Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/210

200 FINE ARTS the impulse which bids him master such things, control, and regulate them. In play you may impose upon Matter what Form you choose, and the two will not interfere with one another or clash. The kingdom of Matter and the kingdom of Form thus harmonized, thus reconciled by the activities of play and show, will in other words be the kingdom of the Beautiful. Follow the impulsion of play, and to the beautiful you will find your road ; the activities you will find yourself putting forth will be the activities of aesthetic creation you will have discovered or invented the fine arts. " Midway," these are Schiller s own words, " midway between the formidable kingdom of natural forces and the hillowed kingdom of moral laws, the impulse of rosthetic creation builds up a third kingdom unperceived, the gladsome kingdom of play and show, wherein it emanci- pxteo man from all compulsion alike of physical and of moral forces." Schiller, the poet and enthusiast, thus making his own application of the Kantian metaphysics, goes on to set forth how the fine arts, or activities of play and show, are for him the typical, the ideal activities of the race, since in them alone is it possible for man to put forth his whole, that is his ideal self. " Only when he plays is man really and truly man." " Man ought only to play with the beautiful, and he ought to play with the beautiful only." " Education in taste and beauty has for its object to train up in the utmost attainable harmony the whole sum of the powers both of sense and spirit." And the rest of Schiller s argument is addressed to show how the activities of artistic creation, once invented, quickly react upon other departments of human life, how the exercise of the play impulse prepares men for an existence in which the inevi table collision of the two other impulses shall be softened or averted more and more. That harmony of the powers which clash so violently in man s primitive nature, having first been found possible in the sphere of the fine arts, re flects itself, in his judgment, upon the whole composition of man, and attunes him, as an aesthetic being, into new capabilities for the conduct of his social existence. Merits Our reasons for dwelling on this wide and enthusiastic and de- formula of Schiller s are both its importance in the history "J 6 3 of reflection it produced, indeed, so great an impression th eor y O f that it may still be called a formula almost classical and Schiller, its positive value. The notion of a sphere of voluntary ac tivity for the human spirit, in which, under no compulsion of necessity or conscience, we order matters as we like them apart from any practical end, seems at least co-extensive with the widest conception of fine art and the fine arts. It insists on and brings into the light the essential point of the free, or as we have called it, the optional character of these activities, as distinguished from others to which we are compelled by necessity or duty. It also insists on and brings into the light what is no less essential, the fact that these activities, superfluous as they are from the points of view of necessity and of duty, spring nevertheless from an imperious and a saving instinct of our nature. It does justice to the part which is, or at any rate may be, filled in the world by pleasures which are apart from profit, and by delights for the enjoyment of which men cannot quarrel. It claims the dignity they deserve for those shows and pastimes in which we have found a way to make permanent all the transitory delights of life and nature, to turn our very tears and yearnings, by their artistic utterance, into sources of appeasing joy, to make amends to ourselves for the confusion and imperfection of reality by conceiving and imaging forth the semblances of things clearer and more complete, since in contriving them we incorporate with the experiences we have had the better experiences we have dreamed of and longed for. Schiller s theory may thus be no explanation of the essential nature and place in the universe of these activities and their results ; it will certainly be none for those to whom the Kantian doctrine of metaphysical opposition between the senses and the reason has no meaning. Neither can his particular application of that doctrine, with its terminology of Sto/trieb, Formtrieb, and tfyrieltrieb, the three impulses, or impulsions, of Matter, Form, and Play, be considered altogether happy. Nevertheless the theory furnishes us with a suggestive approach to a work ing definition, and has remained a fruitful one for many minds independently of the metaphysical doctrines upon which it was based. Its great fault is that, though it asserts that man ought only to play with the beautiful, and that he is his best or ideal self only when he does so, yet it does not sufficiently determine what kinds of play are beautiful nor why we are moved to adopt them. It does not sufficiently show how the delights of the eye and spirit in contemplating forms, colours, and movement?, of the ear and spirit in apprehending musical and verbal sounds, or of the whole mind at once in following the comprehensive current of images called up by poetry it does not sufficiently show how delights like these differ from those yielded by other kinds of play or pastime, and between them make up the whole kingdom of artistic pleasures. The chase, for instance, is a play or pastime which gives scope for any amount of premeditated skill ; it has pleasures, for those who take part in it, which are in some degree analogous to the pleasures of the artist ; and we all know the claims made on behalf of the noble art of venerie by the knights and woodmen of Walter Scott s romances. But here we must remember that, though the chase is play to us, who in civilized communities follow it on no plea of necessity, yet to a not remote ancestry it was earnest ; in primitive societies hunting does not belong to the class of optional activities at all, but is among the most pressing of utilitarian needs. And this character of its origin and history might exclude it from the class of fine arts, even if there were not the further fact that the pleasures of the sportsman are the only pleasures arising from the chase ; Jus exertions afford pain to the victim, and no satisfaction to any class of recipients but himself ; or at least the plea sures of the bystanders at a meet or a battue are hardly to be counted as pleasures of artistic contemplation. Again, it may be said that such a theory does not sufficiently exclude from among the fine arts the class of athletic games or sports, not connected with the chase, though these do afford pleasure to multitudes, and most commu nities, especially our own, are accustomed to devote to them much trained skill and a large portion of their leisure activity. Here the difference is, that the event which excites the spec tator s interest and pleasure at a race or athletic contest is not a wholly unreal or simulated event ; true, it is less real than life, but it is more real than art. The contest has not, indeed, any momentous practical consequences, but it is a contest in which competitors put forth real strength, and one really wins, and others are defeated. Such a con test, in which the exertions are real and the issue uncertain, we follow with an excitement and an expectancy which are different in kind from the feelings with which we contem plate any fictitious representation of which the issues are arranged beforehand, For example, let the reader recall the feelings with which he has watched a real fencing bout, and compare them with those with which he watches the simulated fencing bout in Hamlet. The instance is a crucial one, because the simulated contest is made infinitely more exciting than such contests in general by the intro duction of the poisoned foil, and by the tremendous con sequences which we are aware will turn, in the represen tation, on the issue. Yet because the fencing scene in Hamlet is a representation, and not real, we find ourselves Plea sures of line art com pared with those of the chase, athletics, &c.