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The Changing Order 
 
 A Study of Democracy 
 
 BY 
 
 Oscar Lovell Triggs, Ph. D. 
 
 And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: 
 "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 And God fulfills Himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 SERIES I 
 
 1905 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 OSCAR L. TRIGGS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
'05~ 
 

 
 / 
 
 /a ? 
 
 TO MY ACCOMPLICE. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 Several of the papers of this volume have appeared 
 in the Forum, Sewanee Review, Poet-Lore, Unity, 
 Open Court, Independent, Chautauquan, and Crafts- 
 man; and to the editors of these magazines I am in- 
 debted for permission to reprint in the present form. 
 
 O. L. T. 
 
 Chicago, July, 1905. 
 
 1 
 
THE WORD DEMOCRACY. 
 
 Underneath all now comes this Word, turning the edge of the 
 other words where they meet it. 
 
 Politics, art, science, commerce, religion, customs and methods 
 of daily life, the very outer shows and semblances of or- 
 dinary objects — 
 
 Their meanings must all now be absorbed and recast in this 
 word, or else fall off like dry husks before its disclosure — 
 
 Art can now no longer be separated from life; 
 
 The old canons fail ; her tutelage completed she becomes equivalent 
 to Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous with the 
 clouds and waterfalls — 
 
 The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old classi- 
 fications and definitions — 
 
 The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent 
 heart heaving as though it would break — 
 
 At the sound of the new word spoken — 
 
 At the sound of the word Democracy. 
 
 Edward Carpenter in "Towards Democracy." 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction ......... 9 
 
 Democratic Art ........ 15 
 
 The Esoteric Tendency in Literature : Browning . . .52 
 
 Subjective Landscape Art: George Inness ... 78 
 
 The Critical Attitude 87 
 
 An Instance of Conversion : Tolstoi . . . . . 112 
 
 A Type of Transition: William Morris .... 120 
 
 The Philosophy of Play 151 
 
 Democratic Education ....... 169 
 
 " Where Is the Poet ? " ....... 181 
 
 The New Doctrine of Labor ....... 195 
 
 The Sociological Viewpoint in Art ..... 199 
 
 The Philosophy of the Betterment Movement . . . .215 
 
 Industrial Feudalism — and After ..... 223 
 
 The Workshop and School ....... 233 
 
 A School of Industrial Art 249 
 
 The Philosophic and Religious Ground : Walt Whitman . . 262 
 
 The Outlook to the East 279 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I am to make constant use of the word democracy 
 in the following studies yet I am unable to give it precise 
 definition. I understand, however, that the term is indica- 
 tive of a new order of ideas. Broadly speaking it repre- 
 sents an attitude of mind that is opposed to the monarchic 
 and aristocratic. As yet the foundations of the social 
 order are largely aristocratic. The new ideas are ob- 
 scured and their effects destroyed by the stream of tra- 
 ditionary tendency. My purpose, then, is to separate the 
 new order from the old, to gather materials for a defini- 
 tion from the more subtle fields of distinction, leaving 
 the final formulation to those who shall live within the 
 new world. I have in view certain phenomena that seem 
 to me to be the effects of the new spirit of life which we 
 call democracy. Democracy signifies the uprise of the 
 people, the "masses," their complete utterance and exer- 
 cise in politics, art, education, religion, and all other 
 forms of human activity. Probably the first result of 
 the denial of the feudal relation was felt in the sphere 
 of government. The American Revolutionists discarded 
 at the first political inequality which was exemplified in 
 arbitrary taxation, though they continued to maintain 
 nearly every other feudal condition. Washington might 
 well have been proclaimed King at the time of his election 
 to the presidency and in the states of the South a genuine 
 aristocracy was upheld until the civil war. The principle 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of popular control was, however, acknowledged and in 
 Lincoln, the peasant president, the man of common fibre, 
 unlettered in the European sense of culture, yet the ac- 
 credited prophet of the new social order, truly called by 
 Lowell "the First American," the advent of the people 
 was fully justified. But to describe democratic polity in 
 the sphere of government is no part of my motive. I have 
 in mind the more subtle effects of democracy, its radiation 
 in art, industry, education, and religion. Now one of the 
 new ideas is the doctrine of labor as distinguished from 
 the aristocratic doctrine of leisure. "Blessed is he who 
 has found his work" spoke out Carlyle. But what is the 
 nature of that work from which the ancient curse has 
 been removed — work which is a tangible blessing in 
 itself, a pleasure even as sleep and food ? In truth a new 
 industrialism is forming. Moreover a new sense of life 
 itself is shaping among those whose perceptions are not 
 obscured by power and luxury and a Maeterlinck is born 
 to become the prophet of the humble. "There are about 
 us," says Maeterlinck, in one of his recent essays, "thous- 
 ands of poor creatures who have nothing of beauty in their 
 lives; they come and go in obscurity, and we believe all 
 is dead within them ; and no one pays any heed. And then 
 one day a simple word, an unexpected silence, a little 
 tear that springs from the source of beauty itself, tells 
 us they have found the means of raising aloft, in the 
 shadow of their soul, an ideal a thousand times more 
 beautiful than the most beautiful things their ears have 
 ever heard or their eyes ever seen. O, noble and pallid 
 ideals of silence and shadow! It is you, above all, who 
 soar direct to God!" Where this thing is true, where 
 the speech inclines to silence, where life is esoteric, of 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 what avail is the old ideal of external authority? A 
 marked transformation is taking place likewise in the field 
 of art, both in respect of theory and of subject matter. Tol- 
 stoi would define art in terms of experience and William 
 Morris in terms of pleasurable activity. "One day," 
 Morris said, "we shall win back art to our daily labor: 
 win back art, that is to say, the pleasure of life, to the 
 people." And that was a profound saying of his when 
 denied the laureateship at Tennyson's death: "If I can't 
 be the laureate of writing men, I'll be the laureate of 
 sweating men." So the people are finding inclusion in 
 the books. One recalls now with a new sense of their 
 significance the innovations begun by Euripides in the 
 direction of the realistic drama, the new spirit of Chaucer 
 who gave the miller and plowman a place among his 
 pilgrims, the greatheartedness of Burns who sang the 
 glories of the home and field, the wide sympathies of 
 Wordsworth who depicted with all sincerity the dignity 
 of the commonplace. For these are among the historic 
 tokens of democracy. Changes, springing from the 
 same impulses are taking place in education. Nearly every 
 school building is the arena today of a conflict between 
 the old and the new. Every teacher and pupil feels, in 
 some degree, the turmoil of transition. The ideal of a 
 special culture is yielding. The scholar, once revered as 
 holding the keys of that knowledge which was power, is 
 losing place and function — receding into the past like the 
 vanishing forms of nobles and priests. But life is becom- 
 ing itself educative. Schools are being established with 
 methods based on the principle of self-government. And 
 for the discipline of the intellect there is being substituted 
 the culture of personality. So into all realms of thought 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the spirit of democracy is penetrating. Religion is per- 
 haps the last to suffer change. For long ages the Chris- 
 tian world has been taught to observe the judgments that 
 arise within the "Kingdom of God" — how God is a king, 
 who has established a kingdom, who compels service upon 
 subjects whose duty is to obey. But these conceptions, 
 king, kingdom, subject, duty, obedience, find little re- 
 sponse among men who as to all other affairs are living 
 in federation and under republican forms. And at length 
 prophets are arising upon whose lips the word king is 
 never heard, and in whose minds the conception of king- 
 ship is never formed — prophets, that is, of cosmic democ- 
 racy. The doctrine of immortality was once aristocratic ; 
 it is now inclusive and democratic. These, then, are the 
 type of phenomena that I have in mind to describe. It 
 should be understood that from the very nature of the 
 subject the discussion can not always be elaborated but 
 must be conducted largely by the method of suggestion. 
 
 II. 
 
 Nothing betrays the force of tradition more than the 
 persistency with which democracy in America has been 
 construed in terms of a system of politics. Our fore- 
 fathers were political revolutionists, and when the prin- 
 ciples of free government were formulated and political 
 equality was secured for all, it was supposed that the 
 citizens of the new republic were safe in their pursuit 
 of happiness. The social ground work which the Colon- 
 ists actually laid was industrial democracy, which requires 
 for its well being not a government of laws, but a co- 
 partnership of men. Notwithstanding this condition, 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 our national difficulties have been adjusted by political 
 instruments, and the deposit of a ballot and the enact- 
 ment of a law have been regarded as the chief duty of 
 man. What these instruments really recorded were in- 
 dustrial changes. The American Revolution was funda- 
 mentally a war undertaken for the independency of labor. 
 The Civil War was the occasion of a conflict between two 
 opposing ideals of life — that attendant upon labor and 
 leisure. The principles of representative government 
 in the one case, and of state and national sovereignty 
 in the other, were secondary matters. Our fathers gained 
 certain industrial rights by the one struggle and their 
 sons abolished one form of industrial slavery by the 
 other. The result of confusing the issues so completely 
 has been to place excellent sets of laws upon the statute 
 books, but to leave the community in unregulated tur- 
 moil. Our actual democracy is crude in the extreme; 
 the first lines of relationship proper for an industrial 
 community having hardly been drawn, the first principles 
 of justice having hardly been considered. As Morris 
 once said succinctly: "The industrial situation is bad. 
 I wish it would better." 
 
 It is seen that political equality does not mean indus- 
 trial equality and that manhood suffrage does not bring 
 manly independence. And save for the professional poli- 
 ticians no one engages very seriously today in govern- 
 ment. We look back upon our political declarations very 
 much as we read the XXXIX Articles, or the Book of 
 Homilies, surprised at the disputes they occasioned : "As 
 certain Anabaptists do falsely boast," "As the Palagians 
 do vainly talk" — how little "understanded of the people" 
 are these differences now ! The political issues of the so- 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 called political parties are equally obsolete and outworn. 
 Men belong to parties by tradition, accident, or accord- 
 ing to locality, no longer by conviction — because there are 
 no longer political questions at issue. The real problems 
 of life in America are neither ecclesiastical nor govern- 
 mental: they are industrial. What men are struggling 
 for today is industrial freedom. We have still to make 
 any genuine Declaration of Independence, or to write 
 a Constitution adapted to the needs of a non-political 
 community. Doubtless it has been well that those who 
 were publicly inclined have had the bauble of government 
 to play with. They have toyed eloquently with the sur- 
 face of things and left the deeper forces opportunity to 
 become conscious "and gather for emergence. In the year 
 1899 more than fourteen thousand laws were enacted by 
 legislative bodies in the United States, not that laws were 
 needed, but that legislatures might have occupation. If, 
 in the revolution now upon us, our political institutions 
 should be greatly changed or even swept away, it would 
 not much matter. Administration is practically the only 
 vital function left in any state ; for the most part our legis- 
 lation is simply for the sake of legislation. If government 
 had much significance today, it would point to the vast 
 degeneracy of peoples. For, as Tacitus penned, "When 
 the state is corrupt then the laws are most multiplied. ,, 
 As it is with us today a corrupt government may be the 
 sign of a healthy popular condition, an indication of the 
 fact that men are attending to the vital issues of life. 
 What is needed at this hour is not to establish free govern- 
 ment but to develop free men — "not," as William Morris 
 once said, "to establish socialism, but to educate socialists." 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART. 
 I. 
 
 Democracy, to repeat, is not merely a political term : it 
 is a universal idea, whose entertainment determines _ 1- 
 duct in every one of the spheres of human activity It 
 will not prove itself established until its principles have 
 permeated society in every part. Its function is to bring 
 to growth out of the social soil strictly cutocbthonic edu- 
 cation, religion, philosophy, and arts, which shall be uni- 
 form with progress; corroborating in the fullest degree 
 the immediate land and contemporary life. 
 
 The progress of transformation and adjustment which 
 the fine arts are undergoing, in passing from an aristo- 
 cratic to a democratic basis, is one of the most important 
 and significant, though generally unrecognized, move- 
 ments of the modern world. Although the subject is 
 beset with difficulties, I propose, in this first study, to ex- 
 amine with some care the nature and extent of the specific 
 changes, compelled in art by the Time-Spirit, in the midst 
 of the general results flowing from universal emancipa- 
 tion. The movement is, of course, incomplete in its opera- 
 tion. The present period is one of transition. An ade- 
 quately representative art does not exist today in any 
 democratic community, not even in any portion of Amer- 
 ica, which is still the most perfect and consistent embodi- 
 
 15 
 
16 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 ment of the democratic idea, and in whose bounds, there- 
 fore, we should expect the evidences of artistic freedom. 
 
 If a reason be sought for the insufficiency of American 
 art, two facts will be found to have a bearing upon the 
 question. One is the commonly recognized truth that 
 the actual scenery of the American land and the events 
 of its population are themselves transcendent in their po- 
 etic quality. As the French Revolution, by transferring the 
 drama of life from the stage to the streets, ruined the 
 theatres of Paris, so the very variety and intensity of our 
 own dramatic life make us content to forego the simu- 
 lation of the play and the poem. At the time of the 
 Spanish-American war it was complained that the strug- 
 gle brought forth no poetry commensurate with the occa- 
 sion. But would not the events themselves, brought 
 close to us through the medium of the daily press, re- 
 corded there vividly and dramatically, render the poetic 
 celebration of deeds comparatively uninteresting? This 
 is the moment of being and doing. Our "Iliad" is still 
 in the making. 
 
 Another fact connects the foregoing with this discus- 
 sion, namely, that our art, however potential in its subject- 
 quality, is still formed, to a considerable degree, under 
 the guidance of the traditions of feudal Europe. To this 
 day Paris is the Mecca of painters. The foreign melo- 
 drama, false to our notions of heroism, remains the ac- 
 cepted model of playwrights, rather than native plays of 
 the type of Heme's "Shore Acres" or Thomas's "In 
 Mizzoura." Dvorak's "American Symphony" contains 
 nothing distinctively American ; Damrosch's "Scarlet Let- 
 ter" is Germanic in everything but subject And not only 
 is our creative art formed under direction, but the ac- 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 17 
 
 cepted principles of criticism are traditional ; and we look 
 at even the art that is modern through the eyes of for- 
 eign courts. Emerson's "American Scholar" was called 
 "the scholar's Declaration of Independence" : that revolu- 
 tion is completed. But the declaration of artistic and 
 critical independence has yet to be formulated and written. 
 It must be understood, therefore, that any conclusion re- 
 specting either the descriptive or the speculative phases 
 of democratic art and criticism is but tentative. The 
 event awaits the completion of the democratic movement. 
 Enough, however, has been accomplished, and tendencies 
 are clearly enough defined, to enable us to understand, in 
 part by speculation, in part by observation, the character- 
 istics of democratic art. 
 
 These characteristics may first be formulated by draw- 
 ing a contrast between aristocracy and democracy in their 
 political and social aspects. As pointed out by Professor 
 Santayana, such preliminary scrutiny and definition of 
 political distinctions will be found to be valuable because 
 of the aesthetic ingredient that all social ideas contain, 
 inasmuch as this or that idea is generally entertained on 
 account of its appeal to the imagination as well as to the 
 reason ; and a final selection of any idea is made as much 
 on the grounds of its propriety as of its service. When 
 the members of any society prize the political form they 
 have achieved as having value in itself, as somewhat in- 
 trinsically and eternally right and beautiful, — when, that 
 is, the subjects of a king consecrate the law and order of 
 their society as something inherently beautiful, and the 
 citizens of the republic are pleased to contemplate their 
 structureless, but practical, democracy as something di- 
 vinely just and righteous, — the social imagination receives 
 
18 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 a coloring that may be called aesthetic; and the artistic 
 product, in its turn, is consciously or unconsciously made 
 to conform to the general principle. It is historically, 
 as philosophically, true that the fine arts correspond, in 
 general aspects at least, often in the minutest detail, to 
 the modes of thought and feeling that characterize social 
 conditions. 
 
 Socially an aristocratic society exhibits three special 
 features ; viz., conventionality as to form, exclusiveness as 
 to content, conservatism in matters of progress. A dem- 
 ocracy, on the other hand, is unconventional, almost 
 structureless in its forms, inclusive in its content, pro- 
 gressive in its ideals. 
 
 An examination of artistic production with respect to 
 form, content, and general attitude toward life and 
 thought, in a manner suggested by Professor Dowden and 
 John Addington Symonds in their essays upon the sub- 
 ject, will give the definition of the two classes of art in 
 question. 
 
 In its forms aristocratic art will first be dignified: it 
 must wear the dress prescribed by custom, and defer to 
 the proprieties that hedge the throne. Composition is 
 determined by the standard of "good form," which has 
 been established by the critical class, and is maintained 
 in force by tradition. Aristocratic art is largely external, 
 but perfect within the limits of the "grand manner," 
 and fixed in its "classic" perfection by authoritative con- 
 ventions. 
 
 As a patrician shuns the vulgar phrase in the interest 
 of culture, so it seeks to preserve its refinement by avoid- 
 ing the vulgar person. Its art, accordingly, is exclusive 
 in its subject-matter; only those characters and themes 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 19 
 
 having admission which, by their nobility and dignity, are 
 thought to be susceptible of artistic treatment. The pas- 
 sions that run from lord to lady inspire the lyric song; 
 while "knights' and ladies' gentle deeds" constitute the 
 scope of epic or dramatic action. In pastorals shepherds 
 and shepherdesses of the field appear; but the dainty 
 Corydons and Chloes that play at keeping sheep never 
 see a pasture ; and the sheep that play at being kept never 
 enter a fold. A really common person may enter upon 
 the stage to play buffoonery or point a biting satire, but 
 never to maintain an independent interest or destiny. On 
 Shakespeare's stage fates were given only to kings and 
 nobles. It was doubtless his own amibtion to have 
 
 "A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, 
 And monarchs to behold the swelling scene." 
 
 Hen. V. L, 1. 
 
 Toward life aristocracy ever maintains the conserva- 
 tive attitude. It exists by gifts of the past. Its power and 
 privileges, private and public, are derived by inheritance. 
 The will of the father governs the career of the child: 
 the experience of age restrains the creative impulses of 
 youth. An aristocracy resists the encroachment of new 
 ideas : it doubts nothing, desires nothing, holds perma- 
 nently to beliefs, is content with metes and bounds. Its 
 art pictures in the past the Golden Age. The virtues it 
 extols are those that belong to feudalism, loyalty to the 
 king, obedience to inherited authority. 
 
 The popularization of art results in forms that are 
 fluid and varied, in subjects fully comprehensive in their 
 scope, in ideals that freely enlarge and advance. The 
 one word comprehending these features, the word which 
 
20 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 justifies the use of the term "democratic" in characteriz- 
 ing them, is "freedom" — the freedom to choose without 
 restraint forms and subjects, making possible a sincere 
 expression of personality, which is the fundamental con- 
 tent of all true art ; the freedom to experiment and proph- 
 esy, rendering easy a progression to higher and sincerer 
 modes of expression. 
 
 As the leading principle of a democracy is individual- 
 ism, the art that arises from among the people has for its 
 chief characteristic infinite variety of form. The one 
 effort of democratic art being to exploit individuals, di- 
 verse from each other, the modes of utterance change to 
 correspond to the nature of the man. Every artist be- 
 comes a law unto himself, and learns to follow an impres- 
 sionistic method to the full license of egotism. The ac- 
 ceptance of all the facts of life involves a primitive direct- 
 ness of method in exhibiting such facts. All true realism 
 contains the personal quality, the individualization of sight 
 and interpretation. Styles, therefore, in realistic art, are 
 simple, fluid, and various. Instead of a single standard 
 of established "good form," a hundred plebian modes of 
 significance arise. The canon of order in variety is sup- 
 planted by that of significance with variety. The symmet- 
 rical unity of aristocratic art gives place to multiple mean- 
 ing. 
 
 Now, irregularity of form is the very genius of an art 
 that is controlled by an inner principle. Ruskin said of a 
 Gothic building : "If one part always answers to another 
 part, it is sure to be a bad building ; and the greater and 
 more conspicuous the irregularities, the greater the 
 chances are that it is a good one." Imperfections of form 
 in painting, discordant notes in music, vulgar phrases in 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 21 
 
 poetry, are artistically permissible so long as these are 
 significant of character. Individual sincerity governs 
 manner, rather than the conventions of a dictatorial ar- 
 tistic class. 
 
 A second great principle of democracy is equality. 
 Equality opposes comprehensiveness to exclusiveness. 
 Democratic philosophy asserts that the most common sub- 
 jects of nature, and the most common events of life, are 
 instinct with latent principles which, when detected, ap- 
 prove themselves divine. So long as the all-inclusive light 
 falls round the objects of the universe, so long will love 
 and sympathy comprehend the divinity that appears uni- 
 versally in objects. Nothing in man or in nature is un- 
 poetical, if treated sincerely by a poet who has the large- 
 ness and the insight to penetrate below externals to the 
 heart and essence of things. There is nothing profane 
 save profane eyes and minds. The acceptance of the uni- 
 versal and unseen is rendered imperative ; for only, I be- 
 lieve, by the transcendent idea can each fact and person 
 be given place and significance in the scheme of the 
 world. The democratic principle springs from faith — a 
 faith becoming more and more absolute as man rises in 
 the scale of being. In every individual the prophetic eye 
 perceives the revelation in outlines, however dim, of gods 
 and heroes. By virtue of faith the note of popular art is 
 inclusiveness. Love casts out scorn and denial. High 
 life and low life contribute their characteristic themes. 
 
