Samuel Kneeland

“ A similar tablet is upon the other corner, if possible, more ridiculous than the first; the genius of art has found a winged brother monster, called "Industry." The two, each with wings and arms, are quietly seated, with wings widely stretched—we see in this the same anatomical impossibility, the same physiological absurdity, the same degradation of symbolism. As man is never intentionally absurd, let us attribute these and similar monstrosities to ignorance of nature's laws. If this be art, there is no gulf of absurdity too wide for symbolism to clear at a single bound. ”

“ Seeing manatees and seals reclining on the shores, holding their young in their arms while suckling them, like all mammals, the semi-human faces, the womanly position, and the tender care and anxiety for their young in this act—their hearts would be filled with such joy at thoughts of home, and their eyes with tears long pent up, that the combination of indistinct vision and excited imagination would transform the creatures they saw into the beautiful women they longed to see. ”

“ The stone, bronze, and iron ages do not indicate definite periods of time in man's civilization; every race goes through these ages, some more rapidly than others. Some eastern nations had probably passed out of their stone age at least 3,000 years B.C.; some in northern and central Europe were in this age when Cæsar subjugated Gaul; the Sandwich islanders were in their stone age in the time of Capt. Cook; the Esquimaux and the North American Indians generally are now in their stone age; it is simply the age of the infancy of the race. In America the copper preceded the bronze age ”

“ Let me not be understood as pretending to say that there is no art or beauty in purely fanciful creations in painting or sculpture. There is a place, and a genuine one, for the allegorical, the symbolic, the mysterious, the unreal, if you will, in art; but such art, from the very fact of its unreality, untruthfulness, and impossibility, is, I maintain, a lower type than that which is strictly natural and true. Wings of angels, as messengers of glad tidings or guardian spirits, are, as fanciful creations, beautiful, though untrue ”

“ It seems to me that the symbolic in art bears a relation to the natural and the true, similar to that which the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians do to the written languages of the moderns—the one indefinite, suggestive, but variously interpreted, local, and temporary; the other defifinite, positive, universal, and for all time unmistakable—and that we might as well go back centuries and adopt the hieroglyphic as the simply symbolic without reference to its truth in art. Symbolism is the visible expression of a myth, possessing a variable amount of truth and a large amount of error ”

“ The stone age he divides into—1, that of the extinct mammals, like the mammoth and the cave bear; 2, that of the migrated existing animals, the reindeer epoch; 3, that of the domesticated existing animals, the polished-stone age. The metal age he subdivides into the bronze and the iron ages. According to him, primitive man lived in a comparatively cold, barren, and wet earth, presenting no fruits for his sustenance, and no opportunity for agriculture; essentially predaceous and carnivorous, an eater of raw flesh, and a cannibal, like many savage races of the present day ”

“ I know very well that I am treading here on debatable ground, and that those who follow, or think they follow, the ideal in art, will rise as a host against me. My object here is to show that art has too much neglected the laws of living animal nature; that mythology has been followed rather than zoölogy, where attention to the latter would have been just as good for all the purposes of art, and far better for the interest of truth. In one sense, the ideal is the ultimate aim of art, if by that is meant that it shall suggest true ideas, and excite emotions which shall educate and elevate ”

“ In the next epoch, with a continued mild climate, man became agricultural, had polished implements, and made the dog his companion. In the bronze age man made still greater advances, domesticating animals, cultivating grains and fruits, and smelting metals, especially copper. The iron age insensibly merges into the historic period. The mound-builders M. Lartet considers intermediate in civilization between the polished-stone and the bronze epochs of Europe, not in time, but in stage of advancement ”

“ Benjamin, "Art may be said, in a general way, to spring from the poetic yearnings and emotions suggested by aspirations after the true, the good, and the beautiful. . . . the material means for expressing such feelings appealing to the imagination through the eye by the use of external forms." The highest art, according to this definition, must include the good, the true, and the beautiful; the physically beautiful, or the beautiful and the good, is not the aim of the highest art; the true must be added for a work that shall rank as such for all time. ”

“ They are found from Maine to Florida, and are made up of the shells of the mollusks used by them as food, especially the clam and quahog, with bones of the elk, deer, beaver, bear, dog, various fur-bearing mammals, birds, and especially the great auk, now believed to be extinct; occasional pieces of charcoal, and implements of bone and stone, but no human remains, are found. The growth upon them of large trees proves that they must be several centuries old, though not so ancient as the shell heaps of Denmark; they show a great variety of animal food, to say nothing of the vegetable ”

“ If Theology and Art are sisters (and they are in one sense) , let them be twin sisters, walking hand in hand, with the stamp of truth, as we know it, in every line, word, and feature, irrespective of any pious frauds or false rules of art bequeathed to us by past ages. Spiritual truth ought to be reënforced by scientific truth, and art as well as religion will be the gainer. ”

