling that there is a pleasure in
these things. Somewhere, in most natures, there dwells, dominant or
dormant, an inclination to let such physical sexual attraction guide our
course in life. To give it a plain name, it is “sensuality.” “How can I, father
or mother of a daughter of Juliet’s age, wish that those foul feelings which
the play transmits should be communicated to my daughter? And if the
feelings transmitted by the play are bad, how can I call it good in subject-
matter?”
But, objects a friend, the moral of Romeo and Juliet is excellent. See what
disasters followed from the physical “love at first sight.” But that is quite
another matter. It is the feelings with which you are infected when reading,
and not any moral you can deduce, that is subject-matter of art. Pondering
upon the consequences that flow from Romeo and Juliet’s behaviour may
belong to the domain of moral science, but not to that of art.
I have hesitated to use an illustration Tolstoy had struck out, but I think it
serves its purpose. No doubt there are other, subordinate, feelings (e.g.
humour) to be found in Romeo and Juliet; but many quaint conceits that are
ingenious, and have been much admired, are not, I think, infectious.
Tried by such tests, the enormous majority of the things we have been
taught to consider great works of art are found wanting. Either they fail to
infect (and attract merely by being interesting, realistic, effectful, or by
borrowing from others), and are therefore not works of art at all; or they are
works of “exclusive art,” bad in form and capable of infecting only a select
audience trained and habituated to such inferior art; or they are bad in
subject-matter, transmitting feelings harmful to mankind.
Tolstoy does not shrink from condemning his own artistic productions; with
the exception of two short stories, he tells us they are works of bad art.
Take, for instance, the novel Resurrection, which is now appearing, and of
which he has, somewhere, spoken disparagingly, as being “written in my
former style,” and being therefore bad art. What does this mean? The book
is a masterpiece in its own line; it is eagerly read in many languages; it
undoubtedly infects its readers, and the feelings transmitted are, in the
main, such as Tolstoy approves of—in fact, they are the feelings to which
his religious perception has brought him. If lust is felt in one chapter, the

reaction follows as inevitably as in real life, and is transmitted with great
artistic power. Why a work of such rare merit does not satisfy Tolstoy, is
because it is a work of “exclusive art,” laden with details of time and place.
It has not the “simplicity and compression” necessary in works of
“universal” art. Things are mentioned which might apparently be quite well
omitted. The style, also, is not one of great simplicity; the sentences are
often long and involved, as is commonly the case in Tolstoy’s writings. It is
a novel appealing mainly to the class that has leisure for novel reading
because it neglects to produce its own food, make its own clothes, or build
its own houses. If Tolstoy is stringent in his judgment of other artists, he is
more stringent still in his judgment of his own artistic works. Had
Resurrection been written by Dickens, or by Hugo, Tolstoy would, I think,
have found a place for it (with whatever reservations) among the examples
of religious art. For indeed, strive as we may to be clear and explicit, our
approval and disapproval is a matter of degree. The thought which underlay
the remark: “Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, even
God,” applies not to man only, but to all things human.
What is Art? itself is a work of science—though many passages, and even
some whole chapters, appeal to us as works of art, and we feel the
contagion of the author’s hope, his anxiety to serve the cause of truth and
love, his indignation (sometimes rather sharply expressed) with what blocks
the path of advance, and his contempt for much that the “cultured crowd,”
in our erudite, perverted society, have persuaded themselves, and would
fain persuade others, is the highest art.
One result which follows inevitably from Tolstoy’s view (and which
illustrates how widely his views differ from the fashionable æsthetic
mysticism), is that art is not stationary but progressive. It is true that our
highest religious perception found expression eighteen hundred years ago,
and then served as the basis of an art which is still unmatched; and similar
cases can be instanced from the East. But allowing for such great
exceptions,—to which, not inaptly, the term of “inspiration” has been
specially applied,—the subject-matter of art improves, though long periods
of time may have to be considered in order to make this obvious. Our power
of verbal expression, for instance, may now be no better than it was in the
days of David, but we must no longer esteem as good in subject-matter
poems which appeal to the Eternal to destroy a man’s private or national

foes; for we have reached a “religious perception” which bids us have no
foes, and the ultimate source (undefinable by us) from which this
consciousness has come, is what we mean when we speak of God.
AYLMER MAUDE.
Wickham’s Farm,
Near Danbury, Essex,
23rd March 1899.

The Author’s Preface

This book of mine, “What is Art?” appears now for the first time in its true
form. More than one edition has already been issued in Russia, but in each
case it has been so mutilated by the “Censor,” that I request all who are
interested in my views on art only to judge of them by the work in its
present shape. The causes which led to the publication of the book—with
my name attached to it—in a mutilated form, were the following:—In
accordance with a decision I arrived at long ago,—not to submit my
writings to the “Censorship” (which I consider to be an immoral and
irrational institution), but to print them only in the shape in which they were
written,—I intended not to attempt to print this work in Russia. However,
my good acquaintance Professor Grote, editor of a Moscow psychological
magazine, having heard of the contents of my work, asked me to print it in
his magazine, and promised me that he would get the book through the
“Censor’s” office unmutilated if I would but agree to a few very
unimportant alterations, merely toning down certain expressions. I was
weak enough to agree to this, and it has resulted in a book appearing, under
my name, from which not only have some essential thoughts been excluded,
but into which the thoughts of other men—even thoughts utterly opposed to
my own convictions—have been introduced.
The thing occurred in this way. First, Grote softened my expressions, and in
some cases weakened them. For instance, he replaced the words: always by
sometimes, all by some, Church religion by Roman Catholic religion,
“Mother of God” by Madonna, patriotism by pseudo-patriotism, palaces by
palatii,[2] etc., and I did not consider it necessary to protest. But when the
book was already in type, the Censor required that whole sentences should
be altered, and that instead of what I said about the evil of landed property,
a remark should be substituted on the evils of a landless proletariat.[3] I
agreed to this also and to some further alterations. It seemed not worth
while to upset the whole affair for the sake of one sentence, and when one

alteration had been agreed to it seemed not worth while to protest against a
second and a third. So, little by little, expressions crept into the book which
altered the sense and attributed things to me that I could not have wished to
say. So that by the time the book was printed it had been deprived of some
part of its integrity and sincerity. But there was consolation in the thought
that the book, even in this form, if it contains something that is good, would
be of use to Russian readers whom it would otherwise not have reached.
Things, however, turned out otherwise. Nous comptions sans notre hôte.
After the legal term of four days had already elapsed, the book was seized,
and, on instructions received from Petersburg, it was handed over to the
“Spiritual Censor.” Then Grote declined all further participation in the
affair, and the “Spiritual Censor” proceeded to do what he would with the
book. The “Spiritual Censorship” is one of the most ignorant, venal, stupid,
and despotic institutions in Russia. Books which disagree in any way with
the recognised state religion of Russia, if once it gets hold of them, are
almost always totally suppressed and burnt; which is what happened to all
my religious works when attempts were made to print them in Russia.
Probably a similar fate would have overtaken this work also, had not the
editors of the magazine employed all means to save it. The result of their
efforts was that the “Spiritual Censor,” a priest who probably understands
art and is interested in art as much as I understand or am interested in
church services, but who gets a good salary for destroying whatever is
likely to displease his superiors, struck out all that seemed to him to
endanger his position, and substituted his thoughts for mine wherever he
considered it necessary to do so. For instance, where I speak of Christ going
to the Cross for the sake of the truth He professed, the “Censor” substituted
a statement that Christ died for mankind, i.e. he attributed to me an
assertion of the dogma of the Redemption, which I consider to be one of the
most untrue and harmful of Church dogmas. After correcting the book in
this way, the “Spiritual Censor” allowed it to be printed.
To protest in Russia is impossible, no newspaper would publish such a
protest, and to withdraw my book from the magazine and place the editor in
an awkward position with the public was also not possible.
So the matter has remained. A book has appeared under my name
containing thoughts attributed to me which are not mine.

I was persuaded to give my article to a Russian magazine, in order that my
thoughts, which may be useful, should become the possession of Russian
readers; and the result has been that my name is affixed to a work from
which it might be assumed that I quite arbitrarily assert things contrary to
the general opinion, without adducing my reasons; that I only consider false
patriotism bad, but patriotism in general a very good feeling; that I merely
deny the absurdities of the Roman Catholic Church and disbelieve in the
Madonna, but that I believe in the Orthodox Eastern faith and in the
“Mother of God”; that I consider all the writings collected in the Bible to be
holy books, and see the chief importance of Christ’s life in the Redemption
of mankind by his death.
I have narrated all this in such detail because it strikingly illustrates the
indubitable truth, that all compromise with institutions of which your
conscience disapproves,—compromises which are usually made for the
sake of the general good,—instead of producing the good you expected,
inevitably lead you not only to acknowledge the institution you disapprove
of, but also to participate in the evil that institution produces.
I am glad to be able by this statement at least to do something to correct the
error into which I was led by my compromise.
I have also to mention that besides reinstating the parts excluded by the
Censor from the Russian editions, other corrections and additions of
importance have been made in this edition.
Leo Tolstoy.
29th March 1898.

Contents

Introduction v
Author’s Preface xxxiii
CHAPTER I
Time and labour spent on art—Lives stunted in its service—Morality
sacrificed to and anger justified by art—The rehearsal of an opera described
1
CHAPTER II
Does art compensate for so much evil?—What is art?—Confusion of
opinions—Is it “that which produces beauty”?—The word “beauty” in
Russian—Chaos in æsthetics 9
CHAPTER III
Summary of various æsthetic theories and definitions, from Baumgarten to
to-day 20
CHAPTER IV
Definitions of art founded on beauty—Taste not definable—A clear
definition needed to enable us to recognise works of art 38
CHAPTER V
Definitions not founded on beauty—Tolstoy’s definition—The extent and
necessity of art—How people in the past have distinguished good from bad
in art 46
CHAPTER VI
How art for pleasure has come into esteem—Religions indicate what is
considered good and bad—Church Christianity—The Renaissance—
Scepticism of the upper classes—They confound beauty with goodness 53

CHAPTER VII
An æsthetic theory framed to suit this view of life 61
CHAPTER VIII
Who have adopted it?—Real art needful for all men—Our art too
expensive, too unintelligible, and too harmful for the masses—The theory
of “the elect” in art 67
CHAPTER IX
Perversion of our art—It has lost its natural subject-matter—Has no flow of
fresh feeling—Transmits chiefly three base emotions 73
CHAPTER X
Loss of comprehensibility—Decadent art—Recent French art—Have we a
right to say it is bad and that what we like is good art?—The highest art has
always been comprehensible to normal people—What fails to infect normal
people is not art 79
CHAPTER XI
Counterfeits of art produced by: Borrowing; Imitating; Striking; Interesting
—Qualifications needful for production of real works of art, and those
sufficient for production of counterfeits 106
CHAPTER XII
Causes of production of counterfeits—Professionalism—Criticism—
Schools of art 118
CHAPTER XIII
Wagner’s “Nibelung’s Ring” a type of counterfeit art—Its success, and the
reasons thereof 128
CHAPTER XIV
Truths fatal to preconceived views are not readily recognised—Proportion
of works of art to counterfeits—Perversion of taste and incapacity to
recognise art—Examples 143
CHAPTER XV

The quality of art, considered apart from its subject-matter—The sign
of art: infectiousness—Incomprehensible to those whose taste is perverted
—Conditions of infection: Individuality; Clearness; Sincerity 152
CHAPTER XVI
The quality of art, considered according to its subject-matter—The
better the feeling the better the art—The cultured crowd—The religious
perception of our age—The new ideals put fresh demands to art—Art unites
—Religious art—Universal art—Both co-operate to one result—The new
appraisement of art—Bad art—Examples of art—How to test a work
claiming to be art 156
CHAPTER XVII
Results of absence of true art—Results of perversion of art: Labour and
lives spent on what is useless and harmful—The abnormal life of the rich—
Perplexity of children and plain folk—Confusion of right and wrong—
Nietzsche and Redbeard—Superstition, Patriotism, and Sensuality 175
CHAPTER XVIII
The purpose of human life is the brotherly union of man—Art must be
guided by this perception 187
CHAPTER XIX
The art of the future not a possession of a select minority, but a means
towards perfection and unity 192
CHAPTER XX
The connection between science and art—The mendacious sciences; the
trivial sciences—Science should deal with the great problems of human life,
and serve as a basis for art 200

APPENDICES

Appendix I 215
Appendix II 218
Appendix III 226
Appendix IV 232

What is Art?

Take up any one of our ordinary newspapers, and you will find a part
devoted to the theatre and music. In almost every number you will find a
description of some art exhibition, or of some particular picture, and you
will always find reviews of new works of art that have appeared, of
volumes of poems, of short stories, or of novels.
Promptly, and in detail, as soon as it has occurred, an account is published
of how such and such an actress or actor played this or that rôle in such and
such a drama, comedy, or opera; and of the merits of the performance, as
well as of the contents of the new drama, comedy, or opera, with its defects
and merits. With as much care and detail, or even more, we are told how
such and such an artist has sung a certain piece, or has played it on the
piano or violin, and what were the merits and defects of the piece and of the
performance. In every large town there is sure to be at least one, if not more
than one, exhibition of new pictures, the merits and defects of which are
discussed in the utmost detail by critics and connoisseurs.
New novels and poems, in separate volumes or in the magazines, appear
almost every day, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give their
readers detailed accounts of these artistic productions.
For the support of art in Russia (where for the education of the people only
a hundredth part is spent of what would be required to give everyone the
opportunity of instruction) the Government grants millions of roubles in
subsidies to academies, conservatoires and theatres. In France twenty
million francs are assigned for art, and similar grants are made in Germany
and England.
In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums,
academies, conservatoires, dramatic schools, and for performances and
concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen,—carpenters, masons,
painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers, moulders,

type-setters,—spend their whole lives in hard labour to satisfy the demands
of art, so that hardly any other department of human activity, except the
military, consumes so much energy as this.
Not only is enormous labour spent on this activity, but in it, as in war, the
very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of people devote
their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs rapidly (dancers), or
to touch notes and strings very rapidly (musicians), or to draw with paint
and represent what they see (artists), or to turn every phrase inside out and
find a rhyme to every word. And these people, often very kind and clever,
and capable of all sorts of useful labour, grow savage over their specialised
and stupefying occupations, and become one-sided and self-complacent
specialists, dull to all the serious phenomena of life, and skilful only at
rapidly twisting their legs, their tongues, or their fingers.
But even this stunting of human life is not the worst. I remember being once
at the rehearsal of one of the most ordinary of the new operas which are
produced at all the opera houses of Europe and America.
I arrived when the first act had already commenced. To reach the
auditorium I had to pass through the stage entrance. By dark entrances and
passages, I was led through the vaults of an enormous building past
immense machines for changing the scenery and for illuminating; and there
in the gloom and dust I saw workmen busily engaged. One of these men,
pale, haggard, in a dirty blouse, with dirty, work-worn hands and cramped
fingers, evidently tired and out of humour, went past me, angrily scolding
another man. Ascending by a dark stair, I came out on the boards behind the
scenes. Amid various poles and rings and scattered scenery, decorations and
curtains, stood and moved dozens, if not hundreds, of painted and dressed-
up men, in costumes fitting tight to their thighs and calves, and also women,
as usual, as nearly nude as might be. These were all singers, or members of
the chorus, or ballet-dancers, awaiting their turns. My guide led me across
the stage and, by means of a bridge of boards, across the orchestra (in
which perhaps a hundred musicians of all kinds, from kettle-drum to flute
and harp, were seated), to the dark pit-stalls.
On an elevation, between two lamps with reflectors, and in an arm-chair
placed before a music-stand, sat the director of the musical part, bâton in

hand, managing the orchestra and singers, and, in general, the production of
the whole opera.
The performance had already commenced, and on the stage a procession of
Indians who had brought home a bride was being represented. Besides men
and women in costume, two other men in ordinary clothes bustled and ran
about on the stage; one was the director of the dramatic part, and the other,
who stepped about in soft shoes and ran from place to place with unusual
agility, was the dancing-master, whose salary per month exceeded what ten
labourers earn in a year.
These three directors arranged the singing, the orchestra, and the
procession. The procession, as usual, was enacted by couples, with tinfoil
halberds on their shoulders. They all came from one place, and walked
round and round again, and then stopped. The procession took a long time
to arrange: first the Indians with halberds came on too late; then too soon;
then at the right time, but crowded together at the exit; then they did not
crowd, but arranged themselves badly at the sides of the stage; and each
time the whole performance was stopped and recommenced from the
beginning. The procession was introduced by a recitative, delivered by a
man dressed up like some variety of Turk, who, opening his mouth in a
curious way, sang, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” He sings and waves his
arm (which is of course bare) from under his mantle. The procession
commences, but here the French horn, in the accompaniment of the
recitative, does something wrong; and the director, with a shudder as if
some catastrophe had occurred, raps with his stick on the stand. All is
stopped, and the director, turning to the orchestra, attacks the French horn,
scolding him in the rudest terms, as cabmen abuse each other, for taking the
wrong note. And again the whole thing recommences. The Indians with
their halberds again come on, treading softly in their extraordinary boots;
again the singer sings, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” But here the pairs get
too close together. More raps with the stick, more scolding, and a
recommencement. Again, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” again the same
gesticulation with the bare arm from under the mantle, and again the
couples, treading softly with halberds on their shoulders, some with sad and
serious faces, some talking and smiling, arrange themselves in a circle and
begin to sing. All seems to be going well, but again the stick raps, and the
director, in a distressed and angry voice, begins to scold the men and

women of the chorus. It appears that when singing they had omitted to raise
their hands from time to time in sign of animation. “Are you all dead, or
what? Cows that you are! Are you corpses, that you can’t move?” Again
they re-commence, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” and again, with sorrowful
faces, the chorus women sing, first one and then another of them raising
their hands. But two chorus-girls speak to each other,—again a more
vehement rapping with the stick. “Have you come here to talk? Can’t you
gossip at home? You there in red breeches, come nearer. Look towards me!
Recommence!” Again, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” And so it goes on for
one, two, three hours. The whole of such a rehearsal lasts six hours on end.
Raps with the stick, repetitions, placings, corrections of the singers, of the
orchestra, of the procession, of the dancers,—all seasoned with angry
scolding. I heard the words, “asses,” “fools,” “idiots,” “swine,” addressed to
the musicians and singers at least forty times in the course of one hour. And
the unhappy individual to whom the abuse is addressed,—flautist, horn-
blower, or singer,—physically and mentally demoralised, does not reply,
and does what is demanded of him. Twenty times is repeated the one
phrase, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” and twenty times the striding about in
yellow shoes with a halberd over the shoulder. The conductor knows that
these people are so demoralised that they are no longer fit for anything but
to blow trumpets and walk about with halberds and in yellow shoes, and
that they are also accustomed to dainty, easy living, so that they will put up
with anything rather than lose their luxurious life. He therefore gives free
vent to his churlishness, especially as he has seen the same thing done in
Paris and Vienna, and knows that this is the way the best conductors
behave, and that it is a musical tradition of great artists to be so carried
away by the great business of their art that they cannot pause to consider the
feelings of other artists.
It would be difficult to find a more repulsive sight. I have seen one
workman abuse another for not supporting the weight piled upon him when
goods were being unloaded, or, at hay-stacking, the village elder scold a
peasant for not making the rick right, and the man submitted in silence.
And, however unpleasant it was to witness the scene, the unpleasantness
was lessened by the consciousness that the business in hand was needful
and important, and that the fault for which the head-man scolded the
labourer was one which might spoil a needful undertaking.

But what was being done here? For what, and for whom? Very likely the
conductor was tired out, like the workman I passed in the vaults; it was
even evident that he was; but who made him tire himself? And for what was
he tiring himself? The opera he was rehearsing was one of the most
ordinary of operas for people who are accustomed to them, but also one of
the most gigantic absurdities that could possibly be devised. An Indian king
wants to marry; they bring him a bride; he disguises himself as a minstrel;
the bride falls in love with the minstrel and is in despair, but afterwards
discovers that the minstrel is the king, and everyone is highly delighted.
That there never were, or could be, such Indians, and that they were not
only unlike Indians, but that what they were doing was unlike anything on
earth except other operas, was beyond all manner of doubt; that people do
not converse in such a way as recitative, and do not place themselves at
fixed distances, in a quartet, waving their arms to express their emotions;
that nowhere, except in theatres, do people walk about in such a manner, in
pairs, with tinfoil halberds and in slippers; that no one ever gets angry in
such a way, or is affected in such a way, or laughs in such a way, or cries in
such a way; and that no one on earth can be moved by such performances;
all this is beyond the possibility of doubt.
Instinctively the question presents itself—For whom is this being done?
Whom can it please? If there are, occasionally, good melodies in the opera,
to which it is pleasant to listen, they could have been sung simply, without
these stupid costumes and all the processions and recitatives and hand-
wavings.
The ballet, in which half-naked women make voluptuous movements,
twisting themselves into various sensual wreathings, is simply a lewd
performance.
So one is quite at a loss as to whom these things are done for. The man of
culture is heartily sick of them, while to a real working man they are utterly
incomprehensible. If anyone can be pleased by these things (which is
doubtful), it can only be some young footman or depraved artisan, who has
contracted the spirit of the upper classes but is not yet satiated with their
amusements, and wishes to show his breeding.
And all this nasty folly is prepared, not simply, nor with kindly merriment,
but with anger and brutal cruelty.

It is said that it is all done for the sake of art, and that art is a very important
thing. But is it true that art is so important that such sacrifices should be
made for its sake? This question is especially urgent, because art, for the
sake of which the labour of millions, the lives of men, and above all, love
between man and man, are being sacrificed,—this very art is becoming
something more and more vague and uncertain to human perception.
Criticism, in which the lovers of art used to find support for their opinions,
has latterly become so self-contradictory, that, if we exclude from the
domain of art all that to which the critics of various schools themselves
deny the title, there is scarcely any art left.
The artists of various sects, like the theologians of the various sects,
mutually exclude and destroy themselves. Listen to the artists of the schools
of our times, and you will find, in all branches, each set of artists disowning
others. In poetry the old romanticists deny the parnassians and the
decadents; the parnassians disown the romanticists and the decadents; the
decadents disown all their predecessors and the symbolists; the symbolists
disown all their predecessors and les mages; and les mages disown all, all
their predecessors. Among novelists we have naturalists, psychologists, and
“nature-ists,” all rejecting each other. And it is the same in dramatic art, in
painting and in music. So that art, which demands such tremendous labour-
sacrifices from the people, which stunts human lives and transgresses
against human love, is not only not a thing clearly and firmly defined, but is
understood in such contradictory ways by its own devotees that it is difficult
to say what is meant by art, and especially what is good, useful art,—art for
the sake of which we might condone such sacrifices as are being offered at
its shrine.

CHAPTER II

For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition,
picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and unwilling labour of
thousands and thousands of people is needed at what is often harmful and
humiliating work. It were well if artists made all they require for
themselves, but, as it is, they all need the help of workmen, not only to
produce art, but also for their own usually luxurious maintenance. And, one
way or other, they get it; either through payments from rich people, or
through subsidies given by Government (in Russia, for instance, in grants of
millions of roubles to theatres, conservatoires and academies). This money
is collected from the people, some of whom have to sell their only cow to
pay the tax, and who never get those æsthetic pleasures which art gives.
It was all very well for a Greek or Roman artist, or even for a Russian artist
of the first half of our century (when there were still slaves, and it was
considered right that there should be), with a quiet mind to make people
serve him and his art; but in our day, when in all men there is at least some
dim perception of the equal rights of all, it is impossible to constrain people
to labour unwillingly for art, without first deciding the question whether it
is true that art is so good and so important an affair as to redeem this evil.
If not, we have the terrible probability to consider, that while fearful
sacrifices of the labour and lives of men, and of morality itself, are being
made to art, that same art may be not only useless but even harmful.
And therefore it is necessary for a society in which works of art arise and
are supported, to find out whether all that professes to be art is really art;
whether (as is presupposed in our society) all that which is art is good; and
whether it is important and worth those sacrifices which it necessitates. It is
still more necessary for every conscientious artist to know this, that he may
be sure that all he does has a valid meaning; that it is not merely an
infatuation of the small circle of people among whom he lives which

excites in him the false assurance that he is doing a good work; and that
what he takes from others for the support of his often very luxurious life,
will be compensated for by those productions at which he works. And that
is why answers to the above questions are especially important in our time.
What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for
humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labour, of human life, and even
of goodness may be made?
“What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture, painting,
music, and poetry in all its forms,” usually replies the ordinary man, the art
amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining the matter about which he is
talking to be perfectly clear, and uniformly understood by everybody. But in
architecture, one inquires further, are there not simple buildings which are
not objects of art, and buildings with artistic pretensions which are
unsuccessful and ugly and therefore cannot be considered as works of art?
wherein lies the characteristic sign of a work of art?
It is the same in sculpture, in music, and in poetry. Art, in all its forms, is
bounded on one side by the practically useful and on the other by
unsuccessful attempts at art. How is art to be marked off from each of
these? The ordinary educated man of our circle, and even the artist who has
not occupied himself especially with æsthetics, will not hesitate at this
question either. He thinks the solution has been found long ago, and is well
known to everyone.
“Art is such activity as produces beauty,” says such a man.
If art consists in that, then is a ballet or an operetta art? you inquire.
“Yes,” says the ordinary man, though with some hesitation, “a good ballet
or a graceful operetta is also art, in so far as it manifests beauty.”
But without even asking the ordinary man what differentiates the “good”
ballet and the “graceful” operetta from their opposites (a question he would
have much difficulty in answering), if you ask him whether the activity of
costumiers and hairdressers, who ornament the figures and faces of the
women for the ballet and the operetta, is art; or the activity of Worth, the
dressmaker; of scent-makers and men-cooks, then he will, in most cases,
deny that their activity belongs to the sphere of art. But in this the ordinary
man makes a mistake, just because he is an ordinary man and not a

specialist, and because he has not occupied himself with æsthetic questions.
Had he looked into these matters, he would have seen in the great Renan’s
book, Marc Aurele, a dissertation showing that the tailor’s work is art, and
that those who do not see in the adornment of woman an affair of the
highest art are very small-minded and dull. “C’est le grand art” says Renan.
Moreover, he would have known that in many æsthetic systems—for
instance, in the æsthetics of the learned Professor Kralik, Weltschönheit,
Versuch einer allgemeinen Æsthetik, von Richard Kralik, and in Les
problèmes de l’Esthétique Contemporaine, by Guyau—the arts of costume,
of taste, and of touch are included.
“Es Folgt nun ein Fünfblatt von Künsten, die der subjectiven Sinnlichkeit
entkeimen” (There results then a pentafoliate of arts, growing out of the
subjective perceptions), says Kralik (p. 175). “Sie sind die ästhetische
Behandlung der fünf Sinne.” (They are the æsthetic treatment of the five
senses.)
These five arts are the following:—
Die Kunst des Geschmacksinns—The art of the sense of taste (p. 175).
Die Kunst des Geruchsinns—The art of the sense of smell (p. 177).
Die Kunst des Tastsinns—The art of the sense of touch (p. 180).
Die Kunst des Gehörsinns—The art of the sense of hearing (p. 182).
Die Kunst des Gesichtsinns—The art of the sense of sight (p. 184).
Of the first of these—die Kunst des Geschmacksinns—he says: “Man hält
zwar gewöhnlich nur zwei oder höchstens drei Sinne für würdig, den Stoff
künstlerischer Behandlung abzugeben, aber ich glaube nur mit bedingtem
Recht. Ich will kein allzugrosses Gewicht darauf legen, dass der gemeine
Sprachgebrauch manch andere Künste, wie zum Beispiel die Kochkunst
kennt.”[4]
And further: “Und es ist doch gewiss eine ästhetische Leistung, wenn es der
Kochkunst gelingt aus einem thierischen Kadaver einen Gegenstand des
Geschmacks in jedem Sinne zu machen. Der Grundsatz der Kunst des
Geschmacksinns (die weiter ist als die sogenannte Kochkunst) ist also
dieser: Es soll alles Geniessbare als Sinnbild einer Idee behandelt werden
und in jedesmaligem Einklang zur auszudrückenden Idee.”[5]

This author, like Renan, acknowledges a Kostümkunst (Art of Costume) (p.
200), etc.
Such is also the opinion of the French writer, Guyau, who is highly
esteemed by some authors of our day. In his book, Les problèmes de
l’esthétique contemporaine, he speaks seriously of touch, taste, and smell as
giving, or being capable of giving, aesthetic impressions: “Si la couleur
manque au toucher, il nous fournit en revanche une notion que l’œil seul ne
peut nous donner, et qui a une valeur esthétique considérable, celle du
doux, du soyeux du poli. Ce qui caractérise la beauté du velours, c’est sa
douceur au toucher non moins que son brillant. Dans l’idée que nous nous
faisons de la beauté d’une femme, le velouté de sa peau entre comme
élément essentiel.”
“Chacun de nous probablement avec un peu d’attention se rappellera des
jouissances du goût, qui out été de véritables jouissances esthétiques.”[6]
And he recounts how a glass of milk drunk by him in the mountains gave
him æsthetic enjoyment.
So it turns out that the conception of art as consisting in making beauty
manifest is not at all so simple as it seemed, especially now, when in this
conception of beauty are included our sensations of touch and taste and
smell, as they are by the latest æsthetic writers.
But the ordinary man either does not know, or does not wish to know, all
this, and is firmly convinced that all questions about art may be simply and
clearly solved by acknowledging beauty to be the subject-matter of art. To
him it seems clear and comprehensible that art consists in manifesting
beauty, and that a reference to beauty will serve to explain all questions
about art.
But what is this beauty which forms the subject-matter of art? How is it
defined? What is it?
As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception
conveyed by a word, with the more aplomb and self-assurance do people
use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so simple and
clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it actually means.
This is how matters of orthodox religion are usually dealt with, and this is
how people now deal with the conception of beauty. It is taken for granted

that what is meant by the word beauty is known and understood by
everyone. And yet not only is this not known, but, after whole mountains of
books have been written on the subject by the most learned and profound
thinkers during one hundred and fifty years (ever since Baumgarten
founded æsthetics in the year 1750), the question, What is beauty? remains
to this day quite unsolved, and in each new work on æsthetics it is answered
in a new way. One of the last books I read on æsthetics is a not ill-written
booklet by Julius Mithalter, called Rätsel des Schönen (The Enigma of the
Beautiful). And that title precisely expresses the position of the question,
What is beauty? After thousands of learned men have discussed it during
one hundred and fifty years, the meaning of the word beauty remains an
enigma still. The Germans answer the question in their manner, though in a
hundred different ways. The physiologist-æstheticians, especially the
Englishmen: Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen and his school, answer it, each in
his own way; the French eclectics, and the followers of Guyau and Taine,
also each in his own way; and all these people know all the preceding
solutions given by Baumgarten, and Kant, and Schelling, and Schiller, and
Fichte, and Winckelmann, and Lessing, and Hegel, and Schopenhauer, and
Hartmann, and Schasler, and Cousin, and Lévêque and others.
What is this strange conception “beauty,” which seems so simple to those
who talk without thinking, but in defining which all the philosophers of
various tendencies and different nationalities can come to no agreement
during a century and a half? What is this conception of beauty, on which the
dominant doctrine of art rests?
In Russian, by the word krasota (beauty) we mean only that which pleases
the sight. And though latterly people have begun to speak of “an ugly
deed,” or of “beautiful music,” it is not good Russian.
A Russian of the common folk, not knowing foreign languages, will not
understand you if you tell him that a man who has given his last coat to
another, or done anything similar, has acted “beautifully,” that a man who
has cheated another has done an “ugly” action, or that a song is “beautiful.”
In Russian a deed may be kind and good, or unkind and bad. Music may be
pleasant and good, or unpleasant and bad; but there can be no such thing as
“beautiful” or “ugly” music.

Beautiful may relate to a man, a horse, a house, a view, or a movement. Of
actions, thoughts, character, or music, if they please us, we may say that
they are good, or, if they do not please us, that they are not good. But
beautiful can be used only concerning that which pleases the sight. So that
the word and conception “good” includes the conception of “beautiful,” but
the reverse is not the case; the conception “beauty” does not include the
conception “good.” If we say “good” of an article which we value for its
appearance, we thereby say that the article is beautiful; but if we say it is
“beautiful,” it does not at all mean that the article is a good one.
Such is the meaning ascribed by the Russian language, and therefore by the
sense of the people, to the words and conceptions “good” and “beautiful.”
In all the European languages, i.e. the languages of those nations among
whom the doctrine has spread that beauty is the essential thing in art, the
words “beau,” “schön,” “beautiful,” “bello,” etc., while keeping their
meaning of beautiful in form, have come to also express “goodness,”
“kindness,” i.e. have come to act as substitutes for the word “good.”
So that it has become quite natural in those languages to use such
expressions as “belle ame,” “schöne Gedanken,” of “beautiful deed.” Those
languages no longer have a suitable word wherewith expressly to indicate
beauty of form, and have to use a combination of words such as “beau par
la forme,” “beautiful to look at,” etc., to convey that idea.
Observation of the divergent meanings which the words “beauty” and
“beautiful” have in Russian on the one hand, and in those European
languages now permeated by this æsthetic theory on the other hand, shows
us that the word “beauty” has, among the latter, acquired a special meaning,
namely, that of “good.”
What is remarkable, moreover, is that since we Russians have begun more
and more to adopt the European view of art, the same evolution has begun
to show itself in our language also, and some people speak and write quite
confidently, and without causing surprise, of beautiful music and ugly
actions, or even thoughts; whereas forty years ago, when I was young, the
expressions “beautiful music” and “ugly actions” were not only unusual but
incomprehensible. Evidently this new meaning given to beauty by
European thought begins to be assimilated by Russian society.

And what really is this meaning? What is this “beauty” as it is understood
by the European peoples?
In order to answer this question, I must here quote at least a small selection
of those definitions of beauty most generally adopted in existing æsthetic
systems. I especially beg the reader not to be overcome by dulness, but to
read these extracts through, or, still better, to read some one of the erudite
æsthetic authors. Not to mention the voluminous German æstheticians, a
very good book for this purpose would be either the German book by
Kralik, the English work by Knight, or the French one by Lévêque. It is
necessary to read one of the learned æsthetic writers in order to form at
first-hand a conception of the variety in opinion and the frightful obscurity
which reigns in this region of speculation; not, in this important matter,
trusting to another’s report.
This, for instance, is what the German æsthetician Schasler says in the
preface to his famous, voluminous, and detailed work on æsthetics:—
“Hardly in any sphere of philosophic science can we find such divergent
methods of investigation and exposition, amounting even to self-
contradiction, as in the sphere of æsthetics. On the one hand we have
elegant phraseology without any substance, characterised in great part by
most one-sided superficiality; and on the other hand, accompanying
undeniable profundity of investigation and richness of subject-matter, we
get a revolting awkwardness of philosophic terminology, enfolding the
simplest thoughts in an apparel of abstract science as though to render them
worthy to enter the consecrated palace of the system; and finally, between
these two methods of investigation and exposition, there is a third, forming,
as it were, the transition from one to the other, a method consisting of
eclecticism, now flaunting an elegant phraseology and now a pedantic
erudition.... A style of exposition that falls into none of these three defects
but it is truly concrete, and, having important matter, expresses it in clear
and popular philosophic language, can nowhere be found less frequently
than in the domain of æsthetics.”[7]
It is only necessary, for instance, to read Schasler’s own book to convince
oneself of the justice of this observation of his.
On the same subject the French writer Véron, in the preface to his very
good work on æsthetics, says, “Il n’y a pas de science, qui ait été plus que

l’esthétique livrée aux rêveries des métaphysiciens. Depuis Platon jusqu’
aux doctrines officielles de nos jours, on a fait de l’art je ne sais quel
amalgame de fantaisies quintessenciées, et de mystères transcendantaux qui
trouvent leur expression suprême dans la conception absolue du Beau idéal,
prototype immuable et divin des choses réelles” (L’esthétique, 1878, p. 5).[8]
If the reader will only be at the pains to peruse the following extracts,
defining beauty, taken from the chief writers on æsthetics, he may convince
himself that this censure is thoroughly deserved.
I shall not quote the definitions of beauty attributed to the ancients,—
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., down to Plotinus,—because, in reality, the
ancients had not that conception of beauty separated from goodness which
forms the basis and aim of æsthetics in our time. By referring the judgments
of the ancients on beauty to our conception of it, as is usually done in
æsthetics, we give the words of the ancients a meaning which is not theirs.[9]

CHAPTER III

I begin with the founder of æsthetics, Baumgarten (1714-1762).
According to Baumgarten,[10] the object of logical knowledge is Truth, the
object of æsthetic (i.e. sensuous) knowledge is Beauty. Beauty is the Perfect
(the Absolute), recognised through the senses; Truth is the Perfect perceived
through reason; Goodness is the Perfect reached by moral will.
Beauty is defined by Baumgarten as a correspondence, i.e. an order of the
parts in their mutual relations to each other and in their relation to the
whole. The aim of beauty itself is to please and excite a desire,
“Wohlgefallen und Erregung eines Verlangens.” (A position precisely the
opposite of Kant’s definition of the nature and sign of beauty.)
With reference to the manifestations of beauty, Baumgarten considers that
the highest embodiment of beauty is seen by us in nature, and he therefore
thinks that the highest aim of art is to copy nature. (This position also is
directly contradicted by the conclusions of the latest æstheticians.)
Passing over the unimportant followers of Baumgarten,—Maier,
Eschenburg, and Eberhard,—who only slightly modified the doctrine of
their teacher by dividing the pleasant from the beautiful, I will quote the
definitions given by writers who came immediately after Baumgarten, and
defined beauty quite in another way. These writers were Sulzer,
Mendelssohn, and Moritz. They, in contradiction to Baumgarten’s main
position, recognise as the aim of art, not beauty, but goodness. Thus Sulzer
(1720-1777) says that only that can be considered beautiful which contains
goodness. According to his theory, the aim of the whole life of humanity is
welfare in social life. This is attained by the education of the moral feelings,
to which end art should be subservient. Beauty is that which evokes and
educates this feeling.

Beauty is understood almost in the same way by Mendelssohn (1729-1786).
According to him, art is the carrying forward of the beautiful, obscurely
recognised by feeling, till it becomes the true and good. The aim of art is
moral perfection.[11]
For the æstheticians of this school, the ideal of beauty is a beautiful soul in
a beautiful body. So that these æstheticians completely wipe out
Baumgarten’s division of the Perfect (the Absolute), into the three forms of
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; and Beauty is again united with the Good and
the True.
But this conception is not only not maintained by the later æstheticians, but
the æsthetic doctrine of Winckelmann arises, again in complete opposition.
This divides the mission of art from the aim of goodness in the sharpest and
most positive manner, makes external beauty the aim of art, and even limits
it to visible beauty.
According to the celebrated work of Winckelmann (1717-1767), the law
and aim of all art is beauty only, beauty quite separated from and
independent of goodness. There are three kinds of beauty:—(1) beauty of
form, (2) beauty of idea, expressing itself in the position of the figure (in
plastic art), (3) beauty of expression, attainable only when the two first
conditions are present. This beauty of expression is the highest aim of art,
and is attained in antique art; modern art should therefore aim at imitating
ancient art.[12]
Art is similarly understood by Lessing, Herder, and afterwards by Goethe
and by all the distinguished æstheticians of Germany till Kant, from whose
day, again, a different conception of art commences.
Native æsthetic theories arose during this period in England, France, Italy,
and Holland, and they, though not taken from the German, were equally
cloudy and contradictory. And all these writers, just like the German
æstheticians, founded their theories on a conception of the Beautiful,
understanding beauty in the sense of a something existing absolutely, and
more or less intermingled with Goodness or having one and the same root.
In England, almost simultaneously with Baumgarten, even a little earlier,
Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Hogarth, and others, wrote on art.