 Goethe defined good society as that which furnished no 
 materials for poetry; and Mr. Symonds says: "How 
 hardly shall they who wear evening clothes and ball 
 dresses enter into the kingdom of art." But democratic 
 art does not exclude good society. Society, bending and 
 
22 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 gliding at the dance, has a specific note of grace no less to 
 be admired and cherished than that attending the superb 
 poise of the reaper as he swings his sickle, or the strong 
 flex of the blacksmith's muscles as he strikes the glowing 
 iron. The older themes of aristocracy are not to be neg- 
 lected. Why should they be? Heroism remains heroic 
 still. The youth of a Western village may hearken to 
 the shout of Achilles as it rings out on the plains of Troy ; 
 he may shudder at the heroic suffering of Prometheus 
 undergoing chastening like a god; he may spring up at 
 the sound of Roland's or Oliver's trumpet to recover a 
 lost field ; but while not failing to recognize the noble hero- 
 ism of god-like action, he is, as a member of the common 
 mass, more concerned about the lovely qualities that attach 
 to all human life. The hero at the plow or the forge, the 
 heroine at the loom or in the kitchen, may be dignified be- 
 yond our means of expressing by patiently enduring the 
 edicts of fate, and by suffering with hardihood all tragic 
 woe. "Lads a-hold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder 
 ropes no less to me," said the bard of democracy, "than the 
 gods of the antique wars." "We owe to genius," says Em- 
 erson, "always the same debt of lifting the curtain of the 
 common, and showing us that divinities are sitting in the 
 seeming gang of gypsies and peddlers." 
 
 It is a feature of democracy that it looks to the future 
 for its justification. As yet the social ideal of democracy 
 is unrealized. The New World is destined to vast growths 
 and unparalleled achievements. Whitman announces for 
 America "splendors and majesties to make all previous 
 politics of the earth insignificant." He apostrophizes the 
 New World in his most optimistic strain : 
 "Thou mental, moral orb — thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 23 
 
 The Present holds thee not — for such vast growth as thine, 
 For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine, 
 The Future only holds thee and can hold thee." 
 
 Bold in this promise, the pioneer of progress, accepting 
 what accrues to him from the past not as an obligation, 
 but as a free inheritance, moves gladly forward toward an 
 ideal goal ; believing he is marching toward something 
 great and fortunate. The Golden Age lies somewhere in 
 the twentieth century — always beyond, a "Flying Per- 
 fect." The poet is given to celebrate not the advance 
 that has been made, but the progress that shall be ; and if 
 he look to the past at all, it is to gain ground for 
 prophecy. Shelley, despairing over the past, restless in 
 the present, constructing an ideal world in a far-distant 
 future, fully incarnated the democratic spirit. William 
 Morris, though he dreamt of the past, yet had eyes ever 
 fixed on ideal landscapes, ideal social systems, ideal fel- 
 lowships. With characteristic optimism, Whitman an- 
 nounced : "All that the past was not the future will be ;" 
 and to that future the poet trusted his ideas, never doubt- 
 ing that an audience would be raised up to justify him. 
 Such usage is significant of democratic procedure. "Noth- 
 ing conceivable," said De Tocqueville, "is so petty, so in- 
 sipid, so crowded with petty interests, in one word so un- 
 poetic, as the life of a man in the United States; but 
 amongst the thoughts it suggests there is always one 
 which is full of poetry, and this is the hidden nerve which 
 gives vigor to the whole frame." This thought, so vital 
 and poetic, De Tocqueville goes on to say, is the perfecti- 
 bility of human nature. To each in some degree comes 
 the splendid vision of the not distant future when person- 
 al independence, good-will, charity, comradeship, shall be 
 
24 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the rule and practice, the joy and independence of the 
 race. The attitude of hope and expectancy encourages the 
 formulation of new ideals, and experimentation with re- 
 spect to new art forms. 
 
 Aristocratic art is typical : it lays aside the common atr 
 tributes and seeks the type-forms. Democratic art is indi- 
 vidual and real : it accepts the personal view, and invests 
 common attributes with meaning. The one gives unity to 
 the beautiful ; the other expands and diversifies it. The 
 one, being reminiscent, is static ; the other, being prospect- 
 ive, is dynamic. The one harmonizes what is given: the 
 other suggests what is to be. The note of the one is de- 
 spair: that of the other is triumph and joy. The one 
 is bound : the other is free. 
 
 II. 
 
 All the fine arts, with the exception perhaps of sculp- 
 ture, which has never undergone romantic revival, might 
 be drawn upon to illustrate the various effects of the 
 democratization of art. Architecture was the first of the 
 arts to be popularized. We should expect such an event, 
 inasmuch as architecture is the most intimate of the arts, 
 the most closely related to our daily life ; for though we 
 may not be able to write a poem, or to paint, we are most 
 of us called upon at some time to build something, a home 
 at least. As a matter of fact, architecture, up to the 
 time of the invention of printing, was the chief register 
 of human thought; and its forms corresponded most 
 closely with the dominant ideas of history. The whole 
 series of structural changes which freedom accomplishes 
 is exhibited in the history of architecture from the time of 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 25 
 
 the Hindu and Egyptian temples, the forms of which 
 answered to the conditions of a theocracy, to the period 
 of the Middle Ages, when the Gothic cathedral took shape 
 under conditions of greater freedom. 
 
 The general character of ancient architecture is immo- 
 bility. Conventionality covered the temples like another 
 petrifaction. Primitive types were consecrated to the em- 
 bodiment of a fixed and most rigorous dogma. Tradition- 
 al lines were retained from century to century without 
 variation. As the stone embodied an obscure symbolism, 
 the interpretation of a special priestly class was required, 
 the directive functions of whom have been performed by 
 the critics of culture and good taste in every aristocratic 
 age. Victor Hugo, in the Fifth Book of his "Notre 
 Dame," relates the story of the escape of the mediaeval 
 cathedral from the authoritative absolutism of the priest, 
 and how, for the first time since the Greek, the religious 
 temple fell into the hands of the artist, and became the 
 property of the imagination, of poetry, of the people. 
 Thought, it appears, was free in the Middle Ages in the 
 one direction of architecture. The modern freedom of the 
 press is scarcely greater. The creative genius of the peo- 
 ple, repressed from political and social activity by feudal- 
 ism, and from religious constructiveness by ecclesiastical 
 absolutism, emerged in the one way left open — the way of 
 architecture. The cathedral of Roman and Byzantine tra- 
 ditions furnished the conventional ground ; but, when the 
 mobility and spiritual expressiveness of stone were once 
 discovered, forms tractable to thought and capable of in- 
 finite variation were rapidly developed. If a genius was 
 born he became a builder. The other arts, being more 
 restricted in their expressiveness, were subordinated to 
 
20 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 this one achievement. Architecture became a co-operative 
 art, the art of the arts, the art of the whole people. The 
 sculptor must fill the niches and cap the pinnacles with 
 appropriate figures; the painter must decorate the walls 
 with scenic frescoes, and design forms and select colors 
 for the windows ; the musician must raise the lofty organ 
 to complete the mystery of vaulted roof with vanishing 
 sound ; the poet must exercise his genius in the composi- 
 tion of canticle and responsions. A sublime unity of the 
 arts was thus accomplished to enhance the glory of the 
 one free art. 
 
 The effect of the popularization of architecture may be 
 seen in the very enthusiasm for structure that was engen- 
 dered in the free cities of Europe. During the period of 
 emancipatory process so many cathedrals arose in every 
 part of Christendom, that we can hardly believe the report 
 of their number. With invention unhindered, rapid and 
 innumerable changes took place in styles. In three cen- 
 turies the aspect of the standard cathedral was completely 
 transformed. Upon the nature of the changes, William 
 Morris, in his essay on "Gothic Architecture," makes the 
 
 following comment : 
 
 "If some abbot or monk of the eleventh century could have been 
 brought back to his rebuilt church of the thirteenth, he might 
 almost have thought some miracle had taken place: the huge 
 cylindrical or square piers transformed into clusters of slim, 
 elegant shafts; the narrow, round-headed windows supplanted by 
 tall, wide lancets, elegantly glazed with pattern and subject; the 
 bold vault spanning the wide nave instead of the flat wooden ceil- 
 ing of past days; the extreme richness of the mouldings with 
 which every member is treated; the elegance and order of the 
 floral sculpture, the grace and good drawing of the imagery." 
 (Pp. 38, 39.) 
 
 Free creation thus resulted in every improvement. 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 27 
 
 Though a logical style was finally developed, there was 
 not at any time a fixity of form. Throughout the period 
 of growth the use was granted of material of any kind, 
 arches of any span or altitude, pillars of any degree of 
 strength or tenuity, windows of any size or shape, and 
 details of any amount of elaboration. Says Morris : 
 
 "Slim elegance the Gothic could produce, or sturdy solidity, as 
 its moods went. Material was not its master, but its servant; 
 marble was not necessary to its beauty; stone would do, or brick, 
 or timber. In default of carving, it would set together cubes of 
 glass or whatsoever was shining and fair-hued, and cover every 
 portion of its interiors with a fairy coat of splendor; or would 
 mould mere plaster into intricacy of work scarce to be followed, 
 but never wearying the eyes with its delicacy and expressiveness 
 of line. Smoothness it loves, the utmost finish that the hand 
 can give; but if material or skill fail, the rougher work shall so 
 be wrought that it also shall please us with its inventive sug- 
 gestion. For the iron rule of the classical period, the acknowledged 
 slavery of everyone but the great man, was gone, and freedom 
 had taken its place." (Id., pp. 32, 33.) 
 
 With increasing license the priestly symbolism was 
 modified; and a meaning foreign to religion would be 
 embodied in a door, or a facade, sometimes in an entire 
 church. As Victor Hugo remarks in "Notre Dame :' 
 
 .rt 
 
 "No idea can be given of the liberties taken by architects. We 
 find capitals interwoven with monks and nuns in shameful atti- 
 tudes, as in the Salle des Cheminees of the Palace of Justice at 
 Paris; we find Noah's adventures carved at full length, as under 
 the great porch at Bourges; or we find a tipsy monk, with the 
 ears of an ass and a glass in his hand, laughing in the face of 
 an entire community, as in the lavatory of the Abbey of Bocher- 
 ville. Sometimes a doorway, a facade, an entire church, offers 
 a symbolic meaning hostile to the Church. Guillaume de Paris 
 in the thirteenth century, Nicholas Flamel in the fifteenth, wrote 
 
28 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 such seditious pages. Saint Jacques de la Boucherie was a church 
 of opposition throughout." (English trans., Sterling edit., pp. 
 213, 214.) 
 
 With the restrictions of dogma removed, the interests 
 of beauty or significance alone determined the artist's 
 plan. 
 
 The secret of the evolution was found in the freedom of 
 the workmen. Each builder and mason was at liberty to 
 leave some evidence of his own individuality upon the 
 materials, some mark of his pleasure in service. The chief 
 architect was only the master-workman ; and the masons 
 and carvers were architects in their turn ; mingling fancy 
 and imagination with their technical skill, and giving to 
 each object the vitality of spontaneous design and execu- 
 tion. Freedom, in short, was the essential quality of 
 Gothic architecture. 
 
 For full three hundred years the development of an 
 individualized architecture continued — a bright, creative, 
 golden period. When the printing-press was invented 
 "the book," as Victor Hugo puts it, "destroyed the build- 
 ing." Mind had found other channels for its activity. 
 But the Gothic cathedrals accomplished their purpose; 
 and they stand to witness forever to the advantages of 
 freedom — a promise of democratic art. 
 
 The freedom, originality, variety, and progress that 
 marked the making of Gothic architecture are the char- 
 acteristics that distinguish the modern structures being 
 produced on American and democratic soil. The waves 
 of classical renaissance that swept across Europe in ages 
 subsequent to the Gothic, leaving in its recession such 
 masses of formal, pedantic structures as St. Paul's in 
 London and its group of parish churches, — just meant to 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 29 
 
 t>e the homes of cultivated, unenthusiastic ecclesiasticism, 
 — had but little effect upon the architectural movement of 
 the New World. Architecture in America, especially dur- 
 ing the last fifty years, is conspicuous by the quantity, 
 variety, and originality of native forms, and by the free- 
 dom with which the traditional models are employed. The 
 leading characteristic is a readiness to strike out new 
 paths under the requirement of changing conditions and 
 of practical considerations. The principle of individual- 
 ity, especially in the newer cities of the West, controls 
 domestic structure to the end of multiplying de- 
 signs almost infinitely, many of which, it is true, are pain- 
 ful and monstrous to classic good taste (the penalty 
 democracy pays for its freedom) ; but many more are 
 full of artistic beauty and promise. 
 
 Conspicuous secular architecture may be said to con- 
 stitute America's contribution to the modern. The epochs 
 of popes and kings have passed; and this is no age in 
 which to build churches or palaces. Secularism and in- 
 dustrial democracy are keys to the present. We build 
 libraries, school houses and railroad stations. The com- 
 mercial temple, largely the product of the American mind, 
 is the exact equivalent of the modern business ideal. The 
 daring, strength, Titanic energy, intelligence and majesty 
 evidenced in many of the modern business temples in- 
 dicate precisely one, and perhaps the dominant, feature 
 of American character. These buildings are significant 
 in their principles of structure, rather than formal. They 
 observe the logic of function. They are not built, that is, 
 primarily, to display artistic proportions, but to serve 
 a purpose and fulfill a need. The Time-Spirit was their 
 
30 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 architect; necessity was their craftsmaster. In them a 
 new group of social conditions found a habitation. 
 
 The growth of population in cities, the centralization of 
 business in a "down-town" district, the co-operation of 
 men necessitated by economy and despatch, the abundance 
 and cheapness of iron and steel, the convenience and ser- 
 viceability of steam heat and electric light, the quick 
 transportation made possible by the elevator — these eco- 
 nomic forces and mechanical devices have combined to 
 make such structures as the Masonic Temple in Chicago 
 masterpieces of modernity, admirably answering to new 
 conditions ; and structures as full of meaning and ideal 
 content as any that architectural history records. In dis- 
 play of simplicity, in the use of broad surfaces, in control 
 of the lines of height, and in the artistic handling of mass, 
 the Chicago group of office buildings is unique among the 
 architecture of the world. These are proud structures, 
 defiant in their altitude, every story soaring and exulting. 
 In their pride and altitude their artistic feeling lies. I 
 admire the daring, wisdom, and genius of the men who 
 designed and erected them. The genius of men like Root 
 and Hardenberg marks an epoch in art. They were no 
 hawkers of worn-out creeds; neither were they infidel. 
 But actuated by a new motive they inaugurated an archi- 
 tectural movement that may be said to be the only genu- 
 inely new and creative tendency in architecture since the 
 completion of the Gothic in the Middle Ages. When to 
 the strength of a general idea are added the delicacy and 
 refinement of a personal conception, when the strictly ar- 
 tistic sentiment is perceived and accentuated, democracy 
 may point to its commercial structures with the pride of a 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 31 
 
 great achievement. They spring from freedom: in the 
 lines of freedom they are elaborated. 
 
 In a few instances, notably in the work of Mr. Louis 
 H. Sullivan, the architect of the Auditorium and the 
 Schiller theatre at Chicago, I believe the signs of a new 
 and enlarged architecture are visible. Mr. Sullivan, more 
 than any other builder known to me, founds his works in 
 personal character and personal responsibility and perme- 
 ates them with poetic feeling. He is the exponent in 
 theory and in practice of poetic architecture by which he 
 means an architecture that rises freshly out of the heart 
 of nature and out of the soul of man, seeking to typify 
 the harmoniously interblended rhythms of nature and hu- 
 manity in a form characterized by mobile equilibrium or 
 static rhythm. In his essay "Objective and Subjective," 
 Mr. Sullivan explains his theory : 
 
 "I hold that the architectural art, thus far, has failed to reach 
 its highest development, its fullest capability of imagination, of 
 thought and expression, because it has not yet found a way to be- 
 come truly plastic; it does not yet respond to the poet's touch. 
 That it is today the only art for which the multitudinous rhythms 
 of outward nature, the manifold fluctuations of man's inner be- 
 ing, have no significance, no place. 
 
 That the Greek architecture, unerring as far as it went — 
 and it went very far indeed in one direction — was but one radius 
 within the field of a possible circle of expression. That, though 
 perfect in its eyesight, definite in its desires, clear in its pur- 
 pose, it was not resourceful in forms; that it lacked the flexi- 
 bility and the humanity to respond to the varied and constantly 
 shifting desires of the heart. 
 
 It was a pure, it was a noble art; wherefore we call it classic: 
 but, after all, it was an apologetic art; for, while possessing 
 serenity, it lacked the divinely human element of mobility. The 
 Greeks never caught the secret of the changing of the seasons, 
 the orderly and complete sequence of their rhythms within the 
 
32 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 calmly moving year. Nor did this self-same Greek know what 
 we now know of Nature's bounty: for music in those days had 
 not been born; this lovely friend, approaching man to man, had 
 not yet begun to bloom as a rose, to exhale its wondrous perfume. 
 
 That the Gothic architecture, with sombre, ecstatic eye, with its 
 thought far above with Christ in the heavens, seeing but little 
 here below, feverish and overwrought, taking comfort in garden- 
 ing and plant-life, sympathizing deeply with Nature's visible 
 forms, evolved a copious and rich variety of incidental expressions, 
 but lacked the unitary comprehension, the absolute consciousness 
 and mastery of pure form that can come alone of unclouded and 
 serene contemplation of perfect repose and peace of mind. 
 
 I believe, in other words, that the Greek knew the statics, the 
 Goth the dynamics of the art, but that neither of them suspected 
 the mobile equilibrium of it — neither of them divined the movement 
 and stability of Nature. Failing in this, both have forever fallen 
 short, and must pass away when the true, the Poetic Architecture 
 shall arise — that architecture which shall speak with clearness, 
 with eloquence, and with warmth of the fulness, the completeness 
 of man's intercourse with Nature and with his fellow-men." (Pp. 
 12, 13.) 
 
 The completion of a personalized rhythmic architecture, 
 the attainment in structure of what Wagner has done in 
 music and Whitman in poetry, Mr. Sullivan reserves for 
 the builders of his native land. 
 
 The same freedom characterizes the American use of 
 traditional forms. By means of association democracy 
 must realize its connection with a historic past. Innumer- 
 able memories cling to and linger around a Grecian 
 column, a Roman arch, a Gothic spire. These forms serve 
 as organs of recollection; reminding democracy of its 
 historical attachments. In buildings designed in part for 
 display, — capitols, churches, libraries, museums, and other 
 edifices of a public character, — artistic and purely archi- 
 tectural conditions meet the maker; and the forms and 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 33 
 
 proportions sanctioned by historical experience may be 
 properly employed. 
 
 When traditions are used as servants and not as mas- 
 ters, when they are permitted to suggest and not allowed 
 to command, the architecture resulting from such combin- 
 ation of tradition and free creation may still be classed 
 as democratic. In cases where a style was adopted arbi- 
 trarily, and rigidly applied, as often by Bullfinch and the 
 earlier architects, the freedom of creation had no part in 
 it ; a dead past had been continued into the living present ; 
 the artist was a slave to tradition and not a freeman. But 
 the Italianism of the Boston Public Library, the Roman- 
 esque features of Trinity Church, Boston, the Florentine 
 traditions in the Capitol at Washington, the Gothicism 
 of the halls of the University of Chicago, the classicism 
 of the World's Fair buildings, serve their proper and pro- 
 portionate function by perpetuating historic experience 
 and by displaying cultural association, while they leave 
 the buildings free to modern and American uses. 
 
 Of what a free adaptation of traditional styles may ac- 
 complish, to the end of forming an architecture whicK 
 is yet modern and almost worth the name of an original 
 American style, the work of Henry Richardson furnishes 
 an illustration. Mr. Richardson's characteristic produc- 
 tions are the Trinity Church at Boston and the Wynn 
 Memorial Library. Freely employing an ancient mode 
 Richardson was bold to carry tradition forward in the 
 direction of national and personal aspirations. He pro- 
 duced a style simple, intellectual, and massive, one in 
 perfect harmony with the virile, serious civilization of the 
 Puritan. More significant, too, were certain buildings 
 in the World's Fair group at Chicago. For the group 
 
34 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 as a whole the traditional classic style was adopted, — 
 probably from fear and distrust, — and to this rigid form 
 every architect was required to restrain his exuberance 
 and trim his fancy. For the purposes of a Fair the classic 
 style is altogether irrational. A Fair gives occasion for a 
 holiday; it is lyric in its motive and suggestiveness, and 
 fancy and individual creativeness come rightly into play in 
 the builders. At Chicago the rigidity of the style was 
 corrected by the environment, the bright skies and gleam- 
 ing lake. It was transcended by the free use of ornamen- 
 tation and imposing sculpture groups. Its limitations 
 were actually overcome in Sullivan's Transportation 
 Building and Cobb's Fisheries Building, built of honest 
 staff with no pretence of marble and genuinely plastic. 
 Both had the individual touch; the Fisheries Building, 
 with its stucco of frogs, fishes and snakes, being the one 
 attempt at humor among buildings dedicated to a holiday. 
 Handling equally free while under the same restrictions 
 of style was made by D. H. Perkins in a building de- 
 voted to machinery and electricity at the Omaha exposi- 
 tion. His arrangement of this was suggested by the use 
 of the building and with wires and lamps, rods and cog- 
 wheels he made a plastic design, crowning the whole with 
 a superb group of five driven lions, symbolizing the mas- 
 tery by man of the physical forces of nature. I would 
 wish that that mastery could be carried into other ma- 
 terials. 
 
