Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/88

 74 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is not stirred by Matthew Arnold's majestic image of the "weary Titan" "staggering under the too vast orb of her fate" ? In the gropings of a vast collective life towards self-consciousness, swift-divining genius finds just that hint which incites it to imagine and to glorify a gigantic group personality.

If he but keep the epic attitude, the artist, however narrow his sympathies, will be apt to cast his influence on the side of order. For though he spurn codes and creeds he cannot dis- avow that morality which lies at the base of all association. Equally indifferent though he be to all men he will feel the reasonableness and Tightness of those sentiments which will not let one live as if there were no other will in the world. So he holds the beam level between clashing individuals he will insensibly be led to consecrate the dictates of an elementary justice. But when he becomes subjective he loses this impartial view. The thoroughly modern and decadent aim of the artist to express himself, rather than to give what he sees or imagines, helps to explain the more frequent outcropping in literature of a deeply anti-social individualism.

Again, sociability runs hand in hand with the very technique of the artist. The delight he aims to confer flows from the felt harmony of self with other beings. Despise the multitude as he may, the artist is still alive to the charm of some people, and so after all levels his appeal at our sympathies. Take from his palette love, affinity, and loyalty and there would be little left save the elementary beauty of form and color and motion. Everywhere in works of art we find some clear note of socia- bility.

The individual artist is often the flower of an entire civiliza- tion. He sends his root fibers far and wide into the culture of his time, which culture is already social. Moreover, in what- ever medium he works he comes in contact with traditions, canons, models and ideals 1 which have been elaborated for that

the author of the present work is at all acquainted." POSNETT, Comparative Litera- ture, p. 129.
 * "Signs of communal literary culture are to be found in any literature with which