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Michelangelo Buonarotti, Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, 1508–1512, red
chalk on unknown surface, 11⅜ × 87/16 inches (28.9 × 21.4cm). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY). Art Resource, NY.
Copyright © 2017 by Albert F. Gury

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Watson-Guptill Publications, an imprint of the

Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.watsonguptill.com

WATSON-GUPTILL and the WG and Horse designs are registered trademarks of

Penguin Random House LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gury, Al, author.

Title: Foundations of drawing : a practical guide to art history, tools, techniques,

and styles / Al Gury.

Description: First edition. | California ; New York : Watson-Guptill, 2017. | Includes

bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017001750 (print) | LCCN 2017003614 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Drawing—Technique. | Drawing—History. | BISAC: ART /

Techniques / Drawing. | ART / Techniques / General. | ART / Study & Teaching.

Classification: LCC NC730 .G89 2017 (print) | LCC NC730 (ebook) | DDC 741.2—
dc23

LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2017001750

Trade Paperback ISBN 9780307987181

Ebook ISBN 9780307987198

v4.1
a
Foundations of Drawing is dedicated to Mr. Jack Frisk,
art collector, scholar, and friend.
Holly Trostle Brigham, Judith and Flora, 2003, watercolor on paper, 29½
× 29½ inches (74.93 × 74.93 cm). Private collection.
CONTENTS

Preface: A Life of Drawing

Introduction
What Is Drawing?
Anyone Can Learn to Draw
“Why Can’t I Draw a Straight Line?”

1 Essential History of Drawing

Beginnings in Prehistory
The Ancient World
The Medieval World
The Renaissance
The Baroque
The Nineteenth Century
Beginnings of the Modern Era
The Modern World
Contemporary Growth and Challenges
Today

2 Essential Drawing Materials

Drawing Mediums
Drawing Tools
Paper
The Drawing Studio—Furniture and Equipment
Storage, Presentation, and Conservation of Drawings

3 Essential Drawing Skills

Holding Drawing Tools
Measuring
 Blending and Erasing
Methods of Drawing
Types of Line
Hatching and Other Descriptive Marks
Shape
Depth and Perspective
Closed versus Open Form
Planes
Tonality, Light, and Shade
Texture
Composition and the Compositional Frame

4 Essential Aesthetics in Drawing

Classicism
Realism
Abstraction
Expressionism

5 Essential Drawing Demonstrations

Drawing Still Lifes
Drawing Interiors and Architecture
Drawing Portraits
Drawing the Human Figure

Acknowledgments
Index
PREFACE: a Life of Drawing
The ideas, thoughts, and concepts contained in this book are filtered
through my own experience and that of the many teachers of
drawing who have influenced my development as an artist and
teacher. In this book, I try to recreate the atmosphere of my drawing
classroom and the rich conversations with my students on materials,
concepts, aesthetics, and history. For thirty years, I have taught
drawing to students ranging from complete beginners—including
children, teenagers, the elderly, and the learning impaired—to very
experienced artists at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
PAFA has produced some of the finest artists in American history,
including Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Maxfield Parrish, Cecilia
Beaux, Daniel Garber, Sidney Goodman, and Vincent Desiderio, and
drawing has always been at the core of the school’s curriculum—an
umbrella for its educational mission. The drawing curriculum at PAFA
is strong and balanced and addresses the great tradition of academic
fine-arts education as well as important issues of contemporary
artistic discourse and art-making. Beginning with cast drawing, life
drawing, anatomy, still-life drawing, interior drawing, and
perspective, PAFA students are guided through lessons in the formal
elements of drawing (shape, form, line, light and shade, perspective,
composition, and so on) with the goal of developing a solid
knowledge base and an expressive, personal language and vision.
Upper-level classes add the concerns of drawing in the modern
world: content, narrative, aesthetics, diverse mediums, and personal
statement.
Drawing done by the author at age five.
Thomas Toner, Sketches, date unknown, pencil on paper, 8 × 12 inches
(20.32 × 30.48 cm). Collection of the author.
Tom Toner did numerous preparatory sketches in pencil, like this one, for his large
oil paintings. He loosely sketched the shapes of the figures and faces with a sharp
6B pencil, then added shading with short hatch lines following the direction of the
light. Toner’s drawing technique is derived from approaches used in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries in Italy and northern Europe by artists such as Pontormo
and Albrecht Dürer.
Cast Corridor, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA),
Philadelphia.
The Cast Hall and Corridor at PAFA were designed as drawing studios by the
building’s architects, the Philadelphia firm of Furness-Hewitt. The building, a
national landmark, was opened in 1876 for America’s centennial celebration. Its
cast collection, including more than 160 full-size replicas of Greco-Roman and
Renaissance figures, busts, and reliefs, serves a central component of the drawing
curriculum at the school.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, A Seated Nude Twisting Around, circa 1504–
1505, pen and brown ink with wash and lead white on paper,
dimensions unknown. British Museum, London. © the Trustees of the
British Museum/Art Resource, New York.
This Michelangelo drawing, probably done from a model, is first sketched in with
fine line in brown ink and pen. The modeling of the forms uses short hatching
lines in brown ink following the direction changes of the surfaces of the figure’s
anatomical structures. Strokes of white hatch lines on the very tops of the swelling
forms complete the sense of form and light. The tan paper provides a unifying
middle tone for the forms of the figure.
INTRODUCTION
Foundations of Drawing is a guide for teachers, students, artists, and
the general reader to the traditions and practice of drawing in
Western culture. This overview of the history of drawing and of
drawing materials, concepts, and techniques provides a practical
look at the art of drawing and will be a useful text for anyone who is
interested in learning about drawing, returning to drawing, studying
drawing, or teaching drawing as well as for longtime practitioners of
the art. The book takes the point of view that clear information on
the history, materials, and techniques of drawing creates the ability
to understand drawing, make choices, and chart one’s development
in drawing with a sense of confidence.
Foundations of Drawing focuses on classic drawing mediums such
as pencil and charcoal while also presenting an overview of a broad
range of other materials, including chalk and oil pastels, watercolors,
and acrylics. Not all materials are discussed in depth, but the
essential ones are presented. Traditional materials and methods are
illustrated through examples of old master and contemporary
drawings as well as through demonstrations of basic concepts. The
essential elements and concepts of core drawing genres—still life,
interiors, portraiture, life drawing, and landscape—are presented for
foundational drawing study and portfolio-making. More experienced
artists can use Foundations of Drawing as a sourcebook and a point
of departure for further personal growth and artistic exploration.
Drawing is an essential part of a portfolio for art school
admittance. Drawing shows whether or not the applicant has a basic
ability to understand visual organization and use the formal
principals of shape, form, line, light, and perspective. It also shows
whether or not the applicant can visualize creative ideas and
concepts.