 III. 
 
 I have used the history of architecture to illustrate 
 the variety of form that follows the popularization of 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 35 
 
 art. The other arts may be briefly referred to, in order 
 to give examples of the comprehensiveness of subject- 
 matter resulting from the deification of nature and man. 
 
 The history of music, from Bach to Wagner, presents 
 the features of emancipation with respect to form, and 
 also the extension of the scope of music to the inclusion of 
 poetical concepts. 
 
 Berlioz, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and Wagner repre- 
 sent the contest between the classical and the romantic, 
 the effort, that is, to enlarge the domain of music by 
 including the theme and method of poetry and scenic art. 
 Two of these musicians, Berlioz and Wagner, were 
 active revolutionists in the political as well as the musical 
 world. Berlioz won his first musical victory by a cantata 
 written while the bullets of revolution were rattling round 
 his window and later on in the barricade wielded his 
 weapons with the rest of the Parisian mob, while Wag- 
 ner was banished from Saxony as a. "politically-dangerous 
 individual" and was known as an exponent of anarchy. 
 Of very necessity their art was expansive. Berlioz de- 
 clared his purpose was not to subvert any of the constitu- 
 ent elements of art, but to add to their number. Liszt 
 invented modes elastic enough to reproduce poetical con- 
 cepts. The tendency was toward expressiveness. The 
 significance of Wagner, who may be taken as the repre- 
 sentative democrat in music, consists in his effort to re- 
 store the relations between life and art — first, by forming 
 a drama which should be all-inclusive, expressing the 
 vast issues and complex relations of modern life; and, 
 second, by composing music which is indifferent to the 
 rules of the symphony, but which is dramatic and realistic 
 
36 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 in motive and fully apprehensible by personality and the 
 poetic judgment. 
 
 Such a composer, being independent, is limited in his 
 display only by the bounds which define the ideas he 
 seeks to embody. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Painting has had a similar development; its history 
 being marked by a growing individualization of form and 
 an increasing inclusiveness of theme. The disabilities 
 imposed by the mediaeval church relating to sacred theme 
 have long since been overcome, on the one hand by the 
 growth of religious skepticism, which resulted in a gener- 
 al secularization of life, and on the other hand by increase 
 in scientific knowledge, which has cast out fear and 
 penalty, and filled the void fixed by romantic theology be~ 
 tween man and nature with infinite and lovely forms of 
 life. The romantic movement, at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, freed the painter from the rules and 
 pedantries of the academy, which had been no less re- 
 strictive than the church. The "Men of 1830" stood for 
 sincerity and the personal view in confronting nature. 
 Jean Francois Millet carried forward the movement oi 
 1830 by adding to the interest of landscape the inspira- 
 tion of humanity, and avowed that a peasant was as 
 worthy as a king for portraiture. He broke from th< 
 slavery of conventional art, and put freely upon canvas 
 the actual earth-born man and woman, rude in their 
 outline, but vigorous in their action, and who face cour- 
 ageously their destiny on the laborious earth. "Beauty," 
 said Millet, "is the fit, the appropriate, the serviceable 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 37 
 
 character well rendered, an idea well wrought out with 
 largeness and simplicity." 
 
 Impressionism, the latest of the emancipatory modes, 
 asserts the verity of the personal view and even though 
 this method has been carried to extremes and the painter 
 rioted in the excesses of egotism, the effects which seem 
 oftentimes distorted are still significant as an outcome of 
 the democratization of art. 
 
 V. 
 
 The popular art of the present day is literature chiefly 
 in the forms of essay and fiction and certain kinds of 
 poetry. The romantic movement long ago delivered liter- 
 ature from bondage to a special measure or class of sub- 
 jects. Any man of letters may avail himself of the 
 full freedom of the modern world. If, like Shelley, he 
 has a passion for reforming the world, his verses may not 
 only be expressive of personality but may seek also to 
 inculcate the ideals that inform the present and lead for- 
 ward the future. The close association of poetry with 
 the regnant ideas and dominating tendencies of the mod- 
 ern render its history particularly serviceable to illustrate 
 the most important phase of the democratic movement in 
 art, the enlargement of subject and especially the inclusion 
 of the people in the guise of the "average man," about 
 whom more and more the ideals and sympathies of men 
 are gathering. Says Edward Carpenter: 
 
 "There was a time when the sympathies and the 
 ideals of men gathered round other figures ; 
 
 When the crowned king, or the priests in procession, 
 or the knight errant, or the man of letters in 
 
38 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 his study, were the imaginative forms to which 
 men clung; 
 But now before the easy homely garb and appearance 
 of this man as he sweeps past in the evening 
 all these others fade and grow dim. They 
 come back after all and cling to him." 
 And this is one of the slowly unfolding meanings of 
 democracy. 
 
 It may not be commonly appreciated how thoroughly 
 modern English poetry is permeated by political and social 
 ideals. Byron and Shelley were in open rebellion against 
 aristocratic usage and were even anarchic in their passion 
 to destroy the fabric of civilization. Coleridge and 
 Wordsworth reflect in their poetry the enthusiasm for 
 liberty that led to the conception of a Pantisocracy in the 
 Western world. Swinburne has long been a fervid singer 
 of odes to freedom and is known not to be averse to 
 political revolution. William Morris during his last years 
 turned all his poetic genius to the establishment of positive 
 socialism. The cry of Armenia was heard in England 
 most clearly by a poet, William Watson, whose words in 
 denunciation of the Turk who destroyed and in scorn of 
 his own people who permitted the ruin, seem as if they 
 must burn the page upon which they are written. Rud- 
 yard Kipling is an embodiment of English imperialism. 
 A poet like Browning while not political in intent ranges 
 the world for his subject like a democrat and enunci- 
 ates ideas that may destroy or shape social institutions. 
 Even Tennyson, aristocrat as he is at heart, must admit 
 that "kind hearts are more than coronets and simple 
 faith than Norman blood," reversing thus the standards 
 of feudalism. On the part of America, Emerson, though 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 39 
 
 he did not go to the war to free the slaves sent forward 
 ten thousand men and liberated from the prison-house 
 of mind the thought out of which the union of the states 
 was formed. The New England poets cried out against 
 the wrong of slavery and loyally held up the hands of 
 Lincoln in the war for union. Lowell and Whitman 
 adopted democracy as a positive philosophy and 
 from this point of view gave utterance to the loftiest 
 ideals. In poetry, if anywhere, will be found the history 
 of the theory of man. 
 
 The contrast of the present with the past in respect 
 to the position of the average man is most striking and 
 illustrative. By the Greek poets the heroic few were 
 honored: of the thousands who sailed the Aegean with 
 Agamemnon only a few figures stand out from the 
 groups of the Myrmidons. Upon the Greek stage gods 
 mingled with men to dignify the hero and the deed. 
 Euripides, for the first time, introduced touches of realism 
 but his innovations had no chance of being established 
 and were not followed up until long afterwards in another 
 land. Throughout the Middle Ages the hero continued 
 to be the object of poetic celebration. The praise of 
 Charlemagne and his peers was sung throughout Europe. 
 Knightly adventure formed the theme of the novel. Cer- 
 vantes for the first time intermingled with the romance 
 of nobility various phases of popular life. The popular 
 voice appears also for a time in England in the series of 
 ballads which celebrated the deeds of Robin Hood and 
 his merry men in Sherwood forest. These free men of 
 the woods stood for the rights of the common people 
 against the exaction of the rich and noble born and the 
 report of their adventures formed a genuine epic of revolt. 
 
40 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Still much of Robin Hood's popularity was due to the 
 fact that he was a mad-cap prince, reputed Earl of 
 Huntingdon. The democratic ideals hinted at by Eurip- 
 ides did not in reality emerge before Chaucer. It is 
 the distinction of Chaucer to have created in his Canter- 
 bury Tales characters of flesh and blood with touches of 
 local color, not forgetting the miller or the ploughman 
 or their environment of mill and field. The company that 
 rode to Becket's shrine knew no great separation in 
 class, made uniform perhaps by the levelling tendency of 
 the Catholic creed. Shakespeare, it must be confessed, is 
 generally aristocratic. Not once did the so-called "Lord of 
 all the passions" give a fate to a common man or woman. 
 Fates were for kings and nobles to feed their vanity. 
 Sometimes wisdom is spoken by fools but fools were men 
 of privilege in the court and in any case perform a second- 
 ary part in the drama, playing buffoonery to relieve the 
 tragedy of the great. Spencer ignored the common- 
 place, idealized the shepherds of the hill, wrote to inform 
 the lives of the ladies at the court of the queen and to 
 fashion a "gentleman of noble person in virtuous, brave 
 and gentle discipline." Still there is in the sixteenth 
 century in chap book and picaresque novel a distinctive 
 realism and on the stage a tendency toward the humani- 
 zation of art. The moral plays and interludes furnish other 
 elements of a popular character. This tendency, however, 
 went no further than the stage in England. The Latin 
 supremacy entered by way of the universities and through 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was no 
 marked democratic manifestation. From the revolt of 
 1688 there ran on underground, as it were, the popular 
 social movement but it had few superficial evidences until 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 41 
 
 the present century. English art of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury was decidedly aristocratic. The popular writers ig- 
 nore the populace and celebrate the great. The dictator 
 of this class, the absolute emperor of their literary lace 
 and ruffles — as J. W. Hales puts it — was the poet Pope. 
 But some pricks of conscience begin now to disturb 
 the century's complacency. In one passage Pope wonders 
 whether it is quite right that the great should monopolize 
 the poet: 
 
 "Yet all our praises why should lords engross? 
 Rise, honest muse, and sing the Man of Ross." 
 
 That a plain man, a man without a title, could be 
 thought worthy of record indicates that something of 
 the century's exclusiveness is disappearing. Richardson 
 in "Pamela," published in 1740, recognized the new order 
 by adopting a servant girl for a heroine but he ac- 
 knowledged the old order by marrying her to the worth- 
 less lord and making her Lady Pamela. In Cowper, sym- 
 pathies that comprehend the poor and lowly begin to 
 abound; a lowly man himself, "he loved the commonplace 
 and took pleasure in his garden and his rabbits and found 
 it in his heart to justify the unlovely cucumber vine. It 
 was left, however, to the genius of a ploughman, Robert 
 Burns, to discover and open forever to poetic use the 
 thought and emotion contained in the world of the com- 
 mon. The service of Burns in this respect can never be 
 overestimated. The cunning genius of poetry might 
 still lie unexposed in the laborer's cottage and in the 
 open sun-purified field had he not possessed the insight to 
 detect and the genius to exploit the dignity of the simple, 
 the common, the sublime. He has the immortal distinc- 
 tion of being the first real democrat in letters. The new 
 
42 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 spirit is just in evidence in Walter Scott, who, although he 
 preferred the aristocracy and attempted at Abbots ford to 
 restore the glitter and gold of a feudal past and in his 
 writings to set the world in love with dreams and phan- 
 toms, was yet wide and generous in his sympathies. It 
 is said of him that he spoke to every man as if he were 
 his blood relation. 
 
 In the great era of the French Revolution the spirit 
 of brotherhood passed permanently into literature. The 
 era of Humanity dawned with the ruin of a social aristoc- 
 racy. The English revolutionary poets all shared in the 
 passion for the restoration of freedom : Byron in a moody 
 fiery spirit of tumult and destruction, Keats in a gentle 
 mood of longing, Shelley with a passion for the domina- 
 tion of Love. More than any other man Wordsworth, 
 perhaps, taught the world the duty of catholic affection. 
 "O, gentle reader," he exhorted, "you will find a tale in 
 everything." It was his great service to display the 
 hitherto unrecognized attractions of the commonest cir- 
 cumstances, the most ignoble things, the most ordinary 
 persons. 
 
 Wordsworth presents the type of poetic feeling preva- 
 lent in an era of social revolution. By a further demo- 
 cratic advance indicated by the rise of industrialism which 
 tends always to substitute an industrial for a political co- 
 partnership, an organization of men for a government of 
 laws, the people, as the real members of such an organic 
 community, have gained a new importance and furnished 
 poetry with a significant theme and subject — the theme of 
 labor, the heroic character of the average man. The 
 writings of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Ruskin, 
 Carlyle, Browning and Morris worthily interpret the age 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 43 
 
 in its enthusiasm for humanity. There is fine passion 
 glowing in Carlyle's words concerning the "toilworn 
 craftsman that conquers the earth and makes her man's" : 
 "Venerable to me is the hard hand, crooked, coarse; 
 wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, inde- 
 feasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Ven- 
 erable, too, is the rugged face, all weather tanned, with its 
 rude intelligence ; for it is the face of a man living man- 
 like. O! but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and 
 even because we must pity as well as love thee; hardly 
 entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us 
 were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou 
 wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our 
 battles wert so marred. For in thee lay a God-created 
 form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it 
 stand, with the thick adhesions and defacements of la- 
 bour; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know free- 
 dom. Yet toil on, toil on; thou art in thy duty, be out 
 of it who may ; thou toilest for the altogether indispens- 
 able, for daily bread." 
 
 Carlyle was the prophet of toil, but not the craftsman's 
 intimate. The spirit of industrial association becomes 
 supreme, for the first time, in contemporary fiction. In 
 the novels of George Eliot there are notable and character- 
 istic pictures of English social life. The district around 
 Nuneaton where George Eliot lived for many years is 
 just on the edge of the section where industrialism centers. 
 As the traveler passes northward from London, through 
 the beautiful feudal county of Warwickshire, the county 
 of regal parks and immemorial elms and lordly manor 
 houses, the land of chivalric Shakespeare, he enters by 
 slow stages a region of more lowly mien and repellent 
 
44 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 features — the Great Black country, a country of mines 
 and manufactories, so black and repulsive that the travel- 
 er looks back with regret at the stately forms of nobles 
 fading at the threshold of the industrial region. From 
 glowing furnaces rise a thousand smoke-formed pillars 
 which support in air a vast and shifting dome of vapors. 
 The sun and the blue sky are obscured. The land, the 
 houses, the men are blackened and seem stricken with 
 disease. Yet these are the scenes and faces, here the 
 ideas working, which George Eliot at Nuneaton and 
 the Brontes farther north at Haworth, recognizing their 
 real grandeur, made forever interesting. Thus did Eliot 
 plead : 
 
 "Paint us an angel if you can, with a floating violet 
 robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet 
 oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and 
 opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do 
 not impose on us any of the aesthetic rules which shall 
 banish from the regions of art these old women, scraping 
 carrots with their work-worn hands, these heavy clowns 
 taking holiday in a dingy pothouse, these rounded backs 
 and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the 
 spade and done the rough work of the world — these 
 homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their 
 rough curs, and their clusters of onions." 
 
 Dickens understood the common people even better. 
 The Chimes, Bleak House, and Hard Times exhibit his 
 popular sympathies that included the lowest and! even the 
 criminal classes. Judging Dickens by the standards of 
 the twentieth century, Dr. Leet in Looking Backward 
 said : "He overtops all the writers of his age, not because 
 his literary genius was highest, but because his great heart 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 45 
 
 beat for the poor, because he made the cause of the 
 victims of society his own, and devoted his pen to expos- 
 ing its cruelties and shams." Thackeray took for his part 
 in the democratic movement the exposition of the mean- 
 ness and selfishness abounding in the circles of wealth and 
 rank. Thackeray's return to reality, from that which is 
 external to that which is vital and attached to character, 
 constitutes his contribution to the modern. Later English 
 fiction is not less marked in its absolute inclusiveness. 
 John Watson gives us the reason for the success of his 
 short stories that "the people liked to read about the 
 doings and sayings of the plain, unsophisticated, every- 
 day people, who were still close enough to the heart of 
 nature to keep something of the freshness and original- 
 ity, rather than to hear about the introspective question- 
 ings and narrow discussions of the over-cultivated mem- 
 bers of a coterie. ,, 
 
 In other departments of modern English literature, the 
 democratic subject-matter is hardly less prominent than 
 in fiction. The poets of the century with but few ex- 
 ceptions are involved in the movement in some degree 
 and the spirit of brotherhood colors largely the writings 
 of the leading essayists. Browning is the typical English 
 democrat, both in his comprehensive philosophy of love, 
 which principle is the universal solvent of human experi- 
 ence, and in his actual poetic treatment of life and char- 
 acter in which nothing is excluded that is vital and dy- 
 namic. I do not mean that Browning touches the com- 
 mon people as Burns, but that his works contain demo- 
 cratic philosophy and exhibit the democratic method. 
 He has gone the whole round of creation, searched the 
 world for persons who had been lost or forgotten or 
 
46 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 misunderstood, the Sordellos, Pompilias, Fifines, Para- 
 celsuses, Grammarians, pointed out that love is under- 
 lying all of these, and for each personality found an in- 
 dividual voice and style. 
 
 In America where democracy is so largely industrial 
 and conditioned by free labor it is natural to expect a 
 literature when most native most replete with the mode 
 of democracy. Democracy with us is not a mere literary 
 theme but is our life, our habit of thought, the condition 
 from which we take departure in action. Emerson, 
 Thoreau, Lowell, and Whitman are American products, 
 impossible in any other than modern soil. Their whole 
 work takes meaning from the social environment, as they 
 are related to the democratic age. Emerson and Thoreau 
 each in his own way displayed the theory of the inde- 
 pendent self-centered man. Lowell with scholastic in- 
 sight and precision declared the meaning of democracy 
 as the life that is separate, self-poised and sole as stars, 
 yet linked by love, made one as light. Whitman, uniting 
 in his personality the results of historical process, pre- 
 sents himself as a typical, complete personality, the first 
 unconditioned absolutely sovereign, average man. The 
 theme of literature in America, taken in its entirety, re- 
 volves about the individualized personality, which is seen 
 not to be simple but to have relations and identities with 
 every other personality, with nature and the Divine Spirit. 
 The sublimation of the thought of identity is expressed 
 in Whitman's lines: 
 
 "Ah, little recks the laborer 
 
 How near his work is holding him to God, 
 The loving laborer through space and time." 
 
 In this essay I have quoted several times from Whit- 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 4 
 
 man. If one poet alone is sought who is fully representa- 
 tive of humanity, of democracy, the modern and the New 
 World, whose works exhibit in every aspect the features 
 of democratic art, its sincerity, universality, and idealistic 
 tendency, Whitman certainly would be chosen. Indeed, 
 without the illustration of Whitman's poems which indi- 
 cate the direction of the wind of the human spirit more 
 truly than any other collection of recent production this 
 essay could hardly have been written. "Through me," 
 the poet affirms, "the afflatus surging and surging, 
 through me the current and index." With perfect free- 
 dom he ignored the conventionalism of form and consti- 
 tuted a line and rhythm that would most adequately convey 
 his content. For subjects he ranged the whole subject- 
 ive and objective world, saying to every person or thing: 
 "Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you." lie 
 said, "I have made my poetry out of actual, practical life, 
 such as is common to every man or woman, so that all 
 have an equal share in it. The old poets went on the 
 assumption that there was a selection needed. I make 
 little or no selection, put in common things, tools, trades, 
 all that can happen or belong to mechanics, farmers, or 
 the practical community. I have not put in the language 
 of politics but I have put in its spirit ; and in science, by 
 intention, at least, the most advanced points are perpetual- 
 ly recognized and allowed for." His ideals include also 
 the most advanced philosophy and religious opinions. 
 In every way he is the most conspicuous artistic identity 
 of the age. Beyond all others he is the poet of joy. 
 His exultation mounts high and soars wide. His faith 
 is so absolute, his confidence in the goodwill of the 
 World-Spirit and of each individual soul so great, that 
 
48 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 no imperfection in the world order, no evil in the social 
 system, no meanness in the individual, is sufficient to 
 check the play of an optimism that is all inclusive and 
 boundless as light. To the future and to the Invisible 
 World he dedicated his poems. 
 
 VI. 
 
 As th* stream of tendency toward democracy cannot be 
 turned back nor permanently checked, it must be con- 
 cluded that along the lines of freedom art will continue to 
 advance until every subject shall be included, and every 
 thought shall find its appropriate form. 
 
 It is likely that there are those who are not in sympathy 
 with these tendencies, who resent the destruction of an- 
 cient idols, and who maintain that these innovations in- 
 dicate the decline and decay of art. The fear of timid 
 souls is well expressed by Lowell in "The Cathedral." 
 "Lo, where his coming looms, 
 Of Earth's anarchic children latest born, 
 Democracy, a Titan who hath learned 
 To laugh at Jove's old fashioned thunderbolts — 
 Could he not also forge them, if he would? 
 He, better skilled, with solvents merciless, 
 Loosened in air and borne on every wind, 
 Saps unperceived: the calm Olympian height 
 Of ancient order feels its bases yield, 
 And pale gods glance for help to gods as pale. 
 What will be left of good or worshipful, 
 Of spiritual secrets, mysteries, 
 Of fair religion's guarded heritage, 
 Heirlooms of soul, passed downward unprofaned 
 From eldest Ind? This Western giant coarse, 
 Scorning refinements which he lacks himself, 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 49 
 
 Loves not nor heeds the ancestral hierarchies, 
 
 Each rank dependent on the next above 
 
 In orderly gradation fixed as fate. 
 
