240 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



objects, while the greatest art of to-day is tending to 

 find its expression in literature and similar mediums ? 



The true answer to this question carries us far. 

 It is doubtless to this effect. The characteristic 

 art of the West in the past, which has expressed 

 itself through formative mediums like sculpture 

 and painting, is the art of the era of the ascendancy 

 in the world of the fighting male. It is, therefore, 

 art which, as Tolstoy with profound intuition per- 

 ceived, is essentially pagan in character. 1 It is 

 the art of which Grant Allen tried to give, and in 

 large measure succeeded in giving us, the true 

 Darwinian principles in his Physiological Esthetics. 

 In it there is expressed, over and above everything 

 else, the feelings and emotions through which the 

 individual was rendered successful in the struggle 

 for his own interests, and through which the in- 

 dividual, thus successful, became the dominant 

 power in creation. The formative art of the West 

 is, in short, the art of all the world which most 

 profoundly expresses the pyschology of the male. 



That the essentially male psychology of the 

 formative arts of the West, which glorifies the self- 

 regarding emotion under every aspect, is the cause 

 which directs and rules the artist in all his efforts, 

 may be observed on every hand. The reflective 



1 What is Art? p. 161 et seq. 