What Is Drawing?
For many centuries, drawing has been a practical approach to
visualizing and planning everything from human figures in an oil
painting to designing machine parts, buildings, and textiles. Simple
materials such as graphite pencils, charcoal, and ink have been the
primary means for doing the great majority of drawings.

First grade student, My Family, 2012, crayon on manila drawing paper,

dimensions unknown.
Drawing provides insight into the inner world and perceptions of the child.

The term drawing now encompasses a wide range of traditional

and nontraditional mediums, approaches, and aesthetics. Modern
technology has created new versions of old materials and has
sometimes even replaced them. For example, fine-point marker pens
have added to or replaced older dip pens and ink bottles for some
artists. Some artists rely on and cherish traditional materials and
methods, while others draw only on computer screens. And some
artists draw experimentally using materials their Renaissance
ancestors would think very strange: blood, tar, food, and computer
drawing pads.
Also, the aesthetics of drawing, which traditionally focused on a
figure, an object, or a scene, now include abstract and conceptual
forms having little to do with nature and more to do with how the
artist personally interprets the world. Once thought of as the
province of trained artists or skilled amateurs, drawing is now
recognized as part of the language of children, the mentally
disabled, and self-taught or outsider artists. Prisoners and victims of
social injustice draw in order to document their social and political
experiences.
Student drawing of Laocoön and His Sons, c. 1990s, white and black
pastel on colored charcoal paper, 24 × 18 inches (60.96 × 45.72 cm).
School Collection, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
In this student drawing, the structural shapes and gesture lines of the figure of
Laocoön were lightly laid out using vine charcoal. The light on the sculpture was
first described with loosely scumbled (roughed in) strokes of white pastel to
establish a strong contrast between light and shade. Highlights within the light
mass were added by building up loose strokes of white pastel. The strokes follow
the direction of the forms. Shadows were deepened with vine charcoal, with a few
edges and creases emphasized with a stronger, sharper touch of the charcoal. The
overall effect is one of soft light and shade and atmosphere.
Here, a student is drawing from a cast-plaster replica of the ancient statue
Laocoön and His Sons, the original of which is in the Vatican Museum, in Rome.
The north-facing skylights in the Cast Hall at PAFA provide perfect light for
drawing.
This student is making quick gesture sketches of a model with vine charcoal on
newsprint. He has lined up the figures sequentially to compare and correct size,
proportion, and movement—and to aid him in learning consistency in scale, line
weight, and shape. Such gesture sketches are also called croquis, an old French
academic name for quick sketches of a model.

Anyone Can Learn to Draw

With the right tools, clear guidance, and encouragement, anyone
can learn to draw. Many people consider taking a drawing class
because they remember that they enjoyed it in elementary school; it
was something personal that gave them pleasure. This is one of the
best reasons for anyone to begin drawing.
Any person can learn the basics of shape, form, line, shading,
perspective, and composition—the foundational, or “formal,”
elements of drawing. Foundational elements are the gateway; some
individuals stop there, having achieved their primary goal of being
able to sketch simple things for enjoyment and relaxation. Others,
however, may feel that the lessons have opened up a new world of
interest and will want to continue the journey—even to a career as
an artist. Any reason for drawing is a good one.

“Why Can’t I Draw a Straight Line?”

