aims diminishes the beauty of the result. In creative literature all advocacy of the artist's own opinions, any betrayal of an interested motive, intrudes and disturbs. The illusion can no longer rival the perfect dream, inconclusive, select, concentrated, inevitable, intimate and stimulating. Success may be and has been achieved by genius at a single heat, but is more usually compassed by rehandling a genial improvisation with conscious and patient art. Such was Flaubert's æsthetic.

The comparison of those parts which correspond in the three versions of St Anthony' makes a perfect object-lesson. No young poet could do better than pore over the successive states of the dialogue between the Sphinx and the Chimæra. That is how a genial first draft may be brought into harmonious and proportionate relief. Weak and redundant details are relentlessly cut away, but fresh inventions as happy as, or happier than any, enforce and consolidate the main structure; in the end you realise what this great artist meant by the anatomy of style.' If we compare his practice with current theories we shall find that, embracing all, it avoids that maniac insistence on a single aim which renders each of them partial. Realism, impressionism, lyricism and self-portraiture all suppose art's value to be that of a record; they only differ as to what should be recorded; for them success crowns the record's fidelity, whether to facts or impressions or per sonal emotion or the character of the author. Science has produced perfect records devoid of æsthetic value; and some of the greatest works neither portray the author, nor record his emotions, nor his impressions, while they mingle fiction with fact. Therefore these theories are mistaken.

Conformity to the spirit of a race, to tradition, to rules, to cultivated expectation, is put forward as the value of art. Such theories idolise the past; if value accrues from conformity to existent standards, that value cannot pertain to the divine dawn,' the golden age,' the great period,' which became what they were by departing from example and surpassing it. Sometimes the adoption of a novel or more rational technique is expected to suffice. Flaubert's æsthetic might come within this description, if he had not held inspiration to

be the substance which art can only fertilise, purify, and render fully effective.

'La nature' (he says) 'n'est belle que pour qui sait la voir: preuve que tout dépend du subjective.'* And again: Toute œuvre d'art enferme une chose particulière tenant à la personne de l'artiste, et qui fait, indépendamment de l'execution, que nous sommes séduits ou irrités. Aussi notre admiration n'est-elle complète que pour les ouvrages satisfaisant à la fois notre tempérament et notre esprit ?'†

In practice we find theoretical innovators, Cubist, Futurist, Symbolist and Vers-librist, indulge in idle details just as much as their predecessors, while they insist narrowly and monotonously on some one set of forms.

For many, originality is the value of art. Unfortunately madmen are often extremely original; while great art has sometimes adopted the whole of its predecessor's inventions and processes, and yet doubled the value by adding an indefinable something. Art must, for others, be instinct with the true criticism of life,' 'the saving doctrine,' the Spirit'; but they too recognise these things where there is no art, and always belittle some recognised masterpiece as heterodox; thus M. Suarez slights Flaubert, Mr Shaw Shakespeare.‡ Men are so deeply flattered by supposing their kind the flower of creation, and their particular conceptions the maturing fruit of that flower, that reason pauses before accepting even a M. Paul Claudel or a Victor Hugo at his own valuation. This humanitarian prejudice always merits suspicion. The artist-saviour is stage-struck; for him all the world's a scene, and either himself or his doctrine the hero.

Though the best art has never been dominated by these purposes singly, it absorbs the strength out of any

* Ib. p. 364.

+ Correspondance, IVme série, p. 445.

Possibly Mr Shaw's plea for Bunyan (a very raw artist) deserves distinction from this theory. The will to be used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one and not to repent it' is the spirit of the hero and of heroic art, he thinks. The aesthetic instinct is to add a good thing to the world. To be spent in doing this as Flaubert and Shakespeare were, when one is not confident that the universe is bound to result in good, and so cannot identify oneself with the cosmic purpose, needs surely even more courage than those who know themselves infallibly backed can require.

or all. Flaubert held that honesty, if vital and intense enough, corrects every vice; for then it can never shrink from contest with intimate prejudice or content itself with less than the best possible workmanship.

'Le don de l'observation ne peut appartenir qu'a un honnête homme, car pour voir les choses en êlles-mêmes il faut n'y porter aucun intérêt personnel.'

*

Effort to cultivate objective sympathy and to perfect form will save even the most impetuous genius from all avoidable self-deception.

