{"id":465,"date":"2013-07-13T01:28:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=465"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:28:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:28:10","slug":"39-the-national-value-of-art-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17\/39-the-national-value-of-art-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","title":{"rendered":"-39_The National Value of Art.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nThe National
\nValue of Art<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                       
\nTHERE<\/b> is a
\ntendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and overstress
\nthe value of the useful, a tendency curbed in Europe by the imperious insistence of an agelong tradition of culture and generous training of the aesthetic
\nperceptions; but in India, where we have been cut off by a mercenary and
\nsoulless education from all our ancient roots of culture and tradition, it is
\ncorrected only by the stress of imagination, emotion and spiritual delicacy,
\nsubmerged but not yet destroyed in the temperament of the people. The value
\nattached by the ancients to music, art and poetry has become almost
\nunintelligible to an age bent on depriving life of its meaning by turning
\nearth into a sort of glorified ant-heap or beehive and confusing the lowest,
\nthough most primary in necessity, of the means of human progress with the aim of
\nthis great evolutionary process. The first and lowest necessity of the race is
\nthat of self-preservation in the body by a sufficient supply and equable
\ndistribution of food, shelter and raiment. This is a problem which the oldest
\ncommunistic human societies solved to perfection, and without communism it
\ncannot be solved except by a convenient but inequitable arrangement which makes
\nof the majority slaves provided with these primary wants and necessities and
\nministering under compulsion to a few who rise higher and satisfy larger wants.
\nThese are the wants of the vital instincts, called in our philosophy the prānakosa,
\n<\/i>which go beyond and dominate the mere animal wants, simple, coarse and
\nundiscriminating, shared by us with the lower creation. It is these vital
\nwants, the hunger for wealth, luxury, beautiful women, rich foods and drinks,
\nwhich disturbed the first low but perfect economy of society and made the
\ninstitution of private property, with its huge train of evils, inequality,
\ninjustice, violence, fraud, civil commotion and hatred, class selfishness,
\nfamily selfishness, and personal selfishness, an inevitable necessity of human
\nprogress. The Mother of All works through evil as well as good, and<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\nPage-231<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

through temporary
\nevil she brings about a better and lasting good. These disturbances were
\ncomplicated by the heightening of the primitive animal emotions into more
\nintense and complex forms. Love, hatred, vindictiveness, anger, attachment,
\njealousy and the host of similar passions,<\/span>
\n<\/font> –<\/span>
\n<\/font>
\nthe citta <\/i>or
\nmindstuff suffused by the vital wants of the prāna, <\/i>that which the
\nEuropeans call the heart – ceased to be communal in their application and, as
\npersonal wants, clamoured for separate satisfaction. It is for the satisfaction
\nof the vital and emotional needs of humanity that modern nations and societies
\nexist, that commerce grows and Science ministers to human luxury and convenience. But for these new wants, the establishment of private
\nproperty, first in the clan or family, then in the .individual, the institution
\nof slavery and other necessary devices, the modem world would never have come
\ninto existence; for the satisfaction of the primary economic wants and bodily
\nnecessities would never have carried us beyond the small commune or tribe. But
\nthese primary wants and necessities have to be satisfied and satisfied
\nuniversally, or society becomes diseased and states convulsed with sedition and
\nrevolution.
\n   
\nThe old arrangement of a mass of slaves well fed and provided and a select
\nclass or classes enjoying in greater or less quantity the higher wants of
\nhumanity broke down in the mediaeval ages, because the heart began to develop
\ntoo powerfully in humanity and, under the influence of philosophy, ethics and
\nreligion, began to spread its claim beyond the person, the class, the family,
\nthe clan to the nation and to humanity or to all creation. A temporary makeshift
\nwas invented to replace slavery, called free labour, by which men were paid and
\nbribed to accept voluntarily the position of slaves, contenting themselves with
\nthe coarse satisfaction of the animal necessities and in return
\nproviding by their labour the higher wants of their masters now called superiors
\nor higher classes. This also has become a solution which will no longer serve.
