Introduction
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18971897

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Author : Leo Tolstoy

Translator : Aylmer Maude

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What thoughtful man has not been perplexed by problems
relating to art?

An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt
the charm of the music and ritual of the services of the
Russo-Greek Church so strongly that she wished the
peasants, in whom she was interested, to retain their blind
faith, though she herself disbelieved the church doctrines.
“Their lives are so poor and bare—they have so little art,
so little poetry and color in their lives—let them at least
enjoy what they have; it would be cruel to undeceive
them,” said she.

A false and antiquated view of life is supported by means
of art, and is inseparably linked to some manifestations of
art which we enjoy and prize. If the false view of life be
destroyed this art will cease to appear valuable. Is it best
to screen the error for the sake of preserving the art? Or
should the art be sacrificed for the sake of truthfulness?

Again and again in history a dominant church has
utilized art to maintain its sway over men. Reformers
(early Christians, Mohammedans, Puritans, and others)
have perceived that art bound people to the old faith, and
they were angry with art. They diligently chipped the noses
from statues and images, and were wroth with ceremonies,
decorations, stained-glass windows, and processions. They
were even ready to banish art altogether, for, besides the
visuperstitions it upheld, they saw that it depraved and perverted
men by dramas, drinking-songs, novels, pictures, and
dances, of a kind that awakened man’s lower nature. Yet
art always reasserted her sway, and to-day we are told by
many that art has nothing to do with morality—that “art
should be followed for art’s sake.”

I went one day, with a lady artist, to the Bodkin Art
Gallery in Moscow. In one of the rooms, on a table, lay a
book of colored pictures, issued in Paris and supplied, I
believe, to private subscribers only. The pictures were
admirably executed, but represented scenes in the private
cabinets of a restaurant. Sexual indulgence was the chief
subject of each picture. Women extravagantly dressed and
partly undressed, women exposing their legs and breasts to
men in evening dress; men and women taking liberties
with each other, or dancing the “can-can,” etc., etc. My
companion the artist, a maiden lady of irreproachable
conduct and reputation, began deliberately to look at these
pictures. I could not let my attention dwell on them without
ill effects. Such things had a certain attraction for me,
and tended to make me restless and nervous. I ventured
to suggest that the subject-matter of the pictures was
objectionable. But my companion (who prided herself on
being an artist) remarked with conscious superiority, that
from an artist’s point of view the subject was of no consequence.
The pictures being very well executed were
artistic, and therefore worthy of attention and study.
Morality had nothing to do with art.

Here again is a problem. One remembers Plato’s advice
not to let our thoughts run upon women, for if we do we
shall think clearly about nothing else, and one knows that
to neglect this advice is to lose tranquility of mind; but
then one does not wish to be considered narrow, ascetic, or
inartistic, nor to lose artistic pleasures which those around
us esteem so highly.

viiAgain, the newspapers last year printed proposals to
construct a Wagner Opera House, to cost, if I recollect
rightly, £100,000—about as much as a hundred laborers
may earn by fifteen or twenty years’ hard work. The
writers thought it would be a good thing if such an Opera
House were erected and endowed. But I had a talk lately
with a man who, till his health failed him, had worked as a
builder in London. He told me that when he was younger
he had been very fond of theater-going, but, later, when he
thought things over and considered that in almost every
number of his weekly paper he read of cases of people
whose death was hastened by lack of good food, he felt it
was not right that so much labor should be spent on
theaters.

In reply to this view it is urged that food for the mind is
as important as food for the body. The laboring classes
work to produce food and necessaries for themselves and
for the cultured, while some of the cultured class produce
plays and operas. It is a division of labor. But this
again invites the rejoinder that, sure enough, the laborers
produce food for themselves and also food that the cultured
class accept and consume, but that the artists seem too
often to produce their spiritual food for the cultured only—at
any rate that a singularly small share seems to reach
the country laborers who work to supply the bodily
food! Even were the “division of labor” shown to be
a fair one, the “division of products” seems remarkably
one-sided.

Once again: how is it that often when a new work is
produced, neither the critics, the artists, the publishers, nor
the public, seem to know whether it is valuable or worthless?
Some of the most famous books in English literature
could hardly find a publisher, or were savagely derided
by leading critics; while other works once acclaimed as
masterpieces are now laughed at or utterly forgotten. A
viiiplay which nobody now reads was once passed off as a
newly-discovered masterpiece of Shakespear’s, and was
produced at a leading London theater. Are the critics
playing blind-man’s buff? Are they relying on each other?
Is each following his own whim and fancy? Or do they
possess a criterion which they never reveal to those outside
the profession?

Such are a few of the many problems relating to art which
present themselves to us all, and it is the purpose of this
book to enable us to reach such a comprehension of art,
and of the position art should occupy in our lives, as will
enable us to answer such questions.

The task is one of enormous difficulty. Under the cloak
of “art,” so much selfish amusement and self-indulgence
tries to justify itself, and so many mercenary interests are
concerned in preventing the light from shining in upon the
subject, that the clamor raised by this book can only be
compared to that raised by the silversmiths of Ephesus
when they shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!”
for about the space of two hours.

