Chapter 4
Making and skill of every kind: the fine arts, crafts, useful arts, technique and imitation of nature.
1135 passages · 374 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Art, in the sense these volumes give the word, covers every kind of making. It includes the shipwright’s raft and the goldsmith’s chalice, the brewer’s malt and the poet’s verse, the breeder’s sheep and the tragedian’s stage. The idea is great for the Harvard Classics because nearly every author in them stands somewhere between nature and human contrivance and must say what the human hand adds. One of the earliest voices is Prometheus, who claims that every mortal art springs from him: ships, the yoking of horses, metals, letters and medicines1. One of the latest is Schiller, for whom art becomes the instrument that ennobles character itself2. Between them lies a long argument about skill, nature, imitation, rule and worth.
The first question is what distinguishes art from mere knack. The Stoics answer that art is a disciplined capacity governed by principle. Marcus Aurelius observes that craftsmen cling to the principles of their art and asks whether man will respect his own reason less3. Epictetus finds an art even in speaking and hearing, as in making and viewing a statue4. Hippocrates insists that medicine requires both talent and training, and he compares pretenders to actors in a tragedy5. Plato’s Socrates grants that artisans truly know many fine things, but he faults them for supposing that this skill gives them knowledge of higher matters6. Kant presses the point to its limit. Imperatives of skill prescribe means to any end whatever, so the physician and the poisoner are equally skilful7. On this view art is power over means, and it is morally indifferent.
Whether such power needs science is disputed. Hobbes calls science the true mother of the useful arts, though the artificer takes the credit8. Descartes expects knowledge of natural bodies to yield countless new arts9. Voltaire, by contrast, traces the great inventions to the mechanical instinct of unlettered men rather than to philosophy10, even as he urges that practice and theory be united11. Penn likewise finds gardeners ignorant of the reasons of their craft and holds that the true master combines both12. The moderns supply telling cases. Faraday’s smith softens iron by heat without knowing the scientific terms for what he does13. Pasteur shows that brewers had unwittingly been aerating their yeast all along14. Huxley mocks the practical men who trust rule of thumb15. Burke goes furthest, holding that artists succeed by practice without theory, and that art cannot supply the rules that make an art16. Cellini speaks from the bench. Scholars’ fancies may be fine in words but unfit for metal17, and a design is not achieved until the artist himself executes it18.
The division between useful and fine arts sharpens only with the moderns. Schiller calls art the daughter of freedom, neglected in an age of utility19. He contrasts the mechanical artist, the fine artist and the political educator, whose material is man himself20. He sees free intelligence shining even in the ornament of weapons21. Emerson finds the English adept at coarse useful manufactures but heavy in the fine arts22. Whether the fine arts form one family is also contested. Goethe reads the mixing of kinds as a sign of decay and holds that each art must keep its own field23. Taine likewise gives each art its own law and its own season, as painting had in Flanders24. Schiller, however, wants music, sculpture and poetry to converge in their effect upon the mind25. Coleridge calls all art the figured language of thought26. Shelley notes how each medium limits the passage from conception to expression27. Browning imagines every artist longing to speak love once in an art not his own28.
On the origin of the arts, myth and natural history give rival accounts. In Aeschylus, stolen fire is the teacher of every art29. Milton’s vision shows the first smiths and musicians as inventors of arts that polish life30. Sophocles’ chorus marvels that man sails, ploughs, nets creatures and yokes the bull31. Pope has man rise from nature to art by copying the bee, the mole and the nautilus32. Rousseau derives fishing tackle, bows and clothing from necessity33, and Hobbes calls need the mother of invention34. Herodotus records the fen-dwellers who sleep under their fishing nets to keep off the gnats35.