\nThe whole of humanity now demands not merely the satisfaction of the body, the anna,
\n<\/i>but the satisfaction also of the prāna <\/i>and the citta, <\/i>the
\nvital and emotional desires. Wealth, luxury, enjoyment for oneself and those
\ndear to us, participation in the satisfaction<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-232<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nof national wealth, pride, lordship, rivalry, war, alliance, peace, once the
\nprivilege of the few, the higher classes, of prince, burgess and noble are now
\nclaimed by all humanity. Political, social and economic liberty and equality,
\ntwo things difficult to harmonise, must now be conceded to all men and
\nharmonised as well as the present development of humanity will allow. It is this
\nclaim that arose, red with fury and blinded with blood, in the French
\nRevolution. This is Democracy, this Socialism, this Anarchism; and, however
\nfiercely the privileged and propertied classes may rage, curse and denounce
\nthese forerunners of Demogorgon, they can only temporarily resist. Their
\ninterests
\nmay be hoary and venerable with the sanction of the ages, but the future is
\nmightier than the past and evolution proceeds relentlessly in its course
\ntrampling to pieces all that it no longer needs. Those who fight against her
\nfight against the will of God, against a decree written from of old, and are
\nalready defeated and slain in the kāranajagat, <\/i>the world of types and
\ncauses where Nature fixes everything before she works it out in the visible
\nworld. Nihatāh  pūrvameva.<\/i>
\n   
\nThe mass of humanity has not risen beyond the bodily needs, the vital desires,
\nthe emotions and the current of thought- sensations created by these lower
\nstrata. This current of thought- sensations is called in Hindu philosophy the manas
\n<\/i>or mind, it is the highest to which all but a few of the animals can rise,
\nand it is the highest function that the mass of mankind has thoroughly
\nperfected. Beyond the manas <\/i>is the buddhi, <\/i>or thought proper,
\nwhich, when perfected, is independent of the desires, the claims of the body and
\nthe interference of the emotions. But only a minority of men have developed this
\norgan, much less perfected it. Only great thinkers in their hours of thought are
\nable to use this organ independently of the lower strata, and even they are
\nbesieged by the latter in their ordinary life and their best thought suffers
\ncontinually from these lower intrusions. Only developed Yogins have a viśliddha-buddhi,
\n<\/i>a thought-organ cleared of the interference of the lower strata by cittaśuddhi
\n<\/i>or purification of the citta, <\/i>the mind-stuff, from the prāna <\/i>full
\nof animal, vital and emotional disturbances. With most men the buddhi <\/i>is
\nfull of manas <\/i>and the manas <\/i>of the lower strata. The majority of
\nman-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-233<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nkind do not think, they have only thought-sensations; a large minority think
\nconfusedly, mixing up desires, predilections, passions, prejudgments, old
\nassociations and prejudices with pure and disinterested thought. Only a few, the
\nrare aristocrats of the earth, can really and truly think. That is now the true
\naristocracy, not the aristocracy of the body and birth, not the aristocracy of
\nvital superiority, wealth, pride and luxury, not the aristocracy of higher
\nemotions, courage, energy, successful political instinct and the habit of
\nmastery and rule,<\/span> <\/font>
\n– though these latter cannot be
\nneglected, – but the aristocracy of knowledge, undisturbed insight and
\nintellectual ability. It emerges, though it has not yet
\nemerged, and in any future arrangement of human society this
\nnatural inequality will play an important part.
\n   
\nAbove the buddhi <\/i>are other faculties which are now broadly included in
\nthe term spirituality. This body of faculties is still rarer and more
\nimperfectly developed even in the highest than the thought-organ. Most men
\nmistake intellectuality, imaginative inspiration or emotional fervour for
\nspirituality, but this is a much higher function, the highest of all, of which
\nall the others are coverings and veils. Here we get to the fountain, the source
\nto which we return, the goal of human evolution. But although spirituality has
\noften entered into humanity in great waves, it has done so merely to create a
\ntemporary impetus and retire into the souls of a few, leaving only its coverings
\nand shadows behind to compose and inform the thing which is usually called
\nreligion. Meanwhile the thought is the highest man has really attained and it is
\nby the thought that the old society has been broken down. And the thought is
\ncomposed of two separate sides, judgment or reason and imagination, both of
\nwhich are necessary to perfect ideation. It is by science, philosophy and
\ncriticism on the one side, by art, poetry and idealism on the other, that the
\nold state of humanity has been undermined and is now collapsing, and the
\nfoundations have been laid for the new. Of these science, philosophy and
\ncriticism have established their use to the mass of humanity by ministering to
\nthe luxury, comfort and convenience which all men desire and arming them with
\njustification in the confused struggle of passions, interests, cravings and
\naspirations which are now working with solvent and
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-234<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ncorrosive effect throughout the world. The value of the other side, more subtle
\nand profound, has been clouded to the mass of men by the less visible and
\nsensational character of its workings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-235<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n2<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n                       THE<\/b> activity
\nof human thought divides it- self broadly into two groups of functions, those of
\nthe right- hand, contemplation, creation, imagination, the centres that see the
\ntruth, and those of the left-hand, criticism, reasoning, discrimination,
\ninquiry, the centres that judge the truth when it is seen. In education the
\nlatter are fostered by scientific and manual training, but the only quality of
\nthe right-hand that this education fosters is observation. For this reason a
\npurely scientific education tends to make thought keen and c1earsighted within
\ncertain limits, but narrow, hard and cold. Even in his own sphere the man
\nwithout any training of the right-hand can only progress in a settled groove; he
\ncannot broaden the base of human culture or enlarge the bounds of science.