Being unable to draw a straight line may be very frustrating for
someone learning to draw. But we are not physically designed to
draw straight lines. Two anatomical structures in our arms dominate
the actions needed to draw: the shoulder and its joint structure and
muscles and the wrist and its connection to the forearm. The bones
all have S-curved shapes, and the joints are all diagonal and oval
ball-and-socket structures. They’re designed to make our limbs move
in a curving fashion, which is more economical than straight, angular
movements. So when you first try to draw a straight line, you may
find it very difficult because your body wants to make curved,
diagonal lines. You must learn to align your hands, your arms, and
their movements to create a straight movement. Like shooting a
basketball, this takes practice and the ability to control the
movements of your hand and arm.
Al Gury, Why Can’t I Draw a Straight Line?, 2014, marker on paper, 8 ×
10 inches (20.32 × 25.4 cm).
Drawing a straight line is a learned action.
Al Gury, sketchbook pages, year unknown, marker and ballpoint pen on
white paper, 8 × 5 inches (20.32 × 12.7 cm).
The freedom and immediacy of drawing in a journal or sketchbook creates a world
of personal exploration.
 ESSENTIAL
HISTORY OF DRAWING

The Roman historian Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) credited drawing’s
invention to the daughter of the Corinthian sculptor Butades (fl. c.
600 BC). As Pliny’s charming story goes, Butades’s daughter—whom
he refers to only as the Maid of Corinth—is anxious over her
beloved’s imminent departure for war and casts the young man’s
shadow on a wall with a lamp, then traces the shadow’s outline. Her
father uses the outline to sculpt a portrait bust of the young man—
connecting drawing’s origin to that of sculpture, as well. In reality,
drawing began much farther back in time.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
57
The Pride of the Sterile
Ecclesiastical, ceremonious humility is the pride of those who cannot
create or initiate, either because they are sterile, or because the
obstacles in their way are too great. Their pride is centred, not on
what they can do, but on what they can endure. The anchorite goes
into the wilderness, perhaps rather to get his background than to
escape attention, and there imposes upon himself the most difficult
and loathsome tasks, enduring not only outward penances, fasting
and goading of the flesh, but such inward convulsions, portents and
horrors, as the soul of man has by no other means experienced.
Here, in endurance, is his power, and here, therefore, is his pride:
the poor Atlas, who does not remove, but supports mountains, and
these of his own making!
Men who have the power to create but are at the same time
extremely timid belong to this class. Rather than venture outside
themselves they will do violence to their own nature. The forces
which in creation would have been liberated are pent within them
and cause untold restlessness, uneasiness and pain. Religions which
stigmatize "self-expression," separating the individual into an
"outward" and an "inward" and raising a barrier between the two,
encourage the growth of this type of man. These religions
themselves have their roots in a timidity, a fear of pain. For self-
expression is by no means painless; it is, on the contrary, a great
cause of suffering. Essentially its outcome is strife, the clash of egos:
Tragedy is the great recognition in Art of this truth. Christianity saw
the suffering which conflict brought with it, said it was altogether
evil, and sought to abolish it. But a law of Life cannot be abolished:
strife, driven from the world of outward event, retreated into the
very core of man, and there became baleful, indeed, disintegrating,
and subversive. The early Christians did not see that men would
suffer more from that inward psychic conflict than from the other. It
was the Greeks who elevated conflict to an honourable position in
their outward actions; with them, as Nietzsche said, there was no
distinction between the "outward" and "inward"; they lived
completely and died once. But the Christians, to use the words of St.
Paul, "died daily." How true was that of those proudly humble
anchorites! What a light it throws upon their sternly endured
convulsions of the soul! In the end, Death itself came no doubt to
many of them as a relief from this terribly protracted "dying."
Perhaps one thing, however, made their lives bearable and even
enjoyable—the power of the soul to plumb its own sufferings and
capacity for endurance. Psychology arose first among the
ecclesiastically humble men.
Well, let us count up our gains and losses. Spiritual humility,
wherever it has spread, has certainly weakened the expression of
Life: for it has weakened man by introducing within him a disrupting
conflict. But it has also made Life subtler and deeper; it has enlarged
the inward world of man, even if it has straitened the world outside.
So that when we return—as we must—to the Pagan ideal of
"expression," our works shall be richer than those of the Pagans, for
man has now more to express.

58
When Pride is Necessary
Perhaps in all great undertakings into which uncertainty enters pride
is necessary. In the Elizabethan age, our most productive and
adventurous age, pride was at its zenith. Was that pride the
necessary condition of that productiveness? Would the poets, the
thinkers and the discoverers have attempted what they did attempt,
had they been humble men? What is needed is more enquiry: a new
psychology, and, above all, a new history of pride.

59
Humility and the Artists
There is one man, at any rate, who has always owed more to pride
than to humility—the artist. Whether it be in himself, where it is
almost the condition of productiveness, or in others, where it is the
cause of all actions and movements æsthetically agreeable, Pride is
his great benefactor. All artists are proud, but not all have the good
conscience of their pride. In their thoughts they permit themselves
to be persuaded too much by the theologians; they have not enough
"free spirit" to say, "Pride is my atmosphere, in which I create. I do
not choose to refuse my atmosphere."
But if pride were banished even from the remainder of Life, how
poor would the artists be left! For every gesture that is beautiful, all
free, spirited, swift movement and all noble repose have in them
pride. Humility uglifies, except, indeed, the humility which is a form
of pride; that has a sublimity of its own. Even the Christian Church—
the Church of the humble—had to make its ceremonies magnificent
to make itself æsthetically presentable; without its magnificence it
would have been an impossible institution. Humility, to be
supportable, must have in it an admixture of pride. That gives it
standing. It was His subtle pride that communicated to the humility
of Jesus its gracious "charm."
Poetic tragedy and pride are profoundly associated. No event is
tragic which has not arisen out of pride, and has not been borne
proudly: the Greeks knew that. But, as well, is not pride at times
laughable and absurd? Well, what does that prove, except that
comedy as well as tragedy has been occasioned by it? Humility is not
even laughable!