According to Shaftesbury (1670-1713), “That which is beautiful is
harmonious and proportionable, what is harmonious and proportionable is
true, and what is at once both beautiful and true is of consequence agreeable
and good.”[13] Beauty, he taught, is recognised by the mind only. God is
fundamental beauty; beauty and goodness proceed from the same fount.
So that, although Shaftesbury regards beauty as being something separate
from goodness, they again merge into something inseparable.
According to Hutcheson (1694-1747—“Inquiry into the Original of our
Ideas of Beauty and Virtue”), the aim of art is beauty, the essence of which
consists in evoking in us the perception of uniformity amid variety. In the
recognition of what is art we are guided by “an internal sense.” This internal
sense may be in contradiction to the ethical one. So that, according to
Hutcheson, beauty does not always correspond with goodness, but separates
from it and is sometimes contrary to it.[14]
According to Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), beauty is that which is
pleasant. Therefore beauty is defined by taste alone. The standard of true
taste is that the maximum of richness, fulness, strength, and variety of
impression should be contained in the narrowest limits. That is the ideal of a
perfect work of art.
According to Burke (1729-1797—“Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of
our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”), the sublime and beautiful, which
are the aim of art, have their origin in the promptings of self-preservation
and of society. These feelings, examined in their source, are means for the
maintenance of the race through the individual. The first (self-preservation)
is attained by nourishment, defence, and war; the second (society) by
intercourse and propagation. Therefore self-defence, and war, which is
bound up with it, is the source of the sublime; sociability, and the sex-
instinct, which is bound up with it, is the source of beauty.[15]
Such were the chief English definitions of art and beauty in the eighteenth
century.
During that period, in France, the writers on art were Père André and
Batteux, with Diderot, D’Alembert, and, to some extent, Voltaire, following
later.

According to Père André (“Essai sur le Beau,” 1741), there are three kinds
of beauty—divine beauty, natural beauty, and artificial beauty.[16]
According to Batteux (1713-1780), art consists in imitating the beauty of
nature, its aim being enjoyment.[17] Such is also Diderot’s definition of art.
The French writers, like the English, consider that it is taste that decides
what is beautiful. And the laws of taste are not only not laid down, but it is
granted that they cannot be settled. The same view was held by D’Alembert
and Voltaire.[18]
According to the Italian æsthetician of that period, Pagano, art consists in
uniting the beauties’ dispersed in nature. The capacity to perceive these
beauties is taste, the capacity to bring them into one whole is artistic genius.
Beauty commingles with goodness, so that beauty is goodness made visible,
and goodness is inner beauty.[19]
According to the opinion of other Italians: Muratori (1672-1750),
—“Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto intorno le science e le arti,”—and
especially Spaletti,[20]—“Saggio sopra la bellezza” (1765),—art amounts to
an egotistical sensation, founded (as with Burke) on the desire for self-
preservation and society.
Among Dutch writers, Hemsterhuis (1720-1790), who had an influence on
the German æstheticians and on Goethe, is remarkable. According to him,
beauty is that which gives most pleasure, and that gives most pleasure
which gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time. Enjoyment
of the beautiful, because it gives the greatest quantity of perceptions in the
shortest time, is the highest notion to which man can attain.[21]
Such were the æsthetic theories outside Germany during the last century. In
Germany, after Winckelmann, there again arose a completely new æsthetic
theory, that of Kant (1724-1804), which more than all others clears up what
this conception of beauty, and consequently of art, really amounts to.
The æsthetic teaching of Kant is founded as follows:—Man has a
knowledge of nature outside him and of himself in nature. In nature, outside
himself, he seeks for truth; in himself he seeks for goodness. The first is an
affair of pure reason, the other of practical reason (free-will). Besides these
two means of perception, there is yet the judging capacity (Urteilskraft),
which forms judgments without reasonings and produces pleasure without

desire (Urtheil ohne Begriff und Vergnügen ohne Begehren). This capacity
is the basis of æsthetic feeling. Beauty, according to Kant, in its subjective
meaning is that which, in general and necessarily, without reasonings and
without practical advantage, pleases. In its objective meaning it is the form
of a suitable object in so far as that object is perceived without any
conception of its utility.[22]
Beauty is defined in the same way by the followers of Kant, among whom
was Schiller (1759-1805). According to Schiller, who wrote much on
æsthetics, the aim of art is, as with Kant, beauty, the source of which is
pleasure without practical advantage. So that art may be called a game, not
in the sense of an unimportant occupation, but in the sense of a
manifestation of the beauties of life itself without other aim than that of
beauty.[23]
Besides Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant’s followers in the sphere of
æsthetics was Wilhelm Humboldt, who, though he added nothing to the
definition of beauty, explained various forms of it,—the drama, music, the
comic, etc.[24]
After Kant, besides the second-rate philosophers, the writers on æsthetics
were Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their followers. Fichte (1762-1814) says
that perception of the beautiful proceeds from this: the world—i.e. nature—
has two sides: it is the sum of our limitations, and it is the sum of our free
idealistic activity. In the first aspect the world is limited, in the second
aspect it is free. In the first aspect every object is limited, distorted,
compressed, confined—and we see deformity; in the second we perceive its
inner completeness, vitality, regeneration—and we see beauty. So that the
deformity or beauty of an object, according to Fichte, depends on the point
of view of the observer. Beauty therefore exists, not in the world, but in the
beautiful soul (schöner Geist). Art is the manifestation of this beautiful soul,
and its aim is the education, not only of the mind—that is the business of
the savant; not only of the heart—that is the affair of the moral preacher;
but of the whole man. And so the characteristic of beauty lies, not in
anything external, but in the presence of a beautiful soul in the artist.[25]
Following Fichte, and in the same direction, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam
Müller also defined beauty. According to Schlegel (1772—1829), beauty in
art is understood too incompletely, one-sidedly, and disconnectedly. Beauty

exists not only in art, but also in nature and in love; so that the truly
beautiful is expressed by the union of art, nature, and love. Therefore, as
inseparably one with aesthetic art, Schlegel acknowledges moral and
philosophic art.[26]
According to Adam Muller (1779-1829), there are two kinds of beauty; the
one, general beauty, which attracts people as the sun attracts the planet—
this is found chiefly in antique art—and the other, individual beauty, which
results from the observer himself becoming a sun attracting beauty,—this is
the beauty of modern art. A world in which all contradictions are
harmonised is the highest beauty. Every work of art is a reproduction of this
universal harmony.[27] The highest art is the art of life.[28]
Next after Fichte and his followers came a contemporary of his, the
philosopher Schelling (1775-1854), who has had a great influence on the
æsthetic conceptions of our times. According to Schelling’s philosophy, art
is the production or result of that conception of things by which the subject
becomes its own object, or the object its own subject. Beauty is the
perception of the infinite in the finite. And the chief characteristic of works
of art is unconscious infinity. Art is the uniting of the subjective with the
objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and
therefore art is the highest means of knowledge. Beauty is the
contemplation of things in themselves as they exist in the prototype (In den
Urbildern). It is not the artist who by his knowledge or skill produces the
beautiful, but the idea of beauty in him itself produces it.[29]
Of Schelling’s followers the most noticeable was Solger (1780-1819—
Vorlesungen über Aesthetik). According to him, the idea of beauty is the
fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the
fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this
idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.[30]
According to another follower of Schelling, Krause (1781-1832), true,
positive beauty is the manifestation of the Idea in an individual form; art is
the actualisation of the beauty existing in the sphere of man’s free spirit.
The highest stage of art is the art of life, which directs its activity towards
the adornment of life so that it may be a beautiful abode for a beautiful
man.[31]

After Schelling and his followers came the new æsthetic doctrine of Hegel,
which is held to this day, consciously by many, but by the majority
unconsciously. This teaching is not only no clearer or better defined than
the preceding ones, but is, if possible, even more cloudy and mystical.
According to Hegel (1770-1831), God manifests himself in nature and in art
in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in two ways: in the object and
in the subject, in nature and in spirit. Beauty is the shining of the Idea
through matter. Only the soul, and what pertains to it, is truly beautiful; and
therefore the beauty of nature is only the reflection of the natural beauty of
the spirit—the beautiful has only a spiritual content. But the spiritual must
appear in sensuous form. The sensuous manifestation of spirit is only
appearance (schein), and this appearance is the only reality of the beautiful.
Art is thus the production of this appearance of the Idea, and is a means,
together with religion and philosophy, of bringing to consciousness and of
expressing the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the
spirit.
Truth and beauty, according to Hegel, are one and the same thing; the
difference being only that truth is the Idea itself as it exists in itself, and is
thinkable. The Idea, manifested externally, becomes to the apprehension not
only true but beautiful. The beautiful is the manifestation of the Idea.[32]
Following Hegel came his many adherents, Weisse, Arnold Ruge,
Rosenkrantz, Theodor Vischer and others.
According to Weisse (1801-1867), art is the introduction (Einbildung) of the
absolute spiritual reality of beauty into external, dead, indifferent matter, the
perception of which latter apart from the beauty brought into it presents the
negation of all existence in itself (Negation alles Fürsichseins).
In the idea of truth, Weisse explains, lies a contradiction between the
subjective and the objective sides of knowledge, in that an individual I
discerns the Universal. This contradiction can be removed by a conception
that should unite into one the universal and the individual, which fall
asunder in our conceptions of truth. Such a conception would be reconciled
(aufgehoben) truth. Beauty is such a reconciled truth.[33]
According to Ruge (1802-1880), a strict follower of Hegel, beauty is the
Idea expressing itself. The spirit, contemplating itself, either finds itself

expressed completely, and then that full expression of itself is beauty; or
incompletely, and then it feels the need to alter this imperfect expression of
itself, and becomes creative art.[34]
According to Vischer (1807-1887), beauty is the Idea in the form of a finite
phenomenon. The Idea itself is not indivisible, but forms a system of ideas,
which may be represented by ascending and descending lines. The higher
the idea the more beauty it contains; but even the lowest contains beauty,
because it forms an essential link of the system. The highest form of the
Idea is personality, and therefore the highest art is that which has for its
subject-matter the highest personality.[35]
Such were the theories of the German æstheticians in the Hegelian
direction, but they did not monopolise æsthetic dissertations. In Germany,
side by side and simultaneously with the Hegelian theories, there appeared
theories of beauty not only independent of Hegel’s position (that beauty is
the manifestation of the Idea), but directly contrary to this view, denying
and ridiculing it. Such was the line taken by Herbart and, more particularly,
by Schopenhauer.
According to Herbart (1776-1841), there is not, and cannot be, any such
thing as beauty existing in itself. What does exist is only our opinion, and it
is necessary to find the base of this opinion (Ästhetisches Elementarurtheil).
Such bases are connected with our impressions. There are certain relations
which we term beautiful; and art consists in finding these relations, which
are simultaneous in painting, the plastic art, and architecture, successive and
simultaneous in music, and purely successive in poetry. In contradiction to
the former æstheticians, Herbart holds that objects are often beautiful which
express nothing at all, as, for instance, the rainbow, which is beautiful for its
lines and colours, and not for its mythological connection with Iris or
Noah’s rainbow.[36]
Another opponent of Hegel was Schopenhauer, who denied Hegel’s whole
system, his æsthetics included.
According to Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Will objectivizes itself in the
world on various planes; and although the higher the plane on which it is
objectivized the more beautiful it is, yet each plane has its own beauty.
Renunciation of one’s individuality and contemplation of one of these
planes of manifestation of Will gives us a perception of beauty. All men,

says Schopenhauer, possess the capacity to objectivize the Idea on different
planes. The genius of the artist has this capacity in a higher degree, and
therefore makes a higher beauty manifest.[37]
After these more eminent writers there followed, in Germany, less original
and less influential ones, such as Hartmann, Kirkmann, Schnasse, and, to
some extent, Helmholtz (as an æsthetician), Bergmann, Jungmann, and an
innumerable host of others.
According to Hartmann (1842), beauty lies, not in the external world, nor in
“the thing in itself,” neither does it reside in the soul of man, but it lies in
the “seeming” (Schein) produced by the artist. The thing in itself is not
beautiful, but is transformed into beauty by the artist.[38]
According to Schnasse (1798-1875), there is no perfect beauty in the world.
In nature there is only an approach towards it. Art gives what nature cannot
give. In the energy of the free ego, conscious of harmony not found in
nature, beauty is disclosed.[39]
Kirkmann wrote on experimental aesthetics. All aspects of history in his
system are joined by pure chance. Thus, according to Kirkmann (1802-
1884), there are six realms of history:—The realm of Knowledge, of
Wealth, of Morality, of Faith, of Politics, and of Beauty; and activity in the
last-named realm is art.[40]
According to Helmholtz (1821), who wrote on beauty as it relates to music,
beauty in musical productions is attained only by following unalterable
laws. These laws are not known to the artist; so that beauty is manifested by
the artist unconsciously, and cannot be subjected to analysis.[41]
According to Bergmann (1840) (Ueber das Schöne, 1887), to define beauty
objectively is impossible. Beauty is only perceived subjectively, and
therefore the problem of æsthetics is to define what pleases whom.[42]
According to Jungmann (d. 1885), firstly, beauty is a suprasensible quality
of things; secondly, beauty produces in us pleasure by merely being
contemplated; and, thirdly, beauty is the foundation of love.[43]
The æsthetic theories of the chief representatives of France, England, and
other nations in recent times have been the following:—

In France, during this period, the prominent writers on æsthetics were
Cousin, Jouffroy, Pictet, Ravaisson, Lévêque.
Cousin (1792-1867) was an eclectic, and a follower of the German idealists.
According to his theory, beauty always has a moral foundation. He disputes
the doctrine that art is imitation and that the beautiful is what pleases. He
affirms that beauty may be defined objectively, and that it essentially
consists in variety in unity.[44]
After Cousin came Jouffroy (1796-1842), who was a pupil of Cousin’s and
also a follower of the German æstheticians. According to his definition,
beauty is the expression of the invisible by those natural signs which
manifest it. The visible world is the garment by means of which we see
beauty.[45]
The Swiss writer Pictet repeated Hegel and Plato, supposing beauty to exist
in the direct and free manifestation of the divine Idea revealing itself in
sense forms.[46]
Lévêque was a follower of Schelling and Hegel. He holds that beauty is
something invisible behind nature—a force or spirit revealing itself in
ordered energy.[47]
Similar vague opinions about the nature of beauty were expressed by the
French metaphysician Ravaisson, who considered beauty to be the ultimate
aim and purpose of the world. “La beauté la plus divine et principalement
la plus parfaite contient le secret du monde.”[48] And again:—“Le monde
entier est l’œuvre d’une beauté absolue, qui n’est la cause des choses que
par l’amour qu’elle met en elles.”
I purposely abstain from translating these metaphysical expressions,
because, however cloudy the Germans may be, the French, once they
absorb the theories of the Germans and take to imitating them, far surpass
them in uniting heterogeneous conceptions into one expression, and putting
forward one meaning or another indiscriminately. For instance, the French
philosopher Renouvier, when discussing beauty, says:—“Ne craignons pas
de dire qu’une vérité qui ne serait pas belle, ne serait qu’un jeu logique de
notre esprit et que la seule vérité solide et digne de ce nom c’est la
beauté.”[49]

Besides the æsthetic idealists who wrote and still write under the influence
of German philosophy, the following recent writers have also influenced the
comprehension of art and beauty in France: Taine, Guyau, Cherbuliez,
Coster, and Véron.
According to Taine (1828-1893), beauty is the manifestation of the essential
characteristic of any important idea more completely than it is expressed in
reality.[50]
Guyau (1854-1888) taught that beauty is not something exterior to the
object itself,—is not, as it were, a parasitic growth on it,—but is itself the
very blossoming forth of that on which it appears. Art is the expression of
reasonable and conscious life, evoking in us both the deepest consciousness
of existence and the highest feelings and loftiest thoughts. Art lifts man
from his personal life into the universal life, by means, not only of
participation in the same ideas and beliefs, but also by means of similarity
in feeling.[51]
According to Cherbuliez, art is an activity, (1) satisfying our innate love of
forms (apparences), (2) endowing these forms with ideas, (3) affording
pleasure alike to our senses, heart, and reason. Beauty is not inherent in
objects, but is an act of our souls. Beauty is an illusion; there is no absolute
beauty. But what we consider characteristic and harmonious appears
beautiful to us.
Coster held that the ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true are innate.
These ideas illuminate our minds and are identical with God, who is
Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. The idea of Beauty includes unity of essence,
variety of constitutive elements, and order, which brings unity into the
various manifestations of life.[52]
For the sake of completeness, I will further cite some of the very latest
writings upon art.
La psychologie du Beau et de l’Art, par Mario Pilo (1895), says that beauty
is a product of our physical feelings. The aim of art is pleasure, but this
pleasure (for some reason) he considers to be necessarily highly moral.
The Essai sur l’art contemporain, par Fierens Gevaert (1897), says that art
rests on its connection with the past, and on the religious ideal of the

present which the artist holds when giving to his work the form of his
individuality.
Then again, Sar Peladan’s L’art idéaliste et mystique (1894) says that
beauty is one of the manifestations of God. “Il n’y a pas d’autre Réalité que
Dieu, n’y a pas d’autre Vérité que Dieu, il n’y a pas d’autre Beauté, que
Dieu” (p. 33). This book is very fantastic and very illiterate, but is
characteristic in the positions it takes up, and noticeable on account of a
certain success it is having with the younger generation in France.
All the æsthetics diffused in France up to the present time are similar in
kind, but among them Véron’s L’esthétique (1878) forms an exception,
being reasonable and clear. That work, though it does not give an exact
definition of art, at least rids æsthetics of the cloudy conception of an
absolute beauty.
According to Véron (1825-1889), art is the manifestation of emotion
transmitted externally by a combination of lines, forms, colours, or by a
succession of movements, sounds, or words subjected to certain rhythms.[53]
In England, during this period, the writers on æsthetics define beauty more
and more frequently, not by its own qualities, but by taste, and the
discussion about beauty is superseded by a discussion on taste.
After Reid (1704-1796), who acknowledged beauty as being entirely
dependent on the spectator, Alison, in his Essay on the Nature and
Principles of Taste (1790), proved the same thing. From another side this
was also asserted by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of the
celebrated Charles Darwin.
He says that we consider beautiful that which is connected in our
conception with what we love. Richard Knight’s work, An Analytical
Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, also tends in the same direction.
Most of the English theories of æsthetics are on the same lines. The
prominent writers on æsthetics in England during the present century have
been Charles Darwin, (to some extent), Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen, Ker,
and Knight.
According to Charles Darwin (1809-1882—Descent of Man, 1871), beauty
is a feeling natural not only to man but also to animals, and consequently to
the ancestors of man. Birds adorn their nests and esteem beauty in their

mates. Beauty has an influence on marriages. Beauty includes a variety of
diverse conceptions. The origin of the art of music is the call of the males to
the females.[54]
According to Herbert Spencer (b. 1820), the origin of art is play, a thought
previously expressed by Schiller. In the lower animals all the energy of life
is expended in life-maintenance and race-maintenance; in man, however,
there remains, after these needs are satisfied, some superfluous strength.
This excess is used in play, which passes over into art. Play is an imitation
of real activity, so is art. The sources of æsthetic pleasure are threefold:—
(1) That “which exercises the faculties affected in the most complete ways,
with the fewest drawbacks from excess of exercise,” (2) “the difference of a
stimulus in large amount, which awakens a glow of agreeable feeling,” (3)
the partial revival of the same, with special combinations.[55]
In Todhunter’s Theory of the Beautiful (1872), beauty is infinite loveliness,
which we apprehend both by reason and by the enthusiasm of love. The
recognition of beauty as being such depends on taste; there can be no
criterion for it. The only approach to a definition is found in culture. (What
culture is, is not defined.) Intrinsically, art—that which affects us through
lines, colours, sounds, or words—is not the product of blind forces, but of
reasonable ones, working, with mutual helpfulness, towards a reasonable
aim. Beauty is the reconciliation of contradictions.[56]
Grant Allen is a follower of Spencer, and in his Physiological Æsthetics
(1877) he says that beauty has a physical origin. Æsthetic pleasures come
from the contemplation of the beautiful, but the conception of beauty is
obtained by a physiological process. The origin of art is play; when there is
a superfluity of physical strength man gives himself to play; when there is a
superfluity of receptive power man gives himself to art. The beautiful is that
which affords the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of waste.
Differences in the estimation of beauty proceed from taste. Taste can be
educated. We must have faith in the judgments “of the finest-nurtured and
most discriminative” men. These people form the taste of the next
generation.[57]
According to Ker’s Essay on the Philosophy of Art (1883), beauty enables
us to make part of the objective world intelligible to ourselves without
being troubled by reference to other parts of it, as is inevitable for science.

So that art destroys the opposition between the one and the many, between
the law and its manifestation, between the subject and its object, by uniting
them. Art is the revelation and vindication of freedom, because it is free
from the darkness and incomprehensibility of finite things.[58]
According to Knight’s Philosophy of the Beautiful, Part II. (1893), beauty is
(as with Schelling) the union of object and subject, the drawing forth from
nature of that which is cognate to man, and the recognition in oneself of that
which is common to all nature.
The opinions on beauty and on Art here mentioned are far from exhausting
what has been written on the subject. And every day fresh writers on
æsthetics arise, in whose disquisitions appear the same enchanted confusion
and contradictoriness in defining beauty. Some, by inertia, continue the
mystical æsthetics of Baumgarten and Hegel with sundry variations; others
transfer the question to the region of subjectivity, and seek for the
foundation of the beautiful in questions of taste; others—the æstheticians of
the very latest formation—seek the origin of beauty in the laws of
physiology; and finally, others again investigate the question quite
independently of the conception of beauty. Thus, Sully in his Sensation and
Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Æsthetics (1874), dismisses the
conception of beauty altogether, art, by his definition, being the production
of some permanent object or passing action fitted to supply active
enjoyment to the producer, and a pleasurable impression to a number of
spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage derived
from it.[59]

CHAPTER IV

To what do these definitions of beauty amount? Not reckoning the
thoroughly inaccurate definitions of beauty which fail to cover the
conception of art, and which suppose beauty to consist either in utility, or in
adjustment to a purpose, or in symmetry, or in order, or in proportion, or in
smoothness, or in harmony of the parts, or in unity amid variety, or in
various combinations of these,—not reckoning these unsatisfactory
attempts at objective definition, all the æsthetic definitions of beauty lead to
two fundamental conceptions. The first is that beauty is something having
an independent existence (existing in itself), that it is one of the
manifestations of the absolutely Perfect, of the Idea, of the Spirit, of Will, or
of God; the other is that beauty is a kind of pleasure received by us, not
having personal advantage for its object.
The first of these definitions was accepted by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, and the philosophising Frenchmen, Cousin, Jouffroy,
Ravaisson, and others, not to enumerate the second-rate æsthetic
philosophers. And this same objective-mystical definition of beauty is held
by a majority of the educated people of our day. It is a conception very
widely spread, especially among the elder generation.
The second view, that beauty is a certain kind of pleasure received by us,
not having personal advantage for its aim, finds favour chiefly among the
English æsthetic writers, and is shared by the other part of our society,
principally by the younger generation.
So there are (and it could not be otherwise) only two definitions of beauty:
the one objective, mystical, merging this conception into that of the highest
perfection, God—a fantastic definition, founded on nothing; the other, on
the contrary, a very simple and intelligible subjective one, which considers
beauty to be that which pleases (I do not add to the word “pleases” the

words “without the aim of advantage,” because “pleases” naturally
presupposes the absence of the idea of profit).
On the one hand, beauty is viewed as something mystical and very elevated,
but unfortunately at the same time very indefinite, and consequently
embracing philosophy, religion, and life itself (as in the theories of
Schelling and Hegel, and their German and French followers); or, on the
other hand (as necessarily follows from the definition of Kant and his
adherents), beauty is simply a certain kind of disinterested pleasure received
by us. And this conception of beauty, although it seems very clear, is,
unfortunately, again inexact; for it widens out on the other side, i.e. it
includes the pleasure derived from drink, from food, from touching a
delicate skin, etc., as is acknowledged by Guyau, Kralik, and others.
It is true that, following the development of the æsthetic doctrines on
beauty, we may notice that, though at first (in the times when the
foundations of the science of æsthetics were being laid) the metaphysical
definition of beauty prevailed, yet the nearer we get to our own times the
more does an experimental definition (recently assuming a physiological
form) come to the front, so that at last we even meet with such æstheticians
as Véron and Sully, who try to escape entirely from the conception of
beauty. But such æstheticians have very little success, and with the majority
of the public, as well as of artists and the learned, a conception of beauty is
firmly held which agrees with the definitions contained in most of the
æsthetic treatises, i.e. which regards beauty either as something mystical or
metaphysical, or as a special kind of enjoyment.
What then is this conception of beauty, so stubbornly held to by people of
our circle and day as furnishing a definition of art?
In the subjective aspect, we call beauty that which supplies us with a
particular kind of pleasure.
In the objective aspect, we call beauty something absolutely perfect, and we
acknowledge it to be so only because we receive, from the manifestation of
this absolute perfection, a certain kind of pleasure; so that this objective
definition is nothing but the subjective conception differently expressed. In
reality both conceptions of beauty amount to one and the same thing,
namely, the reception by us of a certain kind of pleasure, i.e. we call
“beauty” that which pleases us without evoking in us desire.

Such being the position of affairs, it would seem only natural that the
science of art should decline to content itself with a definition of art based
on beauty (i.e. on that which pleases), and seek a general definition, which
should apply to all artistic productions, and by reference to which we might
decide whether a certain article belonged to the realm of art or not. But no
such definition is supplied, as the reader may see from those summaries of
the æsthetic theories which I have given, and as he may discover even more
clearly from the original æsthetic works, if he will be at the pains to read
them. All attempts to define absolute beauty in itself—whether as an
imitation of nature, or as suitability to its object, or as a correspondence of
parts, or as symmetry, or as harmony, or as unity in variety, etc.—either
define nothing at all, or define only some traits of some artistic productions,
and are far from including all that everybody has always held, and still
holds, to be art.
There is no objective definition of beauty. The existing definitions, (both
the metaphysical and the experimental), amount only to one and the same
subjective definition which (strange as it seems to say so) is, that art is that
which makes beauty manifest, and beauty is that which pleases (without
exciting desire). Many æstheticians have felt the insufficiency and
instability of such a definition, and, in order to give it a firm basis, have
asked themselves why a thing pleases. And they have converted the
discussion on beauty into a question concerning taste, as did Hutcheson,
Voltaire, Diderot, and others. But all attempts to define what taste is must
lead to nothing, as the reader may see both from the history of æsthetics and
experimentally. There is and can be no explanation of why one thing
pleases one man and displeases another, or vice versâ. So that the whole
existing science of æsthetics fails to do what we might expect from it, being
a mental activity calling itself a science, namely, it does not define the
qualities and laws of art, or of the beautiful (if that be the content of art), or
the nature of taste (if taste decides the question of art and its merit), and
then, on the basis of such definitions, acknowledge as art those productions
which correspond to these laws, and reject those which do not come under
them. But this science of æsthetics consists in first acknowledging a certain
set of productions to be art (because they please us), and then framing such
a theory of art that all those productions which please a certain circle of
people should fit into it. There exists an art canon, according to which
certain productions favoured by our circle are acknowledged as being art,—

Phidias, Sophocles, Homer, Titian, Raphael, Bach, Beethoven, Dante,
Shakespear, Goethe, and others,—and the æsthetic laws must be such as to
embrace all these productions. In æsthetic literature you will incessantly
meet with opinions on the merit and importance of art, founded not on any
certain laws by which this or that is held to be good or bad, but merely on
the consideration whether this art tallies with the art canon we have drawn
up.
The other day I was reading a far from ill-written book by Folgeldt.
Discussing the demand for morality in works of art, the author plainly says
that we must not demand morality in art. And in proof of this he advances
the fact that if we admit such a demand, Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet and
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister would not fit into the definition of good art; but
since both these books are included in our canon of art, he concludes that
the demand is unjust. And therefore it is necessary to find a definition of art
which shall fit the works; and instead of a demand for morality, Folgeldt
postulates as the basis of art a demand for the important (Bedeutungsvolles).
All the existing æsthetic standards are built on this plan. Instead of giving a
definition of true art, and then deciding what is and what is not good art by
judging whether a work conforms or does not conform to the definition, a
certain class of works, which for some reason please a certain circle of
people, is accepted as being art, and a definition of art is then devised to
cover all these productions. I recently came upon a remarkable instance of
this method in a very good German work, The History of Art in the
Nineteenth Century, by Muther. Describing the pre-Raphaelites, the
Decadents and the Symbolists (who are already included in the canon of
art), he not only does not venture to blame their tendency, but earnestly
endeavours to widen his standard so that it may include them all, they
appearing to him to represent a legitimate reaction from the excesses of
realism. No matter what insanities appear in art, when once they find
acceptance among the upper classes of our society a theory is quickly
invented to explain and sanction them; just as if there had never been
periods in history when certain special circles of people recognised and
approved false, deformed, and insensate art which subsequently left no
trace and has been utterly forgotten. And to what lengths the insanity and
deformity of art may go, especially when, as in our days, it knows that it is

considered infallible, may be seen by what is being done in the art of our
circle to-day.
So that the theory of art, founded on beauty, expounded by æsthetics, and,
in dim outline, professed by the public, is nothing but the setting up as
good, of that which has pleased and pleases us, i.e. pleases a certain class of
people.
In order to define any human activity, it is necessary to understand its sense
and importance. And, in order to do that, it is primarily necessary to
examine that activity in itself, in its dependence on its causes, and in
connection with its effects, and not merely in relation to the pleasure we can
get from it.
If we say that the aim of any activity is merely our pleasure, and define it
solely by that pleasure, our definition will evidently be a false one. But this
is precisely what has occurred in the efforts to define art. Now, if we
consider the food question, it will not occur to anyone to affirm that the
importance of food consists in the pleasure we receive when eating it.
Everyone understands that the satisfaction of our taste cannot serve as a
basis for our definition of the merits of food, and that we have therefore no
right to presuppose that the dinners with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese,
alcohol, etc., to which we are accustomed and which please us, form the
very best human food.
And in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense serve
as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of objects which afford
us pleasure serve as the model of what art should be.
To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we get from it, is like
assuming (as is done by people of the lowest moral development, e.g. by
savages) that the purpose and aim of food is the pleasure derived when
consuming it.
Just as people who conceive the aim and purpose of food to be pleasure
cannot recognise the real meaning of eating, so people who consider the
aim of art to be pleasure cannot realise its true meaning and purpose,
because they attribute to an activity, the meaning of which lies in its
connection with other phenomena of life, the false and exceptional aim of
pleasure. People come to understand that the meaning of eating lies in the

nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of
that activity is pleasure. And it is the same with regard to art. People will
come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider
that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e. pleasure. The acknowledgment of
beauty (i.e. of a certain kind of pleasure received from art) as being the aim
of art, not only fails to assist us in finding a definition of what art is, but, on
the contrary, by transferring the question into a region quite foreign to art
(into metaphysical, psychological, physiological, and even historical
discussions as to why such a production pleases one person, and such
another displeases or pleases someone else), it renders such definition
impossible. And since discussions as to why one man likes pears and
another prefers meat do not help towards finding a definition of what is
essential in nourishment, so the solution of questions of taste in art (to
which the discussions on art involuntarily come) not only does not help to
make clear what this particular human activity which we call art really
consists in, but renders such elucidation quite impossible, until we rid
ourselves of a conception which justifies every kind of art, at the cost of
confusing the whole matter.
To the question, What is this art, to which is offered up the labour of
millions, the very lives of men, and even morality itself? we have extracted
replies from the existing æsthetics, which all amount to this: that the aim of
art is beauty, that beauty is recognised by the enjoyment it gives, and that
artistic enjoyment is a good and important thing, because it is enjoyment. In
a word, that enjoyment is good because it is enjoyment. Thus, what is
considered the definition of art is no definition at all, but only a shuffle to
justify existing art. Therefore, however strange it may seem to say so, in
spite of the mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art
has been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art has
been based on the conception of beauty.

CHAPTER V

What is art, if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses the
whole matter? The latest and most comprehensible definitions of art, apart
from the conception of beauty, are the following:—(1 a) Art is an activity
arising even in the animal kingdom, and springing from sexual desire and
the propensity to play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer), and (1 b) accompanied
by a pleasurable excitement of the nervous system (Grant Allen). This is the
physiological-evolutionary definition. (2) Art is the external manifestation,
by means of lines, colours, movements, sounds, or words, of emotions felt
by man (Véron). This is the experimental definition. According to the very
latest definition (Sully), (3) Art is “the production of some permanent
object, or passing action, which is fitted not only to supply an active
enjoyment to the producer, but to convey a pleasurable impression to a
number of spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage
to be derived from it.”
Notwithstanding the superiority of these definitions to the metaphysical
definitions which depended on the conception of beauty, they are yet far
from exact. (1 a) The first, the physiological-evolutionary definition, is
inexact, because, instead of speaking about the artistic activity itself, which
is the real matter in hand, it treats of the derivation of art. The modification
of it (1 b), based on the physiological effects on the human organism, is
inexact, because within the limits of such definition many other human
activities can be included, as has occurred in the neo-æsthetic theories,
which reckon as art the preparation of handsome clothes, pleasant scents,
and even of victuals.
The experimental definition (2), which makes art consist in the expression
of emotions, is inexact, because a man may express his emotions by means
of lines, colours, sounds, or words, and yet may not act on others by such
expression; and then the manifestation of his emotions is not art.

The third definition (that of Sully) is inexact, because in the production of
objects or actions affording pleasure to the producer and a pleasant emotion
to the spectators or hearers apart from personal advantage, may be included
the showing of conjuring tricks or gymnastic exercises, and other activities
which are not art. And, further, many things, the production of which does
not afford pleasure to the producer, and the sensation received from which
is unpleasant, such as gloomy, heart-rending scenes in a poetic description
or a play, may nevertheless be undoubted works of art.
The inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact that in them all
(as also in the metaphysical definitions) the object considered is the
pleasure art may give, and not the purpose it may serve in the life of man
and of humanity.
In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to
consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it as one of the
conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way, we cannot fail to observe
that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.
Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of
relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with
all those who, simultaneously, previously or subsequently, receive the same
artistic impression.
Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a
means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The
peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it from
intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a
man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his
feelings.
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his
sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of
experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take
the simplest example: one man laughs, and another, who hears, becomes
merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears, feels sorrow. A man is
excited or irritated, and another man, seeing him, comes to a similar state of
mind. By his movements, or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses
courage and determination, or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind
passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and

spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses
his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects,
persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of
admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and
phenomena.
And it is on this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of
feeling, and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is
based.
If a man infects another or others, directly, immediately, by his appearance,
or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he experiences the
feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he himself cannot help
yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself is obliged to laugh or cry, or to
suffer when he himself is suffering—that does not amount to art.
Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to
himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain
external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having
experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter;
and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes
himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the wood, his
own lightheartedness, and then the wolf’s appearance, its movements, the
distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy when
telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and
infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had
experienced, is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently
been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he
invented an encounter with a wolf, and recounted it so as to make his
hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the wolf, that also
would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced
either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality
or in imagination), expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that
others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to
himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or
despondency, and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and
expresses these feelings by sounds, so that the hearers are infected by them,
and experience them as they were experienced by the composer.

The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most various—very
strong or very weak, very important or very insignificant, very bad or very
good: feelings of love for native land, self-devotion and submission to fate
or to God expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel,
feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a
triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humour evoked by a funny
story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a
lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque—it is
all art.
If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the
author has felt, it is art.
To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked
it in oneself then, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, or forms
expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience
the same feeling—this is the activity of art.
Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by
means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived
through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also
experience them.
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious
Idea of beauty, or God; it is not, as the æsthetical physiologists say, a game
in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression
of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing
objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among
men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the
life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity.
As, thanks to man’s capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may
know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all
humanity before his day, and can, in the present, thanks to this capacity to
understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their activity, and can
himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has
assimilated from others, as well as those which have arisen within himself;
so, thanks to man’s capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by
means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is
accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of

years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to
others.
If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men
who preceded them, and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would
be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Hauser.[60]
And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might
be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more
hostile to, one another.
And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the
activity of speech itself, and as generally diffused.
We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in
theatres, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings, statues, poems,
novels.... But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we
communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of
art of every kind—from cradle-song, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of
houses, dress and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments,
and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the
limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting
feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to
which we attach special importance.
This special importance has always been given by all men to that part of
this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their religious
perception, and this small part of art they have specifically called art,
attaching to it the full meaning of the word.
That was how men of old—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—looked on art.
Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard art; thus it
was, and still is, understood by the Mahommedans, and thus is it still
understood by religious folk among our own peasantry.
Some teachers of mankind—as Plato in his Republic, and people such as the
primitive Christians, the strict Mahommedans, and the Buddhists—have
gone so far as to repudiate all art.
People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent view of to-
day, which regards any art as good if only it affords pleasure) considered,
and consider, that art (as contrasted with speech, which need not be listened

to) is so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills,
that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each
and every art.
Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied
that which cannot be denied—one of the indispensable means of
communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not less wrong
are the people of civilised European society of our class and day, in
favouring any art if it but serves beauty, i.e. gives people pleasure.
Formerly, people feared lest among the works of art there might chance to
be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art altogether. Now, they
only fear lest they should be deprived of any enjoyment art can afford, and
patronise any art. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first,
and that its consequences are far more harmful.

CHAPTER VI

But how could it happen that that very art, which in ancient times was
merely tolerated (if tolerated at all), should have come, in our times, to be
invariably considered a good thing if only it affords pleasure?
It has resulted from the following causes. The estimation of the value of art
(i.e. of the feelings it transmits) depends on men’s perception of the
meaning of life; depends on what they consider to be the good and the evil
of life. And what is good and what is evil is defined by what are termed
religions.
Humanity unceasingly moves forward from a lower, more partial, and
obscure understanding of life, to one more general and more lucid. And in
this, as in every movement, there are leaders,—those who have understood
the meaning of life more clearly than others,—and of these advanced men
there is always one who has, in his words and by his life, expressed this
meaning more clearly, accessibly, and strongly than others. This man’s
expression of the meaning of life, together with those superstitions,
traditions, and ceremonies which usually form themselves round the
memory of such a man, is what is called a religion. Religions are the
exponents of the highest comprehension of life accessible to the best and
foremost men at a given time in a given society; a comprehension towards
which, inevitably and irresistibly, all the rest of that society must advance.
And therefore only religions have always served, and still serve, as bases
for the valuation of human sentiments. If feelings bring men nearer the ideal
their religion indicates, if they are in harmony with it and do not contradict
it, they are good; if they estrange men from it and oppose it, they are bad.
If the religion places the meaning of life in worshipping one God and
fulfilling what is regarded as His will, as was the case among the Jews, then
the feelings flowing from love to that God, and to His law, successfully
transmitted through the art of poetry by the prophets, by the psalms, or by

the epic of the book of Genesis, is good, high art. All opposing that, as for
instance the transmission of feelings of devotion to strange gods, or of
feelings incompatible with the law of God, would be considered bad art. Or
if, as was the case among the Greeks, the religion places the meaning of life
in earthly happiness, in beauty and in strength, then art successfully
transmitting the joy and energy of life would be considered good art, but art
which transmitted feelings of effeminacy or despondency would be bad art.
If the meaning of life is seen in the well-being of one’s nation, or in
honouring one’s ancestors and continuing the mode of life led by them, as
was the case among the Romans and the Chinese respectively, then art
transmitting feelings of joy at sacrificing one’s personal well-being for the
common weal, or at exalting one’s ancestors and maintaining their
traditions, would be considered good art; but art expressing feelings
contrary to this would be regarded as bad. If the meaning of life is seen in
freeing oneself from the yoke of animalism, as is the case among the
Buddhists, then art successfully transmitting feelings that elevate the soul
and humble the flesh will be good art, and all that transmits feelings
strengthening the bodily passions will be bad art.
In every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious sense,
common to that whole society, of what is good and what is bad, and it is
this religious conception that decides the value of the feelings transmitted
by art. And therefore, among all nations, art which transmitted feelings
considered to be good by this general religious sense was recognised as
being good and was encouraged; but art which transmitted feelings
considered to be bad by this general religious conception, was recognised as
being bad, and was rejected. All the rest of the immense field of art by
means of which people communicate one with another, was not esteemed at
all, and was only noticed when it ran counter to the religious conception of
its age, and then merely to be repudiated. Thus it was among all nations,—
Greeks, Jews, Indians, Egyptians, and Chinese,—and so it was when
Christianity appeared.
The Christianity of the first centuries recognised as productions of good art,
only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers and hymn-singing, evoking
love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example,
renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions
transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and

therefore rejected: for instance, tolerating plastic representations only when
they were symbolical, they rejected all the pagan sculptures.
This was so among the Christians of the first centuries, who accepted
Christ’s teaching, if not quite in its true form, at least not in the perverted,
paganised form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion of
nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine,
Charlemagne, and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity,
which was nearer to paganism than to Christ’s teaching. And this Church
Christianity, in accordance with its own teaching, estimated quite otherwise
the feelings of people and the productions of art which transmitted those
feelings.
This Church Christianity not only did not acknowledge the fundamental and
essential positions of true Christianity,—the immediate relationship of each
man to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all men, and
the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence—
but, on the contrary, having set up a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan
mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of
angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, and not only of these divinities
themselves, but also of their images, it made blind faith in the Church and
its ordinances the essential point of its teaching.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however
degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the
life-conception of Romans such as Julian and others; it was, for all that, to
the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration
of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a
religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was
assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the
saints and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of
torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered
good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.
The teaching on the basis of which this art arose was a perversion of
Christ’s teaching, but the art which sprang up on this perverted teaching
was nevertheless a true art, because it corresponded to the religious view of
life held by the people among whom it arose.