The progress of the arts then becomes a modern theme. Bacon contrasts the mechanical arts, which keep improving from rude beginnings, with stagnant philosophy36. Adam Smith credits invention to the focused attention that the division of labour brings, as with the boy who improved the fire-engine valve37. He also credits machine-makers and philosophers38. Emerson celebrates Watt, Arkwright and the self-acting mule39, yet he worries that new machinery displaces natural skill40. Rousseau thinks the simple solitary arts kept men free, and that metallurgy and agriculture wrought the fatal revolution41. Woolman calls useful inventions a good gift that self-exalting cunning makes evil42.
The fine arts have a different history, bound to states and patrons. Plutarch shows Pericles’ buildings employing every trade, with workmen striving to outdo their material by craftsmanship43,44. Virgil cedes bronze and marble to others and claims for Rome the arts of empire45. Cellini attributes Florence’s excellence to rivalry among its artists46, and Voltaire credits the munificence of Louis XIV47. Goethe traces a rise from dry imitation to completeness, followed by decline as followers mimic the master’s appearance of ease48. Macaulay detects decline in misplaced beauty rather than in deformity49.
The deepest question concerns art and nature. The ancient doctrine holds that art imitates nature. Marcus Aurelius infers that the most perfect nature cannot fall short of art50. Dante has art follow nature as nature follows the divine mind51,52, and Hobbes extends imitation to the artificial man, Leviathan53. Sidney, following Aristotle, makes poetry a figuring forth that renders even horrible things delightful54. Burke treats imitation as a pleasure in itself55. Fielding locates comic excellence in exact copying, as against the licensed distortion of caricature56. Johnson adds that imitation represents realities without deceiving57.
The romantics complicate the doctrine. Coleridge finds mere copying disgusting and asks the artist to grasp nature’s productive essence rather than her products58,59. Goethe demands truth to nature but sees an enormous chasm between nature and art60. Hugo denies that truth in art is absolute reality61, and he claims the grotesque as nature’s richest gift to art62.
From imitation it is a short step to perfection. Browne calls art the perfection of nature, and nature the art of God63. Confucius wants nature and art blended, lest roughness or pedantry result64. Goethe’s rare artists produce rivals of nature65. Coleridge’s art is the mediatress that humanizes nature66. Against these stand the voices for nature’s superiority. Epictetus finds human marble lifeless beside God’s breathing works67, and Carlyle says art only apes nature from afar68. Darwin judges natural selection immeasurably superior to man’s feeble efforts69. Andersen’s jewelled nightingale can be explained and opened, but it cannot sing unwound, while the living bird succeeds70,71.
A darker strand portrays art contrived to command nature. Harrison’s gardeners presume to direct nature’s course as if they were her superiors72. Bacon’s Salomon’s House crosses kinds and produces new species73, and Bacon declares his aim to command nature74. Dante damns the alchemist who aped creative nature75. Jonson’s Subtle boasts of metals more perfect than nature’s76. Faustus concedes that he cannot produce the true bodies of the dead77, and Prospero finally breaks his staff78. Darwin’s breeders, though, perform something like this magic legitimately. They chalk out a perfect form as an artist would79, and doing so demands a rare eye and years of practice80. In the mule, Darwin allows, art has outdone nature81.
The quarrel over models runs through the Renaissance and beyond. Cellini formed himself on antique sarcophagi82. Cervantes holds that every trade proceeds by imitating exemplars83, and Milton follows the Greek tragedians84. Dryden, citing Horace, warns against servile copying85. He distinguishes imitating nature from copying another’s work, since Raphael’s idea of nature was his own86. Cellini both learns from the ancients and claims to surpass them87, a claim the Pope endorses88. Coleridge criticizes modern sculpture’s exclusive devotion to the antique89. Emerson tells artists to seek their models in their own minds and needs90, and Hugo warns that original talent loses everything by imitation91. Carlyle names the vice precisely: Scott borrowed Mignon’s traits for Fenella but not her soul92.
