Escape, and Other Essays by Arthur Christopher Benson (ebook reader online TXT) 📕

the urgent, daily pressure of wage-earning; homes where there is a certain security of outlook, of varying wealth, with professional occupation in the background; homes in which there is some leisure; and some possibility of stimulating, by reading, by talk, by societies, an interest in ideas. It is not a tough, intellectual interest, but it ends in a very definite desire to idealise life a little, to harmonise it, to give colour to it, to speculate about it, to lift it out of the region of immediate, practical needs, to try experiments, to live on definite lines, with a definite aim in sight--that aim being to enlarge, to adorn, to enrich life.

I am perfectly sure that this instinct is greatly on the increase; but the significant thing about it is this, that whereas formerly religion supplied to a great extent the poetry and inspiration of life for such households, there is now a desire for something as well of a more definitely artistic kind; to put it simply, I believe that more people are in search of beauty, in the largest sense. This instinct does not run counter to religion at all, but it is an impulse not only towards a rather grim and rigid conception of righteousness, but towards a wider appreciation of the quality of life, its interest, its grace, its fineness, and its fulness.

I am always sorry when I hear people talking about art as if it were a rather easy and not very useful profession, when, as a matter of fact, art is one of the sharp, swordlike things, like religion and patriotism, which run through life, and divide it, and separate people, and make men and women misunderstand each other. Art means a temperament, and a method, and a point-of-view, and a way of living. There are accomplished people who believe in art and talk about it and even practise it, who do not understand what it is; while there are people who know nothing about what is technically called art, who are yet wholly and entirely artistic in all that they do or think. Those who have not got the instinct of art are wholly incapable of understanding what those who have got the instinct are about; while those who possess it recognise very quickly others who possess it, and are quite incapable of explaining what it is to those who do not understand it.

I am going to make an attempt in this essay to explain what I believe it to be, not because I hope to make it plain to those who do not comprehend it. They will only think this all a fanciful sort of nonsense: and I would say in passing that whenever in this world one comes across people who talk what appears to be fantastic nonsense, and who yet obviously understand each other and sympathise with each other, one may take for granted that one is in the presence of one of the hidden mysteries, and that if one does not understand, it is because one does not see or hear something which is perfectly plain to those who describe it. It is impossible to do a more stupid thing than to fulminate against secrets which one does not know, and say that "it stands to reason" that they cannot be true. The belief that one has all the experience worth having is an almost certain sign that one ranks low in the scale of humanity!

But what I do hope is that I may make the matter a little plainer to people who do partly understand it, and would like to understand it better; because art is a very big thing, and if it is even dimly understood, it can add much significance and happiness to life. Everyone must recognise the happiness which radiates from the people who have a definite point-of-view and a definite aim. They do not always make other people happy, but there is never any doubt about their own happiness; and when one meets them and parts company with them, it is impossible to think of them as lapsing into any dreariness or depression; they are obviously going back to comfortable schemes and businesses of their own; and we know that whenever we meet them, we shall have just that half-envious feeling that they know their own mind, never want to be interested or amused, but are always occupied in something that continues to interest them, even if they are ill or unfortunate.

To be happy, we all need a certain tenacity and continuity of aim and view; and I would like to persuade people who are only half- aware of it, that they have a power which they could use if they would, and which they would be happier for using. For the best of the art of which I speak is that it does not need rare experiences of expensive materials to apply it, but can be applied to commonplace and quiet ways of life just as easily as to exciting and exceptional circumstances.

Let me say then that art, as a method and a point-of-view, has not necessarily anything whatever to do with poetry or painting or music. These are all manifestations of it in certain regions; but what it consists in, to put it as simply as I can, is in the perception and comparison of quality. If that sounds a heavy sort of formula, it is because all formulas sound dull. But the faculty of which I am speaking is that which observes closely all that happens or exists within range--the sky, the earth, the trees, the fields, the streets, the houses, the people; and then it goes further and observes not only what people look like, but how they move and speak and think; and then we come down to smaller things still, to animals and flowers, to the colour and shape of things of common use, furniture and tools, everything which is used in ordinary life.