The artists of the Middle Ages, vitalised by the same source of feeling—
religion—as the mass of the people, and transmitting, in architecture,
sculpture, painting, music, poetry or drama, the feelings and states of mind
they experienced, were true artists; and their activity, founded on the
highest conceptions accessible to their age and common to the entire
people, though, for our times a mean art, was, nevertheless a true one,
shared by the whole community.
And this was the state of things until, in the upper, rich, more educated
classes of European society, doubt arose as to the truth of that
understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity. When,
after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and its
abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom of
the classics, and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of the
teaching of the ancient sages, and, on the other hand, the incompatibility of
the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they lost all possibility of
continuing to believe the Church teaching.
If, in externals, they still kept to the forms of Church teaching, they could
no longer believe in it, and held to it only by inertia and for the sake of
influencing the masses, who continued to believe blindly in Church
doctrine, and whom the upper classes, for their own advantage, considered
it necessary to support in those beliefs.
So that a time came when Church Christianity ceased to be the general
religious doctrine of all Christian people; some—the masses—continued
blindly to believe in it, but the upper classes—those in whose hands lay the
power and wealth, and therefore the leisure to produce art and the means to
stimulate it—ceased to believe in that teaching.
In respect to religion, the upper circles of the Middle Ages found
themselves in the same position in which the educated Romans were before
Christianity arose, i.e. they no longer believed in the religion of the masses,
but had no beliefs to put in place of the worn-out Church doctrine which for
them had lost its meaning.
There was only this difference, that whereas for the Romans who lost faith
in their emperor-gods and household-gods it was impossible to extract
anything further from all the complex mythology they had borrowed from
all the conquered nations, and it was consequently necessary to find a

completely new conception of life, the people of the Middle Ages, when
they doubted the truth of the Church teaching, had no need to seek a fresh
one. That Christian teaching which they professed in a perverted form as
Church doctrine, had mapped out the path of human progress so far ahead,
that they had but to rid themselves of those perversions which hid the
teaching announced by Christ, and to adopt its real meaning—if not
completely, then at least in some greater degree than that in which the
Church had held it.
And this was partially done, not only in the reformations of Wyclif, Huss,
Luther, and Calvin, but by all that current of non-Church Christianity,
represented in earlier times by the Paulicians, the Bogomili,[61] and,
afterwards, by the Waldenses and the other non-Church Christians who
were called heretics. But this could be, and was, done chiefly by poor
people—who did not rule. A few of the rich and strong, like Francis of
Assisi and others, accepted the Christian teaching in its full significance,
even though it undermined their privileged positions. But most people of
the upper classes (though in the depth of their souls they had lost faith in the
Church teaching) could not or would not act thus, because the essence of
that Christian view of life, which stood ready to be adopted when once they
rejected the Church faith, was a teaching of the brotherhood (and therefore
the equality) of man, and this negatived those privileges on which they
lived, in which they had grown up and been educated, and to which they
were accustomed. Not, in the depth of their hearts, believing in the Church
teaching,—which had outlived its age and had no longer any true meaning
for them,—and not being strong enough to accept true Christianity, men of
these rich, governing classes—popes, kings, dukes, and all the great ones of
the earth—were left without any religion, with but the external forms of
one, which they supported as being profitable and even necessary for
themselves, since these forms screened a teaching which justified those
privileges which they made use of. In reality, these people believed in
nothing, just as the Romans of the first centuries of our era believed in
nothing. But at the same time these were the people who had the power and
the wealth, and these were the people who rewarded art and directed it.
And, let it be noticed, it was just among these people that there grew up an
art esteemed not according to its success in expressing men’s religious

feelings, but in proportion to its beauty,—in other words, according to the
enjoyment it gave.
No longer able to believe in the Church religion whose falsehood they had
detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which
denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people,
stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to
that pagan view of things which places life’s meaning in personal
enjoyment. And then took place among the upper classes what is called the
“Renaissance of science and art,” and which was really not only a denial of
every religion but also an assertion that religion is unnecessary.
The Church doctrine is so coherent a system that it cannot be altered or
corrected without destroying it altogether. As soon as doubt arose with
regard to the infallibility of the pope (and this doubt was then in the minds
of all educated people), doubt inevitably followed as to the truth of
tradition. But doubt as to the truth of tradition is fatal not only to popery
and Catholicism, but also to the whole Church creed with all its dogmas:
the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, and the Trinity; and it destroys the
authority of the Scriptures, since they were considered to be inspired only
because the tradition of the Church decided it so.
So that the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes and
the ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. In the Church doctrine
these people did not believe, for they saw its insolvency; but neither could
they follow Francis of Assisi, Keltchitsky,[62] and most of the heretics, in
acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ, for that teaching
undermined their social position. And so these people remained without any
religious view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard
wherewith to estimate what was good and what was bad art but that of
personal enjoyment. And, having acknowledged their criterion of what was
good to be pleasure, i.e., beauty, these people of the upper classes of
European society went back in their comprehension of art to the gross
conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned.
And conformably to this understanding of life a theory of art was
formulated.

CHAPTER VII

From the time that people of the upper classes lost faith in Church
Christianity, beauty (i.e. the pleasure received from art) became their
standard of good and bad art. And, in accordance with that view, an æsthetic
theory naturally sprang up among those upper classes justifying such a
conception,—a theory according to which the aim of art is to exhibit beauty.
The partisans of this æsthetic theory, in confirmation of its truth, affirmed
that it was no invention of their own, but that it existed in the nature of
things, and was recognised even by the ancient Greeks. But this assertion
was quite arbitrary, and has no foundation other than the fact that among the
ancient Greeks, in consequence of the low grade of their moral ideal (as
compared with the Christian), their conception of the good, τὸ ἀγαθόν, was
not yet sharply divided from their conception of the beautiful, τὸ καλόν.
That highest perfection of goodness (not only not identical with beauty, but,
for the most part, contrasting with it) which was discerned by the Jews even
in the times of Isaiah, and fully expressed by Christianity, was quite
unknown to the Greeks. They supposed that the beautiful must necessarily
also be the good. It is true that their foremost thinkers—Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle—felt that goodness may happen not to coincide with beauty.
Socrates expressly subordinated beauty to goodness; Plato, to unite the two
conceptions, spoke of spiritual beauty; while Aristotle demanded from art
that it should have a moral influence on people (κάθαρσις). But,
notwithstanding all this, they could not quite dismiss the notion that beauty
and goodness coincide.
And consequently, in the language of that period, a compound word (καλο-
κἀγαθία, beauty-goodness), came into use to express that notion.
Evidently the Greek sages began to draw near to that perception of
goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity, and they got
entangled in defining the relation between goodness and beauty. Plato’s

reasonings about beauty and goodness are full of contradictions. And it was
just this confusion of ideas that those Europeans of a later age, who had lost
all faith, tried to elevate into a law. They tried to prove that this union of
beauty and goodness is inherent in the very essence of things; that beauty
and goodness must coincide; and that the word and conception καλο-
κἀγαθία (which had a meaning for Greeks but has none at all for Christians)
represents the highest ideal of humanity. On this misunderstanding the new
science of æsthetics was built up. And, to justify its existence, the teachings
of the ancients on art were so twisted as to make it appear that this invented
science of æsthetics had existed among the Greeks.
In reality, the reasoning of the ancients on art was quite unlike ours. As
Benard, in his book on the æsthetics of Aristotle, quite justly remarks:
“Pour qui veut y regarder de près, la théorie du beau et celle de l’art sont
tout à fait séparées dans Aristote, comme elles le sont dans Platon et chez
tous leurs successeurs” (L’esthétique d’Aristote et de ses successeurs, Paris,
1889, p. 28).[63] And indeed the reasoning of the ancients on art not only
does not confirm our science of æsthetics, but rather contradicts its doctrine
of beauty. But nevertheless all the æsthetic guides, from Schasler to Knight,
declare that the science of the beautiful—æsthetic science—was
commenced by the ancients, by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; and was
continued, they say, partially by the Epicureans and Stoics: by Seneca and
Plutarch, down to Plotinus. But it is supposed that this science, by some
unfortunate accident, suddenly vanished in the fourth century, and stayed
away for about 1500 years, and only after these 1500 years had passed did it
revive in Germany, A.D. 1750, in Baumgarten’s doctrine.
After Plotinus, says Schasler, fifteen centuries passed away during which
there was not the slightest scientific interest felt for the world of beauty and
art. These one and a half thousand years, says he, have been lost to
æsthetics and have contributed nothing towards the erection of the learned
edifice of this science.[64]
In reality nothing of the kind happened. The science of æsthetics, the
science of the beautiful, neither did nor could vanish because it never
existed. Simply, the Greeks (just like everybody else, always and
everywhere) considered art (like everything else) good only when it served
goodness (as they understood goodness), and bad when it was in opposition
to that goodness. And the Greeks themselves were so little developed

morally, that goodness and beauty seemed to them to coincide. On that
obsolete Greek view of life was erected the science of æsthetics, invented
by men of the eighteenth century, and especially shaped and mounted in
Baumgarten’s theory. The Greeks (as anyone may see who will read
Benard’s admirable book on Aristotle and his successors, and Walter’s work
on Plato) never had a science of æsthetics.
Æsthetic theories arose about one hundred and fifty years ago among the
wealthy classes of the Christian European world, and arose simultaneously
among different nations,—German, Italian, Dutch, French, and English.
The founder and organiser of it, who gave it a scientific, theoretic form, was
Baumgarten.
With a characteristically German, external exactitude, pedantry and
symmetry, he devised and expounded this extraordinary theory. And,
notwithstanding its obvious insolidity, nobody else’s theory so pleased the
cultured crowd, or was accepted so readily and with such an absence of
criticism. It so suited the people of the upper classes, that to this day,
notwithstanding its entirely fantastic character and the arbitrary nature of its
assertions, it is repeated by learned and unlearned as though it were
something indubitable and self-evident.
Habent sua fata libelli pro capite lectoris, and so, or even more so, theories
habent sua fata according to the condition of error in which that society is
living, among whom and for whom the theories are invented. If a theory
justifies the false position in which a certain part of a society is living, then,
however unfounded or even obviously false the theory may be, it is
accepted, and becomes an article of faith to that section of society. Such, for
instance, was the celebrated and unfounded theory expounded by Malthus,
of the tendency of the population of the world to increase in geometrical
progression, but of the means of sustenance to increase only in arithmetical
progression, and of the consequent overpopulation of the world; such, also,
was the theory (an outgrowth of the Malthusian) of selection and struggle
for existence as the basis of human progress. Such, again, is Marx’s theory,
which regards the gradual destruction of small private production by large
capitalistic production now going on around us, as an inevitable decree of
fate. However unfounded such theories are, however contrary to all that is
known and confessed by humanity, and however obviously immoral they
may be, they are accepted with credulity, pass uncriticised, and are

preached, perchance for centuries, until the conditions are destroyed which
they served to justify, or until their absurdity has become too evident. To
this class belongs this astonishing theory of the Baumgartenian Trinity—
Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, according to which it appears that the very
best that can be done by the art of nations after 1900 years of Christian
teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their life the ideal that was held by a
small, semi-savage, slave-holding people who lived 2000 years ago, who
imitated the nude human body extremely well, and erected buildings
pleasant to look at. All these incompatibilities pass completely unnoticed.
Learned people write long, cloudy treatises on beauty as a member of the
æsthetic trinity of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness; das Schöne, das Wahre, das
Gute; le Beau, le Vrai, le Bon, are repeated, with capital letters, by
philosophers, æstheticians and artists, by private individuals, by novelists
and by feuilletonistes, and they all think, when pronouncing these
sacrosanct words, that they speak of something quite definite and solid—
something on which they can base their opinions. In reality, these words not
only have no definite meaning, but they hinder us in attaching any definite
meaning to existing art; they are wanted only for the purpose of justifying
the false importance we attribute to an art that transmits every kind of
feeling if only those feelings afford us pleasure.

CHAPTER VIII

But if art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to
others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen, how could
it be that humanity for a certain rather considerable period of its existence
(from the time people ceased to believe in Church doctrine down to the
present day) should exist without this important activity, and, instead of it,
should put up with an insignificant artistic activity only affording pleasure?
In order to answer this question, it is necessary, first of all, to correct the
current error people make in attributing to our art the significance of true,
universal art. We are so accustomed, not only naïvely to consider the
Circassian family the best stock of people, but also the Anglo-Saxon race
the best race if we are Englishmen or Americans, or the Teutonic if we are
Germans, or the Gallo-Latin if we are French, or the Slavonic if we are
Russians, that when speaking of our own art we feel fully convinced, not
only that our art is true art, but even that it is the best and only true art. But
in reality our art is not only not the only art (as the Bible once was held to
be the only book), but it is not even the art of the whole of Christendom,—
only of a small section of that part of humanity. It was correct to speak of a
national Jewish, Grecian, or Egyptian art, and one may speak of a now-
existing Chinese, Japanese, or Indian art shared in by a whole people. Such
art, common to a whole nation, existed in Russia till Peter the First’s time,
and existed in the rest of Europe until the thirteenth or fourteenth century;
but since the upper classes of European society, having lost faith in the
Church teaching, did not accept real Christianity but remained without any
faith, one can no longer speak of an art of the Christian nations in the sense
of the whole of art. Since the upper classes of the Christian nations lost faith
in Church Christianity, the art of those upper classes has separated itself
from the art of the rest of the people, and there have been two arts—the art
of the people and genteel art. And therefore the answer to the question how
it could occur that humanity lived for a certain period without real art,

replacing it by art which served enjoyment only, is, that not all humanity,
nor even any considerable portion of it, lived without real art, but only the
highest classes of European Christian society, and even they only for a
comparatively short time—from the commencement of the Renaissance
down to our own day.
And the consequence of this absence of true art showed itself, inevitably, in
the corruption of that class which nourished itself on the false art. All the
confused, unintelligible theories of art, all the false and contradictory
judgments on art, and particularly the self-confident stagnation of our art in
its false path, all arise from the assertion, which has come into common use
and is accepted as an unquestioned truth, but is yet amazingly and palpably
false, the assertion, namely, that the art of our upper classes[65] is the whole
of art, the true, the only, the universal art. And although this assertion
(which is precisely similar to the assertion made by religious people of the
various Churches who consider that theirs is the only true religion) is quite
arbitrary and obviously unjust, yet it is calmly repeated by all the people of
our circle with full faith in its infallibility.
The art we have is the whole of art, the real, the only art, and yet two-thirds
of the human race (all the peoples of Asia and Africa) live and die knowing
nothing of this sole and supreme art. And even in our Christian society
hardly one per cent. of the people make use of this art which we speak of as
being the whole of art; the remaining ninety-nine per cent. live and die,
generation after generation, crushed by toil and never tasting this art, which
moreover is of such a nature that, if they could get it, they would not
understand anything of it. We, according to the current æsthetic theory,
acknowledge art either as one of the highest manifestations of the Idea,
God, Beauty, or as the highest spiritual enjoyment; furthermore, we hold
that all people have equal rights, if not to material, at any rate to spiritual
well-being; and yet ninety-nine per cent. of our European population live
and die, generation after generation, crushed by toil, much of which toil is
necessary for the production of our art which they never use, and we,
nevertheless, calmly assert that the art which we produce is the real, true,
only art—all of art!
To the remark that if our art is the true art everyone should have the benefit
of it, the usual reply is that if not everybody at present makes use of
existing art, the fault lies, not in the art, but in the false organisation of

society; that one can imagine to oneself, in the future, a state of things in
which physical labour will be partly superseded by machinery, partly
lightened by its just distribution, and that labour for the production of art
will be taken in turns; that there is no need for some people always to sit
below the stage moving the decorations, winding up the machinery,
working at the piano or French horn, and setting type and printing books,
but that the people who do all this work might be engaged only a few hours
per day, and in their leisure time might enjoy all the blessings of art.
That is what the defenders of our exclusive art say. But I think they do not
themselves believe it. They cannot help knowing that fine art can arise only
on the slavery of the masses of the people, and can continue only as long as
that slavery lasts, and they cannot help knowing that only under conditions
of intense labour for the workers, can specialists—writers, musicians,
dancers, and actors—arrive at that fine degree of perfection to which they
do attain, or produce their refined works of art; and only under the same
conditions can there be a fine public to esteem such productions. Free the
slaves of capital, and it will be impossible to produce such refined art.
But even were we to admit the inadmissible, and say that means may be
found by which art (that art which among us is considered to be art) may be
accessible to the whole people, another consideration presents itself
showing that fashionable art cannot be the whole of art, viz. the fact that it
is completely unintelligible to the people. Formerly men wrote poems in
Latin, but now their artistic productions are as unintelligible to the common
folk as if they were written in Sanskrit. The usual reply to this is, that if the
people do not now understand this art of ours, it only proves that they are
undeveloped, and that this has been so at each fresh step forward made by
art. First it was not understood, but afterwards people got accustomed to it.
“It will be the same with our present art; it will be understood when
everybody is as well educated as are we—the people of the upper classes—
who produce this art,” say the defenders of our art. But this assertion is
evidently even more unjust than the former; for we know that the majority
of the productions of the art of the upper classes, such as various odes,
poems, dramas, cantatas, pastorals, pictures, etc., which delighted the
people of the upper classes when they were produced, never were
afterwards either understood or valued by the great masses of mankind, but
have remained, what they were at first, a mere pastime for rich people of

their time, for whom alone they ever were of any importance. It is also
often urged in proof of the assertion that the people will some day
understand our art, that some productions of so-called “classical” poetry,
music, or painting, which formerly did not please the masses, do—now that
they have been offered to them from all sides—begin to please these same
masses; but this only shows that the crowd, especially the half-spoilt town
crowd, can easily (its taste having been perverted) be accustomed to any
sort of art. Moreover, this art is not produced by these masses, nor even
chosen by them, but is energetically thrust upon them in those public places
in which art is accessible to the people. For the great majority of working
people, our art, besides being inaccessible on account of its costliness, is
strange in its very nature, transmitting as it does the feelings of people far
removed from those conditions of laborious life which are natural to the
great body of humanity. That which is enjoyment to a man of the rich
classes, is incomprehensible, as a pleasure, to a working man, and evokes in
him either no feeling at all, or only a feeling quite contrary to that which it
evokes in an idle and satiated man. Such feelings as form the chief subjects
of present-day art—say, for instance, honour,[66] patriotism and
amorousness, evoke in a working man only bewilderment and contempt, or
indignation. So that even if a possibility were given to the labouring classes,
in their free time, to see, to read, and to hear all that forms the flower of
contemporary art (as is done to some extent in towns, by means of picture
galleries, popular concerts, and libraries), the working man (to the extent to
which he is a labourer, and has not begun to pass into the ranks of those
perverted by idleness) would be able to make nothing of our fine art, and if
he did understand it, that which he understood would not elevate his soul,
but would certainly, in most cases, pervert it. To thoughtful and sincere
people there can therefore be no doubt that the art of our upper classes
never can be the art of the whole people. But if art is an important matter, a
spiritual blessing, essential for all men (“like religion,” as the devotees of
art are fond of saying), then it should be accessible to everyone. And if, as
in our day, it is not accessible to all men, then one of two things: either art is
not the vital matter it is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not
the real thing.
The dilemma is inevitable, and therefore clever and immoral people avoid it
by denying one side of it, viz. denying that the common people have a right
to art. These people simply and boldly speak out (what lies at the heart of

the matter), and say that the participators in and utilisers of what in their
esteem is highly beautiful art, i.e. art furnishing the greatest enjoyment, can
only be “schöne Geister,” “the elect,” as the romanticists called them, the
“Uebermenschen,” as they are called by the followers of Nietzsche; the
remaining vulgar herd, incapable of experiencing these pleasures, must
serve the exalted pleasures of this superior breed of people. The people who
express these views at least do not pretend and do not try to combine the
incombinable, but frankly admit, what is the case, that our art is an art of
the upper classes only. So, essentially, art has been, and is, understood by
everyone engaged on it in our society.

CHAPTER IX

The unbelief of the upper classes of the European world had this effect, that
instead of an artistic activity aiming at transmitting the highest feelings to
which humanity has attained,—those flowing from religious perception,—
we have an activity which aims at affording the greatest enjoyment to a
certain class of society. And of all the immense domain of art, that part has
been fenced off, and is alone called art, which affords enjoyment to the
people of this particular circle.
Apart from the moral effects on European society of such a selection from
the whole sphere of art of what did not deserve such a valuation, and the
acknowledgment of it as important art, this perversion of art has weakened
art itself, and well-nigh destroyed it. The first great result was that art was
deprived of the infinite, varied, and profound religious subject-matter
proper to it. The second result was that having only a small circle of people
in view, it lost its beauty of form and became affected and obscure; and the
third and chief result was that it ceased to be either natural or even sincere,
and became thoroughly artificial and brain-spun.
The first result—the impoverishment of subject-matter—followed because
only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh feelings not before
experienced by man. As thought-product is only then real thought-product
when it transmits new conceptions and thoughts, and does not merely repeat
what was known before, so also an art-product is only then a genuine art-
product when it brings a new feeling (however insignificant) into the
current of human life. This explains why children and youths are so
strongly impressed by those works of art which first transmit to them
feelings they had not before experienced.
The same powerful impression is made on people by feelings which are
quite new, and have never before been expressed by man. And it is the
source from which such feelings flow of which the art of the upper classes

has deprived itself by estimating feelings, not in conformity with religious
perception, but according to the degree of enjoyment they afford. There is
nothing older and more hackneyed than enjoyment, and there is nothing
fresher than the feelings springing from the religious consciousness of each
age. It could not be otherwise: man’s enjoyment has limits established by
his nature, but the movement forward of humanity, that which is voiced by
religious perception, has no limits. At every forward step taken by humanity
—and such steps are taken in consequence of the greater and greater
elucidation of religious perception—men experience new and fresh
feelings. And therefore only on the basis of religious perception (which
shows the highest level of life-comprehension reached by the men of a
certain period) can fresh emotion, never before felt by man, arise. From the
religious perception of the ancient Greeks flowed the really new, important,
and endlessly varied feelings expressed by Homer and the tragic writers. It
was the same among the Jews, who attained the religious conception of a
single God,—from that perception flowed all those new and important
emotions expressed by the prophets. It was the same for the poets of the
Middle Ages, who, if they believed in a heavenly hierarchy, believed also in
the Catholic commune; and it is the same for a man of to-day who has
grasped the religious conception of true Christianity—the brotherhood of
man.
The variety of fresh feelings flowing from religious perception is endless,
and they are all new, for religious perception is nothing else than the first
indication of that which is coming into existence, viz. the new relation of
man to the world around him. But the feelings flowing from the desire for
enjoyment are, on the contrary, not only limited, but were long ago
experienced and expressed. And therefore the lack of belief of the upper
classes of Europe has left them with an art fed on the poorest subject-
matter.
The impoverishment of the subject-matter of upper-class art was further
increased by the fact that, ceasing to be religious, it ceased also to be
popular, and this again diminished the range of feelings which it
transmitted. For the range of feelings experienced by the powerful and the
rich, who have no experience of labour for the support of life, is far poorer,
more limited, and more insignificant than the range of feelings natural to
working people.

People of our circle, æstheticians, usually think and say just the contrary of
this. I remember how Gontchareff, the author, a very clever and educated
man but a thorough townsman and an æsthetician, said to me that after
Tourgenieff’s Memoirs of a Sportsman there was nothing left to write about
in peasant life. It was all used up. The life of working people seemed to him
so simple that Tourgenieff’s peasant stories had used up all there was to
describe. The life of our wealthy people, with their love affairs and
dissatisfaction with themselves, seemed to him full of inexhaustible subject-
matter. One hero kissed his lady on her palm, another on her elbow, and a
third somewhere else. One man is discontented through idleness, and
another because people don’t love him. And Gontchareff thought that in this
sphere there is no end of variety. And this opinion—that the life of working
people is poor in subject-matter, but that our life, the life of the idle, is full
of interest—is shared by very many people in our society. The life of a
labouring man, with its endlessly varied forms of labour, and the dangers
connected with this labour on sea and underground; his migrations, the
intercourse with his employers, overseers, and companions and with men of
other religions and other nationalities; his struggles with nature and with
wild beasts, the associations with domestic animals, the work in the forest,
on the steppe, in the field, the garden, the orchard; his intercourse with wife
and children, not only as with people near and dear to him, but as with co-
workers and helpers in labour, replacing him in time of need; his concern in
all economic questions, not as matters of display or discussion, but as
problems of life for himself and his family; his pride in self-suppression and
service to others, his pleasures of refreshment; and with all these interests
permeated by a religious attitude towards these occurrences—all this to us,
who have not these interests and possess no religious perception, seems
monotonous in comparison with those small enjoyments and insignificant
cares of our life,—a life, not of labour nor of production, but of
consumption and destruction of that which others have produced for us. We
think the feelings experienced by people of our day and our class are very
important and varied; but in reality almost all the feelings of people of our
class amount to but three very insignificant and simple feelings—the
feeling of pride, the feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of
life. These three feelings, with their outgrowths, form almost the only
subject-matter of the art of the rich classes.

At first, at the very beginning of the separation of the exclusive art of the
upper classes from universal art, its chief subject-matter was the feeling of
pride. It was so at the time of the Renaissance and after it, when the chief
subject of works of art was the laudation of the strong—popes, kings, and
dukes: odes and madrigals were written in their honour, and they were
extolled in cantatas and hymns; their portraits were painted, and their
statues carved, in various adulatory ways. Next, the element of sexual
desire began more and more to enter into art, and (with very few
exceptions, and in novels and dramas almost without exception) it has now
become an essential feature of every art product of the rich classes.
The third feeling transmitted by the art of the rich—that of discontent with
life—appeared yet later in modern art. This feeling, which, at the
commencement of the present century, was expressed only by exceptional
men; by Byron, by Leopardi, and afterwards by Heine, has latterly become
fashionable and is expressed by most ordinary and empty people. Most
justly does the French critic Doumic characterise the works of the new
writers—“c’est la lassitude de vivre, le mépris de l’époque présente, le
regret d’un autre temps aperçu à travers l’illusion de l’art, le goût du
paradoxe, le besoin de se singulariser, une aspiration de raffinés vers la
simplicité, l’adoration enfantine du merveilleux, la séduction maladive de
la rêverie, l’ébranlement des nerfs,—surtout l’appel exaspéré de la
sensualité” (Les Jeunes, René Doumic).[67] And, as a matter of fact, of these
three feelings it is sensuality, the lowest (accessible not only to all men but
even to all animals) which forms the chief subject-matter of works of art of
recent times.
From Boccaccio to Marcel Prévost, all the novels, poems, and verses
invariably transmit the feeling of sexual love in its different forms. Adultery
is not only the favourite, but almost the only theme of all the novels. A
performance is not a performance unless, under some pretence, women
appear with naked busts and limbs. Songs and romances—all are
expressions of lust, idealised in various degrees.
A majority of the pictures by French artists represent female nakedness in
various forms. In recent French literature there is hardly a page or a poem in
which nakedness is not described, and in which, relevantly or irrelevantly,
their favourite thought and word nu is not repeated a couple of times. There
is a certain writer, René de Gourmond, who gets printed, and is considered

talented. To get an idea of the new writers, I read his novel, Les Chevaux de
Diomède. It is a consecutive and detailed account of the sexual connections
some gentleman had with various women. Every page contains lust-
kindling descriptions. It is the same in Pierre Louÿs’ book, Aphrodite,
which met with success; it is the same in a book I lately chanced upon—
Huysmans’ Certains, and, with but few exceptions, it is the same in all the
French novels. They are all the productions of people suffering from erotic
mania. And these people are evidently convinced that as their whole life, in
consequence of their diseased condition, is concentrated on amplifying
various sexual abominations, therefore the life of all the world is similarly
concentrated. And these people, suffering from erotic mania, are imitated
throughout the whole artistic world of Europe and America.
Thus in consequence of the lack of belief and the exceptional manner of life
of the wealthy classes, the art of those classes became impoverished in its
subject-matter, and has sunk to the transmission of the feelings of pride,
discontent with life, and, above all, of sexual desire.

CHAPTER X

In consequence of their unbelief the art of the upper classes became poor in
subject-matter. But besides that, becoming continually more and more
exclusive, it became at the same time continually more and more involved,
affected, and obscure.
When a universal artist (such as were some of the Grecian artists or the
Jewish prophets) composed his work, he naturally strove to say what he had
to say in such a manner that his production should be intelligible to all men.
But when an artist composed for a small circle of people placed in
exceptional conditions, or even for a single individual and his courtiers,—
for popes, cardinals, kings, dukes, queens, or for a king’s mistress,—he
naturally only aimed at influencing these people, who were well known to
him, and lived in exceptional conditions familiar to him. And this was an
easier task, and the artist was involuntarily drawn to express himself by
allusions comprehensible only to the initiated, and obscure to everyone else.
In the first place, more could be said in this way; and secondly, there is (for
the initiated) even a certain charm in the cloudiness of such a manner of
expression. This method, which showed itself both in euphemism and in
mythological and historical allusions, came more and more into use, until it
has, apparently, at last reached its utmost limits in the so-called art of the
Decadents. It has come, finally, to this: that not only is haziness,
mysteriousness, obscurity, and exclusiveness (shutting out the masses)
elevated to the rank of a merit and a condition of poetic art, but even
incorrectness, indefiniteness, and lack of eloquence are held in esteem.
Théophile Gautier, in his preface to the celebrated Fleurs du Mal, says that
Baudelaire, as far as possible, banished from poetry eloquence, passion, and
truth too strictly copied (“l’éloquence, la passion, et la vérité calquée trop
exactement”).

And Baudelaire not only expressed this, but maintained his thesis in his
verses, and yet more strikingly in the prose of his Petits Poèmes en Prose,
the meanings of which have to be guessed like a rebus, and remain for the
most part undiscovered.
The poet Verlaine (who followed next after Baudelaire, and was also
esteemed great) even wrote an “Art poétique,” in which he advises this style
of composition:—

De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l’Impair
Plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air,
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.

Il faut aussi que tu n’ailles point
Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:
Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
Où l’Indécis au Précis se joint.

And again:—

De la musique encore et toujours!
Que ton vers soit la chose envolée
Qu’on sent qui fuit d’une âme en allée
Vers d’autres cieux à d’autres amours.

Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure
Éparse au vent crispé du matin,
Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym ...
Et tout le reste est littérature.[68]

After these two comes Mallarmé, considered the most important of the
young poets, and he plainly says that the charm of poetry lies in our having
to guess its meaning—that in poetry there should always be a puzzle:—
Je pense qu’il faut qu’il n’y ait qu’allusion, says he. La contemplation des
objets, l’image s’envolant des rêveries suscitées par eux, sont le chant: les

Parnassiens, eux, prennent la chose entièrement et la montrent; par là ils
manquent de mystère; ils retirent aux esprits cette joie délicieuse de croire
qu’ils créent. Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la
jouissance du poème, qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu: le
suggérer, voilà le rêve. C’est le parfait usage de ce mystère qui constitue le
symbole: évoquer petit à petit un objet pour montrer un état d’âme, ou,
inversement, choisir un objet et en dégager un état d’âme, par une sèrie de
déchiffrements.
... Si un être d’une intelligence moyenne, et d’une préparation littéraire
insuffisante, ouvre par hasard un livre ainsi fait et prétend en jouir, il y a
malentendu, il faut remettre les choses à leur place. Il doit y avoir toujours
énigme en poèsie, et c’est le but de la littérature, il n’y en a pas d’autre,—
d’évoquer les objets.—“Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire,” Jules Huret, pp.
60, 61.[69]
Thus is obscurity elevated into a dogma among the new poets. As the
French critic Doumic (who has not yet accepted the dogma) quite correctly
says:—
“Il serait temps aussi d’en finir avec cette fameuse ‘théorie de l’obscurité’
que la nouvelle école a élevée, en effet, à la hauteur d’un dogme.”—Les
Jeunes, par René Doumic.[70]
But it is not French writers only who think thus. The poets of all other
countries think and act in the same way: German, and Scandinavian, and
Italian, and Russian, and English. So also do the artists of the new period in
all branches of art: in painting, in sculpture, and in music. Relying on
Nietzsche and Wagner, the artists of the new age conclude that it is
unnecessary for them to be intelligible to the vulgar crowd; it is enough for
them to evoke poetic emotion in “the finest nurtured,” to borrow a phrase
from an English æsthetician.
In order that what I am saying may not seem to be mere assertion, I will
quote at least a few examples from the French poets who have led this
movement. The name of these poets is legion. I have taken French writers,
because they, more decidedly than any others, indicate the new direction of
art, and are imitated by most European writers.

Besides those whose names are already considered famous, such as
Baudelaire and Verlaine, here are the names of a few of them: Jean Moréas,
Charles Morice, Henri de Régnier, Charles Vignier, Adrien Remacle, René
Ghil, Maurice Maeterlinck, G. Albert Aurier, Rémy de Gourmont, Saint-
Pol-Roux-le-Magnifique, Georges Rodenbach, le comte Robert de
Montesquiou-Fezensac. These are Symbolists and Decadents. Next we have
the “Magi”: Joséphin Péladan, Paul Adam, Jules Bois, M. Papus, and
others.
Besides these, there are yet one hundred and forty-one others, whom
Doumic mentions in the book referred to above.
Here are some examples from the work of those of them who are
considered to be the best, beginning with that most celebrated man,
acknowledged to be a great artist worthy of a monument—Baudelaire. This
is a poem from his celebrated Fleurs du Mal:—

No. XXIV.

Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne,
O vase de tristesse, ô grande taciturne,
Et t’aime d’autant plus, belle, que tu me fuis,
Et que tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits,
Plus ironiquement accumuler les lieues
Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues.

Je m’avance à l’attaque, et je grimpe aux assauts,
Comme après un cadavre un chœur de vermisseaux,
Et je chéris, ô bête implacable et cruelle,
Jusqu’à cette froideur par où tu m’es plus belle![71]

And this is another by the same writer:—

No. XXXVI.

DUELLUM.

Deux guerriers ont couru l’un sur l’autre; leurs armes
Ont éclaboussé l’air de lueurs et de sang.
Ces jeux, ces cliquetis du fer sont les vacarmes
D’une jeunesse en proie à l’amour vagissant.

Les glaives sont brisés! comme notre jeunesse,
Ma chère! Mais les dents, les ongles acérés,
Vengent bientôt l’épée et la dague traîtresse.
O fureur des cœurs mûrs par l’amour ulcérés!

Dans le ravin hanté des chats-pards et des onces
Nos héros, s’étreignant méchamment, ont roulé,
Et leur peau fleurira l’aridité des ronces.

Ce gouffre, c’est l’enfer, de nos amis peuplé!
Roulons-y sans remords, amazone inhumaine,
Afin d’éterniser l’ardeur de notre haine![72]

To be exact, I should mention that the collection contains verses less
comprehensible than these, but not one poem which is plain and can be
understood without a certain effort—an effort seldom rewarded, for the
feelings which the poet transmits are evil and very low ones. And these
feelings are always, and purposely, expressed by him with eccentricity and
lack of clearness. This premeditated obscurity is especially noticeable in his
prose, where the author could, if he liked, speak plainly.
Take, for instance, the first piece from his Petits Poèmes:—

L’ÉTRANGER.
Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton père, ta mère, ta
sœur, ou ton frère?

Je n’ai ni père, ni mère, ni sœur, ni frère.
Tes amis?
Vous vous servez là d’une parole dont le sens m’est resté jusqu’ à ce
jour inconnu.
Ta patrie?
J’ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située.
La beauté?
Je l’aimerais volontiers, déesse et immortelle.
L’or?
Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu.
Et qu ’aimes-tu donc, extraordinaire étranger?
J’aime les nuages ... les nuages qui passent ... là bas, ... les merveilleux
nuages!

The piece called La Soupe et les Nuages is probably intended to express the
unintelligibility of the poet even to her whom he loves. This is the piece in
question:—

Ma petite folle bien-aimée me donnait à dîner, et par la fenêtre ouverte
de la salle à manger je contemplais les mouvantes architectures que
Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les merveilleuses constructions de
l’impalpable. Et je me disais, à travers ma contemplation: “Toutes ces
fantasmagories sont presque aussi belles que les yeux de ma belle bien-
aimée, la petite folle monstrueuse aux yeux verts.”
Et tout à coup je reçus un violent coup de poing dans le dos, et
j’entendis une voix rauque et charmante, une voix hystérique et comme
enrouée par l’eau-de-vie, la voix de ma chère petite bien-aimée, qui me
disait, “Allez-vous bientôt manger votre soupe, s ... b ... de marchand
de nuages?”[73]

However artificial these two pieces may be, it is still possible, with some
effort, to guess at what the author meant them to express, but some of the

pieces are absolutely incomprehensible—at least to me. Le Galant Tireur is
a piece I was quite unable to understand.

LE GALANT TIREUR.
Comme la voiture traversait le bois, il la fit arrêter dans le voisinage
d’un tir, disant qu’il lui serait agréable de tirer quelques balles pour
tuer le Temps. Tuer ce monstre-là, n’est-ce pas l’occupation la plus
ordinaire et la plus légitime de chacun?—Et il offrit galamment la main
à sa chère, délicieuse et exécrable femme, à cette mystérieuse femme à
laquelle il doit tant de plaisirs, tant de douleurs, et peut-être aussi une
grande partie de son génie.
Plusieurs balles frappèrent loin du but proposé, l’une d’elles s’enfonça
même dans le plafond; et comme la charmante créature riait follement,
se moquant de la maladresse de son époux, celui-ci se tourna
brusquement vers elle, et lui dit: “Observez cette poupée, là-bas, à
droite, qui porte le nez en l’air et qui a la mine si hautaine. Eh bien!
cher ange, je me figure que c’est vous.” Et il ferma les yeux et il lâcha
la détente. La poupée fut nettement décapitée.
Alors s’ inclinant vers sa chère, sa délicieuse, son exécrable femme, son
inévitable et impitoyable Muse, et lui baisant respectueusement la
main, il ajouta: “Ah! mon cher ange, combien je vous remercie de mon
adresse!”[74]

The productions of another celebrity, Verlaine, are not less affected and
unintelligible. This, for instance, is the first poem in the section called
Ariettes Oubliées.

