PARRINGTON AND REALITY
39
reality, propagation of emotion, escape from emotion, embodiment
of reason, objectification of will, manifestation of law, liberation
from law, organization of attitudes, elevation above attitudes,
prophecy, recollection, purification, publicity, propaganda. It is
not to the point that Mr. Eastman himself had a
correct
definition
to offer; what is relevant is that all the contradictions of Mr. East–
man's list were not contradictions at all, for in the actual living of
life and the using of art, each one of these definitions, in one way
or another, at one time or another, in one connection or another,
has a genuine validity; life is complex enough to make quite mean–
ingless any exclusive statement about the use of art or about the
things for which men go to it.
But just such exclusive statements must spring from Mr.
Smith's conception of reality and of science. And what does such a
conception do to the artist? It does not, perhaps, abolish him but it
does degrade him as it degrades all thought. Of Emerson Mr.
Smith says, "The divergent tensions within him reflected tensions
in
the world around him." This is true enough, but consider what
follows: "Why
he
more than others was so sensitive to.a variety of
antagonistic ideas, why he more than others suffered (without
really being aware of it) [the parenthesis is worthy of special
note
J
from 'inner conflicts,' are questions which have not yet been
answered." But will be answered? This is surely the latent prom–
ise of Mr. Smith's sentence and of his notion of science even though
he says that the questions "are not directly pertinent to this study,
for our interest is not in the individual, but in the limitations of
thought confronting that individual to the extent that he was one
product of a definite community." I should like to see, not the
answers themselves, that would be asking too much, but the
forms
of the answers. And I ask for them not because I want to make the
tiresome sentimental gesture that people make when they say the
advance of science will rob life of "mystery" and make it anti–
septically dull. I ask because I think the answers could not have
any significance at all. Any answer would imply that Emerson was
not the reality but that something
in
him or
behind
him was.
One cannot escape the impression, in fact, that Mr. Smith is
after the perfect man of letters, the artist or the critic who will
combine the best features of all artists and critics, the Emerson
who will be systematic and orderly (to Mr. Smith these are the