Nietzsche and Art by Anthony M. Ludovici

B
K558Lu
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
SHELF NUMBER
\ STUDIA IN
SOURCE:
NIETZSCHE AND ART
SKKHET.
(Louvre.)
NIETZSCHE AND ART
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
AUTHOR OF "WHO IS TO BE MASTER OF THE WORLD?" ETC.
" Rien n'est beau que le vrai, dit un vers respecte" ;

et moi, je lui reponds, sans crainte d'un blaspheme :
Rien n'est vrai sans beaute." — ALFRED DE MUSSET.
LONDON
CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.
1911
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, B.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE
"We philosophers are never more delighted than when we

are taken for artists." l
IN this book, which embodies a course of lectures
delivered in a somewhat condensed and summarized
form at University College, London, during
November and December, 1910, I have done two
things. I have propounded Nietzsche's general Art
doctrine, and, with the view of illustrating it and of
defining it further, I have also applied its leading
principles to one of the main branches of Art.
As this has not been done before, either in
English or in any Continental language, my book
is certainly not free from the crudeness and inad
vertences which are inseparable from pioneer efforts
of this nature. Nevertheless it is with complete
confidence, and a deep conviction of its necessity,
that I now see it go to print; for, even if here and
there its adventurous spirit may ultimately require
modification, I feel certain that, in the main, time
itself, together with the help of other writers, will
fully confirm its general thesis, if I should be
unable to do so.
Sooner or later it will be brought home to us in
Europe that we cannot with impunity foster and
cultivate vulgarity and mob qualities in our archi
tecture, our sculpture, our painting, our music and
1 Friedrich Nietzsche's Gesammelte Briefc, vol. iii, p. 305.
vi PREFACE
literature, without paying very dearly for these

luxuries in our respective national politics, in our
family institutions, and even in our physique. To
connect all these things together, and to show their
inevitable interdependence, would be a perfectly
possible though arduous undertaking. In any
case, this is not quite the task I have set myself
in this work. I have indeed shown that to bestow
admiration on a work of extreme democratic paint
ing and at the same time to be convinced of the
value of an aristocratic order of society, is to be
guilty of a confusion of ideas which ultimately
can lead only to disastrous results in practical life ;
but further than this I have not gone, simply
because the compass of these lectures did not
permit of my so doing.
Confining myself strictly to Nietzsche's
cesthetic, I have been content merely to show
that the highest Art, or Ruler Art, and therefore
the highest beauty, — in which culture is opposed
to natural rudeness, selection to natural chaos, and
simplicity to natural complexity, — can be the flower
and product only of an aristocratic society which,
in its traditions and its active life, has observed,
and continues to observe, the three aristocratic
principles, — culture, selection and simplicity.
Following Nietzsche closely, I have sought to
demonstrate the difference between the art which
comes of inner poverty (realism, or democratic
art), and that which is the result of inner riches
(Ruler Art).
Identifying the first with the reflex actions which
respond to external stimuli, I have shown it to be
PREFACE vii
slavishly dependent upon environment for its exist

ence, and, on that account, either beneath reality
(Incompetence), on a level with reality (Realism),
or fantastically different from reality (Roman
ticism). I have, moreover, associated these three
forms of inferior art with democracy, because in
democracy I find three conditions which are con
ducive to their cultivation, viz. — (i) The right of
self-assertion granted to everybody, and the con
sequent necessary deterioration of world-interpreta
tions owing to the fact that the function of
interpretation is claimed by mediocrity; (2) the
belief in a general truth that can be made common
to all, which seems to become prevalent in demo
cratic times, and which perforce reduces us to the
only truth that can be made common to all, namely
Reality ; and (3) a democratic dislike of recognizing
the mark or stamp of any particular human power
in the things interpreted, and man's consequent
"return to Nature " untouched by man, which, once
again, is Reality.
Identifying Ruler Art, or the Art of inner riches,
with the function of giving, I have shown it to be
dependent upon four conditions which are quite
inseparable from an aristocratic society, and which
I therefore associate, without any hesitation, as
Nietzsche does, with Higher Man, with Nature's
rare and lucky strokes among men. These con
ditions are — (i) Long tradition under the sway of
noble and inviolable values, resulting in an accumu
lation of will power and a superabundance of good
spirits; (2) leisure which allows of meditation, and
therefore of that process of lowering pitchers into
viii PREFACE
the wells of inner riches; (3) the disbelief in free

dom for freedom's sake without a purpose or
without an aim ; and (4) an order of rank according
to which each is given a place in keeping with
his value, and authority and reverence are upheld.
In the course of this exposition, it will be seen
that I have to lay realism also at the door of Ruler
Art; but I am careful to point out that, although
such realism (I call it militant realism in respect
to the art both of the Middle Ages and of the later
Renaissance, as well as of Greece) is a fault of
Ruler Art which very much reduces the latter's
rank among the arts; it is nevertheless above that
other realism of mediocrity which, for the want of
a better term, I call poverty realism. (See
Lecture II, Part II, end.)
In order firmly to establish the difference between
the Ruler and Democratic styles I ought, perhaps,
to have entered with more thoroughness than I
have done into the meditative nature of the one,
and the empirical nature of the other. This, apart
from a few very unmistakable hints, I have unfor
tunately been unable to do. I found it quite impos
sible to include all the detail bearing upon the main
thesis, in this first treatise; and, though I have
resolved to discuss these important matters very
soon, in the form of supplementary essays, I can but
acknowledge here that I recognize their omission as
a blemish.
The wide field covered by this book, and the
small form in which I was compelled to cast it,
have thus led to many questions remaining inade
quately answered and to many statements being
PREFACE ix
left insufficiently substantiated. In the end I found

it quite impossible to avail myself even of a third
of the material I had collected for its production,
and I should therefore be grateful if it could be
regarded more in the light of a preliminary survey
of the ground to be built upon, rather than as
a finished building taking its foundation in
Nietzsche's philosophy of Art.
With regard to all my utterances on Egypt, I
should like the reader kindly to bear only this in
mind : that my choice of Egyptian art, as the
best example of Ruler Art we possess, is neither
arbitrary nor capricious; but, because it is neither
arbitrary 'nor capricious, it does not follow that I
regard a return to the types of Egypt as the only
possible salvation of the graphic arts. This would
be sheer Romanticism and sentimentality. "A
thousand paths are there which have never yet been
trodden ; a thousand salubrities and hidden islands
of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered is still man
and man's world" (Z., I, XXII.).
It is rather the spirit which led to this Egyptian
Art, which I regard as so necessary to all great
achievements, either in legislation, art, or religion ;
and whether this spirit happens to be found on the
banks of the Nile, in the Vatican, or in Mexico, I
point to it merely as something which we ought to
prize and cherish, and which we now possess only in
an extremely diluted and decadent form. It is the
spirit which will establish order at all costs, whose
manner of exploiting higher men is to look upon
the world through their transfiguring vision, and
which believes that it is better for mankind to
x PREFACE
attain to a high level, even in ones, twos, or threes,

than that the bulk of humanity should begin to
doubt that man can attain to a high level at all.
This spirit might produce any number of types;
it is not necessary, therefore, that the Egyptian
type should be regarded as precisely the one to
be desired. I do but call your attention to these
granite and diorite sculptures, because behind them
I feel the presence and the power of that attitude
towards life which the ancient Pharaohs held and
reverenced,
Art values. and which I find reflected in Nietzsche's
In quoting from German authorities, where I

have not been able to give reference to standard
English translations, I have translated the extracts
from the original myself, for the convenience of
English readers; while, in the case of French
works, I have deliberately given the original text,
only when I felt that the sense might suffer by
translation.
I should now like to express my deep gratitude
to Dr. Oscar Levy, who has always been ready
to place his valuable time and wide knowledge at
my disposal whenever I have expressed the smallest
desire of consulting him on any difficult point that
may have arisen during the preparation of these
lectures. And I should also like to acknowledge
the help afforded me by both Mr. J. M. Kennedy
and Dr. Miigge, — the one through his extensive
acquaintance with Eastern literature, and the other
through his valuable bibliography of works relat
ing to Nietzsche's life and philosophy.
PREFACE xi
It only remains for me to thank the Committee

and the Provost of University College, Gower
Street, for their kindness, and for the generous
hospitality which they have now extended to me
on two separate occasions; and, finally, to avail
myself of this opportunity in order to express my
grateful recognition of the trouble taken on my
behalf by Professor Robert Priebsch and Mr.
Walter W. Seton of London University, on both
occasions when I had the honour of delivering a
course of lectures at their College.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
February ign.
CONTENTS
LECTURE I
PART I
Anarchy in Modern Art PAGE
THE STATE OF MODERN ART. . 7

THE FINE ARTS :—
1. THE ARTISTS ....... 15
2. THE PUBLIC ....... 19
3. TUB CRITICS ... 25
4. SOME ART-CRITICISMS . . .28
PART II
Suggested Causes of the Anarchy in Modern Art
1. MORBID IRRITABILITY 37
2. MISLEADING SYSTEMS OF ./ESTHETIC . . .41
3. OUR HERITAGE :—
(a) CHRISTIANITY ...... 43
(6) PROTESTANTISM ...... 47
(c) PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES . . -S3
(d) THE EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESIS ... 57
LECTURE II
GOVERNMENT IN ART— NIETZSCHE'S DEFINITION OF ART
PART I
Divine Art and the Man- God
i. THE WORLD "WITHOUT FORM" AND "VOID". 66
2 THE FIRST ARTISTS 75
3. THE PEOPLE AND THEIR MAN-GOD . . .81
4. THE DANGER ....... 86
5. THE Two KINDS OF ARTISTS .... 90
xiv CONTENTS
PART II
Deductions from Part 1'— Nietzsche 's Art Principles

PAGE
1. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE INCOMPATIBLE WITH
RULER ART 98
2. A THRUST PARRIED. POLICE OR DETECTIVE ART
DEFINED ....... 103
3. THE PURPOSE OF ART STILL THE SAME AS EVER in
4. THE ARTIST'S AND THE LAYMAN'S VIEW OF LIFE 117
5. THE CONFUSION OF THE Two POINTS OF VIEW 121
6. THE MEANING OF BEAUTY OF FORM AND OF
BEAUTY OF CONTENT IN ART . . .125
7. THE MEANING OF UGLINESS OF FORM AND OF
UGLINESS OF CONTENT IN ART . . -133
8. THE RULER-ARTIST'S STYLE AND SUBJECT . 136
PART III
Landscape and Portrait Painting
1. THE VALUE "UGLY'' IN THE MOUTH OF THE
DIONYSIAN ARTIST ..... 146
2. LANDSCAPE PAINTING 150
3. PORTRAIT PAINTING . . . . . -165
LECTURE III
NIETZSCHE'S ART PRINCIPLES IN THE HISTORY OF ART

PART I
Christianity and the Renaissance
1. ROME AND THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL . . .172
2. THE PAGAN TYPE APPROPRIATED AND TRANS
FORMED BY CHRISTIAN ART . . . .176
3. THE GOTHIC BUILDING AND SENTIMENT . . 183
4. THE RENAISSANCE . . . . . .190
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
PART II
Greece and Egypt
PAGH
1. GREEK ART 198
(a) THE PARTHENON . . .204
(b) THE APOLLO OF TENEA . . . 207
(c) THE Two ART- WILLS OF ANCIENT GREECE . .210
(d) GREEK PAINTING . . 213
2. EGYPTIAN ART . . . . . 2I5

(a) KING KHEPHREN . ... 215
(b) THE LADY NOPHRET . 226
(<•) THE PYRAMID . 232
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SEKHET (Louvre) Frontispiece
To face page
THE MARRIAGE OF MARY, by Raphael (Brera,

Milan) . . . . . . . -123
SASKIA, by Rembrandt (Dresden Royal Picture
Gallery} . .166
THE CANON OF POLYCLEITUS (Rome) . . .189
THE APOLLO OF TENEA (Glyptothek, Munich) . 207
THE MEDUSA METOPE OF SELINUS (Palermo) . 211
KING KHEPHREN (Cairo Museum) . . . .216
THE LADY NOPHRET (Cairo Museum) . . 226
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERRING TO
NIETZSCHE'S WORKS1
E.I. - The Future of our Educational Institutions.

B. T. = The Birth of Tragedy.
//. A. H. = Human All-too-Human.
D. D. = Dawn of Day.
/. W. = Joyful Wisdom.
Z. = Thus spake Zarathustra.
G. E. — Beyond Good and Evil.
G. M. = The Genealogy of Morals.
C. W. = The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra
Wagner.
T. I. = The Twilight of the Idols.
A. = Antichrist.
W. P. = The Will to Power.
1 The English renderings given in this book are taken from the Com
plete
Levy. and Authorized Translation of Nietzsche's Works edited by Dr. Oscar
NIETZSCHE AND ART
LECTURE I1
PART I
ANARCHY IN MODERN ART
" Therefore is the name of it called Babel ; because the Lord

did there confound the language of all the earth : and from
thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of
all the earth." — Genesis xi. 9.
"CONCERNING great things," said Nietzsche, "one

should either be silent, or one should speak loftily :
—loftily, that is to say, cynically and innocently." 2
Art is a great thing. Maybe it is the greatest
thing on earth. Wherever and whenever Nietzsche
speaks about it, he always does so loftily, and with
reverence ; while his position as an anchorite, and
as an artist who kept aloof from the traffic for fame,
allowed him to retain that innocence in his point
of view, which he maintains is so necessary in the
treatment of such a subject.
As the children of an age in which Art is rapidly
losing its prestige, we modern Europeans may per
haps feel a little inclined to purse our lips at the
1 Delivered at University College on Dec. ist, 1910.
2 NIETZSCHE AND ART
religious solemnity with which Nietzsche ap

proaches this matter. So large a number of vital
forces have been applied to the object of giving us
entertainment in our large cities, that it is now no
longer a simple matter to divorce Art altogether in
our minds from the category of things whose sole
purpose is to amuse or please us.
Some there are, of course, who would repudiate
this suggestion indignantly, and who would claim
for Art a very high moral purpose. These moralists
apart, however, it seems safe to say, that in the
minds of most people to-day, Art is a thing which
either leaves them utterly unmoved, or to which
they turn only when they are in need of distrac
tion, of decoration for their homes, or of stimulation
in their thought.
of Nietzsche's personal
Leaving
view to discussion
of Art the the next lecture, I shall now first
attempt, from his standpoint, a general examination
of the condition of Art at the present day, which,
though it will be necessarily rapid and sketchy, will,
I hope, not prove inadequate for my purpose.
Before I proceed, however, I should like to be
allowed to call your attention to the difficulties of
my task. As far as I am aware, mine is the first
attempt that has been made, either here or abroad,
to place an exhaustive account of Nietzsche's Art
doctrine before any audience. But for one or two
German writers, who have discussed Nietzsche — the
artist — tentatively and hesitatingly, I know of no
one who has endeavoured to do so after having had
recourse to all his utterances on the subject, nor do
I know of anybody who has applied his aesthetic
ANARCHY IN MODERN ART 3
principles to any particular branch or branches of

Art. It is therefore with some reason that I now
crave your indulgence for my undertaking and beg
you to remember that it is entirely of a pioneer
nature.
Many of you here, perhaps, are already ac
quainted with Nietzsche's philosophy, and are also
intimately associated with one of the branches of
Art. Nevertheless, let me warn you before I begin,
that you may have to listen to heresies that will try
your patience to the utmost.
I also am intimately associated with one of the
branches of Art, and my traditions are Art tradi
tions. I can well imagine, therefore, how some
of you will receive many of the statements I am
about to make ; and I can only entreat you to bear
with me patiently until the end, if only with the
hope that, after all, there may be something worth
thinking about, if not worth embracing, in what
you are going to hear.
Two years ago, in this same hall, I had the
honour of addressing an audience on the subject
of Nietzsche's moral and evolutionary views, and,
since then, I have wondered whether I really
selected the more important side of his philosophy
for my first lectures. If it were not for the fact
that the whole of his thought is, as it were, of one
single piece, harmoniously and consistently woven,
I should doubt that I had selected the more vital
portion of it; for it is impossible to overrate the
value of his Art doctrine — especially to us, the
children of an age so full of perplexity, doubt and
confusion as this one is.
B2
4 NIETZSCHE AND ART
In taking Nietzsche's Art principles and Art

criticism as a basis for a new valuation of Art, I
am doing nothing that is likely to astonish the
careful student of Nietzsche's works.
Friends and foes alike have found themselves
compelled to agree upon this point, that Nietzsche,
whatever he may have been besides, was at least a
great artist and a great thinker on Art.
On the ground that he was solely and purely an
artist some have even denied his claim to the title
Philosopher. Among the more celebrated of
modern writers who have done this, is the Italian
critic Benedetto Croce;1 while Julius Zeitler de
clares that "Nietzsche's artistic standpoint should
be regarded as the very basis of all his thought,"
and that "no better access could be discovered to
his spirit than by way of his aesthetic." 2
Certainly, from the dawn of his literary career,
Art seems to have been one of Nietzsche's most
constant preoccupations. Even the general argu
ment of his last work, The Will to Power, is an
entirely artistic one ; while his hatred of Christianity
was the hatred of an artist long before it became
the hatred of an aristocratic moralist, or of a
prophet of Superman.
In The Birth of Tragedy, a book in which, by
the bye, he declares that there can be but one
justification of the world, and that is as an aesthetic
phenomenon,3 we find the following words —
"To the purely aesthetic world interpretation . . .
1 Esthetic (translation by Douglas Ainslie), p. 350.
2 Nietzsches /Esthetik, p. 5.
« B.T., p. 183.
taught in this book, there is no greater antithesis

than the Christian dogma, which is only and will
be only moral, and which, with its absolute stan
dards, for instance, its truthfulness of God, relegates
—that is, disowns, convicts, condemns — Art, all
Art, to the realm of falsehood. Behind such a mode
of thought and valuation, which, if at all genuine,
must be hostile to Art, I always experienced what
was hostile to life, the wrathful vindictive counter
will to life itself : for all life rests on appearance,
Art, illusion, optics, and necessity of perspective
and error." *
Nietzsche's works are, however, full of the
evidences of an artistic temperament.
Who but an artist, knowing the joy of creating,
for instance, could have laid such stress upon the
creative act as the great salvation from suffering
and an alleviation of life?2 Who but an artist
could have been an atheist out of his lust to create ?
" For what could be created, if there were Gods ! "
cries Zarathustra.3
But, above all, who save an artist could have
elevated taste to such a high place as a criterion of
value, and have made his own personal taste the
standard for so many grave valuations?
"And ye tell me, my friends," says Zarathustra,
"that there is to be no dispute about taste and tast
ing? But all life is a dispute about taste and
tasting !
"Taste: that is weight at the same time, and
scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing
1 B. T., pp. 9, 10. 2 Z Uf XXIV. 3 Z., II, XXIV.
6 NIETZSCHE AND ART
that would live without dispute about weight and

scales and weighing ! " 1
But it is more particularly in Nietzsche's under
standing of the instinct which drove him to expres
sion, and in his attitude towards those whom he
would teach, that we recognize the typical artist,
in the highest acceptation of the word — that is to
say, as a creature of abundance, who must give
thereof or perish. Out of plenitude and riches
only, do his words come to us. With him there
can be no question of eloquence as the result of
poverty, vindictiveness, spite, resentment, or envy ;
for such eloquence is of the swamp.2 Where he is
wrath, he speaks from above, where he despises his
contempt is prompted by love alone, and where he
annihilates he does so as a creator.3
"Mine impatient love," he says, "floweth over in
streams, down towards the sunrise and the sunset.
From out silent mountains and tempests of afflic
tion, rusheth my soul into the valleys.
"Too long have I yearned and scanned the far
horizon. Too long hath the shroud of solitude
been upon me : thus have I lost the habit of silence.
"A tongue have I become and little else besides,
and the brawling of a brook, falling from lofty
rocks : downward into the dale will I pour my
words.
"And let the torrent of my love dash into all
1 Z., II, XXXV. See also La Bruyere's reply to his

countrymen's popular belief, "des gouts et des couleurs
on ne peut discuter," in Les Caracttres : Des ouvrages
de 1'esprit, Aph. 10.
2 Z., Ill, LVI. 3 Z., II, XXXIV.
blocked highways. How could a torrent help but

find its way to the sea !
"Verily, a lake lies within me, complacent and
alone; but the torrent of my love draws this along
with it, down — into the ocean !
"New highways I tread, new worlds come unto
me ; like all creators I have grown weary of old
tongues. Xo longer will my spirit walk on worn-
out soles.
"Too slow footed is all speech for me : — Into thy
chariot, O storm, do I leap ! And even thee will I
scourge with my devilry.
"Thus spake Zarathustra." 1
The State of Modern Art.

The Art of to-day, unholy and undivine as the
Tower of Babel, seems to have incurred the wrath
of a mighty godhead, and those who were at work
upon it have abandoned it to its fate, and have
scattered apart — all speaking different tongues, and
all filled with confusion.
Precisely on account of the disorder which now
prevails in this department of life, sincere and
honest people find it difficult to show the interest
in it, which would be only compatible with its
importance.
Probably but few men, to-day, could fall on
their knees and sob at the deathbed of a great
artist, as Pope Leo X once did. Maybe there
are but one or two who, like the Taiko's generals,
» 2., II, XXIII.
8 NIETZSCHE AND ART
when Teaism was in the ascendancy in Japan,

would prefer the present of a rare work of art to
a large grant of territory as a reward of victory ; l
and there is certainly not one individual in our
midst but would curl his lips at the thought of a
mere servant sacrificing his life for a precious
picture.
And yet, says the Japanese writer, Okakura-
Kakuzo, "many of our favourite dramas in Japan
are based on the loss and subsequent recovery of
a noted masterpiece." 2
In this part of the world to-day, not only the
author, but also the audience for such dramas is
entirely lacking.
The layman, as well as the artist, knows perfectly
well that this is so. Appalled by the disorder,
contradictoriness, and difference of opinion among
artists, the layman has ceased to think seriously
about Art ; while artists themselves are so perplexed
by the want of solidarity in their ranks, that they
too are beginning to question the wherefore of their
existence.
Not only does every one arrogate to himself the
right to utter his word upon Art; but Art's throne
itself is now claimed by thousands upon thousands
of usurpers— each of whom has a "free personality "
which he insists upon expressing,3 and to whom
severe law and order would be an insuperable
barrier. Exaggerated individualism and anarchy
are the result. But such results are everywhere
1 Okakura-Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, pp. 112. in
2 The Book of Tea, p. 112.
3 See in this regard B. T., pp. 54, 55.
inevitable, when all aesthetic canons have been

abolished, and when there is no longer anybody
strong enough to command or to lead.
" Knowest thou not who is most needed of all ? "
says Zarathustra. " He who commandeth great
things.
"To execute great things is difficult ; but the more
difficult task is to command great things." l
Direct commanding of any sort, however, as
Nietzsche declares, has ceased long since. "In
cases," he observes, "where it is believed that the
leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with,
attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace
commanders by the summing together of clever
gregarious men : all representative constitutions,
for example, are of this origin." 2
Although, in this inquiry, the Fine Arts will be
the subject of my particular aftention, it should not
be supposed that this is necessarily the department
in modern life in which Nietzsche believed most dis
order, most incompetence, and most scepticism pre
vails. I selected the Fine Arts, in the first place,
merely because they are the arts concerning which
I am best informed, and to which the Nietzschean
doctrine can be admirably applied; and secondly,
because sculpture and painting offer a wealth of
examples known to all, which facilitates anything
in the way of an exposition. For even outsiders
and plain men in the street must be beginning to
have more than an inkling of the chaos and con
fusion which now reigns in other spheres besides
the Fine Arts. It must be apparent to most people
1 Z.t II, XLIV. 2 G. E t p I2I
10 NIETZSCHE AND ART
that, in every department of modern life where

culture and not calculation, where taste and not
figures, where ability and not qualifications, are
alone able to achieve anything great — that is to say,
in religion, in morality, in law, in politics, in music,
in architecture, and finally in the plastic arts, pre
cision and government are nowr practically at an end.
"Disintegration," says Nietzsche, " — that is to
say, uncertainty — is peculiar to this age : nothing
stands on solid ground or on a sound faith. . . .
All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the
ice which still bears us has grown unconscionably
thin : \ve all feel the mild and gruesome breath of
the thaw-wind — soon, where we are walking, no one
will any longer be able to stand ! " l
We do not require to be told that in religion and
moral matters, scarcely any two specialists are agreed
—the extraordinarily large number of religious sects
in England alone needs but to be mentioned here;
in law we divine that things are in a bad state;
in politics even our eyes are beginning to give
us evidence of the serious uncertainty prevail
ing; while in architecture and music the case is
pitiable.
"If we really wished, if we actually dared to
devise a style of architecture which corresponded
to the state of our souls," says Nietzsche, "a laby
rinth would be the building we should erect. But,"
he adds, "we are too cowardly to construct anything
which would be such a complete revelation of our
hearts." 2
However elementary our technical knowledge of
1 W. P., Vol. I, p. 55. 2 D. D.t Aph. 169.
the matter may be, we, as simple inquirers, have

but to look about our streets to-day, in order to
convince ourselves of the ignominious muddle of
modern architecture. Here we find structural ex
pedients used as ornaments,1 the most rigid parts
of buildings, in form (the rectangular parts, etc.),
placed near the roof instead of in the basement,2
and pillars standing supporting, and supported by,
nothing.3 Elsewhere we see solids over voids,4
mullions supporting arches,5 key-stones introduced
into lintels,6 real windows appearing as mere holes
in the wall, while the ornamental windows are
shams,7 and pilasters resting on key-stones.8
And, everywhere, we see recent requirements
masked and concealed behind Greek, Roman,
Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque embel
lishments, thrown together helter-skelter, and with
a disregard of structural demands which must
startle even the uninitiated.9
Our streets are ugly in the extreme.10 Only at
night, as Camille Mauclair says, does the artificial
1 This is such a common fault that it is superfluous to
give particular examples of it, but the New War Office in
Whitehall is a good case in point.
2 Local Government Board building; Piccadilly Hotel
(Regent St. side).
3 Piccadilly Hotel (Piccadilly side), and the Sicilian
Avenue, Bloomsbury.
4 New Scotland Yard.
5 Gaiety
Court Road.Theatre; the new Y.M.C.A. building, Tottenham
* Local Government Board.
7 Gaiety Theatre.
8 Marylebone Workhouse.
9 See Fergusson's Introduction to his History of Modern
Architecture.
10 See W. Morris's Address on the Decorative Arts, pp. 18, 19.
light convert their hideousness into a sort of lugu

brious grandeur,1 and that is perhaps why, to the
sensitive artistic Londoner, the darkness of night or
the pale glow of the moon is such a solace and relief.
As to the state of modern music, this is best
described perhaps, though with perfectly uncon
scious irony, by Mr. Henry Davey, in the opening
words of his Student's Musical History.
"Music has indeed been defined," he says, "as
' sound with regular vibrations,' other sounds being
called noise. This definition," the author adds,
"is only suited to undeveloped music; modern
music may include noise and even silence." 2
People are mistaken if they suppose that Nietz
sche, in attacking Wagner as he did, was prompted
by any personal animosity or other considerations
foreign to the question of music. In Wagner,
Nietzsche saw a Romanticist of the strongest pos
sible type, and he was opposed to the Romantic
School of Music, because of its indifference to form.
Always an opponent of anarchy, despite all that
his critics may say to the contrary, Nietzsche saw
with great misgiving the decline and decay of
melody and rhythm in modern music, and in attack
ing Wagner as the embodiment of the Romantic
School, he merely personified the movement to
which he felt himself so fundamentally opposed.
And in this opposition he was not alone. The
Romantic movement, assailed by many, will con
tinue to be assailed, until all its evil influences are
exposed.
1 Trois crises de I'art actuel, p. 243.
2 The Student's Musical History, p. i.
"Since the days of Beethoven," says Emil

Naumann, "instrumental music, generally speak
ing, has retrograded as regards spontaneity of
invention, thematic working, and mastery of art
form," 1 and the same author declares that he
regards all modern masters as the natural outcome
of the Romantic era.2
Nietzsche has told us in his Wagner pamphlets
what he demands from music,3 and this he certainly
could not get from the kind of music which is all
the rage just now.
What it lacks in invention it tries to make up in
idiosyncrasy, intricacy, and complexity, and that
which it cannot assume in the matter of form, it
attempts to convert into a virtue and a prin
ciple.4
"Bombast and complexity in music," says P. von
Lind, "as in any other art, are always a sign of
inferiority ; for they betray an artist's incapacity
to express himself simply, clearly, and exhaust
ively — three leading qualities in our great heroes
of music (Tonhcroen). In this respect the whole
of modern music, including Wagner's, is inferior
to the music of the past." 5
1 History of Music, Vol. II, p. 927. See also The
Student's Musical History, by Henry Davey, p. 97. "Weak
ness of rhythm is the main reason of the inferiority of the
romantic composers to their predecessors."
2 History of Music, p. 1195. êe a^so !'• v- Lind, Moderncr
Geschmack und moderne Musik, in which the author com
plains of the excessive virtuosity, want of faith and science
of modern music, while on p. 34 he, too, calls all modern
musicians romanticists.
3 See especially C. W., pp. 59, 60.
* W. P., Vol. II, p. 276.
3 Moderner Geschmack und moderne Musik, p. 54.
But of all modern musical critics, perhaps

Richard Hamann is the most desperate concerning
the work of recent composers. His book on
Impressionism and Art entirely supports Nietz
sche's condemnation of the drift of modern music,
and in his references to Wagner, even the words
he uses seem to have been drawn from the
Nietzschean vocabulary.1
Briefly what he complains of in the music of
the day is its want of form,2 its abuse of discord,3
its hundred and one different artifices for producing
nerve-exciting and nerve-stimulating effects,4 its
predilection in favour of cacophonous instruments,5
its unwarrantable sudden changes in rhythm or
tempo wdthin the same movement,6 its habit of
delaying the solving chord, as in the love-death
passage of Tristan and Isolde,7 and, finally, its
realism, of which a typical example is Strauss's
"By a Lonely Brook" — all purely Nietzschean
objections !
Well might Mr. Allen cry out: "Oh for the
classic simplicity of a bygone age, the golden age
of music that hath passed away ! " 8 But the
trouble does not end here; for, if we are to believe
a certain organ-builder, bell-founder and piano
forte-maker of ripe experience, it has actually
descended into the sphere of instrument-making
as well.9
1 Der Impressionismus in Leben und Kunst.
2 Ibid., pp. 53, 57. 3 Ibidmf p
Ibtd., p. 69. 6 Ibid., p. 74. i Ibid., p. 61.
8 The Fallacy of Modern Music, p. 10.
9 A Protest against the Modern Development of
Unmusical Tone, by Thomas C. Lewis.
The Fine Arts. — i. The Artists.

Turning, now, to Painting and Sculpture, \vhat
is it precisely that we see ?
In this branch of Art, chaos and anarchy are
scarcely the words to use. The condition is rather
one of complete and hopeless dissolution. There
is neither a direction, a goal, nor a purpose.
Slavish realism side by side with crude conven
tions, incompetence side by side with wasted talent,
coloured photography side by side with deliberate
eccentricity, and scientific principles applied to
things that do not matter in the least : these are
a few of the features which are noticeable at a
first glance. Going a little deeper, we find that
the whole concept of what Art really is seems to
be totally lacking in the work of modern painters
and sculptors, and, if we were forced to formulate
a broad definition for the painting and sculpture
of our time, we should find ourselves compelled to
say that they are no more than a field in which
more or less interesting people manifest their more
or less interesting personalities.
There is nothing in this definition which is likely
to offend the modern artist. On the contrary, he
would probably approve of it all too hastily. But,
in approving of it, he would confess himself utterly
ignorant of what Art actually is, and means, and
purposes in our midst.
Or to state the case differently : it is not that the
modern artist has no notion at all of what Art is;
but, that his notion is one which belittles, humili
ates and debases Art, root and branch.
To have gazed with understanding at the divine

Art of Egypt, to have studied Egyptian realism
and Egyptian conventionalism ; to have stood
doubtfully before Greek sculpture, even of the
best period, and to have known how to place it in
the order of rank among the art-products of the
world; finally, to have learnt to value the Art of
the Middle Ages, not so much because of its form,
but because of its content : these are experiences
which ultimately make one stand aghast before the
work of our modern men, and even before the work
of some of their predecessors, and to ask oneself
into whose hands could Art have passed that she
should have fallen so low ?
Whether one look on a Sargent or on a Poynter,
on a Rodin or on a Brock, on a Vuillard or on a
Maurice Denis, on an Alfred East or on a Monet,
the question in one's heart will be : not, why are
these men so poor ? but, why are they so modest ?
—why are they so humble ?— why, in fact, are their
voices so obsequiously servile and faint? One
will ask : not, why do these men paint or mould
as they do? but, why do they paint or mould
at all ?
Ugliness, in the sense of amorphousness, one
will be able to explain. Ugliness, in this sense,
although its position in Art has not yet been
properly accounted for, one will be able to classify
perfectly well. But this tremulousness, this ple
beian embarrassment, this democratic desire to
please, above all, this democratic disinclination to
assume a position of authority, — these are things
which contradict the very essence of Art, and these
are the things which are found in the productions

of almost every European school to-day.
But, as a matter of fact, to do artists justice,
beneath all the tremendous activity of modern times
in both branches of the art we are discussing, there
is, among the thinking members of the profession,
a feeling of purposelessness, of doubt and pessi
mism, which is ill concealed, even in their work.
The best of these artists know, and will even tell
you, that there are no canons, that individuality
is absolute, and that the aim of all their work is
extremely doubtful, if not impossible to determine. ; ^ fl.
There is not much quarrelling done, or hand-to-
hand scuffling engaged in; because no one feels Cr\V>
sufficiently firm on his own legs to stand up and
oppose the doctrine that "there is no accounting
for tastes." A clammy, deathlike stillness reigns',
over the whole of this seething disagreement and\
antagonism in principles. Not since Whistler fired I
his bright missiles into the press has the report of I ^ L
a decent-sized gun been heard; and this peace in I
chaos, this silence in confusion, is full of the '
suggestion of decomposition and decay.
"Art appears to be surrounded by the magic
influence of death," says Nietzsche, "and in a
short time mankind will be celebrating festivals
memory
of With in honour of it." 1
but one or two brilliant exceptions, that
which characterizes modern painting and modern
sculpture is, generally speaking, its complete lack
of Art in the sense in which I shall use this word
in my next lecture. This indeed, as you will see,
» H. A. H., Vol. I, pp. 205, 206.
c
covers everything. For the present purpose, how

ever, let it be said that, from the Nietzschean
standpoint, the painters and sculptors of the present
age are deficient in dignity, in pride, in faith, and,
above all, in love.
They are too dependent upon environment, upon
Nature, to give a direction and a meaning to their
exalted calling; they are too disunited and too
lawless to be leaders ; they are in an age too chaotic
and too sceptical to be able to find a "wherefore"
and a "whither" for themselves; and, above all,
there are too many pretenders in their ranks — too
many who ought never to have painted or moulded
at all — to make it possible for the greatest among
them to elevate the Cause of Art to its proper
Jevel.
No aesthetic canon is to be seen or traced any
where; nobody knows one, nobody dares to assert
one. The rule that tastes cannot be disputed is now
the only rule that prevails, and, behind this rule,
the basest, meanest and most preposterous indi
vidual claims are able to make their influence felt.
Certainly, it is true, there is no accounting for
tastes ; but, once a particular taste has revealed
itself it ought to be possible to classify it and to
point out where it belongs and whither it is going
to lead. Undoubtedly a man's taste cannot be taken
from him, because its roots are in his constitution;
but, once he has identified himself with a particular
form of taste, it ought to be possible to identify
him too, — that is to say, to realize his rank and his
value.
If it is impossible to do this nowadays, it is
because there is no criterion to guide us. It will

therefore be my endeavour to establish a criterion,
based upon Nietzsche's aesthetic, and, in the
course of these lectures, to classify a few forms
of taste in accordance with it.
Meanwhile, however, the inquiry into the present
condition of the Fine Arts must be continued; and
this shall now be done by taking up the public's
standpoint.
2. The Public.
The man who goes to a modern exhibition of
pictures and sculptures, experiences visually what
they experience aurally who stand on a Sunday
evening within sight of the Marble Arch, just inside
Hyde Park. Not only different voices and different
subjects are in the air; but fundamentally different
conceptions of life, profoundly and utterly antago
nistic outlooks.
The Academy, The International Society of
Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, The Royal Society
of British
Salon des Artists,
ArtistesTheFrancais,
New English Art'CluB,
and the Salon The
des
Beaux Arts, are all alike in this; and the Inter
national's scorn of the Academy,1 or the Academy's
scorn of it, is as ridiculous as the Beaux Arts'
scorn of the Salon, or vice versa.
It is quite foolish, therefore, to inveigh against
1 For some amusing, and, at the same time, shrewd,
remarks concerning the International Society, I would refer
the reader to Mr. Wake Cook's Anarchism in Art (Cassell
& Co.). I agree on the whole with what Mr. Wake Cook
says, but cannot appreciate his remarks on Whistler.
C 2
the public for their bad taste, Philistinism and

apathy. How can they be expected to know, where
there are no teachers? How can they be other
wise than apathetic where keen interest must per
force culminate in confusion ? How can they have
good taste or any taste at all, where there is no
order of rank in tastes?
We know the torments of the modern lay student
of Art, when he asks himself uprightly and ear
nestly whether he should say "yes" or "no"
before a picture or a piece of sculpture. We know
the moments of impotent hesitancy during which
he racks his brains for some canon or rule on
which to base his judgment, and we sympathize
with his blushes when finally he inquires after the
name of the artist, before volunteering to express
an opinion.
At least a name is some sort of a standard nowa
days. In the absence of other standards it is
something to cling to; and the modern visitor to
an Art exhibition has precious little to cling to,
poor soul !
Still, even names become perplexing in the end ;
for it soon occurs to the lay student in question
that, not only Millais, but also Leighton, Whistler,
Rodin, Frith, Watts, Gauguin, John, and Vuillard
have names in the Art world.
Now, it is generally at this stage that such a
student of Art either retires disconcerted from his
first attempts at grappling with the problem, and
takes refuge in indifference ; or else, from the depth
of his despair, draws a certain courage which
makes him say that, after all, he knows what he
likes. Even if he does utter a heresy at times

against fashion or against culture, he knows what
pleases him.
And thus is formed that large concourse of
people who set up what they like and dislike as
the standard of taste.
It is in vain that painters and sculptors deplore
the existence of this part of their audience. It is
they themselves who are responsible for its exist
ence. It is the anarchy in their own ranks that
has infected the bravest of their followers.
The taste of the masses, endowed with self-
confidence in this way, is now a potent force in
European Art, and among those so-called artists
who do not suffer under the existing state of affairs,
there are many who actually conform and submit
to this mob-rule. In my next lecture I shall show
how even the art-canons of the lay masses have
been adopted by some painters and sculptors in
perfect good faith.
"Too long have we acknowledged them to be
right, these petty people," says Zarathustra.
"Thus we have at last given them power as well ;—
and now they teach that ' good ' is only what petty
people call good.' " l
It is on this account that many sincere and
refined natures turn reluctantly away from Art
altogether nowadays, and begin to doubt whether
it serves any good purpose in the world at all.
They grow weary of the humbug of the studios,
the affectation of gushing amateurs, and the snob
bery of the lionizing disciple of one particular
1 Z., IV, LXVII.
school, and doubt the honesty even of his leader.

