Chapter 7

RELIGION AND ART

Eucken has written less on this subject than on any of those which constitute the headings of the chapters of this book. But he has treated art in precisely the same manner as he has treated all other important problems: he has shown that no great art is possible unless it is rooted in a creativeness which is _spiritual_. In his _Main Currents of Modern Thought_ we get an instructive account of art and its relation to morality. His account of the development of art in modern times, from the Renaissance to the present day, shows the ebb and flow of the conception of the Beautiful. The check which the Renaissance received through the Reformation in relation to art had its good as well as its evil side. Intense scorn arose in the Protestant world for every kind of image and decoration, because these were supposed to posit life on what was purely sensuous and natural, and so bar the way to the Divine. Still, the obstruction [p.120] created by Protestantism in this direction opened a door in quite another direction. Art of a higher kind than picture or statue arose, which was far removed from the sensuous level and which emerged from a deeper soil within the soul. The whole series of musical composers produced by Germany is a proof of this. The period of the _Aufklärung_ viewed art with scant favour, but with the rise of the New Humanism a change in favour of art took place.

The origin of this change is to be found where one might least expect it--in the soul of the sage of Königsberg. Kant's _Critique of Judgment_ is unanimously allowed to be the greatest book ever produced on the subject. Goethe and Schiller were influenced by it--the latter in a remarkable manner. We find in these writers an effort to unite the Good and the Beautiful. It is impossible to read the poetry of Goethe without finding that great moral problems are imbedded in his conceptions of the Beautiful. His poetry is an attempt to bridge the chasm between the external world and the soul. His nature was too deep to remain satisfied with the mere impressions of the senses. The union of the world _without_ with the world _within_ gave him a view of the universe and of human life full of originality and suggestiveness.

Schiller worked in practically the same direction. A moral standpoint of a high order [p.121] is to be discovered in his writings, and he believed this standard to be possible of preservation alongside of a legitimate "freedom granted in the phenomenon." "Then the two tendencies again became divided. Romanticism gave a peculiar definite and self-conscious expression to the priority of art and the aesthetical view of life, while Fichte and the other leaders of the national movement exerted a powerful influence in the direction of strengthening morality. The social and industrial type of civilisation, which became more and more powerful during the course of the nineteenth century, was inclined, with its tendency towards social welfare and utility, to assign a subordinate part to art. Modern art arises in protest against this and is ambitious to influence the whole of life; in opposition to morality it holds up an aesthetic view of life as being alone justifiable. Hence at the present time the two spheres stand wide apart."[39]

Eucken shows how such an antithesis between morality and art has partially existed for thousands of years. But whenever a cleavage takes place both morality and art suffer. On the one hand, morality tends to become a system of rules for the performance of which a reward is promised either in this world or in the world to come. On the other hand, art is stripped of the distinction between the values of sensuous things as these express [p.122] themselves in their relation to human life. In the former case, insistence on morality (even on morality alone) has deepened human life; it has given it a more strenuous tone; and it has created a scale of values which alters the whole meaning of life. But morality conceived as a system of regulations and laws has always the tendency to harden and narrow the life, and to posit the individual too much upon himself. Any justification from without--from the physical side--consequently fails to give any help or satisfaction. And man needs this help. As it is impossible for him to fly out of the world to some region where mind or spirit alone reigns, he has to do the best he can with the physical world in the midst of which he exists. It is within such a world that he has to cultivate the spiritual potencies of his own being. It is true that the spiritual potencies of his own being are higher and of more value than anything in Nature. Still, that does not mean that Nature has to be discarded or condemned before the potencies of his own being can develop. Nature is not a mere blind machine; it has produced all--including man and his potencies--that is to be found on the face of it. It is therefore not entirely meaningless, and the meaning it possesses is a necessary element in the evolution of personal spiritual life. Man must enter into some relation with Nature. But such a relation produces even more than all this. When viewed in a friendly mood, [p.123] Nature herself wears an aspect higher than a materialistic or intellectual one. It calls forth the best in imagination; it enables us to feel that something of the power that dwells within the soul dwells also in all the manifestations of phenomena.[40] This fact is evident in all the poetry of the world, and without the perpetual presence of Nature to the soul in the form of wonder, reverence, and admiration, no poetry worthy of the name is possible. Nature thus is of value in the fact that when its phenomena present themselves to a consciousness aware not only of its _knowing_ aspect but also of its _feeling_ aspect, the union of Nature and soul produces a feeling of reality which creates an ideal nature. "The light that never was on sea or land" becomes now on sea and land; it illuminates the whole scene with a "halo and glory" which was concealed before. But there must be present "an eye of the soul" united with the physical impressions before all this is possible. Indeed, the effect of all this is nothing less than an ideal creation of a world consisting of Nature and the spiritual potencies of man. It is evident that if the _internal_ [p.124] factor, which represents itself in the form of morality or value, is absent, the picture of Nature is quite different. And this is Eucken's complaint in regard to much of the art of the present day: the internal factor is absent. Seriousness is not blended with freedom in it; or, in other words, the _inward_ has no power to pass its quality into the _outward_. But when the _inward_ is present in the form of morality or value, then art becomes joyous, serious, helpful, and disinterested. This last aspect of the disinterestedness of art was perceived clearly by Kant, and has formed an important contribution to the philosophy and even to the religion of the nineteenth century. When a potency of the soul, gained in a province outside art (as is the case with morality or value), operates, there is no danger of art degenerating into mere subjectivism; otherwise there is a very grave danger. Loosened from morality it becomes a mere play of decoration and fancy--a mere superficial embroidery of an empty life; it can look on the human world and all its struggles with an indifferent and often cynical mood. Why has all this happened? Because the inward factor of the "strenuous mood" has been replaced by a sentimental factor based on nothing deeper than the satisfaction of the senses; and the result of this is found in feelings which are more psychical than spiritual in their nature.

