Religion, as I have tried to show, arises from instincts. The instincts
of the savage are few, the emotions he is capable of feeling are
limited. As his civilisation progresses his instinctive desires
increase, his emotions are more numerous. And as the greater attracts
the less, the older and more established attract the newer, so religion
attracts to itself and incorporates all it can. Religions have varied in
this matter; but of all, Catholicism has been the most wide-armed, it
has always justified its name. Where a new emotion arose and became
strong the Roman Church always if possible attracted it into the fold. I
have already shown how this was done. There is hardly an emotion of the
human heart that Roman Catholicism has not made its own.
Now what is Art?
Art, as Tolstoi explains, is also an expression of the emotions, and
therefore the difference between religion and art lies in the emotions
expressed and the method of expression.
Different peoples express in their religions different emotions. What
some of these emotions are I explain in Chapter XXX. Different people
are also more or less susceptible to art, and express in their art
different emotions. Where a great religion has absorbed certain
emotions, and a great art subsequently arises and wishes to express in
art some of the same emotions, then the art becomes religious art. The
two domains have overlapped. But there is no distinction between secular
and religious art. Nor is there any necessary connection between Art and
Religion. Neither is dependent on the other. They are quite distinct
domains, each existing to fulfil the necessities and desires of man.
How they came frequently to overlap is easily enough seen.
Consider the religion of Rome. It came, as I have said, out of the
necessity for expressing and cultivating certain emotions. It is a very
catholic religion, the product of a highly emotional people who had many
and strong feelings. As much as possible these were accepted into the
religion.
Therefore, when there came the great outbreak of art in the fourteenth
century, when there were great painters and sculptors desiring to paint
pictures that appealed to the heart, all the ground was occupied.
Did they want to depict feminine beauty, there was the Madonna accepted
as the ideal. Did they want to awaken the emotion of maternity, there
was the Madonna again; of pity, there were the martyrs; of sacrifice,
there was the Christ. Long before these emotions had been crystallised
by the Church round religious ideals, and a change would not be
understood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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