60
Love and Pride
Pride is so indissolubly bound up with everything great—Joy, Beauty,
Courage, Creation—that surely it must have had some celestial
origin. Who created it? Was it Love, who wished to shape a weapon
for itself, the better to fashion things? Pride has so much to do with
creation that sometimes it imagines it is a creator. But that it is not.
Only Love can create. Pride was fashioned out of a rib taken from
the side of Love.

61
Pride and the Fall
It was not humility that was the parent of the fable of the Fall. Or is
it humility to boast of one's high ancestry, and if the ancestry does
not exist, to invent it? The naïve poet who created that old allegory
did not foresee the number of interpretations which would be read
into it. He did not foresee that it would be used to humiliate Man
instead of to exalt him; he did not at all foresee Original Sin. As less
than justice, then, has been meted to him, let us now accord him
more than justice. Let us say that he was a divine philosopher who
perceived that in unconditional morality lay the grand misfortune of
mankind. Man is innocent; thus, he said, it is an absolute ethic that
defiles him—the knowledge of Good and Evil. Sweep that away, and
he is innocent and back in the Garden of Eden again. Let us say this
of the first poet, for certainly he did not mean it! Perhaps he knew
nothing at all about morality! All that he wished for was to provide a
dignified family tree for his generation.

62
The Good Conscience
What a revolution for mankind it would be to get back "the good
conscience"? Life made innocent, washed free from how much filth
of remorse, guilt, contempt, "sin"—that vision arouses a longing
more intense than that of the religious for any heaven. And it seems
at least equally possible of realization! Bad conscience arises when
religion and the instincts are in opposition; the more comprehensive
and deep this conflict, the more guilty the conscience. But there
have been religions not antagonistic to the instincts, which, instead
of condemning them, have thought so well of them as to become
their rule, their discipline. The religion of the Greeks was an example
of this; and in Greece, accordingly, there was no "bad conscience" in
our sense. Well, how is it possible, if it is possible, to regain "the
good conscience"? Not by any miracle! Not by an instantaneous
"change of heart," for even the heart changes slowly. But suppose
that a new instinctive religion and morality were to be set up, and
painfully complied with, until they became a second nature as ours
have become, should we not then gradually lose our bad conscience,
born as it is out of the antagonism between instinct and morality?
Nay, if we were to persevere still further until instinct and religion
and morality became intermingled and indistinguishable, might we
not enter the Garden of Eden again, might not innocence itself
become ours? But to attain that end, an unremitting discipline,
extending over hundreds of years, might be necessary; and who, in
the absence of gods, is to impose that discipline?

63
The Other Side
The life-defaming creeds are not to be condemned unconditionally:
even they are not evil. "Guilt," asceticism, contempt for the world—
these are the physiologically bad things which have sharpened,
deepened and made subtle the soul of man. The Greeks were simple
compared with modern man; a thousand times more healthy, it is
true—perhaps because they were incapable of contracting our
maladies. Well, let us judge Christianity, which in Europe was mainly
responsible for this deepening of Man, by an artistic criterion: let us
judge it by the effects it achieved, not by what it said.

64
Effects of Christianity
If there are gods who take an interest in Man, and experiment upon
him, what better means could they have devised for getting out of
him certain "effects," not Christian at all, than Christianity? Far more
significant for mankind than the virtues of Christianity, are its
contradictions, excesses and "states of mind." The "way of life,"
Christian morality, is of little account compared with the permanent
physiological and psychological transformations effected upon Man
by the discipline of centuries of religion. Not that Man has been
forced into the mould of Christian morality, but that in the process
he has undergone the most unique convulsions, adaptations and
permutations, that an entire new world of conflict, pain, fear, horror,
exaltation, faith and scepticism has been born within him, that Life,
driven within itself, has deepened, enriched and invested him—that
is from the standpoint of human culture the most important thing,
beside which what is usually understood by the Christianizing of
Europe is relatively insignificant. Not Christian morality, but the
effects of Christian morality it is that now concern us. And these
effects are not themselves Christian; rather the contrary. Christianity
has made Man more complex, contradictory, sceptical, tragic and
sublime; it has given him more capacity for good and for evil, and
has added to these two qualities subtlety and spirituality.

III

WHAT IS MODERN?

65
Whither?
The fever of modern thought which burns in our veins, and from
which we refuse to escape by reactionary backdoors—Christianity
and the like—is not without its distinction: it is an "honourable
sickness," to use the phrase of Nietzsche. I speak of those who
sincerely strive to seek an issue from this fever; to pass through it
into a new health. Of the others to whom fever is the condition of
existence, who make a profession of their maladies, the
valetudinarians of the spirit, the dabblers in quack soul-remedies for
their own sake, it is impossible to speak without disdain. Our duty is
to exterminate them, by ridicule or any other means found effectual.
But we are ourselves already too grievously harassed; we are caught
in the whirlwind of modern thought, which contains as much dust as
wind. We see outside our field of conflict a region of Christian calm,
but never, never, never can we return there, for our instincts as well
as our intellect are averse to it. The problem must have a different
solution. And what, indeed, is the problem? To some of us it is still
that of emancipation—that which confronted Goethe, Ibsen,
Nietzsche, and the other great spirits of last century. It is an error to
think that these men have yet been refuted or even understood;
they have simply been buried beneath the corpses of later writers.
And it is the worst intellectual weakness, and, therefore, crime, of
our age that ideas are no longer disproved, but simply superseded
by newer ideas. The latest is the true, and Time refutes everything!
That is our modern superstition. We have still, then, to go back—or,
rather, forward—to Goethe, Ibsen and Nietzsche. Our problem is still
that of clearing a domain of freedom around us, of enlarging our
field of choice, and so making destiny itself more spacious; and,
then, having delivered ourselves from prejudice and superstition—
and how many other things!—of setting an aim before us for the
unflinching pursuit of which we make ourselves responsible.
Greater freedom, and therefore greater responsibility, above all
greater aims, an enlargement of life, not a whittling of it down to
Christian standards—that is our problem still!

