The great 1968 lecture by Eli Siegel that we begin serializing here is about the relation of art and science. But it is also about the source of the terrific tumult, pain, and worry in the world now. The lecture is It and Self; and in it Mr. Siegel shows that true science and true art have this in common: both are a oneness of opposites, of a self and an it — something not self which a self is dealing with. This fact is an aspect of the principle at the basis of Aesthetic Realism: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

     The matter of It and Self is intense, fierce, aching, urgent in the world now. We need these opposites to be one; we have had horror because they are not one. Every self — whether in Washington, Riyadh, Paris, Tel Aviv, Beijing — has as his or her biggest question: How should I see what’s not me, an it which exists outside myself? A disproportion about these opposites is the most ordinary thing there is: one uses one’s sense of self to be sloppy about and unjust to what’s not oneself. A child in a playroom, for instance, who wants a toy, may not be interested in the feeling of another child who wants to use it too. Little Jimmy doesn’t give to that it which is the feeling and hope and inner life of Trisha the same reality he gives himself.

     Aesthetic Realism explains that from this disproportion about Self and It comes all injustice, including the most massive. The disproportion is contempt, defined by Mr. Siegel as "the addition to self through the lessening of something else." And there is no need more pressing now than for America to learn from Aesthetic Realism what contempt is, and to be against it — including in ourselves.

     The persons responsible for the destruction of two huge buildings and thousands of lives, blocks from where I now sit, all were selves. And they did not see New York and the men, women, and children here as an it to which they owed justice. Of course they should be punished. But there is an it that we Americans need to see truly now, which for ever so many years our nation has not tried to see truly; and our not seeing it truly has encouraged and sustained the terrorists. This it is the intense feeling of millions of people in the Middle East and elsewhere that our nation has stopped them from having the lives they deserve, has kept them humiliated and poor.

     In the last two TROs I quoted from an article in the Wall Street Journal that describes some of the reasons "why the U.S. arouses such passion and anger in the Muslim world, among all segments of society." I commented on the statement in the article that "the U.S. has propped up oppressive regimes." We have backed governments that torture and impoverish their citizens, because our chief interest internationally has been to obtain profits for US corporations, no matter how much people suffer as a result. I comment now on another cause of the tremendous anger at us: the treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel, and America’s going along with that treatment.

     All peoples have had that horrible disproportion; Arabs have it. Arabs do not see Jews truly. But it is Jews who have the power in Israel. And they have made Palestinians into lesser beings than themselves; have tried, through Jewish "settlements," to squeeze them out of the little land that was left to them; have made sure they could not earn a decent living.

     The feelings of another person are a huge it to which we need to be fair; the rights of another person are. Jews have felt, about that precious, small area of earth, "This is our home." That is a real feeling. There is history with it, and agony with it: if ever people needed a homeland, it was Jews in the 20th century. But what if other people feel, about the same piece of earth, as sincerely and deeply and needfully as oneself, "This is our home"? We need to be fair to that feeling, see it is as real as ours.

     The land of Israel-Palestine, Palestine-Israel, this small, long-written-of, long-felt-about and fought-for piece of earth, is a place now where strict aesthetics — the oneness of opposites — has to be: selves have to be fair to an it which is selves different from them. That strict aesthetics is good will. Mr. Siegel defined good will as "the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful" (TRO 121). We have to make sure this exact, critical good will for persons different from oneself is present on the earth of Israel. Otherwise not only that land but the whole world is in danger.

     For various reasons, chiefly the desire to sustain a nation in the Mideast that definitely favored the profiting of US businesses, America has backed Israel’s deep demeaning of Palestinians. This has made for fury in millions of Arabs and Muslims. And (as I’ve said in the last weeks) the fury of people who are not terrorists has enabled terrorists to go very far: to look more attractive and meet much less opposition than they should.

Assume the victories go on, and all of Jerusalem is held. If you don’t have good will for the people you beat, is it a victory in God’s lexicon? Jews haven’t been as eager as they might be to see what other people feel.

I should like the people of Israel really to win, but we have to see what winning means. If you discipline people and they feel they’ve been dealt with unjustly, the trouble begins again. The only discipline is good will. It is the greatest thing the heart can get to, and it’s the same thing as justice.

