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REASON IN ART
Volume Four of "The Life of Reason"
GEORGE SANTAYANA
ή γάρ νου ενέργεια ζωή
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.NEW YORKThis Dover edition, first published in 1982, is an unabridged republication ofvolume four of
The Life of Reason; or The Phases of Human Progress
, originallypublished by Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y., in 1905.
REASON IN ART
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE BASIS OF ART IN INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCEMan affects his environment, sometimes to good purpose.—Art is plastic instinctconscious of its aims.—It is automatic.—So are the ideas it expresses.—We aresaid to control whatever obeys us.—Utility is a result.—The useful naturallystable.—Intelligence is docility.—Art is reason propagating itself.—Beauty anincident in rational art, inseparable from the others.
CHAPTER II
RATIONALITY OF INDUSTRIAL ARTUtility is ultimately ideal.—Work wasted and chances missed.—Ideals must beinterpreted, not prescribed.—The aim of industry is to live well.—Some arts, butno men, are slaves by nature.—Servile arts may grow spontaneous or theirproducts may be renounced.—Art starts from two potentialities: its material andits problem.—Each must be definite and congruous with the other.—A sophism
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exposed.—Industry prepares matter for the liberal arts.—Each partakes of theother.
CHAPTER III
EMERGENCE OF FINE ARTArt is spontaneous action made stable by success.—It combines utility andautomatism.—Automatism fundamental and irresponsible.—It is tamed bycontact with the world.—The dance.—Functions of gesture.—Automatic music.
CHAPTER IV
MUSICMusic is a world apart.—It justifies itself.—It is vital and transient.—Its physicalaffinities.—Physiology of music.—Limits of musical sensibility.—The value ofmusic is relative to them.—Wonders of musical structure.—Its inherentemotions.—In growing specific they remain unearthly.—They merge withcommon emotions, and express such as find no object in nature.—Music lendselementary feelings an intellectual communicable form.—All essences are inthemselves good, even the passions.—Each impulse calls for a possible congenialworld.—Literature incapable of expressing pure feelings.—Music may do so.—Instability the soul of matter.—- Peace the triumph of spirit.—Refinement is truestrength.
CHAPTER V
SPEECH AND SIGNIFICATIONSounds well fitted to be symbols.—Language has a structure independent ofthings.—Words, remaining identical, serve to identify things that change.—Language the dialectical garment of facts.—Words are wise men's counters.—Nominalism right in psychology and realism in logic.—Literature movesbetween the extremes of music and denotation.—Sound and object, in theirsensuous presence, may have affinity.—Syntax positively representative.—Yet itvitiates what it represents.—Difficulty in subduing a living medium.—Languageforeshortens experience.—It is a perpetual mythology.—It may be apt or inapt,with equal richness.—Absolute language a possible but foolish art.
CHAPTER VI
POETRY AND PROSEForce of primary expressions.—Its exclusiveness and narrowness.—Rudimentarypoetry an incantation or charm.—Inspiration irresponsible.—Plato'sdiscriminating view.—Explosive and pregnant expression.—Natural history ofinspiration.—Expressions to be understood must be recreated, and so changed.—
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Expressions may be recast perversely, humourously, or sublimely.—The natureof prose.—It is more advanced and responsible than poetry.—Maturity bringslove of practical truth.—Pure prose would tend to efface itself.—Form alone, orsubstance alone, may be poetical.—Poetry has its place in the medium.—It is thebest medium possible.—Might it not convey what it is best to know?—A rationalpoetry would exclude much now thought poetical.—All apperception modifiesits object.—Reason has its own bias and method.—Rational poetry wouldenvelop exact knowledge in ultimate emotions.—An illustration.—Volume canbe found in scope better than in suggestion.
CHAPTER VII
PLASTIC CONSTRUCTIONAutomatic expression often leaves traces in the outer world.—Such effectsfruitful.—Magic authority of man's first creations.—Art brings relief fromidolatry.—Inertia in technique.—Inertia in appreciation.—Adventitious effectsappreciated first.—Approach to beauty through useful structure.—Failure ofadapted styles.—Not all structure beautiful, nor all beauty structural.—Structures designed for display.—Appeal made by decoration.—Its naturalrights.—Its alliance with structure in Greek architecture.—Relations of the two inGothic art.—The result here romantic.—The mediæval artist.—Representationintroduced.—Transition to illustration.
CHAPTER VIII
PLASTIC REPRESENTATIONPsychology of imitation.—Sustained sensation involves reproduction.—Imitativeart repeats with intent to repeat, and in a new material.—Imitation leads toadaptation and to knowledge.—How the artist is inspired and irresponsible.—Need of knowing and loving the subject rendered.—Public interests determinethe subject of art, and the subject the medium.—Reproduction by actingephemeral.—demands of sculpture.—It is essentially obsolete.—When men seegroups and backgrounds they are natural painters.—Evolution of painting.—Sensuous and dramatic adequacy approached.—Essence of landscape-painting.—Its threatened dissolution.—Reversion to pure decorative design.—Sensuousvalues are primordial and so indispensable.
CHAPTER IX
 JUSTIFICATION OF ARTArt is subject to moral censorship.—Its initial or specific excellence is not enough.—All satisfactions, however hurtful, have an initial worth.—But, on the whole,artistic activity is innocent.—It is liberal, and typical of perfect activity.—Theideal, when incarnate, becomes subject to civil society.—Plato's strictures: he
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