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TH

CHAPTER V

ART

HE question of art is closely associated in Emerson with the larger question of nature. In his introduction to Nature he includes the term art under his main topic. "Nature, in the common sense," so his definition runs, "refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.' Later in life, he attended to this matter of art with a fullness of treatment in keeping with the importance of the subject; but throughout his art criticism there is a close connection between his theories of nature and those of art. Art, so Emerson conceives its general im1 Complete Works, I., 5.

186

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port, is one way in which the Universal Mind reveals itself in the activities of the individual. "I hasten to state," his account runs, "the principle which prescribes, through different means, its firm law to the useful and the beautiful arts. The law is this. The universal soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beautiful; therefore, to make anything useful or beautiful, the individual must be submitted to the universal mind." 1 In both the useful and the fine arts, nature is a representative of the universal mind. "In the first place," he proceeds, "let us consider this in reference to the useful arts. Here the omnipotent agent is Nature; all human acts are satellites to her orb. Nature is the representative of the universal mind, and the law becomes this-that Art must be a complement to Nature, strictly subsidiary." In applying the idea to the fine arts he adds, "Nature paints the best part of the picture, carves the best part of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration." 3 As regards the spiritual side of a work of art, "the parts must be subordinate

1 Ibid., VII., 40.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., 47.

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to Ideal Nature, and everything individual abstracted, so that it shall be the production of the universal soul." 1 He thus concludes: "There is but one Reason. The mind that made the world is not one mind, but the mind. And every work of art is a more or less pure manifestation of the same." 2

The doctrine of Universal Mind is writ large on such a theory: and that doctrine Emerson had appropriated from Platonism. The subserviency of nature to this mind, however, and the part that it and the universal mind play in human art arose out of a suggestion which Emerson found in Cudworth's essay on plastic nature which he indexed under "Art" in his own copy of The True Intellectual System of the Universe. This plastic nature, Cudworth explains, is "to be conceived as art acting not from without and at a distance, but immediately upon the thing itself which is formed by it." But this plastic nature in its operations is subordinate to the divine mind. Accordingly he states: "Nature is not the Deity itself, but a thing very remote from it, and far below it, so

1 Ibid., 48.

2 Ibid., 50-51.

3 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 235.

neither is it the divine art, as it is in itself pure and abstract, but concrete and embodied only; for the divine art considered in itself is nothing but knowledge, understanding, or wisdom in the mind of God."1 "Nature is not master of that consummate art and wisdom, according to which it acts, but only a servant to it, and a drudging executioner of the dictates of it." 2 Quoting Plotinus, from whom the theory is drawn, he says, "That which is called nature is the offspring of a higher soul, which hath a more powerful life in it." Now by substituting his own name for God, namely, Universal Mind, Emerson was able to use Cudworth's account as the basis of his essay, Art.

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Further evidence of his dependence upon Cudworth is to be found in his preliminary definition of art. "Relatively to themselves," he says, "the bee, the bird, the beaver, have no art; for what they do they do instinctively; but relatively to the Supreme Being, they have. And the same is true of all unconscious action: relatively to the doer, it is instinct; relatively to the First Cause, it is Art.

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In this sense, recognizing the Spirit which informs Nature, Plato rightly said, 'Those things, which are said to be done by Nature are indeed done by Divine Art.' Art, universally, is the spirit creative. It was defined by Aristotle, 'The reason of the thing, without the matter.'" 1

In Cudworth's account both these quotations are found and in Emerson's copy both are marked. "Wherefore when art is said to imitate nature,” writes Cudworth, "the meaning thereof is, that imperfect human art imitates that perfect art of nature, which is really no other than the divine art itself; as before Aristotle, Plato had declared in his Sophist, in these words:

things which are said to be done by are indeed done by divine art.'" 2 defined by Aristotle to be '

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Those

Nature, "Art is

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It is

son of the thing without matter.'" 3 also to be recalled that the motto from Plotinus prefixed to the first edition of Nature came from this portion of Cudworth where plastic nature is discussed.

So imbued is Emerson with the doctrine of

1 Complete Works, VII., 39.

2 The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I., 237. 3 Ibid., I., 238.

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