\nTennyson describes him as an eye well practised in Nature, a spirit bounded and
\npoor, and the description is just. But a cultivated eye without a cultivated
\nspirit makes by no means the highest type of man. It is precisely the
\ncultivation of the spirit that is the object of what is well called a liberal
\neducation, and the pursuits best calculated to cultivate the growth of the
\nspirit are language, literature, the Arts, music, painting, sculpture or the
\nstudy of these, philosophy, religion, history, the study and understanding of
\nman through his works and of Nature and man through the interpretative as well
\nas through the analytic faculties. These are the pursuits which belong to the intellectual activities of the right-hand, and while the importance of most of
\nthese will be acknowledged, there is a tendency to ignore Art and poetry as mere
\nrefinements, luxuries of the rich and leisurely rather than things that are
\nnecessary to the mass of men or useful to life. This is largely due to the
\nmisuse of these great instruments by the luxurious few who held the world and
\nits good things in their hands in the intermediate period of human progress. But
\nthe aesthetic faculties entering into the enjoyment of the world and the
\nsatisfaction of the vital instincts, the love of the beautiful in men and women,
\nin food, in things, in articles<\/span> <\/font>
\nof<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-236<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

use and articles of pleasure, have done more than anything else,
\nto raise man from the beast, to refine and purge his passions, to ennoble his
\nemotions and to lead him up through the heart and the imagination to the state
\nof the intellectual man. That which has helped man upward, must be preserved in
\norder that he may not sink below the level he has attained. For man
\nintellectually developed, mighty in scientific knowledge and the mastery of
\ngross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his
\nfootstool, but undeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of
\nasura <\/i>using the powers of a dewgod to satisfy the nature of an animal.
\nAccording to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was
\nthe civilisation of old Atlantis, submerged beneath the Ocean when its greatness
\nand its wickedness became too heavy a load for the earth to bear, and our own
\nlegends of the asuras <\/i>represent a similar consciousness of a great but
\nabortive development in humanity.
\n   
\nThe first and lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic, the second is the
\nintellectual or educative, the third and highest the spiritual. By speaking of
\nthe aesthetic use as the lowest, we do not wish to imply that it is not of
\nimmense value to humanity, but simply to assign to it its comparative value in
\nrelation to the higher uses. The aesthetic is of immense importance and until it
\nhas done its work, mankind is not really fitted to make full use of Art on the
\nhigher planes of human development. Aristotle assigns a high value to tragedy
\nbecause of its purifying force. He describes its effect as katharsis, <\/i>a
\nsacramental word of the Greek mysteries, which, in the secret discipline of the
\nancient Greek Tantrics, answered precisely to our cittaśuddhi, <\/i>the purification of the citta <\/i>
\nor mass of established ideas, feelings and actional habits in a man either by samnyama, <\/i>rejection, or by bhoga, <\/i>satisfaction,
\nor by both. Aristotle was speaking of the purification of feelings, passions
\nand emotions in the heart through imaginative treatment in poetry but the truth
\nthe idea contains is of much wider application and constitutes the justification
\nof the aesthetic side of art. It purifies by beauty. The beautiful and the good
\nare held by many thinkers to be the same and, though the idea may be wrongly
\nstated, it is, when put from the<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-237<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nright standpoint, not only a truth but the fundamental truth of existence.
\nAccording to our own philosophy the whole world came out of ānanda <\/i>and
\nreturns into ānanda, <\/i>and the triple term in which ānanda <\/i>may be
\nstated is Joy, Love, Beauty. To see divine beauty in themhole world, man, life,
\nnature, to love that which we have seen and to have pure unalloyed bliss in that
\nlove and that beauty is the appointed road by which mankind as a race must climb
\nto God. That is the reaching to vidy<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i> <\/i>through avidy<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>, <\/i>to the One
\nPure and Divine through the manifold manifestation of Him, of which the
\nUpanishad repeatedly speaks. But the bliss must be pure and unalloyed, unalloyed
\nby self-regarding emotions, unalloyed by pain and evil. The sense of good and
\nbad, beautiful and un-beautiful, which afflicts our understanding and our
\nsenses, must be replaced by akha1:u!a rasa, <\/i>undifferentiated and
\nunabridged delight in the delightfulness of things, before the highest can be
\nreached. On the way to this goal full use must be made of the lower and abridged
\nsense of beauty which seeks to replace the less beautiful by the more, the lower
\nby the higher, the mean by the noble.