 King by mere manhood, nor allowing aught 
 
 Of holier unction than the sweat of toil; 
 
 In his own strength sufficient; called to solve, 
 
 On the rough edges of society, 
 
 Problems long sacred to the choicer few 
 
 And improvise what elsewhere men receive 
 
 As gifts of deity; tough foundling reared 
 
 Where every man's his own Melchisedek, 
 
 How make him reverent of a King of kings? 
 
 Or Judge self-made, executor of laws 
 
 By him not first discussed and voted on? 
 
 For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, 
 
 Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark 
 
 Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day 
 
 From his unscrupulous curiosity 
 
 That handles everything as if to buy, 
 
 Tossing aside what fabrics delicate 
 
 Suit not the rough-and-tumble of his ways? 
 
 What hope for those fine-nerved humanities 
 
 That made earth gracious once with gentler arts, 
 
 Now the rude hands have caught the trick of thought 
 
 And claim an equal suffrage with the brain?" 
 
 The lament is to be expected. The heading of one of 
 the chapters of "The Dream of John Ball" is the common- 
 place truth: "Hard it is for the Old World to see the 
 New." But the changes I have described cannot well 
 be avoided. Metamorphosis is the law of all living things. 
 This is not a matter of what an artistic or academic class 
 wants. It is what the people can be prevailed upon to 
 give. I do not want an art of scholars, but one of men. 
 Art must descend from academic technicalities and be- 
 come commonplace: in the words of Mr. Schreiber, "it 
 must be reinstated as a natural exponent of our common 
 
50 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 culture." Art must be reclaimed for men, the masses. 
 Otherwise it will become abnormal, degenerate into petti- 
 ness, and forsake the walks of common truth. Shame to 
 us that stigma should attach to work that is close to 
 the universal heart and mind, and praise be accorded to 
 what is rare and exotic and refined. Beauty is wherever 
 light is — the most common thing in the universe. Rus- 
 kin declined to interest himself in America because there 
 were no castles here, nor ruins — is beauty limited to where 
 castles are ? Castles, me thinks, were built by men. Time, 
 that wrought the present ruin of past buildings, will 
 make future ruins of present buildings. But who wants 
 an art based upon ruins? Who will consent to be ruled 
 by a dead hand ? Is it not better to free the creative ener- 
 gies in the present? "Faith and wonder and the primal 
 earth," said Lowell, "are born into the world with every 
 child." 
 
 To my mind, the popularization of art — the rendering 
 of form and color and theme characteristic and common- 
 place — marks a real advance. I will not admit for a 
 moment that the triumph of democracy means the wane 
 of art. Indeed, before the modern artist lies a more ar- 
 duous task than any yet attempted. In approaching the 
 people with sympathetic knowledge the danger is not that 
 the artist's standards will be abased, but rather that his 
 thought and skill will not be sufficient to express the 
 real dignity of the people. It is not so easy to 
 "Give to barrows, trays, and pans 
 Grace and glitter of romance." 
 
 My feeling is that the opportunities of modern and 
 American art are great and beyond compare. Almost for 
 the first time in history the artist is a freeman. Obsolete 
 
DEMOCRATIC ART 51 
 
 obstructions are fully cleared. He is independent of any 
 ecclesiastical or aristocratic authority. He is delivered 
 from a scholastic tradition regarding style and subject. 
 He shares in the emancipation of the individual brought 
 about by social movements, and in the freedom of the intel- 
 lect caused by modern science. He may face the whole of 
 nature and the whole of humanity. It is his privilege to 
 create the styles adequate to a great people and land. 
 It is his opportunity to begin the epic of the modern 
 world, — the world as modernly known, — the world of 
 Titanic forces taking birth. It is his mission to open for 
 the imagination the universe as scientifically disclosed. 
 It is his fortune to be able to set forth in all its nobility 
 and grandeur the democratic idea, — the idea of self- 
 sovereignty and of sovereign association, the idea of a 
 life self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as light. 
 If art falls short of its present possibilities, the fault is 
 not with the materials: it does not lie in any want of 
 freedom, but rests rather with the artist who lacks the 
 eyes to see, the mind to think, the skill to compose. 
 
 Yet again the fault shall not be alone with the artist, 
 but with the people : art is the answer to a need felt in the 
 popular heart. The people create: they furnish life for 
 art's impulse, freedom for its atmosphere, patronage for 
 its support. From them alone can come the impulse that 
 shall hasten the production of a genuine democratic 
 art. 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE: 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 I. 
 
 The physical energy of the modern world seems to 
 be expended in the acquirement of some external gain: 
 material possessions, comforts and conveniences. At 
 the same time the tendency of life, as disclosed in the 
 more significant modes of art — which is life moulded 
 nearer to the heart's desire — is in the direction of the 
 esoteric. While the nations of the earth are struggling 
 to gain or to retain markets, the art of the day is seek- 
 ing to satisfy some desire of the heart, some longing of 
 the soul. 
 
 By an esoteric art I mean an art whose visible forms 
 are determined not by external but by psychic neces- 
 sity. The art of a Greek temple is exoteric — it is an art 
 whose aesthetic effects arise from form. Its materials 
 are arranged with reference to external order. The 
 law of visible proportions is inviolable. Its bases, 
 columns, entablature and roof have logical and struc- 
 tural meaning. It is an art that is intellectual, pre- 
 cise, and without mysticism. Christianity released 
 an immense emotionalism and with the consequent 
 increase in mystic feeling, the formal orders of the 
 Greek were broken up. In the course of the middle 
 ages, in the period called Gothic, there were built over 
 the face of Europe, in the lands where Christian ideal- 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE S3 
 
 ism was nurtured, structures that did not arise from 
 the ground as form but descended, as it were, from 
 the heaven as idea. These majestic temples seem to 
 defy all structural laws — they seem not to rest upon 
 the ground so much as hover over it — as if gravi- 
 tation had been reversed, or as if they were suspended 
 from some superior altitude. They are symbols of 
 idea. I see in them not material form or laws of pro- 
 portion, but multiple ideas. The materials vanish and 
 one is face to face with living men — with the great 
 mediaeval mystics, whose eyes pierced through form to 
 psychic realities. Mind unifies the structure. It is 
 genuine esoteric art. Exoteric art may be described 
 as manipulation of materials to the end of form; eso- 
 teric art as the essential expression of the soul. 
 
 The proof of the esoteric tendency in art as a whole 
 is discoverable in the phenomena of modern music 
 and poetry. Architecture is more esoteric than at 
 first appears ; for when a builder inserts a window into 
 a dwelling house according as the house needs the 
 light of a window rather than as the exterior needs 
 a harmony, or when he gathers his steel frame and 
 terra cotta envelope about a man in an office instead 
 of bringing columns from Greece and proportions from 
 Rome to please the man in the street, he is employing 
 the esoteric mode of structure. Such building fol- 
 lows the logic of function. Probably, however, the 
 fullest freedom of man is found in those arts which 
 are farthest removed from use, the arts of music and 
 poetry. 
 
 The Tone-Poem, called "Thus Spake Zarathustra," 
 by Strauss, is an illustration in point. It is a compo- 
 
54 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 sition striking in its originality and power, extra- 
 ordinarily intricate in its modes, and more compre- 
 hensive in its scope than any music that has been 
 heard up to its time. The significance of the com- 
 position resides in the fact that a most intimate union 
 and correspondence exist in it between tones and 
 soul-states. It is a music that follows no external 
 necessity whatever. Its effects are measured in terms 
 of psychology. Though freed from formal law it is 
 yet bound by a profound mastery, the law of psychic 
 process. It exhibits with absolute fidelity the history 
 of a soul. It is a pure form of esoteric music. Now, 
 if this composition stood alone, if the world had not 
 been preparing to receive a music of this character 
 for over a cencury, it might not signify a general ten- 
 dency. But for a century music has been transferring 
 its center of control from the outer to the inner. 
 Mozart's ideal, for instance, was simple and perfectly 
 organized progression, without great passional force. 
 With Beethoven the outer relations are obscured in 
 the interest of greater soul expression. An entire 
 revolution was then wrought by Wagner when he 
 conceived music dramatically, emancipated it from 
 formal restrictions, rendered it capable of expressing 
 the vast issues of modern life, and offered music for- 
 ever to the free uses of the soul. Emboldened by his 
 example the younger composers have continued to 
 enlarge the expressive capacities of music until today 
 it includes nearly the whole idealism of the modern 
 world. 
 
 The poets who best represent the esoteric tendencies 
 in literature are Whitman and Browning. It is a 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 55 
 
 matter of no little moment that two representative 
 English writers of the nineteenth century were ideal- 
 ists. The peculiarity of Whitman's writings is that 
 they can not be understood with any success if ap- 
 proached from the outside. The reader must be ab- 
 sorbed in the thing contemplated — he must become 
 the poet, look through his eyes, realize the universe 
 in his way; "I act as the tongue of you," said Whit- 
 man ; "In my poems, all concentrates in, radiates from, 
 evolves about myself. I have but one central figure, 
 the general human personality typified in myself. 
 Only I am sure my book inevitably necessitates that 
 its reader transpose him or herself into that central 
 position and become the actor, experiencer, himself or 
 herself, of every page, every aspiration, every line." 
 Other books remain standing on the outside of our 
 personality and contribute only to our taste or our 
 knowledge; this book incorporates itself with the 
 reader and contributes pride, love, health, conscious- 
 ness. By some strange process a man has actually 
 got into a book and hence the book must be appre- 
 hended for its character, not for the mere grace of its 
 manner. His writings derive from personality and to 
 personality they return. To an occultist, a mystic, 
 one accustomed to read the symbolism of words and 
 forms, Whitman presents no difficulty. The spread 
 of his influence, the recognition of his power, seems 
 to indicate the increasing idealism of the modern 
 mind. 
 
 II. 
 
 Browning displays his esotericism in three ways: in 
 
56 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the personalization of his poetry, in the artistic modes of 
 his expression, and in the forms of his philosophy. 
 
 To personalize poetry is to inform it with life. Ob- 
 jective art is impersonal. For its effects depend upon 
 skillful manipulation of materials. The artist as a 
 man remains concealed. The world is indifferent to 
 the authorship of Shakespeare's plays for they are un- 
 informed by personality. They were written to pro- 
 duce stage effects. They were tested by their dra- 
 matic outcome: do they play well? Is the dramatic 
 motive sufficient? Is the dramatic consequence re- 
 quired? That the audience should be informed, vi- 
 talized, transformed, did not enter into their dramatic 
 purpose. While Shakespeare was a great artist, the 
 greatest master of strictly dramatic motives that the 
 world has ever known, he need not have been a great 
 personality. In esoteric art a great personality is 
 presupposed. Greatness is an attribute that must be- 
 long to the man before it can enter into and character- 
 ize his work. Whitman's writings rest absolutely upon 
 the character of the writer. In one place he says of 
 himself and his book: 
 
 "I have loved the earth, sun, animals; I have despised riches; 
 
 I have given alms to every one that ask'd, stood up for the 
 stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, 
 
 Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and in- 
 dulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing 
 known or unknown, 
 
 Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the 
 young, and with the mothers of families, 
 
 Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees, 
 stars, rivers, 
 
 Dismisa'd whatever insulted by own soul or defiled my body, 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 57 
 
 Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd 
 
 for others on the same terms, 
 Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from 
 
 every State, 
 (Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe 
 
 his last, 
 This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored, 
 To life recalling many a prostrate form ; ) 
 I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste 
 
 of myself, 
 Rejecting none, permitting all." 
 
 By the truth of this declaration, Whitman's poetry- 
 rises or falls. His character vitalizes the lines, the 
 motive of the line being to vitalize the reader. The 
 art forms have no independent value; they exist sim- 
 ply as a means of conveying life to those not having 
 life. Untold latencies thrill in every page. 
 
 As Browning employs the dramatic method he hides 
 himself behind dramatic masks in some degree, but 
 nevertheless the reader is always conscious that his 
 poems move not by dramatic necessity so much as 
 compelled by thought, and that behind the fictions, 
 informing every line, is the author, alert, unconquer- 
 able, wearing a hundred disguises, contributing 
 something out of his own abounding personality, 
 something that stimulates and vivifies the reader. In 
 a passage in "The Ring and the Book," Browning out- 
 lines the theory of which the poem itself is the ex- 
 emplification : 
 
 "I find first 
 Writ down for very A B C of fact, 
 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' ; 
 From which, no matter with what lisp, I spell 
 And speak you out a consequence — that man, 
 
58 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Man — as befits the made, the inferior thing — 
 Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn, 
 Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow — 
 Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
 The good beyond him — which attempt is growth — 
 Repeats God's process in man's due degree, 
 Attaining man's proportionate result — 
 Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. 
 Inalienable, the arch-prerogative 
 Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses tool 
 No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free, 
 May so project his surplusage of soul 
 In search of body, so add self to self 
 By owning what lay ownerless before — 
 So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 
 That, although nothing which had never life 
 Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 
 Yet, something dead may get to live again, 
 Something with too much life or not enough, 
 Which, either way imperfect, ended once: 
 An end whereat man's impulse intervenes. 
 Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive, 
 Completes the incomplete and saves the thing." 
 
 "The Ring and the Book" is Browning's test of this 
 proposition. Taking facts and persons as history fur- 
 nished, he fused his live soul with the inert materials, 
 vitalized them by contact with himself, his motive 
 being to write a book which would mean beyond the 
 facts, suffice the needs of art, and save the soul be- 
 side. An effect in soul can be secured only by such 
 informing process. There is but this means of soul 
 enlargement. Personality is given increase only by 
 contact with personality. And just so much power 
 proceeds out of a book as went to the making of the 
 composition. 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 59 
 
 The striking feature of Browning's personality is 
 its vigor — a vigor of mind and body that gives to his 
 whole work the note of strenuousness, a vigor of soul 
 that makes him an unconquerable optimist. Stren- 
 uousness, the outcome of physical and mental vigor, 
 and optimism, the result of a deeply penetrative insight, 
 are the two most marked characteristics of his nature. 
 Physical and spiritual courage enabled him to describe 
 himself truthfully as "one who never turned his back, 
 but marched breast forward; never doubted clouds 
 would break ; never dreamed, though right were worst- 
 ed, wrong would triumph; held we fall to rise, are 
 baffled to fight better, sleep to wake." This might and 
 courage are infused into the reader; he becomes eager 
 to assume an armor, seize a weapon, and strike out for 
 some cause with the strength of a newly liberated soul. 
 
 But vigor, admirable in any character, is not enough 
 for purposes of conversion and vitalization. Carlyle 
 compares with Browning in point of vigor. He had in- 
 tensity, the might of a Titan. But to what end was 
 his strength expended? Was it not strength beating it- 
 self out against prison bars, rather than strength freely 
 winging its way to new heights? Carlyle lacked the 
 far-seeing spirit. He knew no unity in the chaos, no 
 clue through the vast revel of the cosmic atoms. He 
 was short-sighted, hemmed in, fought in desperation 
 his friend and foe alike. Consequently, Carlyle dis- 
 courages, not empowers. He never sets his reader on 
 a hill or starts him on an endless journey. For the 
 guide himself sees no goal to be won, not even the 
 path for the feet. 
 
 Browning contributes power, opens up vistas, ex- 
 
60 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 plains destiny, imparts hope, reveals the goal. It is 
 his optimism that gives carrying power to his personal 
 vigor. His book regenerates through the fullness and 
 force of an embodied personality. 
 
 III. 
 
 A second aspect of Browning's esotericism is dis- 
 closed in the features of his artistic method. Instead 
 of adopting the objective stage as the scene of his 
 exploits, he chooses for a worthier place the soul itself 
 and depends upon the reader, as it were, to supply 
 the footlights, shift the scenes, give the cues and per- 
 form the action. The method which he follows is that 
 of suggestion, for the success of which the active re- 
 sponse of the reader is required. The author initiates 
 the poem but the reader completes it. In "Pauline" the 
 action in seen to take place within the soul ; the actors 
 are desires, passions, and thoughts, and without sub- 
 jective experience, the power of inner sight, the reader 
 can not follow the poem or understand a single mo- 
 tive. In the preface to "Paracelsus" Browning gave 
 warning to his readers: "A work like mine depends 
 on the intelligence and sympathy of the reader for its 
 success — indeed were my scenes stars, it must be his 
 co-operating fancy which, supplying all chasms, shall 
 collect the scattered lights into one constellation — a 
 Lyre or a Crown." 
 
 Not only is the process of a poem subjective but 
 also its unity. What one may call logical unity, that 
 form which characterizes most prose and some poetry, 
 is external; thought grows out of thought, line out 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 61 
 
 of line, in the relation of cause and effect. But syn- 
 thetic unity is internal; there are no visible causes — 
 only effects. Again in the preface to "Paracelsus" the 
 author explained his method : "It is an attempt to reverse 
 the method usually adopted by writers whose aim is 
 to set forth any phenomena of the mind or passions, 
 by the operation of persons and events; and that in- 
 stead of having recourse to an external machinery of 
 incidents to create and evolve a crisis I desire to pro- 
 duce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely 
 the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have 
 suffered the agency by which it is influenced and de- 
 termined, to be generally discernible in its effects 
 alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether 
 excluded." In many cases, then, the real action may 
 precede the one recorded. The poem will not begin 
 with the first line or end with the last line; it is that 
 which is suggested. The real poem is that developed 
 in the imagination of the reader, or it will be found 
 floating in a sea of idea. The unifying element is the 
 idea and not the form, just as at night unity is given the 
 stars by the sky and not by the light. It is not pos- 
 sible to count the stars ; it is not possible to enumerate 
 all the facts and experiences of life, but the multiple 
 stars are unified by their setting in a single sky and 
 the multiple facts may be gathered into a single unify- 
 ing principle, some universal essence, some solvent 
 of experience. Such a solvent is the principle of Love. 
 Browning's poems number several hundred ; their unity 
 is found in the principle of Love. This form of unity 
 I would call idealistic or esoteric. The reader dis- 
 covers the method when he finds that he must read 
 
62 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 a poem through before the meaning of the whole ap- 
 pears, then successive readings are required before 
 its full significance is made clear. Such is the method 
 employed by seers and mystics. Whitman said: "I 
 will not make poems with reference to parts. But 
 I will make poems, songs, thoughts with reference to 
 ensemble. And I will not sing with reference to a day 
 but with reference to all days. And I will not make 
 a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference 
 to the soul." Similarly Emerson might have said: "I 
 will not write essays with reference to parts but with 
 reference to wholes." For the unity of his essays is 
 ideal or synthetic. They have no logic — nor were they 
 meant to have logic. They contain something better 
 than logic — a universalizing idea. 
 
 Another characteristic of Browning's artistic method 
 is the correspondency existing between form and con- 
 tent. There are two classes of poets, the traditional 
 and the original. The first class aims to give a perfect 
 objective form to any given content, the form being 
 that which has received the sanction of tradition. The 
 poet of the second class permits the thought to shape 
 itself, striving only for self expression or revelation. 
 In a passage in "Aurora Leigh" Mrs. Browning asks, 
 "What form is best for poems?" Her answer is given 
 in terms of the untraditional class: 
 "Let me think 
 
 Of forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit, 
 
 As souvran nature does, to make the form; 
 
 For otherwise we only imprison spirit 
 
 And not embody. Inward evermore 
 
 To outward — so in life, and so in arfi 
 
 Which still is life. 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 63 
 
 Five acts to make a play? 
 And why not fifteen? Why not ten? or seven? 
 What matter for the number of the leaves, 
 Supposing the tree lives and grows? Exact 
 The literal unities of time and place, 
 When 't is the essence of passion to ignore 
 Both time and place? Absurd. Keep up the fire 
 And leave the generous flames to shape themselves." 
 
