The Two Paths | Page 6

heaths must have risen before the sight of the
Highland soldier; how often the hailing of the shot and the shriek of
battle would pass away from his hearing, and leave only the whisper of
the old pine branches--"Stand fast, Craig Ellachie!"
You have, in these two nations, seen in direct opposition the effects on
moral sentiment of art without nature, and of nature without art. And
you see enough to justify you in suspecting--while, if you choose to
investigate the subject more deeply and with other examples, you will
find enough to justify you in _concluding_--that art, followed as such,
and for its own sake, irrespective of the interpretation of nature by it, is

destructive of whatever is best and noblest in humanity; but that nature,
however simply observed, or imperfectly known, is, in the degree of
the affection felt for it, protective and helpful to all that is noblest in
humanity.
You might then conclude farther, that art, so far as it was devoted to the
record or the interpretation of nature, would be helpful and ennobling
also.
And you would conclude this with perfect truth. Let me repeat the
assertion distinctly and solemnly, as the first that I am permitted to
make in this building, devoted in a way so new and so admirable to the
service of the art-students of England--Wherever art is practised for its
own sake, and the delight of the workman is in what he does and
_produces_, instead of what he interprets or _exhibits_, --there art has
an influence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart, and it issues, if
long so pursued, in the destruction both of intellectual power and
_moral principal_; whereas art, devoted humbly and self- forgetfully to
the clear statement and record of the facts of the universe, is always
helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and
salvation.
Now, when you were once well assured of this, you might logically
infer another thing, namely, that when Art was occupied in the function
in which she was serviceable, she would herself be strengthened by the
service, and when she was doing what Providence without doubt
intended her to do, she would gain in vitality and dignity just as she
advanced in usefulness. On the other hand, you might gather, that when
her agency was distorted to the deception or degradation of mankind,
she would herself be equally misled and degraded--that she would be
checked in advance, or precipitated in decline.
And this is the truth also; and holding this clue you will easily and
justly interpret the phenomena of history. So long as Art is steady in the
contemplation and exhibition of natural facts, so long she herself lives
and grows; and in her own life and growth partly implies, partly
secures, that of the nation in the midst of which she is practised. But a
time has always hitherto come, in which, having thus reached a
singular perfection, she begins to contemplate that perfection, and to
imitate it, and deduce rules and forms from it; and thus to forget her
duty and ministry as the interpreter and discoverer of Truth. And in the

very instant when this diversion of her purpose and forgetfulness of her
function take place--forgetfulness generally coincident with her
apparent perfection--in that instant, I say, begins her actual catastrophe;
and by her own fall--so far as she has influence--she accelerates the
ruin of the nation by which she is practised.
The study, however, of the effect of art on the mind of nations is one
rather for the historian than for us; at all events it is one for the
discussion of which we have no more time this evening. But I will ask
your patience with me while I try to illustrate, in some further
particulars, the dependence of the healthy state and power of art itself
upon the exercise of its appointed function in the interpretation of fact.
You observe that I always say _interpretation_, never imitation. My
reason for so doing is, first, that good art rarely imitates; it usually only
describes or explains. But my second and chief reason is that good art
always consists of two things: First, the observation of fact; secondly,
the manifesting of human design and authority in the way that fact is
told. Great and good art must unite the two; it cannot exist for a
moment but in their unity; it consists of the two as essentially as water
consists of oxygen and hydrogen, or marble of lime and carbonic acid.
Let us inquire a little into the nature of each of the elements. The first
element, we say, is the love of Nature, leading to the effort to observe
and report her truly. And this is the first and leading element.