Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/752

732 kind. According to a recent definition of art, that of Mr. Benjamin, "Art may be said, in a general way, to spring from the poetic yearnings and emotions suggested by aspirations after the true, the good, and the beautiful. . . . the material means for expressing such feelings appealing to the imagination through the eye by the use of external forms." The highest art, according to this definition, must include the good, the true, and the beautiful; the physically beautiful, or the beautiful and the good, is not the aim of the highest art; the true must be added for a work that shall rank as such for all time.

A painting or a statue may be beautiful, as interpreting the emotions or religious beliefs of man at any particular epoch of bis history; but, if the ideas symbolized or suggested become untrue or unbeliefs, they thereby lose in artistic value, and no longer belong to the domain of the highest art. Nothing that is simply temporary, no mere conventionalism, however beautiful at the time, which becomes unnatural or impossible as man advances in knowledge, can, in my opinion, belong to the highest art.

Any one who discusses the principles of art from the point of view of the true, without reference to the beautiful, labors under great disadvantages, arising chiefly from the intimate connection between art and religion. Most of the best works of the old and modern masters, in painting especially, embody the theologic beliefs of the period, and suggest ideas of spiritual, not of physical truth. As there is evolution in nature and in theology, let us hope there is also evolution in art; we can not stand still in any matters of knowledge, for, if we go not forward, we practically go backward, as all the interests of humanity will leave us behind.

The faith in spiritual truths which artists embody by symbols, without being of necessity weakened, will be modified by knowledge, and thus render forms once suggestive of beauty and goodness now untrue and monstrous. I know that the old objection will be urged that, though scientific truths rest upon reason, there are spiritual truths incapable of demonstration, emotions above and beyond reason. Even educated persons have very indefinite and very different ideas on the nature of the mental evidence arising from religious aspirations, and the wish is very apt to be "father to the thought" in symbolic representations of supernatural attributes and powers.

There may be no contradiction in the belief in the existence of spiritual beings far above us in power, and that such may even communicate with mankind in various ways; but, if they assume to the eye the shape and functions of humanity, they should be made to conform to the laws of human anatomy and physiology.

Those who are easily and strongly moved by these spiritual emotions will not listen to reason, which they maintain has nothing to do in the premises. Let such cling to their spiritual truths, and to the artistic representations which embody and suggest them, and regard