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is customary to sound the praises of simplicity in our
day and to belaud the habit of an earlier time, when,
as we declare, life was less complicated than at present.
In the midst of a vital and nascent civilization we
are perhaps none too prone to emulate the virtues of
our fathers or imitate their excellent qualities. Yet
we may easily mistake their blessings. Is simplicity,
after all, so admirable a trait of character, so fine
a quality in art?
And
what is this simplicity of life for which we sigh? We
speak of the simplicity of nature, the simplicity of
a flower, but surely nothing is more wonderfully complex
than all the beautiful products of the natural world.
A leaf, for instance, — one single, [Page
218] fresh, green maple leaf from the myriads
of the forest to-day, — seems at first glance
simplicity itself. Yet its symmetry is not geometrical,
but only artistic. It conforms but roughly, though inexorably,
to its type. It has no perfect fellow in all the whole
earth full of green companions. It is not a machine
product. It hasn’t the simplicity of straight
line and circle. It cannot be reproduced; can hardly
be imitated. It has individuality, properties, parts,
functions, growth, colour, vitality, and a period of
its existence. That is no simple matter.
Lower
in the scale of nature there is greater simplicity.
Inorganic is simpler than organic. Last of all comes
primal cosmos, or chaos, which is simplicity itself.
On the other hand, the farther you go ahead in the development
of nature, the more complex does it become. Simplicity,
truly, means life reduced to its lowest terms. But that
is not what we actually desire, I fancy.
You
tell me you love the simplicity of nature, [Page
219] you are glad to get away from the complications
of city life. Yes, that is the phrase we commonly use,
but I think there is a good deal of error in it. What
is it that wearies us in town? Not the work we have
to do, so much as the strain of unnatural ugliness and
noise in which we allow ourselves to dwell. For work
is not a burden, but a pleasurable activity, a natural
function of the healthy and happy; but noise and ugliness
are against the trend of spirit as it passes from the
lower to the finer life. Noise and ugliness are primitive
and simple; music and beauty are complex, and we only
reach them in our progress toward ideal perfection.
To take a single instance: you will admit that many
of the gongs on the street-cars make a hideous din;
they contribute not a little to the dissonance of city
noises. But suppose that we should go to the trouble
and expense of making our gongs musical. Suppose that
they were all made of the finest bell metal, carefully
attuned, how much pleasanter that would be! [Page
220] And then, further, suppose that each bell
were made to strike its own musical note, and that all
were harmonized, how much more pleasure to the jaded
nerves! And in each improvement, you will observe, we
should be making a step away from the simplicity of
noise and toward the complexity of music. We should
be discarding machinery in favour of art.
And,
again, think of the hideousness of our streets, —
our rows and rows of brownstone fronts, as you look
down the side streets on the way up-town, — every
house exactly like its neighbour, and every street almost
exactly like the next. There is monotonous simplicity
for you, and the result is deadly. Now if every house
were given a beautiful and individual character of its
own, and that character so modified as to conform to
its neighbours, how fine a block you might have! And,
further, if each block were made to harmonize to some
extent with those about it, how fine a city! Again,
in each step of improvement [Page 221] we
should be advancing from the simple to the complex,
from chaos to art. For art is not the antithesis of
nature; but nature and art are both the antithesis of
chaos. It is when we give up loving care and put our
trust in machinery that we begin to move backward to
monotony, simplicity, ugliness, and death.
If
we would remedy the annoyance of city life, we must
be willing to take thought for it. We must be willing
to spend time and trouble and money in order to have
music instead of noise in our car bells, in order to
have beauty instead of simplicity in our architecture.
Now
if you think you can solve the problem of modern life
for yourself by withdrawing from the fray, you are mistaken.
You may set up your studio in the top of a twenty-story
building, and moon there over your emasculate daubs,
while the twentieth century is racing beneath your feet;
but you will never lay on a brushful of paint that will
[Page 222] stay. There is a lot dirty
work to be done in the world yet, and, if we are not
fitted to help in it, we must at least stand by and
give it our sympathy.
Then
in the realm of art itself, it is not simplicity we
admire, but harmonious unity, the complex blending of
colours and tones. Simplicity would mean the crude juxtaposition
of one raw colour by another, the striking of one note
without regard to its fellow. And in poetry, when you
pass from the regularity of the school of Pope to the
apparently freer metrical usage of Wordsworth and Tennyson
and Keats, you fancy at first that you are returning
to simpler methods; and when you come to Emerson and
Whitman, you say you have reached simplicity itself.
But that is exactly the reverse of the truth. The cadences
of “Leaves of Grass” are far more intricate
than those of “The Essay on Man.”
The
only simplicity that is desirable is simplicity of soul,
a certain singleness of aim and quiet detachment of
vision, a mood of enduring [Page 223] repose
not at variance with constant endeavour, a habit of
content, contemplation, and peace, that abides undistracted
in harmony with other habits of activity and toil. This
is not the simplicity of chaos, but the simplicity of
order, the assurance that comes from the perception
of law and the triumph of beauty. This is the higher
simplicity, the simplicity of nature and mathematics,
which comprehends their many complexities in a unity
of being. [Page 224]
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