FETICH ORIGIN OF ART. 39 divinities were concrete, and nothing else; and it was only when the fine arts had attained a kind of dogmatic function under polytheism that they could realize their full expansion; and when they did, they enjoyed an authority and consideration which they could not retain under monotheism. Again, fetichism could not extend, without great delay and difficulty, to the explanation of the moral world: on the contrary, its moral intuition served as the basis of its conception of the physical world; whereas we see in polytheism the great progressive quality of applicability to moral and even social phenomena. Thus, it was in its second stage that theological philosophy became universal, by being extended to that province which became more and more important to it, and which is now all that is left of it. There is no need to point out the aesthetic importance of the extension of the polytheistic philosophy to moral and social phenomena, which must ever be the chief domain of the fine arts.-Once more, polytheism is favourable to those arts, popular as is their character, by giving them so popular a basis as a system of familiar and universal opinions, by which the arts were made an expression of what was in every mind, and the active interpreter and the passive spectator were brought into moral harmony. The want of such harmony is the main cause of the feeble effect produced by the greatest modern works of art, conceived, as they are, without faith, and judged without conviction, and therefore exciting in us no impressions less abstract and more popular than those general ones which are a consequence of our human nature. Now, no succeeding religion was ever so popular as polytheism at its best period; certainly not monotheism, in its utmost splendour; for polytheism had the advantage of great moral imperfections, which extended and sustained its popular power only too well:-and it is only from positive philosophy, with its system of settled and unanimous opinions, that we can hope for any great expansion of the fine arts, in congeniality with the spirit of modern civilization. This, then, is one of the services rendered to humanity by polytheism; and a great service it is, as æsthetic advancement is one of the chief elements of human progression. The aesthetic faculties are, in a manner, intermediate between the moral and intellectual faculties; their end connecting them with the one, and their means with the other. By acting at once on the mind and the heart, their development must become one of the most important agents of education, intellectual and moral, that we can conceive. In the rare cases in which the intellectual life of the individual has been too absorbing, the fine arts can revive the moral life, long neglected or disdained: and, with the great majority of men, the converse effect may be no less salutary. In them the intellectual life is benumbed by their affective activity; and the aesthetic development, besides its own permanent importance, serves as an indispensable preparation for its mental progress. This is the special phase which humanity must assume under the direction of polytheism; and thus is attained the first degree of intellectual life, through a gentle and irresistible influence, fraught with delight, independently of its mental action, properly so called. Our daily observation of individual development shows the value of this service, by making it clear that there is scarcely any other way of awakening and sustaining any speculative activity but such as arises under the immediate stimulus that our human necessities afford to our feeble intelligence; and the manifestation of some interest in the fine arts will ever be the commonest symptom of the birth of the spiritual life. It is true this is but an early stage in human education, which must be imperfect till the reason gains the ascendancy over the imagination; but if, under fetichism, it was an advance that sentiment should prevail over the animal life; and again, that imagination should obtain an ascendancy over sentiment, it is clear that polytheism is a great step forward towards the settled and normal state of that prevalence of reason in the human mind which is aided by monotheism, and will be perfected by the complete establishment of positive philosophy. While the æsthetic and the scientific spirit differ widely from each other, they each employ, in their own way, the same original faculties of the brain; so that the first kind of intellectual activity serves as an introduction to the second, without dispensing with a special intervention which we shall consider when we come to review the operation of monotheism. No doubt, the analytical and POLYTHEISTIC FINE ART. 41 abstract spirit of scientific observation of the external world is radically distinct from the synthetic and concrete spirit of æsthetic observation, which seizes the human aspect only of all phenomena, by contemplating their actual influence on Man, in his moral relations; but not the less have they an all-important interest in common, in the disposition to observe accurately, and therefore to institute intellectual precautions of an analogous kind against error in either case. The analogy is yet more complete in whatever concerns the study of Man himself, in which the philosopher and the artist have equal need of some identical ideas, of which they make different uses. The hidden affinity which unites the one and the other spirit, through all their characteristic differences, cannot therefore be denied; nor that the more rapid development of the first is an indispensable preparation for the slower growth of the last: and if this relation becomes manifest, in the first instance, among the leaders of intellectual culture, it cannot but extend in time to the passive multitude. What I have said would be confirmed