66
The "Restoration" of Christianity
Will Christianity ever be established again? It is doubtful. At the
most, it may be "restored"—in the manner of the architectural
"restorations," against which Ruskin declaimed. The difficulty of re-
establishing it must needs be greater than that of establishing it. For
it has now been battered by science (people no longer believe in
miracles) and by history (people have read what the Church has
done—or has not done). Christianity has become a Church, and the
Church, an object of criticism. As the body which housed the spirit of
Christianity, men have studied it with secular eyes, and have found
little to reverence, much to censure; and in the disrepute into which
the body has fallen, the spirit, also, has shared. And now the
atmosphere cannot be created in which Christianity may grow young
again and recapture its faith. The necessary credulity, or, at any rate,
the proper kind of credulity, is no longer ours. For Christianity grew,
like the mushrooms, in the night. Had there been newspapers in
Judea, there had been no Christianity. And this age of ours, in which
the clank of the printing press drowns all other sounds, is fatal to
any noble mystery, to any noble birth or rebirth. That night, at all
events, we can never pass through again, and, therefore,
Christianity will probably never renew itself.

67
A Drug for Diseased Souls
The utmost that can be expected is a "restoration," and in that
direction we have gone already a long way. For Christianity is not
now, as it was at the beginning, a spring of inspiration, a thing
spiritual, spontaneous, Dionysian. It is mainly a remedy, or, more
often, a drug for diseased souls; and, therefore, to be husbanded
strictly by the modern medicine men, to be dispensed carefully, and,
yes, to be advertised as well! Its birth was out of an exuberance of
spiritual life; its "restoration" will be out of a hopeless debility and
fatigue. And, therefore——
68
The Dogmatists
All religions may be regarded from two sides; from that of their
creators, and from that of their followers. Among the creators are to
be numbered not only the founders of religion, but the saints, the
inspired prophets and every one who has in some degree the genius
for religion. They are not distinguished by much reverence for
dogma, but by the "religious feeling"; and when this emotion carries
them away in its flood they often treat dogma in a way to make the
orthodox gape with horror. But, in truth, they do not themselves take
much account of dogma; every dogma is a crutch, and they do not
feel the need of one. But the people who are not sustained by this
inward spring of emotion, who can never know what religion really
is, these need a crutch; it is for them that dogma was designed.
And, of course, the real religious men see their advantage also in the
adherence of the dogmatists, the many; for the more widely a
religion is spread, the more secure it becomes, and the greater
chance it has of enduring. Dogma, then, is religion for the irreligious.
To the saint religion is a thing inward and creative; to the dogmatist
it is a thing outward, accomplished and fixed, to which he may cling.
The former is the missionary of religion, the latter, its conserver. The
one is religious because he has religion, the other, because he needs
it.

69
The Religious Impulse
The time comes in the history of a faith when the "religious feeling"
dies, and nothing is left but dogma. The dogmatists then become
the missionaries of religion. The fount is dried up; there is no longer
an inward force seeking for expression; there is only the fear of the
dogmatist lest his staff, his guide, his horizon should be taken from
him. Religion is then supported most frenziedly by the irreligious;
weakness then speaks with a more poignant eloquence than
strength itself. And that is what is happening with Christianity. Its
"religious feeling" is dead: there has been no great religious figure in
Europe in our time. And the Church is now being defended on
grounds neither religious nor theological, but secular and even
utilitarian. The real religious impulse is now to be found in the
movement outside, and, therefore, against Christianity. But, alas, as
Nietzsche feared, there may not after all be "sufficient religion in the
world to destroy religion."