Elaborate theories blocked the path with subtle sophistries
or ponderous pseudo-erudition. Merely to master
these, and expose them, was by itself a colossal labor,
but necessary in order to clear the road for a statement of
any fresh view. To have accomplished this work of exposure
in a few chapters is a wonderful achievement. To have
done it without making the book intolerably dry is more
wonderful still. In Chapter III. (where a rapid summary of
some sixty æsthetic writers is given) even Tolstoy’s powers
fail to make the subject interesting, except to the specialist,
and he has to plead with his readers “not to be overcome
by dullness, but to read these extracts through.”

Among the writers mentioned, English readers miss the
names of John Ruskin and William Morris, especially as so
much that Tolstoy says, is in accord with their views.

ixOf Ruskin, Tolstoy has a very high opinion. I have
heard him say, “I don’t know why you English make
such a fuss about Gladstone—you have a much greater
man in Ruskin.” As a stylist, too, Tolstoy speaks of
him with high commendation. Ruskin, however, though
he has written on art with profound insight, and has
said many things with which Tolstoy fully agrees, has,
I think, nowhere so systemized and summarized his view
that it can be readily quoted in the concise way which has
enabled Tolstoy to indicate his points of essential agreement
with Home, Véron, and Kant. Even the attempt to
summarize Kant’s æsthetic philosophy in a dozen lines will
hardly be of much service except to readers who have already
some acquaintance with the subject. For those to whom the
difference between “subjective” and “objective” perceptions
is fresh, a dozen pages would be none too much. And
to summarize Ruskin would be perhaps more difficult than
to condense Kant.

As to William Morris, we are reminded of his dictum that
art is the workman’s expression of joy in his work, by
Tolstoy’s “As soon as the author is not producing art for
his own satisfaction,—does not himself feel what he wishes
to express,—a resistance immediately springs up” (p. 154);
and again, “In such transmission to others of the feelings
that have arisen in him, he (the artist) will find his happiness”
(p. 195). Tolstoy sweeps over a far wider range of
thought, but he and Morris are not opposed. Morris was
emphasizing part of what Tolstoy is implying.

But to return to the difficulties of Tolstoy’s task. There
is one, not yet mentioned, lurking in the hearts of most of
us. We have enjoyed works of “art.” We have been
interested by the information conveyed in a novel, or we
have been thrilled by an unexpected “effect”; have
admired the exactitude with which real life has been
reproduced, or have had our feelings touched by allusions
xto, or reproductions of, works—old German legends, Greek
myths, or Hebrew poetry—which moved us long ago, as
they moved generations before us. And we thought all this
was “art.” Not clearly understanding what art is, and
wherein its importance lies, we were not only attached to
these things, but attributed importance to them, calling
them “artistic” and “beautiful,” without well knowing
what we meant by those words.

But here is a book that obliges us to clear our minds.
It challenges us to define “art” and “beauty,” and to say
why we consider these things, that pleased us, to be specially
important. And as to beauty, we find that the definition
given by æsthetic writers amounts merely to this, that
“Beauty is a kind of pleasure received by us, not having
personal advantage for its object.” But it follows from this,
that “beauty” is a matter of taste, differing among different
people, and to attach special importance to what pleases
me (and others who have had the same sort of training
that I have had) is merely to repeat the old, old mistake
which so divides human society; it is like declaring that my
race is the best race, my nation the best nation, my
church the best church, and my family the “best” family.
It indicates ignorance and selfishness.

But “truth angers those whom it does not convince;”—people
do not wish to understand these things. It seems,
at first, as though Tolstoy were obliging us to sacrifice something
valuable. We do not realize that we are being helped
to select the best art, but we do feel that we are being
deprived of our sense of satisfaction in Rudyard Kipling.

Both the magnitude and the difficulty of the task were
therefore very great, but they have been surmounted in a
marvelous manner. Of the effect this book has had on me
personally, I can only say that “whereas I was blind, now I
see.” Though sensitive to some forms of art, I was, when
I took it up, much in the dark on questions of æsthetic
xiphilosophy; when I had done with it, I had grasped the
main solution of the problem so clearly that—though I
waded through nearly all that the critics and reviewers had
to say about the book—I never again became perplexed
upon the central issues.

Tolstoy was indeed peculiarly qualified for the task he
has accomplished. It was after many years of work as a
writer of fiction, and when he was already standing in the
very foremost rank of European novelists, that he found
himself compelled to face, in deadly earnest, the deepest
problems of human life. He not only could not go on
writing books, but he felt he could not live, unless he
found clear guidance, so that he might walk sure-footedly
and know the purpose and meaning of his life. Not as a
mere question of speculative curiosity, but as a matter of
vital necessity, he devoted years to rediscover the truths
which underlie all religion.