They grow timid and renounce all judgment in
Art, wondering whether any of it really matters.
In a gingerly fashion they still hold on to gener
ally accepted views, — views that time seems to have
endorsed, — and thus they very often give all their
attention to the Old Masters.1
And yet, it is in thus turning away with contempt
from modern Art, that sincere people tacitly
acknowledge how profoundly serious the question
is on which they have turned their backs. For, it
is the horror of its disorder that makes them dis
consolate : they could continue facing this disorder
only if the matter were less important.
Passing over that unfortunately large percentage
1 In a Times leader of the 2oth December, 1909, the
writer puts the case very well. After referring to the heated
controversy which was then raging- round the Berlin wax
bust that Dr. Bode declared to be a Leonardo, the writer
goes on to say: "... it is amusing to see how the merit
of the work is forgotten in the dispute about its origin.
It seems to be assumed that if it is by Leonardo it must be
a great work of art, and if by Lucas nothing of the kind. . . .
This fact proves what needs no proving, that there are
many wealthy connoisseurs who buy works of art not for
their intrinsic merit, but for what is supposed to be their
authenticity. ^ . . This state of things reveals an extra
ordinary timidity in buyers of works of art. If they all
trusted their own taste" [that is to say, if they had a taste
of their
have no own basedTheupon
value. some merit
intrinsic reliableofcanon]
a work"names
of art would
is not
affected by the name it bears. . . . Yet in the market the
name of a great painter is worth more than the inspiration
of a lesser one. . . . Hence many people believe that it is
far more difficult to understand pictures than literature. .
But there is no more mystery about pictures than about
literature. It is only the market that makes a mystery of
them, and the market does this because it is timid." In
other words : because it does not know.
ANARCHY IN MODERN ART
of up-to-date people, in whose minds Art in general

is associated with jewellery, French pastry and
goldfish, as a more or less superfluous, though
pleasing, luxury, the rest of the civilized world
certainly feels with varying degrees of conviction
that Art has some essential bearing upon life; and,
though few will grant it the importance that Nietz
sche claims for it, a goodly number will realize
that it is quite impossible to reckon without it.
Now, if by chance, one of the last-mentioned
people, having grown disgusted at the prevailing
degeneration of Art, should start out in quest of
a canon, or a standard whereby he might take his
bearings in the sea of confusion around him, what
are we to suppose would await him ?
Unfortunately, we know only too well what
awaits him !
He may turn to the art-critics — the class of men
which society sustains for his special benefit in art
matters, — or he may turn to the philosophers. He
may spend years and years of labour in studying
the Art and thought of Antiquity, of the Middle
Ages, and of the Renaissance ; but, unless he have
sufficient independence of spirit to distrust not only
the Art, but every single manifestation of modern
life, and to try to find what the general corrosive
is which seems to be active everywhere, it is ex
tremely doubtful whether he will ever succeed in
reaching a bourne or a destination of any sort
whatsoever.
He will still be asking : " What is a good poem ? "
"What is good music?" — and, above all, "What
is a good picture or a good statue?"
We know the difficulties of the layman, and even

of the artist in this matter ; for most of us who
have thought about Art at all have experienced
these same difficulties.
The general need, then, I repeat, is a definite
canon,1 a definite statement as to the aim and pur
pose of Art, and the establishment of an order of
rank among tastes. Once more, I declare that I
have attempted to arrive at these things by the
principles of Nietzsche's Êsthetic; but, in order to
forestall the amusement which an announcement
of this sort is bound to provoke nowadays, let me
remind you of two things : First, that any artistic
canon must necessarily be relative to a certain type
of man ; and secondly, that the most that an estab
lishment of an order of rank among tastes can do
for you, is to allow you the opportunity of exercis
ing some choice — a choice of type in manhood,
therefore a choice as to a mode of life, and therefore
a choice of values, and the customs and conditions
that spring from them.
At present you have no such choice. You cer
tainly have the option of following either Rodin and
Renoir, or Whistler and Manet, or Sargent and
Boldini, or John and Gauguin, or Herkomer and
Lavery; but not one of you can say, "If I follow
1 On this point see Questionings on Criticism and Beauty,
by the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour. (Oxford University Press.)
Mr. Balfour entirely agrees that to-day we are driven to a
kind of anarchy of individual preferences, and he acknow
ledges that he is not satisfied to remain in this position. He
does not seem to recognize, however, how curiously and
almost perfectly this anarchy in Art coincides with a certain
anarchy in other departments of life, and thus, although it
displeases him, he sees in it no imminent danger, or no hint
that Art and life react in any way upon each other.
the first couple I shall be going in such and such a

direction," or, "If I follow the second couple I shall
be travelling towards this or that goal," — this you
would scarcely be able to say ; neither could your
leaders help you.
3. The Critics.
Now, to return to our lay-student of Art, let us
suppose that he first approaches the art-critics of
the day for guidance. Will there be one among
these men who will satisfy him ? Is there a single
art-critic either of the nineteenth or twentieth
century who knew, or who knows, his business?
It is possible to point to one or two, and even
so, in doing this, one is prompted more by a sense
of kindness than by a sense of accuracy. Some
Continental critics, Camille Mauclair and Muther
among them, and here and there an English critic
like R. A. M. Stevenson, occasionally seem to hit
a nail on the head; but as a rule, one can say with
Coventry Patmore : "There is little that is con
clusive or fruitful in any of the criticism of the
present day." 1
For the most part it is written by men who know
absurdly little of their subject, and who, if they do
know it, are acquainted much more with its chrono
logical and encyclopaedic than with its philosophical
side. There is not much conscience either, or much
acumen, in these men; and they are as a rule con
cerned with questions that are irrelevant to the point
at issue. Like a certain kind of insect, as Nietzsche
1 Principles in Art, p. 4.
very justly remarks, they live by stinging; but their

stings serve no purpose save that of providing them
with their food.1
They are, perhaps, less to blame than the artists
themselves for the state of affairs that exists to-day ;
but, while the artists have betrayed only themselves,
the critics have betrayed the reading public. They
have neither resisted nor condemned the flood of
anarchy that has swept over the art-world; they
have rather promoted it in every way in their power,
abetting and applauding artists in their lawlessness.
In fairness to some of them, however, it should be
said, that in encouraging the confusion and dis
order around them they very often acted with almost
religious sincerity. This reservation applies to
Ruskin, for instance, and to many other critics
writing for the better-class papers.
Lest this be considered as an overstatement of the
case, hear what one of these men himself actually
says concerning his own profession ! Mr. Frank
Rutter, writing in 1907, expressed himself as
follows : —
"In olden days the press used to lead public
opinion ; now it meekly follows because its courage
has been sapped by servile cringing to the adver
tiser, because its antics and sensational inaccuracy
have brought it into contempt. No longer com
manding the authority of a parent or guardian, it
seeks to attract attention by the methods of the
cheap-jack. The few exceptions surviving only
prove the rule." 2
1 H. A. H., Vol. II, Aph. 164.
2 The Academy, August 24th, 1907. Article, "The Pursuit
of Taste."
Finding themselves forced to speak of other

things than "The Purpose of Art," "The Standard
of Beauty," and "The Canons of Art "—simply
because nobody now knows anything about these
matters, or dares to assert anything concerning
them, — the better-class art-critics, feeling that they
must do something more than state merely their
opinions concerning the work under notice — in fact,
that they must give their reasons for their praise
or blame— have lately been compelled to have re
course to the only field that is open to them, and
that is technique.
Now, while Mr. Glutton Brock seems perfectly
justified in deprecating these tactics on the part of
some of his brother critics, and while Mr. Rutter
seems quite wrong in upholding them, the question
which naturally arises out of the controversy is :
what is there left to the critic to talk about ?
If he is no longer able to judge of the general
tendency and teaching of a play, and if he is no
longer able to regard it aesthetically, what can he do
but analyse the playwright's grammar, and seek
out the latter's split infinitives, his insufficient use
of the subjunctive mood, his Cockney idioms and
Cockney solecisms ?
We agree with Mr. Clutton Brock that . . . "the
public has no concern with the process of produc
tion but only with the product"; and that *'i/ Art
were in a healthy state l the public would know this
and would not ask for technical criticism." We
also agree that "the critic's proper business is with
the product, not with the process of production ; to
1 The italics are mine.
explain their own understanding and enjoyment of

the meaning and beauty of works of art, and not
the technical means by which they have been
made." *
But, while we agree with all this, we cannot help
sympathizing with the late R. A. M. Stevenson and
his admirer Mr. Frank Rutter; for their dilemma
is unique.
When Monsieur Domergue of the French
Academy assured his friend Beauze"e confidentially
that he had discovered that Voltaire didn't know
grammar, Beauze'e very rightly replied with some
irony : " I am much obliged to you for telling me ;
now I know that it is possible to do without it." 2
And this is the only reply that ought to be made
to any criticism which analyses the technique of a
real work of Art ; since it is obvious, that if technical
questions are uppermost, the work is by implication
unworthy of consideration in all other respects.3
4. Some Art Criticisms.

In order further to establish my contention, it
might perhaps be an advantage to refer to some
1 The Academy, Oct. 26th, 1907. Article, "The Hypo-
chondria of Art."
5 Monsieur de Saint Ange's Reception Speech, 1810.
3 There is, however, a further excuse for Mr. Rutter and
his school of critics, and that is, that in an age like this
one, in which Amateurism is rampant, the critic very often
performs a salutary office in condemning a work on purely
technical grounds. I, ^ for my part, am quite convinced
that^ the morbid attention which is now paid to technique
is simply a result of the extraordinary preponderance of
the art-student element in our midst,
criticisms that have actually been made. It will

not be necessary to give more than one or two of
these, because everybody must know that similar
instances could be multiplied indefinitely; but while
I shall limit the selection, I should not like it to be
thought that the cases I present are not absolutely
typical.
Quite recently the art-world has been staring with
something akin to amazement, not unmingled here
and there with indignation, at the work of one
Augustus John, in whose pictures they have found
at once a problem and an innovation.
Now, without for the present wishing to express
any opinion at all upon Mr. John's work, this at
least seemed quite clear to me when I first saw it;
namely, that it challenged profound analysis. Un
consciously or consciously, Mr. John seemed to
re-question a whole number of things afresh. The
direction of Art, the purpose of Art, the essence of
Art, the value of Art — these are some of the subjects
into which he provoked me to inquire.
Here was an opportunity for the more wise
among the critics to show their wisdom. This was
essentially a case in which the public required
expert guidance. Augustus John comes forward
with a new concept of what is beautiful. He says
pictorially this and that is beautiful. Are we to
follow him or to reject him ?
Hear one or two critics : —
Commenting upon one of Mr. Max Beerbohm's
caricatures in the Spring Exhibition of the New
English Art Club, 1909, the Times critic writes as
follows —
"Here an art-critic meets a number of Mr. John's

strange females with long necks and bent, unlovely
heads, like a child's copy of a Primitive; and the
puzzled critic ejaculates, ' How odd it seems that
thirty years hence I may be desperately in love
with these ladies ! ' Odd, indeed, but perfectly
possible," continues the Times expert. "Some of
us have learned, in twenty years, to find nature in
Claude Monet, and the time may come when the
women in Mr. John's ' Going to the Sea,' or in the
' Family Group ' at the Grafton, will seem as
beautiful as the Venus de Milo. The ' return of
Night primeval and of old chaos * may be nearer
than we think." Then after paying Mr. John's
drawing a compliment, the writer continues : "But
can any one, for all that, whose mind is not warped
by purely technical prepossession in favour of a
technician, say that the picture would not have been
enormously improved if the artist had thought more
of nature and less of his ' types ' ? If Mr. John
would throw his types to the winds, look for a
beautiful model, and paint her as she is, we should
not have to wait the thirty years of Mr. Max Beer-
bohm's critic, but might begin to fall in love with
her at once." *
And this, let me assure you, is a comparatively
able criticism !
But, what guidance does it give? Why is it so
timid and non-committing? And, where it is com
mitting, why is it so vague? The words "beautiful
model "" mean absolutely nothing nowadays. How,
then, can the critic employ them without defining
1 The Times, May 22nd, 1909.
the particular sense in which he wishes them to be

understood ?
I examined this picture of Mr. John's, as also the
one at the Grafton. Both of them were full of his
personal solution of the deepest problems associated
with the ideas of Art and beauty ; but how can we
know whether to accept these solutions unless they
are made quite plain by our critics? It may be
suggested that Mr. John's solutions of these prob
lems is not sufficiently important. Why, then,
discuss them at all ?
The Daily Telegraph also contained a so-called
criticism of Mr. John. After commenting, as the
previous critic did, upon Mr. Max Beerbohm's
caricature and the words accompanying it, the
writer proceeds : " How true — to give the most
obvious of all instances — with respect to Wagner !
And yet Mr. Max Beerbohm, the satirist, is as
regards the actual moment, not quite, quite up to
date. To-day, for fear of being accused of a
Boeotian denseness, we hasten to acclaim, if not
necessarily to enjoy, Cezanne, Maurice Denis, the
r'fleo-Impressionists, etc., etc." 1
"For fear of being accused of Boeotian dense-
ness ! " Yes, that is the whole trouble ! Appar
ently, then, if we are to believe the Daily Telegraph
critic, Mr. John has been acclaimed, simply in
order that his critics may escape the gibe of being
classically dense I
Possessing neither the necessary knowledge, nor
the necessary values, nor yet the necessary cer
tainty, to take up a definite stand for or against,
1 The Daily Telegraph, May 3151, 1909.
these critics "acclaim" novelty, in whatever garb

it may come, lest, perchance, their intelligence be
for one instant doubted. Very good !— at least this
is a confession which reveals both their humility
and their honesty, and, since it entirely supports
my contention, I am entirely grateful for it.
But what ought to be said to the implied, in
genuous and perfectly unwarrantable assumption,
that that which posterity endorses must of necessity
have been right all along? Why should Wagner
be vindicated simply because an age subsequent
to his own happens to rave about him ? Before
such posthumous success can vindicate a man,
surely the age in which it occurs must be duly
valued. In the event of its being more lofty, more
noble, and more tasteful than the age which pre
ceded it, then certainly posthumous fame is a vin
dication ; but if the case be otherwise, then it is a
condemnation. In an ascending culture the classic
of yesterday becomes the primitive of to-morrow,
and in a declining culture the decadent of yesterday
becomes the classic of to-morrow. Thus in valu
ing, say, Michelangelo, it all depends whence you
come. If you come from Egypt and walk down
towards him, your opinion will be very different
from that of the man who comes from twentieth-
century Europe and who walks up towards him.
But we are not ascending so rapidly or so materi
ally — if we are ascending at all — as to make post
humous success a guarantee of excellence. In fact,
precisely the converse might be true, and men who
are now quickly forgotten, may be all the greater
on that account alone. In any case, however, the
matter is not so obvious as to allow us to make the

broad generalizations we do concerning it.
Perhaps, in order to be quite fair, I ought now
to refer to other critics, as well as to other criticisms
concerning John written by the critics already
quoted. True, in the Times for October I4th, 1905,
there appears a more elaborate discussion of Mr.
John's powers. (I say more elaborate, but I mean
more lengthy !) And the Daily Telegraph has also
given us more careful views, as, for instance, in
their issues of October lyth, 1905, and November
23rd, 1909. I doubt, however, whether it could be
honestly said that one really understands any better
how to place Mr. John after having read the articles
in question, though, in making this objection, I
should like it to be understood, that I regard it as
applying not only to the art-criticism of the two
particular papers to which I have referred, but to
art-criticism in general.1
Most of what we read on this matter in the sphere
of journalism is pure badinage, and little besides
— entertainingly and ably written it is true, but
generally very wide of the fundamental principles
at stake, and of that consciousness of dealing with
a deeply serious question, which the subject Art
ought to awaken.
1 A further example of what I mean can be found in the
Hornine Post's article (4th April), on the International
Society's 1910 Show. Here the writer's only comments on
a Simon Bussy (No. -149), which really required serious
treatment, or no treatment at all, are : "Could any English
tourist at Mentone see that resort in the terms of
M. Bussy?" And his comments on an important Monet
(No. 133) arc: "What happy Idler at Antibes other than a
Frenchman could record the particular impression of Monet
(No. 133), even in enjoying the hospitalities of Eilenroe?"
No one seems to feel nowadays that a picture,

like a sonnet, like a sonata, and like a statue, if it
claim attention at all, should claim the attention of
all those who are most deeply concerned with the
problems of Life, Humanity, and the Future; and
that every breath of Art comes from the lungs of
Life herself, and is full of indications as to her
condition.
When one says these things nowadays, people
are apt to regard one as a little peculiar, a little
morbid, and perhaps a little too earnest as well.
Only two or three months ago, a certain critic,
commenting upon a sentence of mine in my Intro
duction to Nietzsche's Case of Wagner,1 in which
I declared that "the principles of Art are inextric
ably bound up with the laws of Life," assured the
readers of the Nation that "the plainest facts of
everyday life contradict this theory of non-artistic
philosophers in their arm-chairs." 2 And thus the
fundamental questions are shelved, year after year,
while Art withers, and real artists become ever more
and more scarce.
"I loathe this great city," cried Zarathustra.
"Woe to this great city! — And I would that I
already saw the pillar of fire in which it will be
consumed !
"For such pillars of fire must precede the great
noontide . But this hath its time and its own
fate." 3
' J Dr. Oscar Levy's Authorized English Edition of
Nietzsche's Complete Works.
2 The Nation, July oth, iqio.
3 Z., Ill, LI.
PART II
SUGGESTED CAUSES OF THE ANARCHY IN MODERN ART
44 ... To them gave he power to become the sons of

God, even to them that do believe in his name."— John i. 12.
AND now, what are the causes of this depression
and this madness in Art? For Nietzsche was not
alone in recognizing it. Many voices, some wholly
trustworthy, have been raised in support of his
view.
It could only have been the unsatisfactory con
ditions, even in his time, that made Hegel regard
Art as practically dead; for, as Croce and Monsieur
Benard rightly observe, Hegel's Vorlesungen iiber
/Esthetik are Art's dirge.1 Schopenhauer's extra
ordinary misunderstanding of Art, also, precisely
like Plato's,2 can be explained only by supposing
that the examples of Art which he saw about him
misled his otherwise penetrating judgment. Even
Ruskin's vague and wholly confused utterances on
the subject are evidence of his groping efforts to
find his way in the disorder of his time. And,
as to the voices of lesser men, their name is legion.
1 Benedetto Crocc, /Esthetic (translated by Douglas
Ain-lic), p. 308, and Monsieur Be"nard's critical survey of
Hegel's /Esthetik in Cours d'Esthetique, Vol. V. p. 493.
8 On this point see Schilling, Sammtliche Werkc,
Vol. V, "Vorlesungen iibcr die Methode des akadcmisch«-n
Stadiums," pp. 346-47.
02 35
Two eminent Englishmen of the last century,

however, were both clear and emphatic in their
denunciation of the age in which they lived. I
refer to Matthew Arnold and William Morris. The
former made a most illuminating analysis of some
of the influences which have conduced to bring
about the regrettable state of modern life, while
William Morris — less philosophical perhaps, and
more direct, though totally wrong in the remedies
he advocates — bewailed Art's unhappy plight as
follows —
"I must in plain words say of the Decorative
Arts, of all the arts, that it is not merely that we
are inferior in them to all who have gone before
us, but also that they are in a state of anarchy and
disorganization, that makes a sweeping change
necessary and certain." l
There can be no doubt, therefore, that what
Nietzsche saw was a plain fact to very many think
ing men besides; but, in tracing the conditions to
precise and definite causes, Nietzsche by far
excelled any of his contemporaries.
Before proceeding, however, to examine the more
general causes that he suggests, I should like to
pause here a moment, in order to dispose of one
particular cause which, although of tremendous
importance for us moderns, can scarcely be
regarded as having been active for a very long
period. I refer to the manner in which Nietzsche
accounts for a good deal that is incompetent and
futile, in the Art of the present day only, by point-
1 The Decorative Arts, an address delivered before the
Trades Guild of Learning, p. 11.
CAUSES OF ANARCHY IN ART 37
ing to a psychological misapprehension which is,

alas, but all too common. I should not have
broken my general narrative with the consideration
of this particular cause, had it not been that I feel
sure it will help laymen, and artists as well, to
account for much that will still remain obscure,
even after the more general causes have been
discussed.
i. Morbid Irritability.
Nietzsche recognized that this age is one in
which Will is not merely diseased, but almost
paralyzed. Everywhere he saw men and women,
youths and girls, who are unable to resist a
stimulus, however slight; who react with excessive
speed in the presence of an irritant, and who bedeck
this weakness and this irritability with all the finest
gala dresses and disguises that they can lay their
hands on.1
In Determinism he saw the philosophical abstract
of this fact; in our novels and plays he saw its
representation under the cloak of passion and
emotion; in the Darwinian theory of the influence
of environment, he saw it togged out in scientific
garb, and in the modern artist's dependence upon
an appeal to Nature for inspiration — i.e. for a spur
to react upon, he recognized its unhealthiest mani
festation.
"The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane,"
he says; "the strength required in order to stop
action, and to cease from reacting, is most seriously
diseased." 2
1 G.E., p. 145. 2 Wm p^ vol. I, p. 36.
"Man unlearns the art of doing, and all he does

is to react to stimuli coming from his environ
ment." !
Speaking of the modern artist, he refers to "the
absurd irritability of his system, which makes a
crisis out of every one of his experiences, and
deprives him of all calm reflection," 2 and, while
describing Europeans in general, he lays stress
upon their "spontaneous and changeable natures." 3
In calling our attention to these things,
Nietzsche certainly laid his finger on the root of a
good deal for which the other more general causes
which I shall adduce fail to account.
There can be no doubt that this irritability does
exist, and that it causes large numbers of unrefined
and undesirable men and women to enter the arts
to-day, who are absolutely mistaken in their
diagnosis of their condition. We are all only too
ready to conceal our defects beneath euphemistic
interpretations of them, and we most decidedly
prefer, if we have the choice, to regard any morbid
symptoms we may reveal, as the sign of strength
rather than of weakness. There is some tempta
tion, therefore, both for our friends and ourselves,
to interpret our natures kindly and if possible
flatteringly; and, if we suffer from a certain
"sickly irritability and sensitiveness" in the
presence of what we think beautiful, we prefer to
ascribe this to an artistic temperament rather than
to a debilitated will.
We are acquainted with the irascible nerve-
i W. P., Vol. I, p. 63. 2 w. P., Vol. II, p. 258.
3 W.P., Vol. II, p. 339.
patient who pours his curses on the head of a noisy

child; and in his case we are only too ready to
suspect a morbid condition of the body. But when
we ourselves, or our young friends, or our brothers,
sister, or cousins, suddenly display, when still in
their teens, a sort of gasping enthusiasm before a
landscape, a peasant child, or a sunset; when they
show an inability to bide their time, to pause, and
to remain inactive in the presence of what they
consider beautiful, we immediately conclude from
their conduct, not that they have little command
of themselves, but that they must of necessity
have strong artistic natures.
Our novels are full of such people with weak
wills, so are our plays; so, too, unfortunately, are
our Art Schools.
We know the Art student who, the moment he
sees what he would call "a glorious view," or a
"dramatic sunset or sunrise," hurls his materials
together helter-skelter and dashes off, venire a terre,
to the most convenient spot whence he can paint it.
We have seen him seize the thing he calls an
impression, his teeth clenched the while, and his
nostrils dilated. But how often does it occur to us
that such a creature has got a bad temper? How
often do we realize that he is irritable, self-
indulgent, sick in fact?
Only in an age like our own could this ridiculous
travesty of an artist pass for an artist. It is only
in our age that his neurotic touchiness could
possibly be mistaken for strength and vigour; and
yet there are hundreds of his kind among the
painters and sculptors of the day.
Many a student's call to Art, at present, is

merely a reminder, on the part of Nature, that he
should cultivate restraint and forbearance, and
should go in for commerce; for there is a whole
universe between such a man and the artist of
value. Not that sensitiveness is absent in the
real artist; but it is of a kind which has strength
to wait, to reflect, to weigh, and, if necessary, to
refrain from action altogether.
"Slow is the experience of all deep wells," says
Zarathustra. "Long must they wait ere they know
what hath sunk into their depths." *
But the people I have just described have only
a skin, and any itch upon it they call Art.
No lasting good, no permanent value can come
of these irascible people who will be avenged on
all that they call beauty, "right away"; who will,
so to speak, "pay beauty out," and who cannot
contain themselves in its presence. They can but
help to swell the ranks of the incompetent, and
even if they are successful, as they sometimes are
nowadays, all they do is to wreck the sacred calling
in which they are but pathological usurpers.
Now, in turning to the more general causes, we
find that in accounting for the prevailing anarchy
in Europe and in countries like Europe, and par
ticularly in England and in countries like England,
Nietzsche pointed to the whole heritage of tra
ditional thought which prevailed and still does
prevail in the civilized parts of the Western world,
and declared that it was in our most fundamental
beliefs, in our most unquestioned dogmas, and in
1 Z., I, XII.
our most vaunted birthrights that this anarchy

takes its source.
If Art had lost its prestige in our midst, and
even its justification ; and if individualism, incom
petence, eccentricity, mediocrity and doubt were
rife, we must seek the causes of all this neither in
Diderot's somewhat disappointing essay on paint
ing, nor in the slur that Rousseau had once cast
upon the culture of man, nor in John Stuart Mill's
arguments in favour of individualism, nor yet in
Spencer's declaration that "the activities we call
play are united with the aesthetic activities by the
trait that neither subserves in any direct way the
processes conducive to life." 1
All these things are merely symptomatic.
Diderot, Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Spencer
were only symptoms of still deeper influences which
have been at work for centuries, and those influ
ences are to be sought in the most vital values
upon which our civilization is based.
2. Misleading Systems of /Esthetic.

It is perfectly true that from classic times onward
the guidance of European thought, on matters of
Art, has been almost entirely inadequate if not
misleading. But for the subconscious motives of
artists and their spectators there seems to have been
very little comprehension of what Art actually
means and aspires to, and even these subconscious
motives have been well-nigh stifled, thanks to the
false doctrines with which they have been persist-
1 The Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 627.
ently and systematically smothered. Perhaps, how

ever, the very nature of the subject condemns it to
false theoretical treatment ; for it has almost always
been at the mercy of men who were not themselves
performers in the arts. Of the few artists who have
written on Art, how many have given us an
adequate expression of what they themselves must
have felt and aspired to? Not one. Ghiberti,
Vasari, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Mengs, Hogarth
and Reynolds — to mention the most famous, teach
us scarcely anything at all concerning the essence
of their life passion, and this is, as Nietzsche
observes, perhaps "a necessary fault; for," he con
tinues, "the artist who would begin to understand
himself would therewith begin to mistake himself —
he must not look backwards, he must not look at
all; he must give. — It is an honour for an artist
to have no critical faculty ; if he can criticize he is
mediocre, he is modern."1
Still, the greater part of this faulty guidance
may, in itself, be but another outcome of the
erroneous and rooted beliefs which lie even deeper
in the heart of life than Art itself, and for these
beliefs we must seek deep down in the foundations
of European thought for the last two or three
hundred years. In fact, we must ask ourselves
what our heritage from by-gone ages has been.
Since Art is the subject of our inquiry, and "Art
is the only task of life," 2 it seems moderately clear
that everything that has tended to reduce the
dignity of Art must, in the first place, have reduced
the dignity of man.
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 256. 2 Ibid., p. 292.
Is our heritage of thought of a kind that exalts

man, or is it of a kind that debases him ? What
are, in fact, its chief characteristics?
3. Our Heritage. — A. Christianity.

We shall find that the one definite and unswerv
ing tendency of the traditional thought of Europe
has been, first, to establish on earth that equality
between men which from the outset Christianity
had promised them in Heaven; secondly, to assail
the prestige of man by proving that other tenet of
the Faith which maintains the general depravity of
human nature; and thirdly, to insist upon truth in
the Christian sense; that is, as an absolute thing
which can be, and must be, made common to all.
At the root of all our science, all our philosophy,
and all our literature, the three fundamental
doctrines of Christianity : the equality of all souls,
the insuperable depravity of human nature, and
the insistence upon Truth, are the ruling influences.
By means of the first and third doctrines equality
was established in the spirit, and by means of the
second it was established in the flesh.1
By means of the first, each individual, great or
small, was granted an importance 2 undreamt of
1 The Judaic story of the fall of man is at bottom an
essentially democratic one. This absence of rank in sin
had no parallel in the aristocratic Pagan world. Likewise,
in the manner of the fall, there is a total absence of noble
qualities. "Curiosity, bcguilement, seductibility and
wantonness— in short, a whole series of pre-eminently
feminine passions— were regarded as the origin of evil.'''
aen'T" ?p.' 78' 79'
Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. I,
P- 33-
theretofore,1 while the lowest were raised to the

highest power; by means of the second, in which
the pride of mankind received a snub at once severe
and merciless, the highest were reduced to the
level of the low, while the low were by implication
materially raised; and by means of the third, no
truth or point of view which could not be made
general could be considered as a truth or a point
of view at all. Practically it amounted to this,
that in one breath mankind was told, first,
"Thy Lord for thee the Cross endured
To save thy soul from Death and Hell;"2
secondly, "Thou shalt have no other God before

Me; " and thirdly,
" From Greenland's icy mountains
To India's coral strand,
. . . every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile." 3
But in each case, as I have pointed out, it was the
higher men who suffered. Because they alone had
something to lose. The first notion — that of
equality, threatened at once to make them doubt
their own privileges and powers, to throw suspicion
into the hearts of their followers, and to make all
special, exceptional and isolated claims utterly void.
The third — the insistence upon a truth which could
be general and absolute, denied their right to estab
lish their own truths in the hearts of men, and to
rise above the most general truth which was reality ;
while in the second — the Semitic doctrine of general
1 A., Aph. 43 and 64.
2 Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 47 c.
3 Ibid., No. 522.
sin, which held that man was not only an imper

fect, but also a fallen being, and that all his kind
shared in this shame — there was not alone the ring
of an absence of rank, but also of a universal
depreciation of human nature which was ultimately
to lead, by gradual stages, from a disbelief in man
himself to a disbelief in nobles, in kings and finally
in gods.1
At one stroke, not one or two human actions,
but all human performances, inspirations and happy
thoughts, had been stripped of their glory and con
demned. Man could raise himself only by God's
grace — that is to say, by a miracle, otherwise he
was but a fallen angel, aimlessly beating the air
with his broken \vings.
These three blows levelled at the head of higher
men were fatal to the artist; for it is precisely in
the value of human inspirations, in the efficiency of
human creativeness, and in the irresistible power of
human will, that he, above all, must and does
believe. It is his mission to demand obedience and
to procure reverence ; for, as we shall see, every
artist worthy the name is at heart a despot.2
Fortunately, the Holy Catholic Church inter-
vened, and by its rigorous discipline and its firm
rnî/VhX0!;-1!'
to doubt that higherP> men
3I2 :exist,
".Whenthenil occur* to inferior men
the danger
etc. See, in fact, the whole of Aph. 874. is great "
1 See A Aph. 49: "The concept of guilt and punish-
mem inclusive of the doctrine of 'grace,' of
-lies through and through, 'salvatio n,'
without a
llf v'nl f t?s>'chrloeicnl
lolat.on [f"th.
par excellence, Sin, .invented
was . . this form of human
solely for the
purpose of making nil science, all culture, and every kind of
elevation and nobility utterly impossible "
establishment upon a hierarchical principle, sup

pressed for a while the overweening temper of the
Christian soul, and all claims of individual thought
and judgment, while it also recognized an order of
rank among men ; but the three doctrines above
described remained notwithstanding at the core of
the Christian Faith, and awaited only a favourable
opportunity to burst forth and blight all the good
that the Church had done.
This favourable opportunity occurred in the
person of Martin Luther. The Reformation, in
addition to reinstating, with all their evil con
sequences, the three doctrines mentioned above, also
produced a certain contempt for lofty things and an
importunate individualism which has done nought
but increase and spread from that day to this.
Individualism, on a large scale, of course, had
been both tolerated and practised in Gothic archi
tecture, and on this account the buildings of the
Middle Ages might be said to breathe a more truly
Christian spirit x than most of the sculpture and the
painting of the same period, which are more
hieratic.2 But it was not until the Reformation
1 Ruskin, On the Nature of Gothic Architecture (p. 7),
contrasting the classic and Gothic style, says: ". . . In
the mediaeval, or especially Christian, system of ornament,
this slavery [i. e. the slavery imposed by the classic canon]
is done away with altogether ; Christianity having recog
nized, in small things as well as great, the individual value
of every soul."
2 In a good deal of the painting and sculpture of the
pre-Renaissance period, too, signs were not lacking which
showed that the Christian ideal of truth was beginning
to work its effects by leading to a realism which I have
classified in Lecture II as Police Art. Of course, a good
deal of this realism may also be accounted for by the
began to spread that the most tiresome form of

individualism, which we shall call Amateurism,1
received, as it were, a Divine sanction; and there
can be no doubt that it is against this element in
modern life that not only Art, but all forces which
aim at order, law and discipline, will eventually
have to wage their most determined and most
implacable warfare.
B. Protestantism.
For Protestantism was nothing more nor less
than a general rebellion against authority.2 By
reasons which I suggest at the end of Part I of Lecture III ;
be this as it may, however, as it is difficult to decide the
actual proportion of either of these influences, the weight of
the Christian doctrine of Truth must not be altogether
overlooked in such productions as Donatello's "Crucifixion "
(Capella Bardi, S. Croce, Florence); Masolino's "Raising
of Tabitha " (Carmine, Florence); Masaccio's Fresco
(S. Maria del Carmine, Florence); Ucello's "Rout of
S. Romano" (Uffizi); Andrea del Castagno's "Crucifixion"
(in the Monastery of the Angeli, Florence); and the really
beautiful statues of the Founders in the Cathedral of
Naumburg.
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 297: "The terrible consequences of
' freedom '— in the end everybody thinks he has the right
to every problem. All order of rank is banished."
2 Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. II,
p. 140: "Whatever the prejudices of some may suggest,
it will be admitted, by all unbiassed judges, that the
Protestant Reformation was neither more nor less than an
open rebellion. Indeed, the mere mention of private judg
ment, on which it was avowedly based, is enough to
substantiate this fact. To establish the right of private
judgment was to appeal from the Church to individuals,"
etc. (See also p. 138 in the same volume.) Cambridge
Modern History, Vol. II, p. 166 : "In the Edict of Worms,
Luther had been branded as a revolutionary, then as a
heretic, and the burden of the complaints preferred against
means of it the right of private judgment was

installed once more, and to the individual was
restored that importance which Christianity had
acknowledged from the first, and which only the
attitude of the Church had been able to modify.
The layman, with his conscience acknowledged to
be the supreme tribunal, was declared a free man,
emancipated even from the law,1 or, as Luther said,
"free Lord of all, subject to none." 2
Now, not only the immortal soul of every indi
vidual became important ; but also every one of his
proclivities, desires and aspirations. He was told
that he could be his own priest if he chose,3 and that
Christ had obtained this prerogative for him.
Megalomania, in fact, as Nietzsche declares, was
made his duty.4
"Let men so account of us, as of the ministers
of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God." 5
him by the Catholic humanists was, that his methods of
seeking a reformation would be fatal to all order, political
or ecclesiastical. They painted him as the apostle of revolu
tion, a second Catiline." And p. 174: "The most frequent
and damaging charge levelled at Luther between 1520 and
1525 reproached him with being the apostle of revolution
and anarchy, and predicted that his attacks on spiritual
authority would develop into a campaign against civil order
unless he were promptly suppressed."
1 A Treatise Touching the Libertie of a Christian, by
Martyne Luther (translated from the Latin by James Bell,
1579. Edited by W. Bengo' Collyer, 1817), p. 17: "So that
it is manifest that to a Christian man faith sufficeth only
for all, and that he needeth no works to be justified by.
Now, if he need no works, then also he needs not the law :
if he have no need of the law, surely he is then free from
the law. So this also is true. The law is not made for
the righteous man, and this is the same Christian libertie."
2 Ibid., p. 3. 3 Ibid., p. 31.
4 W. P., Vol. II, p. 211. - i Cor. iv. i.
With these words St. Paul had addressed the

Corinthians, and Luther did not fail to base his
strongest arguments upon the text.1
"Even the Reformation," says Nietzsche, "was a
movement for individual liberty ; * Every one his
own priest ' is really no more than a formula for
libertinagc. As a matter of fact, the words, ' Evan
gelical freedom ' would have sufficed — and all
instincts which had reasons for remaining con
cealed broke out like wild hounds, the most brutal
needs suddenly acquired the courage to show them
selves, everything seemed justified." 2
Was it at all likely that the formula, "Every one
his own priest," was going to lead to trouble only
in ecclesiastical matters? As a matter of fact we
know that Luther himself extended the principle
still further in his own lifetime. By his radical
alterations in the church service Luther gave the
laity a much more prominent place in Divine
worship than they had ever had before; for, in
addition to the fact that the liturgy as compiled by
him was written almost entirely in the native tongue,
the special attention he gave to the singing of
hymns3 allowed the people an opportunity of
1 Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.
3 W. P., Vol. I, p. 75.
3 Emil Naumann, History of Jl/ustV, Vol. II, p. 429:
"With the Catholics, hymns in the mother tongue were
only used at processions and on high festivals, and were
then sung by the congregation only at Christmas, Easter,
and certain other high feast days. With these exceptions,
the Catholic congregational song consisted of short musical
phrases chanted by the priests, to which the people either
responded, or added their voices to the refrain sung by the
choristers from the altar. The part assigned to the people
then was but a very subordinate one." See also the Intro-
E
displaying their individual powers to such an extent

that it has even been said that "they sang them
selves into enthusiasm for the new faith." 1
But these remarkable changes were only symbolic
of the changes that followed elsewhere; for, once
this spirit of individual liberty and judgment had
invaded that department of life which theretofore
had been held most sacred, what was there to
prevent it from entering and defiling less sacred
sanctuaries ?
Bearing in mind the condition of the arts at the
present day, and taking into account a fact which
we all very well know ; namely, that thousands upon
thousands are now practising these arts who have
absolutely no business to be associated with them
in any way, we are almost inclined to forgive
Protestantism and Puritanism their smashing of
our images, and their material iconoclasm ; so light
does this damage appear, compared with the other
indirect damage they have done to the spirit of Art,
by establishing the fatal precedent of allowing
everybody to touch and speak of everything—
however sacred.
We may argue with Buckle that the English
spirit is of a kind which is essentially Protestant
in temper; but this only seems to make the matter
worse.
When Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold
point, the one to the evils of Liberalism, and the
other to the evils of anarchy, we know to what they
duction to C. von Winterfeld's Sacred Songs of Luther
(Leipzig, 1840).
1 The Beginnings of Art, by Ernst Grosse, pp. 299, 300;
and Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, p. 201.
are referring. They are referring to the impos

sibility, nowadays, of awakening reverence for
anything or for anybody.
"May not every man in England say what he
likes?" Matthew Arnold exclaims. "But," he
continues, "the aspirations of culture, which is the
study of perfection, are not satisfied^ unless what
men say, wheji they may say what they like, is
worth saying. . . . Culture indefatigably tries, not
to make what each raw person may like, the rule
by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever
nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, grace
ful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like
that." *
But what is fatal to culture is no less fatal to art,
and thus we find Nietzsche saying —
"Once spirit was God, then it became man, and
now it becometh mob." 2
If in the Europe, and especially in the England
of to-day, everybody has a right to every judgment
and to every joy; if a certain slavish truthfulness
to nature and reality, rawness and ruggedness, have
well-nigh wrecked higher aspirations, and if every
body can press his paltry modicum of voice, of
thought, of draughtsmanship, of passion and
impudence to the fore, and thus spread his portion
of mediocrity like dodder over the sacred field of
Art; it is because the fundamental principles of the
Christian faith are no longer latent or suppressed
in our midst; but active and potent — if not
almighty.
1 Culture and Anarchy (Smith, Elder, 1909), pp. u, 12.
E 2
It might almost be said that they have reared a

special instinct — the instinct of liberty and of taking
liberties, without any particular aim or purpose ;
and, by so doing, have thrown all virtue, all merit,
all ambition, not on the side of culture, but on the
side of that "free personality"1 and rude natural
ness, or truth to man's original savagery, which
it seems the triumph of every one, great or small,
to produce.
No one any longer claims the kind of freedom
that Pope Paul III claimed for his protege Ben-
venuto Cellini : 2 this would be too dangerous,
because, in a trice, it would be applied to all.
Therefore the insignificant majority get more free
dom than is good for them, and the noble minority
are deprived of their birthright.
"Thus do I speak unto you in parable," cries
Zarathustra, "ye who make the soul giddy, ye
preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me,
and secretly revengeful ones !
"But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the
light, therefore do I laugh in your faces my
laughter of the height.
"And ' Will to Equality '—that itself shall hence
forth be the name of virtue; and against all that
hath power will we raise an outcry !
"Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant frenzy of
impotence crieth thus in you for ' equality ' : your
1 E. I., pp. 54, 55.
^ 2 Sandro' Botticelli, by
"Paul III ame tres haute, Emile Gebhart (1907), p. 9:
re"pond aux personnes qui lui
de"noncent les vices
uniques dans de soncomme
leur art, spirituel spadassin
Cellini, : ' Les hommes
ne doivent pas etre
soumis aux lois, et lui moms que tout autre. '"
most secret tyrant longings disguise themselves in

words of virtue ! " 1
And now recapitulating a moment, what have we
found our heritage to consist of, in the realm of the
religious spirit?
In the first place : a certain universal acknow
ledgment and claim of liberty, which has no special
purpose or direction, and which is too fair to some
and unfair to many. Secondly, a devotion to a
truth that could be general, which perforce has
reduced us to vulgar reality; thirdly, a prevailing
depression in the value and dignity of man, result
ing from the suspicion that has been cast upon all
authority and all loftiness; and fourthly, a wanton
desecrating and befingering of all sanctuaries by
anybody and everybody, which is the inevitable
outcome of that amateur priesthood introduced and
sanctified by Martin Luther.
C. Philosophical Influences.
Now, turning to our heritage in philosophy and
science, do we find that it tends to resist, or to
thwart in any way the principles of our religious
heritage? Not in the slightest degree! At every
point and at every stage it has confirmed and re
stated, with all the pomp of facts and statistics to
support it, what the religious spirit had laid down
for our acceptance. It is superficial and ridiculous
to suppose, as Dr. Draper once supposed, that
there has been a conflict between Religion and
Science. I take it that he means the Christian
1 Z., II, XXIX.
Religion alone. Such a conflict has never taken

place; what has taken place, however, is a conflict
between Science and the Catholic Church. The
Christian Religion and Science together, however,
have never had any such antagonism, and least of
all in England, where, from the time of Roger
Bacon,1 the first English Experimentalist, to the
present day, nothing has been left undone, no stone
has been left unturned, which might establish
scientifically that which Christianity, as we have
seen, wished to establish emotionally.
Universal liberty, without a purpose or a direc
tion ; the free and plebeian production of thoughts
and theories divorced from all aim or ideal, after
the style in which children are born in the slums ;
devotion to a truth that can be common to all ; the
depression of the value and dignity of man, and a
certain lack of reverence for all things — these four
aspirations of Christianity and Protestantism have
been the aspirations of science, and at the present
moment they are practically attained.
Unfortunately, it is in the nature of human
beings to imitate success, and England's success
as a colonizing and constitutional nation has un
doubtedly been a potent force in spreading not only
her commercial, but also her philosophical views
among all ambitious and aspiring Western nations,
who guilelessly took the evil with the good.
1 It is important here to note, first, that Roger Bacon
was an Aristotelian through his intimate study of the
Arabian treatises on the Greek philosopher, and, secondly,
that although Greek speculation was governed more by
insight than experience, Aristotle forms a striking exception
to this rule.
The empiricists, Francis Bacon, Hobbes and

Locke, were among the first, by their teaching, to
level a decisive blow at genuine thought, at the /
man who knows and who is the measure of all !
things;1 and this they did by arriving at a con
ception of knowledge and thought that converted
the latter into possessions which might be common
to everybody — that is to say, by reducing all know
ledge to that which can be made immediately the
experience of all. This was the greatest blasphemy
against the human spirit that has ever been com
mitted. By means of it, every one, whatever he
might be, could aspire to intellectuality and wis
dom ; for experience belongs to everybody, whereas
a great spirit is the possession only of the fewest.
The Frenchmen, Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Maupertius, Condillac, Diderot, d'Alembert, La
Mettrie and Baron Holbach, were quick to become
infected, and in Germany, despite the essentially
aristocratic influence of Leibnitz,2 Kant was the
first to follow suit.
Begun in this way, English philosophical
speculation, as Dr. Max Schasler says, was forced
to grow ever more and more materialistic 3 in
character, and, if "Science has already come very
1 G. E.t p. 210: "What is lacking in England, and has
always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew
well enough, the absurd muddle-head Carlyle, who sought to
conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about him
self : namely, what was lacking in Carlyle — real power of intel
lect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy."
2 In reply to those who said, "Nothing exists in the
int. -licet but what has before existed in the senses," Leibnitz
replied: "Yes, nothing but the intellect."
3 Kritischc Geschichte der Msthetik (1872). Speaking of
the English ^stheticians, he says (p. 285), "The fact that
generally to mean, not that which may be known,

but only such knowledge as every animal with
faculties a little above those of an ant or a beaver
can be induced to admit," and if "incommunicable
knowledge, or knowledge which can be communi
cated at present only to a portion — perhaps a small
portion — of mankind, is already affirmed to be no
knowledge at all," l it is thanks to the efforts of the
fathers of English thought.
Hence Nietzsche's cry, that "European ignoble-
ness, the plebeianism of modern ideas — is Eng
land's work and invention."2
But it is not alone in its vulgarization of the
concept of knowledge, or in its materialistic tend
ency, that English influence has helped to reduce
the dignity of man and to level his kind; the
utilitarians from Bentham to John Stuart Mill and
Sidgwick, by taking the greatest number as the
norm, as the standard and measurement of all
things, ably reflected the Christian principle, of the
equality of souls, in their works, and, incidentally,
by so doing, treated the greatest number exceedingly
badly. For what is mediocre can neither be exalted
nor charmed by values drawn from mediocrity, and
is constantly in need of values drawn from super-
mediocrity, for its joy, for its love of life, and for
its reconciliation with drabby reality.3
there is no decrease, but rather an increase of Materialism
in their thought, no purification in their meditation from
the coarseness of experience, but rather a gradual immersion
in the same, may also be regarded as characteristic of the
development of the English spirit in general. "
1 Coventry Patmore, Principles in Art, p. 209.
2 G.E., p. 213.
3 Even J. S. Mill saw the flaw in his own teaching in
D. The Evolutionary Hypothesis.