70
The Decay of Prophecy
The past should be studied only in order to divine the future. The
new soothsayers should seek for omens, not, as their ancient
brethren did, in the stars and the entrails of animals, but in the book
of history, past and becoming. "The new soothsayers," for
soothsaying has not died; it has become popular—and degenerate.
Every one may now foretell the future, but no one may believe what
is foretold. And that is because the soothsayers do not themselves
believe their auguries; when they happen to speak the truth, no one
is more surprised than they. But in the antique world the augurs
had, at any rate, responsibility; to foretell the future was not to them
an amusement but a vocation.
To what is due the decay of the art of soothsaying? Partly, no doubt,
to the dissemination of popular knowledge, by which people have
become less credulous; partly to the "scientific temper" of those
who, had they lived in the old world, would have been the
soothsayers; partly to other causes known to every one. But,
allowing for these, may there not be something due to the fact that
people are no longer interested, as they used to be, in the future?
They know the past, ah, perhaps too well: they have looked into it
so long that at length they feel that the future holds nothing which it
has not held, that Fate has now no fresh metamorphosis or
apotheosis, and that Time must henceforth be content to plagiarize
itself. And so the future has lost the seduction which it once held for
the noblest spirits. It is true, men still amuse themselves by
guessing which of Time's well-thumbed and greasy cards will turn up
at the next deal, or by playing at patience with the immemorial
possibilities. But that is not soothsaying, nor is it even playing with
the future: it is playing with the past. And the great modern
discovery is not the discovery of the future, but the discovery of the
past.
And as with soothsaying, so with prophecy. If we could but look for
a moment into the soul of an old prophet and see his deepest
thoughts and visions, what a conception of the future would be ours!
But that is impossible. We cannot now understand the faith of the
men who, unmoved, prophesied the advent of supernatural beings,
the Christ or another; to whom the future was a new world more
strange than America was to Columbus. That attitude of mind has
been killed; and now comes one who says the belief in the future is
a weakness. Would he, perchance, have said that to John the
Baptist, the great modern of his time? Had he lived in that pre-
Christian world, would he have believed in the God in whom he now
believes? The orthodox Christian here finds himself in a laughable
dilemma. Admitting nothing wonderful in the future, he is yet
constrained to believe in a past wonderful beyond the dreams of
poets or of madmen—a past in which supernatural beings, miracles
and portents were almost the rule. And so the future is to him not
even so wonderful as the past. It is an expurgated edition of the
past—an edition with the incidents and marvels left out, a novel
without a hero or a plot.
So, for good or for evil, we no longer believe in the future as we did:
it is steadily becoming less marvellous, and, therefore, less seductive
for us. But, without the bait of the strange and the new to lure it on,
must not humanity halt on its way? Can man act at all without
believing in the future in some fashion? Must not things be foreseen
before they can be accomplished? Is not soothsaying implicit in
every deliberate act? Are not all sincere ideals involuntary auguries?
Is it not the future rather than the prophecy which "comes true"?
Did not the old prophecies "come true" because they were
prophesied? Did not Christ arise because He was foretold? And are
not the believers in the future, then, the creators of the future, and
the true priests of progress? When we can envisage a future noble
enough, it will not then be weakness to believe in it.

71
The Great Immoralists
The morality of Nietzsche is more strict and exacting than that of
Christianity. When the Christians argue against it, therefore, they are
arguing in favour of a morality more comfortable, pleasing and
indulgent to the natural man; consequently, even on religious
grounds, of a morality more immoral. What! is Nietzsche, then, the
great moralist, and are the Christians the great immoralists?
This notion may appear to us absurd, or merely ingenious, but will it
appear so to future generations? Will timidity, conformity, mediocrity,
judicious blindness, unwillingness to offend, be synonymous, to
them also, with morality? Or will they look back upon Christianity as
a creed too indulgent and not noble enough? As a sort of
Epicureanism, for instance?

72
The First and the Last
We all know what the weak have suffered from the strong; but who
shall compute what the strong have suffered from the weak?" The
last shall be first"; but when they become first they become also the
worst tyrants—impalpable, anonymous and petty.

73
Humility in Pride
The pride of some gifted men is not pride in their person, but in
something within them, of which they regard themselves the
guardians and servants. If there is dignity in their demeanour it is a
reflected, impersonal dignity. Just so a peasant might feel ennobled
who guarded a king in danger and exile.

74
The Modern Devil
The devil is not wicked but corrupt, in modern phraseology,
decadent. The qualities of the mediæval devil, rage, cruelty, hatred,
pride, avarice, are in their measure necessary to Life, necessary to
virtue itself. But corruption is wholly bad; it contaminates even those
who fight it. Hell relaxes: Mr. Shaw's conception is profoundly true.
But if the devil is corruption, cannot the devil be abolished? It is
true, Man cannot extirpate cruelty, hatred and pride without
destroying Life; but Life is made more powerful by the destruction of
the corrupt. God created Man; but it was Man that created the devil.

75
Master and Servant
To summon out of the void a task, and then incontinently to make of
himself its slave: that is the happiness of many a man. A great
means of happiness!

76
Criterions
It is not expedient to choose on every occasion the higher rather
than the lower, for one may not be able to endure too much living
on the heights. If will and capacity were always equal! Then, it is
true, there would not be any difficulty; but Life is Life, after all—that
is, our will is greater than our capacity. On the other hand, it is not
well to develop equally all our faculties—the formula of the Humanist
—for among them there is a hierarchy, and some are more worthy of
development than others. What course is left? To act always in the
interest of what is highest in us, and when we partake of a lower
pleasure to regard it as a form of sleep, of necessary forgetting? For
even the mind must slumber occasionally if it is to remain healthy.

77
Intellectual Prudence
Among athletes there is a thing known as over-training: if it is
persisted in it wrecks the body. A similar phenomenon is to be found
among thinkers: thought too severe and protracted may ruin the
mind. Was this the explanation of Nietzsche's downfall? Certainly, his
intellectual health was that of the athlete who remains vigorous by
virtue of a never-sleeping discipline, who maintains his balance by a
continuous effort. This is perhaps the highest, the most exquisite
form of health, but it is at the same time the most dangerous—a
little more, a little less, and the engine of thought is destroyed. It is
important that the thinker should discover exactly how far he may
discipline himself, and how far permit indulgence. What in the
ordinary man—conscious of no secondary raison d'être—is
performed without fuss by the instincts, must by him be thought out
—a task of great peril.