\n    At a certain stage of human development the aesthetic sense
\nis of infinite value in this direction. It raises and purifies conduct by
\ninstilling a distaste for the coarse desires and passions of the savage, for the
\nrough, uncouth and excessive in action and manner, and restraining both feeling
\nand action by a striving after the decent, the beautiful, the fit and seemly
\nwhich received its highest expression in the manners of cultivated European
\nsociety, the elaborate ceremonious life of the Confucian, the careful
\n<\/span>
\nā<\/span><\/i>c<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>ra <\/i>
\nand etiquette of Hinduism. At the present stage of progress this element is losing much of its
\nonce all-important value and, when overstressed, tends to hamper a higher
\ndevelopment by the obstruction of soulless ceremony and formalism. Its great use
\nwas to discipline the savage animal instincts of the body, the vital instincts
\nand the lower feelings in the heart. Its disadvantage to progress is that it
\ntends to trammel the play both of the higher feelings of the heart and the
\nworkings of originality in thought. Born originally of a seeking after beauty,
\nit degenerates into an attachment to form, to exterior uniformity, to precedent,
\nto dead authority. In the future development of humanity it must<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-238<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nbe given a much lower place than in
\nthe past. Its limits must be
\nrecognised and the demands of a higher truth, sincerity and freedom of thought
\nand feeling must be given priority. Mankind is apt to bind itself by attachment
\nto the means of its past progress forgetful of the aim. The bondage to formulas
\nhas to be outgrown, and in this again it is the sense of a higher beauty and
\nfitness which will be most powerful to correct the lower. The art of life must
\nbe understood in more magnificent terms and must subordinate its more formal
\nelements to the service of the master civilisers, Love and Thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-239<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n3<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n                    THE<\/b>
\nwork of purifying conduct through outward form and habitual and seemly
\nregulation of expression, manner and action is the lowest of the many services
\nwhich the artistic sense has done to humanity, and yet how wide is the field it
\ncovers and how important and indispensable have its workings been to the
\nprogress of civilisation! A still more important and indispensable activity of
\nthe sense of beauty is the powerful help it has given to the formation of
\nmorality. We do not ordinarily recognise how largely our sense of virtue is a
\nsense of the beautiful in conduct and our sense of sin a sense of ugliness and
\ndeformity in conduct. It may easily be recognised in the lower and more physical
\nworkings, as for instance in the shuddering recoil from cruelty, blood, torture
\nas things intolerably hideous to sight and imagination or in the aesthetic
\ndisgust at sensual excesses and the strong sense, awakened by this disgust, of
\nthe charm of purity and the beauty of virginity. This latter feeling was extremely active in the imagination of the Greeks and other nations not
\nnoted for a high standard in conduct, and it was purely aesthetic in its
\nroots. Pity again is largely a vital instinct in the ordinary man associated
\nwith jugups<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>, <\/i>the loathing for the hideous- ness of its opposite,
\nghrn<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>,
\n<\/i>disgust at the sordidness and brutality of cruelty, hardness and selfishness
\nas well as at the ugliness of their actions, so that a common word for cruel in
\nthe Sanskrit language is nirghrna, <\/i>the man without disgust or loathing,
\nand the word ghrn<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i> <\/i>approximates in use to krp<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>, <\/i>the lower or
\nvital kind of pity. But even on a higher plane the sense of virtue is very
\nlargely aesthetic and, even when it emerges from the aesthetic stage, must
\nalways call the sense of the beautiful to its support if it is to be safe from
\nthe revolt against it of one of the most deep- seated of human instincts. We can
\nsee the largeness of this element if we study the ideas of the Greeks, who
\nnever got beyond the aesthetic stage of morality. There were four gradations in
\nGreek ethical thought, – the euprepēs, <\/i>that which is seemly or outwardly decorous; the dikaion, <\/i>that which is in accordance with
\ndikē<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-240<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nor nomos, <\/i>the law, custom and standard of humanity based on the sense of
\nfitness and on the codified or uncodified mass of precedents in which that
\nsense has been expressed in general conduct, – in other words the just or
\nlawful; thirdly, the agathon, <\/i>the good, based partly on the seemly and
\npartly on the just and lawful, and reaching towards the purely beautiful; then
\nfinal and supreme, the kalon, <\/i>that which is purely beautiful, the sup-
\nreme standard. The most remarkable part of Aristotle’s moral system is that in
\nwhich he classifies the parts of conduct not according to our idea of virtue and
\nsin, p<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>pa <\/i>and punya, <\/i>but by a purely aesthetic standard, the
\nexcess, defect and golden, in other words correct and beautiful, mean of
\nqualities. The Greeks’ view of life was imperfect even from the standpoint of
\nbeauty, not only because the idea of beauty was not sufficiently catholic and
\ntoo much attached to a fastidious purity of form and outline and restraint, but
\nbecause they were deficient in love. God as beauty, Sri Krishna in Brindavan,
\n<\/span>
\nŚ<\/span>y<\/i><\/span>ā<\/span><\/i>masundara,
\n<\/i>is not only Beauty, He is also Love, and without perfect love there cannot
\nbe perfect beauty, and without perfect beauty there cannot be perfect delight.