Finally, in the latter half of the last century,
these two tendencies at last reached their zenith,
and culminated in a discovery which, by some, is
considered as the proudest product of the Eng
lish mind. This discovery, which was at once a
gospel and a solution of all world riddles, and
which infected the whole atmosphere of Europe from
Edinburgh to Athens, was the Evolutionary Hypo
thesis as expounded by Darwin and Spencer.
A more utterly vulgar, mechanistic, and depress
ing conception of life and man cannot be conceived
than this evolutionary hypothesis as it was pre
sented to us by its two most famous exponents;
and its immediate popularity and rapid success,
alone, should have made it seem suspicious, even
in the eyes of its most ardent adherents.
And yet it was acclaimed and embraced by almost
everybody, save those, only, whose interests it
assailed.
How much more noble was the origin of the
world as described even in Genesis, Disraeli was
one of the first to see and to declare ; l and yet, so
this respect, and acknowledged it openly. See his Liberty
chapter "The Elements of Well-Being," paragraph 13.
Froude's The Earl of Bcaconsfield (gth Edition),
pp. 176, 177: "The discoveries of
told, consistent with the teachings science are not. we are
of the Church. ... It
of great importance when this tattle about science is
'"< Mtioned, that we should attach to the phrase precise ideas.
he function of science is the interpretation of nature and
the mt< rpn tMu.n of the highest nature is the highest science.
What is the h.ghest nature? Man is the highest nature.
II must say that when I compare the interpretation of
the highest nature by the most advanced, the most fashion-
school of modern science with some other teaching
strong was the faith in a doctrine which, by means

of its popular proof through so-called facts, could
become the common possession of every tinker,
tailor and soldier, that people preferred to think
they had descended from monkeys, rather than
doubt such an overwhelming array of data, and
regard themselves still as fallen angels.
In its description of the prime motor of life as a
struggle for existence ; in its insistence upon adapta
tion to environment and mechanical adjustment to
\external influences;1 in its deification of a blind
and utterly inadequate force which was called
Natural Selection ; and above all in its unprincipled
optimism, this new doctrine bore the indelible stamp
of shallowness and vulgarity.
According to it, man was not only a superior
monkey, but he was also a creature who sacrificed
everything in order to live; he was not only a slave
of habit, but he was a yielding jelly, fashioned by
his surroundings; he was not only a coward, but a
cabbage; and, with it all, he was invoked to do
nothing to assist the world process and his own
improvement; for, he was told by his unscrupulous
teachers, that "evil tended perpetually to dis
appear,"2 and that "progress was therefore not an
accident, but a necessity." 3
with which we are familiar I am not prepared to admit
that the lecture room is more scientific than the Church.
What is the question now placed before society, with a glib
assurance the most astounding? The question is this: Is
man an ape or an angel? I, my Lord, I am on the side of
the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence
the contrary view, which I believe foreign to the conscience
of 1humanity."
See p. 37.
2 Spencer, Social Statics (Ed. 1892), p. 27. 3 Ibid., p. 31.
CAUSES OF ANARCHY IX ART 59
Thus not only was man debased, but we could

now fold our arms apathetically, and look on while
he dashed headlong to his ruin.1
"No," said the evolutionists, "we do not believe
in a moral order of things, although our doctrine
does indeed seem to be a reflection of such an
order; neither do we believe in God: but we cer
tainly pin our faith to our little idol Evolution, and
feel quite convinced that it is going to make us
muddle through to perfection somehow — look at
our proofs ! "
And what are these proofs? On all sides they
are falling to bits, and we are quickly coming to
the conclusion that an assembly of facts can prove
nothing— save the inability of a scientist to play the
role of a creative poet.
Nietzsche was one of the first to see, that if
Becoming were a reliable hypothesis, it must be
supported by different principles from those of the
Darwinian school, and he spared no pains in
sketching out these different principles.2
"These English psychologists— what do they
really mean?" Nietzsche demands. "We always
find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same
task of pushing to the front the partie honteuse of
our inner world, and looking for the efficient
governing and decisive principle in that precis
quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the e
race
See aUn' , /I e s.,.llos°Phies Ancient and Modern)

would be the most reluctant to find it— that is to

say, in slothfulness of habit, or in forgetfulness, or
in blind and fortuitous mechanism and association
of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive,
reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid, — what
is the real motive power which always impels these
psychologists in precisely this direction ? " 1
Not one of these advocates of mechanism, how
ever, realized how profoundly he was degrading
man, and how seriously he had therefore sullied all
human achievement. In their scientific rechauffe
of the Christian concept of man's depravity, they
all had the most hearty faith, and, as there was
little in their over-populated and industrial country
to contradict their conclusions, they did not refrain
from passing these conclusions into law.
We can detect nothing in this greatest scientific
achievement of the last century which seriously resists
or opposes our heritage in the realm of the religious
spirit. In their fundamentals, the two are one.
And when we take them both to task, and try to
discover their influence upon the world, we wonder
not so much why Art is so bad, but why Art has
survived at all.
For, though for the moment we may exclude the
influence of earlier English thought upon general
artistic achievement, at least the degraded condition
of Art at the present day cannot be divorced in this
manner from more recent English speculation, for
even Mr. Bosanquet counts Darwin and Lyell
among those who have ushered in the new renais
sance of art in England ! 2
1 G. M., p. 17. 2 A History of /Esthetic, p. 445.
"At present," says Nietzsche, "nobody has any

longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of
domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself
and his equals, — for pathos of distance, . . . and \
even our politics are morbid from this want of )
courage ! " l
To-day, when all reverence has vanished, even
before kings and gods, when to respect oneself
overmuch is regarded with undisguised resentment,
what can we hope from a quarter in which self-
reverence and reverence in general are the first
needs of all ?
We can only hope to find what we actually see,
and that, as we all very well know and cannot deny,
is a condition of anarchy, incompetence, purpose-
lessness and chaos.
"Culture . . . has a very important function to
fulfil for mankind," said Matthew Arnold. "And
this function is particularly important in our
modern world, of which the whole civilization is,
to a much greater degree than the civilization of
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and
tends constantly to become more so. But, above
all, in our own country has culture a weighty part
to perform, because, here, that mechanical charac
ter, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is
shown in the most eminent degree. . . . The idea
of perfection as an inward condition of the mind
and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and
material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere,
as I have said, so much in esteem as with us." 2
1 A., Aph. 43.
2 Culture and Anarchy (Smith, Elder, 1909), p. 10.
We may trust that it is not in vain that men like

Matthew Arnold and Nietzsche raised their voices
against the spirit of the age. And we may hope
that it is not in vain that lesser men have taken up
their cry.
In any case Nietzsche did not write in utter
despair. His words do not fall like faded autumn
leaves announcing the general death that is immi
nent. On the contrary, he saw himself approach
ing a new century, this century, and he drew more
than half his ardour from the hope that we might
now renounce this heritage of the past, the dele
terious effects of which he spent his lifetime in
exposing.
"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones! " he says.
"From the future winds are coming with a gentle
beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings
for fine ears.
"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart,
ye shall one day be a people, and from you who
have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise.
"Verily a place of healing shall the earth be
come ! And already a new odour lieth around it,
an odour which bringeth salvation — and a new
hope." * 1 Z., I, XXII.
LECTURE II1
GOVERNMENT IN ART. NIETZSCHE'S DEFINITION OF
ART
PART I
DIVINE ART AND THE MAN-GOD
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be

fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue
it : and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth
upon the earth." — Genesis i. 28.
MAN has ceased from believing in miracles,
because he is convinced that the divine power of
the miracle-worker has departed from him. At last
he has proclaimed the age of wonders to be at
an end, because he no longer knows himself capable
of working wonders.
He acknowledges that miracles are still needed.
He hears the distressing cry for the SM/>er-natural
everywhere. All about him to-day he feels that
wonders will have to be worked if the value of
Life, of his fellows, and of himself is to be raised,
by however little; and yet he halts like one
paralyzed before the task he 63
can no longer accom
plish, and finding that his hand has lost its cun
ning and that his eye has lost its authority, he
1 Delivered at University College on Dec. 8th, 1910.
stammers helplessly that the age of miracles has

gone by.
Everything convinces him of the fact. Every
body, from his priest to his porter, from his wife
to his astrologer, from his child to his neighbour,
tells him plainly that he is no longer divine, no
longer a god, no longer even a king !
Not only has the age of miracles gone by ; but
with it, also, has vanished that age in which man
could conceive of god in his own image. There
are no gods now ; because man himself has long
since doubted that man is godlike.
Soon there will be no kings,1 finally there will
be no greatness at all, and this will mean the
evanescence of man himself.
To speak of all this as the advance of know
ledge, as the march of progress, as the triumph of
science, and as the glories of enlightenment, is
merely to deck a corpse, to grease-paint a sore, and
to pour rose-water over a cesspool.
If the triumph of science mean "The Descent of
Man "; if the glories of enlightenment mean, again,
the descent of man ; and if progress imply, once
more, the descent of man ; then the question to be
asked is : in whose hands have science, enlighten
ment and the care of progress fallen ?
This world is here for us to make of it what we
will. It is a field of yielding clay, in which, like
sandboys, we can build our castles and revel in our
creations.
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 187: "The time of kings has gone
by, because people are no longer worthy of them. They
do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but
only a means to their own ends." See also Z., Ill, LVI.
DIVINE ART AND THE MAN-GOD 65
But what are these people doing? In building

their castles they grow ever more like beavers, and
ants, and beetles. In laying out their gardens they
grow ever more like slugs, and worms, and centi
pedes. And their joy seems to be to feel them
selves small and despised.
Once, for instance, their sky was the mighty god
Indra; the clouds were his flock, and he drove his
flock across his vast fields — blue and fragrant with
delicate flowers. Their fruitful rain was the milk
which their god Indra obtained from his herd of
cows, and their seasons of drought were times when
the god Indra was robbed by brigands of his flock.
Now, their sky is infinite space. Their clouds
are masses of vapour in a state of condensation
more or less considerable, and their rain is the
outcome of that condensation becoming too con
siderable.
Not so many years ago their Heaven and their
Earth were the father and mother of all living
things, who had become separated in order that
their offspring might have room to live and breathe
and move. And thus their mists were the passionate
sighs of the loving wife, breathing her love
heavenwards; and the dew, the tearful response of
her affectionate and sorrowful spouse.
Now, their Heaven is a thing that no one knows
anything at all about. Their Earth is an oblate
spheroid revolving aimlessly through a hypo
thetical medium called ether; their mists are
vaporous emanations; while their dew is a dis
charge of moisture from the air upon substances
that have irradiated a sufficient quantity of heat.
F
Their Sun was once a god with long, shining

streams of golden hair, of which every year their
goddess Night would rob him, thus leaving Winter
mistress of the earth.
Now, their sun is the central orb of their solar
system. It consists of a nucleus, it is surrounded
by a photosphere and a chromosphere, and has a
disease of the face called "spots."
The facts remain the same; the mist still rises,
the dew still falls, and the canopy of Heaven still
spans the two horizons. Whatever the interpreta
tion of these phenomena rfiay be, this at least is
certain, that they are^^dll with us. But there is one
thing that changed f one thing that cannot remain
indifferent înterpretation — even though the facts
do not alter, — and that is the soul of man.
A million times more sensftive to changes in
interpretation than the column of mercury is to
changes in the atmosphere, the soul of man rises
or falls according to the nobility or the baseness of
the meaning which he himself puts into things;
and, just as, in this matter, he may be his own
regenerator, so, also, may he be his own assassin.
i. The World "without form" and "void."

For, in the beginning, the world was "without
form" and "void," things surrounded man; but
they had no meaning. His senses received prob
ably the same number of impressions as they do
now — and perhaps more — but these impressions
had no co-ordination and no order. He could
neither calculate them, reckon with them, nor com

municate * them to his fellows.
Before he could thus calculate, reckon with, and
communicate the things of this world, a vast process
of simplification, co-ordination, organization and
ordering had to be undertaken, and this process,
however arbitrarily it may have been begun, was
one of the first needs of thinking man.
Everything had to be given some meaning, some
interpretation, and some place; and in every case,
of course, this interpretation was in the terms of
man, this meaning was a human meaning, and
this place was a position relative to humanity.
Perhaps no object is adequately defined until
the relation to it of every creature and thing in the
universe has been duly discovered and recorded.2
But no such transcendental meaning of a thing
preoccupied primeval man. All he wished was to
understand the world, in order that he might have
power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his
impressions concerning it. And, to this end, the
only relation of a thing that he was concerned with
was its relation to himself. It must be given a
name, a place, an order, a meaning — however
arbitrary, however fanciful, however euphemistic.
Facts were useless, chaotic, bewildering, meaning
less, before they had been adjusted,3 organized,
classified, and interpreted in accordance with the
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 72: "... Communication is neces
sary, and for it to be possible, something must be stable,
simple and capable of being stated precisely."
' W.P., Vol. II, p. 6$.
3 Okakurn-Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, p. c8 : "Adjust-
ment is Art."
F 2
desires, hopes, aims and needs of a particular kind

of man.
Thus interpretation was the first activity of all
to thinking humanity, and it was human needs
that interpreted the world.1
The love of interpreting and of adjusting — this
primeval love and desire, this power of the sand
boy over his castles ; how much of the joy in Life,
the love of Life, and, at the same time, the sorrow-
in Life, does not depend upon it ! For we can
know only a world which we ourselves have
created.2
There was the universe — strange and inscrut
able; terrible in its strangeness, insufferable in its
inscrutability, incalculable in its multifariousness.
With his consciousness just awaking, a cloud or
a shower might be anything to man — a godlike
friend or a savage foe. The dome of blue behind
was also prodigious in its volume and depth,
and the stars upon it at night horrible in their
mystery.
What, too, was this giant's breath that seemed
to come from nowhere, and which, while it cooled
his face, also bent the toughest trees like straws?
The sun and moon were amazing — the one marvel
lously eloquent, communicative, generous, hot and
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 13. See also Th. Gomperz, Greek
Thinkers, Vol. I, p. 25. Speaking of interpretation, he
says: "Andcircumstances
suspicious this tendency ofwas notablylife,strengthened
external by the
which awoke the
desire for clearness, distinctness and a logical sequence of
ideas. "
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 21. See also Max Miiller, Intro-
duction to the Science of Religion, pp. 198-207, and T. /.,
Part 10, Aph. 19.
passionate : the other silent, reserved, aloof, cold,

incomprehensible.1
But there were other things to do, besides inter
preting the stars, the sun, the moon, the sea, and
the sky above. There was the perplexing multi
plicity of changes and of tides in Life, to be mas
tered and simplified. There was the fateful flow
of all things into death and into second birth, the
appalling fact of Becoming and never-resting, of
change and instability, of bloom and of decay, of
rise and of decline. What was to be done?
It was impossible to live in chaos. And yet, in
its relation to man Nature was chaotic. There was
no order anywhere. And, where there is no order,
there are surprises,2 ambushes, lurking indignities.
The unexpected could jump out at any minute.
And a masterful mind abhors surprises and loathes
disorder. His Will to Power is humiliated by
them. To man, — whether he be of yesterday, of
to-day or of to-morrow — unfamiliarity, constant
change, and uncertainty, are sources of great
anxiety, great sorrow, great humiliation and some
times great danger. Hence everything must be
familiarized, named and fixed. Values must be
definitely ascertained and determined. And thus
valuing becomes a biological need. Nietzsche even
1 Hegel, in his Vorlesungen iiber JEsthetik (Vol. I,
p. 406), says: "If we should wish to speak of the first
appearance of symbolic Art as a subjective state, we should
remember that artistic meditation in general, like religious
meditation — or rather the two in one — and even scientific
research, took their origin in wonderment."
2 Hegel makes some interesting remarks on this point.
See his vorlesungen iiber ALsthetik, Vol. I, p. 319. He shows
that the extreme regularity of gardens of the seventeenth
century was indicative of their owners' masterful natures.
goes so far as to ascribe the doctrine of causality

to the inherent desire in man to trace the unfamiliar
to the familiar. "The so-called instinct of caus
ality," he says, "is nothing more than the fear of
the unfamiliar, and the attempt at rinding some
thing in it which is already known." x
In the torrent and pell-mell of Becoming, some
milestones must be fixed for the purpose of human
orientation. In the avalanche of evolutionary
changes, pillars must be made to stand, to which
man can hold tight for a space and collect his
senses. The slippery soil of a world that is for
ever in flux, must be transformed into a soil on
which man can gain some foothold.2
Primeval man stood baffled and oppressed by the
complexity of his task. Facts were insuperable as
facts; they could, however, be overcome spiritually
— that is to say, by concepts. And that they must
be overcome, man never doubted for an instant —
he was too proud for that. For his aim was not
existence, but a certain kind of existence — an exist
ence in which he could hold his head up, look down
upon the world, and stare defiance even at the
firmament.
And thus all humanity began to cry out for a
meaning, for an interpretation, for a scheme, which
would make all these distant and uncontrollable
facts their property, their spiritual possessions.
I This was not a cry for science, or for a scientific
1 explanation, as we understand it; nor was it a cry
1 IF. P., Vol. II, p. 58. See also p. n : "to 'under
stand ' means simply this : to be able to express something
new in the terms of something old or familiar."
a W. P., Vol. II, p. 88.
for truth in the Christian sense.1 For the bare

truth, the bare fact, the bald reality of the thing
was obvious to everybody. All who had eyes to
see could see it. All who had ears to hear could
hear it. And all who had nerves to feel could feel
it. If ever there was a time when there was a truth
for all, this was the time; and it was ugly, bare
and unsatisfying. What was wanted was a scheme
of life, a picture of life, in which all these naked
facts and truths could be given some place and some
human significance— in fact, some order and ar
rangement, whereby they would become the chattels
of the human spirit, and no longer subjects of
independent existence and awful strangeness.2
Only thus could the dignity and pride of humanity
begin to breathe with freedom. Only thus could
life be made possible, where existence alone was
not the single aim and desire.
"The purpose of ' knowledge,' " says Nietzsche,
"in this case, as in the case of ' good/ or ' beautiful,'
must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an
anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order
that a particular species may maintain and increase
1 W P Vol. II, p. 26: "The prerequisite of all living
be a large
things and of their lives is: that there should pass
amount of faith, that it should be possible to definite
judgments on things, and that there should be no doubt
at all concerning values. Thus it is necessary that some
thing should be assumed to be true, not that it is true.
2 Felix Clay, The Origin of the Sense of Beauty, p. 95 :
"The mind or the eye, brought face to face with a number
of disconnected and apparently different facts, ideas, shapes,
that
sounds or objects, is bothered and uneasy ; the moment which
some central conception is offered or discovered by
they all fall into order, so that their due relation to one
another can be perceived and the whole grasped, there is a
sense of relief and pleasure which is very intense.
its power, its conception of reality must contain

enough which is calculable and constant to allow
of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility
of preservation — and not some abstract or theoreti
cal need to eschew deception — stands as the motive
force behind the development of the organs of
knowledge. ... In other words, the measure of
the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent
to which the Will to Power grows in a certain
species : a species gets a grasp of a given amount
of reality in order to master it, in order to enlist
that amount into its service." *
And thus "the object was, not to know, but to
schematize, to impose as much regularity and form
upon chaos as our practical needs required." 2
"The whole apparatus of knowledge," says
Nietzsche, "is an abstracting and simplifying
apparatus — not directed at knowledge, but at the
appropriation of things." 3
No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever
, been stronger than this thirst and hunger, which
yearned to make all that is unfamiliar, familiar;
or in other words, all that is outside the spirit,
inside the spirit.4
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 12. 2 Wf P., Vol. II, p. 2Q.
W.P., Vol. II, p. 24.
4 W. P., Vol. II, p. 76. Hegel was also approaching this
truth when he said, in his introduction to the Vorlesungen
iiber /Esthetik (pp. 58, 59 of the translation of that Intro
duction by B. Bosanquet) : " Man is realized for himself by
poetical activity, inasmuch as he has the impulse, in the
medium which is directly . given to him, and externally
presented before him, to produce himself. This purpose he
achieves by the modification of external things upon which
he impresses the seal of his inner being. Man does this in
order, as a free subject, to strip the outer world of its stub-
Life without food and drink was bad enough ; but
Life without nourishment for this spiritual appetite,
this famished wonder,1 this starving amazement,
was utterly intolerable !
The human system could appropriate, and could
transform into man, in bone and flesh, the vegeta
tion and the animals of the earth ; but what was
required was a process, a Weltanschauung, a
general concept of the earth which would enable
man to appropriate also Life's other facts, and
transform them into man the spirit. Hence the
so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the
lust of appropriation and conquest,2 and the "will
to truth " to a process of establishing things, to a
process of making things true and lasting. . . .
Thus truth is not something which is present andl
which has to be found and discovered; it is some-)
thing which" has to be created and which gives its
name to a process, or better still, to the "will to
overpower." 3
For what is truth ? It is any interpretation of
born foreignness, and to enjoy, in the shape and fashion of
things, a mere external reality of himself."
1 Hegel again seems to bo on the road to Nietzsche's
standpoint, when he says: " \Vonderment arises when man,
as a spirit separated from his immediate connection with
Nature, and from the immediate relation to his merely
practical desires, steps back from Nature and from his own
singular existence, and then begins to seek and to see
generalities, permanent qualities, and absolute attributes in
things" (Vorlesungen iiber /Esthetik, Vol. I, p. 406).
2 W. P., Vol. I, p. 339. See also Hegel (Vorlesungen iiber
/Esthetik, p. 128) : "The instinct of curiosity and the desire
for knowledge, from the lowest stage up to the highest
degree of philosophical insight, is the outcome only of man's
yearning to make the world his own in spirit and concepts."
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 60.
the world which has succeeded in becoming the

belief of a particular type of man.1 Therefore there
can be many truths; therefore there must be an
order of rank among truths.
"Let this mean Will to Truth unto you," says
Zarathustra, "that everything be made thinkable,
visible, tangible unto man !
"And what ye have called the world, shall have
first to be created by you : 2 your reason, your
image, your will, your love shall the world be !
And, verily, for your own bliss, ye knights of
knowledge ! " 3
"The purpose was to deceive oneself in a useful
way ; the means thereto was the invention of forms
and signs, with the help of which, the confusing
multifariousness of Life could be reduced to a useful
and wieldly scheme." 4
This was the craving. Not only must a mean
ing, a human meaning, be given to all things, in
r1 "Truth is that kind of error without which a certain
' species of living being cannot exist" (W. P., Vol. II, p. 20).
See also G. E., pp. 8, 9: "A belief might be false and
yet life-preserving." See also W. P., Vol. II, pp. 36, 37:
"We should not interpret this constraint in ourselves to
imagine concepts, species, forms, purposes, and laws as
if we were in a position to construct a real world ; but as a
constraint to adjust a world by means of which our exist
ence is ensured : we thereby create a world which is deter-
minable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us."
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 76.
is 3theZ.,will
II, to
XXIV. See also
be master over W.theP.,manifold
Vol. II, sensations
p. 33 : "Truth
that
reach consciousness ; it is the will to classify phenomena
according to definite categories."
4 W. P., Vol. II, p. 86. See also Schelling, System des
transcendcntalen Idealismiis, p. 468, where the author
says, "Science, in the highest interpretation of this term,
has one and the same mission as Art."
order to subordinate them to man's power; but

Life itself must also be schematized and arranged.
And, while all humanity cried aloud for this to be
done, it was humanity's artists and higher men who
set to and did it.1
2. The First Artists.
For it was then that man's strongest instinct

became creative in man's highest product — the
artist — and the discovery was made that the world,
although "without form" and "void," as a fact,
could be simplified and made calculable and full
of form and attractions, as a valuation, as an inter
pretation, as a spiritual possession. With the
world at 3 distancejrom him, unfamiiiarTandûn-
human, man's existence was a torment. With it
beneath him, inside him, bearing the impress of
his spirit, and proceeding from him, he became a
lord, casting care to the winds, and terror to the
beasts around.
Man, the bravest animal on earth, thus conceived
the only possible condition of his existence ; namely,
to become master of the world. And, when we
think of the miracles he then began to perform,
we cease from wondering why he once believed in
miracles, why he thought of God as in his own
image, and why he made his strongest instinct God,
and thereupon made Him say: "Replenish the
earth and subdue it ! "
It was therefore the powerful who made the names
of things into law.2 It was their Will to Power
1 w.p.t Vol. II, pp. 28, 90, 103.
a W. P., Vol. II, p. 28; also G.E., p. 288. See also
that simplified, organized, ordered and schematized

the world, and it was their will to prevail which
made them proclaim their simplification, their
organization, their order and scheme, as the norm,
as the thing to be believed, as the world of values
which must be regarded as creation itself.
These early artists conceived of no other way of
subduing the earth than by converting it into con
cepts ; and, as time soon showed that there actually
was no other way, interpretation came to be re
garded as the greatest task of all.1 Naming, ad
justing, classifying, qualifying, valuing, putting a
meaning into things, and, above all, simplifying —
all these functions acquired a sacred character, and
he who performed them to the glory of his fellows
became sacrosanct.
So great were the relief and solace that these
functions bestowed upon mankind, and so different
did ugly reality appear, once it had been interpreted
by the artist mind, that creating and naming
actually began to acquire much the same sense.
For to put a meaning into things was clearly to
create them afresh 2 — in fact, to create them literally.
And so it came to pass that, in one of the oldest
religions on earth, the religion of Egypt, God was
imagined as a Being who created things by naming
Schelling, Sdmmtliche Werke, Vol. V, "Vorlesungen iiber
die Methode des akademischen Studiums," p. 286: "The
first origin of religion in general, as of every other kind of
knowledge and culture, can be explained only as the teach
ing of higher natures."
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 89 : "The Will to Truth at this stage
is essentially the art of interpretation."
2 Thus Schiller, in one of his happy moments, called beauty
our second creator (zweite Schopferin).
them;1 while, in the Judaic notion of the creation

of the world, which was probably derived from the
Egyptians themselves, Jehovah is also said to have
brought things into existence merely by pronounc
ing their names.2
The world thus became literally man's Work of
Art,3 man's Sculpture.4 Miracle after miracle at
last reduced Nature to man's chattel, and it was
man's lust of mastership, his will to power, which
thus became creative in his highest specimen — the
artist— and which, fighting for "the higher worthi
ness and meaning of mankind,"5 transfigured
reality by means of human valuations, and over
came Becoming by falsifying it as Being.6
"We are in need of lies," says Nietzsche, "in
order to rise superior to reality, to truth— that is to
say, in order to live. . . . That lies should be
necessary to life, is part and parcel of the terrible
and questionable character of existence.
"Metaphysics, morality, religion, science — all
these things are merely different forms of falsehood,
by means of them we are led to believe in life.
1 Prof. VV. M. Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient
Egypt, p. 67.
* That those who successfully determined values even in
comparatively recent times should have been regarded
almost universally as enjoying "some closer intimacy with
the Deity than ordinary mortals,1' proves how very godlike
and sacred the establishment of order was thought to be.
See Max Miiller, Introduction to the Science of Religion,
p. 88.
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 102. 4 W. P., Vol. II, p. 107.
5 H. A. H., Vol. I, p. 154.
• W. P., Vol. II, p. 108: "Art is the will to overcome
Becoming, it is a process of eternalizing." And p. 107:
"To stamp Becoming with the character of Being — this is
the highest Will to Power." See also G. M., p. 199.
' Life must inspire confidence ; ' the task which this
imposes upon us is enormous. In order to solve
this problem man must already be a liar in his heart.
But he must, above all, be an artist. And he is
that. Metaphysics, religion, morality, science —
all these things are but an offshoot of his will to
Art, to falsehood, to a flight from 'truth,' to a
denial of ' truth.' This ability, this artistic
capacity, par excellence, of man — thanks to which
he overcomes reality with lies — is a quality which
he has in common with all other forms of exist
ence. . . .
"To be blind to many things, to see many things
falsely, to fancy many things. Oh, how clever
man has been in those circumstances in which he
believed that he was anything but clever ! Love,
enthusiasm, ' God ' — are but subtle forms of ulti
mate self-deception ; they are but seductions to life
and to the belief in life ! In those moments when
man was deceived, when he befooled himself and
when he believed in life : Oh, how his spirit swelled
within him ! Oh, what ecstasies he had ! What
power he felt ! And what artistic triumphs in the
feeling of power ! . . . Man had once more become
master of ' matter ' — master of truth ! . . . And
whenever man rejoices, it is always in the same
way : he rejoices as an artist, his Power is his joy,
he enjoys falsehood as his power." 1
"Subdue it ! " said the Jehovah of the Old Testa
ment, speaking to man, and pointing to the earth :
"have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
1 W. P., Vol. II, pp. 289, 290. See also H. A. H.,
Vol. I, p. 154.
the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth."
This was man's original concept of his task on
earth, and with it before him he began to breathe
at last, and to feel no longer a worm, entangled in
a mysterious piece of clockwork mechanism.
"What is it that created esteeming and despising
and value and will?" Zarathustra asks.
"The creating self created for itself esteeming
and despising, it created for itself joy and woe.
The creating body created for itself spirit, as a
hand to its will." l
To appraise a thing was to create it for ever in
the minds of a people. But to create a thing in the
minds of a people was to create that people too;
for it is to have values in common that constitutes
a people.2
"Creators were they who created peoples, and
hung one belief and one love over them," says
Zarathustra; "thus they served life."3
"Values did man stamp upon things only that
he might preserve himself — he alone created the
meaning of things — a human meaning ! There
fore calleth he himself man — that is, the valuing
one.
"Valuing is creating: listen, ye creators!
Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of valued
things.
"Through valuing alone can value arise; and
1 Z., I, IV.
3 Schelling and Hegel both held this view; the one
expressed it quite categorically in his lectures on Philosophy
and Mythology, and the other in his Philosophy of History.
1 Z., I, XI.
without valuing, the nut of existence would be

hollow. Listen, ye creators !
"Change of values — that is, change of creators.1
"Verily a prodigy is this power of praising and
blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it
for me? Who will put a yoke on the thousand
necks of this animal ? " 2
"All the beauty and sublimity with which we
have invested real and imagined things," says
Nietzsche, "I will show to be the property and
product of man, and this should be his most beauti
ful apology. Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a
god, as love, as power. Oh, the regal liberality
with w:hich he has lavished gifts upon things ! . . .
Hitherto this has been his greatest disinterested
ness, that he admired and worshipped, and knew
how to conceal from himself that he it was who
had created what he admired." 3
"Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love,
as power " — this man, following his divine inspira
tion to subdue the earth and to make it his, became
the greatest stimulus to Life itself, the greatest bond
between earth and the human soul ; and, in shed
ding the glamour of his personality, like the sun,
upon the things he interpreted and valued, he also
gilded, by reflection, his fellow creatures.
There is not a thing we call sacred, beautiful,
good or precious, that has not been valued for us
by this man, and when we, like children, call out
for the Truth about the riddles of this world, it is
not for the truth of reality which is the object of
1 Z., I, XV. 2 Z., I, XVI.
3 W. P., Vol. I, p. 113.
Christianity and of science for which we crave ; but

for the simplifications 1 and values of this man-god,
who, by the art-form, into which he casts reality,
makes us believe that reality is as he says it is.
If this man is lacking, then we succumb to the
blackest despair. If he is with us, we voluntarily
yield to boundless joy and good cheer. His func
tion is the divine principle on earth ; his creation
Art "is the highest task and the properly meta-/
physical activity of this life." 2 /
3. The People and their Man-God.

Think of the joy that must have spread through
a wondering people like the Greeks, when they were
told that Earth, as the bride of Heaven, and fer
tilized by his life-giving rain, became the mother
not only of deep eddying Ocean, but also of all
that lives and dies upon her broad bosom !
Imagine the jubilation, the feeling of power and
the sense of extreme relief that must have filled the
hearts of the ancient New Zealanders, when the first
great Maori artist arose and said to his brothers
and sisters that it was the god of the forests, Tane
Mahuta, with his tall trees that had wrenched the
1 See Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, p. 46, who, speak
ing of the old Ionian Nature-philosophers, says : "The bold
flight of their imagination did not stop at the assumption
of a plurality of indestructible elements; it never rested
t reached the conception of a single fundamental or
primordial matter as the essence of natural diversity.
I hi- impulse to simplification, when it had once been
d, was like a stone set in motion, which rolls con
tinuously till it is checked by an obstacle." See also
a B'
p T.,Worr»nger,
p. 20. Abstraktion und Einfuhlung, p. 20.
sky by force from mother Earth, where once upon a

time he used to crush her teeming offspring to death.1
With what superior understanding could they
now gaze up into the sky, and snap their fingers
scornfully at its former azure mystery ! No wonder
that the artist who could come forward with such
an interpretation became a god ! And no wonder
that in strong nations gods and men are one ! The
fact that the explanation was not a true one, accord
ing to our notions, did not matter in the least.
History not only reveals, but also proves that
lies are not necessarily hostile to existence.
For thousands of years the human race not only
lived, but also flourished with the lie of the
Ptolemaic theory of the heavens on their tongue,
or centuries men thrived and multiplied, believ
ing that the lightning was Jehovah's anger, and
that the rainbow was Jehovah's reminder of a cer
tain solemn covenant by which He promised never
| again to destroy all life on earth by a flood.
I do not wish to imply that these two beliefs are
' false. For my part, I would prefer to believe them,
rather than accept the explanations of these pheno
mena which modern science offers me. Still, the fact
remains that these two Judaic explanations have been
exploded by modern science, though the question
whether, as explanations, they are superior to modern
science, scarcely requires a moment's consideration.
At any rate they were the work of an artist, and
when we think of the joy they must have spread
among wondering mankind, we cannot wonder that
1 See Max Miillcr, India. What can it teach us?
pp. 154, 155; also pp. 150 and 151.
such an artist was made a god. It was an artist,

too, who created the unchanging thing;1 who
created every kind of permanency, i. e. Stability
out of Evolution, and among other unchangeable
things, th£__soul of man, which was perhaps the
greatest artistic achievement that has ever been
accomplished?
And trus Man-God who created Being — that is
to say, a stable world, a world which can be
reckoned with, and in which the incessant kaleido
scopic character of things is entirely absent — this
same Man-God who found the earth "without
form" and "void," and whose magnificent Spirit
"moved upon the face of the waters " ; when people
grew too weak to look upon him as their brother
and God at the same time,2 was relegated to his
own world, and from a great distance they now
pray to him and worship him and say: "For
Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory,
For ever and ever. Amen."
"For ever and ever;" this was something they 1
could not say of the world as it is; and the thought j
of stability and of Being was a delight to them.
It may be difficult for us to picture how great
the rejoicings must have been which followed upon
every fresh ordering and arranging of the universe,
every fresh interpretation of the world in the terms
of man.
Perhaps only a few people to-day, who are begin-
1 W.P., Vol. II, pp. 88, 89: "Happiness can be
promised only by Being: change and happiness exclude
i other. The loftiest desire is thus to be one with
«8;• • P.,
n hat
Vol.1S II,
thc formula Mr the way to happiness."
p. 313.
G 2
ning to cast dubious glances at Life, and to ques

tion even the justification of man's existence, may
be able to form some conception of the thrill that
must have passed through an ancient community,
when one of its higher men uprose and ordered and
adjusted Life for them, and, in so ordering it,
transfigured it.
How much richer they must have felt ! And how
inseparable the two notions "artist" and "giver"
must have appeared to them !
"If indeed this is Life," they must have said; "if
Life is really as he orders it " — and his voice and
eye allowed them to prefix no such "if" with
genuine scepticism — "then of a truth it is a well
of delight and a fountain of blessedness."
Thus Art — this function which "is with us in
order that we may not perish through truth," 1 this
"enhancement of the feeling of Life and Life's
stimulant,"2 which "acts as a tonic, increases
strength and kindles desire"3 — became the "great
seducer " to earth and to the world ; 4 and we can
imagine the gratitude that swelled in the hearts of
men for him whose function it was. How could
he help but become a god ! Even tradition was not
necessary for this. For at the very moment when
his creative spirit lent its glory to the earth, man
must have been conscious of his divinity or of his
use as a mouthpiece by a Divinity.5
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 252.
4 W. P., Vol. II, p. 290. See also p. 292 : "Art is more
divine than trdth."
5 W. P., Vol. II, p. 133. See also Schopenhauer,
Parerga und Paralipomcna, Vol. II, Chap. XV, " Ueber
Religion," para. 176, where this view is ably upheld.
"O, Lord Varuna, may this song go well to thy

heart ! " sang the ancient Hindus.
"Thou who knowest the place of the birds that
fly through the sky, who on the waters knowest the
ships.
"Thou the upholder of order, who knowest the
twelve months with the offspring of each, and who
knowest the month that is engendered aftenvards.
"Thou who knowest the track of the wind, of the
wide, the bright, the mighty; and knowest those
who reside on high.
"Thou the upholder of order, Varuna, sit down
among thy people, thou, the wise, sit there to
govern.
"From thence perceiving
thou seest what has been and allwhat
wondrous
will be things,
done.
"Thou who givest to men glory, and not half
glory, who givest it even to our own selves.
"Thou, O wise god, art Lord of all, of heaven
and earth ! " l
We can follow every word of this heartfelt
worship with perfect sympathy now.
"Thou, the upholder of order, who knowest the
twelve months with the offspring of each " — this is
no empty praise. It is the cry of those who feel
inexpressibly grateful to their great artist; to him
who has put some meaning, some order into the
world.
And "Thou who givest men glory, and not half
glory "—here is the sincere recognition of a people
who have been raised and who not only rejoice in
their elevation, but also recognize that it has been
1 Rig-Veda, I, 25.
a creative act — a gift and a blessing from one who

had something to give. For the soul of man is a
million times more sensitive to changes in inter
pretation than the column of mercury is to changes
in the atmosphere, and nothing can be more grate
ful than the soul of man when it is raised, however
little, and thereby glorified.
4. The Danger.
Now, having reached this point, and having
established — First : that it is our artists who value
and interpret things for us, and who put a meaning
into reality which, without them, it would never
possess ; and, secondly : that it is their will to power
that urges them thus to appropriate Nature in con
cepts, and their will to prevail which gives them
the ardour to impose their valuation with authority
upon their fellows, thus forming a people; the
thought which naturally arises is this : The power
that artists can exercise, and the prerogative they
possess, is one which might prove exceedingly
dangerous ; for while it may work for good, it may
also work very potently for evil. Does it matter
who interprets the world? who gives a meaning to
things? who adjusts and systematizes Nature? and
who imposes order upon chaos ?
Most certainly it matters. For a thousand mean
ings are possible, and men may have a thousand
shots at the target of life, before striking precisely
that valuation which is most in harmony with a
lofty and noble existence. And though they have
been aiming for years, other interpretations are still

possible.
Listen to your artistic friend's description of the
most trifling excursion he has made, and then set
your inartistic friend to relate— say, his journey
round the world. Whereupon ask yourself whether
it matters who sees things and who interprets life
for you. The first, even with his trifling excursion
in his mind, will make you think that life is really
worth living, that the world is full of hidden
treasure. The second will make you conclude that
this earth is an uninteresting monster, and that
boredom can be killed only by the dangers of motor
racing, aerial navigation and glacier climbing.
"A thousand paths are there which never have
been trodden," says Zarathustrofa, life. "a thousand
salubrities and hidden islands Still un
exhausted and undiscovered is mankind and man's
world." l
This interpreting of Nature and this making and
moulding of a people might therefore have brilliant
or sinister results. There are many who wish to
prevail; there are many who wish to lure their
fellows on, and not all are standing on a superior
plane.
For though artists, as a rule, are men of strong
propensities2 and surplus energy, there is an
instinct of chastity in the best of them,3 which
impels them to devote all their power to prevailing
in concepts rather than in offspring, and which
1 Z., I, XXII. a W. P., Vol. II, p. 243.

