The nature of this impulse, and the several grounds of these pleasures, are subjects which have given rise to a formidable body of speculation and discussion, the chief phases of which will be found summarized under the heading Aesthetics. In the present article we have only to attend to the concrete processes and results of the artistic activities of man; in other words, we shall submit (1) a definition of fine art in general, (2) a definition and classification of the principal fine arts severally, (3) some observations on their historical development.
I. Of Fine Art in General.
According to the popular and established distinction between art and nature, the idea of Art (q.v.) only includes phenomena of which man is deliberately the cause; while the idea of Nature includes all phenomena, both in man and in the world outside him, which take place without Premeditation essential to art. forethought or studied initiative of his own. Art, accordingly, means every regulated operation or dexterity whereby we pursue ends which we know beforehand; and it means nothing but such operations and dexterities. What is true of art generally is of course also true of the special group of the fine arts. One of the essential qualities of all art is premeditation; and when Shelley talks of the skylark’s profuse strains of “unpremeditated art,” he in effect lays emphasis on the fact that it is only by a metaphor that he uses the word art in this case at all; he calls attention to that which (if the songs of birds are as instinctive as we suppose) precisely makes the difference between the skylark’s outpourings and his own. We are slow to allow the title of fine art to natural eloquence, to charm or dignity of manner, to delicacy and tact in social intercourse, and other such graces of life and conduct, since, although in any given case they may have been deliberately cultivated in early life, or even through ancestral generations, they do not produce their full effect until they are so ingrained as to have become unreflecting and spontaneous. When the exigencies of a philosophic scheme lead some writers on aesthetics to include such acts or traits of beautiful and expressive behaviour among the deliberate artistic activities of mankind, we feel that an essential distinction is being sacrificed to the exigencies of a system. That distinction common parlance very justly observes, with its opposition of “art” to “nature” and its phrase of “second nature” for those graces which have become so habitual as to seem instinctive, whether originally the result of discipline or not. When we see a person in all whose ordinary movements there are freedom and beauty, we put down the charm of these with good reason to inherited and inbred aptitudes of which the person has never thought or long since ceased to think, and could not still be thinking without spoiling the charm by self-consciousness; and we call the result a gift of nature. But when we go on to notice that the same person is beautifully and appropriately dressed, since we know that it is impossible to dress without thinking of it, we put down the charm of this to judicious forethought and calculation and call the result a work of art.
The processes then of fine art, like those of all arts properly
so called, are premeditated, and the property of every fine art
is to give to the person exercising it a special kind of
active pleasure, and a special kind of passive or
receptive pleasure to the person witnessing the results
The active and the passive pleasures
of fine art.
of such exercise. This latter statement seems to imply
that there exist in human societies a separate class
producing works of fine art and another class enjoying them.
Such an implication, in regard to advanced societies, is near
enough the truth to be theoretically admitted (like the analogous
assumption in political economy that there exist separate
classes of producers and consumers). In developed communities
the gifts and calling of the artist constitute in fact a separate
profession of the creators or purveyors of fine art, while the rest
of the community are its enjoyers or recipients. In the most
primitive societies, apparently, this cannot have been so, and we
can go back to an original or rudimentary stage of almost every
fine art at which the separation between a class of producers
or performers and a class of recipients hardly exists. Such an
original or rudimentary stage of the dramatic art is presented
by children, who will occupy themselves for ever with mimicry
and make-believe for their own satisfaction, with small regard
or none to the presence or absence of witnesses. The original
or rudimentary type of the profession of imitative sculptors or
painters is the cave-dweller of prehistoric ages, who, when he
rested from his day’s hunting, first took up the bone handle of
his weapon, and with a flint either carved it into the shape,
or on its surface scratched the outlines, of the animals of the
chase. The original or rudimentary type of the architect, considered
not as a mere builder but as an artist, is the savage
who, when his tribe had taken to live in tents or huts instead
of caves, first arranged the skins and timbers of his tent or hut
in one way because it pleased his eye, rather than in some other
way which was as good for shelter. The original type of the
artificer or adorner of implements, considered in the same light,
was the other savage who first took it into his head to fashion
his club or spear in one way rather than another for the pleasure
of the eye only and not for any practical reason, and to ornament
it with tufts or markings. In none of these cases, it would
seem, can the primitive artist have had much reason for pleasing
anybody but himself. Again, the original or rudimentary
type of lyric song and dancing arose when the first reveller
clapped hands and stamped or shouted in time, in honour of his
god, in commemoration of a victory, or in mere obedience to the
blind stirring of a rhythmic impulse within him. To some very
remote and solitary ancestral savage the presence or absence
of witnesses at such a display may in like manner have been
indifferent; but very early in the history of the race the primitive
dancer and singer joined hands and voices with others of his
tribe, while others again sat apart and looked on at the performance,
and the rite thus became both choral and social. A
primitive type of the instrumental musician is the shepherd who
first notched a reed and drew sounds from it while his sheep
were cropping. The father of all artists in dress and personal
adornment was the first wild man who tattooed himself or bedecked
himself with shells and plumes. In both of these latter
instances, it may be taken as certain, the primitive artist had the
motive of pleasing not himself only, but his mate, or the female
whom he desired to be his mate, and in the last instance of all
the further motive of impressing his fellow-tribesmen and striking
awe or envy into his enemies. The tendency of recent speculation
and research concerning the origins of art has been to
ascribe the primitive artistic activities of man less and less to
individual and solitary impulse, and more and more to social
impulse and the desire of sharing and communicating pleasure.
(The writer who has gone furthest in developing this view,
and on grounds of the most careful study of evidence, has
been Dr Yrjö Hirn of Helsingfors.) Whatever relative parts the
individual and the social impulses may have in fact played at
the outset, it is clear that what any one can enjoy or admire by
himself, whether in the way of mimicry, of rhythmical movements
or utterances, of imitative or ornamental carving and drawing,
of the disposition and adornment of dwelling-places and utensils—the
same things, it is clear, others are able also to enjoy or
admire with him. And so, with the growth of societies, it came
about that one class of persons separated themselves and became
the ministers or producers of this kind of pleasures, while the rest
became the persons ministered to, the participators in or recipients
of the pleasures. Artists are those members of a society
who are so constituted as to feel more acutely than the rest
certain classes of pleasures which all can feel in their degree.
By this fact of their constitution they are impelled to devote
their active powers to the production of such pleasures, to the
making or doing of some of those things which they enjoy so
keenly when they are made and done by others. At the same
time the artist does not, by assuming these ministering or
creative functions, surrender his enjoying or receptive functions.
He continues to participate in the pleasures of which he is
himself the cause, and remains a conscious member of his own
public. The architect, sculptor, painter, are able respectively