\nThe aesthetic motive in conduct limits and must be exceeded in order that
\nhumanity may rise. Therefore it was that the Greek mould had to be broken and
\nhumanity even revolted for a time against beauty. The agathon, <\/i>the good,
\nhad to be released for a time from the bondage of the kalon, <\/i>the
\naesthetic sense of beauty, just as it is now struggling to deliver itself from
\nthe bondage of the euprepēs <\/i>and the dikaion, <\/i>mere decorousness,
\nmere custom, mere social law and rule. The excess of this anti- aesthetic
\ntendency is visible in Puritanism and the baser forms of asceticism. The
\nprogress of ethics in Europe has been largely a struggle between the Greek sense
\nof aesthetic beauty and the Christian sense of a higher good marred on the one
\nside by formalism, on the other by an unlovely asceticism. The association of
\nthe latter with virtue has largely driven the sense of beauty to the side of
\nvice. The good must not be subordinated to the aesthetic sense, but it must be
\nbeautiful and delightful, or to that extent it ceases to be good. The object of
\nexistence is not the practice of virtue for its own sake but
\n<\/span>
\nā<\/span><\/i>nanda, <\/i>
\ndelight, and progress consists not in rejecting beauty and delight, but in
\nrising<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-241<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nfrom the lower to the higher, the
\nless complete to the more complete beauty
\nand to delight.
\n   
\nThe third activity of the aesthetic faculty, higher than the two already
\ndescribed, the highest activity of the artistic sense before it rises to the
\nplane of the intellect, is the direct purifying of the emotions. This is the katharsis
\n<\/i>of which Aristotle spoke. The sense of pleasure and delight in the emotional
\naspects of life and action, this is the poetry of life, just as the regulating
\nand beautiful arrangement of character and action is the art of life. We have
\nseen how the latter purifies, but the purifying force of the former is still
\nmore potent for good. Our life is largely made up of the eight rasas. <\/i>The
\nmovements of the heart in its enjoyment of action, its own and that of others,
\nmay either be directed down- wards, as is the case with the animals and animal
\nmen, to the mere satisfaction of the ten sense-organs and the vital desires
\nwhich make instruments of the senses in the average sensual man, or they may
\nwork for the satisfaction of the heart itself in a predominatingly emotional
\nenjoyment of life, or they may be directed upwards through the medium of the
\nintellect, rational and intuitional, to attainment of delight through the
\nseizing on the source of all delight, the Spirit, the sat yam, sundaram,
\n<\/i>
\n<\/span>
\nā<\/span><\/i>nandam <\/i>who is beyond and around, the source and the basis of all this
\nworld-wide activity, evolution and progress. When the heart works for itself,
\nthen it enjoys the poetry of life, the delight of emotions, the wonder, pathos,
\nbeauty, enjoyableness, lovableness, calm, serenity, clarity and also the
\ngrandeur, heroism, passion, fury, terror and horror of life, of man, of
\nNature, of the phenomenal manifestation of God. This is not the highest, but it
\nis higher than the animal, vital and ‘externally aesthetic developments. The
\nlarge part it plays in life is obvious, but in life it is hampered by the
\ndemands of body and the vital passions. Here comes in the first mighty utility,
\nthe triumphant activity of the most energetic forms of art and poetry. They
\nprovide a field in which these pressing claims of the animal can be excluded and
\nthe emotions, working disinterestedly for the satisfaction of the heart and the
\nimagination alone, can do the work of katharsis, <\/i>emotional
\npurification, of which Aristotle spoke. Cittaśuddhi, <\/i>the purification
\nof the heart, is the appointed road by<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-242<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nwhich man arrives at his higher fulfilment, and, if it can be shown that poetry
\nand art are powerful agents towards that end, their supreme importance is
\nestablished. They are that, and more than that. It is only one of the great uses
\nof these things which men nowadays are inclined to regard as mere ornaments of
\nlife and therefore of secondary importance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-243<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n4<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n                       
\nWE<\/b><\/span>
\n<\/font><\/b>
\nnow come to the kernel of the
\nsubject, the place of art in the evolution of the race and its value in the
\neducation and actual life of a nation. The first question is whether the sense
\nof the beautiful has any effect on the life of a nation. It is obvious, from
\nwhat we have already written, that the manners, the social culture and the
\nrestraint in action and expression which are so large a part of national
\nprestige and dignity and make a nation admired like the French, loved like the
\nIrish or respected like the higher-class English, are based essentially on the
\nsense of form and beauty, of what is correct, symmetrical, well-adjusted, fair
\nto the eye and pleasing to the imagination. The absence of these qualities is a
\nsource of national weakness. The rudeness, coarseness and vulgar violence of the
\nless cultured Englishman, the over-bearing brusqueness and selfishness of the
\nPrussian have greatly hampered those powerful nations in their dealings with
\nforeigners, dependencies and even their own friends, allies, colonies. We all
\nknow what a large share the manner and ordinary conduct of the average and of
\nthe vulgar Anglo-Indian has had in bringing about the revolt of the Indian,
\naccustomed through ages to courtesy, dignity and the amenities of an equal
\nintercourse, against the mastery of an obviously coarse and selfish community.