“Le vent dans la plaine
Suspend son haleine.”—Favart.

C’est l’extase langoureuse,
C’est la fatigue amoureuse,
C’est tous les frissons des bois
Parmi l’étreinte des brises,
C’est, vers les ramures grises,
Le chœur des petites voix.

O le frêle et frais murmure!
Cela gazouille et susurre,
Cela ressemble au cri doux
Que l’herbe agitée expire ...
Tu dirais, sous l’eau qui vire,
Le roulis sourd des cailloux.

Cette âme qui se lamente
En cette plainte dormante
C’est la nôtre, n’est-ce pas?
La mienne, dis, et la tienne,
Dont s’exhale l’humble antienne
Par ce tiède soir, tout has?[75]

What “chœur des petites voix”? and what “cri doux que l’herbe agitée
expire”? and what it all means, remains altogether unintelligible to me.
And here is another Ariette:—

VIII.

Dans l’interminable
Ennui de la plaine,
La neige incertaine
Luit comme du sable.

Le ciel est de cuivre,
Sans lueur aucune.
On croirait voir vivre
Et mourir la lune.

Comme des nuées
Flottent gris les chênes
Des forêts prochaines
Parmi les buées.

Le ciel est de cuivre,
Sans lueur aucune.
On croirait voir vivre
Et mourir la lune.

Corneille poussive
Et vous, les loups maigres,
Par ces bises aigres
Quoi donc vous arrive?

Dans l’interminable
Ennui de la plaine,
La neige incertaine
Luit comme du sable.[76]

How does the moon seem to live and die in a copper heaven? And how can
snow shine like sand? The whole thing is not merely unintelligible, but,
under pretence of conveying an impression, it passes off a string of
incorrect comparisons and words.

Besides these artificial and obscure poems, there are others which are
intelligible, but which make up for it by being altogether bad, both in form
and in subject. Such are all the poems under the heading La Sagesse. The
chief place in these verses is occupied by a very poor expression of the
most commonplace Roman Catholic and patriotic sentiments. For instance,
one meets with verses such as this:—

Je ne veux plus penser qu’ à ma mère Marie,
Siège de la sagesse et source de pardons,
Mère de France aussi de qui nous attendons
Inébranlablement l’honneur de la patrie.[77]

Before citing examples from other poets, I must pause to note the amazing
celebrity of these two versifiers, Baudelaire and Verlaine, who are now
accepted as being great poets. How the French, who had Chénier, Musset,
Lamartine, and, above all, Hugo,—and among whom quite recently
flourished the so-called Parnassiens: Leconte de Lisle, Sully-Prudhomme,
etc.,—could attribute such importance to these two versifiers, who were far
from skilful in form and most contemptible and commonplace in subject-
matter, is to me incomprehensible. The conception-of-life of one of them,
Baudelaire, consisted in elevating gross egotism into a theory, and replacing
morality by a cloudy conception of beauty, and especially artificial beauty.
Baudelaire had a preference, which he expressed, for a woman’s face
painted rather than showing its natural colour, and for metal trees and a
theatrical imitation of water rather than real trees and real water.
The life-conception of the other, Verlaine, consisted in weak profligacy,
confession of his moral impotence, and, as an antidote to that impotence, in
the grossest Roman Catholic idolatry. Both, moreover, were quite lacking in
naïveté, sincerity, and simplicity, and both overflowed with artificiality,
forced originality, and self-assurance. So that in their least bad productions
one sees more of M. Baudelaire or M. Verlaine than of what they were
describing. But these two indifferent versifiers form a school, and lead
hundreds of followers after them.
There is only one explanation of this fact: it is that the art of the society in
which these versifiers lived is not a serious, important matter of life, but is a
mere amusement. And all amusements grow wearisome by repetition. And,

in order to make wearisome amusement again tolerable, it is necessary to
find some means to freshen it up. When, at cards, ombre grows stale, whist
is introduced; when whist grows stale, écarté is substituted; when écarté
grows stale, some other novelty is invented, and so on. The substance of the
matter remains the same, only its form is changed. And so it is with this
kind of art. The subject-matter of the art of the upper classes growing
continually more and more limited, it has come at last to this, that to the
artists of these exclusive classes it seems as if everything has already been
said, and that to find anything new to say is impossible. And therefore, to
freshen up this art, they look out for fresh forms.
Baudelaire and Verlaine invent such a new form, furbish it up, moreover,
with hitherto unused pornographic details, and—the critics and the public of
the upper classes hail them as great writers.
This is the only explanation of the success, not of Baudelaire and Verlaine
only, but of all the Decadents.
For instance, there are poems by Mallarmé and Maeterlinck which have no
meaning, and yet for all that, or perhaps on that very account, are printed by
tens of thousands, not only in various publications, but even in collections
of the best works of the younger poets.
This, for example, is a sonnet by Mallarmé:—

A la nue accablante tu
Basse de basalte et de laves
A même les échos esclaves
Par une trompe sans vertu.

Quel sépulcral naufrage (tu
Le soir, écume, mais y baves)
Suprême une entre les épaves
Abolit le mât dévêtu.

Ou cela que furibond faute
De quelque perdition haute
Tout l’abîme vain éployé

Dans le si blanc cheveu qui traîne
Avarement aura noyé
Le flanc enfant d’une sirène.[78]

(“Pan,” 1895, No. 1.)

This poem is not exceptional in its incomprehensibility. I have read several
poems by Mallarmé, and they also had no meaning whatever. I give a
sample of his prose in Appendix I. There is a whole volume of this prose,
called “Divagations.” It is impossible to understand any of it. And that is
evidently what the author intended.
And here is a song by Maeterlinck, another celebrated author of to-day:—

Quand il est sorti,
(J’entendis la porte)
Quand il est sorti
Elle avait souri ...

Mais quand il entra
(J’entendis la lampe)
Mais quand il entra
Une autre était là ...

Et j’ai vu la mort,
(J’entendis son âme)
Et j’ai vu la mort
Qui l’attend encore ...

On est venu dire,
(Mon enfant j’ai peur)
On est venu dire
Qu’il allait partir ...

Ma lampe allumée,
(Mon enfant j’ai peur)
Ma lampe allumée
Me suis approchée ...

A la première porte,
(Mon enfant j’ai peur)
A la première porte,
La flamme a tremblé ...

A la seconde porte,
(Mon enfant j’ai peur)
A la seconde porte,
La flamme a parlé ...

A la troisième porte,
(Mon enfant j’ai peur)
A la troisième porte,
La lumière est morte

La lumière est morte ...

Et s’il revenait un jour
Que faut-il lui dire?
Dites-lui qu’on l’attendit
Jusqu’à s’en mourir ...

Et s’il demande où vous êtes
Que faut-il répondre?
Donnez-lui mon anneau d’or
Sans rien lui répondre ...

Et s’il m’interroge alors
Sur la dernière heure?
Dites lui que fai souri
De peur qu’il ne pleure ...

Et s’il m’interroge encore
Sans me reconnaître?
Parlez-lui comme une sœur,
Il souffre peut-être ...

Et s’il veut savoir pourquoi
La salle est déserte?
Montrez lui la lampe éteinte
Et la porte ouverte ...[79]

(“Pan,” 1895, No. 2.)

Who went out? Who came in? Who is speaking? Who died?
I beg the reader to be at the pains of reading through the samples I cite in
Appendix II. of the celebrated and esteemed young poets—Griffin,
Verhaeren, Moréas, and Montesquiou. It is important to do so in order to
form a clear conception of the present position of art, and not to suppose, as
many do, that Decadentism is an accidental and transitory phenomenon. To
avoid the reproach of having selected the worst verses, I have copied out of
each volume the poem which happened to stand on page 28.

All the other productions of these poets are equally unintelligible, or can
only be understood with great difficulty, and then not fully. All the
productions of those hundreds of poets, of whom I have named a few, are
the same in kind. And among the Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Italians,
and us Russians, similar verses are printed. And such productions are
printed and made up into book form, if not by the million, then by the
hundred thousand (some of these works sell in tens of thousands). For type-
setting, paging, printing, and binding these books, millions and millions of
working days are spent—not less, I think, than went to build the great
pyramid. And this is not all. The same is going on in all the other arts:
millions and millions of working days are being spent on the production of
equally incomprehensible works in painting, in music, and in the drama.
Painting not only does not lag behind poetry in this matter, but rather
outstrips it. Here is an extract from the diary of an amateur of art, written
when visiting the Paris exhibitions in 1894:—
“I was to-day at three exhibitions: the Symbolists’, the Impressionists’, and
the Neo-Impressionists’. I looked at the pictures conscientiously and
carefully, but again felt the same stupefaction and ultimate indignation. The
first exhibition, that of Camille Pissarro, was comparatively the most

comprehensible, though the pictures were out of drawing, had no subject,
and the colourings were most improbable. The drawing was so indefinite
that you were sometimes unable to make out which way an arm or a head
was turned. The subject was generally, ‘effets’—Effet de brouillard, Effet du
soir, Soleil couchant. There were some pictures with figures, but without
subjects.
“In the colouring, bright blue and bright green predominated. And each
picture had its special colour, with which the whole picture was, as it were,
splashed. For instance in ‘A Girl guarding Geese’ the special colour is vert
de gris, and dots of it were splashed about everywhere: on the face, the hair,
the hands, and the clothes. In the same gallery—‘Durand Ruel’—were other
pictures, by Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley—who are
all Impressionists. One of them, whose name I could not make out,—it was
something like Redon,—had painted a blue face in profile. On the whole
face there is only this blue tone, with white-of-lead. Pissarro has a water-
colour all done in dots. In the foreground is a cow entirely painted with
various-coloured dots. The general colour cannot be distinguished, however
much one stands back from, or draws near to, the picture. From there I went
to see the Symbolists. I looked at them long without asking anyone for an
explanation, trying to guess the meaning; but it is beyond human
comprehension. One of the first things to catch my eye was a wooden haut-
relief, wretchedly executed, representing a woman (naked) who with both
hands is squeezing from her two breasts streams of blood. The blood flows
down, becoming lilac in colour. Her hair first descends and then rises again
and turns into trees. The figure is all coloured yellow, and the hair is brown.
“Next—a picture: a yellow sea, on which swims something which is neither
a ship nor a heart; on the horizon is a profile with a halo and yellow hair,
which changes into a sea, in which it is lost. Some of the painters lay on
their colours so thickly that the effect is something between painting and
sculpture. A third exhibit was even less comprehensible: a man’s profile;
before him a flame and black stripes—leeches, as I was afterwards told. At
last I asked a gentleman who was there what it meant, and he explained to
me that the haut-relief was a symbol, and that it represented ‘La Terre.’ The
heart swimming in a yellow sea was ‘Illusion perdue,’ and the gentleman
with the leeches was ‘Le Mal.’ There were also some Impressionist pictures:
elementary profiles, holding some sort of flowers in their hands: in

monotone, out of drawing, and either quite blurred or else marked out with
wide black outlines.”
This was in 1894; the same tendency is now even more strongly defined,
and we have Böcklin, Stuck, Klinger, Sasha Schneider, and others.
The same thing is taking place in the drama. The play-writers give us an
architect who, for some reason, has not fulfilled his former high intentions,
and who consequently climbs on to the roof of a house he has erected and
tumbles down head foremost; or an incomprehensible old woman (who
exterminates rats), and who, for an unintelligible reason, takes a poetic
child to the sea and there drowns him; or some blind men, who, sitting on
the seashore, for some reason always repeat one and the same thing; or a
bell of some kind, which flies into a lake and there rings.
And the same is happening in music—in that art which, more than any
other, one would have thought, should be intelligible to everybody.
An acquaintance of yours, a musician of repute, sits down to the piano and
plays you what he says is a new composition of his own, or of one of the
new composers. You hear the strange, loud sounds, and admire the
gymnastic exercises performed by his fingers; and you see that the
performer wishes to impress upon you that the sounds he is producing
express various poetic strivings of the soul. You see his intention, but no
feeling whatever is transmitted to you except weariness. The execution lasts
long, or at least it seems very long to you, because you do not receive any
clear impression, and involuntarily you remember the words of Alphonse
Karr, “Plus ça va vite, plus ça dure longtemps.”[80] And it occurs to you that
perhaps it is all a mystification; perhaps the performer is trying you—just
throwing his hands and fingers wildly about the key-board in the hope that
you will fall into the trap and praise him, and then he will laugh and confess
that he only wanted to see if he could hoax you. But when at last the piece
does finish, and the perspiring and agitated musician rises from the piano
evidently anticipating praise, you see that it was all done in earnest.
The same thing takes place at all the concerts with pieces by Liszt, Wagner,
Berlioz, Brahms, and (newest of all) Richard Strauss, and the numberless
other composers of the new school, who unceasingly produce opera after
opera, symphony after symphony, piece after piece.

The same is occurring in a domain in which it seemed hard to be
unintelligible—in the sphere of novels and short stories.
Read Là-Bas by Huysmans, or some of Kipling’s short stories, or
L’annonciateur by Villiers de l’Isle Adam in his Contes Cruels, etc., and
you will find them not only “abscons” (to use a word adopted by the new
writers), but absolutely unintelligible both in form and in substance. Such,
again, is the work by E. Morel, Terre Promise, now appearing in the Revue
Blanche, and such are most of the new novels. The style is very high-flown,
the feelings seem to be most elevated, but you can’t make out what is
happening, to whom it is happening, and where it is happening. And such is
the bulk of the young art of our time.
People who grew up in the first half of this century, admiring Goethe,
Schiller, Musset, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, Chopin, Raphael, da Vinci,
Michael Angelo, Delaroche, being unable to make head or tail of this new
art, simply attribute its productions to tasteless insanity and wish to ignore
them. But such an attitude towards this new art is quite unjustifiable,
because, in the first place, that art is spreading more and more, and has
already conquered for itself a firm position in society, similar to the one
occupied by the Romanticists in the third decade of this century; and
secondly and chiefly, because, if it is permissible to judge in this way of the
productions of the latest form of art, called by us Decadent art, merely
because we do not understand it, then remember, there are an enormous
number of people,—all the labourers and many of the non-labouring folk,—
who, in just the same way, do not comprehend those productions of art
which we consider admirable: the verses of our favourite artists—Goethe,
Schiller, and Hugo; the novels of Dickens, the music of Beethoven and
Chopin, the pictures of Raphael, Michael Angelo, da Vinci, etc.
If I have a right to think that great masses of people do not understand and
do not like what I consider undoubtedly good because they are not
sufficiently developed, then I have no right to deny that perhaps the reason
why I cannot understand and cannot like the new productions of art, is
merely that I am still insufficiently developed to understand them. If I have
a right to say that I, and the majority of people who are in sympathy, with
me, do not understand the productions of the new art simply because there
is nothing in it to understand and because it is bad art, then, with just the
same right, the still larger majority, the whole labouring mass, who do not

understand what I consider admirable art, can say that what I reckon as
good art is bad art, and there is nothing in it to understand.
I once saw the injustice of such condemnation of the new art with especial
clearness, when, in my presence, a certain poet, who writes
incomprehensible verses, ridiculed incomprehensible music with gay self-
assurance; and, shortly afterwards, a certain musician, who composes
incomprehensible symphonies, laughed at incomprehensible poetry with
equal self-confidence. I have no right, and no authority, to condemn the new
art on the ground that I (a man educated in the first half of the century) do
not understand it; I can only say that it is incomprehensible to me. The only
advantage the art I acknowledge has over the Decadent art, lies in the fact
that the art I recognise is comprehensible to a somewhat larger number of
people than the present-day art.
The fact that I am accustomed to a certain exclusive art, and can understand
it, but am unable to understand another still more exclusive art, does not
give me a right to conclude that my art is the real true art, and that the other
one, which I do not understand, is an unreal, a bad art. I can only conclude
that art, becoming ever more and more exclusive, has become more and
more incomprehensible to an ever-increasing number of people, and that, in
this its progress towards greater and greater incomprehensibility (on one
level of which I am standing, with the art familiar to me), it has reached a
point where it is understood by a very small number of the elect, and the
number of these chosen people is ever becoming smaller and smaller.
As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from universal
art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be incomprehensible to
the masses. And as soon as this position was admitted, it had inevitably to
be admitted also that art may be intelligible only to the very smallest
number of the elect, and, eventually, to two, or to one, of our nearest
friends, or to oneself alone. Which is practically what is being said by
modern artists:—“I create and understand myself, and if anyone does not
understand me, so much the worse for him.”
The assertion that art may be good art, and at the same time
incomprehensible to a great number of people, is extremely unjust, and its
consequences are ruinous to art itself; but at the same time it is so common

and has so eaten into our conceptions, that it is impossible sufficiently to
elucidate all the absurdity of it.
Nothing is more common than to hear it said of reputed works of art, that
they are very good but very difficult to understand. We are quite used to
such assertions, and yet to say that a work of art is good, but
incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some
kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it. The
majority of men may not like rotten cheese or putrefying grouse—dishes
esteemed by people with perverted tastes; but bread and fruit are only good
when they please the majority of men. And it is the same with art. Perverted
art may not please the majority of men, but good art always pleases
everyone.
It is said that the very best works of art are such that they cannot be
understood by the mass, but are accessible only to the elect who are
prepared to understand these great works. But if the majority of men do not
understand, the knowledge necessary to enable them to understand should
be taught and explained to them. But it turns out that there is no such
knowledge, that the works cannot be explained, and that those who say the
majority do not understand good works of art, still do not explain those
works, but only tell us that, in order to understand them, one must read, and
see, and hear these same works over and over again. But this is not to
explain, it is only to habituate! And people may habituate themselves to
anything, even to the very worst things. As people may habituate
themselves to bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and opium, just in the same way
they may habituate themselves to bad art—and that is exactly what is being
done.
Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the taste to
esteem the highest works of art. The majority always have understood, and
still understand, what we also recognise as being the very best art: the epic
of Genesis, the Gospel parables, folk-legends, fairy-tales, and folk-songs
are understood by all. How can it be that the majority has suddenly lost its
capacity to understand what is high in our art?
Of a speech it may be said that it is admirable, but incomprehensible to
those who do not know the language in which it is delivered. A speech
delivered in Chinese may be excellent, and may yet remain

incomprehensible to me if I do not know Chinese; but what distinguishes a
work of art from all other mental activity is just the fact that its language is
understood by all, and that it infects all without distinction. The tears and
laughter of a Chinese infect me just as the laughter and tears of a Russian;
and it is the same with painting and music and poetry, when it is translated
into a language I understand. The songs of a Kirghiz or of a Japanese touch
me, though in a lesser degree than they touch a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am
also touched by Japanese painting, Indian architecture, and Arabian stories.
If I am but little touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not
that I do not understand these productions, but that I know and am
accustomed to higher works of art. It is not because their art is above me.
Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and
comprehensible to everyone. The story of Joseph, translated into the
Chinese language, touches a Chinese. The story of Sakya Muni touches us.
And there are, and must be, buildings, pictures, statues, and music of
similar power. So that, if art fails to move men, it cannot be said that this is
due to the spectators’ or hearers’ lack of understanding; but the conclusion
to be drawn may, and should be, that such art is either bad art, or is not art
at all.
Art is differentiated from activity of the understanding, which demands
preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge (so that one cannot learn
trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that it acts on people
independently of their state of development and education, that the charm
of a picture, of sounds, or of forms, infects any man whatever his plane of
development.
The business of art lies just in this—to make that understood and felt which,
in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.
Usually it seems to the recipient of a truly artistic impression that he knew
the thing before but had been unable to express it.
And such has always been the nature of good, supreme art; the Iliad, the
Odyssey, the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the Hebrew prophets, the
psalms, the Gospel parables, the story of Sakya Muni, and the hymns of the
Vedas: all transmit very elevated feelings, and are nevertheless quite
comprehensible now to us, educated or uneducated, as they were
comprehensible to the men of those times, long ago, who were even less
educated than our labourers. People talk about incomprehensibility; but if

art is the transmission of feelings flowing from man’s religious perception,
how can a feeling be incomprehensible which is founded on religion, i.e. on
man’s relation to God? Such art should be, and has actually, always been,
comprehensible to everybody, because every man’s relation to God is one
and the same. And therefore the churches and the images in them were
always comprehensible to everyone. The hindrance to understanding the
best and highest feelings (as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in
deficiency of development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false
development and false learning. A good and lofty work of art may be
incomprehensible, but not to simple, unperverted peasant labourers (all that
is highest is understood by them)—it may be, and often is, unintelligible to
erudite, perverted people destitute of religion. And this continually occurs
in our society, in which the highest feelings are simply not understood. For
instance, I know people who consider themselves most refined, and who
say that they do not understand the poetry of love to one’s neighbour, of
self-sacrifice, or of chastity.
So that good, great, universal, religious art may be incomprehensible to a
small circle of spoilt people, but certainly not to any large number of plain
men.
Art cannot be incomprehensible to the great masses only because it is very
good,—as artists of our day are fond of telling us. Rather we are bound to
conclude that this art is unintelligible to the great masses only because it is
very bad art, or even is not art at all. So that the favourite argument (naïvely
accepted by the cultured crowd), that in order to feel art one has first to
understand it (which really only means habituate oneself to it), is the truest
indication that what we are asked to understand by such a method is either
very bad, exclusive art, or is not art at all.
People say that works of art do not please the people because they are
incapable of understanding them. But if the aim of works of art is to infect
people with the emotion the artist has experienced, how can one talk about
not understanding?
A man of the people reads a book, sees a picture, hears a play or a
symphony, and is touched by no feeling. He is told that this is because he
cannot understand. People promise to let a man see a certain show; he
enters and sees nothing. He is told that this is because his sight is not

CHAPTER XI

Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter and more and more
unintelligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its latest productions,
has even lost all the characteristics of art, and has been replaced by
imitations of art. Not only has upper-class art, in consequence of its
separation from universal art, become poor in subject-matter and bad in
form, i.e. ever more and more unintelligible, it has, in course of time,
ceased even to be art at all, and has been replaced by counterfeits.
This has resulted from the following causes. Universal art arises only when
some one of the people, having experienced a strong emotion, feels the
necessity of transmitting it to others. The art of the rich classes, on the other
hand, arises not from the artist’s inner impulse, but chiefly because people
of the upper classes demand amusement and pay well for it. They demand
from art the transmission of feelings that please them, and this demand
artists try to meet. But it is a very difficult task, for people of the wealthy
classes, spending their lives in idleness and luxury, desire to be continually
diverted by art; and art, even the lowest, cannot be produced at will, but has
to generate spontaneously in the artist’s inner self. And therefore, to satisfy
the demands of people of the upper classes, artists have had to devise
methods of producing imitations of art. And such methods have been
devised.
These methods are those of (1) borrowing, (2) imitating, (3) striking
(effects), and (4) interesting.
The first method consists in borrowing whole subjects, or merely separate
features, from former works recognised by everyone as being poetical, and
in so re-shaping them, with sundry additions, that they should have an
appearance of novelty.
Such works, evoking in people of a certain class memories of artistic
feelings formerly experienced, produce an impression similar to art, and,

provided only that they conform to other needful conditions, they pass for
art among those who seek for pleasure from art. Subjects borrowed from
previous works of art are usually called poetical subjects. Objects and
people thus borrowed are called poetical objects and people. Thus, in our
circle, all sorts of legends, sagas, and ancient traditions are considered
poetical subjects. Among poetical people and objects we reckon maidens,
warriors, shepherds, hermits, angels, devils of all sorts, moonlight, thunder,
mountains, the sea, precipices, flowers, long hair, lions, lambs, doves, and
nightingales. In general, all those objects are considered poetical which
have been most frequently used by former artists in their productions.
Some forty years ago a stupid but highly cultured—ayant beaucoup
d’acquis—lady (since deceased) asked me to listen to a novel written by
herself. It began with a heroine who, in a poetic white dress, and with
poetically flowing hair, was reading poetry near some water in a poetic
wood. The scene was in Russia, but suddenly from behind the bushes the
hero appears, wearing a hat with a feather à la Guillaume Tell (the book
specially mentioned this) and accompanied by two poetical white dogs. The
authoress deemed all this highly poetical, and it might have passed muster if
only it had not been necessary for the hero to speak. But as soon as the
gentleman in the hat à la Guillaume Tell began to converse with the maiden
in the white dress, it became obvious that the authoress had nothing to say,
but had merely been moved by poetic memories of other works, and
imagined that by ringing the changes on those memories she could produce
an artistic impression. But an artistic impression, i.e. infection, is only
received when an author has, in the manner peculiar to himself, experienced
the feeling which he transmits, and not when he passes on another man’s
feeling previously transmitted to him. Such poetry from poetry cannot
infect people, it can only simulate a work of art, and even that only to
people of perverted æsthetic taste. The lady in question being very stupid
and devoid of talent, it was at once apparent how the case stood; but when
such borrowing is resorted to by people who are erudite and talented and
have cultivated the technique of their art, we get those borrowings from the
Greek, the antique, the Christian or mythological world which have become
so numerous, and which, particularly in our day, continue to increase and
multiply, and are accepted by the public as works of art, if only the
borrowings are well mounted by means of the technique of the particular art
to which they belong.

As a characteristic example of such counterfeits of art in the realm of
poetry, take Rostand’s Princesse Lointaine, in which there is not a spark of
art, but which seems very poetical to many people, and probably also to its
author.
The second method of imparting a semblance of art is that which I have
called imitating. The essence of this method consists in supplying details
accompanying the thing described or depicted. In literary art this method
consists in describing, in the minutest details, the external appearance, the
faces, the clothes, the gestures, the tones, and the habitations of the
characters represented, with all the occurrences met with in life. For
instance, in novels and stories, when one of the characters speaks we are
told in what voice he spoke, and what he was doing at the time. And the
things said are not given so that they should have as much sense as possible,
but, as they are in life, disconnectedly, and with interruptions and
omissions. In dramatic art, besides such imitation of real speech, this
method consists in having all the accessories and all the people just like
those in real life. In painting this method assimilates painting to
photography and destroys the difference between them. And, strange to say,
this method is used also in music: music tries to imitate not only by its
rhythm but also by its very sounds, the sounds which in real life accompany
the thing it wishes to represent.
The third method is by action, often purely physical, on the outer senses.
Work of this kind is said to be “striking,” “effectful.” In all arts these effects
consist chiefly in contrasts; in bringing together the terrible and the tender,
the beautiful and the hideous, the loud and the soft, darkness and light, the
most ordinary and the most extraordinary. In verbal art, besides effects of
contrast, there are also effects consisting in the description of things that
have never before been described. These are usually pornographic details
evoking sexual desire, or details of suffering and death evoking feelings of
horror, as, for instance, when describing a murder, to give a detailed
medical account of the lacerated tissues, of the swellings, of the smell,
quantity and appearance of the blood. It is the same in painting: besides all
kinds of other contrasts, one is coming into vogue which consists in giving
careful finish to one object and being careless about all the rest. The chief
and usual effects in painting are effects of light and the depiction of the
horrible. In the drama, the most common effects, besides contrasts, are

tempests, thunder, moonlight, scenes at sea or by the sea-shore, changes of
costume, exposure of the female body, madness, murders, and death
generally: the dying person exhibiting in detail all the phases of agony. In
music the most usual effects are a crescendo, passing from the softest and
simplest sounds to the loudest and most complex crash of the full orchestra;
a repetition of the same sounds arpeggio in all the octaves and on various
instruments; or that the harmony, tone, and rhythm be not at all those
naturally flowing from the course of the musical thought, but such as strike
one by their unexpectedness. Besides these, the commonest effects in music
are produced in a purely physical manner by strength of sound, especially in
an orchestra.
Such are some of the most usual effects in the various arts, but there yet
remains one common to them all, namely, to convey by means of one art
what it would be natural to convey by another: for instance, to make music
describe (as is done by the programme music of Wagner and his followers),
or to make painting, the drama, or poetry, induce a frame of mind (as is
aimed at by all the Decadent art).
The fourth method is that of interesting (that is, absorbing the mind) in
connection with works of art. The interest may lie in an intricate plot—a
method till quite recently much employed in English novels and French
plays, but now going out of fashion and being replaced by authenticity, i.e.
by detailed description of some historical period or some branch of
contemporary life. For example, in a novel, interestingness may consist in a
description of Egyptian or Roman life, the life of miners, or that of the
clerks in a large shop. The reader becomes interested and mistakes this
interest for an artistic impression. The interest may also depend on the very
method of expression; a kind of interest that has now come much into use.
Both verse and prose, as well as pictures, plays, and music, are constructed
so that they must be guessed like riddles, and this process of guessing again
affords pleasure and gives a semblance of the feeling received from art.
It is very often said that a work of art is very good because it is poetic, or
realistic, or striking, or interesting; whereas not only can neither the first,
nor the second, nor the third, nor the fourth of these attributes supply a
standard of excellence in art, but they have not even anything in common
with art.

Poetic—means borrowed. All borrowing merely recalls to the reader,
spectator, or listener some dim recollection of artistic impressions they have
received from previous works of art, and does not infect them with feeling
which the artist has himself experienced. A work founded on something
borrowed, like Goethe’s Faust for instance, may be very well executed and
be full of mind and every beauty, but because it lacks the chief
characteristic of a work of art—completeness, oneness, the inseparable
unity of form and contents expressing the feeling the artist has experienced
—it cannot produce a really artistic impression. In availing himself of this
method, the artist only transmits the feeling received by him from a
previous work of art; therefore every borrowing, whether it be of whole
subjects, or of various scenes, situations, or descriptions, is but a reflection
of art, a simulation of it, but not art itself. And therefore, to say that a
certain production is good because it is poetic,—i.e. resembles a work of
art,—is like saying of a coin that it is good because it resembles real money.
Equally little can imitation, realism, serve, as many people think, as a
measure of the quality of art. Imitation cannot be such a measure, for the
chief characteristic of art is the infection of others with the feelings the
artist has experienced, and infection with a feeling is not only not identical
with description of the accessories of what is transmitted, but is usually
hindered by superfluous details. The attention of the receiver of the artistic
impression is diverted by all these well-observed details, and they hinder
the transmission of feeling even when it exists.
To value a work of art by the degree of its realism, by the accuracy of the
details reproduced, is as strange as to judge of the nutritive quality of food
by its external appearance. When we appraise a work according to its
realism, we only show that we are talking, not of a work of art, but of its
counterfeit.
Neither does the third method of imitating art—by the use of what is
striking or effectful—coincide with real art any better than the two former
methods, for in effectfulness—the effects of novelty, of the unexpected, of
contrasts, of the horrible—there is no transmission of feeling, but only an
action on the nerves. If an artist were to paint a bloody wound admirably,
the sight of the wound would strike me, but it would not be art. One
prolonged note on a powerful organ will produce a striking impression, will
often even cause tears, but there is no music in it, because no feeling is

transmitted. Yet such physiological effects are constantly mistaken for art
by people of our circle, and this not only in music, but also in poetry,
painting, and the drama. It is said that art has become refined. On the
contrary, thanks to the pursuit of effectfulness, it has become very coarse. A
new piece is brought out and accepted all over Europe, such, for instance,
as Hannele, in which play the author wishes to transmit to the spectators
pity for a persecuted girl. To evoke this feeling in the audience by means of
art, the author should either make one of the characters express this pity in
such a way as to infect everyone, or he should describe the girl’s feelings
correctly. But he cannot, or will not, do this, and chooses another way, more
complicated in stage management but easier for the author. He makes the
girl die on the stage; and, still further to increase the physiological effect on
the spectators, he extinguishes the lights in the theatre, leaving the audience
in the dark, and to the sound of dismal music he shows how the girl is
pursued and beaten by her drunken father. The girl shrinks—screams—
groans—and falls. Angels appear and carry her away. And the audience,
experiencing some excitement while this is going on, are fully convinced
that this is true æsthetic feeling. But there is nothing æsthetic in such
excitement, for there is no infecting of man by man, but only a mingled
feeling of pity for another, and of self-congratulation that it is not I who am
suffering: it is like what we feel at the sight of an execution, or what the
Romans felt in their circuses.
The substitution of effectfulness for æsthetic feeling is particularly
noticeable in musical art—that art which by its nature has an immediate
physiological action on the nerves. Instead of transmitting by means of a
melody the feelings he has experienced, a composer of the new school
accumulates and complicates sounds, and by now strengthening, now
weakening them, he produces on the audience a physiological effect of a
kind that can be measured by an apparatus invented for the purpose.[83] And
the public mistake this physiological effect for the effect of art.
As to the fourth method—that of interesting—it also is frequently
confounded with art. One often hears it said, not only of a poem, a novel, or
a picture, but even of a musical work, that it is interesting. What does this
mean? To speak of an interesting work of art means either that we receive
from a work of art information new to us, or that the work is not fully
intelligible, and that little by little, and with effort, we arrive at its meaning,

and experience a certain pleasure in this process of guessing it. In neither
case has the interest anything in common with artistic impression. Art aims
at infecting people with feeling experienced by the artist. But the mental
effort necessary to enable the spectator, listener, or reader to assimilate the
new information contained in the work, or to guess the puzzles propounded,
by distracting him, hinders the infection. And therefore the interestingness
of a work not only has nothing to do with its excellence as a work of art, but
rather hinders than assists artistic impression.
We may, in a work of art, meet with what is poetic, and realistic, and
striking, and interesting, but these things cannot replace the essential of art
—feeling experienced by the artist. Latterly, in upper-class art, most of the
objects given out as being works of art are of the kind which only resemble
art, and are devoid of its essential quality—feeling experienced by the artist.
And, for the diversion of the rich, such objects are continually being
produced in enormous quantities by the artisans of art.
Many conditions must be fulfilled to enable a man to produce a real work of
art. It is necessary that he should stand on the level of the highest life-
conception of his time, that he should experience feeling and have the
desire and capacity to transmit it, and that he should, moreover, have a
talent for some one of the forms of art. It is very seldom that all these
conditions necessary to the production of true art are combined. But in
order—aided by the customary methods of borrowing, imitating,
introducing effects, and interesting—unceasingly to produce counterfeits of
art which pass for art in our society and are well paid for, it is only
necessary to have a talent for some branch of art; and this is very often to be
met with. By talent I mean ability: in literary art, the ability to express one’s
thoughts and impressions easily and to notice and remember characteristic
details; in the depictive arts, to distinguish and remember lines, forms, and
colours; in music, to distinguish the intervals, and to remember and transmit
the sequence of sounds. And a man, in our times, if only he possesses such
a talent and selects some specialty, may, after learning the methods of
counterfeiting used in his branch of art,—if he has patience and if his
æsthetic feeling (which would render such productions revolting to him) be
atrophied,—unceasingly, till the end of his life, turn out works which will
pass for art in our society.

To produce such counterfeits, definite rules or recipes exist in each branch
of art. So that the talented man, having assimilated them, may produce such
works à froid, cold drawn, without any feeling.
In order to write poems a man of literary talent needs only these
qualifications: to acquire the knack, conformably with the requirements of
rhyme and rhythm, of using, instead of the one really suitable word, ten
others meaning approximately the same; to learn how to take any phrase
which, to be clear, has but one natural order of words, and despite all
possible dislocations still to retain some sense in it; and lastly, to be able,
guided by the words required for the rhymes, to devise some semblance of
thoughts, feelings, or descriptions to suit these words. Having acquired
these qualifications, he may unceasingly produce poems—short or long,
religious, amatory or patriotic, according to the demand.
If a man of literary talent wishes to write a story or novel, he need only
form his style—i.e. learn how to describe all that he sees—and accustom
himself to remember or note down details. When he has accustomed
himself to this, he can, according to his inclination or the demand,
unceasingly produce novels or stories—historical, naturalistic, social,
erotic, psychological, or even religious, for which latter kind a demand and
fashion begins to show itself. He can take subjects from books or from the
events of life, and can copy the characters of the people in his book from
his acquaintances.
And such novels and stories, if only they are decked out with well observed
and carefully noted details, preferably erotic ones, will be considered works
of art, even though they may not contain a spark of feeling experienced.
To produce art in dramatic form, a talented man, in addition to all that is
required for novels and stories, must also learn to furnish his characters
with as many smart and witty sentences as possible, must know how to
utilise theatrical effects, and how to entwine the action of his characters so
that there should not be any long conversations, but as much bustle and
movement on the stage as possible. If the writer is able to do this, he may
produce dramatic works one after another without stopping, selecting his
subjects from the reports of the law courts, or from the latest society topic,
such as hypnotism, heredity, etc., or from deep antiquity, or even from the
realms of fancy.

In the sphere of painting and sculpture it is still easier for the talented man
to produce imitations of art. He need only learn to draw, paint, and model—
especially naked bodies. Thus equipped he can continue to paint pictures, or
model statues, one after another, choosing subjects according to his bent—
mythological, or religious, or fantastic, or symbolical; or he may depict
what is written about in the papers—a coronation, a strike, the Turko-
Grecian war, famine scenes; or, commonest of all, he may just copy
anything he thinks beautiful—from naked women to copper basins.
For the production of musical art the talented man needs still less of what
constitutes the essence of art, i.e. feeling wherewith to infect others; but, on
the other hand, he requires more physical, gymnastic labour than for any
other art, unless it be dancing. To produce works of musical art, he must
first learn to move his fingers on some instrument as rapidly as those who
have reached the highest perfection; next he must know how in former
times polyphonic music was written, must study what are called
counterpoint and fugue; and furthermore, he must learn orchestration, i.e.
how to utilise the effects of the instruments. But once he has learned all this,
the composer may unceasingly produce one work after another; whether
programme-music, opera, or song (devising sounds more or less
corresponding to the words), or chamber music, i.e. he may take another
man’s themes and work them up into definite forms by means of
counterpoint and fugue; or, what is commonest of all, he may compose
fantastic music, i.e. he may take a conjunction of sounds which happens to
come to hand, and pile every sort of complication and ornamentation on to
this chance combination.
Thus, in all realms of art, counterfeits of art are manufactured to a ready-
made, prearranged recipe, and these counterfeits the public of our upper
classes accept for real art.
And this substitution of counterfeits for real works of art was the third and
most important consequence of the separation of the art of the upper classes
from universal art.

CHAPTER XII

In our society three conditions co-operate to cause the production of objects
of counterfeit art. They are—(1) the considerable remuneration of artists for
their productions and the professionalisation of artists which this has
produced, (2) art criticism, and (3) schools of art.
While art was as yet undivided, and only religious art was valued and
rewarded while indiscriminate art was left unrewarded, there were no
counterfeits of art, or, if any existed, being exposed to the criticism of the
whole people, they quickly disappeared. But as soon as that division
occurred, and the upper classes acclaimed every kind of art as good if only
it afforded them pleasure, and began to reward such art more highly than
any other social activity, immediately a large number of people devoted
themselves to this activity, and art assumed quite a different character and
became a profession.
And as soon as this occurred, the chief and most precious quality of art—its
sincerity—was at once greatly weakened and eventually quite destroyed.
The professional artist lives by his art, and has continually to invent
subjects for his works, and does invent them. And it is obvious how great a
difference must exist between works of art produced on the one hand by
men such as the Jewish prophets, the authors of the Psalms, Francis of
Assisi, the authors of the Iliad and Odyssey, of folk-stories, legends, and
folk-songs, many of whom not only received no remuneration for their
work, but did not even attach their names to it; and, on the other hand,
works produced by court poets, dramatists and musicians receiving honours
and remuneration; and later on by professional artists, who lived by the
trade, receiving remuneration from newspaper editors, publishers,
impresarios, and in general from those agents who come between the artists
and the town public—the consumers of art.

