Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1912 (Heft 40))

cries of man and bird and beast—so clear and intimate—of remote countrysides
at sunset. And for long I listened, too vague to move my pen.
New philosophy—a vigorous Art! Are there not all the signs of it? In
music, sculpture, painting; in fiction—and drama; in dancing; in criticism
itself, if criticism be an Art. Yes; we are reaching out to a new faith not yet
crystallized, to a new Art not yet perfected; the forms still to find—the flowers
still to fashion!
And how has it come, this slowly growing faith in Perfection for Per-
fection’s sake? Surely thus. When the Western world awoke one day to find
that it no longer believed corporately and for certain in future life for the
individual—when it began to feel: “I cannot say more than that there may
be individual life to come; that Death may be the end of man, or that Death
may be nothing”—it began also to ask itself in this uncertainty: “Do I then
desire to go on living?” And, since it found that it desired to go on living at
least as earnestly as ever it did before, it began to inquire why. And slowly it
perceived that there was, inborn within it, a passionate instinct, of which it
had hardly till then been conscious—a sacred instinct to perfect itself, now, as
well as in a possible hereafter; to perfect itself because Perfection was desir-
able, a vision to be adored and striven for; a dream motive fastened within
the Universe; the very essential Cause of everything. And it began to see
that this Perfection, cosmically, was nothing but perfect Equilibrium and
Harmony; and in human relations, nothing but perfect Love and Justice.
And Perfection began to glow before the eyes of the Western world like a new
star, whose light touched with glamour all things as they came forth from
Mystery, till to Mystery they were ready to return.
This—I thought—is surely what the Western world has dimly been re-
discovering. There has crept into our minds once more the feeling that the
Universe is all of a piece, Equipoise supreme; and all things equally wonderful,
and mysterious, and valuable. We have begun, in fact, to have a glimmering
of the artist’s creed, that nothing may we despise or neglect—that everything
is worth the doing well, the making fair—that our God, Perfection, is implicit
everywhere, and the revelation of Him, the business of our Art.
And as I jotted down these words, I noticed that some real stars had crept
up into the sky, so gradually darkening above the pollard limes; cuckoos, who
had been calling on the thorn trees all the afternoon, were silent; the swallows
no longer flitted past, but a bat was already in career over the holly hedge;
and round me the buttercups were closing. The whole form and feeling of the
world had changed, so that I seemed to have before me a new picture hanging.
Ah!—I thought—Art must indeed be priest of this new faith in Perfection,
whose motto is “Harmony, Proportion, Balance.” For by Art alone can true
harmony in human affairs be fostered, true Proportion revealed, and true
Equipoise preserved. Is not the training of an artist a training in the due
relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that rela-
tion clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self
the very essence of self and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate

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