 This quite exactly describes the usage of many of the 
 leading artists of the century. The tendency of Wagner's 
 method, for instance, was to seek artistic effects in un- 
 derlying harmonies of thought and tonality. His music 
 springs from the words, and the words from the 
 music. "Unless the subject absorbs me completely," 
 Wagner wrote to his friend Uhlig, "I cannot produce 
 twenty bars worth listening to." And again he said: 
 "The musical phrases fit themselves on the verses and 
 periods without any trouble on my part; everything 
 grows as if wild from the ground." The orchestra is, 
 therefore, no mere accompaniment, but an essential 
 expression of the thought and action. "Every bar of 
 music," the author explained to Liszt, "is justified only 
 by the fact that it explains something in the action 
 or in the character of the actor." Always his themes 
 originate coherently and with the character of plastic 
 phenomena. In other words, renouncing the artificial 
 and formal symmetry of beat and measure, he endeav- 
 ored to correlate physical and psychical phenomena. 
 The beauty of his music is one that belongs to idea. 
 Such also is the beauty of Whitman's poetry. He 
 dared to permit the original creative energy to issue 
 forth without hindrance. There is a deep in man 
 below the region that mind arrogates mastery upon 
 
64 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 — a deep that is unsounded, recognized in every life 
 but not defined. The pulsing, dynamic motion of that 
 sea gives to Whitman's lines their form and fashion. 
 They are absolutely genuine, faithful to the mastery 
 of the soul, not independent as fluency and ornamen- 
 tation are, but dependent as truth is bound to be. His 
 poems grew out of their source as unerringly as lilacs 
 or roses on a bush. He is as careless about mere 
 beauty as the stars about numbers. Said another 
 esoteric artist, the French painter Millet: "Beauty is 
 the fit, the serviceable character well rendered, an idea 
 well wrought out with largeness and simplicity." 
 "Beauty is expression. If I am to paint a mother, I 
 shall try and make her beautiful, simply because she 
 is looking at her child.' , "Has not everything in 
 creation its own place and hour? Who would ven- 
 ture to say that a potato is inferior to a pomegranate ?" 
 In proof of these statements Millet would point to cer- 
 tain frescoes of Giotto at Padua and show how the 
 expression, the character in them was everything. 
 Their naturalness was fine even if it were only that of 
 one man washing the feet of another. And then by 
 way of contrast he would show the works of Titian 
 such as "The Nativity": "There," he would say, "the 
 figures lack the roughness of the peasant type, the 
 room is unlike a stable, the child is naked instead of 
 being wrapped in woolens. There you see the begin- 
 ning of an art of ornamentation." 
 
 In Browning the intimacy between the outer and the 
 inner is perhaps the closest in literary history. His 
 style and rhetoric are always dramatic. The inner and 
 the outer exactly correspond. Instead of having a few 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 65 
 
 standard forms or molds of expression he has as many 
 forms as poems. The critical question we have a right 
 to ask is concerning the adequacy of expression. Such 
 queries as: Is the poem musical, has it perfect rhyme, 
 is it smooth, soft, metrical, well ordered? — such quer- 
 ies will not reach the heart of the matter at all. But 
 has the poem character, does it say what it means, does 
 it act genuinely out of its own substance? — these 
 questions will win the secret. The poems display 
 a beauty that is not formal, but characteristic. The 
 love poems, for instance, which exhibit the perfect union 
 of kindred lives, are of unvarying sweetness. Hate will 
 introduce at once a jarring, discordant note, as in the 
 "Spanish Cloister." The Gipsy's song in the "Flight 
 of the Duchess," and the recital called "Mesmerism," 
 have mesmeric power to loosen and to bind. The 
 "Cavalier Tunes" move to their appropriate measures ; 
 the marching of the soldiery, the circling of wine cups 
 in the air, the galloping of horses. "The Grammar- 
 ian's Funeral" proceeds by slow steps and solemn 
 pauses. "Abt Vogler" opens with the pulse of the 
 music that is still beating in the musician's soul. "An- 
 drea del Sarto" reflects the quiet silver gray of the 
 evening and darkens with the spread of night over 
 the painter's home. In these poems, Browning proves 
 himself the undisputed master of the psychological 
 method. 
 
 Any genuine criticism of Browning starts then from 
 the inside, and this is the most difficult of all forms 
 of criticism, requiring preparation both deep and wide, 
 deep in personality, wide in knowledge. Any techni- 
 cian, however evil-minded, can correct bad drawing, 
 
66 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 but only one who has the capacity for being inspired 
 can interpret drawing. The critic must become the 
 artist, he takes his stand at the center, and watches the 
 growth of form out of thought, a growth that in the 
 case of a great and genuinely creative artist is always 
 vital and inevitable. It is to the critics of the formal 
 type that Browning turns in one of his poems : 
 
 "Was it grammar wherein you would 'coach' me — 
 
 You — pacing in even that paddock 
 
 Of language alloted you ad hoc, 
 With a clog at your fetlocks — you scorners 
 Of me free of all its four corners? 
 Was it 'clearness of words which convey thought'? 
 Aye, if words never needed enswathe aught 
 
 But ignorance, impudence, envy 
 And malice — which word-swathe would then vie 
 With yours for a clearness crystalline? 
 
 But had you to put in one small line 
 Some thought hig and bouncing — as waddle 
 Of goose, born to cackle and waddle 
 And bite at man's heel, as Goose- wont is 
 Never felt plague its puny os frontis, 
 You'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered, 
 
 Clear cackle is easily uttered!'* 
 
 V. 
 
 A third aspect is the philosophic. Browning is a 
 profound thinker. Having philosophic content to dis- 
 close, he employs for. that purpose innumerable sym- 
 bols. His ideas rarely appear in their abstractedness but 
 as draped in sights and sounds. Through the sym- 
 bols we are able to reach back to the ideas and dis- 
 cover a complete systematic philosophy. The sym- 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 67 
 
 bols, in short, relate to just three themes : the Good, 
 the True and the Beautiful, which in the last syn- 
 thesis become resolved in the one supreme conception 
 of the Absolute Love. All the incidents and persons 
 are absorbed in the idea. The objects are multiple, 
 but the idea is one. What has been accomplished 
 is the illustration of a transcendental philosophy. 
 Browning has done for idealism what Dante did for 
 mediaeval theology — made it visible. We perceive 
 in his poems philosophy in masks. Philosophy loves 
 and hates, hopes and fears, strives, fails, succeeds. 
 W r e perceive men in many guises and in many cir- 
 cumstances, governed by Reason. We contemplate 
 thought thinking itself, then by a strange indirection 
 we become the thinker, and construct a philosophy: 
 God in the absolute is the ultimate essence, with at- 
 tributes of Power and Love. The particular and tem- 
 poral modes of Power's and Love's manifestation are 
 Truth, Beauty, and Love, with their opposites, False- 
 hood, Ugliness, and Hate. The triad of positive and 
 continuing factors, while existing in correlation (since 
 their ground is the one Unity), have different means 
 of expression in Time, and require for perception in 
 the human the development of special faculties. Truth 
 abides in the objective realm, where God's Power op- 
 erates, and is the concern of the Intellect. Beauty 
 and Love reside in the subjective, where God's Love 
 is made manifest, and are the motives, respectively, of 
 Feeling and the Moral Will. Truth is abstract, and is 
 gained by observational and ratiocinative process, 
 having its ground in the object world. Beauty and 
 Love are concrete, and rest in immediate perception, 
 
68 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 since they begin and end in human consciousness. 
 The scientist approaches God by unending steps of 
 hypothesis and proof; the artist and lover know Him 
 face to face. Art and religion, in their turn, while 
 agreeing in their intuitional and concrete methods, 
 are differentiated by the medium in which each has 
 its operation. Love is purely spiritual, having its 
 source in God; art is publication, and in order to 
 affect the sensibilities of men, employs material media 
 — stone, color, sound or language. For the exhibition 
 and dispersion of this metaphysics, Browning's poems 
 may be said to exist. 
 
 In one thing, Browning as becomes a poet, stands 
 supreme, namely, in the emphasis placed upon Love. 
 Other philosophers had chosen for their absolute prin- 
 ciple Idea, as with Hegel, or Will, as with Schopen- 
 hauer. The poet saw that the solvent of all phenom- 
 ena, natural and spiritual, was Love. To know Love 
 is to know God. And Browning has lovers of many 
 kinds — the Grammarian, who loved knowledge and 
 devoted his life with enthusiasm to the doctrine of 
 de and oun; Fra Lippo Lippi, who loved his Flor- 
 ence and its environment of mountain and wood; 
 Aprille, who loved Beauty, whose aspiration it was 
 to carve in stone the forms of things, and for his 
 shapes to paint a world, and into his world to infuse 
 through song all passions and soft emotions, and, con- 
 summating all, to supply all chasms with music; then 
 above all, the lovers of Love: Rudel, Norbert, Pom- 
 pilia, who, though suffering deprivation and pain, 
 found light enough in the eyes of the loved one to rise 
 to heaven. 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 69 
 
 Love is aspiration, the want and passion of the 
 soul, the Platonic madness. It is the pursuit of some- 
 thing, the eager quest of an ideal. 
 
 Metaphysical as this conception is, Browning does 
 not lose himself in the abstraction, but faces fairly 
 and courageously the actual incidents of nature and 
 man. Nature exhibits power and intelligence, but it 
 seems to be in moral strife, indifferent to weal or woe ; 
 but penetrate deeply enough, and God appears in the 
 stock and the stone, in the plant and the bird, an evo- 
 lutionary force tending to the Good. In the world of 
 men wrong is often on the throne, and evil seems often 
 to endure beyond the good; but look deeply enough, 
 and the wrong is righted and evil is seen to serve. 
 
 Beyond all others, Browning is the poet of love in 
 its human aspect. You will not find anywhere, ex- 
 cept in modern fiction, a treatment of the relations 
 between the sexes so honest and truthful. Other 
 poets have shunned this field, except to write sonnets 
 to their mistresses' eyebrows. Were it not for the 
 novel, the Italian opera, and Browning, we would 
 hardly be aware of the presence of two sexes in the 
 world of artistic folk. If a New Zealander were to 
 visit America with Emerson as a guide-book, what il- 
 lumination would he receive concerning the most com- 
 mon facts that would meet his observation. Emerson 
 suspected the sexes. He was silent about them, be- 
 cause his philosophy of idea did not contain them. 
 But what a multitude of men and women throng 
 Browning's pages — men and women, loving, hating, 
 united, estranged, in every degree of relationship. A poet 
 who starts right is apt to conclude right. He wins 
 
70 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 our allegiance by his truthfulness in treating the 
 world's most primitive theme. 
 
 From this philosophy seen in essence in the life of 
 men and women, the larger theory of the universe 
 proceeds. The universe is love coming into mani- 
 festation. The world is a becoming. The mode is 
 evolutionary, an unending process. Love was at its 
 beginning, accompanying the "first huge Nothing." 
 Slowly the plan of the earth unrolled — a plan involving 
 love as its motive and end. Man appears endowed with 
 unsatisfied yearnings. With man began a tendency to 
 God. In the order of process a Christ appeared, a god- 
 man, the all-loving, fulfilling the prophecy of the uni- 
 verse, outlining what was to be. In the fullness of time 
 men shall be as gods. Love shall reign from star to star. 
 
 Concerning the evolutionary process Browning ad- 
 vances the following propositions : Evolution is an order 
 imposed on every object in virtue of its being. There is 
 no escape. If the object lags at one point, it is hastened 
 at another. All things are thrust out into the cosmic 
 stream. The soul of things moves as the planets in their 
 orbit, hasting, unresting. Redemption is wrought into 
 the very constitution of things. The Christs do not save 
 — the universe saves. 
 
 The sign of evolution is aspiration. Growth is a com- 
 ing into being. The whole universe groans in its travail, 
 yearning for accession of life. It reaches out its hands 
 after God. It is not what man does, but what he would 
 do, that exalts him. There is no good fixed and abso- 
 lute, the attainment of which marks one's salvation. The 
 good is the desire for the good. Salvation is a process. 
 Attainment is a tendency. Paracelsus reached the point 
 
THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 71 
 
 of death, with body marred and soul a wreckage, but he 
 pressed God's lamp to his breast. He saw the truth, and 
 the seeing gave him means for a never ending progress. 
 What he achieved was not a fixed salvation, but a ten- 
 dency. All good is relative. 
 
 The accompaniment of evolution is struggle. Ma- 
 terials offer obstruction to spiritual possession. The 
 artist finds his media intractable. He cannot mold the 
 clay as he would; he shapes, re-shapes, adds, subtracts 
 the stubborn materials, only to make a shape all unlike 
 his desire. So life presents unsealed walls. Our pur- 
 poses are balked. Nevertheless, there can be no peace. 
 Browning sounds the call to battle. He does not avoid 
 the evil, waiting for Nirvana, an ending in dream. Rather 
 he welcomes the strife, grapples with the evil, endures 
 the pain and defeat. That is the way of the world, not 
 to be resisted. 
 
 Evolution is eternal. As love was at the beginning, 
 so love continues in the process. There is no stoppage; 
 there can be no stoppage. Love is exhaustless. Immor- 
 tality is not a dogma — it is an experience. It is the con- 
 sciousness of growth in love. , 
 
 Starting with an esoteric philosophy, the principle of 
 which works by inner evolutionary or esoteric means, 
 the very outworking of this principle in his own life 
 lead Browning to personalize his poetry and to follow 
 the evolutionary or esoteric method in the forms of his 
 art. 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART: GEORGE 
 
 INNESS. 
 
 I. 
 
 "Some persons suppose," said George Inness, in one of 
 his wonderfully suggestive conversations, "that land- 
 scape has no power to communicate human sentiment; 
 but this is a great mistake. The civilized landscape pe- 
 culiarly can, and therefore I love it more and think it 
 more worthy of reproduction than that which is savage 
 and untamed. It is more significant." In these words, 
 George Inness, whom I fain would believe the greatest 
 among landscape artists, touches upon a discovery that 
 the human mind has been long in making; the discovery 
 of the essential unity and kinship of all living things, the 
 discovery that landscape, sunshine and atmosphere yield 
 a full and adequate response to human thought and feel- 
 ing, that these have significance, not only in their own 
 right, but also as defining and interpreting man's own 
 subjectivity. 
 
 The stages of exploration whereby the world's paint- 
 ers have approached the monistic conception are three: 
 the first, a transitional era, during which, having some 
 faint perception of kinship with nature, men freed them* 
 selves from the theological dogma of dualism ; the second, 
 the stage of realism, when under the direction of ma- 
 terialistic science, painters looked outwardly and de- 
 scribed phenomena in their superficial aspect; the third, 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 73 
 
 that of idealization, corresponding to the modern stage 
 of monistic science, when the discovery was made that 
 nature has its mystery, that there is something underly- 
 ing the objective reality, that "something," perceived by 
 Wordsworth, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, 
 and in the mind of man," and which is further described 
 as "a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, 
 all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things." 
 The time of emancipation and first discovery was the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries, and exactly coincided 
 with the emancipatory movements inaugurated by Luther 
 in the sphere of religion and by Copernicus and Galileo 
 in the realm of knowledge. Nature, to be sure, had been 
 employed to some extent by the early Italian masters, 
 but simply as background. In the paintings of Fra 
 Filippo Lippi and Botticelli and other members of the 
 Renaissance group, even as early as Fra Angelico of the 
 strictly pietisic and ethical school, appear charming little 
 bits of landscape hidden away in the background of 
 madonnas and saints, seen perhaps only through win- 
 dows and open doors as if the caprice or accident of the 
 moment. And in these dainty glimpses of clouds, woods, 
 mountain and river the suggestion is stealthily made that 
 saints and madonnas were not wholly heavenly minded, 
 but lived environed by the facts of this our mundane 
 sphere. "The world's no blot for us, nor blank," Brown- 
 ing makes Lippi say, "It means intensely and means 
 good." The discoveries of science, the substitution of 
 the sun for the earth as the center of the planetary sys- 
 tem, destroyed forever the egotistic assumption of the 
 centrality of man in the universe; and the history of 
 
74 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 painting from that day to this might almost be said to 
 consist in the disappearance of man as having sole and 
 independent value, and in the advance of the backgrounds 
 of the early painters into the foreground of art's canvas. 
 By the seventeenth century, in the works of Reubens, 
 the Poussins, Claude Lorraine, and Salvator Rosa, the 
 independence of landscape is acknowledged. Nature, 
 it is true, was treated by these painters with hardly a 
 touch of realism. Their canvases are formal, pedantic 
 and artificially composed. But their task was not to re- 
 alize but to emancipate. There is even the need of com' 
 promise and in many paintings, whose chief interest is 
 clearly that of the natural scene, some figure from the 
 old scriptures or reminiscent of the mythologies would 
 be included in deference to the traditions. 
 
 It belonged to the Dutch painters of the seventeenth 
 century, to the group about Hobbema and Ruisdael, to 
 ascertain with accuracy the content of the objective 
 vision. Certain aspects of nature, as the forms of trees, 
 the manner of running water and moving clouds, occa- 
 sionally the fugitive play of light, were understood by 
 them as never before, and recorded with fidelity to the 
 object. Their pictures bear signs of their penetrating 
 observation; their objects are heavy with the pull of 
 gravitation, but of inter-penetration, of the sense of re- 
 lationship between the painter and the scene there is 
 scarcely a token. In the Christian masters there was 
 lacking the sense of the actual; even more do we miss 
 in the work of the Dutch painters of this period the feel- 
 ing of surmise. But after long centuries of neglect of 
 nature, their task was to study, explore and record the 
 objective world. To man and objects they gave equal 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 75 
 
 value. Their motive was realism; their merits were 
 frankness and fidelity in handling the objects of vision. 
 
 Upon the Dutch painters and their honesty of report 
 the idealists built their superstructure — or if this figure 
 be too dualistic, let it be said that when Constable and 
 Gainsborough saw how good the actual appeared when 
 seen with the objective eye, they were emboldened to 
 record the results of a more penetrating and sensitizing 
 vision. The movement now begun in England and con- 
 tinued in France by the Barbizon painters has reference 
 to the idealization of landscape, or more properly to the 
 realization of the ideal or sensient element in landscape. 
 Varied as are the actual forms of nature, the perception 
 on the part of modern painters of the sensient life gov- 
 erning forms is even more various, the difference, how- 
 ever, being measured by relative depth of vision rather 
 than by the presence or absence of humanizing capacity; 
 for one and all are monistic in tendency and perceive 
 that nature is passional and that passion is natural. Con- 
 stable, a painter of the transition, carries still something 
 of the material burden of the Dutch painters ; but so deli- 
 cate is Corot in sentiment that only the quiet morning or 
 the evening, treated with Doric simplicity and harmony, 
 measures his still nature. Less classic than Corot, Rous- 
 seau, whose symbols are distance, sky depth, and intri- 
 cate woods, strikes deeper into nature's sentiency. In 
 Delacroix the objects of nature appear almost altogether 
 as symbols, so conscious is he of kinship in language. 
 With George Inness the identities are well nigh perfected, 
 with the emphasis laid perhaps a little too strongly upon 
 his own impression: yet I would not call Inness — or 
 indeed any painter of this group — an impressionist, but 
 
76 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 an expressionist. His two hundred and more land- 
 scapes are the notes and jottings of a soul's biography. 
 Could all his paintings be displayed together in the order 
 of their composition, they would show even in their so- 
 lution of the problems of light and perspective the stages 
 of his spiritual history. To this state, then, landscape art 
 has arrived : a single painting may be faithful at once to 
 what is called nature and to what is termed human ; with- 
 out neglecting any of the problems of natural form and 
 color, a painter may serve his own need of self expression. 
 "Was somebody," said Whitman, "asking to see the soul ? 
 See your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, 
 beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands." 
 
 II. 
 
 The annals of Inness's life are simple. A biographer 
 would note his Scotch descent, the general Celtic bear- 
 ing and habit of gesture, rapid speech, and imaginative 
 conversations, which might lead to the recollection of 
 Matthew Arnold's proposition that from the Celtic the 
 English derives its "natural magic." He would mark 
 the slender, agile form, the lines of the face, denoting 
 extraordinary fire and energy — the face that in later life 
 had the drawn intensity of Michael Angelo's. The paint- 
 er's career — the labor he endured first as a grocer's ap- 
 prentice, then in an engraver's shop, before he found his 
 kingdom, and then his struggles for place and mainten- 
 ance after his true work had begun — would illustrate the 
 certainty of genius of possessing its own. His visits to 
 Europe and acquaintance with the Barbizon painters 
 whereby the direction of his art was confirmed would be 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 77 
 
 pointed to as one of the happy accidents whereof no man's 
 life is bereft. His excitement at the news of the firing 
 on Fort Sumpter and his insistence upon going to the 
 war, though he could not pass the examination, would 
 furnish diversion and be seen to redound to the painter's 
 humanity. The record of idyllic periods, of home and 
 studio life at and near New York and Boston, of suc- 
 cesses and increasing fame, would make up a biography 
 that in its main lines would be not unlike that of many 
 others born in uninspiring environment, but destined by 
 pure force of genius to achieve great name and fame. 
 
 III. 
 