Professionalism is the first condition of the diffusion of false, counterfeit
art.
The second condition is the growth, in recent times, of artistic criticism, i.e.
the valuation of art not by everybody, and, above all, not by plain men, but
by erudite, that is, by perverted and at the same time self-confident
individuals.
A friend of mine, speaking of the relation of critics to artists, half-jokingly
defined it thus: “Critics are the stupid who discuss the wise.” However
partial, inexact, and rude this definition may be, it is yet partly true, and is
incomparably juster than the definition which considers critics to be men
who can explain works of art.
“Critics explain!” What do they explain?
The artist, if a real artist, has by his work transmitted to others the feeling
he experienced. What is there, then, to explain?
If a work be good as art, then the feeling expressed by the artist—be it
moral or immoral—transmits itself to other people. If transmitted to others,
then they feel it, and all interpretations are superfluous. If the work does not
infect people, no explanation can make it contagious. An artist’s work
cannot be interpreted. Had it been possible to explain in words what he
wished to convey, the artist would have expressed himself in words. He
expressed it by his art, only because the feeling he experienced could not be
otherwise transmitted. The interpretation of works of art by words only
indicates that the interpreter is himself incapable of feeling the infection of
art. And this is actually the case, for, however strange it may seem to say so,
critics have always been people less susceptible than other men to the
contagion of art. For the most part they are able writers, educated and
clever, but with their capacity of being infected by art quite perverted or
atrophied. And therefore their writings have always largely contributed, and
still contribute, to the perversion of the taste of that public which reads
them and trusts them.
Artistic criticism did not exist—could not and cannot exist—in societies
where art is undivided, and where, consequently, it is appraised by the
religious understanding-of-life common to the whole people. Art criticism

grew, and could grow, only on the art of the upper classes, who did not
acknowledge the religious perception of their time.
Universal art has a definite and indubitable internal criterion—religious
perception; upper-class art lacks this, and therefore the appreciators of that
art are obliged to cling to some external criterion. And they find it in “the
judgments of the finest-nurtured,” as an English æsthetician has phrased it,
that is, in the authority of the people who are considered educated, nor in
this alone, but also in a tradition of such authorities. This tradition is
extremely misleading, both because the opinions of “the finest-nurtured”
are often mistaken, and also because judgments which were valid once
cease to be so with the lapse of time. But the critics, having no basis for
their judgments, never cease to repeat their traditions. The classical
tragedians were once considered good, and therefore criticism considers
them to be so still. Dante was esteemed a great poet, Raphael a great
painter, Bach a great musician—and the critics, lacking a standard by which
to separate good art from bad, not only consider these artists great, but
regard all their productions as admirable and worthy of imitation. Nothing
has contributed, and still contributes, so much to the perversion of art as
these authorities set up by criticism. A man produces a work of art, like
every true artist expressing in his own peculiar manner a feeling he has
experienced. Most people are infected by the artist’s feeling; and his work
becomes known. Then criticism, discussing the artist, says that the work is
not bad, but all the same the artist is not a Dante, nor a Shakespear, nor a
Goethe, nor a Raphael, nor what Beethoven was in his last period. And the
young artist sets to work to copy those who are held up for his imitation,
and he produces not only feeble works, but false works, counterfeits of art.
Thus, for instance, our Pushkin writes his short poems, Evgeniy Onegin,
The Gipsies, and his stories—works all varying in quality, but all true art.
But then, under the influence of false criticism extolling Shakespear, he
writes Boris Godunoff, a cold, brain-spun work, and this production is
lauded by the critics, set up as a model, and imitations of it appear: Minin
by Ostrovsky, and Tsar Boris by Alexée Tolstoy, and such imitations of
imitations as crowd all literatures with insignificant productions. The chief
harm done by the critics is this, that themselves lacking the capacity to be
infected by art (and that is the characteristic of all critics; for did they not
lack this they could not attempt the impossible—the interpretation of works

of art), they pay most attention to, and eulogise, brain-spun, invented
works, and set these up as models worthy of imitation. That is the reason
they so confidently extol, in literature, the Greek tragedians, Dante, Tasso,
Milton, Shakespear, Goethe (almost all he wrote), and, among recent
writers, Zola and Ibsen; in music, Beethoven’s last period, and Wagner. To
justify their praise of these brain-spun, invented works, they devise entire
theories (of which the famous theory of beauty is one); and not only dull
but also talented people compose works in strict deference to these theories;
and often even real artists, doing violence to their genius, submit to them.
Every false work extolled by the critics serves as a door through which the
hypocrites of art at once crowd in.
It is solely due to the critics, who in our times still praise rude, savage, and,
for us, often meaningless works of the ancient Greeks: Sophocles,
Euripides, Æschylus, and especially Aristophanes; or, of modern writers,
Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear; in painting, all of Raphael, all of Michael
Angelo, including his absurd “Last Judgment”; in music, the whole of
Bach, and the whole of Beethoven, including his last period,—thanks only
to them, have the Ibsens, Maeterlincks, Verlaines, Mallarmés, Puvis de
Chavannes, Klingers, Böcklins, Stucks, Schneiders; in music, the Wagners,
Liszts, Berliozes, Brahmses, and Richard Strausses, etc., and all that
immense mass of good-for-nothing imitators of these imitators, become
possible in our day.
As a good illustration of the harmful influence of criticism, take its relation
to Beethoven. Among his innumerable hasty productions written to order,
there are, notwithstanding their artificiality of form, works of true art. But
he grows deaf, cannot hear, and begins to write invented, unfinished works,
which are consequently often meaningless and musically unintelligible. I
know that musicians can imagine sounds vividly enough, and can almost
hear what they read, but imaginary sounds can never replace real ones, and
every composer must hear his production in order to perfect it. Beethoven,
however, could not hear, could not perfect his work, and consequently
published productions which are artistic ravings. But criticism, having once
acknowledged him to be a great composer, seizes on just these abnormal
works with special gusto, and searches for extraordinary beauties in them.
And, to justify its laudations (perverting the very meaning of musical art), it
attributed to music the property of describing what it cannot describe. And

imitators appear—an innumerable host of imitators of these abnormal
attempts at artistic productions which Beethoven wrote when he was deaf.
Then Wagner appears, who at first in critical articles praises just
Beethoven’s last period, and connects this music with Schopenhauer’s
mystical theory that music is the expression of Will—not of separate
manifestations of will objectivised on various planes, but of its very essence
—which is in itself as absurd as this music of Beethoven. And afterwards he
composes music of his own on this theory, in conjunction with another still
more erroneous system of the union of all the arts. After Wagner yet new
imitators appear, diverging yet further from art: Brahms, Richard Strauss,
and others.
Such are the results of criticism. But the third condition of the perversion of
art, namely, art schools, is almost more harmful still.
As soon as art became, not art for the whole people but for a rich class, it
became a profession; as soon as it became a profession, methods were
devised to teach it; people who chose this profession of art began to learn
these methods, and thus professional schools sprang up: classes of rhetoric
or literature in the public schools, academies for painting, conservatoires for
music, schools for dramatic art.
In these schools art is taught! But art is the transmission to others of a
special feeling experienced by the artist. How can this be taught in schools?
No school can evoke feeling in a man, and still less can it teach him how to
manifest it in the one particular manner natural to him alone. But the
essence of art lies in these things.
The one thing these schools can teach is how to transmit feelings
experienced by other artists in the way those other artists transmitted them.
And this is just what the professional schools do teach; and such instruction
not only does not assist the spread of true art, but, on the contrary, by
diffusing counterfeits of art, does more than anything else to deprive people
of the capacity to understand true art.
In literary art people are taught how, without having anything they wish to
say, to write a many-paged composition on a theme about which they have
never thought, and, moreover, to write it so that it should resemble the work
of an author admitted to be celebrated. This is taught in schools.

In painting the chief training consists in learning to draw and paint from
copies and models, the naked body chiefly (the very thing that is never
seen, and which a man occupied with real art hardly ever has to depict), and
to draw and paint as former masters drew and painted. The composition of
pictures is taught by giving out themes similar to those which have been
treated by former acknowledged celebrities.
So also in dramatic schools, the pupils are taught to recite monologues just
as tragedians, considered celebrated, declaimed them.
It is the same in music. The whole theory of music is nothing but a
disconnected repetition of those methods which the acknowledged? masters
of composition made use of.
I have elsewhere quoted the profound remark of the Russian artist Bruloff
on art, but I cannot here refrain from repeating it, because nothing better
illustrates what can and what can not be taught in the schools. Once when
correcting a pupil’s study, Bruloff just touched it in a few places, and the
poor dead study immediately became animated. “Why, you only touched it
a wee bit, and it is quite another thing!” said one of the pupils. “Art begins
where the wee bit begins,” replied Bruloff, indicating by these words just
what is most characteristic of art. The remark is true of all the arts, but its
justice is particularly noticeable in the performance of music. That musical
execution should be artistic, should be art, i.e. should infect, three chief
conditions must be observed,—there are many others needed for musical
perfection; the transition from one sound to another must be interrupted or
continuous; the sound must increase or diminish steadily; it must be
blended with one and not with another sound; the sound must have this or
that timbre, and much besides,—but take the three chief conditions: the
pitch, the time, and the strength of the sound. Musical execution is only
then art, only then infects, when the sound is neither higher nor lower than
it should be, that is, when exactly the infinitely small centre of the required
note is taken; when that note is continued exactly as long as is needed; and
when the strength of the sound is neither more nor less than is required. The
slightest deviation of pitch in either direction, the slightest increase or
decrease in time, or the slightest strengthening or weakening of the sound
beyond what is needed, destroys the perfection and, consequently, the
infectiousness of the work. So that the feeling of infection by the art of
music, which seems so simple and so easily obtained, is a thing we receive

only when the performer finds those infinitely minute degrees which are
necessary to perfection in music. It is the same in all arts: a wee bit lighter,
a wee bit darker, a wee bit higher, lower, to the right or the left—in
painting; a wee bit weaker or stronger in intonation, or a wee bit sooner or
later—in dramatic art; a wee bit omitted, over-emphasised, or exaggerated
—in poetry, and there is no contagion. Infection is only obtained when an
artist finds those infinitely minute degrees of which a work of art consists,
and only to the extent to which he finds them. And it is quite impossible to
teach people by external means to find these minute degrees: they can only
be found when a man yields to his feeling. No instruction can make a
dancer catch just the tact of the music, or a singer or a fiddler take exactly
the infinitely minute centre of his note, or a sketcher draw of all possible
lines the only right one, or a poet find the only meet arrangement of the
only suitable words. All this is found only by feeling. And therefore schools
may teach what is necessary in order to produce something resembling art,
but not art itself.
The teaching of the schools stops there where the wee bit begins—
consequently where art begins.
Accustoming people to something resembling art, disaccustoms them to the
comprehension of real art. And that is how it comes about that none are
more dull to art than those who have passed through the professional
schools and been most successful in them. Professional schools produce an
hypocrisy of art precisely akin to that hypocrisy of religion which is
produced by theological colleges for training priests, pastors, and religious
teachers generally. As it is impossible in a school to train a man so as to
make a religious teacher of him, so it is impossible to teach a man how to
become an artist.
Art schools are thus doubly destructive of art: first, in that they destroy the
capacity to produce real art in those who have the misfortune to enter them
and go through a 7 or 8 years’ course; secondly, in that they generate
enormous quantities of that counterfeit art which perverts the taste of the
masses and overflows our world. In order that born artists may know the
methods of the various arts elaborated by former artists, there should exist
in all elementary schools such classes for drawing and music (singing) that,
after passing through them, every talented scholar may, by using existing
models accessible to all, be able to perfect himself in his art independently.

These three conditions—the professionalisation of artists, art criticism, and
art schools—have had this effect that most people in our times are quite
unable even to understand what art is, and accept as art the grossest
counterfeits of it.

CHAPTER XIII

To what an extent people of our circle and time have lost the capacity to
receive real art, and have become accustomed to accept as art things that
have nothing in common with it, is best seen from the works of Richard
Wagner, which have latterly come to be more and more esteemed, not only
by the Germans but also by the French and the English, as the very highest
art, revealing new horizons to us.
The peculiarity of Wagner’s music, as is known, consists in this, that he
considered that music should serve poetry, expressing all the shades of a
poetical work.
The union of the drama with music, devised in the fifteenth century in Italy
for the revival of what they imagined to have been the ancient Greek drama
with music, is an artificial form which had, and has, success only among the
upper classes, and that only when gifted composers, such as Mozart, Weber,
Rossini, and others, drawing inspiration from a dramatic subject, yielded
freely to the inspiration and subordinated the text to the music, so that in
their operas the important thing to the audience was merely the music on a
certain text, and not the text at all, which latter, even when it was utterly
absurd, as, for instance, in the Magic Flute, still did not prevent the music
from producing an artistic impression.
Wagner wishes to correct the opera by letting music submit to the demands
of poetry and unite with it. But each art has its own definite realm, which is
not identical with the realm of other arts, but merely comes in contact with
them; and therefore, if the manifestation of, I will not say several, but even
of two arts—the dramatic and the musical—be united in one complete
production, then the demands of the one art will make it impossible to fulfil
the demands of the other, as has always occurred in the ordinary operas,
where the dramatic art has submitted to, or rather yielded place to, the
musical. Wagner wishes that musical art should submit to dramatic art, and

that both should appear in full strength. But this is impossible, for every
work of art, if it be a true one, is an expression of intimate feelings of the
artist, which are quite exceptional, and not like anything else. Such is a
musical production, and such is a dramatic work, if they be true art. And
therefore, in order that a production in the one branch of art should coincide
with a production in the other branch, it is necessary that the impossible
should happen: that two works from different realms of art should be
absolutely exceptional, unlike anything that existed before, and yet should
coincide, and be exactly alike.
And this cannot be, just as there cannot be two men, or even two leaves on
a tree, exactly alike. Still less can two works from different realms of art,
the musical and the literary, be absolutely alike. If they coincide, then either
one is a work of art and the other a counterfeit, or both are counterfeits.
Two live leaves cannot be exactly alike, but two artificial leaves may be.
And so it is with works of art. They can only coincide completely when
neither the one nor the other is art, but only cunningly devised semblances
of it.
If poetry and music may be joined, as occurs in hymns, songs, and
romances—(though even in these the music does not follow the changes of
each verse of the text, as Wagner wants to, but the song and the music
merely produce a coincident effect on the mind)—this occurs only because
lyrical poetry and music have, to some extent, one and the same aim: to
produce a mental condition, and the conditions produced by lyrical poetry
and by music can, more or less, coincide. But even in these conjunctions the
centre of gravity always lies in one of the two productions, so that it is one
of them that produces the artistic impression while the other remains
unregarded. And still less is it possible for such union to exist between epic
or dramatic poetry and music.
Moreover, one of the chief conditions of artistic creation is the complete
freedom of the artist from every kind of preconceived demand. And the
necessity of adjusting his musical work to a work from another realm of art
is a preconceived demand of such a kind as to destroy all possibility of
creative power; and therefore works of this kind, adjusted to one another,
are, and must be, as has always happened, not works of art but only
imitations of art, like the music of a melodrama, signatures to pictures,
illustrations, and librettos to operas.

And such are Wagner’s productions. And a confirmation of this is to be seen
in the fact that Wagner’s new music lacks the chief characteristic of every
true work of art, namely, such entirety and completeness that the smallest
alteration in its form would disturb the meaning of the whole work. In a true
work of art—poem, drama, picture, song, or symphony—it is impossible to
extract one line, one scene, one figure, or one bar from its place and put it in
another, without infringing the significance of the whole work; just as it is
impossible, without infringing the life of an organic being, to extract an
organ from one place and insert it in another. But in the music of Wagner’s
last period, with the exception of certain parts of little importance which
have an independent musical meaning, it is possible to make all kinds of
transpositions, putting what was in front behind, and vice, versâ, without
altering the musical sense. And the reason why these transpositions do not
alter the sense of Wagner’s music is because the sense lies in the words and
not in the music.
The musical score of Wagner’s later operas is like what the result would be
should one of those versifiers—of whom there are now many, with tongues
so broken that they can write verses on any theme to any rhymes in any
rhythm, which sound as if they had a meaning—conceive the idea of
illustrating by his verses some symphony or sonata of Beethoven, or some
ballade of Chopin, in the following manner. To the first bars, of one
character, he writes verses corresponding in his opinion to those first bars.
Next come some bars of a different character, and he also writes verses
corresponding in his opinion to them, but with no internal connection with
the first verses, and, moreover, without rhymes and without rhythm. Such a
production, without the music, would be exactly parallel in poetry to what
Wagner’s operas are in music, if heard without the words.
But Wagner is not only a musician, he is also a poet, or both together; and
therefore, to judge of Wagner, one must know his poetry also—that same
poetry which the music has to subserve. The chief poetical production of
Wagner is The Nibelung’s Ring. This work has attained such enormous
importance in our time, and has such influence on all that now professes to
be art, that it is necessary for everyone to-day to have some idea of it. I
have carefully read through the four booklets which contain this work, and
have drawn up a brief summary of it, which I give in Appendix III. I would
strongly advise the reader (if he has not perused the poem itself, which

would be the best thing to do) at least to read my account of it, so as to have
an idea of this extraordinary work. It is a model work of counterfeit art, so
gross as to be even ridiculous.
But we are told that it is impossible to judge of Wagner’s works without
seeing them on the stage. The Second Day of this drama, which, as I was
told, is the best part of the whole work, was given in Moscow last winter,
and I went to see the performance.
When I arrived the enormous theatre was already filled from top to bottom.
There were Grand-Dukes, and the flower of the aristocracy, of the merchant
class, of the learned, and of the middle-class official public. Most of them
held the libretto, fathoming its meaning. Musicians—some of them elderly,
grey-haired men—followed the music, score in hand. Evidently the
performance of this work was an event of importance.
I was rather late, but I was told that the short prelude, with which the act
begins, was of little importance, and that it did not matter having missed it.
When I arrived, an actor sat on the stage amid decorations intended to
represent a cave, and before something which was meant to represent a
smith’s forge. He was dressed in trico-tights, with a cloak of skins, wore a
wig and an artificial beard, and with white, weak, genteel hands (his easy
movements, and especially the shape of his stomach and his lack of muscle
revealed the actor) beat an impossible sword with an unnatural hammer in a
way in which no one ever uses a hammer; and at the same time, opening his
mouth in a strange way, he sang something incomprehensible. The music of
various instruments accompanied the strange sounds which he emitted.
From the libretto one was able to gather that the actor had to represent a
powerful gnome, who lived in the cave, and who was forging a sword for
Siegfried, whom he had reared. One could tell he was a gnome by the fact
that the actor walked all the time bending the knees of his trico-covered
legs. This gnome, still opening his mouth in the same strange way, long
continued to sing or shout. The music meanwhile runs over something
strange, like beginnings which are not continued and do not get finished.
From the libretto one could learn that the gnome is telling himself about a
ring which a giant had obtained, and which the gnome wishes to procure
through Siegfried’s aid, while Siegfried wants a good sword, on the forging
of which the gnome is occupied. After this conversation or singing to
himself has gone on rather a long time, other sounds are heard in the

orchestra, also like something beginning and not finishing, and another
actor appears, with a horn slung over his shoulder, and accompanied by a
man running on all fours dressed up as a bear, whom he sets at the smith-
gnome. The latter runs away without unbending the knees of his trico-
covered legs. This actor with the horn represented the hero, Siegfried. The
sounds which were emitted in the orchestra on the entrance of this actor
were intended to represent Siegfried’s character and are called Siegfried’s
leit-motiv. And these sounds are repeated each time Siegfried appears.
There is one fixed combination of sounds, or leit-motiv, for each character,
and this leit-motiv is repeated every time the person whom it represents
appears; and when anyone is mentioned the motiv is heard which relates to
that person. Moreover, each article also has its own leit-motiv or chord.
There is a motiv of the ring, a motiv of the helmet, a motiv of the apple, a
motiv of fire, spear, sword, water, etc.; and as soon as the ring, helmet, or
apple is mentioned, the motiv or chord of the ring, helmet, or apple is heard.
The actor with the horn opens his mouth as unnaturally as the gnome, and
long continues in a chanting voice to shout some words, and in a similar
chant Mime (that is the gnome’s name) answers something or other to him.
The meaning of this conversation can only be discovered from the libretto;
and it is that Siegfried was brought up by the gnome, and therefore, for
some reason, hates him and always wishes to kill him. The gnome has
forged a sword for Siegfried, but Siegfried is dissatisfied with it. From a
ten-page conversation (by the libretto), lasting half an hour and conducted
with the same strange openings of the mouth and chantings, it appears that
Siegfried’s mother gave birth to him in the wood, and that concerning his
father all that is known is that he had a sword which was broken, the pieces
of which are in Mime’s possession, and that Siegfried does not know fear
and wishes to go out of the wood. Mime, however, does not want to let him
go. During the conversation the music never omits, at the mention of father,
sword, etc., to sound the motive of these people and things. After these
conversations fresh sounds are heard—those of the god Wotan—and a
wanderer appears. This wanderer is the god Wotan. Also dressed up in a
wig, and also in tights, this god Wotan, standing in a stupid pose with a
spear, thinks proper to recount what Mime must have known before, but
what it is necessary to tell the audience. He does not tell it simply, but in the
form of riddles which he orders himself to guess, staking his head (one does
not know why) that he will guess right. Moreover, whenever the wanderer

strikes his spear on the ground, fire comes out of the ground, and in the
orchestra the sounds of spear and of fire are heard. The orchestra
accompanies the conversation, and the motive of the people and things
spoken of are always artfully intermingled. Besides this the music expresses
feelings in the most naïve manner: the terrible by sounds in the bass, the
frivolous by rapid touches in the treble, etc.
The riddles have no meaning except to tell the audience what the nibelungs
are, what the giants are, what the gods are, and what has happened before.
This conversation also is chanted with strangely opened mouths and
continues for eight libretto pages, and correspondingly long on the stage.
After this the wanderer departs, and Siegfried returns and talks with Mime
for thirteen pages more. There is not a single melody the whole of this time,
but merely intertwinings of the leit-motive of the people and things
mentioned. The conversation tells that Mime wishes to teach Siegfried fear,
and that Siegfried does not know what fear is. Having finished this
conversation, Siegfried seizes one of the pieces of what is meant to
represent the broken sword, saws it up, puts it on what is meant to represent
the forge, melts it, and then forges it and sings: Heiho! heiho! heiho! Ho!
ho! Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho! heiaho! Ho! ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei!
and Act I. finishes.
As far as the question I had come to the theatre to decide was concerned,
my mind was fully made up, as surely as on the question of the merits of
my lady acquaintance’s novel when she read me the scene between the
loose-haired maiden in the white dress and the hero with two white dogs
and a hat with a feather à la Guillaume Tell.
From an author who could compose such spurious scenes, outraging all
æsthetic feeling, as those which I had witnessed, there was nothing to be
hoped; it may safely be decided that all that such an author can write will be
bad, because he evidently does not know what a true work of art is. I
wished to leave, but the friends I was with asked me to remain, declaring
that one could not form an opinion by that one act, and that the second
would be better. So I stopped for the second act.
Act II., night. Afterwards dawn. In general the whole piece is crammed with
lights, clouds, moonlight, darkness, magic fires, thunder, etc.

The scene represents a wood, and in the wood there is a cave. At the
entrance of the cave sits a third actor in tights, representing another gnome.
It dawns. Enter the god Wotan, again with a spear, and again in the guise of
a wanderer. Again his sounds, together with fresh sounds of the deepest
bass that can be produced. These latter indicate that the dragon is speaking.
Wotan awakens the dragon. The same bass sounds are repeated, growing yet
deeper and deeper. First the dragon says, “I want to sleep,” but afterwards
he crawls out of the cave. The dragon is represented by two men; it is
dressed in a green, scaly skin, waves a tail at one end, while at the other it
opens a kind of crocodile’s jaw that is fastened on, and from which flames
appear. The dragon (who is meant to be dreadful, and may appear so to five-
year-old children) speaks some words in a terribly bass voice. This is all so
stupid, so like what is done in a booth at a fair, that it is surprising that
people over seven years of age can witness it seriously; yet thousands of
quasi-cultured people sit and attentively hear and see it, and are delighted.
Siegfried, with his horn, reappears, as does Mime also. In the orchestra the
sounds denoting them are emitted, and they talk about whether Siegfried
does or does not know what fear is. Mime goes away, and a scene
commences which is intended to be most poetical. Siegfried, in his tights,
lies down in a would-be beautiful pose, and alternately keeps silent and
talks to himself. He ponders, listens to the song of birds, and wishes to
imitate them. For this purpose he cuts a reed with his sword and makes a
pipe. The dawn grows brighter and brighter; the birds sing. Siegfried tries to
imitate the birds. In the orchestra is heard the imitation of birds, alternating
with sounds corresponding to the words he speaks. But Siegfried does not
succeed with his pipe-playing, so he plays on his horn instead. This scene is
unendurable. Of music, i.e. of art serving as a means to transmit a state of
mind experienced by the author, there is not even a suggestion. There is
something that is absolutely unintelligible musically. In a musical sense a
hope is continually experienced, followed by disappointment, as if a
musical thought were commenced only to be broken off. If there are
something like musical commencements, these commencements are so
short, so encumbered with complications of harmony and orchestration and
with effects of contrast, are so obscure and unfinished, and what is
happening on the stage meanwhile is so abominably false, that it is difficult
even to perceive these musical snatches, let alone to be infected by them.
Above all, from the very beginning to the very end, and in each note, the

author’s purpose is so audible and visible, that one sees and hears neither
Siegfried nor the birds, but only a limited, self-opinionated German of bad
taste and bad style, who has a most false conception of poetry, and who, in
the rudest and most primitive manner, wishes to transmit to me these false
and mistaken conceptions of his.
Everyone knows the feeling of distrust and resistance which is always
evoked by an author’s evident predetermination. A narrator need only say in
advance, Prepare to cry or to laugh, and you are sure neither to cry nor to
laugh. But when you see that an author prescribes emotion at what is not
touching but only laughable or disgusting, and when you see, moreover,
that the author is fully assured that he has captivated you, a painfully
tormenting feeling results, similar to what one would feel if an old,
deformed woman put on a ball-dress and smilingly coquetted before you,
confident of your approbation. This impression was strengthened by the fact
that around me I saw a crowd of three thousand people, who not only
patiently witnessed all this absurd nonsense, but even considered it their
duty to be delighted with it.
I somehow managed to sit out the next scene also, in which the monster
appears, to the accompaniment of his bass notes intermingled with the
motiv of Siegfried; but after the fight with the monster, and all the roars,
fires, and sword-wavings, I could stand no more of it, and escaped from the
theatre with a feeling of repulsion which, even now, I cannot forget.
Listening to this opera, I involuntarily thought of a respected, wise,
educated country labourer,—one, for instance, of those wise and truly
religious men whom I know among the peasants,—and I pictured to myself
the terrible perplexity such a man would be in were he to witness what I
was seeing that evening.
What would he think if he knew of all the labour spent on such a
performance, and saw that audience, those great ones of the earth,—old,
bald-headed, grey-bearded men, whom he had been accustomed to respect,
—sit silent and attentive, listening to and looking at all these stupidities for
five hours on end? Not to speak of an adult labourer, one can hardly
imagine even a child of over seven occupying himself with such a stupid,
incoherent fairy tale.

And yet an enormous audience, the cream of the cultured upper classes, sits
out five hours of this insane performance, and goes away imagining that by
paying tribute to this nonsense it has acquired a fresh right to esteem itself
advanced and enlightened.
I speak of the Moscow public. But what is the Moscow public? It is but a
hundredth part of that public which, while considering itself most highly
enlightened, esteems it a merit to have so lost the capacity of being infected
by art, that not only can it witness this stupid sham without being revolted,
but can even take delight in it.
In Bayreuth, where these performances were first given, people who
consider themselves finely cultured assembled from the ends of the earth,
spent, say £100 each, to see this performance, and for four days running
they went to see and hear this nonsensical rubbish, sitting it out for six
hours each day.
But why did people go, and why do they still go to these performances, and
why do they admire them? The question naturally presents itself: How is the
success of Wagner’s works to be explained?
That success I explain to myself in this way: thanks to his exceptional
position in having at his disposal the resources of a king, Wagner was able
to command all the methods for counterfeiting art which have been
developed by long usage, and, employing these methods with great ability,
he produced a model work of counterfeit art. The reason why I have
selected his work for my illustration is, that in no other counterfeit of art
known to me are all the methods by which art is counterfeited—namely,
borrowings, imitation, effects, and interestingness—so ably and powerfully
united.
From the subject, borrowed from antiquity, to the clouds and the risings of
the sun and moon, Wagner, in this work, has made use of all that is
considered poetical. We have here the sleeping beauty, and nymphs, and
subterranean fires, and gnomes, and battles, and swords, and love, and
incest, and a monster, and singing-birds: the whole arsenal of the poetical is
brought into action.
Moreover, everything is imitative: the decorations are imitated and the
costumes are imitated. All is just as, according to the data supplied by

archæology, they would have been in antiquity. The very sounds are
imitative, for Wagner, who was not destitute of musical talent, invented just
such sounds as imitate the strokes of a hammer, the hissing of molten iron,
the singing of birds, etc.
Furthermore, in this work everything is in the highest degree striking in its
effects and in its peculiarities: its monsters, its magic fires, and its scenes
under water; the darkness in which the audience sit, the invisibility of the
orchestra, and the hitherto unemployed combinations of harmony.
And besides, it is all interesting. The interest lies not only in the question
who will kill whom, and who will marry whom, and who is whose son, and
what will happen next?—the interest lies also in the relation of the music to
the text. The rolling waves of the Rhine—now how is that to be expressed
in music? An evil gnome appears—how is the music to express an evil
gnome?—and how is it to express the sensuality of this gnome? How will
bravery, fire, or apples be expressed in music? How are the leit-motive of
the people speaking to be interwoven with the leit-motive of the people and
objects about whom they speak? Besides, the music has a further interest. It
diverges from all formerly accepted laws, and most unexpected and totally
new modulations crop up (as is not only possible but even easy in music
having no inner law of its being); the dissonances are new, and are allowed
in a new way—and this, too, is interesting.
And it is this poeticality, imitativeness, effectfulness, and interestingness
which, thanks to the peculiarities of Wagner’s talent and to the
advantageous position in which he was placed, are in these productions
carried to the highest pitch of perfection, that so act on the spectator,
hypnotising him as one would be hypnotised who should listen for several
consecutive hours to the ravings of a maniac pronounced with great
oratorical power.
People say, “You cannot judge without having seen Wagner performed at
Bayreuth: in the dark, where the orchestra is out of sight concealed under
the stage, and where the performance is brought to the highest perfection.”
And this just proves that we have here no question of art, but one of
hypnotism. It is just what the spiritualists say. To convince you of the reality
of their apparitions, they usually say, “You cannot judge; you must try it, be
present at several séances,” i.e. come and sit silent in the dark for hours

together in the same room with semi-sane people, and repeat this some ten
times over, and you shall see all that we see.
Yes, naturally! Only place yourself in such conditions, and you may see
what you will. But this can be still more quickly attained by getting drunk
or smoking opium. It is the same when listening to an opera of Wagner’s.
Sit in the dark for four days in company with people who are not quite
normal, and, through the auditory nerves, subject your brain to the strongest
action of the sounds best adapted to excite it, and you will no doubt be
reduced to an abnormal condition and be enchanted by absurdities. But to
attain this end you do not even need four days; the five hours during which
one “day” is enacted, as in Moscow, are quite enough. Nor are five hours
needed; even one hour is enough for people who have no clear conception
of what art should be, and who have come to the conclusion in advance that
what they are going to see is excellent, and that indifference or
dissatisfaction with this work will serve as a proof of their inferiority and
lack of culture.
I observed the audience present at this representation. The people who led
the whole audience and gave the tone to it were those who had previously
been hypnotised, and who again succumbed to the hypnotic influence to
which they were accustomed. These hypnotised people, being in an
abnormal condition, were perfectly enraptured. Moreover, all the art critics,
who lack the capacity to be infected by art and therefore always especially
prize works like Wagner’s opera where it is all an affair of the intellect,
also, with much profundity, expressed their approval of a work affording
such ample material for ratiocination. And following these two groups went
that large city crowd (indifferent to art, with their capacity to be infected by
it perverted and partly atrophied), headed by the princes, millionaires, and
art patrons, who, like sorry harriers, keep close to those who most loudly
and decidedly express their opinion.
“Oh yes, certainly! What poetry! Marvellous! Especially the birds!” “Yes,
yes! I am quite vanquished!” exclaim these people, repeating in various
tones what they have just heard from men whose opinion appears to them
authoritative.
If some people do feel insulted by the absurdity and spuriousness of the
whole thing, they are timidly silent, as sober men are timid and silent when

surrounded by tipsy ones.
And thus, thanks to the masterly skill with which it counterfeits art while
having nothing in common with it, a meaningless, coarse, spurious
production finds acceptance all over the world, costs millions of roubles to
produce, and assists more and more to pervert the taste of people of the
upper classes and their conception of what is art.

CHAPTER XIV

I know that most men—not only those considered clever, but even those
who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific,
mathematical or philosophic problems—can very seldom discern even the
simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the
falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty—
conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and
on which they have built their lives. And therefore I have little hope that
what I adduce as to the perversion of art and taste in our society will be
accepted or even seriously considered. Nevertheless, I must state fully the
inevitable conclusion to which my investigation into the question of art has
brought me. This investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost
all that our society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far
from being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all, but
only a counterfeit of it. This position, I know, will seem very strange and
paradoxical; but if we once acknowledge art to be a human activity by
means of which some people transmit their feelings to others (and not a
service of Beauty, nor a manifestation of the Idea, and so forth), we shall
inevitably have to admit this further conclusion also. If it is true that art is
an activity by means of which one man having experienced a feeling
intentionally transmits it to others, then we have inevitably to admit further,
that of all that among us is termed the art of the upper classes—of all those
novels, stories, dramas, comedies, pictures, sculptures, symphonies, operas,
operettas, ballets, etc., which profess to be works of art—scarcely one in a
hundred thousand proceeds from an emotion felt by its author, all the rest
being but manufactured counterfeits of art in which borrowing, imitating,
effects, and interestingness replace the contagion of feeling. That the
proportion of real productions of art is to the counterfeits as one to some
hundreds of thousands or even more, may be seen by the following
calculation. I have read somewhere that the artist painters in Paris alone

number 30,000; there will probably be as many in England, as many in
Germany, and as many in Russia, Italy, and the smaller states combined. So
that in all there will be in Europe, say, 120,000 painters; and there are
probably as many musicians and as many literary artists. If these 360,000
individuals produce three works a year each (and many of them produce ten
or more), then each year yields over a million so-called works of art. How
many, then, must have been produced in the last ten years, and how many in
the whole time since upper-class art broke off from the art of the whole
people? Evidently millions. Yet who of all the connoisseurs of art has
received impressions from all these pseudo works of art? Not to mention all
the labouring classes who have no conception of these productions, even
people of the upper classes cannot know one in a thousand of them all, and
cannot remember those they have known. These works all appear under the
guise of art, produce no impression on anyone (except when they serve as
pastimes for the idle crowd of rich people), and vanish utterly.
In reply to this it is usually said that without this enormous number of
unsuccessful attempts we should not have the real works of art. But such
reasoning is as though a baker, in reply to a reproach that his bread was bad,
were to say that if it were not for the hundreds of spoiled loaves there would
not be any well-baked ones. It is true that where there is gold there is also
much sand; but that can not serve as a reason for talking a lot of nonsense in
order to say something wise.
We are surrounded by productions considered artistic. Thousands of verses,
thousands of poems, thousands of novels, thousands of dramas, thousands
of pictures, thousands of musical pieces, follow one after another. All the
verses describe love, or nature, or the author’s state of mind, and in all of
them rhyme and rhythm are observed. All the dramas and comedies are
splendidly mounted and are performed by admirably trained actors. All the
novels are divided into chapters; all of them describe love, contain effective
situations, and correctly describe the details of life. All the symphonies
contain allegro, andante, scherzo, and finale; all consist of modulations and
chords, and are played by highly-trained musicians. All the pictures, in gold
frames, saliently depict faces and sundry accessories. But among these
productions in the various branches of art there is in each branch one among
hundreds of thousands, not only somewhat better than the rest, but differing
from them as a diamond differs from paste. The one is priceless, the others

not only have no value but are worse than valueless, for they deceive and
pervert taste. And yet, externally, they are, to a man of perverted or
atrophied artistic perception, precisely alike.
In our society the difficulty of recognising real works of art is further
increased by the fact that the external quality of the work in false
productions is not only no worse, but often better, than in real ones; the
counterfeit is often more effective than the real, and its subject more
interesting. How is one to discriminate? How is one to find a production in
no way distinguished in externals from hundreds of thousands of others
intentionally made to imitate it precisely?
For a country peasant of unperverted taste this is as easy as it is for an
animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs among a thousand
others in wood or forest. The animal unerringly finds what he needs. So
also the man, if only his natural qualities have not been perverted, will,
without fail, select from among thousands of objects the real work of art he
requires—that infecting him with the feeling experienced by the artist. But
it is not so with those whose taste has been perverted by their education and
life. The receptive feeling for art of these people is atrophied, and in valuing
artistic productions they must be guided by discussion and study, which
discussion and study completely confuse them. So that most people in our
society are quite unable to distinguish a work of art from the grossest
counterfeit. People sit for whole hours in concert-rooms and theatres
listening to the new composers, consider it a duty to read the novels of the
famous modern novelists and to look at pictures representing either
something incomprehensible or just the very things they see much better in
real life; and, above all, they consider it incumbent on them to be
enraptured by all this, imagining it all to be art, while at the same time they
will pass real works of art by, not only without attention, but even with
contempt, merely because, in their circle, these works are not included in
the list of works of art.
A few days ago I was returning home from a walk feeling depressed, as
occurs sometimes. On nearing the house I heard the loud singing of a large
choir of peasant women. They were welcoming my daughter, celebrating
her return home after her marriage. In this singing, with its cries and
clanging of scythes, such a definite feeling of joy, cheerfulness, and energy
was expressed, that, without noticing how it infected me, I continued my

way towards the house in a better mood, and reached home smiling and
quite in good spirits. That same evening, a visitor, an admirable musician,
famed for his execution of classical music, and particularly of Beethoven,
played us Beethoven’s sonata, Opus 101. For the benefit of those who
might otherwise attribute my judgment of that sonata of Beethoven to non-
comprehension of it, I should mention that whatever other people
understand of that sonata and of other productions of Beethoven’s later
period, I, being very susceptible to music, equally understood. For a long
time I used to atune myself so as to delight in those shapeless
improvisations which form the subject-matter of the works of Beethoven’s
later period, but I had only to consider the question of art seriously, and to
compare the impression I received from Beethoven’s later works with those
pleasant, clear, and strong musical impressions which are transmitted, for
instance, by the melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydn, Mozart, Chopin (when
his melodies are not overloaded with complications and ornamention), and
of Beethoven himself in his earlier period, and above all, with the
impressions produced by folk-songs,—Italian, Norwegian, or Russian,—by
the Hungarian tzardas, and other such simple, clear, and powerful music,
and the obscure, almost unhealthy excitement from Beethoven’s later pieces
that I had artificially evoked in myself was immediately destroyed.
On the completion of the performance (though it was noticeable that
everyone had become dull) those present, in the accepted manner, warmly
praised Beethoven’s profound production, and did not forget to add that
formerly they had not been able to understand that last period of his, but
that they now saw that he was really then at his very best. And when I
ventured to compare the impression made on me by the singing of the
peasant women—an impression which had been shared by all who heard it
—with the effect of this sonata, the admirers of Beethoven only smiled
contemptuously, not considering it necessary to reply to such strange
remarks.
But, for all that, the song of the peasant women was real art, transmitting a
definite and strong feeling; while the 101st sonata of Beethoven was only
an unsuccessful attempt at art, containing no definite feeling and therefore
not infectious.
For my work on art I have this winter read diligently, though with great
effort, the celebrated novels and stories, praised by all Europe, written by

Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, and Kipling. At the same time I chanced on a
story in a child’s magazine, and by a quite unknown writer, which told of
the Easter preparations in a poor widow’s family. The story tells how the
mother managed with difficulty to obtain some wheat-flour, which she
poured on the table ready to knead. She then went out to procure some
yeast, telling the children not to leave the hut, and to take care of the flour.
When the mother had gone, some other children ran shouting near the
window, calling those in the hut to come to play. The children forgot their
mother’s warning, ran into the street, and were soon engrossed in the game.
The mother, on her return with the yeast, finds a hen on the table throwing
the last of the flour to her chickens, who were busily picking it out of the
dust of the earthen floor. The mother, in despair, scolds the children, who
cry bitterly. And the mother begins to feel pity for them—but the white
flour has all gone. So to mend matters she decides to make the Easter cake
with sifted rye-flour, brushing it over with white of egg and surrounding it
with eggs. “Rye-bread which we bake is akin to any cake,” says the mother,
using a rhyming proverb to console the children for not having an Easter
cake made with white flour. And the children, quickly passing from despair
to rapture, repeat the proverb and await the Easter cake more merrily even
than before.
Well! the reading of the novels and stories by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans,
Kipling, and others, handling the most harrowing subjects, did not touch me
for one moment, and I was provoked with the authors all the while, as one
is provoked with a man who considers you so naïve that he does not even
conceal the trick by which he intends to take you in. From the first lines you
see the intention with which the book is written, and the details all become
superfluous, and one feels dull. Above all, one knows that the author had no
other feeling all the time than a desire to write a story or a novel, and so one
receives no artistic impression. On the other hand, I could not tear myself
away from the unknown author’s tale of the children and the chickens,
because I was at once infected by the feeling which the author had evidently
experienced, re-evoked in himself, and transmitted.
Vasnetsoff is one of our Russian painters. He has painted ecclesiastical
pictures in Kieff Cathedral, and everyone praises him as the founder of
some new, elevated kind of Christian art. He worked at those pictures for
ten years, was paid tens of thousands of roubles for them, and they are all

simply bad imitations of imitations of imitations, destitute of any spark of
feeling. And this same Vasnetsoff drew a picture for Tourgenieff’s story
“The Quail” (in which it is told how, in his son’s presence, a father killed a
quail and felt pity for it), showing the boy asleep with pouting upper lip,
and above him, as a dream, the quail. And this picture is a true work of art.
In the English Academy of 1897 two pictures were exhibited together; one
of which, by J. C. Dolman, was the temptation of St. Anthony. The Saint is
on his knees praying. Behind him stands a naked woman and animals of
some kind. It is apparent that the naked woman pleased the artist very
much, but that Anthony did not concern him at all; and that, so far from the
temptation being terrible to him (the artist) it is highly agreeable. And
therefore if there be any art in this picture, it is very nasty and false. Next in
the same book of academy pictures comes a picture by Langley, showing a
stray beggar boy, who has evidently been called in by a woman who has
taken pity on him. The boy, pitifully drawing his bare feet under the bench,
is eating; the woman is looking on, probably considering whether he will
not want some more; and a girl of about seven, leaning on her arm, is
carefully and seriously looking on, not taking her eyes from the hungry boy,
and evidently understanding for the first time what poverty is, and what
inequality among people is, and asking herself why she has everything
provided for her while this boy goes bare-foot and hungry? She feels sorry
and yet pleased. And she loves both the boy and goodness.... And one feels
that the artist loved this girl, and that she too loves. And this picture, by an
artist who, I think, is not very widely known, is an admirable and true work
of art.
I remember seeing a performance of Hamlet by Rossi. Both the tragedy
itself and the performer who took the chief part are considered by our critics
to represent the climax of supreme dramatic art. And yet, both from the
subject-matter of the drama and from the performance, I experienced all the
time that peculiar suffering which is caused by false imitations of works of
art. And I lately read of a theatrical performance among the savage tribe the
Voguls. A spectator describes the play. A big Vogul and a little one, both
dressed in reindeer skins, represent a reindeer-doe and its young. A third
Vogul, with a bow, represents a huntsman on snow-shoes, and a fourth
imitates with his voice a bird that warns the reindeer of their danger. The
play is that the huntsman follows the track that the doe with its young one

has travelled. The deer run off the scene and again reappear. (Such
performances take place in a small tent-house.) The huntsman gains more
and more on the pursued. The little deer is tired, and presses against its
mother. The doe stops to draw breath. The hunter comes up with them and
draws his bow. But just then the bird sounds its note, warning the deer of
their danger. They escape. Again there is a chase, and again the hunter gains
on them, catches them and lets fly his arrow. The arrow strikes the young
deer. Unable to run, the little one presses against its mother. The mother
licks its wound. The hunter draws another arrow. The audience, as the eye-
witness describes them, are paralysed with suspense; deep groans and even
weeping is heard among them. And, from the mere description, I felt that
this was a true work of art.
What I am saying will be considered irrational paradox, at which one can
only be amazed; but for all that I must say what I think, namely, that people
of our circle, of whom some compose verses, stories, novels, operas,
symphonies, and sonatas, paint all kinds of pictures and make statues, while
others hear and look at these things, and again others appraise and criticise
it all, discuss, condemn, triumph, and raise monuments to one another
generation after generation,—that all these people, with very few
exceptions, artists, and public, and critics, have never (except in childhood
and earliest youth, before hearing any discussions on art), experienced that
simple feeling familiar to the plainest man and even to a child, that sense of
infection with another’s feeling,—compelling us to joy in another’s
gladness, to sorrow at another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another,—
which is the very essence of art. And therefore these people not only cannot
distinguish true works of art from counterfeits, but continually mistake for
real art the worst and most artificial, while they do not even perceive works
of real art, because the counterfeits are always more ornate, while true art is
modest.