Allied to this is the controversy over rules. Sidney requires art, imitation and exercise, and he faults Gorboduc for breaking the unities93,94. Hume grounds rules in experience of common sentiment and measures perfection by fitness to end95,96. Johnson, however, calls the display of critical rules ostentatious97. Bacon had already said that a painter makes excellent faces by felicity, not by geometry98. For Carlyle the artist creates without knowing how99, and for Shelley works grow in the artist like a child in the womb100. Hugo pleads for art’s freedom against systems101 and scorns the unities102. Yet freedom does not excuse idleness. Jonson holds that the poet must sweat on the Muses’ anvil103. Carlyle measures worth by the pains bestowed104, though like a carpenter the craftsman knows when work is right enough105. Poe would judge the work only by its impression106.
The particular crafts are described with loving precision. Homer details Odysseus’s raft107. Dana shows navigators feeling their way through fog by the lead108,109. Franklin regrets that shipbuilding is divided among men who never combine their experience110, and Longfellow holds that the heart in one’s work gives grace to every art111. Cellini’s casting of the Perseus is the great set piece of craft. He revives caked metal with oak and fire, and he throws in pewter against the doubters’ advice112,113. He insists the living body is the sculptor’s only book114. Harrison records household brewing step by step115, and Franklin improvises type-casting116. Watching gauchos lasso a bull, Darwin remarks how completely art masters force117. Pascal presents his calculating machine as the labour of years118, and Kelvin’s tide predictor carries the line of instruments into the age of mechanism119.
In architecture the governing tension is between use and effect. Bacon prefers use over uniformity in a house120 and ranks gardening above stately building as a refinement121. Burke thinks architecture can be great only by deceiving the spectator122, and he dismisses the analogy with the human body as forced123. Greenough, as Emerson reports him, fits form to function and forbids make-believe124. Pliny’s villa gardens, with box clipped into letters, mix design with imitated negligence125.
Painting and sculpture raise the problem of likeness most vividly. Dante’s purgatorial carvings shame Polycletus and nature itself126. Aeneas weeps before the painted Trojan War127. Walton’s statue of Donne seems to breathe128. Doubters remain. Pascal calls painting useless, since we admire likenesses of things whose originals we do not admire129. Locke rejects painting for gentlemen as costly in time130, and Hobbes links images with idolatry131. Judgment requires knowledge. Burke’s novice admires crude statues for mere likeness132, and Goethe wants art discussed before the works themselves133. Cellini’s mock report on Bandinello applies the standards of anatomy, posture and grace134. Plutarch records an older ambivalence: we admire the work yet disdain its maker135.
Among the literary and performing arts, Sidney names the poet the maker who creates his own matter136, and he treats verse as mere apparel137. Confucius forgets the taste of meat on hearing the Shao138, and Milton credits music with power over manners139. Browning’s Abt Vogler makes from three sounds not a fourth sound but a star140. Dana’s sailors, more plainly, find that songs speed the work141. Hamlet instructs the players in judgment142, and Voltaire defends the stage as worthy of honour143. Lamb, though, calls the actor’s imitation of passion a low trick beside the poet’s mastery144.
Finally, what is art for? Schiller wants it to restore the wholeness that culture has destroyed145. Yet he admits that flourishing taste has coincided with decline and can serve injustice146. Mill found poetry and music instruments of culture, while his friend Roebuck denied that they form character147,148. Augustine had already condemned crafts multiplied beyond need149. Rousseau ties frivolous arts to inequality150, and Ruskin scorns a nation that values art only for commerce151. Emerson reports Carlyle dismissing high art as delusion152.
The artist’s own lot is shown as both exalted and grievous. Grief stays Daedalus’s hand at the temple doors153. Cellini, unemployed in old age, labours at his own cost154. Goethe holds that art requires the whole man155. Browning’s Andrea del Sarto sees his faultless drawing lacking soul156, and Emerson’s genius counts every finished work poor beside the unexecuted ideal157. Whether art should copy, perfect or command nature remains an open question. So does whether rule or genius governs it, and whether it elevates or corrupts. These books leave each of these unsettled.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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