Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/221

 FINE A II T 21J turn. Part of the pleasures of sculpture, and a larger part of those of painting, are independent of the representation of natural facts, and depend only, like the pleasures of architecture, on abstract properties of line, colour, andlight- and-shade. In like manner part of the pleasures of poetry are independent of the images which the words in poetry call up, and depend only, like the pleasures of music, on the melody and emotional suggestiveness of the sounds of those words as they are combined in the line or stanza. It is impossible to distinguish how much of this pleasure which is received by the eye and ear respectively apart from imitation is purely organic pleasure of the senses, and how much is plea sure derived from the association of particular forms, hues, and sounds with desirable and beneficent qualities. Certain it is that there are figures and combinations of line, and p .itterns and arrangements of colour, and successions, transi tions, and oppositions of sound, which affect our senses with an organic pleasure ; and certain it is no less that there are others which seem to affect them with a similar pleasure from being unconsciously associated in our minds with ex periences of efficiency, beneficence, or power. The point at which these kindred pleasures merge into one another it does not here concern us to distinguish, if we could. It is .sufficient that the effects of architecture and music depend, as we have learned, almost entirely on their appeal to these pleasures ; while the effects of sculpture, painting, and poetry, depending mainly on the pleasures derived from idealized representation of fact, depend on the others also in a secondary but none the less in an indispensable degree. Thus, the outlines, intervals, and shadows of the masses in a work of sculpture are bound to be such as would please the eye, whether the statue or relief represented the figure of anything real in the world or not. The flow and balance of line, and the distribution of colours and light-and-shade,in a picture are bound to be such as would make an agreeable pattern although they bore no resemblance to natural fact (as, indeed, many subordinate applications of this art, in decorative painting and geometrical and other ornaments, do, we know r, give pleasure though they represent nothing). The sound of a line or verse in poetry is bound to be such as would thrill the physical ear in hearing, or the mental ear in reading, with a delightful excitement even though the meaning went for nothing. If the imitative arts are to touch and elevate the emotions, if they are to afford per manent delight of the due pitch and volume, it is not a more essential law that their imitation should be of the order which we have defined as ideal, than that they should at the same time exhibit these independent effects which they share with the non-imitative group. Having now sufficiently drawn attention to the effects presented by the several greater fine arts as divided into an imitative and a non-imitative group, and having found that division the most convenient for the general discus sion of the nature of the several arts, if not the most important for practice, we may now pass to another point of view, and consider very briefly the results which are gained by a third mode of classification. 3. The Serviceable and the Non-Serviceable Arts. It has ) Ceil established from the outset that, though the essential distinction f mie art is to minister not to necessity but to delight, yet among the arts of men there are some which do both these things at once, and add beauty, or the quality w hich gives us delight, to use, or the quality which satisfies our needs. This double character is inseparable, among the five greater arts, from architecture. We build in the first instance for the sake of necessary shelter and accommoda tion. By and by w r e find out that the aspect of our con structions is pleasurable or the reverse. Architecture is the art of building at once as we need and as we like, and a practical treatise on architecture must treat the beauty and the utility of buildings as bound up together. But for our present purpose it has been proper to take into account one half only of the vocation of architecture, the half by which it gives dslight, and belongs to that which is the subject of our study, to fine art ; and to neglect the other half of its vocation, by which it belongs to what is not the subject of our study, to useful or mechanical art. It is plain, however, that the presence or absence of this foreign element, the element of utility, constitutes a fair ground for a separate classification of the fine arts. If wo took tho five greater arts only, architecture would on this ground stand alone in one division, as the useful or serviceable fine art; with sculpture, painting, music, and poetry together in the other division, as fine arts unasso- ciated with direct use or service. Not that the divisions would, even thus, be quite sharply and absolutely separated. Didactic poetry, wo have already acknowledged, is a brunch of the poetic art which aims at practice and utility. Again, the hortatory and patriotic kinds of lyric poetry, from the strains of Tyrtseus to those of Arndt or Rouget de Lisle, may fairly be said to belong to a phase of fine art which is directly concerned, if not with practical needs, at any rate with practical duties. So may the strains of music which accompany such poetry. The same practical char acter, as stimulating and attuning the mind to definite ends and actions, might indeed have been claimed for the greater part of the whole art of music, as that art was practised in antiquity, when each of several prescribed and highly elaborated moods, or modes, of melody were sup posed to have a known effect upon the courage and moral temper of the hearer. In modern music, of which the elements, much more complex in themselves than those of ancient music, have the effect of stirring our fibres to snoods of rapturous contemplation rather than of action, military strains in march time are the only purely instru mental variety of the art which may still be said to retain this character. To reinforce, however, the serviceable or useful division of fine arts in our present classification, it is not among the greater arts that we must look. We must look among the lesser or auxiliary arts of the manual or shaping group. The potter, the joiner, the weaver, the smith, the goldsmith, the glass-maker, these and a hundred artificers who produce wares primarily for use, produce them in a form or with embellishments that have the secondary virtue of giving pleasure to the user. Much ingenuity has been spent to little purpose in attempting to group and classify these lesser shaping arts under one or other of the greater shap ing arts, according to the nature of the means employed in each. Thus the potter s art has been classed under sculp ture, because he moulds in solid form the shapes of his cups, plates, and ewers ; the art of the joiner under that of the architect, because his tables, seats, and cupboards, are fitted and framed together, like the houses they furnish, out of solid materials previously prepared and cut ; and we our selves had occasion above to class the weaver and embroid erer, from the point of view of the effects produced by their art, among painters. But the truth is, that each one of these auxiliary handicrafts has its own materials and technical procedure, which cannot, without forcing and con fusion, be described by the name proper to the materials and technical procedure of any of the greater arts. The only satisfactory classification of these handicrafts is that now before us, according to which we think of them all together in the same group with architecture, not because any one or more of them may be technically allied to that art, but because, like it, they all yield products capable of being at the same time useful and beautiful. Architecture is the art which fits and frames together, of stone, brick, timber, or iron, tlie abiding and assembling places of