» W. P., Vol. II, p. 259. Also G. Af., p. 141.
makes them avoid precisely that quarter whither

other men turn when they wish to prevail.1
The question as to what kind of man it is who
walks up to Life and orders and values her for us,
is therefore of the most extraordinary importance.
Nothing could be more important than this. Be
cause, as we have seen, the question is not one of
truth in the Christian and modern scientific sense.
A belief is often life-preserving and still false from
the standpoint of reality.2 It is a matter, rather,
of finding that belief, whether true or false, which
most conduces to the love of an exalted form of
Life. And if we ask, Who is the man who is
interpreting life for us? What is he? What is
his rank ? we practically lay our finger upon the
very worth of our view of the world.
There is no greater delight or passionate love on
earth for the artist than this : to feel that he has
stamped his hand on a people and on a millennium,
to feel that his eyes, his ears, and his touch have
become their eyes, and their ears, and their touch.
There is no deeper enjoyment than this for him :
to feel that as he sees, hears and feels, they also will
be compelled to see, hear and feel. Only thus is he
able to prevail. A people becomes his offspring.3
1 In this regard it is interesting to note that: "The
Teutonic ' Kunst ' (Art) is formed from konnen, and konnen
is developed from a primitive Ich kann. In kann philology
recognizes a preterite form of a lost verb, of which we find
the traces in Kin-d, a child; and the form Ich kann, thus
meaning originally, ' I begot,' contains the germ of the two
developments — konnen, ' to be master,' ' to be able,' and
' kennen ' to know " (Sidney Colvin, in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Qth Edition. Article, "Art").
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 14. See also G. £., pp. 8, 9.
3 W.P., Vol. II, p. 368: "The great man is conscious
While their elation and blessedness consisted in
being raised in concepts to his level, and in seeing
the world through his artistic prisms — in fact, in
scoring materially by allowing him, their higher
man, to establish their type; it was his solitary and
unfathomable glory to prevail for ever through their
minds, and to lay the foundation of his hazar, his
thousand years of life on earth, in the spirit of his
fellows.
Utilitarian, if you will, are both points of view :
the one giving from his abundance, simply because
he must discharge some of his plenitude or perish,
found his meaning in giving. The others, step
ping up on the gifts bestowed, found their meaning
in receiving.1
The artist, then, as the highest manifestation of
any human community, justifies his existence
merely by living his life, and by imparting some
of his magnificence to the things about him. To
use a metaphor of George Meredith's, he gilds his
retainers as the sun gilds, with its livery, the small
clouds that gather round it. This is the artist's
power and it is also his bliss. From a lower and
more economical standpoint, he justifies his life by
raising the community to its highest power; by
binding it to Life with the glories which he alone
of his power over a people, and of the fact that he coincides
tempornrily with a people or with a century— this magnify
ing of his self-consciousness as causa and vohtntas is mis
understood as ' altruism ' : he feels driven to means of com
munication : all great men are inventive in such means.
They want to form great communities in their own image;
they would fain give multiformity and disorder definite
shape; it stimulates them to behold chaos,"
1 W. P., PP- 255, 256.
can see, and by luring it up to heights which he is

the first to scale and to explore.1
5. The Two Kinds of Artists.

Up to the present I have spoken only of the
desirable artist, of him who, from the very health
and fulness that is in him, cannot look on Life
without transfiguring her; of the man who naturally
sees things fuller, simpler, stronger and grander 2
than his fellows.3 When this man speaks of Life,
his words are those of a lover extolling his bride.4
There is a ring of ardent desire and deep longing
in his speech, which is infectious because it is so
sincere, which is convincing because it is so authori
tative, and which is beautiful because it is so simple.
Intoxicated 5 by his love, giddy with enthusiasm,
he rhapsodizes about her, magnifies her; points to
1 Even Fichte recognizes this power in Art to stamp
values upon a people. See the Sammtliche Werke, Vol. IV,
P- 353 : "Art converts the transcendental standpoint into
the general standpoint. . . . The philosopher can raise
himself and others to this standpoint only with great effort.
But the artistic spirit actually finds himself there, without
having thought about it; he knows no other standpoint,
and those who yield to his influence are drawn so imper
ceptibly over to his side, that they do not even notice how
the change takes place."
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 243: "Artists should not see things
as they are ; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger.
To this end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality,
a sort of perpetual elation, must be peculiar to their lives."
See also T. /., Part 10, Aph. 8.
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 243. See also T. /., Part 10, Aph. 9.
* W. P., Vol. II, p. 248.
5 W. P., Vol. II, p. 241: "The feeling of intoxication
(elation) is, as a matter of fact, equivalent to a sensation of
surplus strength." See also p. 254.
vast unknown qualities and beauties in her, to

which he is the first to give some lasting names;
and stakes his life upon her myriad charms. This
Dionysian artist, the prototype of all gods and
demi-gods that have ever existed on earth, exalts
Life when he honours her with his love; and in
exalting her, exalts humanity as well.1
For the mediocre, simply because they cannot
transfigure Life in that way, benefit extremely from
looking on the world through the Dionysian artist's
personality. It is his genius which, by putting
ugly reality into an art-form, makes life desirable.
Beneath all his dithyrambs, however, there is still
the will to power and the will to prevail — just as
these instincts are to be found behind the mag
nificats of the everyday lover; but, in the case of the
former, it is the power in the spirit.
There is, however, another kind of man who
walks towards Life to value and to order her. The
kind of man who, as we saw in my last lecture,
declares that "man is born in sin,"- -"that depravity
is universal," — "that nothing exists in the intellect
but what has before existed in the senses ; " and
that "every man is his own priest"; the man who
1 Schelling also recognized the transfiguring power of
Art; but he traced it to the fact that the artist invariably
paints Nature at her zenith. See p. u, The Philosophy of
Art (translation by A. Johnson): "Every growth of nature
has but one moment of perfect beauty, . . . Art, in that it
presents the object in this moment, withdraws it from time,
and causes it to display its pure being in the form of eternal
beauty." This is making the natural object itself the
adequate source of its own transfiguration, and the theory
overlooks the power of the artist himself to see things as
they are not.
c
defines Life as "the continuous adjustment of in
ternal relations to external relations " ; and who
says: "it is only the cultivation of individuality
which produces, or can produce, well-developed
human beings " ; the man who declares that we are
all equal, that there is one truth for all, if only it
can be found; and who thus not only kills all
higher men, but also deprives his fellow creatures
of all the beauty that these higher men have
brought, and might still bring, into the world ;
finally, the man who values humanity with figures
and in the terms of matter, who values progress in
the terms of the engineer's workshop, and who
denies that Art can have any relation to Life.
This man is a sort of inverted Midas at whose
touch all gold turns to tinsel, all pearls turn to
beads, and all beauty withers and fades. His
breath is that of the late autumn, and his words
are hoarfrost. Having nothing to give,1 he merely
robs things of the beauty that was once laid in
them, by insisting upon the truth of their reality;
and he sees Life smaller, thinner, weaker, and
greyer than it is even to the people themselves.
He is the antithesis of the Dionysian artist. He
comes from the people, and very often from a
substratum lower than they. How, therefore, can he
give the people anything they do not already pos
sess ? He is a field-labourer among field-labourers,
a housewife among housewives — how could he point
to any beauty or desire which field-labourers and
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 244: "The sober-minded man, the
tired man, the exhausted and dried-up man, can have no
feeling for Art, because he does not possess the primitive
force of Art, which is the tyranny of inner riches,"
housewives have not already seen or felt ? People

have no use for him, therefore, and whenever they
are drawn to his side by his seditious songs about
equality, they find, when it is too late, that he has
made the world drabbier, uglier, colder, and
stranger for them than it \vas"~before.
This is thejnan who insists "f*B frtfth- Forget
ting that truth is uglv l and that humanity has done
little else, since it first became conscious, than to
master and overcome truth, he wishes to make this
world what it was in the beginning, "without
form" and "void," and to empty things of the
meaning that has been put into them, simply
because he is unable to create a world for
himself.2
Aiming at a general truth for all, he is reduced
to naked reality, to Nature as it was before God's
Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and this
is his world of facts, stripped of all that higher
men have put into them. This mfln of sripnrp
without Art, is gradually reducing us to a state of
iutr ignorance; for while he takes from us what
we know about things, he gives us nothing in
return. How often do we not hear people who are
influenced by his science, exclaim that the more
they learn the less they feel they know. This
exclamation contains a very profound truth ; for
science is robbing us inch by inch of all the ground
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 101.
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 89 : "The belief that the world which
ought to be, is, really exists, is a belief proper to the
unfruitful, who do not wish to create a world. They take
it for granted, they seek for ways and means of attaining
it. ' The will to truth ' [in the Christian and scientific
sense] is the impotence of the will to create."
that was once conquered for us by bygone

artists.1
Such a man, if he can be really useful in garner
ing and accumulating facts, and in devising and
developing novel mechanical contrivances, ought
in any case to be closeted apart, so that none of his_
breath can reach the Art-made world. And when
he begins valuing, all windows and doors ought
speedily to be barred and bolted against him. He
is the realist. It is he who sees spots on the sun's
face ; it is he who denies that mist is the passionate
sigh of mother Earth, yearning for her spouse the
sky; it is he who will not believe that the god of
the forest with his tallest trees separated the earth
and the heavens by force, and the explanations he
gives of things, though they are doubtless useful
to him in his laboratory, are empty and colourless.
Granting, as I say, that he does anything useful in
the department of facts, let his profession at least
be a strictly esoteric one. For his interpretations
are so often ignoble, in addition to being colour
less, that his business, like that of a certain Paris
functionary, ought to be pursued in the most severe
and most zealous secrecy.
If the world grows ugly, and Life loses her
bloom ; if all winds are ill winds, and the sunshine
seems sickly and pale ; if we turn our eyes dubiously
about us, and begin to question the justification of
1 W.ever
tends P., more
Vol. toII,transform
p. 104: the
"Theknown
development of science :
into the unknown
its aim, however, is to do the reverse, and it starts out with
the instinct of tracing the unknown to the known. In
short, science is laying the road to sovereign ignorance, to
a feeling that knowledge does not exist at all, that it was
merely a form of haughtiness to dream of such a thing."
our existence, we may be quite certain that this

man, this realist, and his type, are in the ascend
ancy, and that he it is who is stamping his ugly
fist upon our millennium.
For the function of Art is the function of the
ruler. It relieves the highest of their burden, so
that mediocrity may be twice blessed, and it makes
us a people by luring us to a certain kind of Life.
Its essence is riches, its activity is giving and per
fecting,1 and while it is a delight to the highest,
it is also a boon to those beneath them.
The attempt of the Dionysian artist 2 to prevail,
therefore, is sacred and holy. In his efforts to
make his eyes our eyes, his ears our ears, and his
touch our touch, though he does not pursue any
altruistic purpose, he confers considerable benefits
upon mankind. Whereas the attempt of that other
man to prevail — the realist and devotee of so-called
truth — is barbarous and depraved. By his egoism
he depresses, depreciates and dismantles Life in
great things as in small. Woe to the age whose
values allow his voice to be heard with respect !
There are necessary grey studies to be made,
necessary uglinesses to be described, perhaps. But
let these studies and descriptions be kept within
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 263: "The essential feature in art

is its power of perfecting existence, its production of
perfection and plenitude. Art is essentially the affirmation,
the blessing, and the deification of existence."
2 Fichte comes near to Nietzsche, here, with his idea of
the "beautiful spirit" \\hich sees all nature full, large
and abundant, as opposed to him who sees all things
thinner, smaller, and emptier than they actually are. See
's Sdmmtliche
Vnl. Ill, p. 273. Werke, Vol. IV, p. 354. See also
the four walls of a laboratory until the time comes

when, by their collective means, man can be raised
and not depressed by them. Science is not with
us to promulgate values. It is with us to be the
modest handmaiden of Art; working in secrecy
until all its ugliness can be collected, transfigured,
and used for the purpose of man's exaltation by
the artist. It may be useful for our science-
slaves, working behind the scenes of Life, to know
that the sky is merely our limited peep into an
infinite expanse of ether — whatever that is. But
when we ask to hear about it, let us be told as
follows —
"O heaven above me! Thou pure! Thou
deep ! Thou abyss of light ! Gazing on Thee, I
quiver with godlike desires.
"To cast myself up unto thy height — that is my
profundity ! To hide myself in thy purity — that is
mine innocence.
"We have been friends from the beginning, thou
and I. Sorrow and horror and soil we share : even
the sun is common to us.
"We speak not to each other, for we know too
many things. We stare silently at each other; by
smiles do we communicate our knowledge.
"And all my wanderings and mountain-climbings
— these were but a necessity and a makeshift of
the helpless one. To fly is the one thing that my
will willeth, to fly into thee.
"And what have I hated
clouds and all that defileth theemore
! than passing
"The passing clouds I loathe — those stealthy

cats of prey. They take from thee and me what
we have in common — that immense, that infinite

saying of Yea and Amen.
"These mediators and mixers we loathe — the
passing clouds.
"Rather would I sit in a tub, with the sky shut
out ; rather would I sit in the abyss without a sky,
than see thee, sky of Light, defiled by wandering
clouds !
"And oft have I longed to pin them fast with
the jagged gold wires of lightning, that I might,
like the thunder, beat the drum upon their bellies.
"An angry drummer, because they bereave me of
thy Yea and Amen !— thou heaven above me, thou
pure, thou bright, thou abyss of Light ! And
because they bereave thee of my Yea and Amen.
"Thus spake Zarathustra." 1
1 Z., Ill, XLVIII.
PART II
DEDUCTIONS FROM PART I. NIETZSCHE'S ART

PRINCIPLES
" For he taught them as one having authority, and not

as the scribes." — Matthew vii. 29.
i. The Spirit of the Age Incompatible with
Ruler-Art.
WITH Nietzsche's concept of Art before me I

feel as if I had left the arts of the present day many
thousand leagues behind, and it is almost a hard
ship to be obliged to return to them. For unless
most of that which is peculiar to this age be left
many thousand leagues to the rear, all hope of
making any headway must be abandoned.
We live in a democratic age. It is only natural,
therefore, that all that belongs to the ruler shoulc
have been whittled down, diluted, and despoilec
of its dignity; and we must feel no surprise at
finding that no pains have been spared which
might reduce Art also to a function that would be
compatible with the spirit of the times. All that
savours of authority has become the work of com
mittees, assemblies, herds, crowds, and mobs.
How could the word of one man be considered
authoritative, now that the ruling principle, to use
NIETZSCHE'S ART PRINCIPLES 99
a phrase of Mr. Chesterton's, is that "twelve men

are better than one " ? x
The conception of Art as a manifestation of the
artist's will to power and his determination to pre
vail, is a much too dangerous one for the present
day. It involves all kinds of things which are
antagonistic to democratic theory, such as : Com
mand, Reverence, Despotism, Obedience, Great
ness and Inequality. Therefore, if artists are to
be tolerated at all, they must have a much more
modest, humble, and pusillanimous comprehension
of what their existence means, and of the purpose
and aim of their work ; and their claims, if they
make any, must be meek, unprivileged, harmless
and unassuming.
While, therefore, the artist, as Nietzsche under
stood him, scarcely exists at all to-day, another
breed of man has come to the fore in the graphic
arts, whose very weakness is his passport, who
makes no claims at establishing new values of
beauty, and who contents himself modestly with
exhibiting certain baffling dexterities, virtuosities
and tricks, which at once amaze and delight
ordinary spectators or Art-students, simply because
they themselves have not yet overcome even the
difficulties of a technique.
Monet's pointillisme, Sargent's visible and nerv
ous brush strokes, Rodin's wealth of anatomical
detail, the Impressionist's scientific rendering of
atmosphere, Peter Graham's gauzy mists, Lavery's
post-Whistlerian portraits of pale people, and the
1 See his evidence before the Joint Committee on the
Stage H Censorship.
2 — Daily Press, September 24th, 1909.
touching devotion of all modern artists to Truth,

in the Christian and scientific sense, are all indica
tions of the general "funk " — the universal paralysis
of will that has overtaken the Art-world.
But I am travelling too fast. I said that no pains
have been spared which might reduce Art also to a
function that would be compatible with the demo
cratic spirit of the times. Now in what form have
these pains been taken ?
Their form has invariably been to turn the tables
upon Art, and to make its beauty dependent upon
Nature, instead of Nature's beauty dependent upon
it.1
Tradition, of course, very largely laid the founda
tion of this mode of thinking, and, from the Greeks
to Ruskin, few seem to have realized how much
beauty Art had already laid in Nature, before.
even the imitative artist could consider Nature as/
beautiful.
As Croce rightly observes: "Antiquity seems
generally to have been entrammelled in the meshes
of the belief in mimetic, or the duplication of
natural objects by the artist ; " 2 but when we re
member that, as Schelling points out, in Greece
speculation about Art began with Art's decline,3
1 T.I., Part 10, Aph. 19: "Man believes the world itself
to be overcharged with beauty, — he forgets that he is the
cause of it. He alone has endowed it with beauty. . . .
In reality man mirrors himself in things; he counts every
thing beautiful which reflects his likeness. ... Is the world
really beautiful, just because man thinks it is? Man has
humanized it, that is all."
2 Esthetic (Douglas Ainslie's translation), p. 259. See
also B. Bosanquet, A History of Esthetic, pp. 15-18.
3 Sammtliche Werke, Vol. V, "Vorlesungen iiber die
Methode des akademischen Studiums," pp. 346, 347.
we ought to feel no surprise at this remote under
estimation of the artistic fact.1
In reviewing the work of aestheticians from
Plato to Croce, however, what strikes me as so
significant is the fact that, from the time of Plotinus
— who practically marks the end of the declension
which started in Plato's time— to the end of the
seventeenth century, scarcely a voice of any mag
nitude was raised in Europe on the subject of Art.2
That there was no real "talk" about Art, at the
time when it was revived in the Middle Ages, and
at the time when it flourished in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and that all the old Hellenic
discussions on the subject should have been taken
up again at a period when the last emaciated
blooms of the Renaissance and of the counter-
Renaissance were bowing their heads, only shows
how very sorry the plight of all great human func
tions must be when man begins to hope that he
may set them right by talking about them.
When it is remembered, however, that, from the
end of the seventeenth century onward, Art was
regarded either as imitation pure and simple or as
idealised imitation by no less than fifteen thinkers
1 Dr. Max Schasler (Kritische Geschichte der AZsthetik,
P- 73) agrees that the understanding of Art in classical
antiquity seems to be quite barbaric in its stupidity ("von
einer geradezu barbarischcn Bornirthcit ") ; but he adds that
this may be an argument in favour of the antique ; for it may
prove the unconsciousness of the artists and the absolute
unity of the artistic life and of artistic appreciation in antiquity.
2 Aristotle was, of course, studied and commentated to
a very great extent during these fifteen centuries; but
in all the branches of science save ./Esthetic. Where his
Poetic was examined, the philological or literary-historical
interest was paramount. Augustine and St. Thomas
Aquinas do not differ materially from Plotinus and Plato.
of note — that is to say, roughly speaking, by the

Earl of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke and
Hume in England, by Batteux and Diderot in
France, by Pagano and Spaletti in Italy, by Hem-
sterhuis in Holland, and by Leibnitz, Baumgarten,
Kant, Schiller and Fichte in Germany; and that
if Winckelmann and Lessing opposed these ideas,
it was rather with the recommendation of another
kind of imitation — that of the antique — than with
a new valuation of Art ; we can feel scarcely any
surprise at all at the sudden and total collapse of
the dignity of Art in the nineteenth century, under
the deadly influence of the works of men like
Semper and his followers.
It is all very well to point to men like Goethe,
Heydenreich, Schelling, Hegel, Hogarth and
Reynolds — all of whom certainly did a good deal
to brace the self-respect of artists ; but it is impos
sible to argue that any one of them took up either
such a definite or such a determined attitude against
the fifteen others whom I have mentioned, as could
materially stem the tide of democratic Art which
was rising in Europe. And if in the latter half of
the nineteenth century we have Ruskin telling us
that "the art which makes us believe what we wrould
not otherwise have believed, is misapplied, and in
most instances very dangerously so " ; l and if we
find that his first principle is, "that our graphic
art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce
something which shall look as like Nature as pos
sible,"2 and that, in extolling the Gothic, he says
1 Lectures on Art (1870), p. 50.
2 Aratra Pentelici (1870), p. 118. It is true that this is
it was "the love of natural objects for their own

sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, un
constrained by artistic laws " ; x we realize how very
slight the effect of those exceptional spirits, headed
by Goethe, must have been.
2. A Thrust parried. Police or Detective Art

defined.
But to return to the movement initiated by
Semper2 — here we certainly have the scientific and
Christian coup de grace levelled at the expiring
spirit of nineteenth-century Art. For the actors
in this movement not only maintained that Art is
imitation, but that it actually took its origin in
imitation — and of the basest sort — that is to say, of
accidental combinations of lines and colours pro
duced in basket-work, weaving and plaiting.
This conclusion, which was arrived at, once
more, by means of a formidable array of facts, and
which called itself "Evolution in Art," was, like its
first cousin, "Evolution in the Organic World,"
absolutely democratic, ignoble, and vulgar; seek
ing the source of the highest human achievements
either in automatic mimicry, slavish and even faulty
copying, or involuntary adoption of natural or
purely utilitarian forms.
Taking the beauty of Nature for granted— an
followed by a restriction ; but what docs this restriction
amount to? Ruskin says: "We must produce what shall
look like Nature to people who know what Nature is."
1 On the Nature of the Gothic (Smith, Elder, 1854), p. 19.
"Der Stil in dor tcchnischen und tektonischen Kunsten,
Oder praktische /Esthetik."
assumption which, as the first part of this lecture

shows, is quite unwarrantable — these Art-Evolu
tionists sought to prove that all artistic beauty was
the outcome
in the realm ofof man's
NatureSimian
or in virtues working
the realm of hiseither
own
utilitarian handiwork. And from the purely imita
tive productions found in the Madeleine Cavern in
La Dordogne, to the repetitive patterns worked on
wooden bowls by the natives in British New Guinea,
the origin of all art lay in schoolboy "cribbing."
This was a new scientific valuation of Art — fore
shadowed, as I have shown, by philosophical
aesthetic, but arriving independently, as it were, at
the conclusion that Art was no longer a giver, but
a robber.
Volumes were written to show the origin in
technical industry of individual patterns and orna
ments on antique vases. And as Alois Riegl
rightly observes, the authors of these works spoke
with such assurance, that one might almost have
believed that they had been present when the vases
were made.1
Even Semper, however, as Riegl points out, did
not go so far as his disciples, and though he be
lieved that art-forms had been evolved — a fact any
one would be ready to admit — he did not press the
point that technical industry had always been their
root.
When we find such delicate and beautifully
rhythmic patterns as those which Dr. A. C.
Haddon gives us in his interesting work on Evolu
tion in Art, and are told that they originated in
1 See the excellent work, Stilfragen, p. n.
the frigate birds, or in woodlarks, which infest the
neighbourhood from which these patterns hail ; l
when we are shown a Chinese ornament which
resembles nothing so much as the Egyptian honey
suckle and lotus ornament,2 and we are told that it
is derived from the Chinese bat, and when we are
persuaded that an ordinary fish-hook can lead to a
delightful bell-like3 design; then our knowledge of
what Art is protests against this desecration of its
sanctity — more particularly after we have been
informed that any beauty that the original "Skeuo-
morph " 4 may ultimately possess is mostly due to
rapid and faulty copying by inexpert draughtsmen,
or to a simplifying process which repeated draw
ings of the same thing must at length involve.
This is nonsense, and of a most pernicious sort.
No mechanical copying or involuntary simplifica
tion will necessarily lead to designs of great
beauty. One has only to set a class of children
to make dozens of copies of an object — each more
removed than the last from the original — in order
to discover that if any beauty arises at all, it is
actually given or imparted to the original by one
particular child, who happens to be an artist, and
that the rest of the class will be quite innocent of
anything in the way of embellishments, or beauty
of any kind.
> Evolution in Art, by A. C. Haddon. Sec especially
figures 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, pp. 49-52. See also figure 106,
p. lol.
2 The Evolution of Decorative Art, by Henry J. Balfour,
P- 5°-
» Evolution in Art, by A. C. Haddon, p. 76.
A word Dr. Colloy March introduced to express the idea
of an ornament due to structure.
It would be absurd to argue that the beak of a

frigate bird had not been noticed by particular
natives in those parts of the world where the
creature abounds; but the creative act of making
an ornamental design based upon a pot-hook unit,
such as the frigate bird's beak is, bears no causal
relation whatsoever to the original fact in the
artist's environment, and to write books in order to
show that it does, is as futile as to try and show that
pneumonia or bronchitis or pleurisy was the actual
cause of Poe's charming poem, "Annabel Lee."
Riegl, Lipps, and Dr. Worringer very rightly
oppose this view of Semper and others. In his
book, Stilfragen, Riegl successfully disposes of the
theory that repetitive patterns have invariably been
the outcome of technical processes such as weaving
and plaiting, and points out that, very often, a
vegetable or animal form is given to an original
ornamental figure, only after it has been developed
to such an extent that it actually suggests that
vegetable or animal form.1
Dr. Worringer goes to great pains in order to
show that there is an Art-will which is quite dis
tinct from mimicry of any kind, and that this Art-
will, beginning in the graphic arts with rhythmic
and repetitive geometrical designs, such as zigzags,
cross-hatchings and spirals, has nothing whatsoever
to do with natural objects or objects of utility,
such as baskets and woven work, which these
designs happen to resemble.2
1 Stilfragen, p. 208 et seq. See also Dr. W. Worringer 's
really valuable contribution to this subject : Abstraktion nnd
Einfuhlung, p. 58.
2 Abstraktion imd Einfiihlung, pp. 4, 8, 9, u.
He points out that there is not only a difference
of degree, but actually a marked difference of kind,
between the intensely realistic drawing of the
Madeleine finds and of some Australian cave paint
ing and rock sculptures,1 which are the work of the
rudest savages, and the rhythmic decoration of other
races ; and that whereas the former are simply the
result of a truly imitative instinct which the savage
does well to cultivate for his own self-preservation
— since the ability to imitate also implies sharpened
detective senses2 — the latter is the result of a
genuine desire for order and simple and organized
arrangement, and an attempt in a small way to
overcome confusion. "It is man's only possible
way of emancipating himself from the accidental
and chaotic character of reality." 3
The author also shows very ably that, even where
plant forms are selected by the original geometric
artist, it is only owing to some peculiarly orderly or
systematic arrangement of their parts, and that the
first impulse in the selective artist is not to imitate
Nature, but to obtain a symmetrical and systematic
arrangement of lines,4 to gratify his will to be
master of natural disorder.
These objections of Riegl and Worringer are
both necessary and important; for, as the former
declares : " It is now high time that we should
retreat from the position in which it is maintained
1 Abstraktion nnd Einfiihlung, p. 51. See also Grosse,
The Beginnings of Art, pp. 166-169 «* seq.
2 For confirmation of this point see Felix Clay, The
Origin of the Sense of Beauty, p. 97.
3 Abstraktion und Einfiihlung, p. 44.
4 Abstraktion \ind Einfiihlung, p. 58.
that the roots of Art lie in purely technical proto
types." *
Even in the camp of the out-and-out evolution
ists, however, there seems always to have been some
uncertainty as to whether they were actually on the
right scent. One has only to read Grosse, where
he throws doubt on the technical origin of orna
ment, and acknowledges that he clings to it simply
because he can see no other,2 and the concluding
word of Dr. Haddon's book, Evolution in Art,* in
order to understand how very much a proper concept
of the Art-instinct would have helped these writers
to explain a larger field of facts than they were able
to explain, and to do so with greater accuracy.
Nobody, of course, denies that the patterns on
alligators' backs, the beaks of birds, and even the
regular disposition of features in the human face,
have been incorporated into designs ; but what must
be established, once and for all, is the fact that
there is a whole ocean of difference between the
1 Stttfragen, p. 12.
2 The Beginnings of Art, pp. 145-147.
3 p. 309: "There are certain styles of ornamentation
which, at all events in particular cases, may very well be
original, taking that word in its ordinary sense, such, for
example, as zigzags, cross-hatching, and so forth. The
mere toying with any implement which could make a mark
on any surface might suggest the simplest ornamentation
[N.B. — It is characteristic of this school that even original
design, according to them, must be the result of "toying"
with an instrument, and of a suggestion from chance
markings it may make] to the most savage mind. This may
or may not have been the case, and it is entirely beyond
proof either way, and therefore we must not press our
analogy too far. It is, however, surprising and is certainly
very significant that the origin of so many designs can be
determined although they are of unknown age."
theory which \vould ascribe such coincidences to
the imitative faculty, and that which would show
them to be merely the outcome of an original desire
for rhythmic order, simplification, and organiza
tion, which may or may not avail itself of natural
or technical forms suggestive of symmetrical
arrangement that happen to be at hand.
It is an important controversy, and one to which
I should have been glad to devote more attention.
In summing up, however, I don't think I could
do better than quote the opening lines of the Rev.
J. F. Rowbotham's excellent History of Music, in
which the same questions, although applied to a
different branch of Art, are admirably stated and
answered.
In this book the author says —
"The twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves,
the gurgling of brooks, have provoked the enco
miums of poets. Yet none of these has ever so
powerfully affected man's mind that he has sur
mised the existence of something deeper in them
than one hearing would suffice to disclose, and has
endeavoured by imitating them to familiarize him
self with their nature, so that he may repeat the
effect at his own will and pleasure in all its various
shades. These sounds, with that delicate instinct
which has guided him so nicely through this
universe of tempting possibilities, he chose deliber
ately to pass over. He heard them with pleasure
maybe. But pleasure must possess some aesthetic1
value. There must be a secret there to fathom, a
mystery to unravel, before we would undertake its
serious pursuit.
"And there is a kind of sound which exactly

possesses these qualities — a sound fraught with
seductive mystery — a sound which is Nature's
magic, for by it can dumb things speak.
"The savage who, for the first time in our world's
history, knocked two pieces of wood together, and
took pleasure in the sound, had other aims than his
own delight. He was patiently examining a mys
tery ; he was peering with his simple eyes into one
of Nature's greatest secrets. The something he
was examining was rhythmic sound, on which rests
the whole art of music." x
Thus, as you see, there is a goodly array of
perfectly sensible people on the other side. Still,
the belief that graphic art took its origin in imita
tion must undoubtedly have done a good deal of
damage ; for the numbers that hold it and act upon
it at the present day are, I am sorry to say, exceed
ingly great.
By identifying the will to imitate with the instinct
of self-preservation pure and simple, however, we
immediately obtain its order of rank; for having
already established that the will to Art is the will to
exist in a certain way — that is to say, with power,
all that which ministers to existence alone must of
necessity fall below the will to Art. In helping us
to make this point, Dr. Worringer and Mr. Felix
Clay have done good service, while Riegl's con
tribution to the side opposed to the Art-Evolution
ists cannot be estimated too highly.
We are now able to regard the realistic rock-
1 The History of Music, by J. F. Rowbotham, 1893,
pp. 7, 8. See also Dr. Wallaschek's Anf tinge der Tonkunst
(Leipzig, 1903).
drawings and cave-paintings of rude Bushmen, as
also the finds in the Madeleine Cavern, with an
understanding which has not been vouchsafed us
before, and in comparing these examples of amaz
ing truth to Nature — which, for want of a better
name, we shall call Detective or Police Art 1— with
the double twisted braid, the palmette, and the
simple fret in Assyrian ornament, we shall be able
to assign to each its proper order of rank.
It seems a pity, before laying down the principles
of an art, that it should be necessary to clear away
so many false doctrines and prejudices heaped upon
it in perfect good faith by scientific men. It is
only one proof the more, if such were needed, of
the vulgarizing influence science has exercised over
everything it has touched, since it began to become
almost divinely ascendant in the nineteenth century.
3. The Purpose of Art Still the Same as Ever.

But in spite of all the attempts that have been
made to democratize Art, and to fit it to the Pro
crustes bed of modernity, two human factors have
remained precisely the same as they ever were,
and show no signs of changing. I refer to the
general desire to obey and to follow, in the mass
of mankind, and to the general desire to prevail in
concepts, if not in offspring, among higher men.
Wherever one may turn, wherever one inquires,
one will discover that, at the present day, however
1 The Bortillon system of identification and Madame
Tuv-,.-iud's, together with a large number of modern por
traits and landscapes, are the highest development of
this art.
few and weak the commanders may be, there is

among the vast majority of people an insatiable
thirst to obey, to find opinions ready-made, and to
believe in some one or in some law. The way the
name of science is invoked when a high authority
is needed — just as the Church or the Bible used to
be invoked in years gone by — the love of statistics
and the meekness with which a company grows
silent when they are quoted ; the fact that the most
preposterous fashions are set in clothing, in tastes,
and in manners ; the sheep-like way in which people
will follow a leader, whether in politics, literature,
or in sport, not to dilate upon the love of great
names and the faith in the daily Press which now
adays, so I hear, even prescribes schemes for dinner-
table conversation — all these things show what a
vast amount of instinctive obedience still remains
the birthright of the Greatest Number. For even
advertisement hoardings and the excessive use of
advertisements in this age, in addition to the fact
that they point unmistakably to the almost omni
potent power of the commercial classes (a power
which vouchsafes them even the privilege of self-
praise, which scarcely any other class of society
could claim without incurring the charge of bad-
taste), also show how docilely the greatest number
must ultimately respond to repeated stimuli, and
finally obey if they be told often enough to buy,
or to go to see, any particular thing. And, in this
respect, the Nietzschean attitude towards the great
est number is one of kindness and consideration.
This instinct to obey, says Nietzsche, is the most
natural thing in the world, and it must be gratified.
By all means it must be gratified. What is fatal

is not that it should be fed with commands, but
that it should be starved by the lack of comman
ders, and so be compelled to go in search of food
on its own account.
"Inasmuch as in all ages," says Nietzsche, "as
long as mankind has existed, there have always
been human herds (family alliances, communities,
tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a
great number who obey in proportion to the small
number who command — in view, therefore, of the
fact that obedience has been most practised and
fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reason
ably suppose that, generally speaking, the need
thereof is now innate in every one, as a kind of
formal conscience which gives the command :
* Thou shall unconditionally do something, uncon
ditionally refrain from something.' In short,
' Thou slialt.' This need tries to satisfy itself and
to fill its form with a content; according to its
strength, impatience and eagerness, it thereby
seizes, as an omnivorous appetite, with little
selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its
ear by all sorts of commanders — parents, teachers,
laws, class prejudices, or public opinion." 1
Everywhere, then, "he who would command finds
those who must obey " 2 — this is obvious to the
most superficial observer ; because it is easier to
obey than to command.
"Wherever I found living things," says Zara-
thustra, "there heard I also the language of
1 G.E., p. 120. * iv. P., Vol. I, p. 105.
i
obedience. All living things are things that

obey.
"And this I heard secondly: whatever cannot
obey itself, is commanded. Such is the nature of
living things.
"This, however, is the third thing I heard: to
command is more difficult than to obey. And not
only because the commander beareth the burden
of all who obey, and because this burden easily
crusheth him : —
"An effort and a risk seemed all commanding
unto me; and whenever it commandeth, the living
thing risketh itself.
"Yea, even when it commandeth himself, then
also must it atone for its commanding. Of its own
law must it become the judge and avenger and
victim." 1
For opinions are a matter of will ; they are
always, or ought to be always, travelling tickets
implying a certain definite aim and destination, and
the opinions we hold concerning Life must point
to a certain object we see in Life ;— hence there is
just as great a market for opinions, and just as
great a demand for fixed values to-day as there
ever was, and the jealous love with which men will
quote well-established views, or begin to believe
when they hear that a view is well established — a
fact which is at the root of all the fruits of modern
popularity — shows what a need and what a craving
there is for authority, for authoritative information,
and for unimpeachable coiners of opinions.
Now all the arts either determine values or lay
1 Z., II, XXXIV.
stress upon certain values already established.1

What, then, are the particular values that the
graphic arts determine or accentuate? It must be
clear that they determine what is beautiful, de
sirable, in fact, imperative, in form and colour.
The purpose of the graphic arts, then, has re
mained the same as it ever was. It is to determine
the values "ugly" and "beautiful" for those who
wish to know what is ugly and what is beautiful. ;
The fact that painters and sculptors have grown so
tremulous and so little self-reliant as to claim only
the right to imitate, to please and to amuse, does
not affect this statement in the least ; it is simply a
reflection upon modern artists and sculptors.
Since, however, these values beautiful and ugly
are themselves but the outcome of other more
fundamental values which have ruled and moulded
a race for centuries, it follows that the artist who
would accentuate or determine the qualities beauti
ful or ugly, must bear some intimate relation to the
past and possible future of the people.
Place the Hermes of Praxiteles and especially the
canon of Polycletus in any part of a cathedral of
the late Gothic, and you will see to what extent the
values which gave rise to Gothic Art were incom-
does1 7'.
all/.,
art Part 10, Aph.
do? does it not 24: "A does
praise? psychologist asks what
it not glorify? does
it not select? does it not bring into prominence? In each
of these cases it strengthens or weakens certain valua
tions. ... Is this only a contingent matter? — an accident,
something with which the instinct of the artist would not
at all be concerned? Or rather, is it not the pre-requisite
which enables the artist to do something? Is his funda
mental instinct directed towards art? — or is it not rather
directed towards the sense of art, namely, life? towards a
desirableness of life?"
patible with, and antagonistic to, those which

reared Praxiteles and Polycletus. Now, if you
want a still greater contrast, place an Egyptian
granite sculpture inside a building like le Petit
Trianon, and this intimate association between the
Art and the values of a people will begin to seem
clear to you.
You may ask, then, why or how such an art as
Ruler-art can please? Since it introduces some
thing definitely associated with a particular set of
values, and commands an assent to these values,
how is it that one likes it ?
The reply is that one does not necessarily like it.
One often hates it. One likes it only when one
feels that it reveals values which are in sympathy
with one's own aspirations. The Ruler-art of
Egypt, for instance, can stir no one who, con
sciously or unconsciously, is not in some deep
secret sympathy with the society which produced
it; and as an example of this sympathy — if you
wish to know why the realism which comes from
poverty x tends to increase and flourish in demo
cratic times, it is only because there is that absence
of particular human power in it which is compatible
with a society in which a particular human power
is completely lacking.
For it is absolute nonsense to speak of Vart pour
Vart and of the pleasure of art for art's sake as
acceptable principles.2 I will show later on how
this notion arose. Suffice it to say, for the present,
that this is the death of Art. It is separating Art
1 See p. 119.
2 W. P., Vol. I, p. 246. See also T. /., Part 10, Aph. 24,
and G. £., p. 145.
from Life, and it is relegating it to a sphere — a

Beyond — where other things, stronger than Art,
have already been known to die. The notion of
art for art's sake can only arise in an age when
the purpose of Art is no longer known, when its
relation to Life has ceased from being recognized,
and when artists have grown too weak to find the
realization of their will in their works.
4. The Artist's and the Layman's View of Life.

