THE MONSTROUS IN ART. 741 



and similar monsters ; and surely no rules of art can demand the con- 

 tinued perpetration of such absurdities, in painting or sculpture, even 

 as symbols. 



In my opinion, then, there can be no high art, as there is no truth 

 and no real significance, in external forms unknown to anatomy and 

 physiology ; truth in art must not be divorced from truth in science, 

 nor the truly beautiful from nature. The exterior should translate, as 

 it were, the interior ; and, whether we study the human or the animal 

 figure, from the point of view of surgery, art, or philosophical anatomy, 

 the natural type, the laws of structure and growth, the correlation and 

 the organic harmony of parts, should in every case lie at the foundation. 

 The idealism of ancient art is, I believe, a pretense of the moderns ; 

 their ideal is the real, magnified by the imagination. The modern 

 ideal of much that is considered high art is too often the impossible, the 

 absurd, the monstrous, the incomprehensible. 



The conscientious and real artist, though he may be ignorant of, 

 despises not anatomy ; it is only the superficial and the conceited who 

 fancy that it is a laudable and independent spirit which allows imagina- 

 tion, under the pretense of symbolism, unguided by knowledge, to dic- 

 tate the rules of art. Albert Dilrer, Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Cousin, 

 were well versed in anatomy ; it would have been better had the genius 

 and imagination of Raphael and other great artists been tempered by 

 an accurate knowledge of the real. 



Herbert Spencer says, " Only when genius is married to science can 

 the highest results be achieved " ; to which Mr. Benjamin adds, in his 

 essay already quoted, " But such science should be the intense study 

 of nature even more than of art." 



In our day, when reason is supreme, the thinking world can not be 

 made to believe ihaX progress means eml, even though it modify ideas 

 of things once considered sacred and beyond reason ; and any belief, 

 practice, sentiment, or influence, which can not bear the light of reason, 

 and hence can not be said to be founded on truth, deserves to be re- 

 moved as a bar to human progress. 



It has been said, and no doubt truly, that as knowledge increases, 

 the imagination (decreases ; in such an event our ideal will soon be- 

 come the real, without exaggeration, and nature and art will no longer 

 be divorced, even in appearance. Increasing intelligence is the great 

 and never-ceasing iconoclast which breaks to pieces the images created 

 by imperfect knowledge of facts. 



This is about the sum of the arguments in favor of symbols, once 

 suggestive of the good and the sacred, but since proved to be fallacious 

 and founded on error, namely, that those who originated and used them 

 for purposes of good believed them .to be true and beautiful, and there- 

 fore that for all time, or at the present time, they are worthy of imita- 

 tion and belong in the realm of high art. 



Must we, then, give up our saints, angels, and devils, and other 