CHAPTER XV

Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to
be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has
been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is,
therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.
There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its
counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising
effort and without altering his standpoint, on reading, hearing, or seeing
another man’s work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with
that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then
the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical,
realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it
does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy,
and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who
are also infected by it).
It is true that this indication is an internal one, and that there are people
who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect something else
from art (in our society the great majority are in this state), and that
therefore such people may mistake for this æsthetic feeling the feeling of
divertisement and a certain excitement which they receive from counterfeits
of art. But though it is impossible to undeceive these people, just as it is
impossible to convince a man suffering from “Daltonism” that green is not
red, yet, for all that, this indication remains perfectly definite to those
whose feeling for art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly
distinguishes the feeling produced by art from all other feelings.
The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic
impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own
and not someone else’s,—as if what it expresses were just what he had long
been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of

the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist, nor that alone,
but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In
this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this
uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive
force of art.
If a man is infected by the author’s condition of soul, if he feels this
emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this
is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the
author and with others who are moved by the same work—then it is not art.
And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness
is also the sole measure of excellence in art.
The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art, speaking now apart
from its subject-matter, i.e. not considering the quality of the feelings it
transmits.
And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:—
(1) On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted; (2) on
the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted; (3) on
the sincerity of the artist, i.e. on the greater or lesser force with which the
artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.
The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it act on
the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he is
transferred the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore the
more readily and strongly does he join in it.
The clearness of expression assists infection, because the receiver, who
mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the more
clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he has long
known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression.
But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by the degree
of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator, hearer, or reader feels that
the artist is infected by his own production, and writes, sings, or plays for
himself and not merely to act on others, this mental condition of the artist
infects the receiver; and, contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or
hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for his own
satisfaction,—does not himself feel what he wishes to express,—but is

doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the
most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only
fail to produce any infection but actually repel.
I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may all
be summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e. that the artist should be
impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That condition includes the
first; for if the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced
it. And as each man is different from everyone else, his feeling will be
individual for everyone else; and the more individual it is,—the more the
artist has drawn it from the depths of his nature,—the more sympathetic and
sincere will it be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear
expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit.
Therefore this third condition—sincerity—is the most important of the
three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such
art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent
from our upper-class art, which is continually produced by artists actuated
by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.
Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits, and
which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its subject-
matter.
The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work from the
category of art and relegates it to that of art’s counterfeits. If the work does
not transmit the artist’s peculiarity of feeling, and is therefore not
individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it has not proceeded from
the author’s inner need for expression—it is not a work of art. If all these
conditions are present, even in the smallest degree, then the work, even if a
weak one, is yet a work of art.
The presence in various degrees of these three conditions: individuality,
clearness, and sincerity, decides the merit of a work of art, as art, apart from
subject-matter. All works of art take rank of merit according to the degree in
which they fulfil the first, the second, and the third of these conditions. In
one the individuality of the feeling transmitted may predominate; in
another, clearness of expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may
have sincerity and individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth,

individuality and clearness, but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible
degrees and combinations.
Thus is art divided from not art, and thus is the quality of art, as art,
decided, independently of its subject-matter, i.e. apart from whether the
feelings it transmits are good or bad.
But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its subject-
matter?

CHAPTER XVI

How in art are we to decide what is good and what is bad in subject-matter?
Art, like speech, is a means of communication, and therefore of progress,
i.e. of the movement of humanity forward towards perfection. Speech
renders accessible to men of the latest generations all the knowledge
discovered by the experience and reflection, both of preceding generations
and of the best and foremost men of their own times; art renders accessible
to men of the latest generations all the feelings experienced by their
predecessors, and those also which are being felt by their best and foremost
contemporaries. And as the evolution of knowledge proceeds by truer and
more necessary knowledge dislodging and replacing what is mistaken and
unnecessary, so the evolution of feeling proceeds through art,—feelings less
kind and less needful for the well-being of mankind are replaced by others
kinder and more needful for that end. That is the purpose of art. And,
speaking now of its subject-matter, the more art fulfils that purpose the
better the art, and the less it fulfils it the worse the art.
And the appraisement of feelings (i.e. the acknowledgment of these or those
feelings as being more or less good, more or less necessary for the well-
being of mankind) is made by the religious perception of the age.
In every period of history, and in every human society, there exists an
understanding of the meaning of life which represents the highest level to
which men of that society have attained,—an understanding defining the
highest good at which that society aims. And this understanding is the
religious perception of the given time and society. And this religious
perception is always clearly expressed by some advanced men, and more or
less vividly perceived by all the members of the society. Such a religious
perception and its corresponding expression exists always in every society.
If it appears to us that in our society there is no religious perception, this is
not because there really is none, but only because we do not want to see it.

And we often wish not to see it because it exposes the fact that our life is
inconsistent with that religious perception.
Religious perception in a society is like the direction of a flowing river. If
the river flows at all, it must have a direction. If a society lives, there must
be a religious perception indicating the direction in which, more or less
consciously, all its members tend.
And so there always has been, and there is, a religious perception in every
society. And it is by the standard of this religious perception that the
feelings transmitted by art have always been estimated. Only on the basis of
this religious perception of their age have men always chosen from the
endlessly varied spheres of art that art which transmitted feelings making
religious perception operative in actual life. And such art has always been
highly valued and encouraged; while art transmitting feelings already
outlived, flowing from the antiquated religious perceptions of a former age,
has always been condemned and despised. All the rest of art, transmitting
those most diverse feelings by means of which people commune together,
was not condemned, and was tolerated, if only it did not transmit feelings
contrary to religious perception. Thus, for instance, among the Greeks, art
transmitting the feeling of beauty, strength, and courage (Hesiod, Homer,
Phidias) was chosen, approved, and encouraged; while art transmitting
feelings of rude sensuality, despondency, and effeminacy was condemned
and despised. Among the Jews, art transmitting feelings of devotion and
submission to the God of the Hebrews and to His will (the epic of Genesis,
the prophets, the Psalms) was chosen and encouraged, while art
transmitting feelings of idolatry (the golden calf) was condemned and
despised. All the rest of art—stories, songs, dances, ornamentation of
houses, of utensils, and of clothes—which was not contrary to religious
perception, was neither distinguished nor discussed. Thus, in regard to its
subject-matter, has art been appraised always and everywhere, and thus it
should be appraised, for this attitude towards art proceeds from the
fundamental characteristics of human nature, and those characteristics do
not change.
I know that according to an opinion current in our times, religion is a
superstition, which humanity has outgrown, and that it is therefore assumed
that no such thing exists as a religious perception common to us all by
which art, in our time, can be estimated. I know that this is the opinion

current in the pseudo-cultured circles of to-day. People who do not
acknowledge Christianity in its true meaning because it undermines all their
social privileges, and who, therefore, invent all kinds of philosophic and
æsthetic theories to hide from themselves the meaninglessness and
wrongness of their lives, cannot think otherwise. These people intentionally,
or sometimes unintentionally, confusing the conception of a religious cult
with the conception of religious perception, think that by denying the cult
they get rid of religious perception. But even the very attacks on religion,
and the attempts to establish a life-conception contrary to the religious
perception of our times, most clearly demonstrate the existence of a
religious perception condemning the lives that are not in harmony with it.
If humanity progresses, i.e. moves forward, there must inevitably be a guide
to the direction of that movement. And religions have always furnished that
guide. All history shows that the progress of humanity is accomplished not
otherwise than under the guidance of religion. But if the race cannot
progress without the guidance of religion,—and progress is always going
on, and consequently also in our own times,—then there must be a religion
of our times. So that, whether it pleases or displeases the so-called cultured
people of to-day, they must admit the existence of religion—not of a
religious cult, Catholic, Protestant, or another, but of religious perception—
which, even in our times, is the guide always present where there is any
progress. And if a religious perception exists amongst us, then our art
should be appraised on the basis of that religious perception; and, as has
always and everywhere been the case, art transmitting feelings flowing
from the religious perception of our time should be chosen from all the
indifferent art, should be acknowledged, highly esteemed, and encouraged;
while art running counter to that perception should be condemned and
despised, and all the remaining indifferent art should neither be
distinguished nor encouraged.
The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most practical
application, is the consciousness that our well-being, both material and
spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the growth
of brotherhood among all men—in their loving harmony with one another.
This perception is not only expressed by Christ and all the best men of past
ages, it is not only repeated in the most varied forms and from most diverse
sides by the best men of our own times, but it already serves as a clue to all

the complex labour of humanity, consisting as this labour does, on the one
hand, in the destruction of physical and moral obstacles to the union of
men, and, on the other hand, in establishing the principles common to all
men which can and should unite them into one universal brotherhood. And
it is on the basis of this perception that we should appraise all the
phenomena of our life, and, among the rest, our art also; choosing from all
its realms whatever transmits feelings flowing from this religious
perception, highly prizing and encouraging such art, rejecting whatever is
contrary to this perception, and not attributing to the rest of art an
importance not properly pertaining to it.
The chief mistake made by people of the upper classes of the time of the so-
called Renaissance,—a mistake which we still perpetuate,—was not that
they ceased to value and to attach importance to religious art (people of that
period could not attach importance to it, because, like our own upper
classes, they could not believe in what the majority considered to be
religion), but their mistake was that they set up in place of religious art
which was lacking, an insignificant art which aimed only at giving pleasure,
i.e. they began to choose, to value, and to encourage, in place of religious
art, something which, in any case, did not deserve such esteem and
encouragement.
One of the Fathers of the Church said that the great evil is not that men do
not know God, but that they have set up, instead of God, that which is not
God. So also with art. The great misfortune of the people of the upper
classes of our time is not so much that they are without a religious art, as
that, instead of a supreme religious art, chosen from all the rest as being
specially important and valuable, they have chosen a most insignificant and,
usually, harmful art, which aims at pleasing certain people, and which,
therefore, if only by its exclusive nature, stands in contradiction to that
Christian principle of universal union which forms the religious perception
of our time. Instead of religious art, an empty and often vicious art is set up,
and this hides from men’s notice the need of that true religious art which
should be present in life in order to improve it.
It is true that art which satisfies the demands of the religious perception of
our time is quite unlike former art, but, notwithstanding this dissimilarity, to
a man who does not intentionally hide the truth from himself, it is very clear
and definite what does form the religious art of our age. In former times,

when the highest religious perception united only some people (who, even
if they formed a large society, were yet but one society surrounded by
others—Jews, or Athenian or Roman citizens), the feelings transmitted by
the art of that time flowed from a desire for the might, greatness, glory, and
prosperity of that society, and the heroes of art might be people who
contributed to that prosperity by strength, by craft, by fraud, or by cruelty
(Ulysses, Jacob, David, Samson, Hercules, and all the heroes). But the
religious perception of our times does not select any one society of men; on
the contrary, it demands the union of all—absolutely of all people without
exception—and above every other virtue it sets brotherly love to all men.
And, therefore, the feelings transmitted by the art of our time not only
cannot coincide with the feelings transmitted by former art, but must run
counter to them.
Christian, truly Christian, art has been so long in establishing itself, and has
not yet established itself, just because the Christian religious perception was
not one of those small steps by which humanity advances regularly; but was
an enormous revolution, which, if it has not already altered, must inevitably
alter the entire life-conception of mankind, and, consequently, the whole
internal organisation of their life. It is true that the life of humanity, like that
of an individual, moves regularly; but in that regular movement come, as it
were, turning-points, which sharply divide the preceding from the
subsequent life. Christianity was such a turning-point; such, at least, it must
appear to us who live by the Christian perception of life. Christian
perception gave another, a new direction to all human feelings, and
therefore completely altered both the contents and the significance of art.
The Greeks could make use of Persian art and the Romans could use Greek
art, or, similarly, the Jews could use Egyptian art,—the fundamental ideals
were one and the same. Now the ideal was the greatness and prosperity of
the Persians, now the greatness and prosperity of the Greeks, now that of
the Romans. The same art was transferred into other conditions, and served
new nations. But the Christian ideal changed and reversed everything, so
that, as the Gospel puts it, “That which was exalted among men has become
an abomination in the sight of God.” The ideal is no longer the greatness of
Pharaoh or of a Roman emperor, not the beauty of a Greek nor the wealth of
Phœnicia, but humility, purity, compassion, love. The hero is no longer
Dives, but Lazarus the beggar; not Mary Magdalene in the day of her
beauty, but in the day of her repentance; not those who acquire wealth, but

those who have abandoned it; not those who dwell in palaces, but those
who dwell in catacombs and huts; not those who rule over others, but those
who acknowledge no authority but God’s. And the greatest work of art is no
longer a cathedral of victory[84] with statues of conquerors, but the
representation of a human soul so transformed by love that a man who is
tormented and murdered yet pities and loves his persecutors.
And the change is so great that men of the Christian world find it difficult to
resist the inertia of the heathen art to which they have been accustomed all
their lives. The subject-matter of Christian religious art is so new to them,
so unlike the subject-matter of former art, that it seems to them as though
Christian art were a denial of art, and they cling desperately to the old art.
But this old art, having no longer, in our day, any source in religious
perception, has lost its meaning, and we shall have to abandon it whether
we wish to or not.
The essence of the Christian perception consists in the recognition by every
man of his sonship to God, and of the consequent union of men with God
and with one another, as is said in the Gospel (John xvii. 21[85]). Therefore
the subject-matter of Christian art is such feeling as can unite men with God
and with one another.
The expression unite men with God and with one another may seem
obscure to people accustomed to the misuse of these words which is so
customary, but the words have a perfectly clear meaning nevertheless. They
indicate that the Christian union of man (in contradiction to the partial,
exclusive union of only some men) is that which unites all without
exception.
Art, all art, has this characteristic, that it unites people. Every art causes
those to whom the artist’s feeling is transmitted to unite in soul with the
artist, and also with all who receive the same impression. But non-Christian
art, while uniting some people together, makes that very union a cause of
separation between these united people and others; so that union of this
kind is often a source, not only of division, but even of enmity towards
others. Such is all patriotic art, with its anthems, poems, and monuments;
such is all Church art, i.e. the art of certain cults, with their images, statues,
processions, and other local ceremonies. Such art is belated and non-
Christian art, uniting the people of one cult only to separate them yet more

sharply from the members of other cults, and even to place them in relations
of hostility to each other. Christian art is only such as tends to unite all
without exception, either by evoking in them the perception that each man
and all men stand in like relation towards God and towards their neighbour,
or by evoking in them identical feelings, which may even be the very
simplest provided only that they are not repugnant to Christianity and are
natural to everyone without exception.
Good Christian art of our time may be unintelligible to people because of
imperfections in its form, or because men are inattentive to it, but it must be
such that all men can experience the feelings it transmits. It must be the art,
not of some one group of people, nor of one class, nor of one nationality,
nor of one religious cult; that is, it must not transmit feelings which are
accessible only to a man educated in a certain way, or only to an aristocrat,
or a merchant, or only to a Russian, or a native of Japan, or a Roman
Catholic, or a Buddhist, etc., but it must transmit feelings accessible to
everyone. Only art of this kind can be acknowledged in our time to be good
art, worthy of being chosen out from all the rest of art and encouraged.
Christian art, i.e. the art of our time, should be catholic in the original
meaning of the word, i.e. universal, and therefore it should unite all men.
And only two kinds of feeling do unite all men: first, feelings flowing from
the perception of our sonship to God and of the brotherhood of man; and
next, the simple feelings of common life, accessible to everyone without
exception—such as the feeling of merriment, of pity, of cheerfulness, of
tranquillity, etc. Only these two kinds of feelings can now supply material
for art good in its subject-matter.
And the action of these two kinds of art, apparently so dissimilar, is one and
the same. The feelings flowing from perception of our sonship to God and
of the brotherhood of man—such as a feeling of sureness in truth, devotion
to the will of God, self-sacrifice, respect for and love of man—evoked by
Christian religious perception; and the simplest feelings—such as a
softened or a merry mood caused by a song or an amusing jest intelligible
to everyone, or by a touching story, or a drawing, or a little doll: both alike
produce one and the same effect—the loving union of man with man.
Sometimes people who are together are, if not hostile to one another, at
least estranged in mood and feeling, till perchance a story, a performance, a
picture, or even a building, but oftenest of all music, unites them all as by

an electric flash, and, in place of their former isolation or even enmity, they
are all conscious of union and mutual love. Each is glad that another feels
what he feels; glad of the communion established, not only between him
and all present, but also with all now living who will yet share the same
impression; and more than that, he feels the mysterious gladness of a
communion which, reaching beyond the grave, unites us with all men of the
past who have been moved by the same feelings, and with all men of the
future who will yet be touched by them. And this effect is produced both by
the religious art which transmits feelings of love to God and one’s
neighbour, and by universal art transmitting the very simplest feelings
common to all men.
The art of our time should be appraised differently from former art chiefly
in this, that the art of our time, i.e. Christian art (basing itself on a religious
perception which demands the union of man), excludes from the domain of
art good in subject-matter everything transmitting exclusive feelings, which
do not unite but divide men. It relegates such work to the category of art
bad in its subject-matter, while, on the other hand, it includes in the
category of art good in subject-matter a section not formerly admitted to
deserve to be chosen out and respected, namely, universal art transmitting
even the most trifling and simple feelings if only they are accessible to all
men without exception, and therefore unite them. Such art cannot, in our
time, but be esteemed good, for it attains the end which the religious
perception of our time, i.e. Christianity, sets before humanity.
Christian art either evokes in men those feelings which, through love of
God and of one’s neighbour, draw them to greater and ever greater union,
and make them ready for and capable of such union; or evokes in them
those feelings which show them that they are already united in the joys and
sorrows of life. And therefore the Christian art of our time can be and is of
two kinds: (1) art transmitting feelings flowing from a religious perception
of man’s position in the world in relation to God and to his neighbour—
religious art in the limited meaning of the term; and (2) art transmitting the
simplest feelings of common life, but such, always, as are accessible to all
men in the whole world—the art of common life—the art of a people—
universal art. Only these two kinds of art can be considered good art in our
time.

The first, religious art,—transmitting both positive feelings of love to God
and one’s neighbour, and negative feelings of indignation and horror at the
violation of love,—manifests itself chiefly in the form of words, and to
some extent also in painting and sculpture: the second kind (universal art)
transmitting feelings accessible to all, manifests itself in words, in painting,
in sculpture, in dances, in architecture, and, most of all, in music.
If I were asked to give modern examples of each of these kinds of art, then,
as examples of the highest art, flowing from love of God and man (both of
the higher, positive, and of the lower, negative kind), in literature I should
name The Robbers by Schiller: Victor Hugo’s Les Pauvres Gens and Les
Misérables: the novels and stories of Dickens—The Tale of Two Cities, The
Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and others: Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
Dostoievsky’s works—especially his Memoirs from the House of Death:
and Adam Bede by George Eliot.
In modern painting, strange to say, works of this kind, directly transmitting
the Christian feeling of love of God and of one’s neighbour, are hardly to be
found, especially among the works of the celebrated painters. There are
plenty of pictures treating of the Gospel stories; they, however, depict
historical events with great wealth of detail, but do not, and cannot, transmit
religious feeling not possessed by their painters. There are many pictures
treating of the personal feelings of various people, but of pictures
representing great deeds of self-sacrifice and of Christian love there are
very few, and what there are are principally by artists who are not
celebrated, and are, for the most part, not pictures but merely sketches.
Such, for instance, is the drawing by Kramskoy (worth many of his finished
pictures), showing a drawing-room with a balcony, past which troops are
marching in triumph on their return from the war. On the balcony stands a
wet-nurse holding a baby and a boy. They are admiring the procession of
the troops, but the mother, covering her face with a handkerchief, has fallen
back on the sofa, sobbing. Such also is the picture by Walter Langley, to
which I have already referred, and such again is a picture by the French
artist Morion, depicting a lifeboat hastening, in a heavy storm, to the relief
of a steamer that is being wrecked. Approaching these in kind are pictures
which represent the hard-working peasant with respect and love. Such are
the pictures by Millet, and, particularly, his drawing, “The Man with the
Hoe,” also pictures in this style by Jules Breton, L’Hermitte, Defregger, and

others. As examples of pictures evoking indignation and horror at the
violation of love to God and man, Gay’s picture, “Judgment,” may serve,
and also Leizen-Mayer’s, “Signing the Death Warrant.” But there are also
very few of this kind. Anxiety about the technique and the beauty of the
picture for the most part obscures the feeling. For instance, Gérôme’s
“Pollice Verso” expresses, not so much horror at what is being perpetrated
as attraction by the beauty of the spectacle.[86]
To give examples, from the modern art of our upper classes, of art of the
second kind, good universal art or even of the art of a whole people, is yet
more difficult, especially in literary art and music. If there are some works
which by their inner contents might be assigned to this class (such as Don
Quixote, Molière’s comedies, David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers
by Dickens, Gogol’s and Pushkin’s tales, and some things of Maupassant’s),
these works are for the most part—from the exceptional nature of the
feelings they transmit, and the superfluity of special details of time and
locality, and, above all, on account of the poverty of their subject-matter in
comparison with examples of universal ancient art (such, for instance, as
the story of Joseph)—comprehensible only to people of their own circle.
That Joseph’s brethren, being jealous of his father’s affection, sell him to
the merchants; that Potiphar’s wife wishes to tempt the youth; that having
attained the highest station, he takes pity on his brothers, including
Benjamin the favourite,—these and all the rest are feelings accessible alike
to a Russian peasant, a Chinese, an African, a child, or an old man, educated
or uneducated; and it is all written with such restraint, is so free from any
superfluous detail, that the story may be told to any circle and will be
equally comprehensible and touching to everyone. But not such are the
feelings of Don Quixote or of Molière’s heroes (though Molière is perhaps
the most universal, and therefore the most excellent, artist of modern
times), nor of Pickwick and his friends. These feelings are not common to
all men but very exceptional, and therefore, to make them infectious, the
authors have surrounded them with abundant details of time and place. And
this abundance of detail makes the stories difficult of comprehension to all
people not living within reach of the conditions described by the author.
The author of the novel of Joseph did not need to describe in detail, as
would be done nowadays, the bloodstained coat of Joseph, the dwelling and
dress of Jacob, the pose and attire of Potiphar’s wife, and how, adjusting the

bracelet on her left arm, she said, “Come to me,” and so on, because the
subject-matter of feelings in this novel is so strong that all details, except
the most essential,—such as that Joseph went out into another room to
weep,—are superfluous, and would only hinder the transmission of
feelings. And therefore this novel is accessible to all men, touches people of
all nations and classes, young and old, and has lasted to our times, and will
yet last for thousands of years to come. But strip the best novels of our
times of their details, and what will remain?
It is therefore impossible in modern literature to indicate works fully
satisfying the demands of universality. Such works as exist are, to a great
extent, spoilt by what is usually called “realism,” but would be better
termed “provincialism,” in art.
In music the same occurs as in verbal art, and for similar reasons. In
consequence of the poorness of the feeling they contain, the melodies of the
modern composers are amazingly empty and insignificant. And to
strengthen the impression produced by these empty melodies, the new
musicians pile complex modulations on to each trivial melody, not only in
their own national manner, but also in the way characteristic of their own
exclusive circle and particular musical school. Melody—every melody—is
free, and may be understood of all men; but as soon as it is bound up with a
particular harmony, it ceases to be accessible except to people trained to
such harmony, and it becomes strange, not only to common men of another
nationality, but to all who do not belong to the circle whose members have
accustomed themselves to certain forms of harmonisation. So that music,
like poetry, travels in a vicious circle. Trivial and exclusive melodies, in
order to make them attractive, are laden with harmonic, rhythmic, and
orchestral complications, and thus become yet more exclusive, and far from
being universal are not even national, i.e. they are not comprehensible to the
whole people but only to some people.
In music, besides marches and dances by various composers, which satisfy
the demands of universal art, one can indicate very few works of this class:
Bach’s famous violin aria, Chopin’s nocturne in E flat major, and perhaps a
dozen bits (not whole pieces, but parts) selected from the works of Haydn,
Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Chopin.[87]

Although in painting the same thing is repeated as in poetry and in music,—
namely, that in order to make them more interesting, works weak in
conception are surrounded by minutely studied accessories of time and
place, which give them a temporary and local interest but make them less
universal,—still, in painting, more than in the other spheres of art, may be
found works satisfying the demands of universal Christian art; that is to say,
there are more works expressing feelings in which all men may participate.
In the arts of painting and sculpture, all pictures and statues in so-called
genre style, depictions of animals, landscapes and caricatures with subjects
comprehensible to everyone, and also all kinds of ornaments, are universal
in subject-matter. Such productions in painting and sculpture are very
numerous (e.g. china dolls), but for the most part such objects (for instance,
ornaments of all kinds) are either not considered to be art or are considered
to be art of a low quality. In reality all such objects, if only they transmit a
true feeling experienced by the artist and comprehensible to everyone
(however insignificant it may seem to us to be) are works of real, good,
Christian art.
I fear it will here be urged against me that having denied that the conception
of beauty can supply a standard for works of art, I contradict myself by
acknowledging ornaments to be works of good art. The reproach is unjust,
for the subject-matter of all kinds of ornamentation consists not in the
beauty, but in the feeling (of admiration of, and delight in, the combination
of lines and colours) which the artist has experienced and with which he
infects the spectator. Art remains what it was and what it must be: nothing
but the infection by one man of another, or of others, with the feelings
experienced by the infector. Among those feelings is the feeling of delight
at what pleases the sight. Objects pleasing the sight may be such as please a
small or a large number of people, or such as please all men. And ornaments
for the most part are of the latter kind. A landscape representing a very
unusual view, or a genre picture of a special subject, may not please
everyone, but ornaments, from Yakutsk ornaments to Greek ones, are
intelligible to everyone and evoke a similar feeling of admiration in all, and
therefore this despised kind of art should, in Christian society, be esteemed
far above exceptional, pretentious pictures and sculptures.
So that there are only two kinds of good Christian art: all the rest of art not
comprised in these two divisions should be acknowledged to be bad art,

deserving not to be encouraged but to be driven out, denied and despised, as
being art not uniting but dividing people. Such, in literary art, are all novels
and poems which transmit Church or patriotic feelings, and also exclusive
feelings pertaining only to the class of the idle rich; such as aristocratic
honour, satiety, spleen, pessimism, and refined and vicious feelings flowing
from sex-love—quite incomprehensible to the great majority of mankind.
In painting we must similarly place in the class of bad art all the Church,
patriotic, and exclusive pictures; all the pictures representing the
amusements and allurements of a rich and idle life; all the so-called
symbolic pictures, in which the very meaning of the symbol is
comprehensible only to the people of a certain circle; and, above all,
pictures with voluptuous subjects—all that odious female nudity which fills
all the exhibitions and galleries. And to this class belongs almost all the
chamber and opera music of our times,—beginning especially from
Beethoven (Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner),—by its subject-matter
devoted to the expression of feelings accessible only to people who have
developed in themselves an unhealthy, nervous irritation evoked by this
exclusive, artificial, and complex music.
“What! the Ninth Symphony not a good work of art!” I hear exclaimed by
indignant voices.
And I reply: Most certainly it is not. All that I have written I have written
with the sole purpose of finding a clear and reasonable criterion by which to
judge the merits of works of art. And this criterion, coinciding with the
indications of plain and sane sense, indubitably shows me that that
symphony by Beethoven is not a good work of art. Of course, to people
educated in the adoration of certain productions and of their authors, to
people whose taste has been perverted just by being educated in such
adoration, the acknowledgment that such a celebrated work is bad is
amazing and strange. But how are we to escape the indications of reason
and of common sense?
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is considered a great work of art. To verify its
claim to be such, I must first ask myself whether this work transmits the
highest religious feeling? I reply in the negative, for music in itself cannot
transmit those feelings; and therefore I ask myself next, Since this work
does not belong to the highest kind of religious art, has it the other

characteristic of the good art of our time,—the quality of uniting all men in
one common feeling: does it rank as Christian universal art? And again I
have no option but to reply in the negative; for not only do I not see how the
feelings transmitted by this work could unite people not specially trained to
submit themselves to its complex hypnotism, but I am unable to imagine to
myself a crowd of normal people who could understand anything of this
long, confused, and artificial production, except short snatches which are
lost in a sea of what is incomprehensible. And therefore, whether I like it or
not, I am compelled to conclude that this work belongs to the rank of bad
art. It is curious to note in this connection, that attached to the end of this
very symphony is a poem of Schiller’s which (though somewhat obscurely)
expresses this very thought, namely, that feeling (Schiller speaks only of the
feeling of gladness) unites people and evokes love in them. But though this
poem is sung at the end of the symphony, the music does not accord with
the thought expressed in the verses; for the music is exclusive and does not
unite all men, but unites only a few, dividing them off from the rest of
mankind.
And, just in this same way, in all branches of art, many and many works
considered great by the upper classes of our society will have to be judged.
By this one sure criterion we shall have to judge the celebrated Divine
Comedy and Jerusalem Delivered, and a great part of Shakespeare’s and
Goethe’s works, and in painting every representation of miracles, including
Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” etc.
Whatever the work may be and however it may have been extolled, we
have first to ask whether this work is one of real art or a counterfeit. Having
acknowledged, on the basis of the indication of its infectiousness even to a
small class of people, that a certain production belongs to the realm of art, it
is necessary, on the basis of the indication of its accessibility, to decide the
next question, Does this work belong to the category of bad, exclusive art,
opposed to religious perception, or to Christian art, uniting people? And
having acknowledged an article to belong to real Christian art, we must
then, according to whether it transmits the feelings flowing from love to
God and man, or merely the simple feelings uniting all men, assign it a
place in the ranks of religious art or in those of universal art.
Only on the basis of such verification shall we find it possible to select from
the whole mass of what, in our society, claims to be art, those works which

form real, important, necessary spiritual food, and to separate them from all
the harmful and useless art, and from the counterfeits of art which surround
us. Only on the basis of such verification shall we be able to rid ourselves
of the pernicious results of harmful art, and to avail ourselves of that
beneficent action which is the purpose of true and good art, and which is
indispensable for the spiritual life of man and of humanity.