at every step, if the nature of this work admitted of a close comparison of the stages of progression of the two orders of ideas,-the æsthetic and the scientific; and also if I could speak separately of each art, and show the order of their rise and expansion. My limits forbid me to do this: and I can only assert what every student can verify for himself, that each art has preceded others in proportion to its more general nature; that is, in proportion to the variety and completeness of its power of expression, apart from its distinctness and force. According to this test, the aesthetic series begins with poetry, and proceeds through music, painting, sculpture, and, finally, architecture. We now see that the excellence of the fine arts in ancient times presents no such paradox as is usually supposed; and that it would be a mistake to imagine that the æsthetic faculties of Man have declined, merely because their exercise is not so prominent, nor so favoured by circumstances, as in the age of polytheism. Without renewing the controversy about the ancients and moderns, we may point to unquestionable evidences that human faculties have not declined, even in regard to the fine arts, by passing through the darkness of the Middle Ages. In the first of them, Poetry, our progress is incontestable. Even in the epic form, which is least congenial with modern civilization, we can hardly find nobler poetic genius in any age than that of Dante or Milton, nor an imagination so powerful as that of Ariosto. In dramatic poetry, where shall we find a parallel to Shakspere and the dramatists of his age in England, and Corneille, Racine, and Molière in France? Though Music does not fill such a space in human life now as in ancient times, there can be no question of the superiority of modern Italian and German music to that of the ancients, which comprehended no harmony, and consisted of only simple and uniform melodies, in which measure was the chief means of expression. In Painting, not only is there a prodigious advance in technical methods, but in the loftiest moral expression; and all antiquity produced nothing comparable to the works of Raffaelle, or of many other modern painters. If there is a real exception in the case of Sculpture, it is easily explained by a reference to the manners and habits of the ancients, which familiarized them more with the study of the human form. As to Architecture, besides the improvement of the industrial part of it in modern times, there can be no doubt of its æsthetic superiority, as shown in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, in which the moral power of the art attains a sublime perfection which is nowhere to be found among the temples of antiquity, notwithstanding the charm of their regularity. And all this progress has taken place amidst a civilization in which æsthetic excitements have hitherto been much less inherent than in that of earlier times. As it is the function of the fine arts to represent our moral and social life, it is clear that, while they are adapted to all phases of human existence, they must be most conspicuous where the character of society is most homogeneous and settled, and therefore best fitted for clear and definite representation; a condition which was afforded, in a preeminent degree, by ancient societies, under the empire of polytheism. Modern society, on the contrary, has been, from the beginning of the Middle Ages, one long stage of transition, directed by monotheism, the social state presenting no stable and marked aspect, and the philosophy MODERN FINE ARTS. 43 favouring scientific more than æsthetic development. All influences have thus concurred to retard the course of the fine arts; and yet, all evidence proves that there has not only been no deterioration, but that genius of this order has attained and surpassed the elevation of the noblest productions of antiquity, while it has opened new provinces of art, and declined in no other respect than in social influence. To all who judge by a higher criterion than the effect produced it must be evident that, in spite of unfavourable circumstances, the aesthetic, like all the other faculties of Man, are under a condition of continuous development. When a stable and homogeneous, and at the same time progressive state of society shall have become established under the positive philosophy, the fine arts will flourish more than they ever did under polytheism, finding new scope and new prerogatives under the new intellectual régime. Then will be seen the advantage of the educational discipline of Man's irrepressible æsthetic faculties which is now going on; and then will be evident to all eyes that radical affinity which, under the laws of the human organization, unites the perception of the beautiful with the relish for truth, on the one hand, and the love of goodness on the other. The influence of polytheism on the industrial aptitudes of the human race will appear hereafter, when we have to consider which of Polytheistic the three forms of polytheism best regulates that province. I need only say here that polytheism provides a great extension and more direct application of the influence by which fetichism first excited and sustained human activity in its conquest of external nature. By withdrawing divinities from their former inseparable connection with particular bodies, polytheism rendered lawful such modifications of matter as would have been profane before; while it imparted a belief in supernatural aid in all enterprises whatever, in a more special and familiar way than we can now conceive. At the same time, it instituted a priesthood, to interpret among conflicting claims and appearances and the multiplicity of gods supplied a valuable special resource to neutralize, by their mutual rivalry, the anti-industrial disposition which we have seen to belong to |