\nNow the sense of form and beauty, the correct, symmetrical, well-adjusted, fair
\nand pleasing is an artistic sense and can best be fostered in a nation by
\nartistic culture of the perceptions and sensibilities. It is noteworthy that the
\ntwo great nations who are most hampered by the defect of these qualities in
\naction are also the least imaginative, poetic and artistic in Europe. It is the
\nSouth German who contributes the art, poetry and music of Germany, the Celt and
\nNorman who produce great poets and a few great artists in England without
\naltering the characteristics of the dominant Saxon. Music is even more powerful
\nin this direction than Art and by the perfect expression of harmony insensibly
\nsteeps the man in it. And it is noticeable that England has hardly produced a
\nsingle musician<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-244<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nworth the name. Plato in his
\nRepublic has dwelt with extraordinary
\nemphasis on the importance of music in education; as is the music to which a
\npeople is accustomed, so, he says in effect, is the character of that people.
\nThe importance of painting and sculpture is hardly less. The mind is profoundly
\ninfluenced by what it sees and, if the eye is trained from the days of childhood
\nto the contemplation and understanding of beauty, harmony and just arrangement
\nin line and colour, the tastes, habits and charac- ter will be insensibly
\ntrained to follow a similar law of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in the
\nlife of the adult man. This was the great importance of the universal
\nproficiency in the arts and crafts or the appreciation of them which was
\nprevalent in ancient Greece, in certain European ages, in Japan and in the
\nbetter days of our own history. Art galleries cannot be brought into every home,
\nbut, if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are things
\nof taste and beauty, it is inevitable that the habits, thoughts and feelings of
\nthe people should be raised, ennobled, harmonised, made more sweet and
\ndignified.
\n   
\nA similar result is produced on the emotions by the study of beautiful or noble
\nart. We have spoken of the purification of the heart, the cittaśuddhi, <\/i>which
\nAristotle assigned as the essential office of poetry, and have pointed out that
\nit is done in<\/span> <\/font>
\npoetry by the
\ndetached and disinterested enjoyment of the eight
\n<\/span>rasas<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/i><\/font>or forms of
\nemotional aestheticism which make up life unalloyed
\nby the disturbance of the lower self-regarding passions. Painting and sculpture
\nwork in the same direction by different means. Art sometimes uses the same means
\nas poetry but can- not do it to the same extent because it has not the movement
\nof poetry; it is fixed, still, it expresses only a given moment, a given point
\nin space and cannot move freely through time and region. But it is precisely
\nthis stillness, this calm, this fixity which gives its separate value to Art.
\nPoetry raises the emotions and gives each its separate delight. Art stills the
\nemotions and teaches <\/span>them
\nthe delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction,<\/span>
\n<\/font> –<\/span>
\n<\/font>
\nthis
\n<\/span>indeed was
\nthe characteristic that the Greeks, a nation of artists far more artistic than
\npoetic, tried to bring into their poetry. Music deepens the emotions and
\nharmonises them with each<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-245<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nother. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the
\nsoul; they make and keep its movements purified, self-controlled, deep and
\nharmonious. These, therefore, are agents which cannot profitably be neglected by
\nhumanity on its onward march or degraded to the mere satisfaction of sensuous
\npleasure which will disintegrate rather than build the character. They are, when
\nproperly used, great educating, edifying and civilising forces.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-246<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n5<\/font><\/b>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n                        THE<\/b> value of
\nart in the training of intellectual faculty is also an important part of its
\nutility. We have already indicated the double character of intellectual
\nactivity, divided between the imaginative, creative and sympathetic or
\ncomprehensive intellectual centres on the one side and the critical, analytic
\nand penetrative on the other. The latter are best trained by science, criticism
\nand observation, the former by art, poetry, music, literature and the
\nsympathetic study of man and his creations. These make the mind quick to grasp
\nat a glance, subtle to distinguish shades, deep to reject shallow selfsufficiency, mobile, delicate, swift, intuitive. Art assists in this training
\nby raising images in the mind which it has to understand not by analysis, but
\nby self-identification with other minds; it is a powerful stimulator of
\nsympathetic insight. Art is subtle and delicate, and it makes the mind also in
\nits movements subtle and
\ndelicate. It is suggestive, and the intellect habituated to the appreciation of
\nart is quick to catch suggestions, mastering not only, as the scientific mind
\ndoes, that which is positive and on the surface, but that which leads to ever