To fit him for this task he possessed great knowledge of
men and books, a wide experience of life, a knowledge of
languages, and a freedom from bondage to any authority
but that of reason and conscience. He was pinned to
no Thirty-nine Articles, and was in receipt of no retaining
fee which he was not prepared to sacrifice. Another gift,
rare among men of his position, was his wonderful sincerity
and (due, I think, to that sincerity) an amazing power of
looking at the phenomena of our complex and artificial life
with the eyes of a little child; going straight to the real,
obvious facts of the case, and brushing aside the sophistries,
the conventionalities, and the “authorities” by which they
are obscured.

He commenced the task when he was about fifty years
of age, and since then (i.e., during the last twenty years) he
has produced nine philosophical or scientific works of first-rate
importance, besides a great many stories and short
articles.
xiiThese works, in chronological order, are—

My Confession.

A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, which has never
been translated.

The Four Gospels Harmonized and Translated, of
which only two parts, out of three, have as yet
appeared in English.

What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion.

The Gospel in Brief.

What are we to do then? sometimes called in English
What to do?

On Life, which is not an easy work in the original,
and has not been satisfactorily translated.[1]

The Kingdom of God is within you; and

The Christian Teaching, which appeared after What
is Art? though it was written before it.

To these scientific works I am inclined to add The
Kreutzer Sonata, with the Sequel or Postscript explaining
its purpose; for though The Kreutzer Sonata is a story,
the understanding of sexual problems, dealt with explicitly
in the Sequel, is an integral part of that comprehension
of life which causes Tolstoy to admire Christ, Buddha, or
Francis of Assisi.

These ten works treat of the meaning of our life; of the
problems raised by the fact that we approve of some things
and disapprove of others, and find ourselves deciding
which of two courses to pursue.

Religion, Government, Property, Sex, War, and all the
relations in which man stands to man, to his own consciousness,
and to the ultimate source (which we call
God) from whence that consciousness proceeds—are examined
with the utmost frankness.

xiiiAnd all this time the problems of Art: What is Art?
What importance is due to it? How is it related to the
rest of life?—were working in his mind. He was a
great artist, often upbraided for having abandoned his
art. He, of all men, was bound to clear his thoughts on
this perplexing subject, and to express them. His whole
philosophy of life—the “religious perception” to which,
with such tremendous labor and effort, he had attained,
forbade him to detach art from life, and place it in a water-tight
compartment where it should not act on life or be
re-acted upon by life.

Life to him is rational. It has a clear aim and purpose,
discernible by the aid of reason and conscience. And no
human activity can be fully understood or rightly appreciated
until the central purpose of life is perceived.

You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you
keep one bit in a wrong place, but when the pieces all fit
together, then you have a demonstration that they are all in
their right places. Tolstoy used that simile years ago
when explaining how the comprehension of the text,
“resist not him that is evil,” enabled him to perceive the
reasonableness of Christ’s teaching, which had long baffled
him. So it is with the problem of Art. Wrongly understood,
it will tend to confuse and perplex your whole comprehension
of life. But given the clue supplied by true
“religious perception,” and you can place art so that it
shall fit in with a right understanding of politics, economics,
sex-relationships, science, and all other phases of human
activity.

The basis on which this work rests, is a perception of
the meaning of human life. This has been quite lost
sight of by some of the reviewers, who have merely misrepresented
what Tolstoy says, and then demonstrated how
very stupid he would have been had he said what they
attributed to him. Leaving his premises and arguments untouched,
xivthey dissent from various conclusions—as though it
were all a mere question of taste. They say that they are very
fond of things which Tolstoy ridicules, and that they can’t
understand why he does not like what they like—which is
quite possible, especially if they have not understood
the position from which he starts. But such criticism
can lead to nothing. Discussions as to why one man likes
pears and another prefers meat, do not help towards
finding a definition of what is essential in nourishment;
and just so, “the solution of questions of taste in art does
not help to make clear what this particular human activity
which we call art really consists in.”

The object of the following brief summary of a few main
points is to help the reader to avoid pitfalls into which
many reviewers have fallen. It aims at being no more than
a bare statement of the positions—for more than that, the
reader must turn to the book itself.

Let it be granted at the outset, that Tolstoy writes for
those who have “ears to hear.” He seldom pauses to safeguard
himself against the captious critic, and cares little
for minute verbal accuracy. For instance, on page 144, he
mentions “Paris,” where an English writer (even one who
knew to what an extent Paris is the art center of France,
and how many artists flock thither from Russia, America,
and all ends of the earth) would have been almost sure to
have said “France,” for fear of being thought to exaggerate.
One needs some alertness of mind to follow Tolstoy in his
task of compressing so large a subject into so small a
space. Moreover, he is an emphatic writer who says
what he means, and even, I think, sometimes rather
overemphasizes it. With this much warning let us proceed
to a brief summary of Tolstoy’s view of art.

“Art is a human activity,” and consequently does not
exist for its own sake, but is valuable or objectionable in
proportion as it is serviceable or harmful to mankind.
xvThe object of this activity is to transmit to others feeling
the artist has experienced. Such feelings—intentionally
re-evoked and successfully transmitted to others—are the
subject-matter of all art. By certain external signs—movements,
lines, colors, sounds, or arrangements of words—an
artist infects other people so that they share his feelings.
Thus “art is a means of union among men, joining them
together in the same feelings.”

