BOOKS.

A THEORY OF LIFE AND ETHICS.* THE outlook of philosophers (one may not say their desires,. for under much more difficult ciroumatanoes they must attempt to maintain the disinterestedness of the scientists) has changed a good deal. Moralists, poets and philosophers have decided to accept the nature of man. Most former ethical systems and nearly all religions endeavoured to place man—for his good— on a kind of bed of Procrustes. This rather drastic engine was, in fact, practically the only tool with which the religious ascetic, and the stoic faced a complex world. To a large part of man's nature the attitude of the philosophers and theologians was that of the averted head and the repressing hand. So great was their abhorrence of the " lower " impulses that they were unwilling to investigate the nature or examine the possibilities of these sources of action. So convinced were they of the awful strength and the brutish character of these instincts that what we may call the " Everything is beautiful and only man is vile ' theory has been since the time of Aristotle perpetually rearing its head. Indeed, from time to time it has reached the dignity of being held to be a truism.

Modern philosophers like Mr. Bertrand Russell (when he is in an ethical mood) or Mr. Santayana go almost as far as to reverse this theory, nor do they preach to the inattentive, for the modern world is perhaps too vividly conscious of the unhappiness and disorder of mankind and his environment. We are almost too ready to acknowledge that life is evil and to see unmitigated tragedy in the ruthlessness of natural phenomena, the long agony of becoming and perishing.

But the reverse of this picture is that we are the more willing to acknowledge the nobility of man—a being, nineteen-twen- tieths of whose energy must go in securing and assimilating bodily food—a creature who is perched on a ridge of being between, for all he knows, two abysses of extinction, knowing neither whence he came nor whither he goes. When we consider the feeble- ness and dissipated energies of the thinker, his achievements, small as they are, appear immense. The question which has throughout his history most concerned this strange creature is the central riddle from which spring all other problems—the question of the goal and purpose of his own life and of the universe in which he finds himself. From time to time various solutions to this question have been offered to man by meta- physicians or by the founders of religions, and for a time these have seemed satisfactory ; but the noblest religions and the wisest metaphysicians have always acknowledged that here was something which they could not unriddle. Christianity teaches man that the goal and the reason are the will of God, whose purposes it was in vain for him to search, and metaphysicians have ceased to attempt to answer a question at once so vague and so vast. And yet it is a problem for the solution of which the circumstances of life daily press mankind. Man is in the position of a traveller whom danger of freezing to death forces into constant perambulation. While necessity compels him to walk, his most urgent concern will be to find out in which direction it is most expedient for him to travel. The theologian and the philosopher are neither of them willing to give man any

assurance as to the exact nature of the goal that he must seek, but they can at any rate prevent him from walking round in a

circle, and can direct him along some sort of a path—a path along which he may walk without stumbling, and which will

• InWe Buffs. Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana by Logan Pearsall Smith. London; Constabie said Co. DA. 6d. act.)

perhaps ultimately lead him somewhere, even if it be to an unknown country.

The reader of Mr. Santayana's Little Esrays, collected by Mr. Loon Pearsall Smith, will at first suppose that he has got hold of a collection of ornate metaphysical snippets. Such, however, is not the case. Short though the pieces may be, they are, as a rule, brief only through extreme compression, and the great beauty of the style fir which they are written links them to- gether rather than divides them. Hidden in the book there lurks the exposition a a theory of life. Mr. Santayana begins by inquiring what is the nature of man, and on the result of lila inquiry builds up a theory as to the conduct and pursuits which are best for the nature, individually and collectively, that his analysis reveals. It is impossible in the space at our disposal to do justice to arguments which are both complex and subtle, and a part of whose significance must be lost by further compression, or even of a transit to a less beautiful phraseology. Renan, in a whimsical mood, said that there were some truths so subtle that they could only be expressed in opera, and there is no doubt that there are many metaphysical and ethical truths a part of whose meaning leaks out by the way unless they are conveyed from one human being to another in a beautiful vehicle. Therefore we shall attempt no summary of Mr. Santa- yana's way of life, but shall concentrate our observations upon one point. One of Mr. Santayana's contentions is that one of the chief instinctive functions of the spirit is that of expression, and he therefore naturally gives a high place in his theory of life to the arts. Art bewitches, " but to be bewitched is not to be saved."

" Art in general is a rehearsal of rational living, and recasts in idea a world which we have no present means of recasting in reality. Yet this rehearsal reveals the glories of a possible performance better than do the miserable experiments until now executed on the reality."