\nfresh widening and subtilising of knowledge and opens a door into the deeper
\nsecrets of inner nature where the positive instruments of science cannot take
\nthe depth or measure. This supreme intellectual value of Art has never been
\nsufficiently recognised. Men have made language, poetry, his- tory, philosophy
\nagents for the training of this side of intellectuality, necessary parts of a
\nliberal education, but the immense educative force of music, painting and
\nsculpture has not been duly recognised. They have been thought to be by-paths of
\nthe human mind, beautiful and interesting, but not necessary, there- fore
\nintended for the few. Yet the universal impulse to enjoy the beauty and
\nattractiveness of sound, to look at and live among pictures, colours, forms
\nought to have warned mankind of the superficiality and ignorance of such a view
\nof these eternal and important occupations of human mind. The impulse, denied
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-247<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nproper training and self-purification, has spent itself on the tri- vial, gaudy,
\nsensuous, cheap or vulgar instead of helping man upward by its powerful aid in
\nthe evocation of what is best and highest in intellect as well as in character,
\nemotion and the aesthetic enjoyment and regulation of life and manners. It is
\ndifficult to appreciate the waste and detriment involved in the low and debased
\nlevel of enjoyment to which the artistic impulses are condemned in the majority
\nof mankind.
\n   
\nBut beyond and above this intellectual utility of Art, there is a higher use,
\nthe noblest of all, its service to the growth of spirituality in the race.
\nEuropean critics have dwelt on the close connection of the highest
\ndevelopments of art with religion, and it is undoubtedly true that in Greece, in
\nItaly, in India, the greatest efflorescence of a national Art has been
\nassociated with the employment of the artistic genius to illustrate or adorn the
\nthoughts and fancies or the temples and instruments of the national religion.
\nThis was not because Art is necessarlly associated with the outward forms of
\nreligion, but because it was in the religion that men’s spiritual aspirations
\ncentred themselves. Spirituality is a wider thing than formal religion and it
\nis in the service of spirituality that Art reaches its highest
\nself-expression. Spirituality is a single word expressive of three lines of
\nhuman aspiration towards divine knowledge, divine love and joy, divine strength,
\nand that will be the highest and most perfect Art which, while satisfying the
\nphysical requirements of the aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the
\nemotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outward reality, as the
\nbest European’ Art satisfies these requirements, reaches beyond them and expresses inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy
\nof God in the world and its beauty and desirableness and the manifestation of
\ndivine force and energy in phenomenal creation. This is what Indian Art alone
\nattempted thoroughly and in the effort it often dispensed, either deliberately
\nor from impatience, with the lower, yet not negligible perfections which the
\nmore material European demanded. Therefore Art has flowed in two separate
\nstreams in Europe and Asia, so diverse that it is only now that the European
\naesthetic sense has so far trained, itself as to begin to appreciate the
\nartistic conven-<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-248<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\ntions, aims and traditions of Asia. Asia’s future development, will unite these
\ntwo streams in one deep and grandiose flood of artistic self-expression
\nperfecting the aesthetic evolution of humanity.
\n    But if Art is to reach towards the highest, the Indian tendency
\nmust dominate. The spirit is that in which all the rest of the human being
\nreposes, towards which it returns and the final self-revelation of which is the
\ngoal of humanity. Man becomes God, and all human activity reaches its highest
\nand noblest when it succeeds in bringing body, heart and mind into touch with
\nspirit. Art can express eternal truth, it is not limited to the expression of form and
\nappearance. So wonderfully has God made the world that a man using a simple
\ncombination of lines, an unpretentious harmony of colours, can raise this
\napparently in- significant medium to suggest absolute and profound truths with a
\nperfection which language labours with difficulty to reach. What Nature is, what
\nGod is, what man is can be triumphantly revealed in stone or on canvas.
\n   
\nBehind a few figures, a few trees and rocks the supreme Intelligence, the
\nsupreme Imagination, the supreme Energy lurks, acts, feels, is, and, if the
\nartist has the spiritual vision, he can see it and suggest perfectly the great
\nmysterious Life in its manifestations brooding in action, active in thought,
\nenergetic in stillness, creative in repose, full of a mastering intention in
\nthat which appears blind and unconscious. The great truths of religion, science,
\nmetaphysics, life, development, become concrete,
\nemotional, universally intelligible and convincing in the hands of the master of
\nplastic Art, and the soul of man, in the stage when it is rising from emotion to
\nintellect, looks, receives the suggestion and is uplifted towards a higher
\ndevelopment, a diviner knowledge.
