The Crown of Wild Olive
moment when the truth becomes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture may
go on safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject of
portrait sculpture to-day; it introduces many questions of detail, and
must be a matter for subsequent consideration.
43. These then are the three great passions which are concerned in true
sculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, more easily remembered,
names for them than "the Instincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, and
Discipline;" meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesome
restraint, in all acts and works of life. Now of these, there is no
question but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love
of Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question
whether the yearning for Idolatry, (the desire of companionship with
images,) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an instinct be essential to
good sculpture, the art founded on it can possibly be "fine" art.
44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have to point out
distinctions in modes of conception which will appear trivial to you,
unless accurately understood; but of an importance in the history of art
which cannot be overrated.
When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Strasbourg with
immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, would
suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost of
the city, was actually there, sitting in the Place de la Concorde. The
figure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond
thoughts about Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to _be_
Strasbourg.
Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting to
represent a river instead of a city,--the Rhine, or Garonne,
suppose,--and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, if
the real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instant
that the statue _was_ the river.
And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might take
delight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered and
perpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor be
capable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that the
statue _was_ the god.
On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight of
a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it aside
in some, to him, sacred place, and believe _the stone itself_ to be a
kind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it.
In like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, such, for
instance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, he would be apt to
regard in the same way; and very possibly also construct for himself
frightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vague
impression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he might
deprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in
them any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature.
45. If you will now refer to Sec. 52-59 of my Introductory Lectures, you
will find this distinction between a resolute conception, recognized for
such, and an involuntary apprehension of spiritual existence, already
insisted on at some length. And you will see more and more clearly as we
proceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded conception is
not idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one of the grandest
and wholesomest functions of the human soul; and that the essence of
evil idolatry begins only in the idea or belief of a real presence of
any kind, in a thing in which there is no such presence.
46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must depend on the
certainty of the negative. If there be a real presence in a pillar of
cloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in a still small voice, it is no sin
to bow down before these.
But, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence has
generally been both ignoble and false, and confined to nations of
inferior race, who are often condemned to remain for ages in conditions
of vile terror, destitute of thought. Nearly all Indian architecture and
Chinese design arise out of such a state: so also, though in a less
gross degree, Ninevite and Phoenician art, early Irish, and
Scandinavian; the latter, however, with vital elements of high intellect
mingled in it from the first.
But the greatest races are never grossly subject to such terror, even in
their childhood, and the course of their minds is broadly divisible into
three distinct stages.
47. (I.) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real animals about
them, as my little girl made the cats and mice, but with an undercurrent
of partial superstition--a sense that there must be more in the
creatures than they can see; also they catch up vividly any of the
fancies of the baser nations round them, and repeat these more or less
apishly, yet rapidly naturalizing and beautifying them. They then
connect all kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of the
old chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a running
wild-fire; but always getting more of man into their images, and
admitting less of monster or brute; their own characters, meanwhile,
expanding and purging themselves, and shaking off the feverish fancy, as
springing flowers shake the earth off their stalks.
48. (II.) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect men and
women, they reach the conception of true and great gods as existent in
the universe; and absolutely cease to think of them as in any wise
present in statues or images; but they have now learned to make these
statues beautifully human, and to surround them with attributes that may
concentrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, accurately
the Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Phidian; the Phidian is
already dimmed with a faint shadow of infidelity; still, the Olympic
Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which was
no more supposed to _be_ Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it was
made of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art were
exhausted in representing a believed and honoured God to the happy and
holy imagination of a sincerely religious people.
49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in which, the
imagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained by
the sanctities of tradition, which permit no farther change in the
conceptions previously created, begins to be superseded by logical
deduction and scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elder
artists having done all that is possible in realizing the national
conceptions of the Gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the
scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything
better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old
ideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and more
limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also, in the
course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and
being made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, for
eminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation; whereas
intellectual design can never be discerned but by the few. So that in
this third aera, we find every kind of imitative and vulgar dexterity
more and more cultivated; while design and imagination are every day
less cared for, and less possible.
50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in literature and
science become continually more logical and investigative; and, once
that they are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, a
very few years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers that
the old imaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be
honestly taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant
persons. And at this point the fate of the people absolutely depends on
the degree of moral strength into which their hearts have been already
trained. If it be a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, the
taking its old gods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it,
will indeed make it deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whit
shake its will, nor alter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally
disposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who had been
previously restrained from indulging these dispositions by their fear of
God, will, of course, break out into open vice, when that fear is
removed. But the heads of the families of the people, instructed in the
pure habits and perfect delights of an honest life, and to whom the
thought of a Father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will
assuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphanage by
becoming uncharitable and vile. Also the high leaders of their thought
gather their whole strength together in the gloom; and at the first
entrance of this valley of the Shadow of Death, look their new enemy
full in the eyeless face of him, and subdue him, and his terror, under
their feet. "Metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,... strepitumque
Acherontis avari." This is the condition of national soul expressed by
the art, and the words, of Holbein, Durer, Shakspeare, Pope, and Goethe.
51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of darkness
approaches, be not confirmed in moral character, but are only
maintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of a spectral religion; the
moment the staff of their faith is broken, the character of the race
falls like a climbing plant cut from its hold: then all the earthliest
vices attack it as it lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane
sin is developed, and half a century is sometimes enough to close, in
hopeless shame, the career of the nation in literature, art, and war.
52. Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has perished
from the practically active national mind of France and England. No
statesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentence
out of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literal
authority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for
their contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the
face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, her
resolved worship of His declared enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore,
founded on religion, and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effete
and corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history
of mankind: and it is possible to show you the condition of sculpture
living, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparing
the nascent Pisan school in Italy with the existing school in England.
53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educational
series, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the pulpit by Niccola
Pisano in the Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, have
given the pulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that
pulpit is dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the
Duomo, and the cloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its
fragments now put together at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to
you. You may partly judge, however, of the method of their execution by
the eagle's head, which I have sketched from the marble in the Campo
Santo (Edu., No. 113), and the lioness with her cubs, (Edu., No. 103,
more carefully studied at Siena); and I will get you other illustrations
in due time. Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the
Cathedral of Pisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, and Holy
Field, with the main purpose of the principal building lately raised for
the people of London. In these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; but