Jessie E. Sampter

“ But art does another thing; it tells us a lie—the most wonderful lie in the world—truer than any truth. It says: Look, here is completeness, harmony, wholeness, in this one small shape. And we know it cannot be so, but still we feel it to be there. That lie gives us, as no truth can, the thing we long for, and know to be most true.
“Now, what do you mean by the word genius? What is genius?” I asked.
“Usually,” said Virginia, “a genius is a crank. There is a girl in my art class who is the frousiest, queerest crank in the world, and every one calls her a genius.” ”

“ I spoke again of reverence, as I had done to Alfred, of the small self awed in supreme moments, before the immensity of its whole self.
“Do you mean,” asked Leo, “that it makes us feel how small we are?”
I tried to make it clear. I spoke of the feeling of nothingness that overcomes us, when we stand under the stars at night, and realize them as worlds and suns, and our planet as a dot of light in immensity.
They had all felt so, except Henry.
He said: “It does not make me feel small. I feel that I am a part of it all, and one with the universe.” ”

“ Humor is the understanding of the petty foibles, humors and lovable weaknesses of men. Remember that the word humor really means mood or state of the blood, that it is a word very like the word ‘human.’ Humor is always human. It is the large, genial way of looking at life of him who sees how little men are, and how great they are at the same time. It is a sense of absurd contradictions, of the unity of utterly unlike things, almost a parody of completeness. All humor, all wit, everything funny is an incongruous bringing together of things that do not seem to belong together. ”

“ All goodness and power in life spring from making the actor and spectator agree, making the larger self include and manage the smaller self, and move it as a player moves a pawn. For, remember, it is not two separate selves, but one self, a vast sense of all life, inclusive of this smaller self which we control. Do you not realize that all heroism, all great and noble action is done so, in the spirit of the whole, for the vast spectator within us? When a man dies for a cause, he is that cause, he is far more than his own small self, and he gladly dies for that which includes and fulfils him. ”

“ If I am, I must be forever. ‘I am’ means immortality. That is what Marian said, and what I believe. If I believe in the whole Self of the universe, and that Self is in me, and I am in it, then how can I die unless that Self dies? And if I believe in progress, which is toward complete understanding and wholeness of the Self, how can that progress be without me who am a part of it? ”

“ I mean that the great and good man is the man whose final far-off aim is the unity and completeness of man, who shapes his life and his work toward that aim, who works for it, lives for it, sacrifices himself and all things to it; and such a man was Lincoln. He made mistakes—he used them for his cause. His morality, his law, was the union—that symbol of the larger union—and for this immense self-fulfilment he worked with his might, and died for it. ”

“ All pains are growing pains. Things are bad only because we already have something better. The other day I heard Virginia saying that when reason came into the world, creatures first knew the bad; because they saw that the life they had lived was a bad life. So, you see, everything bad is something which we feel to be behind us, not equal to our best knowledge. Pain and badness are the price of progress, and we would rather go forward and suffer than stand still and be comfortable. We long to go forward to the good, to the vast self of complete understanding. ”

“ I said, “is: ‘Art must not be partisan.’”
“It seems to me,” said Marian, “the application of that to life is quite clear already.”
“Why, how would you explain it?”
Evidently one must take sides in life. How, then, not be partisan? Virginia said: “Everything has two sides.”
“Yes,” I answered, “and the question is how to use them both, how to be for, and yet not against. Every work of art is for something; it stands for beauty, order, completeness. But it is against nothing. The moment it stands against something, it is not art. Lincoln’s life shows so well what I mean. ”

“ I said, “it seems the most perfect of arts, because it is in itself harmony, the very word we associate with this idea of completeness. I don’t know much of the laws of musical composition, but I know they are the laws of rhythm and harmony, the laws of all motion. Of course, it is figurative to speak of the music of the stars, and yet in a sense their motion is music, because it follows the laws of music. Music is the least definite of all arts, yet the most real and near. It arouses our emotions as nothing else can do.” ”

“ It is a momentary vision of the completeness of life.”
“Beauty is always a thing of moments. Don’t you think so?” asked Marian. “It depends upon you. At one time you may see a thing as beautiful, and at another time not.”
“Surely,” I said.
“Why is it,” she asked, “that some people cannot appreciate beauty in one special form, either in music, or painting, or poetry?”
I said: “Our senses are channels through which we get the feeling of beauty. But no matter whence the feeling comes, it is that same joy. One man finds it in a picture, and another in a symphony, and another in the woods. ”

“ I said: “Money is only, as it were, a certificate of power; for so much work, you are given the means to go on working and living. But the great problem is to make the work itself worth more to us than the payment. And I am afraid with most people it is not so. Money is a means for work, for life, for fulfilment. If things were properly adjusted, and society perfect, each man would work for his livelihood at the work which he loved most to do.”
Virginia said: “I would rather be a pauper than not be an artist.” ”

“ Henry had the paper with him. It was: “Art is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape.”
“So the good, too, is a symbol of completeness in a definite shape,” I said. “Goodness is always of relation. It means the right relation, sympathy and unity of those who know each other. And the good man is the man who makes a complete world, a symbol of the perfect awakened universe, out of those few people whom he knows—that is, of whose existence he is aware—and of all that he knows in the universe, which is a small part of the whole. ”