\n   
\nSo it is with the divine love and joy which pulsates throughout existence and
\nis far superior to alloyed earthly pleasure. Catholic, perfect, unmixed with
\nrepulsion, radiating through all things, the common no less than the high, the
\nmean and shabby no less than the lofty and splendid, the terrible and the
\nrepulsive no less than the charming and attractive, it uplifts all, purifies
\nall, turns all to love and delight and beauty. A little of<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-249<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthis immortal nectar poured into a man’s heart transfigures life and action. The
\nwhole flood of it pouring in would lift mankind to God. This too Art can seize
\non and suggest to the human soul, aiding it in its stormy and toilsome
\npilgrimage. In that pilgrimage it is the divine strength that supports.
\n<\/span> Śakli,
\n<\/span>
\n<\/i>
\nForce, pouring through the universe supports its boundless activities, the
\nfrail and tremulous life of the rose no less than the flaming motions of sun and
\nstar. To suggest the strength and virile unconquerable force of the divine
\nNature in man and in the outside world, its energy, its calm, its powerful
\ninspiration, its august enthusiasm, its wildness, greatness, attractiveness, to
\nbreathe that into man’s soul and gradually mould the finite into the image of
\nthe Infinite is another spiritual utility of Art. This is its loftiest function,
\nits fullest consummation, its most perfect privilege.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-250<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n6<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/span>                       
\nTHE<\/b><\/span> enormous
\nvalue of Art to human evolution has been made sufficiently apparent from the
\nanalysis, incomplete in itself, which we have attempted. We have also
\nincidentally pointed out its value as a factor in education. It is obvious that
\nno nation can afford to neglect an element of such high importance to the
\nculture of its people or the training of some of the higher intellectual, moral
\nand aesthetic faculties in the young. The system of education which, instead of
\nkeeping artistic training apart as a privilege for a few specialists, frankly
\nintroduces it as a part of culture no less necessary than literature or science,
\nwill have taken a great step forward in the perfection of national education and
\nthe general diffusion of a broad-based human culture. It is not necessary that
\nevery man should be an artist. It is necessary that every man should have his
\nartistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight
\ninto form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made
\nhabitually active, correct and sensitive. It is necessary that those who create,
\nwhether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art
\nand genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man’s daily
\nlife, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the
\nbeautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the
\nfine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A
\nnation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes
\nthat which it is habituated to contemplate and realises the fullness of the
\nexpanding Spirit in itself.
\n   
\nIn the system of National education that was inaugurated in Bengal, a beginning
\nwas made by the importance attached to drawing and clay-modelling as elements of
\nmanual training. But the absence of an artistic ideal, the misconception of the
\ntrue aim of manual training, the imperative financial needs of these struggling
\ninstitutions making for a predominant commercial aim in the education given, the
\nmastery of English ideas, English<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-251<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nmethods and English predilections in the so-called national education
\nrendered nugatory the initial advantage. The students had faculty, but the
\nteaching given them would waste and misuse the faculty. The nation and the
\nindividual can gain nothing by turning out figures in clay which faithfully copy the vulgarity and
\nugliness of English commercial production or by multiplying mere copies of men
\nor things. A free and active imaging of form and hue within oneself, a free and
\nself-trained hand reproducing with instinctive success not the form and
\nmeasurement of things seen outside, for that is a smaller capacity easily
\nmastered, but the inward vision of the relation and truth of things, an eye
\nquick to note and distinguish, sensitive to design and to harmony in colour, these are
\nthe faculties that have to be evoked and the formal
\nand mechanical English method is useless for this purpose.
\n    In India the revival of a truly national Art is already an accomplished
\nfact and the masterpieces of the school can already challenge comparison with
\nthe best work of other countries. Under such circumstances it is unpardonable
\nthat the crude formal teaching of English schools and the vulgar commercial aims
\nand methods of the West should subsist in our midst. The country has yet to
\nevolve a system of education which shall be really national. The taint of
\nOccidental ideals and alien and un- suitable methods has to be purged out of our
\nminds, and nowhere more than in the teaching which should be the foundation of
\nintellectual and aesthetic renovation. The spirit of old Indian Art must be
\nrevived, the inspiration and directness of vision which even now subsists among
\nthe possessors of the ancient traditions, the inborn skill and taste of the
\nrace, the dexterity of the Indian hand and the intuitive gaze of the Indian eye
\nmust be recovered and the whole nation lifted again to the high level of the
\nancient culture<\/span> <\/font>
\n–<\/span>
\n<\/font>
\nand higher.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-252<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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