If the artist's view of Life can no longer affect
Life, if his ordering, simplifying and adjusting
mind can no longer make Life simpler, more
orderly and better adjusted, then all his power has
vanished, and he has ceased from counting in our
midst, save, perhaps, as a decorator of our homes
— that is to say, as an artisan; or as an entertainer
—that is to say, as a mere illustrator of our literary
men's work.
What is so important in the artist is, that dis
order and confusion are the loadstones that attract
him.1 Though, in stating this, I should ask you
to remember that he sees disorder and confusion
where, very often, the ordinary person imagines
everything to be admirably arranged. Still, the
faet remains that— he- £rrthr his greatest proof of
power only where his ordering and simplifying
mind meets with something whereon it may stamp
its two strongest features: Order and Simplicity;
and where he is strong, relative disorder is his
element, and the arrangement of this disorder is
1 IK. P., Vol. II, p. 368.
his product.1 Stimulated by disorder, which he

despises, he is driven to his work; spurred by the
sight of anarchy, his inspiration is government;
fertilized by rudeness and ruggedness, his will to
power gives birth to culture and refinement. He
gives of himself — his business is to make things
reflect him.
Thus, even his will to eternalize, and to stamp
the nature of stability on Becoming, must not be
confounded with that other desire for Being which
is a desire for rest and repose and opiates,2 and
which has found its strongest expression in the idea
of the Christian Heaven. It is, rather, a feeling of
gratitude towards Life, a desire to show thankful
ness to Life, which makes him desire to rescue one
beautiful body from the river of Becoming, and fix
its image for ever in this world,3 whereas the other
is based upon a loathing of Life and a weariness
of it.
Defining ugliness provisionally as disorder, it
may have a great attraction for the artist, it may
ifeven be the artist's sole attraction, and in convert-
j ing it— the thing he despises most — into beauty,
' which we shall define provisionally as order, he
reaches the zenith of his power.4
" Where is beauty ? " Zarathustra asks. " Where
I must will with my whole will ; where I will love
and perish, that an image may not remain merely
an image.5
"For to create desireth the loving one, because
he despiseth."6
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 241. 2 Wm P^ vol. II, p. 280.
« Z., II, XXXVII. 6 Z., I, XVIII,
NIETZSCHFS ART PRINCIPLES 119
It follows from this, therefore, that the realistic

artist— the purveyor of Police Art— who goes direct
to beauty or ugliness and, after having worked
upon either, leaves it just as it was before,1 shows
no proof of power at all, and ranks with the bush-
men of Australia and the troglodytes of La Dor-
dogne, as very much below the hierophantic artist
who transforms and transfigures. All realists,
therefore, from Apelles 2 in the fourth century B.C.
to the modern impressionists, portrait painters and
landscapists, must step down. Like the scientists,
they merely ascertain facts, and, in so doing, leave
things precisely as they are.3 Photography is
rapidly outstripping them, and will outstrip them
altogether once it has mastered the problem of
colour. Photography could never have vied with
the artist of Egypt, or even of China and Japan ;
because in the arts of each of these nations there is
an element of human power over Nature or reality,
which no mechanical process can emulate.
Now, what is important in the ideal and purely
hypothetical layman is, that he has a horror of
disorder, of confusion, and of chaos, and flees from
it whenever possible. He finds no solace any
where, except where the artist has been and left
1 T. /., Part 10, Aph. 7: "Nature, estimated artistically,
is no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps.
Nature is accident. Studying ' according to nature ' seems
to me a bad sign; it betrays subjection, weakness, fatalism;
this lying-in-the-dust before petit fails is unworthy of a
complete artist. Seeing what is — that belongs to another
species of intellects, to the anti-artistic, to the practical."
8 See Woltmann and Wocrmann, History of Painting,
Vol. I, p. 62.
3 B. T,, p. 50. See also Schopenhauer, Paver ga und
Paralipomcna, Vol. II, p. 447.
things transformed and richer for him. Bewil

dered by reality, he extends his hands for that
which the artist has made of reality. He is a
receiver. He reaches his zenith in apprehending.1
His attitude is that of a woman, as compared with
the attitude of the artist which is that of the man.
"Logical and geometrical simplification is the
result of an increase of power : conversely, the mere
aspect of such simplification increases the sense of
power in the beholder." 2 To see what is ugliness
to him, represented as what is beauty to him, also
impresses the spectator with the feeling of power ;
of an obstacle overcoffie"ancT Thereby stimulates
his activities. Moreover, the spectator may feel
a certain gratitude to Life and Mankind. It often
happens, even in our days, that another world is
pictured as by no means a better world,3 and the
healthy and optimistic layman may feel a certain
thankfulness to Life and to Humanity. It is then
once more that he turns to the artist who has felt
the same in a greater degree, who can give him
this thing — be it a corner of Life or of Humanity
—who can snatch it from the eternal flux and tor
rent of all things into decay or into death, and who
can carve or paint it in a form unchanging for him,
in spite of a world of Becoming, of Evolution, and
of ebb and flow. Just as the musician cries Time !
Time ! Time ! to the cacophonous medley of
natural sounds that pour into his ears from all
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 255. 2 IF. P., Vol. II, p. 241.
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 95: "A people that are proud of
themselves, and who are on the ascending path of Life,
always picture another existence as lower and less valuable
than theirs,"
S sides, and assembles them rhythmically for our
ears hostile to disorder ; so the graphic artist cries
Time ! Time ! Time ! to the incessant and kaleido
scopic procession of things from birth to death,
and places in the layman's arms the eternalized
image of that portion of Life for which he happens
to feel great gratitude.
5. The Confusion of the Two Points of View.

It is obvious that if both pleasures are to remain
pure and undefiled — if the artist is to attain to his
zenith in happiness, and the layman to his also —
their particular points of view must not be merged,
dulled, or blunted by excessive spiritual inter
course.1 For a very large amount of the disorder
in the arts of the present can easily be traced to a
confusion of the two points of view.
In an ideal society, the artist's standpoint would
be esoteric, and the layman's exoteric.
Nowadays, of course, owing to the process of
universal levelling which has been carried so far
that it is invading even the department of sex, it
is hard to find such distinctions as the artist's and
the layman's standpoint in art sharply and defi
nitely juxtaposed. And this fact accounts for a
good deal of the decrease in aesthetic pleasure,
which is so characteristic of the age. In fact, it
accounts for the decrease of pleasure in general,
for only where there are sharp differences can there
be any great pleasure. Pessimism and melancholia
can arise only in inartistic ages, when a process of
1 W. P., Vol. II, pp. 255, 256.
levelling has merged all the joys of particular

standpoints into one.
Let me give you a simple example, drawn from
modern life and the pictorial arts, in order to show
you to what extent the standpoint of the people or
of the layman has become corrupted by the stand
point of the artist, and vice-versa.
Strictly speaking, artists in search of scope for
their powers should prefer Hampstead Heath or
the Forest of Fontainebleau l to the carefully laid-
out gardens of our parks and of Versailles. Con
versely, if their taste were still uncorrupted, the
public ought to prefer the carefully arranged gar
dens of our parks and of Versailles, to Hampstead
Heath or the Forest of Fontainebleau.
Some of the public, of course, still do hold the
proper views on these points, but their number is
rapidly diminishing, and most of them assume the
airs of artists now, and speak with sentimental
enthusiasm about the beautiful ruggedness of
craggy rocks, the glorious beauty of uncultivated
Nature, and the splendour of wild scenery.2
1 In regard to this point it is interesting to note that
Kant, in his Kritik der Urteilskraft, actually called land
scape-painting a process of gardening.
2 I do not mean to imply here that all the sentimental
gushing that is given vent to nowadays over rugged and
wild scenery is the outcome only of a confusion of the
artist's and layman's standpoints. The influence of the
Christian and Protestant worship of pointless freedom,
together with that of their contempt of the work of man,
is largely active here; and the sight of unhandseled and
wild shrubs, and of tangled and matted grasses, cheers the
heart of the fanatical believer in the purposeless freedom
and anarchy which Christianity and Protestantism have
done so much to honour and extol. That the same man
who honours government and an aristocratic ideal may
THE MARRIAGE OK MARY.
BY RAPHAEL.
(Brera, Milan.)
NIETZSCHKS ART PRINCIPLES 123
Artists, on the other hand, having become in

fected by the public's original standpoint — like the
desire for order — either paint pictures
Raphael's "Marriage of Mary,"1 his "Virgin and
Child attended by St. John the Baptist and St.
Nicholas of Ban," 2 and Perugino's "Vision of St.
Bernard,"3 in which the perfectly symmetrical aspect
and position of the architecture is both annoying
and inartistic, owing to the fact that it was looked
at by the artist from a point at which it was orderly
and arranged before he actually painted it, and
could not therefore testify to his power of simplify
ing or ordering — but simply to his ability to avail
himself of another artist's power, namely, the
architect's; or else, having become infected by the
public's corrupt standpoint — the desire for disorder
and chaos as an end in itself — they paint as Ruys-
dael, Hobbema and Constable painted — that is to
say, without imparting anything of themselves, or
of their power to order and simplify, to the content
of the picture, lest the desire for disorder or chaos
should be thwarted.4
This is an exceedingly important point, and its
often be found to-day dilating upon the charms of chaotic
scenery, only shows how muddle-headed and confused man
kind has become.
1 The Brera at Milan.
3 The National Gallery, London. Raphael was very
much infected with the people's point of view, hence the
annoying stiltedness of many of his pictures.
3 Pinakothek, Munich.
4 See particularly, Ruysdael's "Rocky Landscape,"
"Landscape with a Farm "'(Wallace collection); Hobbema 's
"Outskirts of a Wood" and many others in the W.'tll.uc
collection; and Constable's " Flatford Mill" and "The Hay-
wain " (National Gallery).
NIETZSCHE AND ART
value for art criticism cannot be overrated. If one
can trust one's taste, and it is still a purely public
taste, it is possible to tell at a glance \vhy one
cannot get oneself to like certain pictures in which
either ijrndaj_j:eg4±la»ty has been too great, thus
leaving no scope for the artist's power, or in which
final irregularity is too great, thus betraying no
evidence of the artist's power.
Looking at Rubens' "Ceres,"1 in which the
architecture is viewed also in a frontal position, you
may be tempted to ask why such a picture is not
displeasing, despite the original symmetry of the
architecture in the position in which the painter
chose to paint it. The reply is simple. Here
Rubens certainly placed the architecture full-face ;
but besides dissimulating the greater part of it in
shadow — which in itself produces unsymmetrical
shapes that have subsequently to be arranged by
tone composition — he carefully disordered it by
means of garlands and festoons, and only then did
he exercise his artistic mind in making a harmoni
ous and orderly pictorial arrangement of it, which
also included some cupids skilfully placed.
All realism, or Police Art, therefore, in addition
to being the outcome of the will to truth which
Christianity and its offshoot Modern Science have
infused into the arts, may also be the result of the
artist's becoming infected either with the public's
pure taste, or with the public's corrupted or artist-
infected taste, and we are thus in possession of one
more clue as to what constitutes a superior work
of graphic art.
1 Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg.
NIETZSCHFS ART PRINCIPLES 125
6. The Meaning of Beauty of Form and of Beauty

of Content in Art.
So far, then, I have arrived at this notion of
beauty in Ruler-Art, namely : that it may be re
garded almost universally as that order, simplicity
and transfiguration which the artist mind imparts
to the content of his production. This notion
seems to allow of almost universal application,
because, as I showed in the first part of this lecture,
it involves one of the primary instincts of man—
the overcoming of chaos and anarchy by adjust
ment, simplification and transfiguration. It is only
in democratic ages, or ages of decline, when in
stincts become disintegrated, that beauty in Art is
synonymous with a lack of simplicity, of order and
of transfiguration. I have shown, however, that
the second kind of beauty, or democratic beauty,
is of an inferior kind to that of the first beauty, or
Ruler beauty, because, while the former takes its
root in the will to live, the latter arises surely and
truly out of the will to power.1 Either beauty,
however, constitutes ugliness in its opponent's
opinion.
But there is another aspect of Beauty in Art
which has to be considered, and that is the intrinsic
beauty of the content of an artistic production.
You may say that, ex hypothesi, I have denied
that there could be any such beauty. Not at all !
1 If this book be read in conjunction with my monograph
on Nietzsche: his Life and Works (Constable), or my Who
is to be Master of the World? (Foulis>), there ought to be
no difficulty in understanding this point.
Since the ruler-artist transfigures by enhance

ment, by embellishment and by ennoblement, his
mind can be stimulated perfectly well by an object
or a human being which to the layman is vertigin
ously beautiful, and which to himself is exceed
ingly pleasing. In fact, if his mind is a mind
which, like that of most master-artists, adores that
which is difficult, it will go in search of the greatest
natural beauty it can find, in order, by a stupend
ous effort in transfiguration, to outstrip even that;
for the embellishment of the downright ugly and
the downright revolting presents a task too easy
to the powerful artist — a fact which explains a
good deal of the ugly contents of many a modern
picture.
What, then, constitutes the beauty of the content
in an artistic production, as distinct from the beauty
of the treatment ? In other words, what is beauty
in a subject?
For the notion that the subject does not matter
in a picture is one which should be utterly and
severely condemned. It arose at a time when art
was diseased, when artists themselves had ceased
from having anything of importance to say, when
the subjects chosen had no meaning, and when
technique was bad. And it must be regarded more
in the light of a war-cry coming from a counter-
movement, aiming at an improved technique and
rebelling against an abuse of literature in the
graphic arts, than in the light of sound doctrine,
taking its foundation in normal and healthy con
ditions.
The intrinsic beauty of the content or substance
of a picture or sculpture may therefore be the sub

ject of legitimate inquiry, and in determining what
it consists of, we raise the whole question of content
beauty.
Volumes, stacks of volumes, have been written
on this question. The most complicated and in
comprehensible answers have been given to it, and
not one can be called satisfactory ; for all of them
would be absolute.
When, however, we find a modern writer defin
ing the beautiful as "that which has characteristic
or individual expressiveness for sense perception
or imagination, subject to the conditions of general
or abstract expressiveness in the same medium,"
we feel, or at least / feel, that something must be
wrong. It is definitions such as these \vhich com
pel one to seek for something more definite and
more lucid in the matter of explanation, and if,
in finding the latter, one may seem a little too
prosaic and terre-a-terre, it is only because the
transcendental and metaphysical nature of the kind
of definition we have just quoted makes anything
which is in the slightest degree clearer, appear
earthly and material beside it.
It is obvious that, if we could only arrive at a
subject-beauty which was absolute, practically all
the difficulties of our task would vanish. For hav
ing established the fact that the purpose of the
graphic arts is to determine the values beautiful and
ugly, it would only remain for us to urge all artists
to advocate that absolute subject-beauty with all the
eloquence of line and colour that our concept of
1 13. Bosanquet, A History of Êsthetic, p. 4.
Art-form would allow, and all the problems of Art

would be solved.
But we can postulate no such absolute in subject-
beauty. "Absolute beauty exists just as little as
absolute goodness and truth." l The term "beauti
ful," like the term "good," is only a means to an
end. It is simply the arbitrary self-affirmation of
a certain type of man in his struggle to prevail.2
He says "Yea" to his type, and calls it beautiful.
He cannot extend his power and overcome other
types unless with complete confidence and assur
ance he says "Yea " to his own type.
You and I, therefore, can speak of the beautiful
with an understanding of what that term means,
only on condition that our values, our traditions,
our desires, and our outlook are exactly the same.
If you agree with me on the question of what is
good, our agreement simply means this, that in
that corner of the world from which you and I hail,
the same creator of values prevails over both of
us. Likewise, if you and I agree on the question
of what is beautiful, this fact merely denotes that
as individuals coming from the same people, we
have our values, our tradition and our outlook in
common.
"Beautiful," then, is a purely relative term which
may be applied to a host of dissimilar types and
which every people must apply to its own type
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 246. See also T. /., Part 10, Aph. 19 :
"The ' beautiful in itself ' is merely an expression, not even
a concept."
2 T. /., Part 10, Aph. 19: "In the beautiful, man posits
himself as the standard of perfection ; in select cases he
worships himself in that standard. A species cannot pos
sibly do otherwise than thus say yea to itself."
alone, if it wishes to preserve its power. Biologic
ally, absolute beauty exists only within the confines
of a particular race. That race which would begin
to consider another type than their own as beauti
ful, would thereby cease from being a race. We
may be kind, amiable, and even hospitable to the
Chinaman or the Negro; but the moment we begin
to share the Chinaman's or the Negro's view of
beauty, we run the risk of cutting ourselves adrift
from our own people.
But assuming, as we must, that all people, the
Chinese, the Negroes, the Hindus, the Red Indians,
and the Arabs between themselves apply the word
beautiful only to particular individuals among their
own people, in order to distinguish them from less
beautiful or mediocre individuals — what meaning
has the term in that case ?
Obviously, since the spirit of the people, its
habits, prejudices and prepossessions are deter
mined by their values, and values may fix a type,
that creature will be most beautiful among them
who is the highest embodiment and outcome of all
their values, and who therefore corresponds most
to the ideal their aesthetic legislator had in mind
when he created their values.1 Thus even morality
can be justified aesthetically.2 And in legislating
for primeval peoples, higher men and artist-legis-
* W. P., Vol. II, p. 361 : "Legislative moralities are the
principal means by which one can form mankind, according
to the fancy of a creative and profound will : provided, of
course, that such an artistic will of the first order gets the
power into its own hands, and can make its creative will
prevail over long periods in the form of legislation, religions,
and morals." See p. 79 in the first part of this lecture.
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 185.
K
lators certainly worked like sculptors on a yielding

medium which was their own kind.
The most beautiful negro or Chinaman thus
becomes that individual negro or Chinaman who
is rich in those features which the life-spirit of the
Ethiopian or Chinese people is calculated to pro
duce, and who, owing to a long and regular
observance of the laws and traditions of his people,
by his ancestors for generations, has inherited that
regularity of form in his type, which all long
observance of law and order is bound to cultivate
and to produce.1 And in reviewing the peoples of
Europe alone, we can ascribe the many and different
views which they have held and still hold of beauty,
only to a difference in the values they have ob
served for generations in their outlook, their desires
and their beliefs.
It is quite certain, therefore, that, in the graphic
arts, which either determine or accentuate the
values "ugly" and "beautiful," every artist who
sets up his notion of what is subject-beauty, like
every lover about to marry, either assails or con
firms and consolidates the values of his people.2
Examples of this, if they were needed, are to be
found everywhere. See how the Gothic school of
painting, together with men like Era Angelico,
Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, El Greco, and subse-
1 G. E., p. 107: "The essential thing 'in heaven and
earth ' is, apparently, that there should be long obedience
in the same direction ; there thereby results, and has always
resulted in the long run, something which has made life
worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing,
reason, spirituality — anything whatever that is transfiguring,
refined, foolish, or divine."
a T. I., Part 10, Aph. 24.
quently Burne-Jones, set up the soulful person, the
person of tenuous, nervous and heaven-aspiring
slenderness, as the type of beauty, thus advocating
and establishing Christian values in a very seduc
tive and often artistic manner; while the Pagans,
with Michelangelo, Titian, and even Rubens, repre
sented another code of values — perhaps even several
other codes — and sought to fix their type also.
Note, too, how hopeless are the attempts of
artists who stand for the Pagan ideal, when they
paint Christian saints and martyrs, and how sin
gularly un-Pagan those figures are which appear
in the pictures of the advocates of the Christian
ideal when they attempt Pagan types. Christ by
Rubens is not the emaciated, tenuous Person suffer
ing from a wasting disease that Segna represents
him to be; while the Mars and Venus of Botticelli
in the National Gallery would have been repudiated
with indignation by any Greek of antiquity.
When values are beginning to get mixed, then,
owing to an influx of foreigners from all parts of
the world, we shall find the strong biological idea
of absolute beauty tending to disappear, and in its
place we shall find the weak and wholly philo
sophical belief arising that beauty is relative.
Thus, in Attica of the fifth century B.C., when
300,000 slaves, chiefly foreigners, were to be
counted among the inhabitants, the idea that beauty
was a relative term first occurred to the "talker"
Socrates.
Still, in all concepts of beauty, however widely
separated and however diametrically opposed, there
is this common factor : that the beautiful person
K 2
is the outcome of a long observance through genera

tions of the values peculiar to a people. A certain
regularity of form and feature, whether this form
and feature be Arab, Ethiopian or Jewish, is in
dicative of a certain regular mode of life which has
lasted for generations; and in calling this indication
beautiful, a people once more affirms itself and its
values. If the creature manifesting this regularity
be a Chinaman, he will be the most essential China
man that the Chinese values can produce ; his face
will reveal no fighting and discordant values ; there
will be no violent contrasts of type in his features,
and, relative to Chinese values, his face will be the
most regular and harmonious that can be seen, and
therefore the most beautiful.1 The Chinese ruler-
artist, in representing a mediocre Chinaman, would
therefore exercise his transfiguring powers to over
come any discordant features in the face before him,
and would thus produce a beautiful type.2 Or, if
1 T. /., Part 10, Aph. 47 : "Even the beauty of a race or
family, the pleasantness and kindness of their whole
demeanour, is acquired by effort; like genius, it is the final
result of the accumulated labour of generations. There must
have been great sacrifices made to good taste; for the sake
of it, much must have been done, and much refrained from
— the seventeenth century in France is worthy of admiration
in both ways ; good taste must then have been a principle
of selection, for society, place, dress, and sexual gratification,
beauty must have been preferred to advantage, habit,
opinion, indolence. Supreme rule : — we must not ' let our
selves go,' even when only in our own presence. — Good
things are costly beyond measure, and the rule always holds,
that he who possesses them is other than he who acquires
them. All excellence is inheritance ; what has not been
inherited is imperfect, it is a beginning."
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 245: '" Beauty,' therefore, is, to the
artist, something which is above order of rank, because in
beauty contrasts are overcome, the highest sign of power
his model happened to be the highest product of

Chinese values, his object would be to transcend
even that, and to point to something higher.
Once again, therefore, though it is impossible to
posit a universal concept of subject-beauty, various
concepts may be given an order of rank, subject
to the values with which they happen to be
associated.
7. The Meaning of Ugliness of Form and of

Ugliness of Content in Art.
Ugliness in Art, therefore, is Art's contradic

tion.1 It is the absence of Art. It is a sign that
the simplifying, ordering and transfiguring power
of the artist has not been successful, and that chaos,
disorder and complexity have not been overcome.
Ugliness of form in Art, therefore, will tend to
become prevalent in democratic times; because it is
precisely at such times that a general truth for all
is believed in, and, since reality is the only truth
which can be made common to all, democratic art
is invariably realistic, and therefore, according to
my definition of the beautiful in form, ugly.
In this matter, I do not ask you to take my views
on trust. A person who will seem to you very
much more authoritative than myself — a man who
once had the honour of influencing Whistler, and
who, by the bye, is also famous for having flung
thus manifesting itself in the conquest of opposites; and
achieved without a feeling of tension." See also Hegel,
Vorlesungen iibcr /Estlietik, Vol. I, pp. 130, 144.
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 252.
down the Colonne Vendome in Paris — once ex
pressed himself quite categorically on this matter.
At the Congress of Antwerp in 1861, after he
had criticized other artists and other concepts of
art, this man concluded his speech as follows : "By
denying the ideal and all that it involves, I attain
to the complete emancipation of the individual, and
finally to democracy. Realism is essentially demo
cratic." l
As you all must know, this man was Gustave
Courbet, of whom Muther said that he had a
predilection for the ugly.2
Artists infected with the pure or the corrupt lay
man's view of Art, as described in the previous
section, and artists obsessed by the Christian or
scientific notion of truth, will consequently produce
ugly work. They will be realists, or Police-artists,
and consequently ugly.
But how can content- or subject-ugliness be
understood? Content- or subject-ugliness is the
decadence of a type.3 It is the sign that certain
features, belonging to other peoples (hitherto
1 A. Estignard, Gustave Courbet (Paris, 1896), p. 118.
2 Geschichte dcr Malerei, Vol. Ill, p. 204.
8 W.P., Vol. II, pp. 241, 242, 245. See also T. /.,
Part 10, Aph. 20: "The ugly is understood as a sign and
symptom of degeneration; that which reminds us in the
remotest manner of degeneracy prompts us to pronounce the
verdict 'ugly.' Every indication of exhaustion, gravity,
age or lassitude ; every kind of constraint, such as cramp or
paralysis ; and above all the odour, the colour, and the like
ness of decomposition or putrefaction, be it utterly attenu
ated even to a symbol :— all these things call forth a similar
reaction,
whom does the man
evaluation 'ugly.'
hate there A hatred
? There can beis no
there excited:
doubt : the
decline of his type."
called ugly according to the absolute biological

standard of beauty of a race), are beginning to be
introduced into their type. Or it may mean that
the subject to be represented does not reveal that
harmony and lack of contrasts which the values of
a people are capable of producing. In each case it
provokes hatred, and this "hatred is inspired by
the most profound instinct of the species; there is
horror, foresight, profundity, and far-reaching
vision in it— it is the profoundest of all hatreds.
On account of it art is profound.' ' l
The hatred amounts to a condemnation of
usurping values, or of discordant values; in fact,
to a condemnation of dissolution and anarchy,
and the judgment "ugly" is of the most serious
import.
Thus, although few of us can agree to-day as to
what constitutes a beautiful man or woman, there
is still a general idea common to us all, that a
certain regularity of features constitutes beauty,
and that, with this beauty, a certain reliable, har
monious, and calculable nature will be present.
Spencer said the wisest thing in all his philosophy
when he declared that "the saying that beauty is
but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying." :
For beauty in any human creature, being the
result of a long and severe observance by his
ancestors of a particular set of values, always
denotes some definite attitude towards Life; it
always lures to some particular kind of life and
joy — as Stendhal said, "Beauty is a promise of
1 T. /., Part 10, Aph. 20.
2 Essays, Vol. II (1901 Edition), p. 394.
happiness " — and as such it seduces to Life and to

this earth.
This explains why beauty is regarded with sus
picion by negative religions, and why it tends to
decline in places where the sway of a negative
religion is powerful. Because a negative religion
cannot tolerate that which lures to life, to the body,
to joy and to voluptuous ecstasy.
It is upon their notion of spiritual beauty, upon
passive virtues, that the negative religions lay such
stress, and thus they allow the ugly to find pedestals
in their sanctuaries more easily than the beautiful.
8. The Ruler-Artist's Style and Subject.

Up to the present, you have doubtless observed
that I have spoken only of man as the proper
subject-matter of the graphic Arts. In maintain
ing this, Nietzsche not only has Goethe and many
lesser men on his side, but he has also the history
of Art in general. I cannot, however, show you
yet how, or in what manner, animal-painting,
landscape-painting, and, in some respects, portrait-
painting are to be placed lower than the art which
concerns itself with man. Let it therefore suffice,
for the present, simply to recognize the fact that
Nietzsche did take up this attitude, and leave the
more exhaustive discussion of it to the next part of
this lecture.
Now, eliminating for a moment all those pseudo-
artists who have been reared by the two strongest
public demands on the Art of the present age — I
speak of portrait-painting and dining-room pictures
—there remains a class of artists which still shows

h
signs of raising its head here and there, thoug
ency, and this is the class
every year with less frequ
which,. for want of a better term, we call Ruler-
artists
As I say, they are becoming extremely rare;
is
their rarity, which may be easily accounted for,1
one of the evil omens of the time.
The ruler-artist is he who, elated by his own
health and love of Life, says "Yea" to his own
it,
type and proclaims his faith or confidence in
against all other types; and who, in so doing,
determines or accentuates the values of that type.
If he prevails in concepts in so doing, he also
ennobles and embellishes the type he is advocating.
He is either the maker or the highest product of
an aspiring and an ascending people. In him their
highest values find their most splendid bloom. In
him their highest values find their strongest spokes
man. And in his work they find the symbol of
their loftiest hopes.
By the beauty which his soul reflects upon the
selected men he represents in his works, he estab
lishes an order of rank among his people, and puts
each in his place.
The spectator who is very much beneath the
beauty of the ruler-artist's masterpieces feels his
ignominious position at a glance. He realizes the
impassable gulf that is for ever fixed between him-
self and that! And this sudden revelation tells
him his level. Such a man, after he has contem
plated the ruler-artist's work, may rush headlong
* G. £., p. 120.
to the nearest river and drown himself. His despair

may be so great when he realizes the impossibility
of ever reaching the heights he has been contem
plating, that he may immolate himself on the spot.
Only thus can the world be purged of the many-
too-many.
"Unto many life is a failure," says Zarathustra,
"a poisonous worm eating through into their heart.
These ought to see to it that they succeed better in
dying.
"Many-too-many live. . . . Would that preachers
of swift death might arise ! They would be the
proper storms to shake the trees of life." x
In the presence of beauty, alone, can one know
one's true rank, and this explains why the Japanese
declare that "until a man has made himself beauti
ful he has no right to approach beauty," 2 for "great
art is that before which we long to die." 3
But, to those who see but the smallest chance of
approaching it, beauty is an exhortation, a stimu
lus, a bugle-call. It may drive them to means for
pruning themselves of ugliness; it may urge them
to inner harmony, to a suppression of intestinal
discord.
"Beauty alone should preach penitence,"4 says
Zarathustra. And in this sentence you have the
only utilitarian view of beauty that has any aristo
cratic value, besides that which maintains that
beauty lures to Life, and to the body.
Hence, beauty need not impel all men to the
river. There are some who, after contemplating
1 Z., I, XXI. 2 The Book of Tea, p. 152.
3 Ibid., p. 199. 4 2., I, XXVI.
it, will feel just near enough to it not to despair
altogether of attaining to its level, and this thought
will lend them both hope and courage.
The ruler-artist, therefore, in order that his sub
ject-beauty may have some meaning, must be the
synthesis of the past and the future of a people.
Up to his waist in their spirit, he must mould or
paint them the apotheosis of their type. Only thus
can he hope to prevail with his subject — Man.
The German philosopher, Karl Heinrich Hey-
denreich, was one of the first to recognize this
power of the ruler-artist, and the necessity of his
being intimately associated with a particular people,
although above them ; and in his little book, System
der /Esthctiky he makes some very illuminating
remarks on this matter.1
Thus Benedetto Croce rightly argues that in
order to appreciate the artistic works of bygone and
extinct nations, it is nectessary to have a knowledge
and understanding of their life and history — in
other words, of their values.2 What he does not
1 System der /Esthetik (1790), pp. 9, 10, u, where, in
replying to the question why the arts were not only pursued
with more perfection by the ancients, but also judged with
more competence by them, he says: "Their material was
drawn from the heart of their nation, and from the life of
their citizens, and the manner of representing it and of
framing it was in keeping with the character and needs of
the people. . . . If the Greek lent his ear to the poet, or his
eye to the painter and sculptor, of his age, he was shown
subjects which were familiar to his soul, intimately related
to his imagination, and, as it were, bound by blood-relation
ship to his heart." On pp. 12, 13, he also shows that if Art
is less thrilling nowadays, it is because peoples are too
mixed, and a single purpose no longer characterizes their
striving.
a Esthetic (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p. 210 et seq.
point out, however, and what seems very important,

is, that such historical research would be quite
unnecessary to one who by nature was a priori in
sympathy with the values of an extinct nation ; and
also, that all the historical knowledge available
could not make any one whose character was not a
little Periclean or Egyptian from the start, admire,
or even appreciate, either the Parthenon, or the
brilliant diorite statue of King Khephren in the
Cairo Museum.
All great ruler-art, then, is, as it were, a song
of praise, a magnificat, appealing only to those,
and pleasing only those, who feel in sympathy
with the values which it advocates. And that is
why all art of any importance, and of any worth*.
must be based upon a certain group of values — in
other words, must have a philosophy or a particular
view of the world as its foundation. Otherwise it
is pointless, meaningless, and divorced from life.
Otherwise it is acting, sentimental nonsense, or
I'art pour I'art.
All great ruler-art also takes Man as its content ;
because human values are the only values that con
cern it. All great ruler-art also takes beauty
within a certain people as its aim ; because the
will-to-power is its driving instinct, and beauty,
being the most difficult thing to achieve, is the
strongest test of power. Finally, all great ruler-
art is optimistic; because it implies the will of the
artist to prevail.
But what constitutes the form of the ruler-
artist's ?work ? In what way must he give us his
content
The ruler-artist's form is the form of the com

mander. It must scorn to please.1 It must brook
no disobedience and no insubordination, save
among those of its beholders about whom it does
not care, from whom it would fain separate itself,
and among whom it is not with its peers. It must
be authoritative, extremely simple, irrefutable, full
of restraint, and as repetitive as a Mohammedan
prayer. It must point to essentials, it must select
essentials, and it must transfigure essentials. The
presence of non-essentials in a work of art is
sufficient to put it at once upon a very low plane.
For what matters above all is that the ruler-artist
should prevail in concepts, and in order to do this
his work must contain the definite statement of the
value he sets upon all that he most cherishes.
Hence the belief all through the history of
aesthetic that high art is a certain unity in variety,
a certain single idea exhaled from a more or less
complex whole, or, as the Japanese say, "repetition
with a modicum of variation." 2
not1 W.
to P.,
be Vol. II, p. by277:the "The
measured greatness
beautiful of anwhich
feelings artist heis
evokes: let this belief 'be left to the girls. It should be

|measured according to the extent to which he approaches
the grand style, according to the extent to which he is
capable of the grand style. This style and great passion
have this in common — that they scorn to please; that they
forget to persuade ; that they command ; that they will. . . ."
See also p. 241.
2 This was first brought to my notice by my friend,
Dr. Wrench. Sec The Grammar of Life, by G. T. Wrench
(Heinemann, 1908), p. 218. Although the development of
this idea really belongs to a special treatise on the laws of
Style in painting, it is interesting to note here that this
excellent principle is quickly grasped if the powerfully
alliterative phrases: "Where there's a will there's a way,"
n 142 NIETZSCHE AND ART
Symmetry, as denoting balance, and as a help

to obtaining a complete grasp of an idea; Sobriety,
as revealing that restraint which a position of com
mand presupposes; Simplicity, as proving the
power of the great mind that has overcome the
chaos in itself,1 to reflect its order and harmony
upon other things,2 and to select the most essential
features from among a host of more or less essential
features; Transfiguration, as betraying that Dio-
nysian elation and elevation from which the artist
gives of himself to reality and makes it reflect his
own glory back upon him; Repetition, as a means
of obtaining obedience ; and Variety, as the indis
pensable condition of all living Art — all Art which
is hortatory and which does not aim at repose alone,
at sleep, and at soothing and lulling jaded and
exasperated nerves, — these are the principal qualities
of ruler-art, and any work which would be defi
cient in one of these qualities would thereby be
utterly and deservedly condemned to take its place
on a lower plane.
Perhaps the greatest test of all, however, in
or "Goodness gracious! " or "To-morrow, to-morrow, and
not to-day," be spoken before certain pictures, or written
beneath them. The first phrase, for instance, written
beneath the " Aldobrindini Marriage," or Botticelli's " Birth
of Venus," is seen immediately to be next of kin to these
pictures as an art-form; and the same holds good of the
second written beneath Reynolds 's "John Dunning (First
Lord Ashburton) and his Sister," or Manet's "Olympia."
1 W. P., Vol. II, p. 277.
a W. P., Vol. II. p. 288. "The most convincing artists
are those who make harmony ring out of every discord,
and who benefit all things by the gift of their power and
their inner harmony : in every work of art they merely
reveal the symbol of their inmost experiences — their creation
is gratitude for their life." See also p. 307.
regard to the worth of an artistic production is to
inquire whence it came, what was its source. Has
hunger or superabundance created it?1
If the first, the work will make nobody richer.
It will rather rob them of what they have. It is
likely to be either (A) true to Nature, (B) uglier
than Nature, or (C) absurdly unnatural. A is the
product of the ordinary man, B is the product of
the man below mediocrity, save in a certain manual
dexterity, and C is the outcome of the tyrannical
will of the sufferer,2 who wishes to wreak his
revenge on all that thrives, and is beautiful and
happy, and which bids him weave fantastic worlds
of his own, away from this one, where people of
his calibre can forget their wretched ailments and
evil humours, and wallow in their own feverish
nightmares of overstrained, palpitating and neuro-
yeaiaiagsj A is poverty-realism or Police
Art. B is pessimism and incompetent Art. C is
Romanticism.
Where superabundance is active, the work is the
gift and the blessing of the will to power of some
higher man. It will seem as much above Nature
to mediocre people as its creator is above them.
But, since it will brook no contradiction, it will
actually value Nature afresh, and stimulate them
to share in this new valuation.
Where poverty is active, the work is an act of
robbery. It is what psychologists call a reflex
1 W.P.,
values I nowVol.availII, myself
p. 280: "In regard to all aesthetic
of this fundamental distinction :
in every individual case I ask myself has hunger or has
superabundance boen creative here?'"
2 W. P., Vol. II, p. 281.
action resulting from a stimulus — the only kind of

action that we understand nowadays : hence our
belief in Determinism, Darwinism, and such ex
planations of Art as we find in books by Taine and
other writers who share his views.
The Art which must have experience and which
is not the outcome of inner riches brought to the
surface by meditation — this is the art of poverty.
The general modern belief in experience and in
the necessity of furnishing the mind by going
direct to Nature and to reality shows to what extent
the Art of to-day has become reactive instead of
active.
The greater part of modern realism is the out
come of this poverty. It is reactive art, resulting
from reflex actions ; and, as such, is an exceedingly
unhealthy sign. Not only does it show that the
power of resisting stimuli is waning or altogether
absent; but it also denotes that that inner power
which requires no stimulus to discharge itself is
either lacking or exceedingly weak.
With these words upon the subject of realism, I
shall now conclude this part of Lecture II.
I shall return to realism in my next lecture ; but
you will see that it will be of a different kind from
that of which I have just spoken. It will be
superior, and will be the outcome of riches rather
than of poverty. Although beneath genuine
Ruler-art, which transfigures reality, it will never
theless be superior to the poverty-realism which I
have just discussed; for it will be of a kind which
is forced upon the powerful artist who, in the midst
of a world upholding other values than his own,
is obliged to bring forward his ideal with such a
preponderance of characteristic features as wrould
seem almost to represent a transcript of reality.
This realism I call militant realism, to distinguish
it from the former kind.
In discussing mediaeval, Renaissance and Greek
Art, in my next lecture, this distinction will, I
hope, be made quite plain to you.
PART III
LANDSCAPE AND PORTRAIT PAINTING
41 He cause th the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb

for the service of man : that he may bring forth fruit out
of the earth." — Psalms civ. 14.
i . The Value " Ugly " in the Mouth of the