“ Many thousand polished-stone implements are collected in the museums of northern Europe and America; they are not found in the river-drift gravels, and are especially abundant in Den- mark and Sweden, while the ruder implements of the palæolithic age are unknown there, indicating that these northern countries were not inhabited during the earlier period. No bones of the reindeer nor of the great extinct mammals are found with the polished implements, and nothing made of metals ”

“ We must not confound the results of the imagination, which exaggerates possible parts seen, or supposed to be seen, in nature, with the wholly unreal products of the fancy; we may admit their beauty, but, however definite and pleasing their outlines, if their combinations, when tested by reason, are impossible, they must be regarded as lower than the natural. They may answer for gas-fixtures, monuments, memorial windows, and various articles of household decoration, but not for anything demanding admiration and following as a work of high art. ”

“ In our day, when reason is supreme, the thinking world can not be made to believe that progress means evil, even though it modify ideas of things once considered sacred and beyond reason; and any belief, practice, sentiment, or influence, which can not bear the light of reason, and hence can not be said to be founded on truth, deserves to be removed as a bar to human progress. ”

“ These caves belong to the age of simply worked stone, without the accompaniment of domestic animals or implements of polished stone; bones of the reindeer are abundant, and the coexistence of man with this animal in latitudes so much lower than its present habitat implies a certain degree of elevation above savages, as not only food, clothing, and implements, but materials for ornamentation were obtained from it. ”

“ The Greeks and Romans, whose principles of art the moderns have chiefly imitated, personified certain ideas of their social state, deified and worshiped them. As a general rule, they found in nature the types which they idealized; in some cases, from ignorance, superstition, or love of the marvelous, they departed from nature, and to that extent, in my judgment, their art was false. Art, as I understand it, should be the interpreter of nature, without too servile an imitation; art may transfigure nature, but should never be false to it ”

“ I would say here that, in mere ornamentation, conventional representations suggestive of the intended image may be legitimately and artistically used with good effect; but if they are contrary to nature, whether on a candlestick or a church tower, they must belong to the lower spheres of art; and no metaphysical subtilty, no assumption of æsthetic culture, no aspirations after an imaginary and impossible ideal, ought, in this nineteenth century, to raise them to the highest position in art. ”

“ It has been said, and no doubt truly, that as knowledge increases, the imagination decreases; in such an event our ideal will soon become the real, without exaggeration, and nature and art will no longer be divorced, even in appearance. Increasing intelligence is the great and never-ceasing iconoclast which breaks to pieces the images created by imperfect knowledge of facts. ”

“ While I do not deny the artistic value of the imaginative, symbolic, and ideal, I maintain that such, at the present time, if contrary to nature, is not the highest art, is not necessary for the expression of the most ennobling ideas, and is not demanded by the most exalted aspirations of humanity. ”

“ The ideal, or that which suggests the idea of a heavenly messenger, need not be false to nature; an angel without wings is just as ideal and suggestive, and not an anatomical impossibility. That the form of an angel need not of necessity have wings is shown by a painting in the museum at Naples of the "Holy Family," attributed to an artist of the Florentine school, in every respect admirable, and usually called the "Virgin of Purity." The angels have no wings, and carry lilies in their hands; wings would have added nothing to the picture, which is remarkable for its natural beauty. ”

“ Instances might easily be mentioned, but I will merely allude to them to show that art has not always been true to nature and fact, and to say that we are not only at liberty, but in duty bound, to protest against all untruthfulness, whether it offend the eye or the reason. ”

“ I speak of art from the natural, not the imaginative point of view, and my arguments are addressed chiefly to such as have a fair knowledge of anatomy, physiology, zoölogy (living and fossil) , and the laws of development in the animal kingdom. As, however, many deeply interested in the progress of art have very little acquaintance with living nature, it will be necessary for me to enter into some details, tiresome perhaps for the scientific expert, but important for the popular understanding of my argument. ”

“ MANY persons of culture and poetic imagination, with a keen sense of the beautiful, but with little knowledge of living nature, believe and maintain, and in one sense justly, that certain works of old and modern masters are works of high art, from color, grouping, elegance of figures, and the various accessories which, in themselves, or by ideas and emotions excited by them, make painting and sculpture very powerful agents in instructing and elevating kind. ”

“ If you add another pair of limbs as wings, you make an anatomical nondescript, an impossible monster, devoid of truth, false to nature, odious to the highest art.
The smooth, comparatively hairless skin of man, angel, or devil, is incompatible with the feathers of a bird's wings; his bony tissue has not the air-spaces, nor does it communicate with the lungs, as in the bird, which is thus rendered specifically lighter. His thorax or chest is too movable for the support of muscles of flight, even if angels were made armless and winged ”

“ It is true, as Goethe has well said, that "it is in her monstrosities that Nature reveals to us her secrets," which we now know are but the expressions of natural laws; I hope to show that in the monsters of art she only reveals to us her weakness. ”