In 'Bouvard et Pécuchet' Flaubert was perhaps false to the spirit of his æsthetic. The attempts to interpret it as a satire are as persistent as they are plausible. This once his imagination may have served a thesis. Still I prefer to view it as an attempt to allay the itch to present, as a logical deduction, something he more profoundly felt to be a subjective illusion. Had he completed the book, MM. Gaultier and Ferrère might have found their gratuitous tasks more, not less, difficult. Flaubert regarded the achievement of style as the royal road to thought and beauty. Only by consolidating and harmonising statements can men realise profoundly or represent splendidly. From the progress of science and the calamities of 1870 a pall of thought fell over him, like a heavy sail over a seaman in a storm; his struggles at first seemed hopelessly inadequate. The letters prove that effort to rise equal to experience-which he allowed himself neither to disregard nor to tamper with-kept him tossing and groaning ever more restlessly.

In this book, loyal to his method, he set himself to transmute the contents of a fevered brain into style, by mingling knowledge and invention, and perfecting chapter and sentence. As he progressed, he looked, while creating an objective illusion, to gain lucidity and serenity sufficient to adjust the proportions of his book.

'L'Artiste non seulement porte en soi l'humanité, mais il en reproduit l'histoire dans la création de son œuvre. D'abord, du trouble, une vue générale, les aspirations, l'éblouissement, tout est mêlé (époque barbare); puis l'analyse, le doute,

*Notes de Voyages II.; Notes diverses,' p. 360.

la méthode, la disposition des parties (l'ère scientifique); enfin, il revient à la synthèse première plus élargie dans l'exécution. Si l'humanité doit se developper à la manière d'une œuvre conçue par la Providence, elle est loin encore, miséricorde! de cette troisième phase!' (Ib. p. 358.)

Thus his final aim would have been to free both his book and himself from conclusions which imposed themselves like nightmares. He did not live to succeed. However, generosity can but assume that he might have done so, and was not doomed to fail. The eighteennineties saw the world of intellect finally submerged in that black agnosticism he had attempted to bridge. To-day many hope to climb out with the aid of balloons; but it is still possible that inspiration will again have to be winged with the most humble courage and patient application, before this adventure can succeed.

I have to own that my conception of this great artist does not sort with that of most even of his admirers. Howbeit the best thoughts do not always arise in countless heads. The attempt to be succinct and clear has led me to imply an over-consistent Flaubert. The man I actually perceive was sometimes carried off his feet by the flood of æsthetic admiration, or by its recoil towards scientific deductions. Chatting with idealist friends, he would contradict things shouted at realist admirers-as who might not? But, when he sat alone, was he not conscious of the straight line ruled across his chart, however far gusty weather might force him to tack? Yes, I am persuaded that the whole evidence brought together in the eighteen volumes of this splendid edition tallies with the man in my mind's eye as with no other. Yet, if I am wrong, the mistake has been so good a fortune to me, I could but regret for his sake that it was not the truth about Flaubert.

T. STURGE MOORE.

Art. 3.-THE CONDITIONS OF STATE PUNISHMENT.

1. Outlines of Criminal Law. By C. S. Kenny. Cambridge: University Press, 1913.

2. Criminal Responsibility. By C. Mercier, M.B. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.

3. A History of Penal Methods: Criminals, Witches, Lunatics. By G. Ives. London: Stanley Paul, 1914. 4. Fifty-sixth Report, for the Year 1912, of the Chief Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial Schools. London: Wyman, 1914.

5. Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons (for the Year ended 31 March, 1913). London: Wyman, 1914.

THE enforcement of the social rules established by members of a community for the regulation of their conduct inter se may be effected by one or more of three methods a system of reward for good conduct; a system of punishment for wrong doing; a system composed of the essential elements of the first and second systems.

Experience has taught us that in the conditions which have obtained and still obtain in any community, political or other, a system of reward is insufficient to restrain the individualistic and consequently anti-social tendencies of man. In a simple community, such as the family, the composite system has been found to be efficacious, but the varying and complex circumstances of political life forbid its application to members of a State considered as such. It is true that a State may, in its appointments to State offices, prefer those who, deservedly or undeservedly, bear a good character, but, in the main, it acts upon the principle that its members will be sufficiently remunerated for their good behaviour by a consciousness of their law-abiding worth. Therefore it may be truly said that the methods by which a State enforces its rules are necessarily purely punitive.

This fact may or may not be deplorable; it depends upon the point of view. Those criminologists who regard a man as an individual detached from both the members and the circumstances of a political life, and deem all coercive measures which do not exclusively aim at 'individual reformation' as indefensible, will be those