Chapters II. to V. contain an examination of various
theories which have taken art to be something other than
this, and step by step we are brought to the conclusion
that art is this, and nothing but this.

Having got our definition of art, let us first consider
art independently of its subject-matter, i.e., without asking
whether the feelings transmitted are good, bad, or indifferent.
Without adequate expression there is no art,
for there is no infection, no transference to others of the
author’s feeling. The test of art is infection. If an
author has moved you so that you feel as he felt, if you
are so united to him in feeling that it seems to you that
he has expressed just what you have long wished to express,
the work that has so infected you is a work of art.

In this sense, it is true that art has nothing to do
with morality; for the test lies in the “infection,” and not
in any consideration of the goodness or badness of the
emotions conveyed. Thus the test of art is an internal
one. The activity of art is based on the fact that a
man, receiving, through his sense of hearing or sight,
another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing
the emotion that moved the man who expressed it.
We all share the same common human nature, and in
this sense, at least, are sons of one Father. To take the
simplest example: a man laughs, and another, who hears,
becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears,
feels sorrow. Note in passing that it does not amount to
xviart “if a man infects others directly, immediately, at the very
time he experiences the feeling; if he causes another man
to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning,” etc. Art
begins when some one, with the object of making others share
his feeling, expresses his feeling by certain external indications.

Normal human beings possess this faculty to be infected
by the expression of another man’s emotions. For a plain
man of unperverted taste, living in contact with nature,
with animals, and with his fellow-men—say, for “a country
peasant of unperverted taste, this is as easy as it is for
an animal of unspoiled scent to follow the trace he needs.”
And he will know indubitably whether a work presented
to him does, or does not, unite him in feeling with the
author. But very many people “of our circle” (upper
and middle class society) live such unnatural lives, in
such conventional relations to the people around them,
and in such artificial surroundings, that they have lost
“that simple feeling, that sense of infection with another’s
feeling—compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to
sorrow in another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another—which
is the essence of art.” Such people, therefore, have
no inner test by which to recognize a work of art; and they
will always be mistaking other things for art, and seeking
for external guides, such as the opinions of “recognized
authorities.” Or they will mistake for art something that
produces a merely physiological effect—lulling or exciting
them; or some intellectual puzzle that gives them something
to think about.

But if most people of the “cultured crowd” are impervious
to true art, is it really possible that a common
Russian country peasant, for instance, whose work-days are
filled with agricultural labor, and whose brief leisure is
largely taken up by his family life and by his participation
in the affairs of the village commune—is it possible that he
xviican recognize and be touched by works of art? Certainly
it is! Just as in ancient Greece crowds assembled to hear
the poems of Homer, so to-day in Russia, as in many
countries and many ages, the Gospel parables, and much
else of the highest art, are gladly heard by the common
people. And this does not refer to any superstitious use
of the Bible, but to its use as literature.

Not only do normal, laboring country people possess the
capacity to be infected by good art—“the epic of Genesis,
folk-legends, fairy-tales, folk-songs, etc.,” but they themselves
produce songs, stories, dances, decorations, etc.,
which are works of true art. Take as examples the works of
Burns or Bunyan, and the peasant women’s song mentioned
by Tolstoy in Chapter XIV., or some of those melodies produced
by the negro slaves on the southern plantations, which
have touched, and still touch, many of us with the emotions
felt by their unknown and unpaid composers.

The one great quality which makes a work of art truly
contagious is its sincerity. If an artist is really actuated by
a feeling, and is strongly impelled to communicate that
feeling to other people—not for money or fame, or anything
else, but because he feels he must share it—then he will not
be satisfied till he has found a clear way of expressing it.
And the man who is not borrowing his feelings, but has
drawn what he expresses from the depths of his nature,
is sure to be original, for in the same way that no two
people have exactly similar faces or forms, no two people
have exactly similar minds or souls.

That in briefest outline is what Tolstoy says about art,
considered apart from its subject-matter. And this is how
certain critics have met it. They say that when Tolstoy
says the test of art is internal, he must mean that it is
external. When he says that country peasants have in the
past appreciated, and do still appreciate, works of the
highest art, he means that the way to detect a work of
xviiiart is to see what is apparently most popular among the
masses. Go into the streets or music-halls of the cities in
any particular country and year, and observe what is most
frequently sung, shouted, or played on the barrel-organs.
It may happen to be


  
    
      “Tarara-boom-deay,”
    
  


or,


  
    
      “We don’t want to fight,
      But, by Jingo, if we do.”
    
  


But whatever it is, you may at once declare these songs to
be the highest musical art, without even pausing to ask to
what they owe their vogue—what actress, or singer, or
politician, or wave of patriotic passion has conduced to
their popularity. Nor need you consider whether that
popularity is not merely temporary and local. Tolstoy
has said that works of the highest art are understood by
unperverted country peasants—and here are things which
are popular with the mob, ergo, these things must be the
highest art.

The critics then proceed to say that such a test is utterly
absurd. And on this point I am able to agree with the critics.