But that art is necessary for any completion [p.125] of life is seen by the fact that its contribution to the soul is more than a _thought_ contribution. For the deeper life of the spirit of man is more than thought, although thought forms an essential element of it; this deeper life has wider demands than can be expressed in the form of logical propositions. Eucken shows how true art is therefore indissolubly connected with spiritual life. "Without the presence of a spiritual world [the resultant of the union of the spiritual potencies and external objects], art has no soul and no secure fundamental relationship to reality, and in no way can it develop a fixed style. We hear to-day of a 'new style,' and are in the saddle after such a conception. But shall we find it so long as the whole of life does not fasten itself upon simple fundamental lines and does not follow the main path in the midst of all the tangle of effort? How is it possible to attain to a unity of interpretation where our life itself fails in the possession of a governing unity? We discover ourselves in the midst of the most fundamental transformations of life; old ideals are vanishing, and new ones are dawning on the horizon. But as yet they are all full of unrest and unreadiness; and the situation of man in the All of things is so full of uncertainty that he has to struggle anew for the meaning and value of his life. If art has nothing to say to him and no help to offer--if it relegates these questions far from itself--then art itself must sink to the level of a [p.126] subsidiary play the more these problems win the mind and spirit of man. But if art is capable of bringing a furtherance of values to man in his needs and sorrows, it will have to recognise and acknowledge the problems of spiritual life as well as participate in the struggle for the vindication and formation of a spiritual world. When art does this, these questions which engage our attention are also its questions."[41]

In spite of the contradictions of life, in spite of much which seems indifferent to human weal and woe within the physical universe, the contradictions may be surmounted by the union of man's spirit with other aspects of existence which look in an opposite direction. The ideal world of art is not to be discovered by ignoring these contradictions, but by acknowledging them to the full, and by seeing that Nature is supplemented by man and his soul. Such a union, as has already been pointed out, will create an earnestness and joyousness of life; it will enable man, when any teleology of Nature herself fails to give him satisfaction, to realise a teleology within the _substance_ of his own life--spiritual in its essence, infinite in its duration, and the flowering of a bud which has grown with the help of the natural cosmos. When Nature is thus viewed as a preparatory stage for spirit, it will wear an aspect very different from the mechanical one. Its real teleology [p.127] will be seen: there can be no dispute about it; it has actually produced man, and man has now to carry farther the evolutionary process. Eucken has presented this aspect in a fine manner in his article on Schiller in _Kantstudien_[42] (Band X., Heft 3), _Festschrift zu Schillers hundertstem Todestage_. No one in modern times discovered the contradictions of the world in regard to the needs of man more than Schiller. And yet no one led a more joyous life than this "half-poet, half-thinker." Pressed from within and without by many alien elements, he overcame them all and found, despite his physical weakness, what a gift life is. It is in the direction of a great synthesis of spiritual life and natural phenomena that true art will discover the qualities for a permanent duration. Such a synthesis will enrich the spiritual life, and will grant it something of higher construction concerning the meaning and value of the union of Nature and Man. So Eucken has once more landed us into the spiritual life as the source and goal of all true Art.

"Only the rooted knowledge to high sense Of heavenly can mount, and feel the spur For fruitfullest achievement, eye a mark Beyond the path with grain on either hand, Help to the steering of our social Ark Over the barbarous waters unto land."[43]

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