Creator.
IN the last section of this lecture, I told you of
three kinds of ugliness. I said there was the ugli
ness of chaos and disorder, which provokes the
hate of the layman, and which the artist over
comes. I spoke of the ugliness of form in Art,
which appeared when the artist had failed in his
endeavour to master disorder, or when he had
selected a subject already ordered, in which he has
left himself no scope for manifesting his power;
and I also pointed to that ugliness of subject in
Art, in which the ordinary beholder, as well as the
artist, recognizes the degeneration of his type or a
low example of it.
There is, however, a fourth aspect of ugliness,
and that is the esoteric postulation of the value
"ugly " by the creator. I have shown how creating
also involves giving, and therefore loss — just as
146
LANDSCAPE AND PORTRAIT PAINTING 147
procreation does; but what is the precise meaning

of the word "ugly " in the mouth of the Dionysian
artist?
We must remember that his eyes are not our
eyes, and that his mind is not our mind. He can
not look at Life without enriching her. But what
is his attitude to the transfigurations of former
artists ?
Before these the Dionysian artist can feel only
loathing, and, in a paroxysm of hatred, he raises
his axe and shatters the past into fragments. All
around him, a moment before, people said: "The
world is beautiful ! " But he, thoroughly alone,
groans at its unspeakable ugliness.
He rejoices as he sees the fragments fly beneath
his mighty weapon, and the greater the beauty of
the thing he destroys, the higher is his exulta
tion. For, to him, "the joy in the destruction of
the most noble thing and at the sight of its
gradual undoing," is "the joy over what is
coming and what lies in the future," and this
"triumphs over actual things, however good they
may be." 1
What he calls "ugly," then, has nothing what
soever in common with any other concept of ugli
ness; it is simply the outcome of his creative spirit
"which compels him to regard what has existed
hitherto as no longer acceptable, but as botched,
worthy of being suppressed — ugly ! " 2 And thus
it is peculiar to him alone.
I have shown you that Nietzsche explains
1 IV. P., Vol I, p. 333. See also B. T., pp. 27, 28.
a W. P., Vol. I, p. 333.
L 2
pleasure, aesthetically, as the appropriation of the

world by man's Will to Power. Pain, or evil,
now obtains its aesthetic justification. It is the
outcome of the destruction that the creator spreads
in a world of Becoming; it is the periodical smash
ing" of Being by the Dionysian creator who can
endure Becoming. No creator can tolerate the past
save as a thing which once served as his schooling.
But a people are usually one with their past. To
them it is at once a grandfather, a father, and an
elder brother. In a trice the creator deprives them
of these relatives. Through him they are made
orphans, brotherless and alone. Hence the pain
that is inevitably associated with the joy of destruc
tion and of creation.
Not only a creative genius, however, but also a
creative age, may use the word ugly in this
Dionysian sense. For a robust and rich people
scorn to treasure and to hoard that which has gone
before. And thus our museums, alone, are perhaps
the greatest betrayal of our times.
When the Athenians returned to their ruined
Acropolis in the first half of the fifth century before
Christ, they did not even scratch the ground to
recover the masterpieces that lay broken, though
not completely destroyed, all around them. And,
as Professor Gardner observes, it is fortunate for
us that no mortar was required for the buildings
which were being erected to take the place of those
that had been destroyed ; otherwise these fragments
of marble sculpture and architecture, instead of
being buried to help in filling up the terraced area
of the Acropolis, would certainly have gone to the

lime-kiln.1
The men of the Renaissance, in the same way,
regarded the buildings of ancient Rome merely as
so many quarries whence they might bear away
the materials for their own constructions. And
whether Paul II wished to build the Palazzo di
Venezia, or Cardinal Riario the Cancellaria, the
same principle obtained. At the same period we
also find Raphael destroying the work of earlier
painters by covering it with his own compositions,2
and Michelangelo not hesitating to obliterate even
Perugino's altar frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel in
order to paint his "Judgment." While in compara
tively recent times, at a moment when a great
future seemed to be promised to modern Egypt,
Mehemet Ali sent his architect to the sacred
Pyramids of Gizeh, to rob them of the alabaster
which he required for his magnificent mosque on
the citadel of Cairo.3
1 A Handbook of Greek Sculpture, by E. A. Gardner,
M.A., p. 212.
3 Piero della Francesca's decorations in the Vatican,
painted under the direction of Pope Nicholas V, were ulti
mately destroyed by Raphael. See VV. S. Waters, M.A.,
Piero della Francesca, pp. 23, 24, 108.
Seeâlso Fergusscn, A History of Architecture, Vol. I,
p. 48: "... If we had made the same progress in the
higher that we have in the lower branches of the building
art, we should see a Gothic Cathedral pulled down with the
same indifference, content to know that we could easily
replace it by one far nobler and more worthy of our age
and intelligence. No architect during the Middle Ages ever
hesitated to pull down any part of a cathedral that was old
and going to decay; and to replace it with something in
the style of the day, however incongruous that might be;
From a purely archaeological and scholastic point

of view, therefore, it is possible to justify our
museums — the British Museum, for instance. But
from the creative or artistic standpoint, they are
simply a confession of impotence, of poverty, and
of fear; and, as such, are utterly contemptible. In
any case, however, I think that, for the sake of
public taste and sanity, some of the ugly fragments
— such as two-thirds of the maimed and mutilated
parts of bodies from the Eastern and Western
pediments of the Parthenon — ought never to have
been allowed to stand outside a students' room in
a school of archeology or of art, and even in such
institutions as these, I very much question the value
of the pieces to which I have referred.
2. Landscape Painting.
Up to the present, I have spoken only of Man
as the proper subject of Ruler-Art. I have done
this because Man is the highest subject of Art in
general, and because the moment humanity ceases
from holding trie first place in our interest, some
thing must be amiss, either with humanity, or with
ourselves.
Still, there are degrees and grades among ruler-
artists. All of them cannot aspire to the exposi
tion of the highest human values. And just as
some turn to design and to ornament, and thus,
in a small way, arrange and introduce order into
and if we were progressing as they were, we should have
as little compunction in following the same course."
a small area of the world, so others— standing half

way between these designers and the valuers of
humanity — apply their powers quite instinctively
to Nature away from Man. They have a thought
to express— let us say it is: "Order is the highest
good," or "Power is the source of all pleasure and
beauty," or "Anarchy contends in vain against the
governing power of light which is genius," and in
the case of this last thought they paint a rugged
scene which they reveal as arranged, simplified and
transfigured by the power of the sun. In each of
these cases they use Nature merely as a symbol, or
a vehicle, by means of which their thought or
valuation is borne in upon their fellows; and they
do not start out as actual admirers of mere scenery,
wishing only to repeat it as carefully as possible.
Even when it uses Nature merely as a symbol or
a vehicle, however, there can be little doubt that
this kind of Ruler-Art is a degree lower in rank than
the art which concerns itself with man ; and when
this kind of art becomes realistic, as it did with
Constable and all his followers, it is literally super
fluous. Only when the landscape is a minor
element, serving but to receive and convey the
mood or aspiration of the artist, is it a subject for
Ruler-Art, and then the hand of man should be
visible in it everywhere. With the artist's arrang
ing, simplifying and transfiguring power observ
able in Nature, landscape painting, as Kant very
wisely observed in his Kritik der Urtcilskraft, be
comes a process of pictorial gardening, and as such
can teach very great lessons.
Still, all landscapes ought to be approached

with caution by the lover of Ruler-Art; for unless
they are treated with an extreme ruler-spirit, they
point too imperatively away from man, to promise
a development that can be wholesomely human.
When it is remembered that landscape painting
only became a really important and serious branch
of art when all the turmoil and contradiction which
three successive changes of values had brought
about were at their height — I refer to the blow
levelled at Mediaeval values by the Renaissance,
to the blow levelled at the Renaissance by the
Counter-Renaissance and Protestantism (in its
German form of Evangelism and in its English
form as Puritanism), and to the blow levelled at
the artistic spirit of Europe in general by the rise
of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries — and when, therefore, doubt and confu
sion had already entered men's minds as to what
was to be believed about Man and Life; when it is
remembered also that it was precisely in the north,
where, as we shall see, culture was less a matter
of tradition than in the south, that landscape found
its most energetic and most realistic exponents —
from Joachim Patenier 1 to Ruysdael ; and that it
* According to Dr. Wilhelm Liibke, Outlines of the
History of Art (Vol. II, p. 452), Patenier might almost be
called the founder of the modern northern school of land
scape painting. See also p. 575 in the same volume. On
this subject see also Muther, Geschichte dcr Malerei,
Vol. II, p. 72: "Although in a way it is possible to
establish in what respect the painting of the Netherlands
in the sixteenth century ran parallel with that of Italy, it is
also necessary to emphasize the fact, on the other hand, that
was in the north, even after the Renaissance, that

the negative character of Christianity, in regard to
humanity and to Life, found its strongest adher
ents; the importance of establishing a very severe
canon in regard to all landscape painting, and of
insisting upon very high ruler qualities in this
branch of the art, ought to be clear to all who take
this subject to heart.
For, difficult as it may seem to realize it, there
is nothing whatsoever artistically beautiful in land
scape.1 Only sentimental 2 townspeople, compelled
by their particular mode of existence to gaze daily
on their own hideous homes and streets, ever mani
fest a senselessly ardent and determined affection
for green fields and hills, for their own sake; and
with English psychologists, it would be quite
admissible here to say that all beauty that par
ticular people believe to exist in country scenery,
in some very important matters the former separated itself
from the latter, notably in landscape. The Italian classical
painters still continued to allow it to appear only as a
decorative vanishing point. In the Netherland School a
thoroughly familiar tendency remained ever active. And,
as this tendency could not be reconciled with the trend
of great art, the moment arrived when landscape painting,
as an independent branch of Art, severed itself from religious
painting." Muther mentions Hendrik Met de Bles,
Joachim de Patenier and Bosch as the leaders of this
tendency.
1 See W. H. Riehl, Culturstudicn aus drci Jahrhunderten,
p. 67.
2 This use of the word sentimental in regard to the love
of nature for its own sake, is not by any means unpre
cedented. Schiller, in his essay Ueber naive und senti-
mentale Dichtung, as an advocate in favour of the love in
question, constantly refers to it as sentimental. (See 1838
Edition of Works, Vol. XII, pp. 167-281.)
is the outcome of association. The ancients liked

the sunlit and fruitful valley because of its promise
of sustenance and wealth ; but they showed no love
of nature as such.1
Mr. S. H. Butcher,2 for instance, points out how
landscape painting only became a serious and inde
pendent branch of art among the Greeks after the
fourth century B.C. — that is to say, long over a
century after the date when, according to Freeman,
the decline of Hellas began; and, in speaking of
the Greeks in their best period, he says : "They do
not attach themselves to nature with that depth of
feeling, with that gentle melancholy, that charac-
1 See W. R. Hardie, Lectures in Classical Subjects, pp.
16-17 : " What are the scenes in Nature which had the
greatest attraction for the ancients? The landscape which
a Greek would choose for his environment was a tranquil
one, a cultivated spot or a spot capable of cultivation ; " and
p. 21 : ". . . apart from the work of one or two exceptional
poets like yEschylus or Pindar, it must be allowed that
the ancient view of Nature was somewhat prosaic and
practical, showing a decided preference for fertile, habitable
and accessible country."
2 Some Aspects of Greek Genius, p. 252. See also his
remarks,
indeed, of pp.
the 246-248, concluding
Attic drama, when thus: "The movement
the dialectic great period,of
thought was in full operation, can hardly be called ' simple '
in Schiller's sense" [he is quoting Schiller on "Simple and
Sentimental Poetry," where in the opening paragraph
Schiller applies the word naiv, simple, to a natural object,
as meaning that state in which nature and art stand
contrasted and the former shames the latter]; "yet even
then, as in Homer, nature is but the background of the
picture, the scene in which man's activity displays itself.
The change of sentiment sets in only from the time of
Alexander onwards. Nature is then sought for her own
sake ; artists and poets turn to her with disinterested love ;
her moods are lovingly noted, and she is brought into close
relationship with man."
terizes the moderns. . . . Their impatient imagina

tion only traverses nature to pass beyond it to the
drama of human life." J. A. Symonds tells us that
"Conciseness, simplicity and an almost prosaic
accuracy are the never-failing attributes of classical
descriptive art — moreover, humanity was always
more present to their minds than to ours. Nothing
evoked sympathy from the Greek unless it appeared
before him in human shape, or in connection with
some human sentiment. The ancient poets do not
describe inanimate nature as such, or attribute a
vague spirituality to fields and clouds. That feel
ing for the beauty of the world which is embodied
in such poems as Shelley's Ode to the West Wind
gave birth in their imagination to definite legends,
involving some dramatic interest and conflict of
passions." 1 And Mahaffy and Mr. W. R. Hardie
tell the same story.2
But even among sensible moderns, uninfected by
sentimental fever, the love of nature is mostly of
a purely utilitarian kind, as witness the love of
cornfields, hayfields and orchards. The farmer at
1 Studies of the Greek Poets, Vol. II, p. 258.
3 See Social Life in Greece (Mahaffy), p. 426, and What
have the Greeks done for Modern Civilization? (Mahaffy,
1909). p. ii : "External nature was the very thing that the
Greeks, all through their great history, felt less keenly
than we should have expected. Their want of a sense of
the picturesque has ever been cited as a notable defect."
See also W. R. Hardie, Lectures on Classical Subjects
1*943)1 P- 8: "To what extent do the modern feelings and
fancies about Nature appear in the ancient poets? . . . The
usual and substantially true answer is that they appear to
a very slight extent. Like Whitehead, the Greek is slow tc
recognize 'a bliss that leans not to mankind.'"
certain times gazes kindly at the purple hills behind

his acres of cultivated land, because their colour
indicates the coming rain. The cattle-breeder
smiles as he surveys the Romney marshes, and
thinks of the splendid pastureland they would
make.
In fact, the attitude of sensible mankind in
general towards landscape, as landscape, seems to
have been pretty well summarized by the writer of
the iO4th Psalm, from whom, according to W. H.
Rhiel, the Christian world, and especially the
Teutonic part of it, seems to have derived much of
their love of the beauties of Nature.1
What constitutes the artistic beauty in a painted
landscape, then, is the mood, the particular human
quality, that the artist throws into it. As the
French painters say, a landscape is a state of the
soul; and unless the particular mood or idea with
which the artist invests a natural scene have some
value and interest, and be painted in a command
ing or ruler manner, it is a mere piece of super
fluous foolery, which may, however, find its proper
place on a great railway poster or in an estate
agent's illustrated catalogue.
There is, on the other hand, another kind of love
of nature, which dates only from the eighteenth
century, and which is thoroughly and unquestion
ably contemptible. This also, like the above, is
the result of association, and has nothing artistic
in its constitution ; but this time it is an association
1 Culturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten (and Edition, 1859),
p. 63.
which is misanthropic and negative. I refer to

what is generally known as the love of the
Romantic in Nature, the love of mountains, tor
rents, unhandseled copses, virgin woods, and rough
and uncultivated country.
In this love a new element enters the apprecia
tion of Nature, and that is a dislike and mistrust of
everything that bears the stamp of man's power or
his labour, and therefore an exaltation of everything
untutored, uncultured, free, unconstrained and
wild.
This attitude of mind seems to have been un
known not only to the Greeks and to the Romans,1
but, practically, to all European nations up to the
time of Rousseau. As Friedlander says, it would
1 See S. H. Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius,

pp. 265, 266 : " Mountains and lonely woods and angry seas,
in all periods of Greek literature, so far from calling out a
sublime sense of mystery and awe, raise images of terror
and repulsion, of power divorced from beauty and alien to
art. Homer, when for the moment he pauses to describe
a place, chooses one in which the hand of man is visible ;
which he has reclaimed from the wild, made orderly, sub
dued to his own use. Up to the last days of Greek antiquity
man has not yet learnt so to lose himself in the boundless
life of Nature, as to find a contemplative pleasure in her
wilder and more majestic scenes."
See also J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, Vol.
H» P- 257 : "The Greeks and Romans paid less attention
to inanimate nature than we do, and were beyond all
question repelled by the savage grandeur of marine and
mountain scenery, preferring landscapes of smiling and
cultivated beauty to rugged sublimity or the picturesqueness
of decay. . . ."
See also W. R. Hardie, Lectures on Classical Subjects,
PP' 3» 9« *7. and Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners,
Vol. I, pp. 391, 392, 393, 395.
be difficult to find evidence of travellers going to

mountain country in quest of beauty, before the
eighteenth century,1 and the majority of those who
were forced to visit such country, before that time,
in their journeys to foreign cities, describe it as
horrible, ugly and depressing. Oliver Goldsmith
is a case in point. Riehl declares that in guide
books, even as late as 1750, Berlin, Leipzig, Augs
burg, Darmstadt, Mannheim, etc., are spoken of
as lying in nice and cheerful surroundings, whilst
the most picturesque parts (according to modern
notions) of the Black Forest, of the Harz, and the
Thuringian woods are described as "very gloomy,"
"barren," and "monstrous," or at least as not par
ticularly pleasant. And then he adds: "This is
not the private opinion of the individual topo-
graphists : it is the standpoint of the age." 2
Even in the Bible illustrations of the eighteenth
century, we also find the same spirit prevailing.
Paradise — that is to say, the original picture of
virgin glory in natural beauty — is made to look like
what moderns would call a monotonously flat
garden, devoid of any indication of a hill, in which
the Almighty, or Adam, or somebody, has already
clipped all the trees and hedges, and carefully
trimmed the grass.
You may argue with Riehl 3 that mediaeval
painters must have thought rough, wild and barren
country beautiful; otherwise, why did they put it in
1 Ueber die Entstehung und Entwicklung des Gefiihls
fiir das Romantische in dcr Natur, pp. 4, 10.
2 Culturstiidien aus drci Jahrhundcrtcn, p. 57.
3 Ibid., pp. 59, 60.
their pictures? One low-German painter of the

Middle Ages, for instance, painted a picture of
Cologne, and, contrary to the genuine nature of
the surrounding country, introduced a background
of jagged and rocky mountains. Why did he do
this, if he did not think jagged and rocky mountains
beautiful?
In reply to this I cannot do better than quote
Friedlander again, who on this very question writes
as follows —
"At least the lack of a sense for the beauty of
mountain scenery, which is noticeable in the poetry
and travels of the Middle Ages, viewed as a whole,
ought to lead us to suspect that this same sense
could have been only very slightly apparent in the
realm of pictorial art. But ought we not to ascribe
the fantastic and romantic art ideal of the old
masters, in landscape, rather to their endeavour to
transfer the scene and figures of their pictures from
reality to an imaginary world? . . . Even if his
torical painters like John van Eyck and Memling
eagerly introduced jagged rocks and sharp moun
tain (which apparently they had never seen) into
their backgrounds ... it is difficult to recognize
any real understanding or even knowledge of the
nature of mountains in all this; but simply an old
and therefore very conventional form of heroic
landscape which was considered as the only suitable
one for a large number of subjects." 1
But there is other evidence, besides that to be
1 Ucber die Entstehung und
fur das Romantische in dcr Natur,Ent-wicklung
pp. 2, 3.
des Gefuhls
found in mediaeval poetry and travels, which shows

to what extent the particular sense for natural
beauty, which I am now discussing, was lacking in
the Middle Ages. Its absence is also illustrated by
the arrangement of castles and other buildings.
Mr. d'Auvergne, in his work The English Castles,
more than once calls attention to this, and instances
a tower at Dunstanburgh Castle,1 which, though
commanding a wildly romantic prospect, was
selected for the vilest domestic uses.
Suddenly, all this is contradicted and reversed.
Precisely where man's hand has been, everything
is supposed to be polluted, unclean, and ugly ; and
rough, uncultivated nature, however rugged, how
ever unkempt, is exalted above all that which the
human spirit has shaped and trained.
How did this change come about ?
To begin with, let it be said, that it was not quite
so sudden as Friedlander would have us suppose.
Long before the dawn of the eighteenth century,
the very principles that were at the base of
European life and aspirations — the principle of the
depravity of man, the principle of liberty for
liberty's sake, the principle of the pursuit of general
truth; and finally, the principle that experience —
that is to say, a direct appeal to nature — was the
best method of furnishing the mind — all these
principles had been leading steadily to one con
clusion, and this conclusion Rousseau was the first
to embody in his energetic and fulminating protest
against culture, tradition, human power and society.
1 E. B. d'Auvergne, The English Castles, pp. 216, 217.
And the fact that his doctrine spread so rapidly,

that within fifty years of its exposition, with the
help of men like Coxe, Ramond de Carbonnieres,
Etienne de Senancour, Toppefer, Saussure and
Bourit, it had practically become the credo and the
passion of Europe, shows how ready the age must
have been for the lessons Rousseau taught it.
All of you who have read the fulsome and bom
bastic praise of Nature, together with the bitter
disparagement of the work of man, in such works
as La Nouvelle Heloise, the Confessions, his letters
to Monsieur de Malcsherbes, and his Reveries of a
lonely Rambler, will not require to be told the
gospel Rousseau preaches.1
1 See Lettres Nouvellcs addressees d Monsieur de
Maleshcrbes (Geneva, 1780), 3rd letter, p. 43. Speaking of
a lonely walk in the neighbourhood of his country house,
he says: "J'allois alors d'un pas plus tranquille chercher
quelque lieu sauvage dans la foret, quelque lieu desert, ou
rien ne me montrant la main de 1'homme ne m'annonc.at
la servitude et la domination, enfin quelqu' asyle ou je pusse
croire avoir pe'ndtre' le premier, et ou nul tiers importun ne
vint s'entreposer entre la nature et moi. C'e*tait la qu'elle
sembloit deploycr a mes yeux une magnificence tou jours
nouvelle. L'or des genets et la pourpre des bruyeres frap-
poient mes yeux d'un luxe qui touchoit mon coeur; la majeste*
des arbres " — and so on in the same romantic strain for
twenty lines. It is impossible to reproduce every passage
I should like to quote, in order to reveal the full range of
Rousseau's passion for nature and his bitter contempt of
man and man's work; but the above is typical, and other
cqunlly gushing passages may be found in Les Reveries du
Promcneur Solitaire (Paris, 1882), pp. 119, 138, etc., etc.;
La Nouvelle IMloise, especially the nth letter; Les Con
fessions (Ed. 1889, Vol. I), Bk. VI, pp. 229, 234, 238, 24$,
and Bk. IV, p. 169: ". . . on sait de"ja cc que j'entends
par un beau pays. Jamais pays de plaine, quelque beau
qu'il fut, ne parut tel a mes yeux. II me faut des torrents,
des rochers, des sapins, des bois noirs, des montagnes, des
M
Suffice it to say, that he successfully created a

love of the rough, of the rugged, the unhandseled
and the uncultivated in the minds of almost all
Europeans — especially Northerners, and that this
love was rapidly reflected in landscape painting.
This new feeling for the romantic, for the uncon
strained and for the savage in Nature, although it
soon dominated art, was, in its essentials, quite
foreign to art and to the artist. It had nothing in
common with the motives that prompt and impel
the artist to his creations. Its real essence was
moral and not artistic ; its fundamental feature was
its worship of the abstract principles of liberty,
anarchy and the absence of culture, which rude
nature exemplifies on all sides; and it was a moral
or scientific spirit that animated it, whether in
Rousseau or in his followers.
Friedrich Schiller, who entirely supports Rous
seau's particular kind of love for Nature, frankly
admits this 1 in his able and profound analysis of
chcmins rabotcux a monter et & descendre, des precipices
a mes cot£s, qui me fassent peur. . . . J'eus ce plaisir . . .
en approchant de Chambe'ri . . . car ce qu'il y a de plaisir
dans mon gout pour des lieux escarped, est qu'ils me font
tourner la tete : et j'aime beaucoup ce tournoiement pourvu
je sois en surete"."
que1 Sdmmtliche Werke (Stuttgart and Tubingen, 1838),
Vol. XII, "Ucber naive und sentimentale Dichtung," p. 168,
169: "This kind of pleasure at the sight of Nature is not
an aesthetic pleasure, but a moral one : for it is arrived at
by means of an idea, and it is not felt immediately the
act of contemplation has taken place, neither does it depend
for its existence upon beauty of form." And, p. 189, after
pointing out that the Greeks completely lacked this feeling
for Nature, he says: "Whence comes this different sense?
How is it that we who, in everything related to Nature,
the sentiment in question; whatever self-contempt,

and contempt of adult manhood, may have lain
behind Rousseau's valuations, Schiller brings all
of it openly into the light of day, and in his efforts
to support the Frenchman's school of thought,
literally exposes it to ridicule.
One or two voices, such as Hegel's1 and
Chateaubriand's, were raised in protest against this
thoroughly vulgar and sentimental attitude towards
savage and wild phenomena; but they were unable
to resist a movement, the strength of which had
been accumulating for so many centuries in the
hearts of almost all Europeans; and, ultimately,
numbers triumphed.
Even the hand of man — of the artist — in a painted
landscape, got to be a thing of the past. Realism
—because it most conscientiously repeated that un
constrained and anarchical spirit which the romantic
age loved to detect in matted weeds, in tangled and
impenetrable coppices, in thick festoons of parasitic
plants, in unhandseled brambles and in babbling
brooks — became the ruling principle. Classical
are inferior to the ancients, should pay such homage to
her, should cling so heartily to her, and be able to embrace
the inanimate world with such warmth of feeling? It is
not our greater conformity to Nature, but, on the contrary,
the opposition to her, which is inherent in our conditions
and our customs, that impels us to find some satisfaction
in the physical world for our awakening instinct for truth
and primitive rudeness, which, like the moral tendency from
which that instinct arises, lies incorruptible and indestruct
ible in all human hearts and can find no satisfaction in the
moral world."
1 See He gels Leben, by Karl Roscnkranz, especially
PP- 475.
M 2 476, and 482, 483. *
influence alone was able for a while to resist too

rapid a decline ; but soon we find Constable declar
ing in the early part of the nineteenth century, that
"there is nothing ugly," and addressing aspiring
artists in these words: "Observe that thy best
director, thy perfect guide is Nature. Copy from
her. In her paths is thy triumphal arch. She is
above all other teachers; and ever confide in her
with a bold heart : " 1 and a whole host of people
following in his wake and applauding his principles.
Just as England by her influence had created
Rousseau and his peculiar mode of thinking,2 so,
again, British influence was to show its power in
the world of Art. The parallel is striking, but
nevertheless true. In the years 1824, 1826 and
1829, Constable, whom Muther calls the father of
landscape painting,3 and whom Meier Graefe calls
the father of modern painting,4 exhibited in Paris,
and his style soon became a dominant force.5
1 See The Life and Letters of John Constable, by C. R.
? See J. Morley's Rousseau, Vol. I, pp. 85, 86 : "According

to his own account, it was Voltaire's Letters on the Enghs
which first drew him seriously to study, and nothing^ which
that illustrious man wrote at this time escaped him.' And
p. 146: "Locke was Rousseau's most immediate mspirer,
and the latter affirmed himself to have treated the same
matters exactly on Locke's principles. Rousseau, however,
exaggerated Locke's politics as greatly as Condillac exag
gerated his metaphysics." And p. 147 '• "We need not
quote passages from Locke to demonstrateandthethesubstantial
author of
correspondence of assumption between him
the Social Contract. They are to be found in every chapter.
3 Geschichte dcr Malerei, Vol. Ill, p. 175.
* Modern Art, Vol. I, p. 140.
* Ibid p 138: "What his fatherland neglected was
Stendhal, though very much too moderate, was

one of the first to raise his voice against the lack
of idealism (transfiguration, simplification) in these
English pictures; but his efforts were of no avail,
and he might just as well have shouted in the face
of a hurricane.
3. Portrait Painting.
When one now adds to these influences, the
steady rise of the power of the bourgeoisie in
Europe, from the seventeenth century onward, and,
as a result of this increasing power, an uninter
rupted growth in the art of portrait painting — a
growth that attained such vast proportions that it
cast all attainments of a like nature in any other
age or continent into the shade — one can easily
understand what factors have been the most for
midable opponents of Ruler-Art in the Occident,
since the event of the Renaissance.
After all that I have said concerning the prin
ciples of Ruler- Art, it will scarcely be necessary for
me to expatiate upon those elements in portrait
painting which are antagonistic to these principles;
for when you think of portrait painting as it has
been developed by the claims of the bourgeoisie in
Europe, you must not have Leonardo da Vinci's
taken over by the Continent. Strange as this neglect
may seem, the rapidity with which Europe assimilated
Constable
Paris. . . .isFrance
even more remarkable.
needed The movement
what Constable "began. .in.
had to give.
The young Frenchmen saw the traditional English freedom
with eyes sharpened by enthusiasm."
"Mona Lisa" in mind. Neither must you consider

that portrait work in which, by chance, the artist
has had before him a model who, in every feature
of face or of figure, corresponded to his ideal ; nor
that in which the artist has been able to allow
himself to exercise his simplifying and transfigur
ing power. Otherwise some of the best of Rubens'
and Rembrandt's work would of necessity come
under the ban which we must set upon by far the
greater number of portraits.
When Rembrandt painted his bride Saskia,1 for
instance, the extent to which he exercised his
simplifying and transfiguring power is amazing,
and precludes all possibility of our classing this
work among the portraits which should be con
demned. He knew perfectly well that poor Saskia
was not beautiful — what beautiful girl would have
condescended to look at Rembrandt ?— so what did
he do ? He cast all the upper and right side of her
face in shadow, and deliberately concentrated all his
attention, and consequently the attention of the
beholder as well, upon three or four square inches
of nice round muscle in the lower part of Saskia's
young cheek and neck. But how many plain
daughters of rich bourgeois would allow three or
four square inches of their cheek and neck to be
exalted in this way, at the cost of their eyes and
their nose and their brow ? The same remarks
also apply to Rembrandt's "Jewish Rabbi" in the
National Gallery. There He had to deal with an
emaciated, careworn old Jew. How did he over-
1 Dresden Royal Picture Gallery.
SASKIA.
11V KEMIIKANin.
( Dresden Royal J'icturt (.~>allery.)

LANDSCAPE AND PORTRAIT PAINTING 1C7
come the difficulty ? All of you who know this

picture will be able to answer this question for
yourselves, and I need not, therefore, go into the
matter.
This, then, is not the class of portrait work which
need necessarily deteriorate the power of art. What
does deteriorate this power, is that other and more
common class of portrait painting which began in
Holland in the seventeenth century, and in which
each sitter insisted upon discovering all his little
characteristics and individual peculiarities; in
which, as Muther says, each sitter wished to find
"a counterfeit of his personality," and in which "no
artistic effect, but resemblance alone was the object
desired." *
It was the insistence upon this kind of portrait
work by the wealthy bourgeoisie of England, which
well-nigh drove Whistler, with his ruler spirit, out
of his mind, and it is precisely this portrait work
which is dominant to-day. In order to be pleasing
and satisfactory to the people who demand it, this
class of painting presupposes the suppression of
all those first principles upon which Ruler-Art relies
in order to flourish and to soar; and where it is
seriously and earnestly pursued, art is bound to
suffer.
This was recognized three hundred years ago by
the Spanish theoretician Vincenti Carducho, and his
judgment still remains the wisest that has ever been
written on the subject. In formulating the credo
of the sixteenth century, he wrote as follows —
1 History of Painting (Eng. Trans.), Vol. II, pp. 572, 576.
"No great and extraordinary painter was ever a

portraitist, for such an artist is enabled by judg
ment and acquired habit to improve upon nature.
In portraiture, however, he must confine himself
to the model, whether it be good or bad, with
sacrifice of his observation and selection ; which no
one would like to do who has accustomed his mind
and his eye to good forms and proportions." 1
Our art at the present day is, unfortunately, very
largely the development and natural outcome of the
two influences I have just described, and that
accounts for a good deal for which I have failed to
account hitherto.
Art no longer gives : it takes. It no longer
reflects beauty on reality : it seeks its beauty in
reality. And that is why it falls to pieces judged
by the standard of Ruler-Art. It cannot bear the
fierce light of an art that is intimate with Life and
inseparable from Life. In its death-throes it has
decked itself with all kinds of metaphysical plumes,
in order that it may thus, perhaps, live after death.
But these plumes have been used before by dying
gods and have proved of no avail. "Virtue for
virtue's sake," was the cry of a dying religion.
"Art for art's sake," is now the cry of an expiring
godlike human function.
But unless this cry be altered very quickly into
a cry of art for the sake of Life, there will be no
chance of saving it. Before this art for Life's sake
can be discovered, however; before the purpose
1 Muther, History of Painting (English Translation),
Vol. II, p. 481.
after which it will strive can be determined and
established, the first thing to which we shall have
to lend our attention is not art, but mankind.
The purpose of man is a thousand times more
important than the purpose of art. The one
determines the other. And as a proof of how
intimately the two are connected, see how much
doubt there is as to the purpose of art, precisely
at a moment when men also, owing to the terrible
civil war which is raging among their values, are
beginning to doubt the real purpose of human
existence.
It would be useless to indulge in a detailed
criticism of individual artists. To all those who
have followed my arguments closely, no such
clumsy holding up of particular modern artists to
ridicule will seem necessary. In some of your
minds these men are idols still, and it pleases only
the envious and the unsuccessful to see niche-
statues stoned.
The great artist, as I have shown you, is the
synthetic and superhuman spirit that apotheosizes
the type of a people and thereby stimulates them
to a higher mode of life. But where should we go
to-day, if we wished to look for a type or for a
desirable code of values which that type would
exemplify?
We know that we can go nowhere; for such
things do not exist. They are utterly and hope
lessly extinct.
Our first duty, then, is not to mend the arts — you
cannot mend a cripple. But it is rather to mend
the parents who bring forth this cripple — to mend

Life itself, and above all Man.
"Away from God and Gods did my will allure
me," says Zarathustra; "what would there be to
create if there were Gods !
"But to man doth it ever drive me anew, my
burning will; thus doth it drive the hammer unto
the stone.
"Alas, ye fellow-men, within the stone slumber-
eth an image for me, the image of all my visions !
Alas that it should perforce slumber in ugliest
stone !
"Now rageth my hammer, ruthlessly against its
prison.
that to me From
? the stone fly the fragments : what's
"I shall end the work : for a shadow came unto

me — the stillest and lightest of all things once came
unto me.
"The beauty of the Superman came unto me as
a shadow. Alas my brethren, what are the gods
to me now ! " 1
1 Z., II, XXIV.
LECTURE III1
NIETZSCHE'S ART PRINCIPLES IN THE HISTORY
OF ART
PART I
CHRISTIANITY AND THE RENAISSANCE
" For if ye live after the flesh ye shall die : but if ye

through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye
shall live." — Romans viii. 13.
I SHALL now endeavour to show you when and
where Nietzsche's Art doctrine, or part of it, has
raised its head in the past, and to touch lightly
upon the conditions which led to its observ
ance.
In doing this I shall travel backwards, zigzag
fashion, from Rome, via Greece to Egypt, and
beginning with Christianity, I shall show how the
Holy Catholic Church succeeded in establishing
one of the conditions necessary to all great Art,
which, as I have said, is unity and solidarity last
ing over a long period of time, and forming
men according to a definite and severe scheme of
values.
1 Delivered at University College on Dec. isth, 1910.
171
i. Rome and the Christian Ideal.
The compass of these lectures does not allo*w me

to say anything concerning the Art of Rome.
There are many aspects of this Art which are both
interesting and important from the historical stand
point; but, from the particular point of view which
I am now representing, temporal Rome does not
concern me nearly as much as sacred Rome and its
provincial Government.
For the first act of the Christian power was not
to volatilize the stone bulwarks of the monuments
of antiquity, neither was it to spiritualize the citizen
of the Roman Empire ; but it was to convert Rome
the secular administration into Rome the Eternal
City.
Long before the exterior of the Graeco-Roman
column was divided up and sub-divided, until,
despite its volume, it seemed to have no solidity
whatever; and long before men's eyes and bodies
were transformed from broad, spacious wells of life
into narrow, tenuous cylinders of fire, a teaching
was spread broadcast over the Roman Empire, the
devouring power of which was astounding, and the
like of whose digestion has not been paralleled in
history.
The Romans in their latter days had degenerated
through the decline among them of that very prin
ciple which is the basis of all great art — restraint.
Always utilitarians, in the end they had become
materialists, and finally their will power had
disintegrated.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE RENAISSANCE 173
Then, suddenly — perhaps through the very fact

that their will power had declined, and through a
preponderance among them of a class of people
who were unfit to allow themselves any material
enjoyment, and who were conscious of this short
coming — the pendulum of Life swung back with a
force so great to the opposite extreme, that the
Pagan world was shaken to its foundations, and in
its death-agony stretched out its arms and embraced
the foreign creed which said —
"Flesh is death; Spirit is life and peace. The
body is dead because of sin ; but the Spirit is life
because of righteousness. If ye live after the flesh
ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify
the deeds of the body, ye shall live." :
Here was a fundamentally new valuation, a
totally novel outlook upon the world of man. Some
extraordinarily magnetic creator of values had
spread his will over an empire, and stamped his
hand upon a corner of the globe, and "the blessed
ness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon
brass," 2 promised to be his.
Here was a principle which obviously must have
found its origin in a class of mind which, in order
to overcome the flesh at all, knew of no better
means thereto than to cut it right away and for
ever. It was not a matter of contriving some sort
of desirable inner harmony; the will of the people
in whom this creed took its roots was incapable of
such an achievement. The order went: "If thy
right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
1 Romans viii. 6, 10, 13. 2 Z.t Ill, LVI.
thee ... if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off ! "
Whenever the Spirit was mentioned it was spelt in
capital letters and uttered in exalted tones ; while
the body, on the other hand, as the great obstacle
to salvation, was written small. States of the soul
became surer indices to the qualities "good,"
"beautiful," and "virtuous," than states of the
body, and the paradox that Life was the denial of
Life, was honestly believed to be an attainable ideal.
In Liibke's words: "Christianity disturbed the
harmony between man and nature, and introduced
a sense of discordance by proclaiming to man a
higher spiritual law, in the light of which his
inborn nature became a sinful thing which he was
to overcome." 1
The people who acclaimed this teaching by
instinct ultimately organized themselves, conquered
the Pagan world, enlisted Pagan elements into their
organization — Pagan spirit and Pagan order — and
gradually accomplished a task which no other
European values seem to have been able to do.
They established one idea, one thought, one hope,
in the breasts of almost all great Western peoples,
from Ireland to Constantinople, from the Mediter
ranean to the Baltic.
The power of their creation — the Church — was
such that it co-ordinated the most heterogeneous
elements, the most conflicting factors, and the most
absurd contrasts. And, however much one may
deprecate the nature of the type they advocated,
and the ignoble valuation of humanity upon
1 Outlines of the History of Art, Vol. I, p. 445.
which their religion was based, as a Nietzschean,

one can but acknowledge the power they wielded,
the might with which they made one ideal prevail,
and the art with which for a while they united
and harmonized such discordant voices as those
of the people of Europe.
One can admire all this, I say, even though it is
but a spiritual reflection of Rome's former power,
her former victories, and her former law and
order.1
For, soon, however un-Pagan the ideal may have
been which the Church made to prevail, the
methods it employed were purely Pagan methods.
Fearing nothing, respecting nothing that was
opposed to it, and not losing heart before the
difficulty of vanquishing even the most formidable
enemies of the expiring Empire — the Teutons away
in the North — spiritual Rome thus set about its
task of appropriating humanity ; and all the art of
the organizer, of the orator, of the painter, sculptor
and architect, was speedily ordered into its service.
If the type to which its ideal aspired were not
already a general fact, then it must be made a
general fact. It must be reared, cultivated and
maintained.
1 See H. H. Milman, D.D., History of Latin Christianity
(Kd. 1864), ^°1- I» P- 1()- Speaking of Catholicism, he says :
" It was the Roman Empire, again extended over Europe
by a universal code, and a provincial government; by a
hierarchy of religious praetors or proconsuls, and a host of
inferior officers, each in strict subordination to those imme
diately above them, and gradually descending to the very
lowest ranks of society, the whole with a certain degree of
freedom of action, but a restrained and limited freedom, and
with an appeal to the spiritual Caesar in the last resort."
Strangely enough, the feat of vanquishing the