78
A Dilemma
To be a man is easy: to be a purpose is more difficult; but, on the
whole—easy. In the first instance, one has but to exist; in the
second, to act. But to unite man and purpose in the same person—
to be a type—is both difficult and precarious. For that a balance is
imperative: "being" and "doing" must be prevented from injuring
each other: action must become rhythm, and rest, a form of energy.
To be in doing, to do in being—that is the task of the future man.
The danger of our being mere man is that mankind may remain
forever stationary, without a goal. The danger of our being mere
purpose is that our humanity may altogether drop out and nothing
but the purpose be left. And would not that defeat the purpose?

79
Dangers of Genius
Why is it that so many men of genius have been destroyed by falling
into chasms of desire which are safely trodden by common men? Is
it because there is within the exceptional man greater compass, and,
therefore, greater danger? The genius has left the animal further
behind than the ordinary man; indeed, in the genius of the nobler
sort there is an almost passionate avoidance and disavowal of the
animal. In this disavowal lie at once his safety and his danger: by
means of it he climbs to perilous heights, and is also secure upon
them. But let him abrogate even once this denial of kinship, and he
is in the utmost danger. He now finds himself stationed on the edge
of a precipice up to which he seems to have climbed in a dream, a
dreadful dizziness assails him, along with a mad desire to fling
himself into the depths. It was perhaps a leap of this kind that
Marlowe made, and Shelley. Meantime, the ordinary man lives in
safety at the foot of the precipice: he is never so far above the
animal as to be injured by a fall into animalism. Only to the noble
does spiritual danger come.

80
A Strange Failure
He failed; for the task was too small for him—a common tale among
men of genius. You have been unsuccessful in trivial things? There is
always a remedy left: to essay the great. How often has Man
become impotent simply because there was no task heroic enough
to demand greatness of him!
81
Dangers of the Spiritual
If you are swept off your feet by a strongly sensuous book, it is
probably a sign that you have become too highly spiritualized. For a
sensualist would simply have enjoyed it, while feeling, perhaps, a
little bored and dissatisfied. It was only a religious anchorite who
could have lost his soul to Anatole France's Thaïs. For the salvation
of Man it is more than ever imperative that a reconciliation should be
effected between the spirit and the senses. Until it is, the highest
men—the most spiritual—will be in the very greatest peril, and will
almost inevitably be wrecked or frustrated. It is for the good of the
soul that this reconciliation must now be sought.

82
Again
From the diabolization of the senses innumerable evils have flowed;
physical and mental disease, disgust with the world, cruelty towards
everything natural. But, worst of all, it has made sensuality a greater
danger than it was ever before. In the anchorite, seeking to live
entirely in the spirit, and ignoring or chastising the body, sensuality
was driven into the very soul, and there was magnified a
hundredfold. To the thinker avoiding the senses as much as possible
—for he had been taught to distrust them—sensuality, in the
moments when he was brought face to face with it, had acquired a
unique seductiveness, and had become a problem and a danger. If
he yielded, it was perilous in a degree unknown to the average
sensual man; if he resisted, a good half of his spiritual energy was
wasted in keeping the senses at bay. In either case, the thinker
suffered. So that now it is the spirit that has become the champion
of the senses, but for the good of the spirit.

83
God and Animal
Until the marriage of the soul and the senses has been
accomplished, Man cannot manifest himself in any new type. What
has been the history of humanity during the last two thousand
years? The history of humanity, that is, as distinct from the history of
communities? A record of antithetic tyrannies, the spiritual
alternating with the sensual; an uncertain tussle between God and
animal, now one uppermost, now the other; not a tragedy—for in
Tragedy there is significance—but a gloomy farce. And this farce
must continue so long as the spirit contems sense as evil in itself—
for neither of them can be abolished! Whether we like it or not, the
senses, so long as they are oppressed and defamed, will continue to
break out in terrible insurrections of sensuality and excess, until,
tired and satiated, they return again under the tyranny of the spirit—
at the appointed time, however, to revolt once more. From this
double cul de sac Man can be freed only by a reconciliation between
the two. When this happens, however, it will be the beginning of a
higher era in the history of humanity; Man will then become spiritual
in a new sense. Spirit will then affirm Life, instead of, as now,
slandering it; existence will become joyful and tragic; for to live in
accordance with Life itself—voluntarily to approve struggle, suffering
and change—is the most difficult and heroic of lives. The softening
of the rigour of existence, its reduction and weakening by
asceticism, humility, "sin," is the easier path; narrow is the way that
leads to Nihilism! The error of Heine was that he prophesied a
happier future from the reconciliation of the body and the soul: his
belief in the efficacy of happiness was excessive. But this
reconciliation is, nevertheless, of importance for nothing else than its
spiritual significance: by means of it Man is freed from his labyrinth,
and can at last move forward—he becomes more tragic.

84
Ultimate Pessimism
To the most modern man must have come at some time the
thought, What if this thing spirit be essentially the enemy of the
senses? What if, like the vampire, it can live only by drinking blood?
What if the conflict between spirit and "life" is and must forever be
an implacable and destructive one? He is then for a moment a
Christian, but with an added bitterness which few Christians have
known. For if his thought be true, then the weakening and final
nullification of Life must be our object.
To prove that the spirit and the senses are not eternally
irreconcilable enemies is still a task. Those who believe they are, do
so as an act of faith: their opponents are in the same case. We
should never cease to read spirit into Life-affirming things, such as
pride, heroism and love, and to magnify and exalt these aspects of
the spirit.