 To get the secret of an art so unique in its quality of 
 balancing the outer and inner, one must seize on the 
 genius itself. Primarily, Inness was a man of ideas, 
 holding carefully considered opinions not merely upon 
 art, but respecting questions of science and metaphysics. 
 He was himself a "spiritualist" and agreed on the whole 
 with Swedenborg. He was a voluminous writer in both 
 prose and verse, and left masses of manuscript. His 
 writings prove him to have been a mystic. One of his 
 studies was concerning the science of numbers, wherein 
 he developed a system of mathematical symbols: thus I 
 denoting infinity, 2 conjunction, 3 potency, 4 substance, 
 5 germination, 6 material condition, etc. While fre- 
 quently incoherent and rhapsodical in composition, there 
 was no lack of force or directness in speech. He was 
 an astonishing talker when once aroused to deny or af- 
 firm — as strenuous as Carlyle and with something of the 
 same Scottish disputatious nature. His judgments were 
 
78 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 invariably formed on the authority of the inner conscious- 
 ness. "The consciousness of immortality/' he once said, 
 "is wrapped up in all the experiences of my life, and this 
 is to me the end of the argument. Man's unhappiness 
 arises from disobedience to the monitions within him." 
 In argument, he supported the side of the sincere and un- 
 conventional. Among painters he admired such men as 
 Daubigny and Rousseau in whom there was no trace of 
 affectation. He was impatient with men like Bouguereau 
 and Verboeckhoven, who painted "mercantile imbecili- 
 ties" from simple spiritual inertia. He thought Meis- 
 sonier, Jerome and Detaille wonderful painters, but that 
 their aim was material rather than spiritual, imitative 
 rather than creative. He pronounced Turner full of 
 falsity and clap-trap, saying that Turner's Slave Ship 
 was the "most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted," 
 that there was nothing in it and it was not even a fine 
 bouquet of color. He thought Millet the greatest figure 
 painter that ever lived, that he conveyed the sentiment of 
 labor and home with just enough of objective force for 
 perfect lucidity. "If a painter," he said, "could unite 
 Meissonier's careful reproduction of details with Corot's 
 inspirational power, he would be a very god of art. But 
 Corot's art is higher than Meissonier's. Let Corot paint 
 a rainbow and his work reminds you of the poet's descrip- 
 tion, The rain-bow is the spirit of the flowers.' Let Meis- 
 sonier paint a rain-bow, and his work reminds you of a 
 definition in chemistry. The one is poetic truth, the other 
 is scientific truth; the former is aesthetic, the latter is 
 analytic." 
 
 Among his views on art, I note the following: "What 
 the painter tries to do is simply to reproduce in other 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 79 
 
 minds the impression which a scene has made upon him. 
 A work of art does not appeal to the intellect. It does 
 not appeal to the moral sense. Its aim is not to instruct, 
 not to edify, but to awaken an emotion. This emotion 
 may be one of love, of pity, of hate, of pleasure, or of 
 pain; but it must be a single emotion if the work has 
 unity, as every such work should have, and the true 
 beauty of the work consists in the sentiment or emotion 
 which it inspires. Details in the picture must be elabor- 
 ated only full enough to reproduce the impression that 
 the artist wishes to produce. When more than this is 
 done, the impression is weakened or lost, and we see 
 simply an array of external things, which may be very 
 cleverly painted and look very real but which do not 
 make an artistic painting. The effort and the difficulty 
 of the artist is to combine the two: to make the thought 
 clear and to preserve the unity of impression." "The true 
 use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual 
 nature, and secondly, to enter as a factor in general civili- 
 zation. Every artist who, without reference to external 
 circumstances, aims truly to represent the ideas and emo- 
 tions which come to him when he is in the presence of 
 nature, is in process of his own spiritual development, 
 and is a benefactor of his race. No man can attempt the 
 reproduction of any idea within him from a pure motive, 
 as love of the idea itself, without being in the course of 
 his own regeneration. The difficulties necessary to be 
 overcome in communicating the substance of his idea 
 (which in this case is feeling or emotion), to the end that 
 the idea may be more and more perfectly conveyed to 
 others, involves the exercise of his intellectual faculties ; 
 and soon the discovery is made that the moral element 
 
80 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 underlies all, that unless the moral also is brought into 
 play, the intellectual faculties are not in condition for 
 conveying the artistic impulse or inspiration." "The 
 principles that underlie art are spiritual principles — the 
 principle of unity and the principle of harmony. Christ 
 never uttered a word that forbade the erecting or enjoy- 
 ing of sensuous form. The fundamental necessity of the 
 artistic life is the cultivation of the moral powers, and the 
 loss of those powers is the loss of artistic power. The 
 efforts of the Catholic Church to excite the imagination 
 are admirable, because the imagination is the life of the 
 soul. Art is an essence as subtle as the humanity of God, 
 and like it, is personal only to love — a stranger to the 
 worldly minded, a myth to the intellect. I would not give 
 a fig for art ideas except as they represent what I, in 
 common with all men, need most — the good of our prac- 
 tice in the art of life. Rivers, streams, the rippling brook, 
 hillsides, sky, and clouds — all things that we see — will 
 convey the sentiment of the highest art, if we are in love 
 with God and the desire of the truth." 
 
 IV. 
 
 That Inness embodied general esoteric ideas and mean- 
 ings in his paintings there is no reason to doubt, in spite 
 of the evidence of their astonishing objective force. He 
 believed himself to be inspired, and that "spirits" super- 
 intended his painting. His mind teemed with subjects, 
 derived from sources he knew not of, and his soul con- 
 ceived more rapidly than even his busy hand could shape. 
 His coloring, rich and luminous, has both objective and 
 symbolic values. I doubt not that the lines of form in 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 81 
 
 his pictures, the relation of perspective and distance, were 
 determined in accordance with a subtle symbolism of line 
 and number for the interpretation of which the world 
 has no key. Most of his pictures regarded objectively 
 are studies in light. From descriptive notes by Richard 
 Gruelle, I make a redaction of several paintings : 
 
 a. You are looking down the center of a broad street in a 
 village. In the distance you see a mass of indistinguishable ob- 
 jects, bathed in a warm purple grey atmosphere, full of mysterious 
 suggestiveness. On the right are some low buildings painted with 
 an uncertain effect. Near them are some tall, slender trees with 
 tremulous leafage. Near by is a cottage, rustic and picturesque, 
 on the front of which the moon's light falls. From a window in 
 this light, you see the faint glow of a lamp, whose flickering ray 
 struggles wierdly with that of the moon. A bit of fence and 
 some weeds complete this part of the picture. In the mid-distance 
 and still to the right, some trees are but dimly seen, above which 
 are the spires of a church. On the left is a group of trees, clad 
 in golden green-gray foliage, their tall, graceful forms casting 
 long phantom-like shadows on the ground. In the center of 
 the street you see a woman accompanied by a dog. High above, 
 the moon wings its way through the vast expanse of ethereal blue, 
 while just above are tender grey clouds, ghost like in their evasive- 
 ness and upon which the moon's light makes but faint impress. 
 The entire scene is saturated with a mysterious light, the effect 
 of which is enhanced by the lengthening shadows cast from the 
 various objects and falling forward. 
 
 b. In the midst of a bit of swampy meadow, where weeds 
 and grasses grow in great luxuriance and are accented here and 
 there by clusters of wild flowers, stands a white cow. The full 
 ray of the sunlight falls on the animal with almost dazzling bril- 
 liancy, illuminating the surrounding verdure into a mass of beauti- 
 ful yellow-green hues. The upper sky is cloudy, a shower passing. 
 From the upper right hand of the canvas and extending downward 
 until lost among the grasses is a beautiful rain-bow. To the left 
 is a group of trees robed in dark luxuriant green; back of them 
 
82 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the clouds are torn asunder and a rift of sunlight breaks through. 
 Over all is the gloss of early summer — the very essence of June. 
 
 c. A sky of charming blue, flaked with fleecy white clouds 
 which hover low down on the horizon. A distance in which a 
 picturesque village is seen nestling snugly among foliage of mel- 
 low coloring. To the left is a row of slender trees whose pale 
 yellow leafage shimmers in sunlight, which falls tenderly on the 
 verdure of a bit of meadow, turning it into a mass of warm yel- 
 low green found only in Autumn. This light merges by almost 
 imperceptible gradations into the cool, velvety shadows which fall 
 from trees of sombre coloring. In the foreground is a pool of 
 water around which tall grasses and weeds grow. Rich, luminous 
 and transparent the picture glows with the beauty of harmony. 
 It is that coloring in which there are woven colors that thread 
 up through and form into tones full of solemn grandeur. It is as 
 a beautiful ode to Autumn, yet written in the language of the 
 painter pure and simple. 
 
 d. You are in the midst of a grand old forest upon which 
 many centuries of time have been registered. Here we have the 
 solemn hush of the primitive solitude, in whose awful silence you 
 commune with the soul of all things. There are no figures intro- 
 duced; in fact, nothing that would disturb the all prevailing senti- 
 ment of repose. A shaft of sunlight tears its way through the 
 dense foliage, turning all that is touched into deep golden tones 
 save where it falls with marvelous beauty and power upon the 
 trunk of an immense old tree. Here lichen, moss and fungus are 
 transformed into gleaming color, that is gem-like in its effect. 
 The light, which seems to saturate everything clings with tenacity 
 to the old tree as if it wanted to linger. From this brilliant 
 point the eye passes through gradation of rare chromatic beauty, 
 into velvety shadows whose depths are filled with deep sombre 
 colorings in which the gamut is almost exhausted. These tones 
 likewise grade into a second mass of light farther back in the 
 picture which is brought into contrast with the cool tones which 
 are seen in the extreme distance. Here the lights are cool and 
 phosphorescent in quality, and emerald light in color. As a 
 piece of coloring it is unsurpassed. The relationship of light and 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 83 
 
 shade, of warm and cool tones, the bold rugged drawing of the 
 tree forms, are well nigh perfect. 
 
 The last picture, entitled "Sunset in the Woods," was 
 begun at the moment of receiving the impression of the 
 actual scene, but waited seven years for completion. 
 "The idea," Inness said of it, "is to represent an effect 
 of light in the woods near sundown, but to allow the im- 
 agination to predominate." Here doubtless is the secret 
 of the art of Inness. Fused with the actual landscape 
 is another landscape. Blended with the thing seen is the 
 man seeing. But landscape and painter coincide to some 
 purpose. What was taken from the landscape that was 
 symbolic — what was contributed by Inness that the 
 picture might be expressive? I think the symbolism of 
 Inness's paintings refers almost without exception to 
 w T hat is evanescent and mysterious in all life. Inness was 
 attracted to light on account of its elusiveness. He 
 loved to paint at the hours of the day most character- 
 ized by movement — he seized the dawn at its uprise, the 
 sunlight in wane, the clouds that chased each other in the 
 air or as shadows over the earth. He intercepted that 
 most subtle and mysterious moment when sunlight and 
 moonlight mingle, and shadows cross. In such moments 
 Inness realized his unity with nature. In evanescent 
 light, he found the outward tally of a fugitive soul of 
 fire. 
 
 V. 
 
 The personal characteristic that most distinguished 
 Inness was intensity. It is the mark of all greatly crea- 
 tive natures, of those who develop from within outward. 
 When absorbed in work, the lapse of time was never 
 
84 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 noticed. He was known to work at times nearly the 
 entire day, and while the inspiration lasted the impulse 
 of his mind seemed to extend through the fingers to the 
 brush, and fairly energize the canvas. Otherwhiles his 
 moods were changeful and, not to sacrifice his energy, 
 he would arrange a number of canvases in his studio 
 upon each of which he would work as the mood directed. 
 At other times, the picture would change its motive under 
 his hand and starting out as a morning scene might end 
 as a summer afternoon; or dissatisfied, picture would be 
 imposed upon picture, one canvas being said to contain 
 twenty-five separate and superimposed pictures. To a 
 mind controlled from without by codes and conventions, 
 conduct such as this seems indicative of madness. Such 
 phenomena, however, require other explanation. "The 
 question is not yet settled," said Poe, "whether much 
 that is glorious — whether all that is profound — does not 
 spring from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the 
 general intellect." In other days Inness would have been 
 spoken of as "beloved of the gods." We are not yet cer- 
 tain to what extent a sensitive soul may work under sub- 
 conscious direction, from what universal sources a genius 
 may trace its derivation. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In France the reaction against the positive and scien- 
 tific has gone to the extreme of transcedentalism. Purely 
 subjective painters, like the so-called French Symbolists, 
 will employ color to effect psychic states with no inten- 
 tion of objective simulation. It is the merit of Inness 
 that he stayed in his evolution at the point of balance. 
 
SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 85 
 
 Because he reconciled nature and the soul so wholly and 
 joyously, he is fitted to be named among the great 
 monists. He has many affinities with Whitman. They were 
 both mystics and occultists of a high order, yet refused 
 to subdue sensation utterly to consciousness. The poet 
 colors a landscape with the sensory appeal of the painter, 
 and the painter meets the poet on the high plane of the 
 spiritual. They are both pantheistic and monistic: 
 Inness more special and subtle in his sense of identity, 
 Whitman more elemental and cosmic. Where Inness 
 finds in the evanescence of light the typical symbol of 
 existence, Whitman seeks the sea and reads in its abysmal 
 motion, its ebb and flow, the secret of being : 
 
 "Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, 
 Of you tides, the mystic human meaning: 
 Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, 
 The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song." 
 
 Inness was more intense in special directions, Whitman 
 more brooding and inclusive ; but both were original and 
 creative and gave tokens of identical inspiration. In 
 one instance the poet measured strength with the painter. 
 To accompany Inness's painting "The Valley of the 
 Shadow of Death," and to correct its gloomy view, Whit- 
 man wrote "Death's Valley :" 
 
 "Nay, do not dream, designer dark, 
 Thou hast portray'd or hit thy theme entire; 
 I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having 
 
 glimpses of it, 
 Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol 
 
 too. 
 For I have seen many wounded soldiers die, 
 After dread suffering — have seen their lives pass off with smiles; 
 
86 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 And I have watch'd the death-hours of the old; and seen the 
 
 infant die; 
 The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors; 
 And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty; 
 And I myself for long, O Death, have breath'd my every breath 
 Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee. 
 
 And out of these and thee, 
 
 I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee, 
 
 Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark — for I do not fear thee, 
 
 Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot), 
 
 Of the broad, blessed light and perfect air, with meadows, rippling 
 
 tides, and trees and flowers and grass, 
 And the low hum of living breeze — and in the midst God's 
 
 beautiful eternal right hand, 
 Thee, holiest minister of Heaven — thee, envoy, usherer, guide at 
 
 last of all, 
 Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call'd life, 
 Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death." 
 
 Though Inness's picture is filled with the gloom of the 
 valley, yet I doubt not that when he passed through on 
 his journey he might have uttered, with much cheer, the 
 last words of Daubigny: "I'm going up to see if Corot 
 has any new subjects to paint." 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE. 
 I. 
 
 Two modes of criticism have been developed in the 
 history: of judgment which may be designated by the 
 terms "aristocratic" and "democratic," on the ground that 
 as the art of an aristocracy is the product of an exclus- 
 ive culture, the object of the accompanying criticism is 
 to develop and discipline "good taste," and as the art of 
 a democracy is an outcome of generous human impulses, 
 the aim of its criticism is to increase and fortify per- 
 sonality. 
 
 In a "classic" age, the ideal of which is to have and 
 be the "best," the fine arts are patronized and enjoyed 
 in the interests of an intellectual and special culture. 
 The reader of books, reclining at ease in his library chair, 
 assumes the judicial attitude and essays to find that in 
 the book which accords with "good taste" and "right 
 reason." He concerns himself largely with questions of 
 taste, matters of style, and principles of correct compo- 
 sition. A Matthew Arnold selects a line from Dante and 
 one from Chaucer and uses them as touchstones of pro- 
 priety. The aesthetic canons that support this criticism 
 relate to principles of refinement, selection, symmetry, 
 balance and proportion, the general effects, that is, in- 
 volved in the standard classical canon of order in variety. 
 
 The classical canon was a rule of temperance. The 
 Greeks lived resolutely in the whole, loving equally truth 
 
88 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 and beauty and goodness, proportioning the play of each 
 faculty so as to secure the largest total effect of life. With 
 the authority of their matchless achievements they im- 
 posed upon all succeeding art and criticism an aesthetics 
 corresponding to their ethics. 
 
 But the classical idea of perfection, as it has received 
 application in the modern world, is an ethics of restric- 
 tion. Intellectualism dominates the process. Today to 
 be cultured in the classical sense means to be intellec- 
 tually refined and polished and to have the impulses of 
 the heart well under the control of the head. To be 
 socially aristocratic means to seek the attainment that 
 only the few can achieve and to abhor the coarseness and 
 vulgarity that attach to the general mass. So to be 
 critically aristocratic is to love the good form and the 
 grand manner that spring from a prerogatived culture 
 and to detest the imperfections that belong to universal 
 and humanistic art. 
 
 The first great force that affected aesthetics to the 
 opposition of the exclusory canon of culture was Chris- 
 tianity. Christ directed the sight of the world away 
 from the external to the truth of the inner life. The 
 beauty of his religion is the beauty of holiness. The 
 contest between the two principles of beauty is well illus- 
 trated in "Quo Vadis," by Henryk Sienkiewicz, which 
 may be read as an allegory of the struggle between 
 sense and soul in the transition period from paganism to 
 Christianity. Greek poetry and beauty passed with the 
 death of Petronius and Eunice, but a higher poetry and 
 beauty was born at the marriage of Vinicius and Lygia. 
 "Whoso loves beauty is unable to love deformity," said 
 Petronius, the arbiter of elegance. But in the mind of 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 89 
 
 Vinicius was generated the idea that another beauty 
 resided in the world, a beauty immensely pure, even 
 though deformed, in which a soul abides. 
 
 The next considerable force that tended to modify the 
 classical standards was science. Instead of the cultured 
 man, science rewards the knowing man; and instead of 
 the art of "good form," it advocates an art of true fact. 
 In one sense science is an apotheosis of the common- 
 place. It exalts comprehensiveness. From its micro- 
 scope, piercing inward to the atom, and from its tele- 
 scope, pointing outward to the star, nothing is excluded 
 that is inclusive. The love of pure truth which science 
 has engendered, and the truer view of the constitution of 
 things which knowledge has brought, has had a profound 
 effect upon both artistic production and criticism. The 
 first great result of science was the dispossession of the 
 field of art of its conventional themes and the substitu- 
 tion of realities in their stead. Painting and literature, 
 the representative arts, have been the arts especially 
 affected. The weary round of madonnas and saints that 
 the church required of its pietistic painters gave way be- 
 fore the awakened enthusiasm of men for the common 
 sights of the town and woodland — "the shapes of things, 
 their colors, lights, and shades, changes, surprises." 
 
 Fra Filippo Lippi was in too early revolt against the 
 religious theme to establish a method, but still in his 
 ideas he was a precursor of scientific landscape art. 
 Browning in his poem on this artist makes the painter 
 monk say to his captors, the constables of Florence : 
 
 Do you feel thankful, ay or no, 
 For this fair town's face, yonder river's line, 
 The mountain round it and the sky above, 
 
90 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Much more the figures of man, woman, child, 
 These are the frame to? What's it all about? 
 To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, 
 Wondered at? 
 
 If science had not then come in to answer this question 
 " What's it all about?" and to construct a new and vital 
 mythology of nature, we might still be admiring St. Law- 
 rence toasting on the irons, or Jerome beating with a stone 
 his poor old breast. 
 
 In literature science has rendered nugatory for modern 
 service the whole body of imaginative myths and fictions. 
 "Geology," says Professor Chamberlain, "has dispos- 
 sessed Hades. A great field of gloomy imagery is gone. 
 Dante's 'Inferno' is a literary phenomenon that will 
 never recur. On the earth the whole category of ghosts 
 and witches, of demons and dragons, of elves and fairies 
 are gone, and the literary function they subserved is de- 
 stroyed. The 'Hamlet' of the future may have its Hamlet, 
 but not its ghost. Astronomy has swept away the mystic 
 heavens and destroyed still richer and brighter fields of 
 imagery. Aurora and Phoebus and the crystalline sphere 
 are gone. The curtain of the heavens has been folded up 
 and laid away as the garments of our children, as things 
 loved but outgrown. Olympus is gone. Milton's cosmos, 
 equally with his chaos, is only a picture of the past. 
 The richest imagery of all past literature has lost its 
 power save as the glory of the past. And this is simply 
 because it was not true." Truth is indeed the key word 
 of science. To this everything is sacrificed. But while 
 old things have passed away, a new literary heaven and 
 earth are being created, and upon the new materials 
 imagination proposes to work with the old potency and 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 91 
 
 charm and idealization. Whitman speaks the word of 
 the modern in his declaration that "the true use for imag- 
 inative faculty of modern times is to give ultimate vivi- 
 fication to facts, to science, and to common lives, endow- 
 ing them with the glories and final illustriousness which 
 belong to every real thing and to real things only. 
 Without that ultimate vivification which the poet or 
 other artist alone can give, reality would seem incom- 
 plete, and science, democracy, and life itself finally in 
 vain." If facts are to be made into art, the one factor 
 necessary is the sufficient artist to harvest, grind, knead, 
 and bake the facts. After the success of Emerson, Ten- 
 nyson, Browning, and Whitman in handling scientific 
 material there need be no fear of default in imaginative 
 creation in art. It may be that the actual knowledge 
 we shall gain of the visible universe will make the fic- 
 tions of fancy comparatively petty and jejune. How 
 sublime are the heavens to Whitman ! Can fancy exceed 
 this simple statement: 
 
 I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, 
 
 And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the 
 rim of the farther systems. 
 
 Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, 
 
 Outward and outward and forever outward. 
 
 My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels; 
 
 He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit; 
 
 And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside 
 them. 
 
 See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, 
 
 Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. 
 