CHAPTER XVII

Art is one of two organs of human progress. By words man interchanges
thoughts, by the forms of art he interchanges feelings, and this with all men,
not only of the present time, but also of the past and the future. It is natural
to human beings to employ both these organs of intercommunication, and
therefore the perversion of either of them must cause evil results to the
society in which it occurs. And these results will be of two kinds: first, the
absence, in that society, of the work which should be performed by the
organ; and secondly, the harmful activity of the perverted organ. And just
these results have shown themselves in our society. The organ of art has
been perverted, and therefore the upper classes of society have, to a great
extent, been deprived of the work that it should have performed. The
diffusion in our society of enormous quantities of, on the one hand, those
counterfeits of art which only serve to amuse and corrupt people, and, on
the other hand, of works of insignificant, exclusive art, mistaken for the
highest art, have perverted most men’s capacity to be infected by true works
of art, and have thus deprived them of the possibility of experiencing the
highest feelings to which mankind has attained, and which can only be
transmitted from man to man by art.
All the best that has been done in art by man remains strange to people who
lack the capacity to be infected by art, and is replaced either by spurious
counterfeits of art or by insignificant art, which they mistake for real art.
People of our time and of our society are delighted with Baudelaires,
Verlaines, Moréases, Ibsens, and Maeterlincks in poetry; with Monets,
Manets, Puvis de Chavannes, Burne-Joneses, Stucks, and Böcklins in
painting; with Wagners, Listzs, Richard Strausses, in music; and they are no
longer capable of comprehending either the highest or the simplest art.
In the upper classes, in consequence of this loss of capacity to be infected
by works of art, people grow up, are educated, and live, lacking the

fertilising, improving influence of art, and therefore not only do not
advance towards perfection, do not become kinder, but, on the contrary,
possessing highly-developed external means of civilisation, they yet tend to
become continually more savage, more coarse, and more cruel.
Such is the result of the absence from our society of the activity of that
essential organ—art. But the consequences of the perverted activity of that
organ are yet more harmful. And they are numerous.
The first consequence, plain for all to see, is the enormous expenditure of
the labour of working people on things which are not only useless, but
which, for the most part, are harmful; and more than that, the waste of
priceless human lives on this unnecessary and harmful business. It is
terrible to consider with what intensity, and amid what privations, millions
of people—who lack time and opportunity to attend to what they and their
families urgently require—labour for 10, 12, or 14 hours on end, and even
at night, setting the type for pseudo-artistic books which spread vice among
mankind, or working for theatres, concerts, exhibitions, and picture
galleries, which, for the most part, also serve vice; but it is yet more terrible
to reflect that lively, kindly children, capable of all that is good, are devoted
from their early years to such tasks as these: that for 6, 8, or 10 hours a day,
and for 10 or 15 years, some of them should play scales and exercises;
others should twist their limbs, walk on their toes, and lift their legs above
their heads; a third set should sing solfeggios; a fourth set, showing
themselves off in all manner of ways, should pronounce verses; a fifth set
should draw from busts or from nude models and paint studies; a sixth set
should write compositions according to the rules of certain periods; and that
in these occupations, unworthy of a human being, which are often
continued long after full maturity, they should waste their physical and
mental strength and lose all perception of the meaning of life. It is often
said that it is horrible and pitiful to see little acrobats putting their legs over
their necks, but it is not less pitiful to see children of 10 giving concerts,
and it is still worse to see schoolboys of 10 who, as a preparation for
literary work, have learnt by heart the exceptions to the Latin grammar.
These people not only grow physically and mentally deformed, but also
morally deformed, and become incapable of doing anything really needed
by man. Occupying in society the rôle of amusers of the rich, they lose their
sense of human dignity, and develop in themselves such a passion for public

applause that they are always a prey to an inflated and unsatisfied vanity
which grows in them to diseased dimensions, and they expend their mental
strength in efforts to obtain satisfaction for this passion. And what is most
tragic of all is that these people, who for the sake of art are spoilt for life,
not only do not render service to this art, but, on the contrary, inflict the
greatest harm on it. They are taught in academies, schools, and
conservatoires how to counterfeit art, and by learning this they so pervert
themselves that they quite lose the capacity to produce works of real art,
and become purveyors of that counterfeit, or trivial, or depraved art which
floods our society. This is the first obvious consequence of the perversion of
the organ of art.
The second consequence is that the productions of amusement-art, which
are prepared in such terrific quantities by the armies of professional artists,
enable the rich people of our times to live the lives they do, lives not only
unnatural but in contradiction to the humane principles these people
themselves profess. To live as do the rich, idle people, especially the
women, far from nature and from animals, in artificial conditions, with
muscles atrophied or misdeveloped by gymnastics, and with enfeebled vital
energy would be impossible were it not for what is called art—for this
occupation and amusement which hides from them the meaninglessness of
their lives, and saves them from the dulness that oppresses them. Take from
all these people the theatres, concerts, exhibitions, piano-playing, songs,
and novels, with which they now fill their time in full confidence that
occupation with these things is a very refined, æsthetical, and therefore
good occupation; take from the patrons of art who buy pictures, assist
musicians, and are acquainted with writers, their rôle of protectors of that
important matter art, and they will not be able to continue such a life, but
will all be eaten up by ennui and spleen, and will become conscious of the
meaninglessness and wrongness of their present mode of life. Only
occupation with what, among them, is considered art, renders it possible for
them to continue to live on, infringing all natural conditions, without
perceiving the emptiness and cruelty of their lives. And this support
afforded to the false manner of life pursued by the rich is the second
consequence, and a serious one, of the perversion of art.
The third consequence of the perversion of art is the perplexity produced in
the minds of children and of plain folk. Among people not perverted by the

false theories of our society, among workers and children, there exists a
very definite conception of what people may be respected and praised for.
In the minds of peasants and children the ground for praise or eulogy can
only be either physical strength: Hercules, the heroes and conquerors; or
moral, spiritual, strength: Sakya Muni giving up a beautiful wife and a
kingdom to save mankind, Christ going to the cross for the truth he
professed, and all the martyrs and the saints. Both are understood by
peasants and children. They understand that physical strength must be
respected, for it compels respect; and the moral strength of goodness an
unperverted man cannot fail to respect, because all his spiritual being draws
him towards it. But these people, children and peasants, suddenly perceive
that besides those praised, respected, and rewarded for physical or moral
strength, there are others who are praised, extolled, and rewarded much
more than the heroes of strength and virtue, merely because they sing well,
compose verses, or dance. They see that singers, composers, painters,
ballet-dancers, earn millions of roubles and receive more honour than the
saints do: and peasants and children are perplexed.
When 50 years had elapsed after Pushkin’s death, and, simultaneously, the
cheap edition of his works began to circulate among the people and a
monument was erected to him in Moscow, I received more than a dozen
letters from different peasants asking why Pushkin was raised to such
dignity? And only the other day a literate[88] man from Saratoff called on me
who had evidently gone out of his mind over this very question. He was on
his way to Moscow to expose the clergy for having taken part in raising a
“monament” to Mr. Pushkin.
Indeed one need only imagine to oneself what the state of mind of such a
man of the people must be when he learns, from such rumours and
newspapers as reach him, that the clergy, the Government officials, and all
the best people in Russia are triumphantly unveiling a statue to a great man,
the benefactor, the pride of Russia—Pushkin, of whom till then he had
never heard. From all sides he reads or hears about this, and he naturally
supposes that if such honours are rendered to anyone, then without doubt he
must have done something extraordinary—either some feat of strength or of
goodness. He tries to learn who Pushkin was, and having discovered that
Pushkin was neither a hero nor a general, but was a private person and a
writer, he comes to the conclusion that Pushkin must have been a holy man

and a teacher of goodness, and he hastens to read or to hear his life and
works. But what must be his perplexity when he learns that Pushkin was a
man of more than easy morals, who was killed in a duel, i.e. when
attempting to murder another man, and that all his service consisted in
writing verses about love, which were often very indecent.
That a hero, or Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan, or Napoleon were
great, he understands, because any one of them could have crushed him and
a thousand like him; that Buddha, Socrates, and Christ were great he also
understands, for he knows and feels that he and all men should be such as
they were; but why a man should be great because he wrote verses about
the love of women he cannot make out.
A similar perplexity must trouble the brain of a Breton or Norman peasant
who hears that a monument, “une statue” (as to the Madonna), is being
erected to Baudelaire, and reads, or is told, what the contents of his Fleurs
du Mal are; or, more amazing still, to Verlaine, when he learns the story of
that man’s wretched, vicious life, and reads his verses. And what confusion
it must cause in the brains of peasants when they learn that some Patti or
Taglioni is paid £10,000 for a season, or that a painter gets as much for a
picture, or that authors of novels describing love-scenes have received even
more than that.
And it is the same with children. I remember how I passed through this
stage of amazement and stupefaction, and only reconciled myself to this
exaltation of artists to the level of heroes and saints by lowering in my own
estimation the importance of moral excellence, and by attributing a false,
unnatural meaning to works of art. And a similar confusion must occur in
the soul of each child and each man of the people when he learns of the
strange honours and rewards that are lavished on artists. This is the third
consequence of the false relation in which our society stands towards art.
The fourth consequence is that people of the upper classes, more and more
frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and goodness,
put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from the demands of
morality. These people, reversing the rôles, instead of admitting, as is really
the case, that the art they serve is an antiquated affair, allege that morality is
an antiquated affair, which can have no importance for people situated on
that high plane of development on which they opine that they are situated.

This result of the false relation to art showed itself in our society long ago;
but recently, with its prophet Nietzsche and his adherents, and with the
decadents and certain English æsthetes who coincide with him, it is being
expressed with especial impudence. The decadents, and æsthetes of the type
at one time represented by Oscar Wilde, select as a theme for their
productions the denial of morality and the laudation of vice.
This art has partly generated, and partly coincides with, a similar
philosophic theory. I recently received from America a book entitled “The
Survival of the Fittest: Philosophy of Power, 1896, by Ragnar Redbeard,
Chicago.” The substance of this book, as it is expressed in the editor’s
preface, is that to measure “right” by the false philosophy of the Hebrew
prophets and “weepful” Messiahs is madness. Right is not the offspring of
doctrine but of power. All laws, commandments, or doctrines as to not
doing to another what you do not wish done to you, have no inherent
authority whatever, but receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the
sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to obey any injunction,
human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is
the stamp of the hero. Men should not be bound by moral rules invented by
their foes. The whole world is a slippery battlefield. Ideal justice demands
that the vanquished should be exploited, emasculated, and scorned. The free
and brave may seize the world. And, therefore, there should be eternal war
for life, for land, for love, for women, for power, and for gold. (Something
similar was said a few years ago by the celebrated and refined academician,
Vogüé.) The earth and its treasures is “booty for the bold.”
The author has evidently by himself, independently of Nietzsche, come to
the same conclusions which are professed by the new artists.
Expressed in the form of a doctrine these positions startle us. In reality they
are implied in the ideal of art serving beauty. The art of our upper classes
has educated people in this ideal of the over-man,[89]—which is, in reality,
the old ideal of Nero, Stenka Razin,[90] Genghis Khan, Robert Macaire,[91] or
Napoleon, and all their accomplices, assistants, and adulators—and it
supports this ideal with all its might.
It is this supplanting of the ideal of what is right by the ideal of what is
beautiful, i.e. of what is pleasant, that is the fourth consequence, and a
terrible one, of the perversion of art in our society. It is fearful to think of

what would befall humanity were such art to spread among the masses of
the people. And it already begins to spread.
Finally, the fifth and chief result is, that the art which flourishes in the upper
classes of European society has a directly vitiating influence, infecting
people with the worst feelings and with those most harmful to humanity—
superstition, patriotism, and, above all, sensuality.
Look carefully into the causes of the ignorance of the masses, and you may
see that the chief cause does not at all lie in the lack of schools and libraries,
as we are accustomed to suppose, but in those superstitions, both
ecclesiastical and patriotic, with which the people are saturated, and which
are unceasingly generated by all the methods of art. Church superstitions
are supported and produced by the poetry of prayers, hymns, painting, by
the sculpture of images and of statues, by singing, by organs, by music, by
architecture, and even by dramatic art in religious ceremonies. Patriotic
superstitions are supported and produced by verses and stories, which are
supplied even in schools, by music, by songs, by triumphal processions, by
royal meetings, by martial pictures, and by monuments.
Were it not for this continual activity in all departments of art, perpetuating
the ecclesiastical and patriotic intoxication and embitterment of the people,
the masses would long ere this have attained to true enlightenment.
But it is not only in Church matters and patriotic matters that art depraves;
it is art in our time that serves as the chief cause of the perversion of people
in the most important question of social life—in their sexual relations. We
nearly all know by our own experience, and those who are fathers and
mothers know in the case of their grown-up children also, what fearful
mental and physical suffering, what useless waste of strength, people suffer
merely as a consequence of dissoluteness in sexual desire.
Since the world began, since the Trojan war, which sprang from that same
sexual dissoluteness, down to and including the suicides and murders of
lovers described in almost every newspaper, a great proportion of the
sufferings of the human race have come from this source.
And what is art doing? All art, real and counterfeit, with very few
exceptions, is devoted to describing, depicting, and inflaming sexual love in
every shape and form. When one remembers all those novels and their lust-

kindling descriptions of love, from the most refined to the grossest, with
which the literature of our society overflows; if one only remembers all
those pictures and statues representing women’s naked bodies, and all sorts
of abominations which are reproduced in illustrations and advertisements; if
one only remembers all the filthy operas and operettas, songs and romances
with which our world teems, involuntarily it seems as if existing art had but
one definite aim—to disseminate vice as widely as possible.
Such, though not all, are the most direct consequences of that perversion of
art which has occurred in our society. So that, what in our society is called
art not only does not conduce to the progress of mankind, but, more than
almost anything else, hinders the attainment of goodness in our lives.
And therefore the question which involuntarily presents itself to every man
free from artistic activity and therefore not bound to existing art by self-
interest, the question asked by me at the beginning of this work: Is it just
that to what we call art, to a something belonging to but a small section of
society, should be offered up such sacrifices of human labour, of human
lives, and of goodness as are now being offered up? receives the natural
reply: No; it is unjust, and these things should not be! So also replies sound
sense and unperverted moral feeling. Not only should these things not be,
not only should no sacrifices be offered up to what among us is called art,
but, on the contrary, the efforts of those who wish to live rightly should be
directed towards the destruction of this art, for it is one of the most cruel of
the evils that harass our section of humanity. So that, were the question put:
Would it be preferable for our Christian world to be deprived of all that is
now esteemed to be art, and, together with the false, to lose all that is good
in it? I think that every reasonable and moral man would again decide the
question as Plato decided it for his Republic, and as all the Church Christian
and Mahommedan teachers of mankind decided it, i.e. would say, “Rather
let there be no art at all than continue the depraving art, or simulation of art,
which now exists.” Happily, no one has to face this question, and no one
need adopt either solution. All that man can do, and that we—the so-called
educated people, who are so placed that we have the possibility of
understanding the meaning of the phenomena of our life—can and should
do, is to understand the error we are involved in, and not harden our hearts
in it but seek for a way of escape.

CHAPTER XVIII

The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen was that
people of the upper classes, having ceased to believe in the Church teaching
(called Christian), did not resolve to accept true Christian teaching in its
real and fundamental principles of sonship to God and brotherhood to man,
but continued to live on without any belief, endeavouring to make up for
the absence of belief—some by hypocrisy, pretending still to believe in the
nonsense of the Church creeds; others by boldly asserting their disbelief;
others by refined agnosticism; and others, again, by returning to the Greek
worship of beauty, proclaiming egotism to be right, and elevating it to the
rank of a religious doctrine.
The cause of the malady was the non-acceptance of Christ’s teaching in its
real, i.e. its full, meaning. And the only cure for the illness lies in
acknowledging that teaching in its full meaning. And such acknowledgment
in our time is not only possible but inevitable. Already to-day a man,
standing on the height of the knowledge of our age, whether he be
nominally a Catholic or a Protestant, cannot say that he really believes in
the dogmas of the Church: in God being a Trinity, in Christ being God, in
the scheme of redemption, and so forth; nor can he satisfy himself by
proclaiming his unbelief or scepticism, nor by relapsing into the worship of
beauty and egotism. Above all, he can no longer say that we do not know
the real meaning of Christ’s teaching. That meaning has not only become
accessible to all men of our times, but the whole life of man to-day is
permeated by the spirit of that teaching, and, consciously or unconsciously,
is guided by it.
However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world may
define the destiny of man; whether they see it in human progress in
whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in a socialistic realm,
or in the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward to the

union of mankind under the guidance of one universal Church, or to the
federation of the world,—however various in form their definitions of the
destination of human life may be, all men in our times already admit that
the highest well-being attainable by men is to be reached by their union
with one another.
However people of our upper classes (feeling that their ascendency can only
be maintained as long as they separate themselves—the rich and learned—
from the labourers, the poor, and the unlearned) may seek to devise new
conceptions of life by which their privileges may be perpetuated,—now the
ideal of returning to antiquity, now mysticism, now Hellenism, now the cult
of the superior person (overman-ism),—they have, willingly or unwillingly,
to admit the truth which is elucidating itself from all sides, voluntarily and
involuntarily, namely, that our welfare lies only in the unification and the
brotherhood of man.
Unconsciously this truth is confirmed by the construction of means of
communication,—telegraphs, telephones, the press, and the ever-increasing
attainability of material well-being for everyone,—and consciously it is
affirmed by the destruction of superstitions which divide men, by the
diffusion of the truths of knowledge, and by the expression of the ideal of
the brotherhood of man in the best works of art of our time.
Art is a spiritual organ of human life which cannot be destroyed, and
therefore, notwithstanding all the efforts made by people of the upper
classes to conceal the religious ideal by which humanity lives, that ideal is
more and more clearly recognised by man, and even in our perverted
society is more and more often partially expressed by science and by art.
During the present century works of the higher kind of religious art have
appeared more and more frequently, both in literature and in painting,
permeated by a truly Christian spirit, as also works of the universal art of
common life, accessible to all. So that even art knows the true ideal of our
times, and tends towards it. On the one hand, the best works of art of our
times transmit religious feelings urging towards the union and the
brotherhood of man (such are the works of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoievsky;
and in painting, of Millet, Bastien Lepage, Jules Breton, L’Hermitte, and
others); on the other hand, they strive towards the transmission, not of
feelings which are natural to people of the upper classes only, but of such
feelings as may unite everyone without exception. There are as yet few such

works, but the need of them is already acknowledged. In recent times we
also meet more and more frequently with attempts at publications, pictures,
concerts, and theatres for the people. All this is still very far from
accomplishing what should be done, but already the direction in which
good art instinctively presses forward to regain the path natural to it can be
discerned.
The religious perception of our time—which consists in acknowledging that
the aim of life (both collective and individual) is the union of mankind—is
already so sufficiently distinct that people have now only to reject the false
theory of beauty, according to which enjoyment is considered to be the
purpose of art, and religious perception will naturally takes its place as the
guide of the art of our time.
And as soon as the religious perception, which already unconsciously
directs the life of man, is consciously acknowledged, then immediately and
naturally the division of art, into art for the lower and art for the upper
classes, will disappear. There will be one common, brotherly, universal art;
and first, that art will naturally be rejected which transmits feelings
incompatible with the religious perception of our time,—feelings which do
not unite, but divide men,—and then that insignificant, exclusive art will be
rejected to which an importance is now attached to which it has no right.
And as soon as this occurs, art will immediately cease to be, what it has
been in recent times: a means of making people coarser and more vicious,
and it will become, what it always used to be and should be, a means by
which humanity progresses towards unity and blessedness;
Strange as the comparison may sound, what has happened to the art of our
circle and time is what happens to a woman who sells her womanly
attractiveness, intended for maternity, for the pleasure of those who desire
such pleasures.
The art of our time and of our circle has become a prostitute. And this
comparison holds good even in minute details. Like her it is not limited to
certain times, like her it is always adorned, like her it is always saleable,
and like her it is enticing and ruinous.
A real work of art can only arise in the soul of an artist occasionally, as the
fruit of the life he has lived, just as a child is conceived by its mother. But

counterfeit art is produced by artisans and handicraftsmen continually, if
only consumers can be found.
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But
counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out.
The cause of the production of real art is the artist’s inner need to express a
feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause of sexual
conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of prostitution, is gain.
The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into the
intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife’s love is the birth of a new
man into life.
The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure
which never satisfies, and the weakening of man’s spiritual strength.
And this is what people of our day and of our circle should understand, in
order to avoid the filthy torrent of depraved and prostituted art with which
we are deluged.

CHAPTER XIX

People talk of the art of the future, meaning by “art of the future” some
especially refined, new art, which, as they imagine, will be developed out of
that exclusive art of one class which is now considered the highest art. But
no such new art of the future can or will be found. Our exclusive art, that of
the upper classes of Christendom, has found its way into a blind alley. The
direction in which it has been going leads nowhere. Having once let go of
that which is most essential for art (namely, the guidance given by religious
perception), that art has become ever more and more exclusive, and
therefore ever more and more perverted, until, finally, it has come to
nothing. The art of the future, that which is really coming, will not be a
development of present-day art, but will arise on completely other and new
foundations, having nothing in common with those by which our present art
of the upper classes is guided.
Art of the future, that is to say, such part of art as will be chosen from
among all the art diffused among mankind, will consist, not in transmitting
feelings accessible only to members of the rich classes, as is the case to-day,
but in transmitting such feelings as embody the highest religious perception
of our times. Only those productions will be considered art which transmit
feelings drawing men together in brotherly union, or such universal feelings
as can unite all men. Only such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved, and
diffused. But art transmitting feelings flowing from antiquated, worn-out
religious teaching,—Church art, patriotic art, voluptuous art, transmitting
feelings of superstitious fear, of pride, of vanity, of ecstatic admiration of
national heroes,—art exciting exclusive love of one’s own people, or
sensuality, will be considered bad, harmful art, and will be censured and
despised by public opinion. All the rest of art, transmitting feelings
accessible only to a section of people, will be considered unimportant, and
will be neither blamed nor praised. And the appraisement of art in general
will devolve, not, as is now the case, on a separate class of rich people, but

on the whole people; so that for a work to be esteemed good, and to be
approved of and diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few
people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it will have to
satisfy the demands of all those great masses of people who are situated in
the natural conditions of laborious life.
And the artists producing art will also not be, as now, merely a few people
selected from a small section of the nation, members of the upper classes or
their hangers-on, but will consist of all those gifted members of the whole
people who prove capable of, and are inclined towards, artistic activity.
Artistic activity will then be accessible to all men. It will become accessible
to the whole people, because, in the first place, in the art of the future, not
only will that complex technique, which deforms the productions of the art
of to-day and requires so great an effort and expenditure of time, not be
demanded, but, on the contrary, the demand will be for clearness, simplicity,
and brevity—conditions mastered not by mechanical exercises but by the
education of taste. And secondly, artistic activity will become accessible to
all men of the people because, instead of the present professional schools
which only some can enter, all will learn music and depictive art (singing
and drawing) equally with letters in the elementary schools, and in such a
way that every man, having received the first principles of drawing and
music, and feeling a capacity for, and a call to, one or other of the arts, will
be able to perfect himself in it.
People think that if there are no special art-schools the technique of art will
deteriorate. Undoubtedly, if by technique we understand those
complications of art which are now considered an excellence, it will
deteriorate; but if by technique is understood clearness, beauty, simplicity,
and compression in works of art, then, even if the elements of drawing and
music were not to be taught in the national schools, the technique will not
only not deteriorate, but, as is shown by all peasant art, will be a hundred
times better. It will be improved, because all the artists of genius now
hidden among the masses will become producers of art and will give
models of excellence, which (as has always been the case) will be the best
schools of technique for their successors. For every true artist, even now,
learns his technique, chiefly, not in the schools but in life, from the
examples of the great masters; then—when the producers of art will be the
best artists of the whole nation, and there will be more such examples, and

they will be more accessible—such part of the school training as the future
artist will lose will be a hundredfold compensated for by the training he will
receive from the numerous examples of good art diffused in society.
Such will be one difference between present and future art. Another
difference will be that art will not be produced by professional artists
receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else besides their
art. The art of the future will be produced by all the members of the
community who feel the need of such activity, but they will occupy
themselves with art only when they feel such need.
In our society people think that an artist will work better, and produce more,
if he has a secured maintenance. And this opinion would serve once more to
show clearly, were such demonstration still needed, that what among us is
considered art is not art, but only its counterfeit. It is quite true that for the
production of boots or loaves division of labour is very advantageous, and
that the bootmaker or baker who need not prepare his own dinner or fetch
his own fuel will make more boots or loaves than if he had to busy himself
about these matters. But art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of
feeling the artist has experienced. And sound feeling can only be
engendered in a man when he is living on all its sides the life natural and
proper to mankind. And therefore security of maintenance is a condition
most harmful to an artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from
the condition natural to all men,—that of struggle with nature for the
maintenance of both his own life and that of others,—and thus deprives him
of opportunity and possibility to experience the most important and natural
feelings of man. There is no position more injurious to an artist’s
productiveness than that position of complete security and luxury in which
artists usually live in our society.
The artist of the future will live the common life of man, earning his
subsistence by some kind of labour. The fruits of that highest spiritual
strength which passes through him he will try to share with the greatest
possible number of people, for in such transmission to others of the feelings
that have arisen in him he will find his happiness and his reward. The artist
of the future will be unable to understand how an artist, whose chief delight
is in the wide diffusion of his works, could give them only in exchange for a
certain payment.

Until the dealers are driven out, the temple of art will not be a temple. But
the art of the future will drive them out.
And therefore the subject-matter of the art of the future, as I imagine it to
myself, will be totally unlike that of to-day. It will consist, not in the
expression of exclusive feelings: pride, spleen, satiety, and all possible
forms of voluptuousness, available and interesting only to people who, by
force, have freed themselves from the labour natural to human beings; but it
will consist in the expression of feelings experienced by a man living the
life natural to all men and flowing from the religious perception of our
times, or of such feelings as are open to all men without exception.
To people of our circle who do not know, and cannot or will not understand
the feelings which will form the subject-matter of the art of the future, such
subject-matter appears very poor in comparison with those subtleties of
exclusive art with which they are now occupied. “What is there fresh to be
said in the sphere of the Christian feeling of love of one’s fellow-man? The
feelings common to everyone are so insignificant and monotonous,” think
they. And yet, in our time, the really fresh feelings can only be religious,
Christian feelings, and such as are open, accessible, to all. The feelings
flowing from the religious perception of our times, Christian feelings, are
infinitely new and varied, only not in the sense some people imagine,—not
that they can be evoked by the depiction of Christ and of Gospel episodes,
or by repeating in new forms the Christian truths of unity, brotherhood,
equality, and love,—but in that all the oldest, commonest, and most
hackneyed phenomena of life evoke the newest, most unexpected and
touching emotions as soon as a man regards them from the Christian point
of view.
What can be older than the relations between married couples, of parents to
children, of children to parents; the relations of men to their fellow-
countrymen and to foreigners, to an invasion, to defence, to property, to the
land, or to animals? But as soon as a man regards these matters from the
Christian point of view, endlessly varied, fresh, complex, and strong
emotions immediately arise.
And, in the same way, that realm of subject-matter for the art of the future
which relates to the simplest feelings of common life open to all will not be
narrowed but widened. In our former art only the expression of feelings

natural to people of a certain exceptional position was considered worthy of
being transmitted by art, and even then only on condition that these feelings
were transmitted in a most refined manner, incomprehensible to the
majority of men; all the immense realm of folk-art, and children’s art—
jests, proverbs, riddles, songs, dances, children’s games, and mimicry—was
not esteemed a domain worthy of art.
The artist of the future will understand that to compose a fairy-tale, a little
song which will touch, a lullaby or a riddle which will entertain, a jest
which will amuse, or to draw a sketch which will delight dozens of
generations or millions of children and adults, is incomparably more
important and more fruitful than to compose a novel or a symphony, or
paint a picture which will divert some members of the wealthy classes for a
short time, and then be for ever forgotten. The region of this art of the
simple feelings accessible to all is enormous, and it is as yet almost
untouched.
The art of the future, therefore, will not be poorer, but infinitely richer in
subject-matter. And the form of the art of the future will also not be inferior
to the present forms of art, but infinitely superior to them. Superior, not in
the sense of having a refined and complex technique, but in the sense of the
capacity briefly, simply, and clearly to transmit, without any superfluities,
the feeling which the artist has experienced and wishes to transmit.
I remember once speaking to a famous astronomer who had given public
lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, and saying
it would be a good thing if, with his knowledge and masterly delivery, he
would give a lecture merely on the formation and movements of the earth,
for certainly there were many people at his lecture on the spectrum analysis
of the stars of the Milky Way, especially among the women, who did not
well know why night follows day and summer follows winter. The wise
astronomer smiled as he answered, “Yes, it would be a good thing, but it
would be very difficult. To lecture on the spectrum analysis of the Milky
Way is far easier.”
And so it is in art. To write a rhymed poem dealing with the times of
Cleopatra, or paint a picture of Nero burning Rome, or compose a
symphony in the manner of Brahms or Richard Strauss, or an opera like
Wagner’s, is far easier than to tell a simple story without any unnecessary

details, yet so that it should transmit the feelings of the narrator, or to draw
a pencil-sketch which should touch or amuse the beholder, or to compose
four bars of clear and simple melody, without any accompaniment, which
should convey an impression and be remembered by those who hear it.
“It is impossible for us, with our culture, to return to a primitive state,” say
the artists of our time. “It is impossible for us now to write such stories as
that of Joseph or the Odyssey, to produce such statues as the Venus of Milo,
or to compose such music as the folk-songs.”
And indeed, for the artists of our society and day, it is impossible, but not
for the future artist, who will be free from all the perversion of technical
improvements hiding the absence of subject-matter, and who, not being a
professional artist and receiving no payment for his activity, will only
produce art when he feels impelled to do so by an irresistible inner impulse.
The art of the future will thus be completely distinct, both in subject-matter
and in form, from what is now called art. The only subject-matter of the art
of the future will be either feelings drawing men towards union, or such as
already unite them; and the forms of art will be such as will be open to
everyone. And therefore, the ideal of excellence in the future will not be the
exclusiveness of feeling, accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its
universality. And not bulkiness, obscurity, and complexity of form, as is
now esteemed, but, on the contrary, brevity, clearness, and simplicity of
expression. Only when art has attained to that, will art neither divert nor
deprave men as it does now, calling on them to expend their best strength
on it, but be what it should be—a vehicle wherewith to transmit religious,
Christian perception from the realm of reason and intellect into that of
feeling, and really drawing people in actual life nearer to that perfection and
unity indicated to them by their religious perception.

CHAPTER XX
THE CONCLUSION

I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has
occupied me for 15 years, on a subject near to me—that of art. By saying
that this subject has occupied me for 15 years, I do not mean that I have
been writing this book 15 years, but only that I began to write on art 15
years ago, thinking that when once I undertook the task I should be able to
accomplish it without a break. It proved, however, that my views on the
matter then were so far from clear that I could not arrange them in a way
that satisfied me. From that time I have never ceased to think on the subject,
and I have recommenced to write on it 6 or 7 times; but each time, after
writing a considerable part of it, I have found myself unable to bring the
work to a satisfactory conclusion, and have had to put it aside. Now I have
finished it; and however badly I may have performed the task, my hope is
that my fundamental thought as to the false direction the art of our society
has taken and is following, as to the reasons of this, and as to the real
destination of art, is correct, and that therefore my work will not be without
avail. But that this should come to pass, and that art should really abandon
its false path and take the new direction, it is necessary that another equally
important human spiritual activity,—science,—in intimate dependence on
which art always rests, should abandon the false path which it too, like art,
is following.
Science and art are as closely bound together as the lungs and the heart, so
that if one organ is vitiated the other cannot act rightly.
True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and
such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most
important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the
region of emotion. Therefore, if the path chosen by science be false so also
will be the path taken by art. Science and art are like a certain kind of barge

with kedge-anchors which used to ply on our rivers. Science, like the boats
which took the anchors up-stream and made them secure, gives direction to
the forward movement; while art, like the windlass worked on the barge to
draw it towards the anchor, causes the actual progression. And thus a false
activity of science inevitably causes a correspondingly false activity of art.
As art in general is the transmission of every kind of feeling, but in the
limited sense of the word we only call that art which transmits feelings
acknowledged by us to be important, so also science in general is the
transmission of all possible knowledge; but in the limited sense of the word
we call science that which transmits knowledge acknowledged by us to be
important.
And the degree of importance, both of the feelings transmitted by art and of
the information transmitted by science, is decided by the religious
perception of the given time and society, i.e. by the common understanding
of the purpose of their lives possessed by the people of that time or society.
That which most of all contributes to the fulfilment of that purpose will be
studied most; that which contributes less will be studied less; that which
does not contribute at all to the fulfilment of the purpose of human life will
be entirely neglected, or, if studied, such study will not be accounted
science. So it always has been, and so it should be now; for such is the
nature of human knowledge and of human life. But the science of the upper
classes of our time, which not only does not acknowledge any religion, but
considers every religion to be mere superstition, could not and cannot make
such distinctions.
Scientists of our day affirm that they study everything impartially; but as
everything is too much (is in fact an infinite number of objects), and as it is
impossible to study all alike, this is only said in the theory, while in practice
not everything is studied, and study is applied far from impartially, only that
being studied which, on the one hand, is most wanted by, and on the other
hand, is pleasantest to those people who occupy themselves with science.
And what the people, belonging to the upper classes, who are occupying
themselves with science most want is the maintenance of the system under
which those classes retain their privileges; and what is pleasantest are such
things as satisfy idle curiosity, do not demand great mental efforts, and can
be practically applied.

And therefore one side of science, including theology and philosophy
adapted to the existing order, as also history and political economy of the
same sort, are chiefly occupied in proving that the existing order is the very
one which ought to exist; that it has come into existence and continues to
exist by the operation of immutable laws not amenable to human will, and
that all efforts to change it are therefore harmful and wrong. The other part,
experimental science,—including mathematics, astronomy, chemistry,
physics, botany, and all the natural sciences,—is exclusively occupied with
things that have no direct relation to human life: with what is curious, and
with things of which practical application advantageous to people of the
upper classes can be made. And to justify that selection of objects of study
which (in conformity to their own position) the men of science of our times
have made, they have devised a theory of science for science’s sake, quite
similar to the theory of art for art’s sake.
As by the theory of art for art’s sake it appears that occupation with all
those things that please us—is art, so, by the theory of science for science’s
sake, the study of that which interests us—is science.
So that one side of science, instead of studying how people should live in
order to fulfil their mission in life, demonstrates the righteousness and
immutability of the bad and false arrangements of life which exist around
us; while the other part, experimental science, occupies itself with questions
of simple curiosity or with technical improvements.
The first of these divisions of science is harmful, not only because it
confuses people’s perceptions and gives false decisions, but also because it
exists, and occupies the ground which should belong to true science. It does
this harm, that each man, in order to approach the study of the most
important questions of life, must first refute these erections of lies which
have during ages been piled around each of the most essential questions of
human life, and which are propped up by all the strength of human
ingenuity.
The second division—the one of which modern science is so particularly
proud, and which is considered by many people to be the only real science
—is harmful in that it diverts attention from the really important subjects to
insignificant subjects, and is also directly harmful in that, under the evil
system of society which the first division of science justifies and supports, a

great part of the technical gains of science are turned not to the advantage
but to the injury of mankind.
Indeed it is only to those who are devoting their lives to such study that it
seems as if all the inventions which are made in the sphere of natural
science were very important and useful things. And to these people it seems
so only when they do not look around them and do not see what is really
important. They only need tear themselves away from the psychological
microscope under which they examine the objects of their study, and look
about them, in order to see how insignificant is all that has afforded them
such naïve pride, all that knowledge not only of geometry of n-dimensions,
spectrum analysis of the Milky Way, the form of atoms, dimensions of
human skulls of the Stone Age, and similar trifles, but even our knowledge
of micro-organisms, X-rays, etc., in comparison with such knowledge as we
have thrown aside and handed over to the perversions of the professors of
theology, jurisprudence, political economy, financial science, etc. We need
only look around us to perceive that the activity proper to real science is not
the study of whatever happens to interest us, but the study of how man’s life
should be established,—the study of those questions of religion, morality,
and social life, without the solution of which all our knowledge of nature
will be harmful or insignificant.
We are highly delighted and very proud that our science renders it possible
to utilise the energy of a waterfall and make it work in factories, or that we
have pierced tunnels through mountains, and so forth. But the pity of it is
that we make the force of the waterfall labour, not for the benefit of the
workmen, but to enrich capitalists who produce articles of luxury or
weapons of man-destroying war. The same dynamite with which we blast
the mountains to pierce tunnels, we use for wars, from which latter we not
only do not intend to abstain, but which we consider inevitable, and for
which we unceasingly prepare.
If we are now able to inoculate preventatively with diphtheritic microbes, to
find a needle in a body by means of X-rays, to straighten a hunched-back,
cure syphilis, and perform wonderful operations, we should not be proud of
these acquisitions either (even were they all established beyond dispute) if
we fully understood the true purpose of real science. If but one-tenth of the
efforts now spent on objects of pure curiosity or of merely practical
application were expended on real science organising the life of man, more

than half the people now sick would not have the illnesses from which a
small minority of them now get cured in hospitals. There would be no poor-
blooded and deformed children growing up in factories, no death-rates, as
now, of 50 per cent. among children, no deterioration of whole generations,
no prostitution, no syphilis, and no murdering of hundreds of thousands in
wars, nor those horrors of folly and of misery which our present science
considers a necessary condition of human life.
We have so perverted the conception of science that it seems strange to men
of our day to allude to sciences which should prevent the mortality of
children, prostitution, syphilis, the deterioration of whole generations, and
the wholesale murder of men. It seems to us that science is only then real
science when a man in a laboratory pours liquids from one jar into another,
or analyses the spectrum, or cuts up frogs and porpoises, or weaves in a
specialised, scientific jargon an obscure network of conventional phrases—
theological, philosophical, historical, juridical, or politico-economical—
semi-intelligible to the man himself, and intended to demonstrate that what
now is, is what should be.
But science, true science,—such science as would really deserve the respect
which is now claimed by the followers of one (the least important) part of
science,—is not at all such as this: real science lies in knowing what we
should and what we should not believe, in knowing how the associated life
of man should and should not be constituted; how to treat sexual relations,
how to educate children, how to use the land, how to cultivate it oneself
without oppressing other people, how to treat foreigners, how to treat
animals, and much more that is important for the life of man.
Such has true science ever been and such it should be. And such science is
springing up in our times; but, on the one hand, such true science is denied
and refuted by all those scientific people who defend the existing order of
society, and, on the other hand, it is considered empty, unnecessary,
unscientific science by those who are engrossed in experimental science.
For instance, books and sermons appear, demonstrating the antiquatedness
and absurdity of Church dogmas, as well as the necessity of establishing a
reasonable religious perception suitable to our times, and all the theology
that is considered to be real science is only engaged in refuting these works
and in exercising human intelligence again and again to find support and

justification for superstitions long since out-lived, and which have now
become quite meaningless. Or a sermon appears showing that land should
not be an object of private possession, and that the institution of private
property in land is a chief cause of the poverty of the masses. Apparently
science, real science, should welcome such a sermon and draw further
deductions from this position. But the science of our times does nothing of
the kind: on the contrary, political economy demonstrates the opposite
position, namely, that landed property, like every other form of property,
must be more and more concentrated in the hands of a small number of
owners. Again, in the same way, one would suppose it to be the business of
real science to demonstrate the irrationality, unprofitableness, and
immorality of war and of executions; or the inhumanity and harmfulness of
prostitution; or the absurdity, harmfulness, and immorality of using
narcotics or of eating animals; or the irrationality, harmfulness, and
antiquatedness of patriotism. And such works exist, but are all considered
unscientific; while works to prove that all these things ought to continue,
and works intended to satisfy an idle thirst for knowledge lacking any
relation to human life, are considered to be scientific.
The deviation of the science of our time from its true purpose is strikingly
illustrated by those ideals which are put forward by some scientists, and are
not denied, but admitted, by the majority of scientific men.
These ideals are expressed not only in stupid, fashionable books, describing
the world as it will be in 1000 or 3000 years’ time, but also by sociologists
who consider themselves serious men of science. These ideals are that food
instead of being obtained from the land by agriculture, will be prepared in
laboratories by chemical means, and that human labour will be almost
entirely superseded by the utilisation of natural forces.
Man will not, as now, eat an egg laid by a hen he has kept, or bread grown
on his field, or an apple from a tree he has reared and which has blossomed
and matured in his sight; but he will eat tasty, nutritious, food which will be
prepared in laboratories by the conjoint labour of many people in which he
will take a small part. Man will hardly need to labour, so that all men will
be able to yield to idleness as the upper, ruling classes now yield to it.
Nothing shows more plainly than these ideals to what a degree the science
of our times has deviated from the true path.

The great majority of men in our times lack good and sufficient food (as
well as dwellings and clothes and all the first necessaries of life). And this
great majority of men is compelled, to the injury of its well-being, to labour
continually beyond its strength. Both these evils can easily be removed by
abolishing mutual strife, luxury, and the unrighteous distribution of wealth,
in a word by the abolition of a false and harmful order and the
establishment of a reasonable, human manner of life. But science considers
the existing order of things to be as immutable as the movements of the
planets, and therefore assumes that the purpose of science is—not to
elucidate the falseness of this order and to arrange a new, reasonable way of
life—but, under the existing order of things, to feed everybody and enable
all to be as idle as the ruling classes, who live a depraved life, now are.
And, meanwhile, it is forgotten that nourishment with corn, vegetables, and
fruit raised from the soil by one’s own labour is the pleasantest, healthiest,
easiest, and most natural nourishment, and that the work of using one’s
muscles is as necessary a condition of life as is the oxidation of the blood
by breathing.
To invent means whereby people might, while continuing our false division
of property and labour, be well nourished by means of chemically-prepared
food, and might make the forces of nature work for them, is like inventing
means to pump oxygen into the lungs of a man kept in a closed chamber the
air of which is bad, when all that is needed is to cease to confine the man in
the closed chamber.
In the vegetable and animal kingdoms a laboratory for the production of
food has been arranged, such as can be surpassed by no professors, and to
enjoy the fruits of this laboratory, and to participate in it, man has only to
yield to that ever joyful impulse to labour, without which man’s life is a
torment. And lo and behold, the scientists of our times, instead of
employing all their strength to abolish whatever hinders man from utilising
the good things prepared for him, acknowledge the conditions under which
man is deprived of these blessings to be unalterable, and instead of
arranging the life of man so that he might work joyfully and be fed from the
soil, they devise methods which will cause him to become an artificial
abortion. It is like not helping a man out of confinement into the fresh air,
but devising means, instead, to pump into him the necessary quantity of

oxygen and arranging so that he may live in a stifling cellar instead of
living at home.
Such false ideals could not exist if science were not on a false path.
And yet the feelings transmitted by art grow up on the bases supplied by
science.
But what feelings can such misdirected science evoke? One side of this
science evokes antiquated feelings, which humanity has used up, and
which, in our times, are bad and exclusive. The other side, occupied with
the study of subjects unrelated to the conduct of human life, by its very
nature cannot serve as a basis for art.
So that art in our times, to be art, must either open up its own road
independently of science, or must take direction from the unrecognised
science which is denounced by the orthodox section of science. And this is
what art, when it even partially fulfils its mission, is doing.
It is to be hoped that the work I have tried to perform concerning art will be
performed also for science—that the falseness of the theory of science for
science’s sake will be demonstrated; that the necessity of acknowledging
Christian teaching in its true meaning will be clearly shown, that on the
basis of that teaching a reappraisement will be made of the knowledge we
possess, and of which we are so proud; that the secondariness and
insignificance of experimental science, and the primacy and importance of
religious, moral, and social knowledge will be established; and that such
knowledge will not, as now, be left to the guidance of the upper classes
only, but will form a chief interest of all free, truth-loving men, such as
those who, not in agreement with the upper classes but in their despite, have
always forwarded the real science of life.
Astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological science, as also technical
and medical science, will be studied only in so far as they can help to free
mankind from religious, juridical, or social deceptions, or can serve to
promote the well-being of all men, and not of any single class.
Only then will science cease to be what it is now—on the one hand a
system of sophistries, needed for the maintenance of the existing worn-out
order of society, and, on the other hand, a shapeless mass of miscellaneous
knowledge, for the most part good for little or nothing—and become a

shapely and organic whole, having a definite and reasonable purpose
comprehensible to all men, namely, the purpose of bringing to the
consciousness of men the truths that flow from the religious perception of
our times.
And only then will art, which is always dependent on science, be what it
might and should be, an organ coequally important with science for the life
and progress of mankind.
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is
an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into
feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the
consciousness of the brotherhood of man—we know that the well-being of
man lies in union with his fellow-men. True science should indicate the
various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform
this perception into feeling.
The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by
science guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man which is now
obtained by external means—by our law-courts, police, charitable
institutions, factory inspection, etc.—should be obtained by man’s free and
joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside.
And it is only art that can accomplish this.
All that now, independently of the fear of violence and punishment, makes
the social life of man possible (and already now this is an enormous part of
the order of our lives)—all this has been brought about by art. If by art it
has been inculcated how people should treat religious objects, their parents,
their children, their wives, their relations, strangers, foreigners; how to
conduct themselves to their elders, their superiors, to those who suffer, to
their enemies, and to animals; and if this has been obeyed through
generations by millions of people, not only unenforced by any violence, but
so that the force of such customs can be shaken in no way but by means of
art: then, by the same art, other customs, more in accord with the religious
perception of our time, may be evoked. If art has been able to convey the
sentiment of reverence for images, for the eucharist, and for the king’s
person; of shame at betraying a comrade, devotion to a flag, the necessity of
revenge for an insult, the need to sacrifice one’s labour for the erection and
adornment of churches, the duty of defending one’s honour or the glory of

one’s native land—then that same art can also evoke reverence for the
dignity of every man and for the life of every animal; can make men
ashamed of luxury, of violence, of revenge, or of using for their pleasure
that of which others are in need; can compel people freely, gladly, and
without noticing it, to sacrifice themselves in the service of man.
The task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood and
love of one’s neighbour, now attained only by the best members of the
society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men. By evoking, under
imaginary conditions, the feeling of brotherhood and love, religious art will
train men to experience those same feelings under similar circumstances in
actual life; it will lay in the souls of men the rails along which the actions of
those whom art thus educates will naturally pass. And universal art, by
uniting the most different people in one common feeling, by destroying
separation, will educate people to union, will show them, not by reason but
by life itself, the joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds set by
life.
The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the
realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in being united
together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom
of God, i.e. of love, which we all recognise to be the highest aim of human
life.
Possibly, in the future, science may reveal to art yet newer and higher
ideals, which art may realise; but, in our time, the destiny of art is clear and
definite. The task for Christian art is to establish brotherly union among
men.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I.