German nation proved a thousand times easier to
Rome the Eternal City, than it had done to Rome
the Metropolis of the Greatest Empire of antiquity.
The ancient Germans, with their strong tendency
to subjectivity,
spinning, and towith
fantastic
their b'rooding and to cobweb
coarse, brutal natures
unused either to restraint or to the culture that
arises from it, fell easy victims to this burning
teaching of the spirit, of faith, and of sentiment;1
and it was in their susceptible and untutored
breasts that Christianity laid its firmest foundation.
In its work of appropriation and consumption,
as I say, the Church halted at nothing.
2.
The Pagan Type appropriated and transformed
by Christian Art.
Just as St. Paul had not refrained from taking
possession of the Unknown God whom the
Athenians ignorantly worshipped, by declaring
1 See J. B. Bury, A History of the Roman Empire, Vol. I,
p. 17 : " It has been said that the function of the German
nations was to be the bearers of Christianity. The growth
of the new religion was indeed contemporary with the
spread of the new races in the Empire, but at this time in
the external events of history, so far from being closely
attached to the Germans, Christianity is identified with the
Roman Empire. It is long afterwards that we see the
mission fulfilled. The connection lies on a psychological
basis : the German character was essentially subjective. The
Teutons were gifted with that susceptibility which we call
heart, and it was to the needs of the heart that Christianity
possessed endless potentialities of adaptation. . . . Christianity
and Teutonism were both solvents of the ancient world, and
as the German nations became afterwards entirely Christian,
we see that they were historically adapted to one another."
Him to be precisely the God whom he had come

among them to proclaim, so Christianity did not
refrain from incorporating all the suitable features
of the Pagan faith into its own creed.
The Pagan type was thus the first thing to be
assimilated and absorbed, and in the early Chris
tian paintings of the catacombs you must not be
surprised to find the Saviour depicted with all the
beauties and charms of the classical god or hero.
Here he appears as a Hermes, there as an Apollo,
and yonder as an Orpheus.1 Beardless, young, and
strong, Christ stalks towards you. His gait is free,
his carriage majestic. Across his shoulders you
will sometimes see, as in the catacombs of the Via
Appia in Rome, that he bears a sheep, and he
looks for all the world like a young Hermes, who,
as you know, was the Greek god of flocks.
Elsewhere he looks like a Roman senator, as in
the catacomb of St. Callixtus, for instance; his
mother Mary looks like a Roman matron, praying
with uplifted hands, and the apostles Peter and
Paul, together with the prophets, appear as peri
patetic philosophers, grasping learned-looking
scrolls of manuscript, while Daniel is presented as
a Hercules.2
1 On this point see Kraus, Geschichte dcr christlichcn
Kunst, Vol. I, pp. 41, 46 et seq. Muther, Geschichte der
Malcret, Vol. I, p. 13. VVoltmann and Woermann, History
of lamting, Vol. I. pp. 151-156. Paul Lacroix, Les Arts
ati Moyen Age et a I'Epoque de la Renaissance (Ed. 1877,
Paris), p. 254.
2 See J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, The History
of Painting in Italy (Ed. 1903), Vol. I, p. 4. Woltmann and
Woermann, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 156.
N
Even the famous bronze statue of St. Peter in
his great church at Rome is in fact an antique
statue of a consul which has been transformed into
a Peter, and the original of this monument was
probably quite innocent of the sanctity which has
caused the foot of his effigy to be worn away by the
kisses of the faithful.1
This bold manner of appropriating the Pagan
ideal in Art was but the symbol of what was
actually occurring in the outside world; for the
object was not to glorify the Pagan type, but to
overthrow it, to transform it by degrees into the
type which was compatible with Christian values,
and thus to obliterate it.
We can watch this process. We can see the
classic features and form of body surely and
permanently vanishing from the wall decorations
of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries A.D., and
the Christian type asserting itself with ever greater
assurance. Already in San Paolo fuori-le-mura in
Rome, which had been decorated about the middle
of the fifth century,2 Christ appears bearded,3 ugly
and gloomy, and his apostles reflect his appear
ance and mood. In the Church of San Vitale in
Ravenna, of the sixth century, the spirit of the
antique had almost passed away ; 4 in the basilica
of San Lorenzo fuori-le-mura the bearded Christ
is no longer sublime and dignified, but wan and
1 Woltmnnn and Woermnnn, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 156.
2 J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, op. cit., pp. 14, 15.
3 For a discussion of the material causes of the change of
type, see Milman, op. cit., Vol. IX, p. 324.
4 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 24, 25.
emaciated;1 while in the Church of SS. Nazarus

and Celsus at Ravenna, there is a mosaic of the
fifth century in which even the sheep are beginning
to look with gloomy and dissatisfied eyes upon the
world about them.
Examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely
to prove how slow but sure was this gradual self-
assertion of the type that was compatible with
Christian values, and the early period of mediaeval
art is well described by Woltmann and Woermann
as one in which the classical cast of figure and
features gets swallowed up in ugliness.2
Finally, in the seventh century, the most daring
and most extraordinary artistic feat of all was
accomplished. The greatest paradox the world
had ever seen — a god on a cross — was portrayed
for men's eyes to behold. The Crucifixion became
one of the loftiest subjects of Christian art, and the
god of the Christians was painted in his death
agony.
I will not dwell upon the manifold influences
exercised by this class of picture; I simply record
the fact, in order to show with what steadily increas
ing audacity the Church ultimately realized and
exhibited its type.
For, the fact that Christian Art was didactic,
as all art is which is associated with the will and
idea of a fighting cause, and which is born on a
soil of clashing values, nobody seems to deny.3
1 VVoltmann and Woermann, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 185.
2 Woltmann and Woermann , op. cit., Vol. I, p. 230.
3 See an interesting discussion on the early Christian
attitude towards art in Kraus, Geschichte der christliclicn
N 2
Paulinus of Nola, Gregory the Great, Bishop Ger-

manus, Gregory the Second,1 John of Damascus
and Basil the Great were all agreed as to the incal
culable worth of images in the propagation of the
Christian doctrine, and their attitude, subsequently
adopted by the Franciscans and Dominicans, lasted,
according to Milman, until very late in the Middle
Ages. When it is remembered, moreover, that
illuminated manuscripts, which were destined to
remain in the hands of single individuals, retained
the classical mould of body and features much later
than did the work for church decoration, it is not
difficult to discover the strong motive which lay
behind the production of public art.2
With Roman culture and art, the western and
northern provinces of Gaul, Spain, Germany and
Britain thus received their religion and their ideal
type; and if to-day, in our ball-rooms and drawing-
rooms we are often confronted with tenuous, flame-
Kunst, Vol. I, pp. 58 et seq. See also Milman 's conclusions
on the subject, History of Latin Christianity, Vol. II, pp.
345» 346-
1 See his letter to Leo the Isaurian, quoted by Milman,
op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 358-361. See also the Rev. J. S. Black's
article on "Images" in the Encyclopedia Britannica (gth
Edition).
2 The Rev. J. S. Black says, in his article on " Images,"
above referred to, that even as early as the fourth or fifth
centuries there is evidence of the tendency to enlist art in the
service of the Church, while Woltmann and Woermann
(op. cit., Vol. I, p. 167) quote the following instance : "When
St. Nilus (A.D. 450) was consulted about the decoration of a
church, he rejected as childish and unworthy the intended
design of plants, birds, animals, and a number of crosses,
and desired the interior to be adornqd with pictures from the
Old and New Testaments, with the same motive that
Gregory II expressed afterwards. . . ."
like, swan-necked creatures, that recall Burne-

Jones, Botticelli, Duccio and Segna to our minds,
we know to which values these people owe their
slender, heaven-aspiring stature, and their long,
sensitive fingers.
For the attitude of the Christian ideal to Life,
to the body, and to the world was an entirely
negative one. The command from on high was,
that the deeds of the body should be mortified
through the Spirit. All beauty, all voluptuousness,
smoothness and charm were very naturally regarded
with suspicion by the promoters of such an ideal ;
for beauty, voluptuousness and shapeliness lure
back to Life, lure back to the flesh, and ultimately
back to the body.
What else, then, could possibly have been
expected from such an ideal than the ultimate
decline and uglification of the body ? To what
else did such an ideal actually aspire ? For was
not ugliness the strongest obstacle in the way of
the loving one, in the way of him who wished only
to affirm and to promote life ?
When the student of mediaeval miniatures, wall-
paintings and stained-glass windows finds bodily
charm almost completely eliminated, when he sees
ugliness prevailing, and even made seductive by a
host of the most subtle art-forms, by a gorgeous
wealth of ornament and repetitive design ; and
when he perceives a certain guilty self-conscious
ness in regard to the attributes of sex revealing
itself in such paintings as that on the ceiling of
the Church of St. Michael at Hildesheim, where
Adam and Eve are represented as naked human

monstrosities, exactly alike in frame and limbs,
and with all indications as to sex, save Eve's long
tresses and Adam's beard, carefully suppressed,1
what can be concluded from all this irrefutable and
unimpeachable evidence ?
When he finds the Gothic type of figure growing
ever more tenuous, ever more emaciated and more
sickly as the centuries roll on ; when he hears of a
Byzantine canon of the eleventh century in which the
human body is actually declared to be a monstrosity
measuring nine heads; when he finds strength and
manhood gradually departing from the faces and
the limbs of the men, and an expression of tender
sentiment, culminating in puling sentimentality
becoming the rule ; finally, when he stands opposite
Segna's appalling picture of "Christ on the Cross"
at the National Gallery ; what, under these circum
stances, is he to say, save that he is here concerned
with an art which is antagonistic and hostile to
beauty, to Life and the world ?
For the qualities of this art, qua art, although
they never once attain to the excellence of Ruler-
Art, are sometimes exceedingly great. With Meier
Graefe I should be willing to agree that there has
been no real style since the Gothic,2 or certainly
not one that can claim anything like such general
distribution. And, if it had not been for the fact
1 Kraus seems to be of the opinion that this suppression
of primary sexual characteristics in paintings was not at all
uncommon in the Middle Ages. See Geschichte der christ-
lichen Kunst, Vol. II, p. 280.
2 Modern Art, Vol. I, p. 24.
that the more the paradox at the root of Christian

doctrine was realized, the more paradoxical it
appeared— a fact which called forth the energies of
scores of apologists, commentators, and dialecti
cians, and which made pictures retain to the very
end a rhetorical, persuasive, and therefore more or
less realistic manner, sometimes assisted (more
especially towards the close of the Middle Ages)
by almost lyrical ornament and charm ; there is no
saying to what simple power Christian art might
not have attained. For behind it were all the con
ditions which go to produce the greatest artistic
achievements.
As a style, apart from its subject— or content
beauty ; as the manifestation of a mighty will — who
can help admiring this art of Christianity ? If only
its ideal had been a possible one, and one which
would have required no rhetoric, seduction, or
emotional oratory, accompanied by the ringing of
all the precious metals, to support it until the end;
it might have ascended to the highest pinnacle of
art in simplicity, restraint and order. Into sim
plicity, however, it was never able to develop,
while its constant need of explaining made it to the
very last retain more or less realism in the presenta
tion of its ideal type.
3. The Gothic Building and Sentiment.

But the hierarchy of the Church, although it left
no doubt in the minds of its followers as to the
genuine type which was the apotheosis of Christian
values, was nevertheless unable completely to

impose its culture upon the barbarians under its
sway. And soon, somewhere towards the end of
the twelfth century, there began to appear in
Europe, in things that did not seem to matter from
the moral or didactic standpoint, a certain uncouth
and uncultured spirit, which showed to what extent
the despotic rule of Rome was beginning to be
flouted.
In architecture, which, like music, has for some
reason or other always seemed to Europeans to be
less intimately connected with the thought and will
of man than the graphic arts, an un-Catholic spirit
was preparing its road to triumph. When I say
un-Catholic, I mean emancipated from the law
and order of the Universal Church.1 And in the
1 Speaking of Gothic buildings
A History of Architecture, Vol. I,in p.general, Fergusson, in
41, says: "It is in
Nature's highest works that we find the symmetry of pro
portion most prominent. When we descend to the lower
types of animals we find we lose it to a great extent, and
among trees and vegetables generally find it only in a far
less degree, and sometimes miss it altogether. In the mineral
kingdom among rocks and stones it is altogether absent.
So universal is this principle in Nature that we may safely
apply it to our criticism on art, and say that a building is
perfect as a whole in proportion to its motived regularity, and
departs from the highest type in the ratio in which sym
metrical arrangement is neglected. It may, however, be
incorrect to say that an oak-tree is a less perfect work of
creation than a human body, but it is certain that a pictur
esque group of Gothic buildings may be as perfect as the
stately regularity of an Egyptian or classic temple ; but if it
is so, it is equally certain that it belongs to a lower and
inferior class of design." Page 34 : "The revival of the rites
and ceremonies of the Mediaeval Church, our reverent love
of our own national antiquities, and our admiration of the
rude but vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages, all have
Gothic edifice, from its early stages to its develop

ment into the flamboyant style, all the impossi
bilities, all the terrible self-immolations imposed by
the Christian ideal upon man, begin to make them
selves openly felt.
Now churches begin to tower aloft into heights
undreamt of heretofore. Huge columns spring
heavenwards, bearing up a roof that seems almost
ethereal because it is so high. Spires are thrust
right into the very breasts of clouds, and acres are
covered by constructions which, mechanically
speaking, are alive. Kicks from the vaulted
arches against the hollowed-out walls below, neces
sitate counter-kicks ; buttresses and flying buttresses
strive and struggle against the crushing pressure
of the stone or brick skies of these fantastic archi
tectural feats. All the parts of this mass of stone
or baked clay are at loggerheads and at variance
with each other, and their strife never ceases.
Typical of the contest going on within the body
of the mediaeval Christian, and the vain aspirations
of his soul, the lofty buildings are also symbolic of
the discord and lack of equilibrium which, as
Liibke says,
relations Christianity
to Nature introducedAndinto
and to himself. man's
when we
find the columns of these buildings carved and
moulded to look like groups of pillars embracing
each other to gain strength, the salient parts of the
combined to repress the classical element, both in our liter

ature and in our art, and to exalt in their place Gothic feel
ings and Gothic art to an extent which cannot be justified
on any grounds of reasonable criticism."
construction grooved and striped, and the extremi

ties of the clustered pillars spreading after the
manner of a fan, over our heads; we are amazed
at the manner in which mass and volume have
been volatilized, spiritualized, and apparently
dissipated.
Elsewhere, too, there is variegated glass, gigantic
filigree work, festive decoration, as elaborated as
that of a queen or a bride; infinite grandeur and
infinite littleness.1 The ornament is nervous and
excited, festoons, trefoils, gables, gargoyles and
niches, all thrust themselves at you ; all strive for
individual effect, individual attention, and indi
vidual value, with a restlessness and an importunacy
which knows no limits ; until your eyes, bewildered
and dazzled by the jutting, projecting and budding
details, and out-startled by surprise, instinctively
drop at last, and perhaps close in a paroxysm of
despair, before the High Altar.2
This was the germ of Protestantism in stone.
Long before Martin Luther burned the Papal Bull
in the market-place of Wittenberg, the elements of
Protestantism had already found expression in Gothic
architecture. True the Pagan and Catholic spirit
1 See Hippolyte Taine, On the Nature of the Work of Art
(translated by John Durand), pp. 130, 131, 132, 133, 134.
2 Dr. Wilhelm Liibke, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 14, 15, says,
speaking of the Gothic: "What a contrast to the quiet,
sober masses of the Romanesque style . . . ! Here, on the
other hand, everything thrusts itself into prominence, every
thing strives for outward effect, everything endeavours to
work out its individuality with spirit and energy. ... At
the choir ... a positive sense of disquiet and confusion is
produced, which may indeed excite the fancy, but cannot
satisfy the sense of beauty."
was still sufficiently master to dominate them, just

as it did the heretics, by a tremendous force of
style; but they are nevertheless present, and it is
in this architecture, if we choose to seek it, that we
shall find, at once, all the beauty, all the ugliness,
and all the incompatible elements of the Christian
ideal.
Its beauty and the fact for which we ought to be
grateful to it, is, that by its one-sided and earnest
advocacy of the spiritual in man, it extended the
domain of his spirit over an area so much greater
than that which had been covered theretofore, that
only now can it be said that he knows exactly where
he stands and who he is. Its ugliness lies in its
contempt of the body and of Life; and its incom
patible elements are its negation of Life and the
necessary attitude of affirmation towards Life which
all living creatures are bound to assume.
If, however, the above description of the Gothic
may seem unfair, hear what one of the greatest
friends of the Gothic has said on the subject !
John Ruskin, in the early days of the last half
of the nineteenth century, wrote as follows—
" 1 believe that the characteristic or moral
elements of the Gothic are the following, placed
in order of their importance: (i) Savageness,
(2) Changefulness, (3) Naturalism, (4) Grotesque-
ness, (5) Rigidity, (6) Redundance." l
He speaks of it as being "instinct with work
of an imagination as wild and wayward as the
1 On the Nature of Gothic Architecture (1854), p. 4.

Northern Sea " ; l lays stress upon its rudeness,2 and

declares that it is that strange disquietude of the
Gothic spirit — that is its greatness, "that restlessness
of the dreaming mind, that wanders hither and
thither among the niches, and flickers feverishly
around, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be
satisfied." 3
In fact, in no instance could the saying, "pre
serve me from my own friends," be more aptly
applied than in Ruskin's defence of the Gothic.
For Ruskin was a conscientious student, and things
which even enemies of his subject would be likely
to overlook, he brings forward proudly and in
genuously, like a truculent mother presenting an
ugly child to a friend, and with a broad smile in
his forcible prose which sometimes throws even
the experienced reader quite off his guard.
Hippolyte Taine speaks of the people of the
Middle Ages as being possessed of delicate and
over-excited imaginations, of morbid fancy unto
whom vivid sensation — manifold, changing, bizarre
and extreme — are necessary. In referring to their
taste in ornament, he says, "It is the adornment
of a nervous, over-excited woman, similar to the
extravagant costumes of the day, whose delicate and
morbid poesy denotes by its excess the singular
sentiments, the feverish, violent, and impotent
aspiration peculiar to an age of knights and
monks." 4
1 On the Nature of Gothic Architecture, p. 6.
2 Ibid., p. ii. 3 Ibid., p. 19.
4 On the Nature of the Work of Art, pp. 131-33, 134.
THK ('ANON 01 POLYCLEITUS.
(Rome.)
And if you think of the physical and spiritual

operations they had been made to undergo, you
will not feel very much inclined to question these
conclusions. It must not be supposed that the
canon of Polycletus, measuring seven heads, was
transformed into the Byzantine canon, measuring
nine heads, without some one's suffering — even
though it took centuries to effect the change. It
must not be believed that the calm Pagan idea of
death was converted into the Christian terror of
death without the sacrifice of something ; nor must
these emaciated, careworn, and neurotic faces in
Mediaeval paintings be conceived as mere inven
tions of morbid phantasy. The deeds of the body
are not mortified through the Spirit with impunity.
vSuch brilliant achievements have their accounts to
pay, and the Church never once deceived itself or
its followers as to what was paying, what was
suffering, or where the amputations and vivisections
were taking place.
Look at the type of which the monks approved !
Examine it in Cimabue's, Duccio's, Segna's and
the Cologne painters' pictures. Examine it in the
tapestry of Berne, known as the "Adoration of the
Kings"; look at it in countless stained glass win
dows, and see its repetition in hundreds of illumin
ated manuscripts, some of which, like the Latin
missal of the Church of St. Bavon at Ghent, and
the Lives of the Saints by Simeon Metaphrasi, have
found their way into the British Museum.
Then ask yourself whether or not humanity was
suffering in conforming itself to this holy creed.
"Like those mothers," says Lecky, "who govern

their children by persuading them that the dark is
crowded with spectres that will seize the dis
obedient, and who often succeed in creating an
association of ideas which the adult man is unable
altogether to dissolve, the Catholic priests, by
making the terrors of death for centuries the night
mare of the imagination, resolved to base their
power upon the nerves." l
And, now that all this is known and realized,
what is the meaning of the Renaissance, what is
its explanation ?
4. The Renaissance.
The Renaissance, in its early stages, at least,
was a period neither of pure realism nor of
classicalism ; it was neither a revival of learning
nor a revival of antiquity. These words are mere
euphemisms, mere drawing-room phrases. For, at
its inception, the Renaissance was nothing more
nor less than man's convalescence, after an illness
that had lasted centuries. It was his first walk
into the open, after leaving his bed and his sick
room.
According to the Nietzschean doctrine of art, this
realism of Van Eyck, of Van der Weyden, Quintin
Massys, Donatello, Pisanello, Masolino, Ucello and
others ought to disgust you. It is not art, or if it
is, its rank is inferior. Why, then, does it claim
1 History of European Morals from Augustus to Charle
magne, Vol. I, p. 211.
attention ? Why is it far superior to the realism of

the present day, despite some appallingly ugly
features ? 1
It is superior only in this sense, that it is the
work of convalescents. After they had been laid
on the rack in the attempt to stretch their limbs
and bodies to infinity, you must not be surprised
that these men could only limp along. How could
they be expected to walk majestically and with
grace? That they could stand at all was a mercy.
That they were able to hobble along as they did
was a triumph.
To expect these recovering invalids to impart
something of themselves to Life, to enrich her and
to transfigure her, would be to expect the impos
sible. But if you applaud them at all, applaud
them for their recovery, for the fact that it is well
that they can give us even drabby reality as it is.
Do not congratulate them yet on their health. For
1 Kraus, in his Geschichte dcr christlicJicn Kunst, Vol. II,

denies that the revival of the antique was predominant in the
Renaissance, and argues that individualism and nature study
were the prominent notes. Venturi, the Italian art-historian,
declares that the antique began to be paramount only in the
sixteenth century, and that with it the decadence began.
While Eug6ne Miintz, in his monumental work, L'Htstoire de
I'Art pendant la Renaissance, Vol. I, p. 42, speaking of the
two movements of the period, says : "Deux voics s'ouvraicnt
aux novateurs, ou le naturalisme a outrance, un naturalisms
qui, nV'trtnt plus soutenu par les hautcs aspirations du moyen
Age, risquait fort de sombrer dans la vulgarite* (1'exemple de
Paolo L'cello, d'Andrea del Castagna, de Pullajuolo 1'a bien
prouve") ou bien la nature contrdwe, purific-e, ennoblic par
I'^tudc dcs modeles anciens." The latter was the later move
ment. See also Woltmann and Woermann, History of
Painting, Vol. II, Introduction.
their realism, as realism, is as hopeless, as unin

teresting and as unelevating as any realism ever
was and ever will be.
It is deceptive, too, for what seem to be beauties
in their pictures are borrowed from such of their
predecessors of the late Gothic period as were
already overloading their pictures with ornamental
art forms, in order to disguise the ugliness of the
type they presented. Where they beguile you, it
is often with a wealth of sweet ornament.1
In Ucello's "Battle of Sant' Eglidio," at the
National Gallery, it is impossible not to recognize
the pains the artist has taken to make your eye
dwell on the dainty trappings and accoutrements
of the knights and their steeds, on the distracting
balls of gold in the shrubbery, artfully repeated in
the bridles of the horses, and on the complex maze
of pikes, spears and lances, which makes the glimpse
of hills in the distance all the more restful and
pleasing.
Also in Pisanello's "St. Anthony and St.
George " (National Gallery), whatever charm there
is to be seen is still a Gothic charm, and the same
holds good of this painter's remarkable picture of
the "Vision of St. Eustace," in which the deliber
ately ornamental purpose of the animals in the
background charms you more than their startling
realism.
If you leave these pictures, in the National
1 Muther, in his History of Painting, Vol. I, p. 87,
actually declares that Jan van Eyck and Pisanello in their
dainty manner remained Gothic.
Gallery, and walk over to Orcagna's "Coronation

of the Virgin," you will see where the ornamental
charm of the early Renaissance realists probably
found its origin. For these convalescent men made
no sudden and unanticipated appearance. They
were preceded by painters like Orcagna, who were
beginning to feel the impossibility of making a
beautiful image out of the Christian type, and who
therefore crammed their pictures with ornament in
a manner so prodigal that the human portion of
them assumed quite a subordinate place.
Look at this picture of Orcagna's. It seems
positively to ring with gold. Massed halos of the
precious metal convert the faces of the people into
mere decorative discs of colour. The golden em
broidery on the dresses and on the hangings in the
background give you a feeling of sunshine, of
wealth and of luxury, which makes you forget the
ideal for which all this lavish display is acting but
as a subtle impresario. And the utilization of every
square inch of room by filigrees, festoons, frills
and fretwork of gorgeousness, almost convinces
you at last that you are in front of an art which
says
life. "Yea" to the glory of sunshine, beauty and
In this very need of extravagant ornament, how
ever, Orcagna confesses quite openly to you that,
as far as humanity is concerned, he, as an artist,
is bankrupt and destitute. His picture, like most
things connected with the art of Christianity, is a
pictorial paradox ; and when you leave it, to wander
through the other rooms, your mind must be of a
o
singularly ingenuous stamp if it feels no suspicion

with
brass regard
band intothe
Orcagna's
exaltationuseof ofhissuch
ideal.a deafening
If you doubt all this, how can you explain the
fact that those painters of the early Renaissance
who remained faithful to the Christian type — such
men, I mean, as Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi,
Alesso Baldovinetti, Botticelli and Ghirlandaio —
all remained more or less faithful, too, to Orcagna's
belief in ornament and pretty accessories; while all
those painters who either carried on or developed
the new spirit in Pisanello's, Ucello's, Masolino's
and Masaccio's work — such men as Pollaiuolo,
Verrochio, Perugini, Bellini, and ultimately
Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian and
Raphael — all discarded pretty and seductive acces
sories, or, when they did use them, made them com
pletely subordinate to the human element in their
work?
The gradual growth in the importance of the
human body and of the Pagan type, in the Renais
sance painters, from Masaccio to Michelangelo,
with whom there can no longer be any question of
convalescence, the rapid return to a healthy life-
affirming type, and the ultimate triumph of this
type in the very heart of the Vatican — the head
quarters of the greatest negative religion on earth,
— these are the facts which make the art of this age
so admirable and so thrilling.
It represents the greatest stand which Europe has
ever made against the denial of life, humanity and
beauty; and if some of the artists, like Pisanello,
Piero della Francesca, and ultimately Titian, in

their great zeal, returned to nature with almost as
much interest as to man, this is easily accounted
for when it is remembered how long nature and
man had been separated.1
But the fact that makes the final glory of the
Renaissance type all the more glorious is the
extraordinary circumstance that almost every one
of the artists who fought for it, and for the prin
ciples it involved, from Piero della Francesca to
Titian, were one after the other captured and en
chained by the Church itself. Often it was in the
very atmosphere of the high altar, with the fumes
of the incense about them, that they asserted their
positive faith in Life and Man. The greatest
dangers, the greatest temptations surrounded them.
But they planted their banner, notwithstanding, in
the centre of their true enemy's camp, and, for a
while, their true enemy acquiesced, because the
command was in the hands of men who were artists
and pagans themselves, and who consequently did
not believe in one single tenet of the negative creed
which they professed.
Just as the realism of some of the early Renais
sance artists, however, was the inevitable outcome
of their convalescent state, so the strong realism of
many of the painters and sculptors of the late
1 Of Piero della Francesca, Muther says, op. cit., Vol. I,

p. 97 : " He created the grammar of modern painting. . . .
Four hundred years ago he proposed the problem of realism,
and endeavoured, as the forerunner of the most modern
artists, to establish in what manner atmosphere changes
colour impressions."
O 2
Renaissance was the natural result of their com

bative attitude.
Fighting for a particular kind of man, against
centuries of false and unhealthy tradition, it was
necessary to bring forward the new ideal with
every characteristic plainly, emphatically and
powerfully expressed; for every characteristic of
a new ideal is of the highest importance.
These new values of the Renaissance spirit were
scarcely one hundred years old, when Michelangelo
set himself the task of embodying them in his
sculpture and painting. Would it be fair to
criticize him from the standpoint of Egypt or even
of Greece?
From the standpoint of Egypt he is disappoint
ing. The preponderance of characteristic traits
over simplicity in his work spoils the power of his
conceptions. His prevailing lack of simplicity
makes you guess at the youth of the values on which
he stood, and his tortuous bodies often make you
question whether his types have entirely left the
nerves of the Gothic period behind them. But are
not all these defects precisely of a kind which are
unfortunately inseparable from the position which
Michelangelo assumed ?
He was the greatest of the Renaissance artists.
In criticizing him, I have said all that can be said,
from this particular standpoint, of his predecessors
and contemporaries. His power lies in the forc-
ibleness, the exhilaration, the exuberance and the
wealth with which he brings forward his type. It
lies in his absolute contempt of seductive prettiness,
his sometimes terrible strength, his vehemence and

his energy, and above all in his magnificent con
ceptions and the types with which he illustrates
them. Compared with the art from which it had
sprung, his art was stupendous.
And where he is weak, compared with a higher
— and by no means a modern — concept of art, he
suffers from the virtues of his position as a fighter
and as an innovator.
In valuing him, as I said in my first lecture, it
all depends whence you come. If you hail from
Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth century,
you can but go on your knees before him. If you
hail from Memphis of the year 4000 B.C., you can
but criticize and feel ill at ease before his work.
I have not yet said anything concerning the
relation of the Renaissance artists to Greece, simply
because, taking in view the circumstances of their
development, the relation seems fairly obvious. In
discussing the art of Greece itself, however, the
matter will probably appear quite clear to you.
How much of the transfiguration in late Renais
sance art is actually due to Greek influence, or to
the Dionysian spirit of the age, it is difficult to
determine. In my opinion, the latter influence was
more potent, and to the Greek influence I should
be more prepared to ascribe the spur which origin
ally led to the adoption of a thoroughly Pagan
type.
PART II
GREECE AXD EGYPT
"The land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land

make thy father and brethren to dwell." — Genesis xlvii. 6.
i. Greek Art.
I HAVE now spoken to you of Christian Art, and
you have not been taken altogether by surprise;
because, in England at least, people are not
unacquainted with the fight Art has had with
Puritanism. And you were, therefore, partly pre
pared for what I had to say. The views I have
expressed concerning the Renaissance were not
entirely new to you either, and, if they were, I can
only hope that they will assist you in giving to the
Art of that period its proper valuation. Now,
however, I fear I am going to level a blow at what
must seem to you even more sacred, even more
invulnerable and even more thoroughly established
than either Christian or Renaissance Art. I refer
to the Art of Greece.
Albeit, before I proceed with my task, do not
be surprised if, like Charles the First's executioner,
Brandon, I kneel to kiss the hand of my victim, if
only by so doing I may seem to you to understand
the grave nature of my business, and satisfy you
198
GREECE AND EGYPT 199
that the blow I am about to deliver is prompted

more by conviction than by that cheap irreverence
for great things which is, alas, only too prevalent
to-day.
Goethe says somewhere that, if we find fault with
Euripides at all we should do so on bended knees.
It seems to me that this ought also to be the attitude
of people and critics in this age who attempt to,
value what the Greeks achieved in the graphic arts.
For the earnestness and vigour wherewith, collect
ively, they set up their triumphs and ideals in stone
and marble, the moment any opportunity arose for
them to affirm and exalt their type, is deserving
of the utmost praise and admiration.
Too many great writers have exalted the Greeks,
however, to make it necessary for me to edify you
with any long and enthusiastic praise of those
qualities which Nietzsche admired in them.
Fairness alone, therefore, compels me to acknowr-
ledge the grandeur of the type their art advocates.
With Nietzsche I can but extol the yea-saying of
this type to the passions, to beauty, to health, in
fact to life. The fearlessness of the Greeks before
beauty was their acknowledgment that life was a
blessing to which it was worth while to be lured
and seduced. And their innocent acceptance of
the strongest passions is sufficient to show to what
extent they had not only mastered them, but had
also enlisted them into their service.
Nevertheless, though it is only decent to exercise
some reserve in this matter, it certainly is necessary
to point to a curious fact in regard to Greek Art
in general, and that is, that, with the exception of

some of its archaic examples, it has been revered
with ever-increasing fervour by strangers, from the
second century before Christ to the present day,—
when I say strangers, I mean people whose thought
and aspirations were not necessarily the outcome of
Hellenic values, — and that this general appreciation
of Greek Art by foreigners implies that there is
some quality in it which is only too common to
everybody and to anybody, irrespective of nation
ality and education. If it were asked what this
common factor was, I should reply, it is Nature
herself, to which Greek Art, in its so-called best
period, is undeniably in close and intimate
relationship.
In examining the works of the seventh, sixth
and fifth centuries before Christ, it is well to bear
in mind the peculiar state of tRe country in which
they appeared, its division into states, and its
mixed population. It is well to think of the many
ideals that dominated these people, and of the fact
that the citizen of one city was often regarded as
an alien, without any political rights whatever, if
he ventured to transfer his abode to another city
but a few miles distant from his own ; and allow
ances should be made for the rivalry and com
petition this state of affairs conduced to bring about.
It is also well to remember the individual lives the
colonists lived, and the altered outlook on life to
which their independent positions were bound to
lead, and which, when they returned to their
mother city, as many of them used to do, must
have shed a new and strange light upon what they

saw.
Although a certain uniformity can be traced in
the political history of most Greek states, no one
would dare to maintain that the Greeks, at any time
in their history, were a perfectly united people
observing the same values; whilst even in the
history of each separate state, changes occurred so
constantly that a stable political type is a rare and
practically negligible fact.
In spite of the many heroes and geniuses which
arose from time to time, there never seems to have
been that power, either human or superhuman,
which might have welded these peoples indis-
solubly together, or which, taking its root in one
of the contending races, could have made that race
completely absorb and digest the others.
Even the games of Greece, which, it might be
argued, tended to unite the various peoples, cannot
be said to have gone very far in this respect, since
the very fact that the Hellenic nation enforced a
sacred armistice during the month of the games,
between states that were at war, shows that the
most this institution could achieve was a suspension
of arms.
On the whole, therefore, the fact that one can
talk of different types as characteristic of particular
schools or ideals is amply accounted for, and when
the general spirit of rivalry that animated the whole
nation for centuries is duly taken into consideration,
it is not difficult to explain a certain preponderance
of manifold characteristics over simplicity, which is
observable in the greater part of Greek sculpture —

a preponderance which sometimes led very rapidly
to the crudest realism, and which at other times
approached realism only after a considerable lapse
of time. Such phenomena are the inevitable result
of that lack of the powerful master or ruler spirit
who unifies and co-ordinates heterogeneity, and
who thereby makes simplification and powerful art
possible, as the outcome of relative permanency.1
For, when technique is largely mastered, realism,
as I have shown in the case of Mediaeval and
Renaissance Art, may in a great measure be the
outcome of a desire to make one's own particular
ideal unmistakably plain, and although this kind
of truth to nature always reveals a clashing of
values or types, it is of a kind which may be
regarded as infinitely superior to the realism which
has nothing to say at all, and which merely copies
out of poverty of invention.
When talking to strangers about an ideal they
do not share with you, it is necessary to bring all
your powers to bear upon an adequate and perfectly
vivid representation of what you have in your mind.
I, on this platform, assuming that Nietzsche as
an art valuer was strange to you, had to present
him to you with all the realism and detail I could
dispose of. If I had been talking to people who
1 See Edward A. Freeman, The Chief Periods of European
History, p. 6 : "The mission of the Greek race was to be the
teachers, the beacons, of mankind, but not their rulers,"
Page 9 : "The tale of Hellas shows us a glorified ideal of
human powers, held up to the world for a moment to show
what man can be, but to show us also that such he cannot
be for long."
knew the Nietzschean views of art perfectly well, I

might have indulged in certain artistic simplifica
tions and poetical transfigurations which I con
sidered unsuited to the present circumstances.
This same feeling, I believe, partly explains the
tendency to realism in Greek art. And it is pre
cisely to this tendency to realism that I think it is
now high time to call attention, after all the fulsome
praise which has for ages been lavished upon the
products of the Hellenic spirit.
When you turn to the granite statue of the
Egyptian goddess Sekhet in the Louvre, or to the
lions of Gebel Barkal in the Egyptian Gallery of
the British Museum, you are conscious of a sensa
tion of great strangeness, of humiliating unfamili-
arity, of almost incalculable distance. You may
look at these things for a moment and wonder what
they mean ; you may even pass on with a feeling
of indifference amounting to scorn ; l but whatever
your sensations are, you will be quite unable to
deny that what you have seen does not belong to
your world, that it is utterly and completely separ
ated from you, and that you felt in need of a guide
and of an initiator in its presence.
You may laugh at the lions of Gebel Barkal,
you may deny that they are beautiful ; but, whoever
you are, scholar, poet, painter or layman, you will
1 The attitude of such men as Liibke and \Yinckclmann
to Egyptian art is typical of the lack of understanding with
which modern Europeans have approached the monuments
of the Nile. See History of Sculpture, by Dr. Wilhelm Liibke,
Vol. I, pp. 22-25, and History of Ancient Art, by John
Winckelmann, Vol. I, pp. 169, 171, 175.
admit that they are cruelly distant and strange,

terribly remote and uncommunicative.
A. The Parthenon.
Now, if you turn round and bear to the right
in the Egyptian Gallery at the British Museum,
you will find a broad passage lined with statues
that seem very much more familiar to you than
those which you are just leaving behind; and, in
the distance, you will espy the maimed figures of
the Eastern pediment of the Parthenon. In a
moment you will be in the Elgin Room, and every
where about you you will see all that remains of
the ancient temple of Athens which is worth
seeing.
If you have not been to Athens, you must not
suppose that you have missed much, as far as the
Parthenon is concerned. Unless you are very
modern and very romantic, and can take pleasure
in visiting a gruesome ruin by moonlight, you
would be only depressed and disappointed by the
decayed and ugly mass of stones that now stands
like a battered skeleton on the Acropolis. You may
take it, therefore, that, as you stand in the Elgin
Room, you have around you the best that the
Parthenon could yield after its partial destruction
and dismantlement in 1687 by the victorious
Veneto-German army. And what is it that you
see ?
Remember that you are a man of the twentieth
century A.D., and that you have just been bored
to extinction by a walk in the Egyptian Gallery.

Remember, too, that you have very few fixed
opinions about Art, and that the artistic con
dition of your continent is one of chaos and
anarchy.
In spite of all this, however, you will walk up
to the horse's head at the extreme right of the
Eastern pediment of the Parthenon, and the two
thousand and four hundred years that separate you
from it will vanish as by magic.
For years I have taken men, women and children
up to this horse's head. In some cases these people
have been technical connoisseurs of a horse's
points; in others they have been mere bourgeois
people, indifferent both to the art of Greece and
to equine anatomy ; and with the children I was
concerned with raw manhood that cared not a
jot for Art, and whose one sole, savage instinct
was to recognize and classify what was before
them.
If you supposed, however, that the verdict of
these different people was anything but unanimous,
you would be vastly mistaken. The children cried
with delight. Their powers of recognizing things
was stimulated to the utmost. One of them told me
it was like a real bus-horse. The connoisseurs of a
horse's points began to draw plausible conclusions
from the existing head as to the probable conforma
tion of the body which the artist had deliberately
omitted, and the bourgeois people declared that
they loved the fascinating softness and convincing
looseness of the mouth. — All of them were charmed.
All of them understood. Not one of them felt that

this horse held itself aloof from them and kept its
distance, as the austere Egyptian lions had done.
And all of them were children of the twen
tieth century A.D., and over two thousand years
separated them from the objects they were in
specting.
Their comments on the Parthenon Frieze were
much the same. Once or twice one of them would
say that there was a monotonous similarity of
feature in the men and in the horses — a comment
which immediately revealed to me that 2,400 years
had indeed wrought some change. On the whole,
however, the attitude of those I escorted amazed
me ; for, with but few exceptions, it was one of
sympathy and understanding. I will not say that
I did not stimulate their interest a good deal, by
making them feel that their criticism was valuable
to me; I will not pretend that if they had been
alone they would have troubled to concentrate their
minds to any great extent upon the exhibits around
them ; but this I will affirm, with absolute confid
ence : that if all the men, women and children who
stream through the Elgin Room daily were given
the same stimulus to exercise their critical faculty,
and were similarly induced to give particular atten
tion to all they saw, the sympathy and understand
ing which I observed among the groups of visitors
I escorted would be found to be a fairly general,
if not a common occurrence.
TIIK Ai'oi.i.o OF TKNKA.
(C.lyfitvtlielc, Munich.)
B. The Apollo of Tenea.