Some of these writers commence their articles by saying
that Tolstoy is a most profound thinker, a great prophet,
an intellectual force, etc. Yet when Tolstoy, in his emphatic
way, makes the sweeping remark that “good art
always pleases every one,” the critics do not read on to
find out what he means, but reply: “No! good art does
not please every one; some people are colorblind, and
some are deaf, or have no ear for music.”

It is as though a man strenuously arguing a point were to
say, “Every one knows that two and two make four,” and
a boy who did not at all see what the speaker was driving
at, were to reply: “No, our new-born baby doesn’t know
it!” It would distract attention from the subject in hand,
but it would not elucidate matters.

xixThere is, of course, a verbal contradiction between the
statements that “good art always pleases every one”
(p. 100), and the remark concerning “people of our
circle,” who, “with very few exceptions, artists and public
and critics, ... cannot distinguish true works of art
from counterfeits, but continually mistake for real art the
worst and most artificial” (p. 151). But I venture to think
that any one of intelligence, and free from prejudice, reading
this book carefully, need not fail to reach the author’s
meaning.

A point to be carefully noted is the distinction between
science and art. “Science investigates and brings to
human perception such truths and such knowledge as
the people of a given time and society consider most
important. Art transmits these truths from the region
of perception to the region of emotion” (p. 102). Science
is an “activity of the understanding which demands
preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge, so that
one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing geometry.”
“The business of art,” on the other hand, “lies just in
this—to make that understood and felt which, in the
form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and
inaccessible” (p. 102). It “infects any man whatever his
plane of development,” and “the hindrance to understanding
the best and highest feelings (as is said in the
gospel) does not at all lie in deficiency of development
or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development
and false learning” (pp. 102, 103). Science and art are
frequently blended in one work—e.g., in the gospel elucidation
of Christ’s comprehension of life, or, to take a modern
instance, in Henry George’s elucidation of the land question
in Progress and Poverty.

The class distinction to which Tolstoy repeatedly alludes
needs some explanation. The position of the lower classes
in England and in Russia is different. In Russia a much
xxlarger number of people live on the verge of starvation;
the condition of the factory-hands is much worse than
in England, and there are many glaring cases of brutal
cruelty inflicted on the peasants by the officials, the police,
or the military,—but in Russia a far greater proportion of
the population live in the country, and a peasant usually
has his own house, and tills his share of the communal
lands. The “unperverted country peasant” of whom
Tolstoy speaks is a man who perhaps suffers grievous
want when there is a bad harvest in his province, but
he is a man accustomed to the experiences of a natural
life, to the management of his own affairs, and to a
real voice in the arrangements of the village commune.
The Government interferes, from time to time, to collect
its taxes by force, to take the young men for soldiers, or
to maintain the “rights” of the upper classes; but otherwise
the peasant is free to do what he sees to be necessary
and reasonable. On the other hand, English laborers
are, for the most part, not so poor, they have more legal
rights, and they have votes; but a far larger number of
them live in towns and are engaged in unnatural occupations,
while even those that do live in touch with nature
are usually mere wage-earners, tilling other men’s land,
and living often in abject submission to the farmer, the
parson, or the lady-bountiful. They are dependent on
an employer for daily bread, and the condition of a wage-laborer
is as unnatural as that of a landlord.

The tyranny of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy is more
dramatic, but less omnipresent—and probably far less fatal to
the capacity to enjoy art—than the tyranny of our respectable,
self-satisfied, and property-loving middle-class. I am therefore
afraid that we have no great number of “unperverted”
country laborers to compare with those of whom Tolstoy
speaks—and some of whom I have known personally.
But the truth Tolstoy elucidates lies far too deep in
xxihuman nature to be infringed by such differences of
local circumstance. Whatever those circumstances may
be, the fact remains that in proportion as a man approaches
towards the condition not only of “earning his subsistence
by some kind of labor,” but of “living on all its sides
the life natural and proper to mankind,” his capacity to
appreciate true art tends to increase. On the other hand,
when a class settles down into an artificial way of life,—loses
touch with nature, becomes confused in its perceptions
of what is good and what is bad, and prefers the condition
of a parasite to that of a producer,—its capacity to appreciate
true art must diminish. Having lost all clear perception
of the meaning of life, such people are necessarily left
without any criterion which will enable them to distinguish
good from bad art, and they are sure to follow eagerly after
beauty, or “that which pleases them.”

The artists of our society can usually only reach
people of the upper and middle classes. But who is the
great artist?—he who delights a select audience of his
own day and class, or he whose works link generation to
generation and race to race in a common bond of feeling?
Surely art should fulfill its purpose as completely as possible.
A work of art that united every one with the author,
and with one another, would be perfect art. Tolstoy, in
his emphatic way, speaks of works of “universal” art,
and (though the profound critics hasten to inform us that
no work of art ever reached everybody) certainly the
more nearly a work of art approaches to such expression
of feeling that every one may be infected by it—the
nearer (apart from all question of subject-matter)
it approaches perfection.

