Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/79

 SOCIAL CONTROL 65

pleasure that comes in moments of enlargement and solidarity. Art is "an ensemble of means of producing that general and harmonious stimulation of the conscious life which constitutes i the sentiment of the beautiful." ' In times of decadence it may 1 become merely a means for producing agreeable -sensations, a kind of decorative fringe. But in its best estate it is interpre- tative and appeals to the emotions. "The true object of art is the expression of life." " It is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our compact with our fellow -men beyond the bounds of our personal lot." 2

The taproot of selfishness is weakness of imagination. "We can sympathize only with what we can picture to ourselves ; and the inability to feel for another simply means inability to grasp by means of the imagination the experiences through which that other is passing." 3 So far as the artist by his warmth of imagi- nation releases from the closed chamber of self he conciliates the individual and society. Oftener, however, his task is to give to sympathy range rather than force. Life rather than art is the first nurse of sympathy. But with most people their con- tacts with others are quite too few. Fellow feeling for those they j meet is not enough because their life circle is too narrow. They I need a magic that shall lift into view what is below their horizon. ' Perhaps the chief ethical function of art, therefore, is to supply those imaginative contacts by which local groups are conciliated and the segments of society cemented together.

The artist, like Le Sage's Asmodeus, waves aside all roofs. He shows us in another sex, class, lot, group, race, or age the old passions, longings, hopes, fears, and sorrows we have so often supped and bedded with. So he calls forth fellow feeling and knits anew the ever-raveling social web. Without his fila- ments to bind hearts together it is doubtful if the vast groups of today could last. Certainly a nation like ours could not endurej without the mutual comprehension and sympathy established/ within the folk-mass by artists living and dead. It is they who!

1 / 'Art an point de vut sociologique, p. 1 6.

'GEORGE ELIOT. HUDSON, Tht Church and Stage, p. 68.