The Arts and the Future of Scotland. By Agnes Mure
Mackenzie Saltire Pamphlets, No. 2. (Oliver and Boyd. IS.) THIS vigorously written pamphlet was originally given as all address to the Saltire Society, which has done a good deal in the last few years to provide Scottish writers, artists and architects with an interested, critical and informed audience. "Scotland
has been an uncomfortable country for artists," says Dr.
Mackenzie, and proceeds, convincingly, to put a large share of the blame on the national tendency to separate matter and spirit. With its distrust of symbols and images, Presbyterianism has always stressed, the exclusively spiritual and intellectual sides of religion, and has shrunk from trying to communicate the spiritual through the material in terms of form, colour and action. So those Scots who have given form to their experiences in paint, stone or poetry have for the most part had to work against the traditional philosophy of the country. Dr. Mackenzie writes sensibly on the difference between national and nationalist orri and has her eyes well open to the dangers of the latter.
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