The art of the politician and social reformer would, in a less imperfect state, Mr. Santyana agrees with Socrates, be the highest form of art, for it would harmonize and idealize life —after all, the fullest form of that expression for which the soul is always striving. But, unfortunately, if life is fuller and more diversified and more solid than art, it is also more cumbersome and less ductile. Our strength is not sufficient to modify it. May we not, therefore, find material for the exercise and nourish- ment of our faculties in the arts of music, painting, architecture and poetry ?

" When we consider the present distracted state of govern- ment and religion, there is much relief in turning from them to almost any art, where what is good is altogether and finally good, and what is bad is at least not treacherous. When we consider further the senseless rivalries, the vanities, the ignominy that reign in the practical' world, how doubly blessed it becomes to find a sphere where limitation is an excellence, where diversity is a beauty, and where every man's ambition is consistent with every other man's and even favourable to it ! It is indeed so in art, for we must not import into its blameless labours the bickerings and jealousies of criticism. Critics quarrel with other critics, and that is a part of philosophy. With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes. As nature, being full of seeds, rises into all sorts of crystallizations, each having its own ideal and potential life, each a nucleus of order and a habitation for the absolute self, so art, though in a medium poorer than pregnant matter, and incapable of intrinsic life, generates a semblance of all conceivable things. What nature does with existence, art does with appearance, and while the achievement leaves us, unhappily, much where we were before in all our efficacious relations, it entirely renews our vision and breeds a fresh world in fancy, where all form has the same inner justification that

all life has in the real world. . . Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience—the union of life and peace."

In passing, can an achievement which " renews our vision " be held to " leave us much where we were " in practical matters ?

But Mr. Santayana is far from taking the line that we may be justified in seeking refuge in art if our absorption be to the hurt of our neighbours—and the passages we have quoted are followed by another little essay, " The Place of Art in Moral Economy." In this fragment we find a very good example of the sort of humour with which the book is suffused :- " Aesthetic and other interests are not separable units, to

be compared externally. . . A hostile influence is the most odious of things. . . . A zealot might allow his neighbours to be damned in peace, did not a certain heretical odour emitted by them infect the sanctuary and disturb his own dogmatic calm. In the same way practical people might leave the artist alone in his oasis, and even grant him a pittance on which to live, as they feed the animals in a zoological garden, did he not intrude into their inmost conclave and vitiate the abstract cogency of their designs. It is not so much art in its own field that men of science look askance upon, as the love of glitter and rhetoric and false finality trespassing upon scientific ground • • • . Art being a part of life, the criticism of art is a part of morals."

What is the influence of art on life ? That is what the ethical philosopher must ask himself. As we have said, Mr. Santayana holds a very strong opinion on the value of art. It is a rehearsal and it is an inspiration. His analysis of its different forms—music, sculpture, literature—is very interesting. Music he holds to be the most abstract of the arts :— " Music is essentially useless, as life is ; but both lend utility to their conditions. That the way in which idle soma run together should matter so much is a mystery of the same order as the spirit's concern to keep a particular body alive, or to propagate its life. Such an interest is, from an absolute point of view, wholly gratuitous, and so long as the natural basis and expressive function of spirit are not perceived, this mystery is baffling. In truth the order of values inverts that of causes ; and experience, in which all values lie, is an ideal resultant, itself ineffectual, ll , of the potencies it can conceive. Delight in music is liberal, it makes useful the organs and processes that subserve it. We happen to breathe, and on that account are interested in breathing ; and it is no greater marvel that, happening to be subject to intricate musical sensations, we should be in earnest about these too. The human ear dis- criminates sounds with ease ; what it hears is so diversified that its elements can be massed without being confused, or can form a sequence having a character of its own, to be appreciated and remembered • but what gives music its superior emotional power is its rhythmic advance. Time is a medium which appeals more than space to emotion. Since life is itself a flux, and thought .an operation, there is naturally something immediate and breathless about whatever flows and expands. The visible world, offers itself to our regard with a certain lazy indifference. Peruse me,' it seems to say, if you will. I am here ; and even if you pass me by now and later find it to your advantage to resurvey me, I may still be here.' The world of sound speaks a more urgent language. It insinuates itself into our very substance, and it is not so much the music that moves us as we that move with it. Its rhythms seize upon our bodily life, to accelerate or to deepen it ; and we must either become inattentive altogether or remain enslaved."

That is surely a true conception. Very much the same effect —as of something " breathless and immediate "—is experienced in the case of poetry. And it is from some poet, yet perhaps unborn, that Mr. Santayana hopes for the perfect expression of his theory of life—a theory which is based upon the sublimation of the natural passions and not their stoical repression or their epicurean indulgence. He would, above all things, have men pursue happiness. Those who read this book will agreee that his doctrine is neither selfish nor ignoble.