THE MONSTROUS IiV ART. 733 



them as high art if they please ; but, at the same time, let the truth 

 as it is in nature and reason have a chance to appear in the field of 

 art. If Theology and Art are sisters (and the}' are in one sense), let 

 them be twiti sisters, walking hand in hand, with the stamp of truth, 

 as we know it, in every line, word, and feature, irrespective of any 

 pious frauds or false rules of art bequeathed to us by past ages. Spir- 

 itual truth ought to be reenforced by scientific truth, and art as well as 

 reliorion will be the gainer. 



I know very well that I am treading here on debatable ground, 

 and that those who follow, or think they follow, the ideal in art, will 

 rise as a host against me. My object here is to show that art has too 

 much neglected the laws of living animal nature ; that mythology has 

 been followed rather than zoology, where attention to the latter would 

 have been just as good for all the purposes of art, and far better for 

 the interest of truth. In one sense, the ideal is the ultimate aim of 

 art, if by that is meant that it shall suggest true ideas, and excite emo- 

 tions which shall educate and elevate ; but not, if by the ideal we 

 signify the merely imaginary, fanciful, unnatural, and impossible, how- 

 ever beautiful such creations may be. 



Even admitting that a work of high art by the old masters may 

 include the impossible, the unnatural, as symbolic, if judged by the 

 knowledge of the times and the motives of the artist, that is no reason 

 for advocating similar errors in the nineteenth century. It seems to 

 me that the symbolic in art bears a relation to the natural and the 

 true, similar to that which the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians 

 do to the written languages of the moderns — the one indefinite, sug- 

 gestive, but variously interpreted, local, and temporary ; the other defi- 

 finite, positive, universal, and for all time unmistakable — and that we 

 might as well go back centuries and adopt the hieroglyphic as the 

 simply symbolic without reference to its truth in art. Symbolism is 

 the visible expression of a myth, possessing a variable amount of truth 

 and a large amount of error ; both are characteristic, in the progress of 

 civilization, of the lower phases of development. 



I speak of art from the natural, not the imaginative point of view, 

 and my arguments are addressed chiefly to such as have a fair knowl- 

 edge of anatomy, physiology, zoology (living and fossil), and the laws 

 of development in the animal kingdom. As, however, many deeply 

 interested in the progress of art have very little acquaintance with liv- 

 ing nature, it will be necessary for me to enter into some details, tire- 

 some perhaps for the scientific expert, but important for the popular 

 understanding of my argument. 



While I do not deny the artistic value of the imaginative, symbolic, 

 and ideal, I maintain that such, at the present time, if contrary to 

 nature, is not the highest art, is not necessary for the expression of 

 the most ennobling ideas, and is not demanded by the most exalted 

 aspirations of humanity. 



