ENJOYMENT OF ART

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 159, 1 April 1930, Page 11

ENJOYMENT OF ART

ANTIDOTE TO MATERIALISM “Every age has its characteristics, and posterity, I fear, will say of us that we were a materialistic people, that we were distinguished by a desire for fast movement and noise, and that our reaction to the noble idealism and unequalled effort of the Great War was expressed in a raw, crude materialism, said Lord Moynihan, the famous surgeon, in an address recently. “To all such things as that some kind of antidote is necessary, something which will give a refuge and solace, from the social miseries of our time.” Lord Moynihan declared. “It is my confident belief and frequent personal experience that it is in the contemplation, appreciation, and enjoyment of art we can find certain things explained to us. We find not only relief from our social miseries, but also a real contentment in life. That contentment does not so much depend on material things as on that inward peace which we all seek in one way or another, and which frees us from the more narrow limitations and hampering apprehensions of our material surroundings, if life is not to be a feast or a spectacale or a predicament, but is to be a sacrament, it can only be because we indulge in what Keats called ‘soul making,’ and give ourselves the opportunity of allowing our souls to grow.”