“ Alfred said: “Immortality of what, do you mean?”
“Immortality of everything,” I answered. “We might, of course, believe that the universe will die, will be extinct. But it is an unthinkable thought. We all believe in something eternal. We know that force does not die, but is changed and transmitted; we know that no substance is destroyed; we know that every action, every circumstance has endless consequences and endless antecedents. They—and I—are forever a part of the universe. ”

“ I said, “what I mean, Marian, is that you want to be a certain kind of person, that you must have an idea of yourself which, even unconsciously, you try to attain; and it is this ideal, this vision of the self you wish to be, and mean to be, that should color and shape your life, as an artist’s idea of his central figure and meaning controls his whole execution.” ”

“ And then I asked Henry, whose understanding of it I doubted, to tell me in what three ways the bad was a part of good and progress. His answer was clear and true:
“There is the bad, which is only bad because we now possess or know something better, the old good we have left behind us. Then there is the bad which is the direct result of progress and growth, such as accidents and disease. Then there is the use of bad which we make, to turn it into good, such as the knowledge we get from it, and, as Virginia said before, the sympathy and love which grow out of misfortune.” ”

“ We thought every one had that feeling of vastness, of oneness with God, at times. Virginia said she got it especially when she was by the sea.
“I feel it most,” said Marian, “when I am out of doors, and feel my close relation with nature.”
Henry said he felt it most in a big crowd of people.
“Yes,” answered Ruth; “then you feel how little all this is, and the vast, big life above it all.”
“You don’t mean, Ruth,” I asked “that you feel the crowd to be a little thing?”
“Oh, no,” she answered. “I feel it in the crowd.”
Henry said: “To be among people always arouses that feeling of sympathy.” ”

“ The power of expression itself implies understanding and a sense of unity and harmony. For no matter how well a man may be able to draw lines and objects, unless he understands composition—which is the knowledge of harmony and completeness—he cannot paint a good picture. And no matter how well a man may write English, however perfect his style may be, unless he understands something of life, of symmetry and structure, he cannot write a good book. ”

“ If he were a scientist in his life he would send the poor family at once to the public food kitchen, with a ticket of recommendation, because he did not believe in indiscriminate charity and pauperism. If he were a philosopher he would be horrified at the idea of any man lacking a dinner, and without further thought would give his whole dinner to the poor, and go without, and let his children go without. That is just what Bronson Alcott did—the typical philosopher in life—who neglected his own family for the good of the universe. ”

“ I spoke of sculpture as the Greek drama of visual art, a metaphor that appealed to those of them—Florence, Marian, Henry—who knew enough of Greek drama, with its masks and buskins, and its far-offness, to understand. The distance, the unlifelikeness of the material, is its charm. The colored German marbles lose artistic beauty in gaining lifelike color. ”

“ Sympathy seems to me understanding and love, such as you have for yourself. You are willing to suffer, since it is a part of life and a part of the way. You want to suffer for the cause, if necessary; not otherwise. But you don’t pity yourself. You would be ashamed to make so much of your pain. So you do not pity others. You love them, you feel with them, you help them bravely. You can bear their pain without making a fuss over them, as you would bear your own. ”

“ I spoke again of the relation of our idea to art. It seemed to them all that art was the expression of the religious ideal. Virginia said: “It relates us with others and gives us sympathy.” Henry said it was the action of religious feeling.
“Just as,” he added, “it is said one knows a man by his actions.”
“You know what I mean,” said I; “it might be well expressed in a single phrase that would stay in your minds. Art is the symbol of completeness. It must be in itself a tiny world, a miniature universe. ”

“ Then I read Virginia’s paper:
“Art as it is connected with our previous discussions:
“When an artist dies he leaves behind him all the beautiful ideas he has put on his canvas, or in his books. To be a true artist one must possess an idea of the beautiful, and also be sympathetic with all his fellow beings. Not only humans, but flowers and beasts also. A person who possesses these qualities is a genius. But to be an artist one must also have talent. Either he must have a talent for writing, music or painting, or he cannot express the genius within himself. ”

“ I told them again that as every work of art was a symbol of completeness, so every self, being a self, symbolized the complete self of understanding and unity; every man was a symbol of completeness, of the Divine Self. ”

“ Virginia insisted, too, that she thought a man was an artist, even if he could not express himself; that to have artistic thoughts made one an artist. I answered, it might be so; work itself was not good art unless it was a good expression, no matter what the artist might be. Virginia explained: “I mean an artist is more interesting than his work, sometimes.”
Florence said: “A beautiful thing—in art—is a complete thing, complete and perfect in itself.” ”

“ Florence asked: “Don’t you think it is usually when we are having a very good, jolly time?”
Marian answered quickly: “No, not at all.”
I understood what Marian meant, and did not attempt, naturally, to explain it to the others.
Now we all agreed, every one of us, that completeness and harmony were beauty. But the children had started time and again to bring up instances in art which to them seemed not to fit, and which they thoroughly misunderstood.
“You see,” I said, “that the beautiful thing is the same as that which seems to us most true and good.” ”

“ Genius is the power of understanding. Talent is the power of expression. A man may have very little to say, and yet say it wonderfully well. And another man may have much to say, and marvellous understanding of life, but not nearly so great power of expression. That is what Florence meant the other day, when she spoke of ‘Jenny Kissed Me,’ and of ‘Faust.’ But the man who expresses even the smallest thing well understands, at least, that thing. ”