But now as to subject-matter. The subject-matter of art
consists of feelings which can be spread from man to man,
feelings which are “contagious” or “infectious.” Is it of no
importance what feelings increase and multiply among men?

xxiiOne man feels that submission to the authority of his
church, and belief in all that it teaches him, is good; another
is embued by a sense of each man’s duty to think with his
own head—to use for his guidance in life the reason and
conscience given to him. One man feels that his nation
ought to wipe out in blood the shame of a defeat inflicted
on her; another feels that we are brothers, sons of one
spirit, and that the slaughter of man by man is always
wrong. One man feels that the most desirable thing in
life is the satisfaction obtainable by the love of women;
another man feels that sex-love is an entanglement and a
snare, hindering his real work in life. And each of these,
if he possess an artist’s gift of expression, and if the
feeling be really his own and sincere, may infect other
men. But some of these feelings will benefit and some
will harm mankind, and the more widely they are spread
the greater will be their effect.

Art unites men. Surely it is desirable that the feelings
in which it unites them should be “the best and highest
to which men have risen,” or at least should not run
contrary to our perception of what makes for the well-being
of ourselves and of others. And our perception
of what makes for the well-being of ourselves and of
others is what Tolstoy calls our “religious perception.”

Therefore the subject-matter of what we, in our day,
can esteem as being the best art, can be of two kinds
only—

(1) Feelings flowing from the highest perception now
attainable by man of our right relation to our neighbor
and to the Source from which we come. Dickens’
“Christmas Carol,” uniting us in a more vivid sense of
compassion and love, is a ready example of such art.

(2) The simple feelings of common life, accessible to
every one—provided that they are such as do not hinder
progress towards well-being. Art of this kind makes us
xxiiirealise to how great an extent we already are members
one of another—sharing the feelings of one common human
nature.

The success of a very primitive novel—the story of
Joseph, which made its way into the sacred books of the
Jews, spread from land to land and from age to age, and
continues to be read to-day among people quite free from
bibliolatry—shows how nearly “universal” may be the
appeal of this kind of art. This branch includes all
harmless jokes, folk-stories, nursery rhymes, and even dolls,
if only the author or designer has expressed a feeling
(tenderness, pleasure, humor, or what not) so as to infect
others.

But how are we to know what are the “best” feelings?
What is good? and what is evil? This is decided by
“religious perception.” Some such perception exists in
every human being; there is always something he approves
of, and something he disapproves of. Reason and conscience
are always present, active or latent, as long as
man lives. Miss Flora Shaw tells that the most degraded
cannibal she ever met, drew the line at eating his own
mother—nothing would induce him to entertain the thought,
his moral sense was revolted by the suggestion. In most
societies the “religious perception,” to which they have
advanced,—the foremost stage in mankind’s long march
towards perfection, which has been discerned,—has been
clearly expressed by some one, and more or less consciously
accepted as an ideal by the many. But there
are transition periods in history when the worn-out formularies
of a past age have ceased to satisfy men, or
have become so encrusted with superstitions that their
original brightness is lost. The “religious perception”
that is dawning may not yet have found such expression as
to be generally understood, but for all that it exists, and
shows itself by compelling men to repudiate beliefs that
xxivsatisfied their forefathers, the outward and visible signs of
which are still endowed and dominant long after their spirit
has taken refuge in temples not made with hands.

At such times it is difficult for men to understand each
other, for the very words needed to express the deepest
experiences of men’s consciousness mean different things to
different men. So among us to-day, to many minds faith
means credulity, and God suggests a person of the male
sex, father of one only-begotten son, and creator of the
universe.

This is why Tolstoy’s clear and rational “religious perception,”
expressed in the books named on a previous page,
is frequently spoken of by people who have not grasped it,
as “mysticism.”

The narrow materialist is shocked to find that Tolstoy
will not confine himself to the “objective” view of life.
Encountering in himself that “inner voice” which compels
us all to choose between good and evil, Tolstoy refuses to be
diverted from a matter which is of immediate and vital
importance to him, by discussions as to the derivation of
the external manifestations of conscience which biologists
are able to detect in remote forms of life. The real mystic,
on the other hand, shrinks from Tolstoy’s desire to try all
things by the light of reason, to depend on nothing vague,
and to accept nothing on authority. The man who does
not trust his own reason, fears that life thus squarely faced
will prove less worth having than it is when clothed in
mist.

In this work, however, Tolstoy does not recapitulate at
length what he has said before. He does not pause to
re-explain why he condemns Patriotism—i.e., each man’s
preference for the predominance of his own country, which
leads to the murder of man by man in war; or Churches,
which are sectarian—i.e., which striving to assert that your
doxy is heterodoxy, but that our doxy is orthodoxy, make
xxvexternal authorities (Popes, Bibles, Councils) supreme, and
cling to superstitions (their own miracles, legends, and
myths), thus separating themselves from communion with
the rest of mankind. Nor does he re-explain why he (like
Christ) says “pitiable is your plight—ye rich,” who live
artificial lives, maintainable only by the unbrotherly use of
force (police and soldiers), but blessed are ye poor—who,
by your way of life, are within easier reach of brotherly conditions,
if you will but trust to reason and conscience, and
change the direction of your hearts and of your labor,—working
no more primarily from fear or greed, but seeking
first the kingdom of righteousness, in which all good things
will be added unto you. He merely summarizes it all in a
few sentences, defining the “religious perception” of to-day,
which alone can decide for us “the degree of importance
both of the feelings transmitted by art and of the information
transmitted by science.”

