In the Grand Canyon of Arizona, that most exhilarating
of all natural phenomena, Nature has for once so focussed
her effects, that the result is a framed and final
work of Art. For there, between two high lines
of plateau, level as the sea, are sunk the wrought
thrones of the innumerable gods, couchant, and for
ever revering, in their million moods of light and
colour, the Master Mystery.
Having seen this culmination, I realize why many people
either recoil before it, and take the first train
home, or speak of it as a “remarkable formation.”
For, though mankind at large craves finality, it does
not crave the sort that bends the knee to Mystery.
In Nature, in Religion, in Art, in Life, the common
cry is: “Tell me precisely where I am, what
doing, and where going! Let me be free of this
fearful untidiness of not knowing all about it!”
The favoured religions are always those whose message
is most finite. The fashionable professions—they
that end us in assured positions. The most popular
works of fiction, such as leave nothing to our imagination.
And to this craving after prose, who would not be
lenient, that has at all known life, with its usual
predominance of our lower and less courageous selves,
our constant hankering after the cosey closed door
and line of least resistance? We are continually
begging to be allowed to know for certain; though,
if our prayer were granted, and Mystery no longer
hovered, made blue the hills, and turned day into
night, we should, as surely, wail at once to be delivered
of that ghastliness of knowing things for certain!
Now, in Art, I would never quarrel with a certain
living writer who demands of it the kind of finality
implied in what he calls a “moral discovery”—using,
no doubt, the words in their widest sense. I
would maintain, however, that such finality is not
confined to positively discovering the true conclusion
of premises laid down; but that it may also distil
gradually, negatively from the whole work, in a moral
discovery, as it were, of Author. In other words,
that, permeation by an essential point of view, by
emanation of author, may so unify and vitalize a work,
as to give it all the finality that need be required
of Art. For the finality that is requisite to
Art, be it positive or negative, is not the finality
of dogma, nor the finality of fact, it is ever the
finality of feeling—of a spiritual light,
subtly gleaned by the spectator out of that queer
luminous haze which one man’s nature must ever
be to others. And herein, incidentally, it is
that Art acquires also that quality of mystery, more
needful to it even than finality, for the mystery
that wraps a work of Art is the mystery of its maker,
and the mystery of its maker is the difference between
that maker’s soul and every other soul.