Take the same people down to the Cast Room
and show them the Apollo of Tenea, and what will
they say ?
When I first halted before this bewilderingly
beautiful statue in the Glyptothek at Munich, I felt
I was in the presence of something very much more
masterful, very much more impressive, and infi
nitely more commanding than anything Greek I
had ever seen in London, Paris, or Athens.
Here was a style which was strange. But it was
evidently a style which was the product of a will,
and of a long observance of particular values that
had at last culminated in a type; for this Apollo
resembled nothing modern, Egyptian, Assyrian,
Mediaeval, or of the Renaissance.
This statue scorns to make a general appeal. It
is the apotheosis of a type. Of this there can be
no question. It is the work of a loving and power
ful artist, who could simplify the human frame, and
express stenographically, so to speak, the essential
features of the people he represented, because he
knew the essential features to which their values
aspired.
The arms, alone, transcend everything that .1
have ever seen in Hellenic Art for consummate
skill in transfiguring and retaining bare essentials
alone; and although, here and there, particularly
in the breast, there is a broadness and a sweeping
ease, which I admit ought to be attributed more to
incomplete control of essentials than to their actual
simplification, the whole figure breathes a spirit so

pure, so certain and so sound, that it is the nearest
approach I can find in Greek Art to that ideal
artistic fact in which the particular values of a
people find their apotheosis in the transfigured and
simplified example of their type.
I would deny that the qualities of this statue are
not ultimate qualities. I would deny that there is
anything transitional or archaic in them. What is
archaic, what is transitional, is the weak treatment
of the chest and abdomen. Compared with the
simplified chest and abdomen of an Egyptian statue
of the fourth or fifth dynasty, it shows a minimum
rather than a maximum of command of, and
superiority over, reality. Any healthy develop
ment of such an art, however, ought only to have
led to greater perfection in the treatment of the
parts mentioned, and I seriously question the
general belief that it marks a progress in sculpture
which must ultimately lead to the rendering of the
athletic types for which the sculptors of Argos
and Sicyon became famous. There is something
strange and foreign in this statue which does not
reappear in the Hellenic Art of the Periclean age.1
Like the vases of the sixth century and some of the
ante-Periclean Acropolis statues, there is a Ruler
form in its execution that makes quite a limited
1 This view seems quite opposed to that of a great
authority on the subject, Mr. A. S. Murray; but how this
author comes to the conclusion that " . . . in describing the
progress of sculpture from its early days to its highest
development, it is convenient to speak of it as a gradual
elimination of realism," I am quite at a loss to understand.
See A History of Greek Sculpture, p. 239.
appeal — a fact which would be consistent with its

having been the apotheosis of a type. Its exhorta
tion is not directed at mankind in general. It com
municates little to the modern European, and the
crowds that stream through the Elgin Room of the
British Museum would probably pass it by without
either sympathy or understanding.
And yet, as I have shown, it cannot be regarded
as a perfect specimen of Ruler-art; there are too
many uncertainties and too many doubts in it.
As marking an advanced stage in a very high
class of Ruler-art, however, it is magnificent, and
any transformation of its form to greater realism
would be a descent, rather than an ascent, in taste.
If you turn from it to the sculptures of the temple
of Selinus, which, as far as one can say, must have
been carved not more than about half a century
earlier, you will see that these are indeed archaic.
They are beneath realism in their coarseness and
crudity. But it is in the sculptures of Selinus, and
not in the Apollo of Tenea, or in the best vases of
the sixth century, that you must seek the motive
spirit of the Art which has made the Periclean age
so glorious. This striving after realism, although
unsuccessful in the metopes of Selinus, reveals a
different aspiration, a totally different will, from
that which created the Munich Apollo, and it was
precisely this aspiration that was fully realized, with
but a slight admixture of the other will, in Athens
of the fifth century.
Some wrill say that Egyptian influence is apparent
in the Apollo of Tenea, and they will add that the
p
Greek colonists in Selinus, finding themselves in

very close contact with their commercial rivals the
Phoenicians, very naturally scorned all Eastern
canons and ideas when erecting their temples.
Both of these suggestions are perfectly legiti
mate. The Apollo of Tenea either betrays
Egyptian influence or, owing to its Ruler form,
it takes one's mind back involuntarily to the Ruler-
art of the Nile. The sculptures of Selinus may
also be the outcome of the conscious renunciation
of Eastern influence, or they may be the manifesta
tion of a particular "Art-Will," as Worringer has
it, which aimed at realism and was quite guiltless
of any other ulterior motive. In both cases I
favour the latter alternative, and I should like to
believe that in addition to the influences I have
already mentioned in respect of realism there were
two Art-Wills active in ancient Greece — each striv
ing for supremacy and power.
C. The two Art-Wills of Ancient Greece.

I cannot see how any one rising from a study of
Hellenic Art can arrive at any other conclusion.
A superior will aiming at a Ruler-art form is the
one, an inferior will aiming at realism is the other.
And it is a significant fact, that while the first will
sent forth its last blooms in the sixth century — a
period when, according to Freeman, Hellenic life
reached its zenith,1 the ultimate triumphs of the
1 See The Chief Periods of European History, pp. 21-23.
See also Bury, History of Greece, Chaps. IV and V.
THE MEDUSA METOPE OF SELINUS.
(Palermo.)
other and inferior will, in the fifth century, marks

the first stage in a decline that was never to be
arrested.1
This is not the usual view, I know. As a rule,
the art of the age of Pericles is considered to be the
highest that Greece ever produced. But in this art
I see a preponderance of realism which reveals to
what extent the other and inferior will was begin
ning to prevail. And when I study Hellenistic art,
and see this evil assuming such proportions as to
make even modern historians and Art-scholars
deliberately denounce it, I cannot help but recog
nize the germs of this decay in the art which
hitherto has been most praised and admired.
As I say, I am judging purely from the artistic
records. But I have no doubt that, if I possessed
the necessary scholarship, 1 could trace the two
Art-wills to two distinct races of men who, from
the days of the fall of Mycenaean culture, strove
for mastership in Greece. I also entertain no
1 In studying the actual decline of Greek art it would, I
think, be very necessary to lay some stress upon the part
taken by the people in general, in judging and criticizing
artistic productions under the democracies. See Rev.
J. Mahafty (Social Life in Greece), who is talking entirely
from the Hellenic standpoint, p. 440: "The really vital
point was the public nature of the work they (the Athenian
Demos) demanded; it was not done to please private and
peculiar taste, it was not intended for the criticism of a small
clique of partial admirers, but it was set up, or performed
for all the city together, for the fastidious, for the vulgar,
for the learned, and for the ignorant. It seems to me that
this necessity, and the consequent broad intention of the
Greek artist, is the main reason why its effects upon the
world has never been diminished, and "why its lessons are
eternal " (the italics are mine).
P 2
doubts that the fall of Greece might be attributed
to the gradual triumph of that race which possessed
the inferior Art-will, and nothing I have read,
either in Grote, Bury, Oman, Curtius, Schnaase,
Miss Harrison and others, has led me seriously to
hesitate before suggesting this hypothesis.
Professor Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece leads
me to suppose that the problem might be solved in
the way I suggest. But, in any case, whether this
is so or not, the style of the art of Pheidias shows
a descent from the style of the Apollo of Tenea,
which only an age with a mistaken conception of
what art really is could possibly have overlooked.
The art of the fifth and fourth centuries, I will
not and cannot deny, contains a large proportion
of Ruler form, or what modern and ancient art-
historians call the "ideal."1 No people, any por-
1 T. G. Tucker, in his Life in Ancient Greece, does his
best to reconcile the realism of Greek art with the "ideal,"
and helps himself out of the difficulty by reasserting
Schelling's claim in The Philosophy of Art (see note to p. 91
in this book). Mr. Tucker says, p. 186 : "Many people
imagine that Greek sculpture — to take that salient province
again — deliberately avoided truth to Nature, and aimed at
some utterly conventional thing called the ideal. Nothing
could be more mistaken. The whole aim of Greek sculpture
was to reproduce the living man or woman, and the sublime
of its execution was attained only when the carving seemed
instinct with life — a life not merely of the limbs, but a life
of the soul, which informed the countenance, and was felt
to be controlling every limb. A Greek sculptor like Praxi
teles studied long and lovingly. ... To anatomy he is as
true as an artist need wish to be. But are not his figures
ideal? Doubtless, but what does ' ideal ' mean? That they
are abstract, conventional, or frankly superhuman ? Any
thing but* that. It means simply that he carves figures
which, while entirely true to strict anatomy, entirely lifelike
tion of which had been capable of producing the

Apollo of Tenea, could have avoided it; but that
it preponderates in realism, the evidence of history,
alone, apart from that of our own senses, proves
beyond a doubt.
The appreciation which it has met with at the
hands of almost all Europeans of all ages, and
particularly at the hands of the Renaissance real
ists, shows how general its appeal has been ; and
no art which has been so very much above Nature
as to apotheosize the particular values of a par
ticular people at its zenith, has ever made such a
general appeal.
D. Greek Painting.
In regard to the painting of Greece, I will not
detain you long. Practically all I have said in
regard to Greek sculpture may be applied with
equal force to Greek painting, and I cannot do
better than sum up this side of the question with
the words of that profound Japanese artist Okakura-
Kakuzo.
In speaking of the great style of the Greeks, in
painting — a style which vanished with the sixth
century, — he says —
"The great style of the Greeks in painting — that
style which was theirs before a stage chiaroscuro
and imitation of Nature were brought in by the
Appellesian school, — rises up before us with inefface-
in all their delicate modelling1 . . . are examples of nature in

happiest circumstances. . . .
able regret . . . and we cannot refrain from saying

that European work, by following the later school,
has lost greatly in power of structural composition
and line expression, though it has added to the
facility
When of itrealistic representation."
is remembered that the1 demands of
theatrical scenery are generally admitted to have
exercised considerable influence over Greek paint
ing, we need feel no surprise at the necessarily
vulgar nature of its ultimate development ; while in
raising this point about chiaroscuro, Okakura-
Kakuzo really opens a very serious and needful
inquiry.
It may be seriously questioned whether the
chiaroscuro which Apollodorus is said to have
introduced in the fifth century w7as not the worst
possible blow that has ever been levelled at Ruler-
Art, and it is difficult to separate this discovery
from the people who made it.
Once it is recognized that chiaroscuro implies a
blending of colours together, an elimination of all
those sharp contrasts which the compromising
spirit of a democratic age cannot abide, and a
general hugging and embracing of all colours by
each other, at the cost of the life of all definite
lines; once it is acknowledged, moreover, that all
gradations and blurred zones of contact lead in
evitably to the very worst forms of Police Art,
such as Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Timanthus prac
tised, and that escape from realism is not only
difficult, but almost impossible under such con-
1 Ideals of the East, p. 53.
ditions, the question whether Apollodorus is to be

praised or cursed becomes a very weighty and vital
one; and in saying that he ought to be cursed,
I make a very important statement, however un
reasonable it may seem to you at present.
You have noticed that until now I have not com
pared the Periclean art of Greece with the art of
any other country, but simply with what is gener
ally called the archaic art of Greece itself. I have
spoken only of the Apollo of Tenea, and of certain
promising features in the sixth-century sculptu res
which were discov ered on the Acropo lis within
recent years.
2. Egyptian Art.—l\. King Khephren.

If, however, I now choose to compare the art of
the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the Parthenon
at Athens l with that of Egypt, the first falls abso
lutely to pieces. If I walk from the lions of Gebel
Barkal, which Reginald Stuart Poole considers as
the "finest example of the idealization of animal
age has produced,"2 over
forms that any Parthe to the
horses of the non, the latter seem poor,
feeble, and slavish beside the powerfully simplified
and commanding work of Egypt. And if, with
vivid recollections of the diorite statue of King
Khephren at Cairo, I walk up to the best Greek
work of the Periclean age, or after, either in London
1 I am quite willing with Mr. Gardner to acknowledge the
superiority of the latter over the former. See Handbook to
Greek Sculpture, p. 216 et seq. „
9 Encyclopedia Britannica feth Edition), Article, "Egypt.
or Paris, I marvel at the denseness of an age which

can put the Egyptian Pharaoh second in the order
of rank.
We now know too much to believe that the
noble simplicity of King Khephren — the builder of
the second pyramid of Gizeh — is the result of in
competence or of limited means in dealing with the
stone out of which he was carved. No artist who
follows the careful lines and profiles of this statue,
and who understands the broad grasp with which
each undulation, however sweeping, comprehends
and comprises all that is essential and indispensable,
can doubt for an instant that the sculptor who
carved it was not only capable of realism, but
infinitely superior to it. And he who does not
admire the consummate Ruler form of this statue,
and see in it the expression of the greatest artistic
power that has ever existed on earth, and probably
the portrait of the greatest human power that has
ever existed on earth, confesses himself, immedi
ately, unfamiliar with the fundamental spirit of
great art.1
The type of King Khephren it is quite impossible
to admire and to like, unless one is to some extent
1 See Dr. Petrie, A History of Egypt. On page 54 of this

book the author says, speaking of King Khephren : " It is a
marvel of art; the precision of the expression combining
what a man should be to win our feelings, and what a King
should be to command our regard. The subtlety shown in
this combination of expression — the ingenuity in the over
shadowing hawk, which does not interfere with the front
view; the technical ability in executing this in so resisting a
material — all unite in fixing our regard on this as one of
the leading examples of ancient art,"
Ki\<; KiiKi
(Cairo Museum. I
in sympathy with his ideals and his aspirations.

His features will remain strange and quite inscrut
able as long as one does not feel one's self leaning,
however slightly, to his side, in thought and
emotion ; but the masterly treatment of his apotheo
sized portrait by a man who was probably his
greatest artist, ought to be apparent to all who
have thought and meditated upon the question of
what constitutes the greatest art.
Here is to be seen that autocratic mode of expres
sion which brooks neither contradiction nor diso
bedience ; the Symmetry which makes the spectator
obtain a complete grasp of an idea; the Sobriety
which reveals the restraint that a position of com
mand presupposes ; the Simplicity proving the power
of a great mind that has overcome the chaos in itself
and has reflected its order and harmony upon an
object, the most essential features of which it has
selected with unfailing accuracy ; the Transfigura
tion that betrays the Dionysian ecstasy and pathos
from which the artist gives of himself to reality and
makes it reflect his own glory back upon him ; the
Repetition which ensures obedience, and finally the
Variety which is the indispensable condition of all
living Art.1
For the artist who carved this monument was no
1 Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, A History of Art in
Ancient Egypt, Vol. II, p. 239: "The true originality of the
Egyptian style consists in its deliberately epitomizing that
upon which the artists of other countries have elaborately
dwelt — in its lavishing all its executive powers upon chief
masses and leading lines, and in the marvellous judgment
with which it sei/es their real meaning, their proportion, and
the sources of their artistic effect."
coward. His duty was to surpass the beauty of

the most beautiful subject on earth in his time. This
man whom he has bequeathed to us in stone was
not only a king, but a god, and none but the most
masterful mind, none but the most ultimate product
of ages spent in the observance of a definite and
particular set of values, could have been capable of
giving this simplified rendering, this selection of
essentials, of a man-god who was the highest out
come of these same values.
How was this possible ? How were these values
maintained so long ?
In the first place, it can now be affirmed with con
fidence that the Egyptians, in the days of Khephren,
were a very pure and united race, having remained*
thanks to their isolated position on the Delta of
the Nile, aloof and free from the ethical and blood
influence of the foreigner for probably thousands
of years. Secondly, everybody seems to agree that,
whatever its ultimate purity may have been, the
Egyptian people, thanks to the inordinate power of
their values, certainly had a capacity for absorbing
and digesting foreign elements wrhich was simply
extraordinary ; l and, thirdly, we have it on the
1 A History of Egypt, by Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, Vol. I,
p. 7 : "Although in so long a space of time as sixty centuries,
events and revolutions of great historical importance must
of necessity have altered the political state of Egypt, yet,
notwithstanding all, the old Egyptian race has undergone
but little change; for it still preserves to this day those
distinctive features of physiognomy, and those peculiarities
of manners and customs, which have been handed down to us
by the united testimony of the monuments and the accounts
of the ancient classical writers, as the hereditary character
istics of this people."
authority of Wilkinson that "the superiority of

their legislation has always been acknowledged as
the cause of the duration of an empire which lasted
with a very uniform succession of hereditary sove
reigns, and with the same form of government for
a much longer period than the generality of ancient
states." 1
We can understand King Khephren, then, only
as the apotheosis of a type which was the product
of the values of his people. For that they loved
him and worshipped him quite willingly and quite
heartily, no honest student of their history can any
longer doubt.
It was with great rejoicings, and not, as Buckle
and Spencer thought, with the woeful and haggard
faces of ill-used slaves, that his people assembled
annually to continue and to complete the building
of his pyramid. Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, Wilkin
son, Dr. Petrie,2 and many others have cleared up
1 The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians
Vol. I, p. 293.
2 A History of Egypt, p. 40 : "It is said that a hundred
thousand men were levied for three months at a time (i. e.
during the three months of the inundation, when ordinary
labour would be at a standstill); and on this scale the
pyramid building occupied twenty years." [He is speaking of
the Great Pyramid built by Kheops, Khephren 's predecessor;
but this does not affect my contention.] "On reckoning
number and weight of the 'stones, this labour
suffice for the work. The skilled masons had largewould fully
barracks,
now behind the second pyramid, which might hold even four
thousand men; but perhaps a thousand would quite suffice
to do all the fine work in the time. Hence there was no
impossibility in the task, and no detriment to the country in
employing a small proportion of the population at a season
when they were all idle by the compulsion of natural causes.
all our doubts on this point, and only an English

man like Buckle,1 who could not divorce labour
from the modern idea of sweating, and absolute
monarchy from the modern idea of cruelty, and
slavery from the modern idea of brutality,2 was
able to think otherwise.
For it was highly probable that King Khephren
had no standing army. It is certain that his pre
decessor had not.3 It is even probable that he had
The training and skill which they would acquire by such
work would be a great benefit to the national character."
And the same writer says in The Pyramids and Temples of
Gizeh, p. 211 : "Thus we see that the traditional accounts that
we have of the means employed in building the great
Pyramid, require conditions of labour supply which are quite
practicable in such a land, which would not be ruinous to the
prosperity of the country, or oppressive to the people, and
which would amply and easily suffice for the execution of
their work."
1 History of Civilization in England (Ed. 1871), Vol. I,
pp. 90, 91, 92, 93. And Herbert Spencer's Autobiography,
Vol. II, pp. 341-343.
2 Quite typical of Western inability to understand the
basis of a patriarchal government, and of the misinterpreta
tion of such a form, which writers like Buckle did their best
to increase and spread, was the first Act of the play Fallen
Idols, recently presented at His Majesty's Theatre, London,
in which Egyptian slaves were seen cringing and crawling
before an inhuman taskmaster, who continually lashed out
at them with a big whip.
3 Fergusson, History of Architecture, Vol. I, p. 95 : "Nor
is our wonder less when we ask ourselves how it happened
that such a people became so strongly organized at that
early age as to be willing to undertake the greatest archi
tectural works the world has since seen in honour of one
man from among themselves. A king without an army, and
with no claim, so far as we can see, to such an honour,
beyond the common consent of all, which could hardly have
been attained except by the title of long-inherited services
acknowledged by the community at large." And on p. 94,
speaking of the pictures in the Great Pyramid, the author
no armed bodyguard. What, then, was the power

which, every year, could muster thousands of his
fellow-countrymen about him, and which induced
them cheerfully to undertake this most strenuous,
this most skilful, and this most highly artistic
labour for him ?
This power, there can no longer be any doubt,
was the power of affection and profound and sincere
reverence. An examination of the pyramids of
Gizeh, alone, apart from all historical evidence,
is sufficient to convince any one who has any know
ledge of what forced labour produces, that love
was very largely active in the work of these Egyp
tians of the third and fourth dynasties; 1 and, if we
turn from the actual monuments themselves to the
sculpture that adorned them, we become convinced
that the people who built them were a united, law-
abiding race, who recognized in Khephren the
highest product of their values.
says : " On these walls the owner of the tomb is usually
represented seated, offering first-fruits on a simple table-
altar to an unseen god. He is generally accompanied by his
wife, and surrounded by his stewards, who enumerate his
wealth in horned cattle, in oxen, in sheep and goats, in
geese and ducks. In other pictures some are ploughing and
sowing, some reaping or thrashing out corn, while others
are tending his tame monkeys or cranes, and other domesti
cated pets. Music and dancing add to the circle of domestic
enjoyments, and fowling and fishing occupy his days of
leisure. No sign of soldiers or of warlike strife appears in
any of these pictures, no arms, no chariots or horses. No
camels suggest foreign travel."
1 I should like to reproduce here Fergusson's enthusiastic
account of the work in the interior of the Great Pyramid.
I have not space, however, and earnestly recommend readers
to refer to it on pp. 93, 94 of Vol. I in his History of
Architecture.
And yet, that enormous power was wielded by this

one man-god, is proved by every detail that history
and the archaeological records have handed down to
us. He was the remote predecessor of a king who
one day wrould be able to declare —
" I teach the priests what is their duty : I turn
away the ignorant man from his ignorance. . . .
The gods are full of delight in my time, and their
temples celebrate feasts of joy. I have placed the
boundaries of the land of Egypt at the horizon. I
gave protection to those who were in trouble, and
smote those who did evil against them. I placed
Egypt at the head of all the nations, because its
inhabitants are at one with me in the worship of
Amon !" x
He was a man the moral standards of whose
people were in many respects higher than those of
the Greeks ; 2 he and his subjects felt very strongly
the value of strength of character and of self-
control; 3 though perhaps they laid "greater stress
upon discretion and quietness than on any qualities
of character. In the repudiation of sins an Egyp
tian would say : ' My mouth hath not run on ; '
' My mouth hath not been hot ; ' ' My voice hath
not been voluble in my speech ; ' ' My voice is not
loud.'"4
"Ptahotep urged similar discreetness; he said:
4 Let thy heart be overflowing, but let thy mouth be
1 Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt under the
Pharaohs, Vol. I, pp. 444-445.
2 Dr. Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt,
p. 86.
3 Ibid., p. 112. 4 Ibid., p. 116.
restrained.'"1 While another Egyptian moralist

said : " Do not be a talker ! " 2
Thus we find all the evidences of precisely that
principle which goes to rear a great people
the belief that restraint is necessary, and part of
the art of life, and that in order to have one group
of advantages, another group must be sacrificed.
For this is the principle of all great legislation ;
it is the principle of all great art, — and it is the
principle of all great life.
A great legislator has to discover what sacrifices
his people can afford to make, what things they will
be able for ever to discard in order to reap the
advantages of a certain mode of life. His teaching
must include restraint. It is the renunciation of
some things and the careful cultivation of others
that builds up a noble type. As Mr. Chesterton
once observed, with really uncustomary wisdom,
you cannot be King of England and the Beadle of
Balham at the same time. To be the one you must
sacrifice the advantages which are associated with
the other. All values, all art,3 and all life is based
upon this principle— that if you grasp all, you lose
all; or, as Nietzsche has it: "The belief in the
Dr. Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Kpypt
p. 116.
2 ^^ p' "7< This moralist was Any.
G. £., p 107: "Every artist knows how different from
the state of letting himself go, is his ' most natural ' con-
ion, the free arranging, locating, disposing and con-
iting m the moments of ' inspiration '—and how strictly
and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their
very r.gidness and precision, defy all formulation by
means
pleasure which comes of restraint — this pleasure of

a rider on a fiery steed." 1
You may argue that the enjoyment of one set of
joys is better in your opinion than the enjoyment
of another set; but you cannot claim the enjoyment
of all; that is impossible. It is only among an
uncultured or democratic people that every one
aspires to all pleasures, and it is precisely among
such a people that some form of Puritanism becomes
an urgent need — that is to say, as a substitute for the
art of life.2 Because the indiscriminate pursuit of
all joys perforce ends in failure, and therefore in
unhappiness. But measure is the delight only of
aesthetic natures;3 hence, where the art of living
has not yet been learned, some kind of severe puri
tanical morality will be a condition of existence,
and if that is dropped excesses will soon begin to
make their presence felt.
I do not wish you to imagine, therefore, that the
Egyptians were an austere, ascetic and self-castigat
ing race; on the contrary, as all authorities declare,
they were full of the joy of life and of the love of
life ; 4 and it was precisely because they recognized
well-defined limits in particular things that they
could allow themselves a certain margin in others.
1 IF. P., Vol. II, p. 309.
in 2England,
See Nietzsche's remarks
G. E., p. 211. on the great need of Christianity
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 309.
4 See Brugsch-Bey, A History of Egypt, Vol. I, p. 25;
Wilkinson, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians, Vol. I, p. 156; Georges Perrot and Charles
Chipiez, A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, p. 38; Dr.
Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt, p. 162.
xA
In the art of Egypt I recognized this principle of

restraint, long before I discovered that it existed
in their life and system of society, and I was not
surprised to find it observed with greater severity
by their rulers than by the mass of the people
themselves.1
No one can command who has not first learnt
to obey his own will. Nobody could command as
that Man-God Khephren commanded,2 before he
had become complete master of himself.
"He who cannot command himself shall obey,"
says Zarathustra.3 And about five thousand years
ago Ptahotep — the great moralist of the fifth
dynasty of Egypt — said : " He that obeyeth his
heart, shall command ! " 4
This atmosphere is strange to us. We, who are
used to seeing liberty and authority granted indis
criminately as ends in themselves, to everybody and
anybody, find it difficult to realize this manner of
thought. If we know of it at all, we misunderstand
it and confound the moderation of weak natures
with the restraint of the strong.5
This art of life which takes as a fundamental
principle that every joy is bought by some sacrifice,
1 Sec Wilkinson, Vol. I, p. 179.
2 See Ibid., p. 167. Where he is speaking of the
Pharaohs he says : '* By the practice of justice towards
their subjects, they secured to themselves that pood-will
which was due from children to a parent . . . and this,
Diodorus observes, was the main cause of the duration of the
Egyptian state."
3 Z., Ill, LVI.
4 Dr. Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient
p. 120.
5 W. P., Vol. II, p. 309.
Q
is strange and archaic now. The people it reared

communicate little to our age, as their statues will
prove if you look at them ; the art it created leaves
modern spectators cold; and yet, as every great
legislator and artist should know, it is precisely
upon the principle with which the Egyptian people
of the fourth dynasty were reared, and with which
the splendid statue of King Khephren was carved,
that all great life and art repose.
It cannot be said too often, therefore, that the
Egyptians were a happy and contented people, and
this they were because there was some power abroad
in their world, and because he who wielded that
power could make them believe that the human race
was as high as a pyramid, although but one man
perhaps could ever represent the apex.
B. The Lady Nophret.

But you may object that in some of the works of
this period the Egyptian artists showed a lack of
restraint, a lack of the instinct that knows how much
to sacrifice, which far surpassed this same vice in
the art of the Greeks. You may point to the per
fectly stupendous realism of the Lady Nophret and
her husband or brother, and declare with Fergusson
that "nothing more wonderfully truthful and real
istic has been done since that time, till the invention
of photography." 1
I confess that when I drew near to these statues
in the Museum at Cairo, it is no exaggeration to
1 History of Architecture, Vol. I, p. 95.
TIIK LAKY N
(Cairo Museum.)
say that I was literally startled by their lifelike

appearance. Like Miss Jane Harrison, I felt that
the "Lady Nophret," at least, must be able to rise
and come forward,1 so ridiculously fresh and warm
did she appear in her spotless white dress and her
majestic wig. I soon realized that I was in the
presence of a kind of realism which transcended
anything I had ever seen in ancient or modern art,
for its convincingness and truth ; and it was difficult
to believe that this piece of wholesale deception —
certainly more perfect than any waxwork figure I
had ever known, — like the statue of the Man-God
Khephren, was a product of the pyramid period.
You must not gather, from what I have just said,
that the Lady Nophret is in the slightest degree as
vulgar or as commonplace as an ordinary waxwork
figure or modern portrait. Though its vitality
cannot be denied,2 there are artistic qualities in
the simple moulding of the figure which place it
very much higher than the realistic work either of
ancient Greece or of modern Europe. It is only
beside the statue of King Khephren that it appears
so weak; and, as it is almost a contemporary of
this magnificent person, the manner in which it has
been presented to us by the artist seems to be a
problem.
1 Miss Jane Harrison, Introductory Studies in Greek Art,
p. 6.
3 Dr. Petrie, A History of Egypt, p. 35. Referring to
the Lady Nophret and her husband, the author says (speak
ing quite in the style of a modern prt-critic) : "These statues
are most expressive, and stand in their vitality superior to the
works of any later age in Egypt."
Q 2
The first lesson it teaches you is this — that what

ever you may think about the conventionalism of
King Khephren, such conventionalism has nothing
whatever to do with archaic clumsiness, inability
to see Nature, or incompetence. It is clear that the
Egyptians were greater masters in rendering nature
realistically than any people before or after them.1
If they had not been, they could never have pro
duced the portrait-statues of the architect Ti; the
two portrait-statues of Ranofir, priest of Ptah of
Memphis, and that of the Scribe and of the Cheikh-
el-Beled 2 — all in the museum at Cairo.
When they are not realistic, then, it is because
they do not wish to be; it is because they deliber
ately desire to rise above nature, to transfigure it,
simplify it, and arrange it— in fact, to be artists.
What, then, was the object of these realistic
portrait-statues about which I have chosen to speak
collectively in my references to the Lady Nophret ?
They were never intended by the artist who made
them to be seen by the eye of man. They were
never intended to be works of Ruler-art, set up to
emphasize and underline the values of a people.
They had a definite purpose, of course, but this
1 On the walls of some of the tombs I inspected at Sakarah,

the consummate mastery with which some of the minutest
characteristics of domestic animals were represented in bold
outline gave me a standard by the side of which even
M. Boutet de Monvel's beautiful studies of animals seemed
to fall into the shade. (See his illustrations to La Fon
taine's fables.)
2 Models of the Scribe and of the Cheikh-el-Beled are to
be seen at the British Museum ; but they give one but a poor
idea of the originals.
purpose was quite foreign to that of Art as I defined

it in my last lecture. What was this purpose?
It was related to Death.1 No realistic sculptural
work was associated with Life by the ancient
Egyptians. As men who were still able to believe
in a Man-God, and were still convinced of the
power of man-wrought miracles, how could they
associate realism or that principle of manufacture
whereby a man deliberately suppresses his will to
art and makes himself subservient to nature — how
could they associate this with Life, — Life which to
these dwellers on the Nile was inextricably bound
up with the hand, the thought, the will, and the
power of man ?
No — these realistic sculptures which throw all
our puerile Police Art into the shade were associated
not with Life, but with the opposite of Life — with
Death, with underground tombs and sarcophagi,
with mummies and musty mastabas, and with the
hope of conquering Eternal Sleep.
The Egyptians believed that a living man con
sisted of a body, a Ka or ghost, and a Ba or soul.
At death, the Ka and Ba were supposed to be
liberated; but it was hoped that a day would never
theless come when the Ka, which was the element
in which the life of the deceased person was
1 Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, A History of Art
in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II, p. 181. Speaking of these por
trait statues, they say: "They were not ideal figures to
which the desire for beauty of line and expression had much
to say ; they were stone bodies, bodies which had to reproduce
all the individual contours of their flesh-and-blood originals ;
when the latter was ugly, its reproduction had to be ugly
also, and ugly in the same way."
specially believed to reside, would come back to

the body and effect its resurrection. Hence the
care with which a body was embalmed and pre
served from putrefaction.
Accidents, however, might happen, thought the
ancient Egyptians. The embalmed mummy might
perish, it might be destroyed. What would the
unfortunate Ka do, if it returned and found the
mummy of its former body annihilated? A way
out of this difficulty quickly occurred to the nimble
minds of these imaginative people. If the mummy
had perished, they thought, the Ka might possibly
enter an effigy of its former body, provided that
effigy were sufficiently lifelike. In this way the
realistic Ka-statues were introduced, and for fear
Jest even these might perish, wealthy people would
sometimes multiply their number to what would
seem a ridiculous extent.
Once they were manufactured, these Ka-statues
would be placed far away from the sight of living
man, in the tomb of the departed person, and in
this way his resurrection was supposed to be
ensured.1
For the Egyptians could imagine no world
1 See Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez, A History
of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II, p. 181. Speaking of the
arrangements which were necessary to enable the inhabit
ants of the tomb to resist annihilation, the authors say :
"Those arrangements were of two kinds, a provision of food
and drink, which had to be constantly renewed, either in fact
or by the magic multiplication which followed prayer, and a
permanent support
should fill the place for theliving
of the Ka orbody
'double, a support
of which that
it had been
deprived by dissolution."
GREECE AND EGYPT
better than their own. And even a resurrection

could but occur amid surroun dings which were as
like as possible to those of everyday life on earth.
The realism of the Ka-statue of the Lady
Nophret, therefore, need not frighten us. On the
contrary, it only helps to throw the transfiguration
and power of King Khephren's diorite statue into
greater relief. The Egyptians knew perfectly well
that a Ka-statue was only a duplication, a copy,
and a repetition of reality, and they knew also that
its proper place was underground and out of sight.1
If Lady Nophret and her companion Ka-statues
had never been found, however, we might have
believed, as many have believed, that the conven
tionalism of Egyptian sculpture was beneath instead
of very much above Nature.
But even when we know what we do know, it is
only with the utmost difficulty that an artist who
is a child of this weak and impotent age can feel
any love for these strange, transcendentally power
ful, and almost superhuman figures in granite and
diorite which the sculptors of Egypt have left us.
The artist may perhaps get nearer to them than
any one else in his age, because he, by virtue of
the modicum of creative power that is in him,
initiates himself almost automatically into the
1 Oknkurn-Kakuzo passes a funny remark in regard to our
modern realistic portraits; he says : "In Western houses we
are often confronted with what appears to us useless reii
lion. We find it trying to talk to a man while his full-lengtr
portrait stares at us from behind his back. We wonder
which is real, he of the picture, or he who talks, and leel
a curious conviction that one of them must be a fraud. -
The Book of Tea, p. 97.
mysteries of this great Egyptian simplicity, order,

and transfiguration. But others who are not artists
can only pass them by. For these figures are the
apotheosis of a particular type. They are what
all art should be, a stimulus, and a spur to a life
based upon a definite set of values. How, then,
could people stop and admire them who are living
under values which are possibly the very reverse
of those which this art advocates, or under no
definite values at all ?
The style of the statue of King Khephren, with
but a few modifications, was the style of all
Egyptian statuary until the days of Psammetichus,
over two thousand years later : how can we, the
changeable and restless children of Europe, under
stand these things ?
C. The Pyramid.
How can we admire and understand even the
symbol of King Khephren's social organization —
the Pyramid, when we know and love only the
level plain ?
The Pyramid, which in its form embodies all the
highest qualities of great art, and all the highest
principles of a healthy society, is the greatest
artistic achievement that has been discovered
hitherto.
This symbolic wedlock of Art and Sociology still
stands, with all its six thousand years of age, on
the threshold of the desert — tKat is to say, on the
threshold of chaos and disorder, where none but
GREECE AND EGYFf 233
the wind attempts to shape and to form ; and re

minds us of a master will that once existed and set
its eternal stamp upon the face of the world in
Egypt, so that posterity might learn whether
mankind had risen or declined.
In its synthesis of the three main canons, sim
plicity, repetition and variety,1 nothing has ever
excelled it; in its mystic utterance of the conditions
of the ideal state, in which every member takes his
place and ultimately succeeds in holding highest
man uppermost and nearest the sun, it is unparal
leled in history; and in its sacred revelation that
Man can attain to some height if he chooses, that
he can believe in Man the God, and Man the Hiero-
phant, and Man the Prophet, if he chooses, and
that he can be noble, happy, lasting and powerful
in so doing — in this treble advocacy of these
sublime ideals, the pyramid and the Egyptians who
created it stand absolutely alone in the history of
the world.
The best in Greece was borrowed from them ; the
best we still possess is perhaps but a faint after
glow of their setting sun, and the cold and un
familiar tone in which their art seems to appeal to
modern men ought to prove to us how remote,
how incalculably far off, they are from our insig-
1 See Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (Ed. 1753), p. 21 :
"There is no object composed of straight lines that has so
much variety, with so few parts, as the pyramid : and it is ils
constantly varying from its base gradually upwards in every
situation of the eye (without giving the idea of sameness as
the eye moves round it) that has made it esteemed in all ages,
in preference to the cone, which in all views appears nearly
the same, being varied only by light and shade."
nificant age of progress and advancement, of

feebleness and mediocrity, and of hopeless errors,
in which "the prince proposes, but the shopkeeper
disposes ! " x
I cannot go into the details of their society with
you now. I can but assure you that the more you
read about it in the works of men like Wilkinson,
Petrie and Brugsch-Bey, the more convinced you
will become of its transcendental superiority. And
if, in praising their art above that of any other
nation, I have been forced to deal all too hastily
with their morals and their State, it is simply
because I can conceive of no such perfect art being
possible, save as the flower of the noble and man-
exalting values which I find at the base of the
Egyptian Pyramid.
In identifying Nietzsche's art canon with that
admired and respected by Egypt at its best, I have
done nothing at all surprising to those who know
Nietzsche's philosophy. Everything he says on
Art in his maturest work, The Will to Power, drove
me inevitably, not to Italy, not to Greece, not to
Holland, and not to India — but to the Valley of
the Nile; while in two books already published
I forestalled these lectures, in one respect, by
declaring Nietzsche's ideal aristocratic state to have
been based symbolically upon the idea of the
Egyptian Pyramid.
Only a romantic idealist would have the senti
mental fanaticism to stand up before you now to
preach an Egyptian Renaissance. I wish to do
1 Z., Ill, LI.
nothing of the sort. I know too well to what extent

the Art of Egypt was the product of a people reared
by a definite set of inviolable values, to hope to
transplant it with any chance of success on to our
democratic and anarchical. soil. What I do wish to
advocate, however, is, that when you think of the
best in Art, your mind should go back to the severe
and vigorous culture of Egypt and not to that of
any other country.
This will at least give you a standard of measure
ment, according to which most of the culture of the
present day will strike you as tawdry and putres-
cent. In this way a salutary change may be brought
about, and the words of Disraeli concerning the
Egyptians may also come true, in which he said :
"The day may yet come when we shall do justice
to the high powers of that mysterious and imagin
ative people." 1
Nothing can be done, however, until our type
is purified,2 until we have at least become a people.
For until that time it will be impossible to discover
a type which may become the subject-matter of the
graphic arts.
"Upwards life striveth to build itself with
columns and stairs : into remote distances it long-
eth to gaze : and outwards after blissful beauties
—therefore it needeth height !
1 Contarini Fleming.
3 W. P., Vol. II, p. 318: "Purification of taste can only
be the result of strengthening of the type;" and p. 403 :
" Progress is the strengthening of the type, the ability to
exercise great will power; everything else is a misunder
standing and a danger."
"And because it needeth height, it needeth stairs

and contradiction between stairs, and those who
can climb ! to rise striveth life, and in rising to
surpass itself !
"Verily, he who here towered aloft his thought
in stone knew as well as the wisest ones about the
secret of life !
"That there is struggle and inequality even in
beauty and war for power and supremacy : that
doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.
"Thus spake Zarathustra." l
1 Z., II. XXIX.
Richard Clay &• Sent, Lintittd> London and Bungay.

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B

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

" Rien n'est beau que le vrai, dit un vers respecte" ;

"We philosophers are never more delighted than when we

literature, without paying very dearly for these

slavishly dependent upon environment for its exist

the wells of inner riches; (3) the disbelief in free

left insufficiently substantiated. In the end I found

attain to a high level, even in ones, twos, or threes,

In quoting from German authorities, where I

It only remains for me to thank the Committee

THE STATE OF MODERN ART. . 7

Deductions from Part 1'— Nietzsche 's Art Principles

NIETZSCHE'S ART PRINCIPLES IN THE HISTORY OF ART

2. EGYPTIAN ART . . . . . 2I5

THE MARRIAGE OF MARY, by Raphael (Brera,

E.I. - The Future of our Educational Institutions.

" Therefore is the name of it called Babel ; because the Lord

"CONCERNING great things," said Nietzsche, "one

religious solemnity with which Nietzsche ap

principles to any particular branch or branches of

In taking Nietzsche's Art principles and Art

taught in this book, there is no greater antithesis

that would live without dispute about weight and

1 Z., II, XXXV. See also La Bruyere's reply to his

blocked highways. How could a torrent help but

The State of Modern Art.

when Teaism was in the ascendancy in Japan,

inevitable, when all aesthetic canons have been

that, in every department of modern life where

the matter may be, we, as simple inquirers, have

light convert their hideousness into a sort of lugu

"Since the days of Beethoven," says Emil

But of all modern musical critics, perhaps

The Fine Arts. — i. The Artists.

To have gazed with understanding at the divine

are the things which are found in the productions

covers everything. For the present purpose, how

because there is no criterion to guide us. It will

the public for their bad taste, Philistinism and

likes. Even if he does utter a heresy at times

school, and doubt the honesty even of his leader.

of up-to-date people, in whose minds Art in general

We know the difficulties of the layman, and even

the first couple I shall be going in such and such a

very justly remarks, they live by stinging; but their

Finding themselves forced to speak of other

explain their own understanding and enjoyment of

4. Some Art Criticisms.

criticisms that have actually been made. It will

"Here an art-critic meets a number of Mr. John's

the particular sense in which he wishes them to be

these critics "acclaim" novelty, in whatever garb

matter is not so obvious as to allow us to make the

No one seems to feel nowadays that a picture,

44 ... To them gave he power to become the sons of

Two eminent Englishmen of the last century,

ing to a psychological misapprehension which is,

"Man unlearns the art of doing, and all he does

patient who pours his curses on the head of a noisy