“The religious perception of our time, in its widest and
most practical application, is the consciousness that our
well-being, both material and spiritual, individual and
collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the growth of
brotherhood among men—in their loving harmony with
one another” (p. 159).

And again:

“However differently in form people belonging to our
Christian world may define the destiny of man; whether
they see it in human progress in whatever sense of the
words, in the union of all men in a socialistic realm, or in
the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward
to the union of mankind under the guidance of one universal
Church, or to the federation of the world,—however
various in form their definitions of the destination of human
life may be, all men in our times already admit that the
highest well-being attainable by men is to be reached by
their union with one another” (p. 188).

xxviThis is the foundation on which the whole work is based.
It follows necessarily from this perception that we should
consider as most important in science “investigations into
the results of good and bad actions, considerations of the
reasonableness or unreasonableness of human institutions
and beliefs, considerations of how human life should be
lived in order to obtain the greatest well-being for each; as
to what one may and ought, and what one cannot and
should not believe; how to subdue one’s passions, and how
to acquire the habit of virtue.” This is the science that
“occupied Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Confucius,
Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who have
taught men to live a moral life,” and it is precisely the kind
of scientific investigation to which Tolstoy has devoted most
of the last twenty years, and for the sake of which he is
often said to have “abandoned art.”

Since science, like art, is a “human activity,” that science
best deserves our esteem, best deserves to be “chosen,
tolerated, approved, and diffused,” which treats of what is
supremely important to man; which deals with urgent,
vital, inevitable problems of actual life. Such science as
this brings “to the consciousness of men the truths that
flow from the religious perception of our times,” and
“indicates the various methods of applying this consciousness
to life.” “Art should transform this perception into
feeling.”

The “science” which is occupied in “pouring liquids
from one jar into another, or analyzing the spectrum, or
cutting up frogs and porpoises,” is no use for rendering such
guidance to art, though capable of practical applications
which, under a more righteous system of society, might
greatly have lightened the sufferings of mankind.

Naturally enough, the last chapter of the book deals with
the relation between science and art. And the conclusion
is that:

xxvii“The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the
realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being
for men consists in being united together, and to set
up, in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom of
God, i.e. of love, which we all recognize to be the highest
aim of human life.”

And this art of the future will not be poorer, but far
richer, in subject-matter than the art of to-day. From the
lullaby—that will delight millions of people, generation after
generation—to the highest religious art, dealing with strong,
rich, and varied emotions flowing from a fresh outlook upon
life and all its problems—the field open for good art is
enormous. With so much to say that is urgently important
to all, the art of the future will, in matter of form also, be
far superior to our art in “clearness, beauty, simplicity, and
compression” (p. 194).

For beauty (i.e., “that which pleases”)—though it depends
on taste, and can furnish no criterion for art—will be a
natural characteristic of work done, not for hire, nor even
for fame, but because men, living a natural and healthy life,
wish to share the “highest spiritual strength which passes
through them” with the greatest possible number of others.
The feelings such an artist wishes to share, he will transmit
in a way that will please him, and will please other men
who share his nature.

Morality is in the nature of things—we cannot escape it.

In a society where each man sets himself to obtain
wealth, the difficulty of obtaining an honest living tends to
become greater and greater. The more keenly a society
pants to obtain “that which pleases,” and puts this forward
as the first and great consideration, the more puerile
and worthless will their art become. But in a society which
sought, primarily, for right relations between its members,
an abundance would easily be obtainable for all; and
when “religious perception” guides a people’s art—beauty
xxviiiinevitably results, as has always been the case when men
have seized a fresh perception of life and of its purpose.

An illustration which Tolstoy struck out of the work
while it was being printed, may serve to illustrate how, with
the aid of the principles explained above, we may judge of
the merits of any work professing to be art.

Take Romeo and Juliet. The conventional view is that
Shakespear is the greatest of artists, and that Romeo and
Juliet is one of his good plays. Why this is so nobody can
tell you. It is so: that is the way certain people feel about
it. They are “the authorities,” and to doubt their dictum
is to show that you know nothing about art. Tolstoy does
not agree with them in their estimate of Shakespear,
therefore Tolstoy is wrong!

But now let us apply Tolstoy’s view of art to Romeo
and Juliet. He does not deny that it infects. “Let us
admit that it is a work of art, that it infects (though it is so
artificial that it can infect only those who have been carefully
educated thereunto); but what are the feelings it
transmits?”

That is to say, judging by the internal test, Tolstoy
admits that Romeo and Juliet unites him to its author and
to other people in feeling. But the work is very far from
being one of “universal” art—only a small minority of
people ever have cared, or ever will care, for it. Even in
England, or even in the layer of European society it
is best adapted to reach, it only touches a minority, and
does not approach the universality attained by the story of
Joseph and many pieces of folklore.