85
Leisure and Productiveness
Granted that the society which produces the highest goods in the
greatest profusion is the best—let us not argue from this that society
should be organized with the direct aim of producing goods. For
what if goods be to society what happiness is said to be to men—
things to be attained only by striving for something else? In all good
things—whether it be in art, literature or philosophy—there is much
of the free, the perverse, the unique, the incalculable. In short, good
things can only be produced by great men—and these are
exceptions. The best we can do, then, is to inaugurate a society in
which great men will find it possible to live, will be even encouraged
to live. Can a society in which rights are affixed to functions serve
for that? A function, in practice, in a democratic state—that will
mean something which can be seen to be useful for today, but not
for tomorrow, far less for any distant future. The more subtle,
spiritual, posthumous the activity of a man the less it will be seen to
be a function. Art and philosophy arise when leisure and not work is
the ruling convention. It is true that artists and philosophers work,
and at a higher tension than other men; but it is in leisure that they
must conceive their works: what obvious function do they then fulfil?
Even the most harassed of geniuses, even Burns would never have
become immortal had he not had the leisure to ponder, dream and
love. Idleness is as necessary for the production of a work of art as
labour. And with some men perhaps whole years of idleness are
needed. Artists must always be privileged creatures. It is privileges,
and not rights, that they want.

86
What is Freedom?
The athlete, by the disciplining of his body, creates for himself a new
world of actions; he can now do things which before were prohibited
to him; in consequence, he has enlarged the sphere of his freedom.
The thinker and the artist by discipline of a different kind are
rewarded in the same way. They are now more free, because they
have now more capacity.
There are people, however, who think one can be free whether one
has the capacity for freedom or not—a characteristically modern
fallacy. But a man the muscles of whose body and mind are weak
cannot do anything; how can he be free? The concept of Freedom
cannot be separated from that of Power.

87
Freedom, in the Dance
Even the most unbridled dance is a form of constraint. The
completest freedom of movement is the reward of the severest
discipline.

88
A Moral for Moderns
A spring gushed forth here on the airy height; but the soil was not
hard enough to retain it; and the water sapped away among the soft
moss. One day a man came and laid down a hard channel for the
spring. Imprisoned on both sides, it now imperiously sought an
outlet and—a miracle!—leapt glittering into the sunshine. The history
of Freedom.

89
The Renaissance: A Thesis
How unsatisfactory are those explanations of the Renaissance which
give as its cause the breaking up of the restrictive intellectual canons
of the Middle Ages—as if a mere negation could explain such a
unique creative era! What has here to be discovered is how freedom
and the capacity for freedom should have appeared at the same
moment. Perhaps the Middle Ages have now been sufficiently reviled
by the admirers of the Renaissance; perhaps that event owed more
than we are willing to acknowledge to the centuries of mediæval
repression and discipline. During these centuries the human spirit
had been confined in the granite channel cut for it by mediæval
Christianity, a channel of which even the mouth was stopped. In the
fifteenth century the stream swept away every obstacle and leapt
forth, a brilliant cascade, scattering almost pagan warmth and light.
The fall of Constantinople and the other circumstances usually given
as the explanation of this outburst were only its occasion; the cause
lay much deeper, in the long storing up, conserving and
strengthening of human powers. The freedom of which the
Renaissance was an expression was more, then, than the simple
removal of restriction. It was a freedom not political or moral, but
vital; a positive enhancement if the natural power of man, who could
now do things which hitherto he could not do—an event in the
history, not merely of society, but of Man. Accordingly, the "freedom
of the individual," so dear to some moderns, does not teach us
much here. It was not because freedom was given to them that men
now created: the freedom was claimed because they now possessed
more power, could do more, and had, therefore, the right to a larger
sphere of freedom. The more naturally free—that is, individually
powerful—a people become, the more they will demand and obtain
of "individual freedom"; but it is perhaps inexpedient to offer to a
people individually weak any more freedom than they can use. They
are still at the disciplinary stage; they are preparing for their
renaissance; and to the student of human culture the periods of
preparation, of unproductiveness, are more worthy of consideration
than the productive periods. For in the future we must prepare for
our eras of fruition, and not leave them, as in the past, to pure
chance.
At the Renaissance, however, it was not even individual freedom in
the modern democratic sense that was claimed and allowed; it was
at the most the freedom of certain individuals, the naturally free, the
powerful. Not until a later time was this claim to be universalized by
the unconditional theorists, the generalizers sans distinction, the
egalitarians. The French Revolution was the Renaissance rationalized
and popularized.

90
The Unproductive Periods
Without the Middle Ages the Renaissance would have been
impossible; the one, therefore, was as necessary as the other; and
our reprobation of the former for its comparative sterility is entirely
without justification. If we happen to be living in an unproductive
age, it is our misfortune, then; but we are not entitled, in
contemplating this age, to the luxury of condemnation, reproof or
scorn. What we may demand of any period now is that it should be
a period either of preparation or of fruition. So the present era is,
after all, deserving of condemnation, but only because it is not an
era of preparation—not for any other reason.

91
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