Now every one of these things has a certain quality--of suitability or unsuitability, of proportion or disproportion. Let me take a few quite random instances. Look at a spade, for instance. The sensible man proceeds to call it a spade, and thinks he has done all that is necessary; the wise man considers what length of experience and practice has gone to make it perfectly adapted for its purpose, its length and size, the ledge for the foot to rest on, the hole for the fingers to pass through as they clasp it; all the tools and utensils of men are human documents of far-reaching interest. Or take the strange shapes and colours of flowers, the snapdragon with its blunt lips, the nasturtium with its round flat leaves and flaming horns--they are endless in variety, but all expressing something not only quite definite, but remotely inherited. Or take houses--how perfectly simple and graceful an old homestead can be, how frightfully pretentious and vulgar the speculative builder's work often is, how full of beauty both of form and colour almost all the houses in certain parts of the country are, as in the Cotswolds, where the soft stone has tempted builders to try experiments, and to touch up a plain front with a little delicate and well-placed ornament. Or take the aspect of men, women, and children; how attractive some cannot help being, whatever they do; how helplessly unattractive and uninteresting others can be, and yet how, even so, a fine and sweet nature can make beautiful the plainest and ungainliest of faces. And then in a further region still there are the thoughts and habits and prejudices of people, all wholly distinct, some beautiful and desirable, and others unpleasant and even intolerable.

I could multiply instances indefinitely; but my point is that art in the largest sense is or can be concerned with observing and comparing all these separate qualities, wherever they appear. Of course every one's observation does not extend to everything. There are some people who are wholly unobservant, let us say, of scenery or houses, who are yet very shrewd judges of character.

It is not only the beauty of things that one may observe; they may be dreary, hideous, even horrible. The interest of quality does not by any means depend upon its beauty. The point is whether it is strongly and markedly itself. What could be more crammed with quality than an enormous old pig, with its bristles, its elephantine ears, its furtive little eyes, its twitching snout? What a look it has of a fallen creature, puzzled by its own uncleanliness and yet unable to devise any way out!

All this is only to show that life wherever it is lived affords a rich harvest for eye and mind. And if one dives but a very little way beneath the surface, one is instantly in the presence of the darkest and deepest of mysteries. Who set this all going, and why? Whose idea is it all? What is it all driving at? What is the meaning of our being set down here, in our own particular shape, feeling entirely distinct from it all, with very little idea what our place in it is or what we are intended to do? and above all that strange sense that we cannot be compelled to do anything unless we choose--a sense which remains with us, even though day after day and all day long we are doing things that we would not choose to do, if we could help it.

The whole thing indeed is so strange as to be almost frightening, the moment that we dare to think at all: and yet we feel on the whole at our ease in it, and in our place; and the one thing that does terrify us is the prospect of leaving it.

What I mean, then, by art in its largest sense is the faculty we have of observing and comparing and wondering; and the people who make the most of life are the people who give their imagination wings; and then, too, comes in the further feeling, which leads us to try and shape our own life and conduct on the lines of what we admire and think beautiful; the dull word duty means that, that we choose what is not necessarily pleasant because for some mysterious reason we feel happier so; because, however much we may pretend to think otherwise, we are all of us at every moment intent upon happiness, which is a very different thing from pleasure, and sometimes quite contrary to it.

And so we come at last to the art of living, which is really a very delicate balancing and comparing of reasons, an attempt, however blind and feeble, to get at happiness; and the moment that this attempt ceases and becomes merely a dull desire to be as comfortable as we can, that moment the spirit begins to go down hill, and the value of life is over; unless perhaps we learn that we cannot afford to go down hill, and that every backward step will have to be painfully retraced, somewhere or other.

What, then, I would try to persuade anyone who is listening to me is that we must use our wills somehow to try experiments, to observe, to distinguish, to follow what we think fine and beautiful. It may be said that this is only a sort of religion, and indeed it is exactly that at which I am aiming. It is a religion, which is within the reach of many people who cannot be touched by what is technically called religion. Religion is a word that has unhappily become specialised. It stands for beliefs, doctrines, ceremonies, practices. But these may not, and indeed do not, suit many of us. The worst of definite religions is that they are too definite. They