But perhaps the subject-matter, the feeling with which
Romeo and Juliet infects those whom it does reach, lifts it
into the class of the highest religious art? Not so. The
feeling is one of the attractiveness of “love at first sight.”
A girl fourteen years old and a young man meet at an
xxixaristocratic party, where there is feasting and pleasure and
idleness, and, without knowing each other’s minds, they
fall in love as the birds and beasts do. If any feeling is
transmitted to us, it is the feeling that there is a pleasure in
these things. Somewhere, in most natures, there dwells,
dominant or dormant, an inclination to let such physical
sexual attraction guide our course in life. To give it a plain
name, it is “sensuality.” “How can I, father or mother of
a daughter of Juliet’s age, wish that those foul feelings
which the play transmits should be communicated to my
daughter? And if the feelings transmitted by the play
are bad, how can I call it good in subject-matter?”

But, objects a friend, the moral of Romeo and Juliet is
excellent. See what disasters followed from the physical
“love at first sight.” But that is quite another matter.
It is the feelings with which you are infected when reading,
and not any moral you can deduce, that is subject-matter
of art. Pondering upon the consequences that flow from
Romeo and Juliet’s behavior may belong to the domain
of moral science, but not to that of art.

I have hesitated to use an illustration Tolstoy had struck
out, but I think it serves its purpose. No doubt there are
other, subordinate, feelings (e.g. humor) to be found in
Romeo and Juliet; but many quaint conceits that are ingenious,
and have been much admired, are not, I think,
infectious.

Tried by such tests, the enormous majority of the things
we have been taught to consider great works of art are
found wanting. Either they fail to infect (and attract
merely by being interesting, realistic, effectful, or by borrowing
from others), and are therefore not works of art at
all; or they are works of “exclusive art,” bad in form and
capable of infecting only a select audience trained and
habituated to such inferior art; or they are bad in subject-matter,
transmitting feelings harmful to mankind.

xxxTolstoy does not shrink from condemning his own
artistic productions; with the exception of two short stories,
he tells us they are works of bad art. Take, for instance,
the novel Resurrection, which is now appearing, and of
which he has, somewhere, spoken disparagingly, as being
“written in my former style,” and being therefore bad art.
What does this mean? The book is a masterpiece in its
own line; it is eagerly read in many languages; it undoubtedly
infects its readers, and the feelings transmitted
are, in the main, such as Tolstoy approves of—in fact, they are
the feelings to which his religious perception has brought
him. If lust is felt in one chapter, the reaction follows
as inevitably as in real life, and is transmitted with great
artistic power. Why a work of such rare merit does not
satisfy Tolstoy, is because it is a work of “exclusive
art,” laden with details of time and place. It has not the
“simplicity and compression” necessary in works of “universal”
art. Things are mentioned which might apparently
be quite well omitted. The style, also, is not one of great
simplicity; the sentences are often long and involved, as is
commonly the case in Tolstoy’s writings. It is a novel
appealing mainly to the class that has leisure for novel reading
because it neglects to produce its own food, make its own
clothes, or build its own houses. If Tolstoy is stringent in
his judgment of other artists, he is more stringent still in
his judgment of his own artistic works. Had Resurrection
been written by Dickens, or by Hugo, Tolstoy would, I
think, have found a place for it (with whatever reservations)
among the examples of religious art. For indeed, strive as
we may to be clear and explicit, our approval and disapproval
is a matter of degree. The thought which underlay
the remark: “Why callest thou me good? none is good,
save one, even God,” applies not to man only, but to all
things human.

What is Art? itself is a work of science—though
xxximany passages, and even some whole chapters, appeal to us
as works of art, and we feel the contagion of the author’s hope,
his anxiety to serve the cause of truth and love, his indignation
(sometimes rather sharply expressed) with what
blocks the path of advance, and his contempt for much
that the “cultured crowd,” in our erudite, perverted society,
have persuaded themselves, and would fain persuade others,
is the highest art.

One result which follows inevitably from Tolstoy’s view
(and which illustrates how widely his views differ from the
fashionable æsthetic mysticism), is that art is not stationary
but progressive. It is true that our highest religious perception
found expression eighteen hundred years ago, and
then served as the basis of an art which is still unmatched;
and similar cases can be instanced from the
East. But allowing for such great exceptions,—to which,
not inaptly, the term of “inspiration” has been specially
applied,—the subject-matter of art improves, though long
periods of time may have to be considered in order to
make this obvious. Our power of verbal expression, for
instance, may now be no better than it was in the days of
David, but we must no longer esteem as good in subject-matter
poems which appeal to the Eternal to destroy a
man’s private or national foes; for we have reached a
“religious perception” which bids us have no foes, and
the ultimate source (undefinable by us) from which this
consciousness has come, is what we mean when we speak
of God.

AYLMER MAUDE.

Wickham’s Farm,
Near Danbury, Essex,23rd March 1899.


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     Introduction -- Publication : November 30, 1896

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