This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book Divagations:—

LE PHÉNOMÈNE FUTUR.

Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être partir avec
les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée des couchants déteignent dans
une rivière dormant à l’horizon submergé de rayons et d’eau. Les arbres
s’ennuient, et, sous leur feuillage blanchi (de la poussière du temps plutôt
que celle des chemins) monte la maison en toile de Montreur de choses
Passées: maint réverbère attend le crépuscule et ravive les visages d’une
malheureuse foule, vaincue par la maladie immortelle et le péché des
siècles, d’hommes près de leurs chétives complices enceintes des fruits
misérables avec lesquels périra la terre. Dans le silence inquiet de tous les
yeux suppliant là-bas le soleil qui, sous l’eau, s’enfonce avec le désespoir
d’un cri, voici le simple boniment: “Nulle enseigne ne vous régale du
spectacle intérieur, car il n’est pas maintenant un peintre capable d’en
donner une ombre triste. J’apporte, vivante (et préservée à travers les ans
par la science souveraine) une Femme d’autrefois. Quelque folie, originelle
et naïve, une extase d’or, je ne sais quoi! par elle nommé sa chevelure, se
ploie avec la grâce des étoffes autour d’un visage qu’ éclaire la nudité
sanglante de ses lèvres. A la place du vêtement vain, elle a un corps; et les
yeux, semblables aux pierres rares! ne valent pas ce regard qui sort de sa
chair heureuse: des seins levés comme s’ils étaient pleins d’un lait éternel,
la pointe vers le ciel, les jambes lisses qui gardent le sel de la mer
première.” Se rappelant leurs pauvres épouses, chauves, morbides et pleines
d’horreur, les maris se pressent: elles aussi par curiosité, mélancoliques,
veulent voir.
Quand tous auront contemplé la noble créature, vestige de quelque époque
déjà maudite, les uns indifférents, car ils n’auront pas eu la force de
comprendre, mais d’autres navrés et la paupière humide de larmes
résignées, se regarderont; tandis que les poètes de ces temps, sentant se
rallumer leur yeux éteints, s’achemineront vers leur lampe, le cerveau ivre
un instant d’une gloire confuse, hantés du Rythme et dans l’oubli d’exister à
une époque qui survit à la beauté.

THE FUTURE PHENOMENON—by Mallarmé

A pale sky, above the world that is ending through decrepitude, going
perhaps to pass away with the clouds: shreds of worn-out purple of the
sunsets wash off their colour in a river sleeping on the horizon,
submerged with rays and water. The trees are weary and, beneath their
foliage, whitened (by the dust of time rather than that of the roads),
rises the canvas house of “Showman of things Past.” Many a lamp
awaits the gloaming and brightens the faces of a miserable crowd
vanquished by the immortal illness and the sin of ages, of men by the
sides of their puny accomplices pregnant with the miserable fruit with
which the world will perish. In the anxious silence of all the eyes
supplicating the sun there, which sinks under the water with the
desperation of a cry, this is the plain announcement: “No sign-board
now regales you with the spectacle that is inside, for there is no painter
now capable of giving even a sad shadow of it. I bring living (and
preserved by sovereign science through the years) a Woman of other
days. Some kind of folly, naïve and original, an ecstasy of gold, I know
not what, by her called her hair, clings with the grace of some material
round a face brightened by the blood-red nudity of her lips. In place of
vain clothing, she has a body; and her eyes, resembling precious stones!
are not worth that look, which comes from her happy flesh: breasts
raised as if full of eternal milk, the points towards the sky; the smooth
legs, that keep the salt of the first sea.” Remembering their poor
spouses, bald, morbid, and full of horrors, the husbands press forward:
the women too, from curiosity, gloomily wish to see.
When all shall have contemplated the noble creature, vestige of some
epoch already damned, some indifferently, for they will not have had
strength to understand, but others broken-hearted and with eyelids wet
with tears of resignation, will look at each other; while the poets of
those times, feeling their dim eyes rekindled, will make their way
towards their lamp, their brain for an instant drunk with confused glory,
haunted by Rhythm and forgetful that they exist at an epoch which has
survived beauty.

APPENDIX II.[92]

No. 1.

The following verses are by Vielé-Griffin, from page 28 of a volume of his
Poems:—

OISEAU BLEU COULEUR DU TEMPS.

1.

Sait-tu l’oubli
D’un vain doux rêve,
Oiseau moqueur
De la forêt?
Le jour pâlit,
La nuit se lève,
Et dans mon cœur
L’ombre a pleuré;

2.

O chante-moi
Ta folle gamme,
Car j’ai dormi
Ce jour durant;
Le lâche emoi
Où fut mon âme
Sanglote ennui
Le jour mourant...

3.

Sais-tu le chant
De sa parole
Et de sa voix,
Toi qui redis
Dans le couchant
Ton air frivole
Comme autrefois
Sous les midis?

4.

O chante alors

La mélodie
De son amour,
Mon fol espoir,
Parmi les ors
Et l’incendie
Du vain doux jour
Qui meurt ce soir.

Francis Vielé-Griffin.

BLUE BIRD.

1.

Canst thou forget,
In dreams so vain,
Oh, mocking bird
Of forest deep?
The day doth set,
Night comes again,
My heart has heard
The shadows weep;

2.

Thy tones let flow
In maddening scale,
For I have slept
The livelong day;
Emotions low
In me now wail,
My soul they’ve kept:
Light dies away ...

3.

That music sweet,
Ah, do you know
Her voice and speech?
Your airs so light
You who repeat
In sunset’s glow,
As you sang, each,
At noonday’s height.

4.

Of my desire,

y ,
My hope so bold,
Her love—up, sing,
Sing ’neath this light,
This flaming fire,
And all the gold
The eve doth bring
Ere comes the night.

No. 2.

And here are some verses by the esteemed young poet Verhaeren, which I
also take from page 28 of his Works:—

ATTIRANCES.

Lointainement, et si étrangement pareils,
De grands masques d’argent que la brume recule,
Vaguent, au jour tombant, autour des vieux soleils.

Les doux lointaines!—et comme, au fond du crépuscule,
Ils nous fixent le cœur, immensément le cœur,
Avec les yeux défunts de leur visage d’âme.

C’est toujours du silence, à moins, dans la pâleur
Du soir, un jet de feu soudain, un cri de flamme,
Un départ de lumière inattendu vers Dieu.

On se laisse charmer et troubler de mystère,
Et l’on dirait des morts qui taisent un adieu
Trop mystique, pour être écouté par la terre!

Sont-ils le souvenir matériel et clair
Des éphèbes chrétiens couchés aux catacombes
Parmi les lys? Sont-ils leur regard et leur chair?

Ou seul, ce qui survit de merveilleux aux tombes
De ceux qui sont partis, vers leurs rêves, un soir,
Conquérir la folie à l’assaut des nuées?

Lointainement, combien nous les sentons vouloir
Un peu d’amour pour leurs œuvres destituées,
Pour leur errance et leur tristesse aux horizons.

Toujours! aux horizons du cœur et des pensées,
Alors que les vieux soirs éclatent en blasons
Soudains, pour les gloires noires et angoissées.

Émile Verhaeren,
Poèmes.

ATTRACTIONS.

Large masks of silver, by mists drawn away,
So strangely alike, yet so far apart,
Float round the old suns when faileth the day.

They transfix our heart, so immensely our heart,
Those distances mild, in the twilight deep,
Looking out of dead faces with their spirit eyes.

All around is now silence, except when there leap
In the pallor of evening, with fiery cries,
Some fountains of flame that God-ward do fly.

Mysterious trouble and charms us enfold.
You might think that the dead spoke a silent good-bye,
Oh! too mystical far on earth to be told!

Are they the memories, material and bright,
Of the Christian youths that in catacombs sleep
’Mid the lilies? Are they their flesh or their sight?

Or the marvel alone that survives, in the deep,
Of those that, one night, returned to their dream
Of conquering folly by assaulting the skies?

For their destitute works—we feel it seems,
For a little love their longing cries
From horizons far—for their errings and pain.

In horizons ever of heart and thought,
While the evenings old in bright blaze wane
Suddenly, for black glories anguish fraught.

No. 3.

And the following is a poem by Moréas, evidently an admirer of Greek
beauty. It is from page 28 of a volume of his Poems:—

ENONE AU CLAIR VISAGE.

Enone, j’avais cru qu’en aimant ta beauté
Où l’âme avec le corps trouvent leur unité,
J’allais, m’affermissant et le cœur et l’esprit,
Monter jusqu’à cela qui jamais ne périt,
N’ayant été crée, qui n’est froideur ou feu,
Qui n’est beau quelque part et laid en autre lieu;
Et me flattais encor’ d’une belle harmonie
Que j’eusse composé du meilleur et du pire,
Ainsi que le chanteur qui chérit Polimnie,
En accordant le grave avec l’aigu, retire
Un son bien élevé sur les nerfs de sa lyre.
Mais mon courage, hélas! se pâmant comme mort,
M’enseigna que le trait qui m’avait fait amant
Ne fut pas de cet arc que courbe sans effort
La Vénus qui naquit du mâle seulement,
Mais que j’avais souffert cette Vénus dernière,
Qui a le cœur couard, né d’une faible mère.
Et pourtant, ce mauvais garçon, chasseur habile,
Qui charge son carquois de sagette subtile,
Qui secoue en riant sa torche, pour un jour,
Qui ne pose jamais que sur de tendres fleurs,
C’est sur un teint charmant qu’il essuie les pleurs,
Et c’est encore un Dieu, Enone, cet Amour.
Mais, laisse, les oiseaux du printemps sont partis,
Et je vois les rayons du soleil amortis.
Enone, ma douleur, harmonieux visage,
Superbe humilité, doux honnête langage,
Hier me remirant dans cet étang glacé
Qui au bout du jardin se couvre de feuillage,
Sur ma face je vis que les jours ont passé.

Jean Moréas.

ENONE.

Enone, in loving thy beauty, I thought,
Where the soul and the body to union are brought,
That mounting by steadying my heart and my mind,
In that which can’t perish, myself I should find.
For it ne’er was created, is not ugly and fair;
Is not coldness in one part, while on fire it is there.
Yes, I flattered myself that a harmony fine
I’d succeed to compose of the worst and the best,
Like the bard who adores Polyhymnia divine,
And mingling sounds different from the nerves of his lyre,
From the grave and the smart draws melodies higher.
But, alas! my courage, so faint and nigh spent,
The dart that has struck me proves without fail
Not to be from that bow which is easily bent
By the Venus that’s born alone of the male.
No, ’twas that other Venus that caused me to smart,
Born of frail mother with cowardly heart.
And yet that naughty lad, that little hunter bold,
Who laughs and shakes his flowery torch just for a day,
Who never rests but upon tender flowers and gay,
On sweetest skin who dries the tears his eyes that fill,
Yet oh, Enone mine, a God’s that Cupid still.
Let it pass; for the birds of the Spring are away,
And dying I see the sun’s lingering ray.
Enone, my sorrow, oh, harmonious face,
Humility grand, words of virtue and grace,
I looked yestere’en in the pond frozen fast,
Strewn with leaves at the end of the garden’s fair space,
And I read in my face that those days are now past.

No. 4.

And this is also from page 28 of a thick book, full of similar Poems, by M.
Montesquiou.

BERCEUSE D’OMBRE.

Des formes, des formes, des formes
Blanche, bleue, et rose, et d’or
Descendront du haut des ormes
Sur l’enfant qui se rendort.
Des formes!

Des plumes, des plumes, des plumes
Pour composer un doux nid.
Midi sonne: les enclumes
Cessent; la rumeur finit ...
Des plumes!

Des roses, des roses, des roses
Pour embaumer son sommeil,
Vos pétales sont moroses
Près du sourire vermeil.
O roses!

Des ailes, des ailes, des ailes
Pour bourdonner à son front.
Abeilles et demoiselles,
Des rythmes qui berceront.
Des ailes!

Des branches, des branches, des branches
Pour tresser un pavillon,
Par où des clartés moins franches
Descendront sur l’oisillon.
Des branches!

Des songes, des songes, des songes
Dans ses pensers entr’ ouverts
Glissez un peu de mensonges
A voir le vie au travers
Des songes!

Des fées, des fées, des fées,
Pour filer leurs écheveaux
D i g d b ffé

Des mirages, de bouffées
Dans tous ces petits cerveaux.
Des fées.

Des anges, des anges, des anges
Pour emporter dans l’éther
Les petits enfants étranges
Qui ne veulent pas rester ...
Nos anges!

Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac,
Les Hortensias Bleus.

THE SHADOW LULLABY.

Oh forms, oh forms, oh forms
White, blue, and gold, and red
Descending from the elm trees,
On sleeping baby’s head.
Oh forms!

Oh feathers, feathers, feathers
To make a cosy nest.
Twelve striking: stops the clamour;
The anvils are at rest ...
Oh feathers!

Oh roses, roses, roses
To scent his sleep awhile,
Pale are your fragrant petals
Beside his ruby smile.
Oh roses!

Oh wings, oh wings, oh wings
Of bees and dragon-flies,
To hum around his forehead,
And lull him with your sighs.
Oh wings!

Branches, branches, branches
A shady bower to twine,
Through which, oh daylight, family
Descend on birdie mine.
Branches!

Oh dreams, oh dreams, oh dreams
Into his opening mind,
Let in a little falsehood
With sights of life behind.
Dreams!

Oh fairies, fairies, fairies,
To twine and twist their threads
With ff f h t ii

APPENDIX III.

These are the contents of The Nibelung’s Ring:—
The first part tells that the nymphs, the daughters of the Rhine, for some
reason guard gold in the Rhine, and sing: Weia, Waga, Woge du Welle,
Walle zur Wiege, Wagalaweia, Wallala, Weiala, Weia, and so forth.
These singing nymphs are pursued by a gnome (a nibelung) who desires to
seize them. The gnome cannot catch any of them. Then the nymphs
guarding the gold tell the gnome just what they ought to keep secret,
namely, that whoever renounces love will be able to steal the gold they are
guarding. And the gnome renounces love, and steals the gold. This ends the
first scene.
In the second scene a god and a goddess lie in a field in sight of a castle
which giants have built for them. Presently they wake up and are pleased
with the castle, and they relate that in payment for this work they must give
the goddess Freia to the giants. The giants come for their pay. But the god
Wotan objects to parting with Freia. The giants get angry. The gods hear
that the gnome has stolen the gold, promise to confiscate it and to pay the
giants with it. But the giants won’t trust them, and seize the goddess Freia
in pledge.
The third scene takes place under ground. The gnome Alberich, who stole
the gold, for some reason beats a gnome, Mime, and takes from him a
helmet which has the power both of making people invisible and of turning
them into other animals. The gods, Wotan and others, appear and quarrel
with one another and with the gnomes, and wish to take the gold, but
Alberich won’t give it up, and (like everybody all through the piece)
behaves in a way to ensure his own ruin. He puts on the helmet, and
becomes first a dragon and then a toad. The gods catch the toad, take the
helmet off it, and carry Alberich away with them.

Scene IV. The gods bring Alberich to their home, and order him to
command his gnomes to bring them all the gold. The gnomes bring it.
Alberich gives up the gold, but keeps a magic ring. The gods take the ring.
So Alberich curses the ring, and says it is to bring misfortune on anyone
who has it. The giants appear; they bring the goddess Freia, and demand her
ransom. They stick up staves of Freia’s height, and gold is poured in
between these staves: this is to be the ransom. There is not enough gold, so
the helmet is thrown in, and they also demand the ring. Wotan refuses to
give it up, but the goddess Erda appears and commands him to do so,
because it brings misfortune. Wotan gives it up. Freia is released. The
giants, having received the ring, fight, and one of them kills the other. This
ends the Prelude, and we come to the First Day.
The scene shows a house in a tree. Siegmund runs in tired, and lies down.
Sieglinda, the mistress of the house (and wife of Hunding), gives him a
drugged draught, and they fall in love with each other. Sieglinda’s husband
comes home, learns that Siegmund belongs to a hostile race, and wishes to
fight him next day; but Sieglinda drugs her husband, and comes to
Siegmund. Siegmund discovers that Sieglinda is his sister, and that his
father drove a sword into the tree so that no one can get it out. Siegmund
pulls the sword out, and commits incest with his sister.
Act II. Siegmund is to fight with Hunding. The gods discuss the question to
whom they shall award the victory. Wotan, approving of Siegmund’s incest
with his sister, wishes to spare him, but, under pressure from his wife,
Fricka, he orders the Valkyrie Brünnhilda to kill Siegmund. Siegmund goes
to fight; Sieglinda faints. Brünnhilda appears and wishes to slay Siegmund.
Siegmund wishes to kill Sieglinda also, but Brünnhilda does not allow it; so
he fights with Hunding. Brünnhilda defends Siegmund, but Wotan defends
Hunding. Siegmund’s sword breaks, and he is killed. Sieglinda runs away.
Act III. The Valkyries (divine Amazons) are on the stage. The Valkyrie
Brünnhilda arrives on horseback, bringing Siegmund’s body. She is flying
from Wotan, who is chasing her for her disobedience. Wotan catches her,
and as a punishment dismisses her from her post as a Valkyrie. He casts a
spell on her, so that she has to go to sleep and to continue asleep until a man
wakes her. When someone wakes her she will fall in love with him. Wotan
kisses her; she falls asleep. He lets off fire, which surrounds her.

We now come to the Second Day. The gnome Mime forges a sword in a
wood. Siegfried appears. He is a son born from the incest of brother with
sister (Siegmund with Sieglinda), and has been brought up in this wood by
the gnome. In general the motives of the actions of everybody in this
production are quite unintelligible. Siegfried learns his own origin, and that
the broken sword was his father’s. He orders Mime to reforge it, and then
goes off. Wotan comes in the guise of a wanderer, and relates what will
happen: that he who has not learnt to fear will forge the sword, and will
defeat everybody. The gnome conjectures that this is Siegfried, and wants to
poison him. Siegfried returns, forges his father’s sword, and runs off,
shouting, Heiho! heiho! heiho! Ho! ho! Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho!
heiaho! Ho! ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei!
And we get to Act II. Alberich sits guarding a giant, who, in form of a
dragon, guards the gold he has received. Wotan appears, and for some
unknown reason foretells that Siegfried will come and kill the dragon.
Alberich wakes the dragon, and asks him for the ring, promising to defend
him from Siegfried. The dragon won’t give up the ring. Exit Alberich.
Mime and Siegfried appear. Mime hopes the dragon will teach Siegfried to
fear. But Siegfried does not fear. He drives Mime away and kills the dragon,
after which he puts his finger, smeared with the dragon’s blood, to his lips.
This enables him to know men’s secret thoughts, as well as the language of
birds. The birds tell him where the treasure and the ring are, and also that
Mime wishes to poison him. Mime returns, and says out loud that he wishes
to poison Siegfried. This is meant to signify that Siegfried, having tasted
dragon’s blood, understands people’s secret thoughts. Siegfried, having
learnt Mime’s intentions, kills him. The birds tell Siegfried where
Brünnhilda is, and he goes to find her.
Act III. Wotan calls up Erda. Erda prophesies to Wotan, and gives him
advice. Siegfried appears, quarrels with Wotan, and they fight. Suddenly
Siegfried’s sword breaks Wotan’s spear, which had been more powerful
than anything else. Siegfried goes into the fire to Brünnhilda; kisses her; she
wakes up, abandons her divinity, and throws herself into Siegfried’s arms.
Third Day. Prelude. Three Norns plait a golden rope, and talk about the
future. They go away. Siegfried and Brünnhilda appear. Siegfried takes
leave of her, gives her the ring, and goes away.

Act I. By the Rhine. A king wants to get married, and also to give his sister
in marriage. Hagen, the king’s wicked brother, advises him to marry
Brünnhilda, and to give his sister to Siegfried. Siegfried appears; they give
him a drugged draught, which makes him forget all the past and fall in love
with the king’s sister, Gutrune. So he rides off with Gunther, the king, to get
Brünnhilda to be the king’s bride. The scene changes. Brünnhilda sits with
the ring. A Valkyrie comes to her and tells her that Wotan’s spear is broken,
and advises her to give the ring to the Rhine nymphs. Siegfried comes, and
by means of the magic helmet turns himself into Gunther, demands the ring
from Brünnhilda, seizes it, and drags her off to sleep with him.
Act II. By the Rhine. Alberich and Hagen discuss how to get the ring.
Siegfried comes, tells how he has obtained a bride for Gunther and spent
the night with her, but put a sword between himself and her. Brünnhilda
rides up, recognises the ring on Siegfried’s hand, and declares that it was
he, and not Gunther, who was with her. Hagen stirs everybody up against
Siegfried, and decides to kill him next day when hunting.
Act III. Again the nymphs in the Rhine relate what has happened. Siegfried,
who has lost his way, appears. The nymphs ask him for the ring, but he
won’t give it up. Hunters appear. Siegfried tells the story of his life. Hagen
then gives him a draught, which causes his memory to return to him.
Siegfried relates how he aroused and obtained Brünnhilda, and everyone is
astonished. Hagen stabs him in the back, and the scene is changed. Gutrune
meets the corpse of Siegfried. Gunther and Hagen quarrel about the ring,
and Hagen kills Gunther. Brünnhilda cries. Hagen wishes to take the ring
from Siegfried’s hand, but the hand of the corpse raises itself threateningly.
Brünnhilda takes the ring from Siegfried’s hand, and when Siegfried’s
corpse is carried to the pyre she gets on to a horse and leaps into the fire.
The Rhine rises, and the waves reach the pyre. In the river are three
nymphs. Hagen throws himself into the fire to get the ring, but the nymphs
seize him and carry him off. One of them holds the ring; and that is the end
of the matter.
The impression obtainable from my recapitulation is, of course, incomplete.
But however incomplete it may be, it is certainly infinitely more favourable
than the impression which results from reading the four booklets in which
the work is printed.

APPENDIX IV.
Translations of French poems and prose quoted in Chapter X.

BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.”
No. XXIV.

I adore thee as much as the vaults of night,
O vase full of grief, taciturnity great,
And I love thee the more because of thy flight.
It seemeth, my night’s beautifier, that you
Still heap up those leagues—yes! ironically heap!—
That divide from my arms the immensity blue.

I advance to attack, I climb to assault,
Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in the vault;
Thy coldness, oh cruel, implacable beast!
Yet heightens thy beauty, on which my eyes feast!

BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.”
No. XXXVI.

DUELLUM.

Two warriors come running, to fight they begin,
With gleaming and blood they bespatter the air;
These games, and this clatter of arms, is the din
Of youth that’s a prey to the surgings of love.

The rapiers are broken! and so is our youth,
But the dagger’s avenged, dear! and so is the sword,
By the nail that is steeled and the hardened tooth.
Oh, the fury of hearts aged and ulcered by love!

In the ditch, where the ounce and the pard have their lair,
Our heroes have rolled in an angry embrace;
Their skin blooms on brambles that erewhile were bare.
That ravine is a friend-inhabited hell!
Then let us roll in, oh woman inhuman,
To immortalise hatred that nothing can quell!

FROM BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE WORK ENTITLED “LITTLE
POEMS.”

THE STRANGER.

Whom dost thou love best? say, enigmatical man—thy father, thy mother,
thy brother, or thy sister?
“I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.”
Thy friends?
“You there use an expression the meaning of which till now remains
unknown to me.”
Thy country?
“I ignore in what latitude it is situated.”
Beauty?
“I would gladly love her, goddess and immortal.”
Gold?
“I hate it as you hate God.”
Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
“I love the clouds ... the clouds that pass ... there ... the marvellous clouds!”

BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE POEM,
THE SOUP AND THE CLOUDS.

My beloved little silly was giving me my dinner, and I was contemplating,
through the open window of the dining-room, those moving architectures
which God makes out of vapours, the marvellous constructions of the
impalpable. And I said to myself, amid my contemplations, “All these
phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as the eyes of my beautiful beloved,
the monstrous little silly with the green eyes.”
Suddenly I felt the violent blow of a fist on my back, and I heard a harsh,
charming voice, an hysterical voice, as it were hoarse with brandy, the voice
of my dear little well-beloved, saying, “Are you going to eat your soup
soon, you d—— b—— of a dealer in clouds?”

BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE POEM,
THE GALLANT MARKSMAN.

As the carriage was passing through the forest, he ordered it to be stopped
near a shooting-gallery, saying that he wished to shoot off a few bullets to
kill Time. To kill this monster, is it not the most ordinary and the most
legitimate occupation of everyone? And he gallantly offered his arm to his
dear, delicious, and execrable wife—that mysterious woman to whom he
owed so much pleasure, so much pain, and perhaps also a large part of his
genius.
Several bullets struck far from the intended mark—one even penetrated the
ceiling; and as the charming creature laughed madly, mocking her
husband’s awkwardness, he turned abruptly towards her and said, “Look at
that doll there on the right with the haughty mien and her nose in the air;
well, dear angel, I imagine to myself that it is you!” And he closed his eyes
and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly decapitated.
Then, bowing towards his dear one, his delightful, execrable wife, his
inevitable, pitiless muse, and kissing her hand respectfully, he added, “Ah!
my dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!”

VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS.”
No. I.

“The wind in the plain
Suspends its breath.”—Favart.

’Tis ecstasy languishing,
Amorous fatigue,
Of woods all the shudderings
Embraced by the breeze,
’Tis the choir of small voices
Towards the grey trees.

Oh the frail and fresh murmuring!
The twitter and buzz,
The soft cry resembling
That’s expired by the grass ...
Oh, the roll of the pebbles
’Neath waters that pass!

Oh, this soul that is groaning
In sleepy complaint!
In us is it moaning?
In me and in you?
Low anthem exhaling
While soft falls the dew.

VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS.”
No. VIII.

In the unending
Dulness of this land,
Uncertain the snow
Is gleaming like sand.

No kind of brightness
In copper-hued sky,
The moon you might see
Now live and now die.

Grey float the oak trees—
Cloudlike they seem—
Of neighbouring forests,
The mists in between.

Wolves hungry and lean,
And famishing crow,
What happens to you
When acid winds blow?

In the unending
Dulness of this land,
Uncertain the snow
Is gleaming like sand.

SONG BY MAETERLINCK.

When he went away,
(Then I heard the door)
When he went away,
On her lips a smile there lay ...

Back he came to her,
(Then I heard the lamp)
Back he came to her,
Someone else was there ...

It was death I met,
(And I heard her soul)
It was death I met,
For her he’s waiting yet ...

Someone came to say,
(Child, I am afraid)
Someone came to say
That he would go away ...

With my lamp alight,
(Child, I am afraid)
With my lamp alight,
Approached I in affright ...

To one door I came,
(Child, I am afraid)
To one door I came,
A shudder shook the flame ...

At the second door,
(Child, I am afraid)
At the second door
Forth words the flame did pour ...

To the third I came,
(Child, I am afraid)
To the third I came,
Then died the little flame

Then died the little flame ...

Should he one day return
Then what shall we say?
Waiting, tell him, one
And dying for him lay ...

If he asks for you,
Say what answer then?
Give him my gold ring
And answer not a thing ...

Should he question me
Concerning the last hour?
Say I smiled for fear
That he should shed a tear ...

Should he question more
Without knowing me?
Like a sister speak;
Suffering he may be ...

Should he question why
Empty is the hall?
Show the gaping door,
The lamp alight no more ...

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH

Footnotes
1. Bolton Hall has recently published a little work, Life, and Love, and
Death, with the object of making the philosophy contained in On Life
more easily accessible in English.

2. Tolstoy’s remarks on Church religion were re-worded so as to seem
to relate only to the Western Church, and his disapproval of luxurious
life was made to apply not, say, to Queen Victoria or Nicholas II., but
to the Cæsars or the Pharaohs.—Trans.

3. The Russian peasant is usually a member of a village commune, and
has therefore a right to a share in the land belonging to the village.
Tolstoy disapproves of the order of society which allows less land for
the support of a whole village full of people than is sometimes owned
by a single landed proprietor. The “Censor” will not allow
disapproval of this state of things to be expressed, but is prepared to
admit that the laws and customs, say, of England—where a yet more
extreme form of landed property exists, and the men who actually
labour on the land usually possess none of it—deserve criticism.—
Trans.

4. Only two, or at most three, senses are generally held worthy to supply
matter for artistic treatment, but I think this opinion is only
conditionally correct. I will not lay too much stress on the fact that
our common speech recognises many other arts, as, for instance, the
art of cookery.

5. And yet it is certainly an æsthetic achievement when the art of
cooking succeeds in making of an animal’s corpse an object in all
respects tasteful. The principle of the Art of Taste (which goes
beyond the so-called Art of Cookery) is therefore this: All that is
eatable should be treated as the symbol of some Idea, and always in
harmony with the Idea to be expressed.

6. If the sense of touch lacks colour, it gives us, on the other hand, a
notion which the eye alone cannot afford, and one of considerable
æsthetic value, namely, that of softness, silkiness, polish. The beauty
of velvet is characterised not less by its softness to the touch than by
its lustre. In the idea we form of a woman’s beauty, the softness of
her skin enters as an essential element.
Each of us probably, with a little attention, can recall pleasures of
taste which have been real æsthetic pleasures.

7. M. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik, 1872, vol. i. p. 13.

8. There is no science which more than æsthetics has been handed over
to the reveries of the metaphysicians. From Plato down to the
received doctrines of our day, people have made of art a strange
amalgam of quintessential fancies and transcendental mysteries,
which find their supreme expression in the conception of an absolute
ideal Beauty, immutable and divine prototype of actual things.

9. See on this matter Benard’s admirable book, L’esthétique d’Aristote,
also Walter’s Geschichte der Aesthetik im Altertum.

10. Schasler, p. 361.

11. Schasler, p. 369.

12. Schasler, pp. 388-390.

13. Knight, Philosophy of the Beautiful, i. pp. 165, 166.

14. Schasler, p. 289. Knight, pp. 168, 169.

15. R. Kralik, Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Aesthetik, pp.
304-306.

16. Knight, p. 101.

17. Schasler, p. 316.

18. Knight, pp. 102-104.

19. R. Kralik, p. 124.

20. Spaletti, Schasler, p. 328.

21. Schasler, pp. 331-333.

22. Schasler, pp. 525-528.

23. Knight, pp. 61-63.

24. Schasler, pp. 740-743.

25. Schasler, pp. 769-771.

26. Schasler, pp. 786, 787.

27. Kralik, p. 148.

28. Kralik, p. 820.

29. Schasler, pp. 828, 829, 834-841.

30. Schasler, p. 891.

31. Schasler, p. 917.

32. Schasler, pp. 946, 1085, 984, 985, 990.

33. Schasler, pp. 966, 655, 956.

34. Schasler, p. 1017.

35. Schasler, pp. 1065, 1066.

36. Schasler, pp. 1097-1100.

37. Schasler, pp. 1124, 1107.

38. Knight, pp. 81, 82.

39. Knight, p. 83.

40. Schasler, p. 1121.

41. Knight, pp. 85, 86.

42. Knight, p. 88.

43. Knight, p. 88.

44. Knight, p. 112.

45. Knight, p. 116.

46. Knight, pp. 118, 119.

47. Knight, pp. 123, 124.

48. La philosophie en France, p. 232.

49. Du fondement de l’induction.

50. Philosophie de l’art, vol. i. 1893, p. 47.

51. Knight, p. 139-141.

52. Knight, pp. 134.

53. L’esthétique, p. 106.

54. Knight, p. 238.

55. Knight, pp. 239, 240.

56. Knight, pp. 240-243.

57. Knight, pp. 250-252.

58. Knight, pp. 258, 259.

59. Knight, p. 243.

60. “The foundling of Nuremberg,” found in the market-place of that
town on 26th May 1828, apparently some sixteen years old. He spoke
little, and was almost totally ignorant even of common objects. He
subsequently explained that he had been brought up in confinement
underground, and visited by only one man, whom he saw but seldom.
—Trans.

61. Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected the
Church’s rendering of Christ’s teaching and were cruelly persecuted.
—Trans.

62. Keltchitsky, a Bohemian of the fifteenth century, was the author of a
remarkable book, The Net of Faith, directed against Church and State.
It is mentioned in Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You.—
Trans.

63. Any one examining closely may see that the theory of beauty and that
of art are quite separated in Aristotle as they are in Plato and in all
their successors.

64. Die Lücke von fünf Jahrhunderten, welche zwischen den
Kunstphilosophischen Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und
die des Plotins fällt, kann zwar auffällig erscheinen; dennoch kann
man eigentlich nicht sagen, dass in dieser Zwischenzeit überhaupt
von ästhetischen Dingen nicht die Rede gewesen; oder dass gar ein
völliger Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunst-
anscliauungen des letztgenannten Philosophen und denen der ersteren
existire. Freilich wurde die von Aristoteles begründete Wissenschaft
in Nichts dadurch gefördert; immerhin aber zeigt sich in jener
Zwischenzeit noch ein gewisses Interesse für ästhetische Fragen.
Nach Plotin aber, die wenigen, ihm in der Zeit nahestehenden
Philosophen, wie Longin, Augustin, u. s. f. kommen, wie wir
gesehen, kaum in Betracht und schliessen sich übrigens in ihrer
Anschauungsweise an ihn an,—vergehen nicht fünf, sondern fünfzehn

Jahrhunderte, in denen von irgend einer wissenschaftlichen Interesse
für die Welt des Schönen und der Kunst nichts zu spüren ist.
Diese anderthalbtausend Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch
die mannigfachsten Kämpfe hindurch zu einer völlig neuen
Gestaltung des Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind für die Aesthetik,
hinsichtlich des weiteren Ausbaus dieser Wissenschaft verloren.—
Max Schasler.

65. The contrast made is between the classes and the masses: between
those who do not and those who do earn their bread by productive
manual labour; the middle classes being taken as an offshoot of the
upper classes.—Trans.

66. Duelling is still customary among the higher circles in Russia, as in
other Continental countries.—Trans.

67. It is the weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch, regret for
another age seen through the illusion of art, a taste for paradox, a
desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration after simplicity, an
infantine adoration of the marvellous, a sickly tendency towards
reverie, a shattered condition of nerves, and, above all, the
exasperated demand of sensuality.

68.

Music, music before all things
The eccentric still prefer,
Vague in air, and nothing weighty,
Soluble. Yet do not err,

Choosing words; still do it lightly,
Do it too with some contempt;
Dearest is the song that’s tipsy,
Clearness, dimness not exempt.

Music always, now and ever
Be thy verse the thing that flies
From a soul that’s gone, escaping,
Gone to other loves and skies.

Gone to other loves and regions,
Following fortunes that allure,
Mint and thyme and morning crispness ...
All the rest’s mere literature.

69. I think there should be nothing but allusions. The contemplation of
objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by them, are the song.
The Parnassiens state the thing completely, and show it, and thereby
lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that delicious joy of imagining
that it creates. To name an object is to take three-quarters from the
enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing
little by little: to suggest, that is the dream. It is the perfect use of this
mystery that constitutes the symbol: little by little, to evoke an object
in order to show a state of the soul; or inversely, to choose an object,
and from it to disengage a state of the soul by a series of
decipherings.
... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary
preparation chance to open a book made in this way and pretends to
enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding—things must be returned to their

places. There should always be an enigma in poetry, and the aim of
literature—it has no other—is to evoke objects.

70. It were time also to have done with this famous “theory of obscurity,”
which the new school have practically raised to the height of a
dogma.

71. For translation, see Appendix IV.

72. For translation, see Appendix IV.

73. For translation, see Appendix IV.

74. For translation, see Appendix IV.

75. For translation, see Appendix IV.

76. For translation, see Appendix IV.

77.

I do not wish to think any more, except about my mother Mary,
Seat of wisdom and source of pardon,
Also Mother of France, from whom we
Steadfastly expect the honour of our country.

78. This sonnet seems too unintelligible for translation.—Trans.

79. For translation, see Appendix IV.

80. The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.

81. All styles are good except the wearisome style.

82. All styles are good except that which is not understood, or which fails
to produce its effect.

83. An apparatus exists by means of which a very sensitive arrow, in
dependence on the tension of a muscle of the arm, will indicate the
physiological action of music on the nerves and muscles.

84. There is in Moscow a magnificent “Cathedral of our Saviour,”
erected to commemorate the defeat of the French in the war of 1812.
—Trans.

85. “That they may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be in us.”

86. In this picture the spectators in the Roman Amphitheatre are turning
down their thumbs to show that they wish the vanquished gladiator to
be killed.—Trans.

87. While offering as examples of art those that seem to me the best, I
attach no special importance to my selection; for, besides being
insufficiently informed in all branches of art, I belong to the class of
people whose taste has, by false training, been perverted. And
therefore my old, inured habits may cause me to err, and I may
mistake for absolute merit the impression a work produced on me in
my youth. My only purpose in mentioning examples of works of this
or that class is to make my meaning clearer, and to show how, with
my present views, I understand excellence in art in relation to its
subject-matter. I must, moreover, mention that I consign my own
artistic productions to the category of bad art, excepting the story
God sees the Truth, which seeks a place in the first class, and The
Prisoner of the Caucasus, which belongs to the second.

88. In Russian it is customary to make a distinction between literate and
illiterate people, i.e. between those who can and those who cannot
read. Literate in this sense does not imply that the man would speak
or write correctly.—Trans.

89. The over-man (Uebermensch), in the Nietzschean philosophy, is that
superior type of man whom the struggle for existence is to evolve,
and who will seek only his own power and pleasure, will know

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