 With this introduction of scientific fact into the produc- 
 tive field, the intrusion of the scientific spirit in the realm 
 of criticism could hardly be avoided. Something was 
 
92 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 needed to recover criticism from its "primrose path of 
 dalliance" and to give it serious content. For the criti- 
 cism of taste, during the period of declining aristocracy, 
 had become mere dilettantism, mere tasting and relishing 
 and objecting; in the words of Professor Freeman "mere 
 chatter about Shelley," or in the phrase of a still severer 
 castigator of cultured methods, Professor Gildersleeve, 
 "mere sensibility and opulent phraseology," "finical fault- 
 finding," or "sympathetic phrasemongery." In the face 
 of such incompetency science, with its inductive method, 
 its conception of law, had no difficulty in bringing the 
 artistic world to a new point of view. The general effect 
 of scientific methods and ideas upon aesthetics has been 
 to advance the spirit of disinterestedness, to adopt rela- 
 tive for absolute standards, to emphasize matter instead 
 of manner, and to introduce notions of life and growth. 
 "Before all else," says Professor Dowden, an exponent 
 of scientific interpretation, "the effort of criticism in our 
 time has been to see things as they are, without partiality, 
 without obtrusion of personal liking or disliking, without 
 the impertinence of blame or applause." Perhaps of 
 greater significance has been the recognition of law 
 which has lifted the study of art out of the dominion of 
 elegant trifling and allied it to the important science of 
 life and mind. Specifically, three schools of study have 
 arisen under the domination of the scientific spirit: first, 
 the investigators who undertake the "higher criticism" 
 of texts and deal narrowly with questions of fact ; second, 
 the inductive interpreters who work broadly with the fac- 
 tors of age, race, and environment, evolution and person- 
 al force, or who scrutinize specific compositions to deter- 
 mine the principles of interpretation ; third, the "compara- 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 93 
 
 tive" group, who conceive literature as one of the 
 provinces of universal nature, whose aim is to compare 
 literature, to study origins, the development and dif- 
 fusion of literary themes and forms, to group the whole 
 body of literary facts according to natural lines of evolu- 
 tion, and to write the history of man in so far as that his- 
 tory is reflected in his imaginative creations. 
 
 II. 
 
 Contemporary with the seething intellectual movement 
 which brought science to birth, a mightier and more ex- 
 tensive social revolution created the second of the modern 
 Titans, democracy. Democracy, operating both as a 
 destructive and a constructive force, was destined from 
 the first effectually to destroy the monarchic and feudal 
 position, to modify or supplement the ideas and methods 
 of science, and to start the critical world toward a new 
 point of view. 
 
 The general significance of the democratic movement 
 in art is well expressed by Edward Carpenter in his 
 poem "Towards Democracy :" 
 
 Art can no longer be separated from life; 
 
 The old canons fail; her tutelage completed, she becomes equiva- 
 lent to "Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous with 
 the clouds and waterfalls. 
 
 The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old classifi- 
 cations and definitions 
 
 The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent 
 heart heaving as though it would break — 
 
 At the sound of the new word spoken, 
 
 At the sound of the word "democracy." 
 
 Wholly indifferent to the outcry of a privileged culture, 
 
94 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 democracy has brought about an extension of the bounds 
 of art in three directions. In another paper I have spoken 
 of the inclosure in the field of art, through the growth 
 of the modern spirit, of the average and the universal 
 man. Democratic art has taken for its set purpose to un- 
 fold the beauties inherent in the people and to declare the 
 glory of the daily walk and trade. Two features of the 
 movement which have bearing upon the theory of art re- 
 main to be considered. First, the distinction drawn by 
 aristocratic culture between the fine arts and the in- 
 dustrial arts, is losing its force. The removal of bound- 
 ary lines does not point to the abasement and vulgariza- 
 tion of the fine arts, but signifies rather a radical and 
 violent reversal in aesthetic theory. The grounds of art 
 are shifting from outward formalism to some principle 
 relating to the subjective play and life. The artist is the 
 maker, the free creator, who molds materials of many 
 kinds to the end of pleasure and self-realization. When 
 the industrial artist works under the conditions of free- 
 dom and self-realization, he ceases to be a slave to com- 
 merce and production, is entitled to the name of the fine 
 artist as well as to his rewards in joyous existence — the 
 rewards that the divine artist gets in his own creations. 
 Not a perfect object but a perfected man, not a rigid 
 definition but a fluid personality, is the end of social- 
 istic art. 
 
 The one mind that has penetrated the waste bewilder- 
 ment of the industrial world, understood its tendencies, 
 and solved the problem of its emancipation, is William 
 Morris, whose career as a poet, master workman and 
 socialist has been determined by his conversion and sub- 
 sequent adherence to the cause of democratic art. Morris' 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 95 
 
 great life work has not been his poems but his theory of 
 life. The redemption of the toiling masses of men from 
 themselves, their environment and their actual oppressors, 
 by a life expanding toward an ideal beauty to be realized 
 in every activity from the lowest to the highest — this has 
 been the end for which the poet labored. His desire to 
 return art (by which he meant the pleasure of life) to 
 the people explains his abandonment of his early lyrics 
 and epics, his espousal of socialism as a means of redemp- 
 tion, and his industrial experiments in proof of the easy 
 .alliance of beauty and life. 
 
 The propositions of industrial aesthetics may be briefly 
 formulated in the following terms : First, beauty and art 
 are no mere accidents of human life, which people can 
 take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of 
 concrete living — unless men are content to exist in a man- 
 ner less than the highest. Second, beauty is a subjective 
 effect and to be defined in terms of pleasure. And the 
 highest pleasure is that which arises when an artist is 
 given permission to set forth freely in forms that which 
 his mind conceives. "That thing," said Morris, "which I 
 understand by real art is the expression by man of his 
 pleasure in labor." Third, granting the pleasure of life 
 to be the essence of beauty, how can beauty be univer- 
 sally realized? How but by the association of beauty 
 and that which is commonest and nearest, the labor of 
 the human hand? Labor is not rightly a preparation for 
 living but a consecrated means of living. Labor becomes 
 life when it is in the direction of a man's will. Structure 
 should arise out of the soul. Decoration is the expression 
 of man's pleasure in work, the play of the hand in free 
 activity. The pleasure that the fine artist enjoys returns 
 
96 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 to the people when the people in their turn learn to ex- 
 press themselves in their daily work with the artist's 
 freedom and to the end of self-realization. Then are art 
 and labor associated to the consecration of each, and 
 modern industrialism is emancipated from its slavish sub- 
 jection to a machine and a product. The popularization 
 of art involves the two factors, the return of creation to 
 that which man must perforce make and the return of 
 pleasure to that which man must perforce use. 
 
 The association of art and labor is no new experience 
 in the race's history. The life of the people of Japan 
 furnishes a convenient illustration of the power of beauty 
 to enhance the pleasure of living. Among the Japanese 
 the love of art is innate, its production universal. Labor 
 of every kind, even to the tilling of a tiny plot of ground 
 or the building of their modest homes, is done as much 
 to give delight in contemplation as to supply the gross 
 needs of daily existence. The common articles of use 
 bear the impress of artistic fingers. They are made to 
 strike the senses by their beauty as the first effect of their 
 use. Care is taken to build the home that it may com- 
 mand an ample view of the country side. The charm of 
 their towns lies in their location and in the design of 
 street and garden and grove. Nature is made subser- 
 vient to their aesthetic impulses. Their appropriation 
 of the world is not mechanical but personal. When a 
 tree blossoms and flowers bloom an ecstacy is felt by the 
 farmer, not at the prospective crop but at the immediate 
 spectacle. A bird is held in regard for its song and plum- 
 age. A mountain is the symbol of the celestial paradise. 
 They have exorcised the demon of hurry. They live for 
 their ideals, working with loving care upon minutioe 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 07 
 
 which seem to the Western mind incompatible with the 
 serious business of life, the making fame, wealth, leis- 
 ure, luxury. The result is that the poorest endure an 
 otherwise burdensome lot with equanimity because of 
 the satisfaction beauty affords the finest instincts. As a 
 race the Japanese, in the land of flowers, are simple in 
 their modes of life, quick in intelligence, gentle in charac- 
 ter, elastic in temperament, juvenescent in feeling — a 
 race kept ever young by their love of beauty. 
 
 Among European peoples there was a time in the Mid- 
 dle Ages when art and labor had their due association. 
 That was the short, brilliant period when labor, having 
 won its freedom, expended its energies in the erection of 
 the Gothic cathedrals. "In the twelfth century," said 
 William Morris, recounting the struggle for freedom, 
 "the actual handicraftsmen found themselves at last face 
 to face with the development of the earlier associations 
 of freemen which were the survival from the tribal so- 
 ciety of Europe ; in the teeth of these exclusive and aristo- 
 cratic municipalities the handicraftsmen had associated 
 themselves into guilds of craft, and were claiming their 
 freedom from legal and arbitrary oppression and a share 
 in the government of the towns ; by the end of the thir- 
 teenth century they had conquered the position every- 
 where, and within the next fifty or sixty years the gover- 
 nors of the free towns were the delegates of the craft 
 guilds and all handicraft was included in their associa- 
 tions. This period of their triumph, marked amid other 
 events by the battle of Courtrai, where the chivalry of 
 France turned their backs in flight before the Flemish 
 weavers, was the period during which Gothic architec- 
 ture reached its zenith." The glory of Gothic architec- 
 
98 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 ture lies in the association of art and labor in construc- 
 tion : labor was free, and free labor issued in glorious art. 
 
 In like manner the struggle of the modern world to 
 gain its industrial independence is leading directly toward 
 artistic constructiveness. Every gain in freedom means 
 a step forward in art. The issue of the industrial battle 
 is perhaps the greatest in history. For in it are wrapped 
 up the possibilities of a universal art. It is not possible 
 that the interests of men can be for very long confined 
 to the development of the mechanical energies alone. 
 
 The principle of industrial aesthetics, and conspicu- 
 ously the canon of the pleasure of life, are fortified and 
 proved by the result of scientific investigation into the 
 origin of the artistic impulse. Evolutionary aesthetics 
 points to a conception of art as the outcome and embodi- 
 ment of the freer and higher activities of being. By 
 means of the principle of play, first suggested by Schiller, 
 but for which in this connection the name of Herbert 
 Spencer stands, the origin of art in primitive man is in- 
 telligibly explained. Briefly stated, the knowledge pre- 
 vails that art had its origin when the race had reached 
 that stage of culture that it could rise above mere physi- 
 cal necessity and gratify the instincts and feelings just 
 dawning into consciousness by engaging in free "play." 
 Play, as a form of more or less spontaneous expression, 
 implies freedom from physical needs, an excess of life 
 functioning, some conscious satisfaction, and a certain 
 power of abstraction. When play came to be consciously 
 regulated under some principle of order, and conducted 
 to the satisfaction of higher instincts and the conveyance 
 of the sense of spiritual significance in material things, 
 the long process of art began. 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 99 
 
 Evolutionary aesthetics agrees with the propositions 
 of industrial anesthetics in regard to the primal principle 
 of the importance of beauty in life. In play primitive 
 man, engaging in an ideal exercise, brought into ac- 
 tivity, and therefore into fuller consciousness, the various 
 ideal faculties of his being. It would seem that art, 
 considered in its aspect of play, is the goal of all life. As 
 Schiller says, man "only plays when in the full meaning 
 of the term he is man, and he is only completely man 
 when he plays." Evolutionary advance is along the line 
 of the selection and survival of beauty. The agreement 
 of the theories is even closer in respect of the univer- 
 sality of the artistic instinct and the corresponding need 
 of every human being to become a free creator if he is 
 to live the life designed by nature and advance himself 
 into higher forms of spiritual godlikeness. The play 
 of evolutionary aesthetics is the pleasure of industrial 
 aesthetics, and play and pleasure are just so much of 
 spiritual significance added to life and labor. 
 
 A third aspect of the general question appears in what 
 may be called educational aesthetics, meaning by this 
 the theory of beauty that concurs with the principles and 
 methods of the new education. The new education dif- 
 fers from the old in regard to purpose and means. The 
 education of the past has been in a great measure special 
 and aristocratic. The feudal system evolved a curriculum 
 directed to the shaping of a gentleman, a dignified and 
 exalted object, and the gentleman in his turn took care 
 to preserve his position by insuring general ignorance on 
 the side of the masses and a special culture for himself 
 and fellows. The means employed was an exclusive 
 school with its classical studies and its formal discipline. 
 
 - 3 
 
100 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Though social conditions changed from century to cen- 
 tury, and the world at large grew slowly democratic, the 
 school remained a stronghold of the nobility and retained 
 its feudal forms and traditions. Almost to the present 
 day the school has educated its pupils intellectually and 
 prepared them to live in an aristocracy. It has left them 
 selfish and destroyed sympathy and the spirit of good 
 will. So far as this education was aesthetic it followed 
 the classical canon of culture, the canon of selection and 
 refinement. To strive for selection and refinement in an 
 age of humanity, to separate men from each other when 
 the conditions of social happiness require association, is 
 to leave life bare and barren. An education formed on 
 the lines and principles of a Greek temple is too narrow, 
 perfect, and exclusive to meet the wants of an era of ex- 
 pansion. Mutterings of discontent have recently been 
 heard from some who recognize the failure of the dogma 
 of discipline and who have visions of the future of good 
 will. A prominent educator, Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth, 
 has recently voiced this feeling of dissatisfaction: "Our 
 schools have followed too largely the monarchical idea, 
 and too little the plan of self-government, which repre- 
 sents the spirit of the Republic. We look out on the 
 moral conditions of the people with alarm, and there 
 comes to the prophetic souls the strong conviction that we 
 must have a new order of universal education — an educa- 
 tion that tends to character on the principle that 'power 
 lies in the ultimates' — to make a new generation to meet 
 the higher demands of the age." The age demands 
 character, not merely knowledge or discipline. It de- 
 mands a full-rounded personality, capable of responding 
 to the myriad appeals of environment, equipped for sen- 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 101 
 
 sation, feeling, thought, and conduct. It demands an 
 education that shall .ial in its forms and altruistic 
 
 in its motive. The failure of the present mod : urther 
 
 enforced by Mr. Butterworth: "Our present system of 
 elementary education does not rise to the moral require- 
 ments of the age; it stands toe largely for the develop- 
 ment of memory for the purpose of mere money-makir ; 
 to the neglect of the nobler spiritual faculties. It toe 
 often leaves out the cultivation of the heart and the train- 
 ing of the hand, the quickening of conscience and the 
 growth of the moral perception. Such a system is not 
 education in any large sense; it is what Pestalozzi ca' 
 'mere instruction. 5 The education that makes character, 
 individual and national, begins with the heart, the con- 
 science, and the imagination." Another censure of like 
 import has been rendered by Josephine Locke: "Our 
 education has been too mathematical and too analytic; 
 it has trained the individual for self-preservation at the 
 expense of his relationship to his fellows. It has blinded 
 him to co-operation with the great law of evolution: vi- 
 carious suffering, self-sacrifice. How has it done tins? 
 By presenting the studies isolatedly for their own sak, : . 
 and by teaching each subject in its immediate details, in 
 its Gradgrind facts, by the omission of the aesthetic 
 element, by the exaltation of culture for culture's sake, 
 by the offering of stimulants to excellence and by giving 
 the disciplinary and formal studies precedence over the 
 nourishing and informal." There is need, therefore, in 
 modern culture of securing some effective means of 
 cherishing the ideal within the soul. We need a new 
 standard of values. The educational reforms in contem- 
 plation provide for the application of the principle of 
 
102 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 self-activity in all lines of development. This involves the 
 substitution of character for knowledge, an inward striving 
 for an outward accomplishment, an experience for a 
 derivation, the exercise of the whole social personality 
 for mere intellectual display. As means to secure the 
 spiritualization of education the advocates of the new 
 theory offer creative or artistic studies in the place of 
 formal or disciplinary ones. The child learns by creat- 
 ing. The power by which educational activity is carried 
 on is imagination. This is the central faculty upon the 
 development of which depends the efficiency of the facul- 
 ties of observation and judgment, the exercise of the 
 reason, the activity of the will, and the responsiveness 
 of the moral sympathies. The studies calculated to dis- 
 cipline and nourish the imagination are the arts. Art is 
 liberation. It is instinct, feeling, spontaneity. It is the 
 full activity of the self. Good will lies at the heart. Its 
 characteristics are freedom, self-activity, and love. 
 
 Whether the ideal of the new education can be realized 
 remains to be seen. Surely the child, modeling a form 
 in the pliant clay, affords a happier and more hopeful 
 sight than the child learning by rote a printed page. As 
 the new movement is the outcome of democracy, we may 
 expect its advance with the increase of the democratic 
 spirit. The sesthetical principle involved is the same as 
 that presented by science and the new industrialism, the 
 principle of play. May it not be that through the opera- 
 tion of evolution, the struggles of industrialism to se- 
 cure the freedom of the workers, and the efforts of the 
 school to reach the hearts and souls of its pupils a new 
 aesthetic man will rise to grace the later ages of the 
 world ? 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 103 
 
 Besides establishing the canon of pleasure for the cre- 
 ative artist, democracy has given formulation to a second 
 though allied principle of aesthetics for the use of the 
 critic: the canon of correspondency or the canon of the 
 characteristic. With the development of the modern 
 spirit questions respecting the nature of beauty have 
 again arisen. Does beauty lie in the right relation of the 
 parts of a composition or in inherency and wholes? Is 
 it something artificial and conventional, or something 
 attached to vital functioning? Is it conserved by obedi- 
 ence to the aristocratic canon of order, or to the demo- 
 cratic canon of the characteristic? "My opinion," said 
 Walt Whitman, "has long been that for New World ser- 
 vice our ideas of beauty need to be radically changed and 
 made anew for to-day's New World purposes and finer 
 standards." Sooner or later the New World, for pur- 
 poses of its own, will construct a complete system of 
 aesthetics from the point of view of character or in- 
 herency. The feeling for beauty may be said,, indeed, 
 to be wide as life itself. Some stages of this expansion 
 of interest may be seen in the never-ending revolt against 
 the restrictions imposed by the classical canon of order, 
 with the result of inaugurating at certain times vast and 
 far-reaching revolutionary movements in the direction 
 of the romantic. Theoretical stages of this change are 
 discoverable in the growth of the term "beauty" in point 
 of its inclusiveness. Up to the eighteenth century the 
 term referred almost exclusively to that which was appro- 
 priately designed and ordered. But nature exhibited 
 aspects harsh and terrible and uncouth, which neverthe- 
 less had interest to men. To explain human sympathy 
 with that which was not well ordered, the theory of the 
 
104 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 sublime was developed, at first without relation to the 
 theory of beauty, but later falling within its scope. At 
 the same time the theory of the ugly was broached, the 
 ugly being regarded as the negative of the beautiful. 
 But recent aesthetics understands that the ugly, by be- 
 coming characteristic, may be made a subordinate ele- 
 ment in the effects of beauty, and so the theory is ab- 
 sorbed in the larger conception. 
 
 From a wider historical and philosophical point of view 
 the stages of advance may be indicated by reference to 
 the development of an important principle of thought. 
 The Greeks were held at the stage of naturalistic monism, 
 and, finding unity in external nature and in form, the 
 aesthetic canon of order in variety sufficed the needs of 
 their philosophy. The Middle Ages, under the influence 
 of Christianity, advanced to the stage of romantic dual- 
 ism, a vast gulf being fixed between an infinite ideal of 
 perfection and any possible attainment in a finite world. 
 The philosophy so deepened its knowledge with respect 
 to the universe within that the mind learned to rely upon 
 a symbol for the expression of its thought, without re- 
 gard to the formal quality of the means. Thus far no 
 adequate synthesis had been reached. The Greeks found 
 unity in nature through defective idealism. The Middle 
 Ages arrived at unity in the infinite through an imperfect 
 sense of the finite. The last and modern stage of spiritual 
 monism represents on the one hand the closure of the 
 gulf between form and content, under the combined 
 forces of idealistic philosophy and monistic science, 
 which together reveal the immanent reason in both the 
 world without and the world within, and on the other 
 hand the attainment of a new svnthesis of ideal in form. 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE I } 
 
 A form idealized has the unity neither in the form r tot 
 in the idea, but in an idealized form that is different frc 
 either form or idea; it is form made abstract; it is idea 
 made concrete. The racial expression of this philo- 
 sophic synthe overable in the grc big ses se 
 the solidarity ;iety which is manifestly increasing 
 through the extension of individual importance. 1 
 artistic outcome of the process is an art that does not aim 
 primarily at a beautiful form, but at the most adequate 
 expression of some particular content. The correspond- 
 ing critical theory is one that scrutinizes form for its 
 meaning- and idea for adequate expression. Philosophic 
 monism, social democracy, characteristic art, and the 
 corresponding aesthetics are parts of one stupendous 
 social movement. 
 