     Is a Palestinian boy of 12 who feels rooked, or a mother whose home was leveled by Israeli soldiers, included in that "man" whom God has endowed with "glory and honor" and made "a little lower than the angels"? Is the not seeing him and her as that, a hideous injustice as well as an affront to God? The important matter in this psalm (along with the poetry) is the saying by the Jewish writer David that the largeness of the world is in a person, every person; and the "dominion" or ownership of the world should be everyone’s.

     There is a justice to people, to people in the land of the Psalms, that can no longer be deferred. Justice deferred not only maketh the heart sick, it now imperils the world. Mr. Siegel defined ethics as "the art of enjoying justice." With his own courage, honesty, and knowledge, he enabled people to see what is most urgent to see: that being just is the one way to take care of ourselves.
 

I have called this discussion of the arts and sciences "It and Self": it, here, being more of science; and self being more of art. But as will be seen, these things are in both. That is, every moment of one’s life is a mingling of self and an it, or something the self is seeing, whether it’s in oneself or outside. A way as good as any to see what this matter means is through the fact that in courses in English composition there is a calling for clearness: in writing one should see what one is writing about, the object. There is a necessity still for clear writing, although a great deal of esteemed writing is hardly that. There is a kind of writing which doesn’t pretend to be clear; it tends to be evocative. Still, in journalism, law, scientific writing, the idea of clearness is around; and strictly, it’s around in even the avant-garde writing: the most effective avant-garde writer is in most control of what he’s dealing with.

     So in writing, as in all art, there is what can be called a scientific aspect. In art, for example, you’re supposed to know your technique. You’re supposed to know what to do with a brush. You don’t use it to hold up the window. In art, you’re supposed to have know-how along with a vision. The craft is along with the Muses. (And the Muses themselves know their business.) There is the scientific aspect of every art, including acting, including dancing.

     It is well to look at an essay of 1888, very famous: "Style," by Walter Pater. It has been thought that the Victorian era was bloomy, buzzy, and fuzzy, and the painting of the time was more pompous than exact. But there cannot be any time when there is not a desire for precision. Ancient writing is supposed to be generally more precise than modern writing. The ancients did not permit themselves some of the wildnesses that came in with the moderns. Well, the Victorian era needed precision. It needed precision in its shipbuilding, and in its ammunition, weapons, bookkeeping, and a great deal of it in its writing. Dickens at his best is precise. Then he has the other quality, which is the art quality of art.

     Precision is the scientific quality of art. And emotion, intensity, suggestion, imagination — these are the art qualities. All writing has both. We can say, "The tree sways like myself in a depression." There’s a touch of exactitude there, because this willow, this small tree, is swaying. Now, as to whether it sways "like myself in a depression," that is something else. But you get something of the idea, and there’s a simile there.

     In the essay of Pater the matter of science and art comes up constantly. This is an early passage:

Your historian, for instance, with absolutely truthful intention, amid the multitude of facts presented to him must needs select, and in selecting assert something of his own humour, something that comes not of the world without but of a vision within .... As he thus modifies [he] pass[es] into the domain of art proper.

     The object roughly corresponds to the scientific aspect of art. Every time we feel something, get an emotion from something, the thing causing the emotion can be called the external, reality, or scientific aspect. Then, there are ourselves. It has been so all the time. Historians like Tacitus and Thucydides, who are supposed to be two of the most sensible people of ancient times, had objects. Thucydides had recent Greece as an object, and Tacitus had recent Rome as an object.

     Taking up Pater: "Your historian, for instance, with absolutely truthful intention ... " The artist and the scientist have this in common: both would say that they have a "truthful intention." Nobody, however imaginative he is, says he has an untruthful intention. Whatever you do, your purpose is to show the truth. If something is done, for example, in the Warhol manner, you have to feel that until the Warhol perception met this object, truth wasn’t around. A motion picture director will say he’s going after truth. Dancers will say they go after truth. There’s truth in a symbolic ballet. There’s truth in a play; and if there’s not truth, it isn’t convincing.

     So we have to ask: what is that which convinces in science and which convinces in art? And what is it that one convincing has in common with the other convincing?