 According to the canon of the characteristic, beauty 
 lies in significance. Beauty comes into being when a 
 
 nificant content is duly expr^; "Which is the rr. a r e 
 
 beautiful," asked Millet, "a straight tree or a crook 
 tree' And he answered forthwith: "Whichever is the 
 most in place. The beautiful is that which is in place." 
 This describes the music of Wagner, and of other ro- 
 mantic composers ; the beauty of whose music does r t 
 rest in tone or relation of tone, but in the adequacy 
 of expression to meaning. The form is beautiful in 
 far as it has been absorbed in mind and feeling. As the 
 middle term between form and content is the artist who 
 gives the idea to the form, as no content can get inf. a 
 form without first being in the man, art has come to . 
 defined as "the utterance of all that life contair But 
 
 life must be sincere. Beauty abides in creation on the 
 artist's part, in re-creation on the observer's part. The 
 
106 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 admission of the personal element carries with it the 
 justification of artistic egotism and even lawlessness; 
 the real law, however, is not outer but inner. The ugly 
 takes a place in the synthesis if it can be flushed with 
 meaning. The grotesque gargoyles of a Gothic cathedral 
 are directly related to the creed which the cathedral ex- 
 hibits ; they have the same right there as the figures of 
 angels. The way is opened for the play of suggestions 
 and associations. Formal art is displayed to the senses 
 and to the logical intellect ; characteristic art quickens the 
 imagination and throws the observer back upon his own 
 power to deal artistically with realities. It has multiple 
 standards, inasmuch as the possible relations between 
 form and idea are infinite. One perfection in art does 
 not destroy any other perfection any more than one eye- 
 sight countervails another eyesight. The classical standards 
 are not destroyed, provided the idea is of such a nature as 
 to require the abstraction of form for its presentation. 
 Further, characteristic art is often indeterminate in value. 
 It is beautiful to one who can make it so. More than 
 ordinary demands are made, therefore, upon the critic 
 who would realize the unity of art that depends upon 
 meaning. Schlegel makes this clear in discussing the 
 higher unity of a play: "The separate parts of a work 
 of art are all subservient to one common aim — namely, 
 to produce a joint impression on the mind. Here, there- 
 fore, the unity lies in a single sphere, in the feeling or in 
 the reference to ideas. This is all one, for the feeling as 
 far as it is not merely sensual and passive, is our sense 
 or organ for the Infinite which forms itself into ideas for 
 us. Far, therefore, from rejecting the law of a perfect 
 unity in tragedy, as unnecessary, I require a deeper, 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 107 
 
 more intrinsic, and more mysterious unity than that 
 with which most critics are satisfied." 
 
 III. 
 
 Further considerations of the canon of pleasure, play, 
 and the characteristic will lead to a constructive defini- 
 tion of democratic criticism. 
 
 The test of good art in a democracy must be its ca- 
 pacity to satisfy some universal requirement in human 
 nature. Democratic art is to conquer in the plane of the 
 common and general. What, then, is the paramount 
 human wish, the realization of which brings happiness, 
 the denial of which causes despair? I recall a drawing 
 by William Blake, entitled "I Want," which represents 
 a man standing at the foot of a ladder that reaches from 
 the earth to the moon, up which he longs to climb. Is it 
 the moon we all want ? anything so far distant ? Is it not 
 something nearer at hand, as near as hands and feet, life 
 itself? I do not mean that we all seek to escape death, 
 but that we yearn here and now for full abounding ener- 
 gized being. As the poet says : 
 
 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
 life, not death, for which we pant; 
 More life, and fuller, that I want. 
 
 We want the fulfillment of the promise of every 
 faculty. We want the greatest possible health of body, 
 activity of mind, glow of emotions, play of imagination, 
 force of will, vitality of character. We want the thou- 
 sand possible streams of thought and will-impulse set 
 freely flowing within us. Whence comes the satisfac- 
 
108 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 tion of the want we all know to be universal ? Where but 
 from the source and fount of life, from art in which life 
 has abundantly entered — life conceived after the heart's 
 desire, life made not to the end of good taste alone, or 
 of knowledge alone, but involving the whole of nature to 
 the end of universal progress? Said Goethe in the midst 
 of the waste and bewilderment of his time: "Art still 
 has truth ; take refuge there." Art in its entirety is the 
 expression of man's being in its entirety. 
 
 A perfect response to art requires the activity in the 
 observer of those faculties of being to which the artist 
 has made his appeal. He who is unwilling or incapable 
 of yielding the sympathetic response fails in his inter- 
 pretation just to the extent of his denial. The best 
 student of art is the one who is alive at most points, who 
 can accept the challenge of the artist to the contest of 
 thought and feeling, who in his own being is as active as 
 the artist himself. 
 
 Before venturing upon a constructive definition we 
 may inquire what is wanting in the methods of "good 
 taste" and of scientific interpretation, when considered 
 from the point of view of life's freedom and power and 
 pleasure in play. 
 
 The criticism of taste is manifestly inadequate to our 
 modern democratic needs. It was a method that came 
 into vogue during periods of aristocracy, when men were 
 more concerned about the manner of their speech and 
 dress than the matter of their thought and character. It 
 is a method essentially narrow, exclusive, the special 
 instrument of a literary coterie and professional class. It 
 is not, and cannot ever be universal. Democracy calls 
 less for the fine phrase, the selected gracious ornament, 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 109 
 
 more for the large view, the inner character, the grand 
 personality that betokens universal life itself. The criti- 
 cism of taste has, however, one important feature: it 
 contains ideas of the best, it has standards of the right. 
 Even a democracy wants to know the best things thought 
 and said in the world. The criticism that does not give 
 rank to works of art fails in its important mission. 
 When art comes to the judgment of the people, upon 
 what grounds will rank be given ? On the ground of the 
 "grand manner?" or on the ground of the "grand" per- 
 sonality? Evidently works of art will be adjusted accord- 
 ing to their capacity to satisfy and develop personality. 
 One of the wisest utterances ever made in criticism is the 
 dictum of Wordsworth concerning poetry: "If it con- 
 tributes to the pleasures of sense, that is one degree; if 
 to the higher pleasures, its rank rises as the whole per- 
 sonality of the reader is called into action." Such a stand- 
 ard is inner and not outer. Then books that read well in 
 parlors will pass with difficulty in the open air, in streets 
 and workshops. With the standard of "good taste" a 
 democracy has little to do. 
 
 The scientific process has the advantage of being more 
 universal. At least it is dependent only upon ability to 
 handle the method, and not upon culture or refinement. 
 It may be employed by any one who has intelligence; it 
 has been used by those who have only patience and in- 
 dustry. The objection to induction is that in remaining 
 objective scientific criticism omits from its results fully 
 one-half, often the whole, of the artistic effect, the sub- 
 jective — that is, the response which the observer in his 
 own creative capacity gives to the call of the artist. Pure 
 induction does not allow for personal absorption or pro- 
 
110 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 vide for individual associations. It is afraid of enthu- 
 siasms. It denies any necessity of vital response. So 
 long as men remain moral and sentient, there can be no 
 disinterested endeavor to find the truth of art. In scientific 
 criticism an attitude too exclusively intellectual is taken 
 toward that which is a product of the whole man as a 
 thinking, emotional, imaginative, and moral being: 
 "Love, hope, fear, faith," says Browning, "make hu- 
 manity." It is as Edward Carpenter said to the moon : 
 
 I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through 
 their telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body; 
 
 But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully, they 
 do not see you personal and close, 
 
 As you disclosed yourself among the chimney tops each night 
 to the eyes of a child, 
 
 When you thought no one was looking. 
 
 Research, it seems, is too analytic; detaching form 
 from idea and idea from form, it destroys the synthesis 
 of reality and life. Science has imperfect standards, 
 weeds and flowers having the same value under its 
 scrutiny. While immeasurably valuable as a means, the 
 scientific understanding of art can never become the end 
 of knowledge. As was finely said by Professor Blackie : 
 "Not from any fingering induction of external details, but 
 from the inspiration of the Almighty, cometh all true 
 understanding in matters of beauty. All high art comes 
 directly from within, and its laws are not to be proved by 
 any external collection of facts but by the emphatic as- 
 sertion of the divine vitality from which they proceed." 
 
 To close with a definition of criticism from the stand- 
 point of democratic aesthetics it may be asserted ( I ) the 
 effects of beauty depend upon the presentation of that 
 
THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 111 
 
 which stimulates, within the limits of pleasurable action, 
 any or all of the faculties of being, the senses, the intellect, 
 the emotions, the imagination, and the will. (2) Criti- 
 cism is the statement of an effect, or the wording of the 
 result of the vital contact of a work of art upon an ener- 
 gizing personality. 
 
 Democratic criticism includes in its scope both the ob- 
 jective and the subjective. It takes account of the me- 
 dium in space and time and also of the subjective re- 
 sponse. It requires personal absorption. It permits the 
 fullest play of those vital associations which are differ- 
 ent in every person. The end of its work is not "good 
 taste," not knowledge, but life and character. 
 
AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION: TOLSTOI. 
 
 Leo Tolstoi, with respect to his personal history, may 
 be said to describe a series of contraries. Thus he is a 
 Russian opposed to Muscoviteism, a revolutionist who 
 offers no resistance to evil, a follower of Christ who 
 abjures Christianity, an artist who mocks at beauty, an 
 author who disbelieves in copyright, a noble who 
 preaches brotherhood, a man of over seventy years who 
 says he is but thirty-two. 
 
 The explanation of this strange and complex history is 
 found in the fact of his spiritual conversion in 1873. 
 Before that date he was a Russian count, an atheist, a 
 nihilist, an artist of the aristocratic school. But, turning 
 from his past, and accepting Christianity in the terms of 
 the Sermon on the Mount, it was not long before he 
 left the palace for the fields and began to write accord- 
 ing to a new definition of art. In Christianity and 
 what may be called Peasantism his whole life is now 
 contained. Christ gives him the principle of the new 
 life, the peasant shows how it may be accomplished. 
 
 In conversation with Henry Fisher, Tolstoi recently 
 gave the following account of his "new birth": "It's 
 all so lifelike, I might have experienced it yesterday: 
 A beautiful Spring morning, God's birds singing and 
 His insects humming in the grass. My horse, tired of 
 the great burden which I, brutelike, imposed upon his 
 back, stood still under the wooden image of the Christ 
 at a cross-road. I was so absorbed in the contempla- 
 
AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION : TOLSTOI 113 
 
 tion of the scene that I indulged the beast, allowing 
 the reins to rest upon his neck while he rummaged fot 
 young grass and leaves. By and by a group of moujik 
 pilgrims intruded upon my resting place and without 
 knowing what I was doing I listened to their prayers. 
 It was the most wholesome medicine ever administered 
 to a doubting soul. The simplicity and ignorance of 
 the poor moujik, the confiding moujik, the ever hopeful 
 moujik, touched my heart. I came from under that cross 
 a new man. When I led my beast of burden — God's 
 creature, like myself — away, I knew that the kingdom 
 of God is within us and that the literal interpretation of 
 the Sermon on the Mount should be the crowning rule 
 of a Christian's life." From this it appears that a peasant 
 was the agent of Tolstoi's redemption. And Peasantism, 
 working on in the heart of the man, disrupting his 
 old ideas, carried forward to completion the transfor- 
 mation that began with a spiritual conversion. To pre- 
 sent the whole history of Tolstoi it would be necessary, 
 therefore, to consider the play and interaction of these 
 two forces. It is possible, however, to separate them 
 in thought and to trace the line of Peasantism inde- 
 pendently. 
 
 Specifically, Peasantism displayed its effect in Tol- 
 stoi in two ways. It determined the spirit of his phi- 
 losophy of life and formulated in particular one of 
 his few practical precepts for conduct, and it furnished 
 him a standard of judgment with reference to which 
 he criticised the current forms of religion, government 
 and art. 
 
 Consider the temper of his practical philosophy. By 
 way of negation he has said, "Offend no one," "Take 
 
114 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 no oath," "Resist not evil." For personal commands 
 he wrote, "Be pure," "Love mankind." Then, with 
 the full force of Peasantism upon him, he said, "Do thou 
 labor." This precept dates from the writing of "Anna 
 Karenina," which appeared in 1875. From the time that 
 Levine saved himself from pessimism by dwelling a 
 day in the fields with the mowers, Tolstoi has proclaimed 
 the doctrine of labor. Then take into view his social crit- 
 icisms. The ideas advanced to condemn the present or- 
 der are those of an average respectable, intelligent 
 peasant. It is as if a peasant spoke. Is it not, indeed, 
 a peasant's face that confronts us in his pictures? It 
 seems that a man, born out of his due place in the 
 palace, found in the fields at length the place to which he 
 was destined by his very nativity — a place in nature and 
 among realities. 
 
 To make this latter critical attitude altogether clear, 
 one feature only of his Peasantism may be selected for 
 exposition, his ideas on art. 
 
 A brief historical survey will be sufficient to clear 
 the ground for Tolstoi's definition of art. For about 
 two centuries now art has been defined in terms of 
 beauty. The theory of art as beauty arose among the 
 wealthy and cultured classes of Europe in the eighteenth 
 century, its scientific formulation being due to a German 
 metaphysician, Baumgarten, who flourished about 1750. 
 From that time to this the field of art has been narrowing 
 and refining, the artist withdrawing more and more from 
 life, and within his special realm developing technique 
 and abstracting form, until what is called the fine arts 
 alone receive recognition, and among fine artists only 
 the most dextrous to manipulate form win the plau&ifc 
 
AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION : TOLSTOI 115 
 
 of the cultured world. For two centuries, in short, art 
 has been developing along aristocratic lines. Criticism, 
 likewise, has been called to serve the requirements of 
 a society devoted to pleasure. The decision as to what 
 is good art and what not has been undertaken by the 
 "finest nurtured." The natural result of the refining 
 process has been the creation of an art from the enjoy- 
 ment of which the great masses of men are excluded. 
 
 Now Tolstoi is one of a small company of men who 
 perceive the necessity of a new order of art. The 
 spirit of the new day is universality. A culture that 
 does not carry with it the whole people is doomed to 
 failure. And this universality is to be gained not through 
 the extension of aristocratic culture among the people, 
 not through the education of the masses in the philoso- 
 phy of the classes, but through a new philosophy and a 
 new criticism that shall meet the demands of a democratic 
 society and result in an art that shall be in its own nature 
 universal in character. I do not see that democracy 
 means either leveling up or leveling down; it means 
 life on wholly new terms. The old art will be destroyed, 
 root and branch, and a new art rise that shall start from 
 the broad basis of the people's will. For the old art 
 is based on privilege ; the new art will not be simply the 
 extension of privilege, but the utter rejection of privi- 
 lege. Whitman gives what he well calls "the sign of 
 democracy" in the following sentence: "I will accept 
 nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on 
 the same terms." 
 
 In harmony with this thought, Tolstoi seeks to start 
 a new definition of art: "To evoke in oneself a feeling 
 one has once experienced, and having evoked it in one- 
 
116 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 self, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds 
 or forms, expressed in words, so to transmit that feel- 
 ing that others may experience the same feeling — this 
 is the activity of art." "Art is a human activity, consisting 
 in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain 
 external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived 
 through, and that other people are infected by these feel- 
 ings, and also experience them." Or, in other words, 
 "Art is the infection by one man of another with the feel- 
 ings experienced by the infector." 
 
 This may be called the definition of Peasantism. Ob- 
 serve its grounds. It puts aside the conception of beauty 
 altogether and defines art in terms of experience. That 
 is, it ceases to consider art as a means of pleasure, but 
 as one of the conditions of human life. Art, then, is one 
 of the two organs of human progress. By words we ex- 
 change thoughts ; by art we interchange feelings. Thus 
 considered, art is primarily a means of union among men, 
 indispensable for the life and progress toward well- 
 being of individuals and of humanity. The idea of excel- 
 lence in such an art is not exclusiveness of feeling acces- 
 sible to some, but universality, not obscurity and complex- 
 ity, but clearness and simplicity. Its motives will be 
 sociological, that is, moral and altruistic. It will draw 
 from the primal sources of religion. 
 
 The value of contemporary art, when judged from 
 the ideal of universality, seems small. The experiences 
 of the ruling classes, as they have come to record in art, 
 amount to hardly more than three — the feeling of pride, 
 the feeling of sexual desire and the feeling of the 
 weariness of life. Upon these themes poetry especially 
 has played endless changes. But these are by no means 
 
AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION: TOLSTOI 117 
 
 universal feelings — they are those of an idle pleasure- 
 loving aristocracy. Before such art the peasant stands 
 bewildered. He has no attachment to it. All his own 
 rich life is unreflected there. And lest it be thought that 
 the experiences of the peasant are barren and uninter- 
 esting, Tolstoi insists that the world of labor is rich in 
 subject materials for art. He points to the endlessly 
 varied forms of labor; the dangers connected with that 
 labor on sea and land ; the laborer's migrations, his inter- 
 course with his employers, overseers and companions, 
 and with men of other religions and other nationalities; 
 his struggles with nature and with wild animals, his 
 association with the domestic animals; his work in the 
 forests, the plains, the fields, the gardens, the orchards; 
 his intercourse with his wife and children, not only as 
 with people near and dear to him, but as with co- 
 workers and helpers in labor, replacing him in time of 
 need ; his concern in all economic questions, not as matters 
 of display or discussion, but as problems of life for him- 
 self and family; his pride and self-suppression, and 
 service to others; his pleasure or refreshment; and, 
 above all, his devotion to religion. 
 
 But to set off the value of one life against that of 
 another is no part of Tolstoi's definition. The judgment 
 of a peasant is no more to be respected than the judgment 
 of the "finest nurtured." What the new theory shows is 
 the shifting of the aesthetic ground from what is special 
 to what is universal, from what is form to what is ex- 
 perience. 
 
 To illustrate Tolstoi's definition by reference to con- 
 crete instances of popular art, is not easy. Tolstoi's 
 own illustrations seem trivial in comparison with the 
 
118 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 great works of the past that may be mentioned to prove 
 the aristocratic refinement of beauty. And, of course, 
 the simple explanation is that a mature illustration of 
 popular art does not exist. The rise of the people is a 
 phenomenon of the present century. Whereas for 
 centuries the field of art has been held by the artists of 
 aristocracy. Today the professional artists are every- 
 where on the side of tradition. And criticism for the most 
 part upholds the standards of culture. Outside of Millet's 
 portraiture of the peasant laborer and Whitman's poems 
 exploiting the average man, one does not know where to 
 go for a large illustration of an art that springs from 
 popular feeling. One painting at the World's Fair 
 may, however, be mentioned. This was a picture record- 
 ing an almost universal experience, the breaking of 
 home ties, and few stood before that picture whose 
 eyes did not wet with tears. As might be expected, this 
 painting is pointed to by the professional artist as an 
 instance of bad art, yet it was very generally applauded 
 by the people. Art, says Tolstoi, is an infection — that 
 picture is infectious. 
 
 From many signs it appears that this is the moment 
 of transition. All the features that accompany tran- 
 sition are exhibited in the works of Tolstoi himself 
 as well as in the works of kindred spirits, John 
 Ruskin and William Morris. These men, with respect 
 to "fine writing," illustrate almost the best that can be 
 done in the creation of works springing from the sense 
 of beauty. But catching glimpses of the new thought 
 and becoming advocates of a new definition of art, they 
 gave up art on the old terms of exclusion and labored 
 in the interests of the people. J This change of face is 
 
AN INSTANCE OP CONVERSION : TOLSTOI 119 
 
 not due to "perverted vision," as their critics would have 
 us believe, but to the new revelation they have caught 
 from the mountain tops of their observation. With this 
 change of attitude, moreover, the inconsistencies with 
 which these authors are charged could hardly be avoided. 
 One may not wish to defend inconsistency, but in their 
 case it is not difficult to explain. A river that meets 
 the incoming tides from the sea is uncertain during the 
 hour of transition whether to resist its own traditions 
 or strive to overcome the new tendency. Would it not 
 be strange if, even when in the grasp of the sea, it did not 
 have memories of its flow through the upper meadows 
 and be taken with a sudden ardor to reassert its past? 
 
A TYri 7 OF TRANSITION: WILLIAM MORRIS. 
 
 I. 
 
 The socialists of Hammersmith were accustomed in 
 
 former days to meet weekly at Kelmscott House, the 
 London home of Mr. Morris on the Upper Mall. An old 
 carriage house served as a place of gathering-. Frequent- 
 ly at these conferences. Mr. Morris would act as chair- 
 man. Sometimes he would speak. One night, he had 
 spoken with more than usual sadness upon the hope of 
 his life, and in closing he uttered these words: 
 "Neighbors, it is peace that we need that we may live 
 and work in hope and joy.'* Leaving the hall. I stood 
 with a friend for a half hour beneath the elm trees, look- 
 ing out over the river. The tide was flowing quietly to 
 the sea. A light mist obscured the opposite shore. The 
 river, the passing boats, the bridge, the city beyond, 
 were all toned down to the common grayness. Xeither 
 of us spoke a word. The peace of the evening seemed 
 to mingle with the words we had heard and give direction 
 to our thoughts. Then, near at hand, we heard the voice 
 of the poet saying : 
 
 "So with this Earthly Paradise it is, 
 
 If ye will read uqght tad pardon me, 
 "Wbr strive tc build a shadowy isle of bliss, 
 Midmcs: the bearing oi the steely sea. 
 Where tossed about all hearts of men must- be." 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 121 
 
 II. 
 
 William Morris, master-workman, poet and socialist, 
 was born March 24, 1834, at Walthamstow, a village in 
 Essex not far from London. He was the eldest-born of 
 a family of nine. His father, of Welsh ancestry, was an 
 enterprising and successful business man of the city. 
 At Walthamstow, William went to a school kept by Dr. 
 Greig, a Scotchman, who described his pupil as a rollick- 
 ing boy, full of the vigor of life. At this period he was 
 said to have been extraordinarily active with his hands, 
 an omniverous reader, but not taking kindly to discipline. 
 After the death of Mr. Morris in 1848, the family moved 
 to Marlborough, where William attended the college and 
 began to take an interest in art and archaeology. He 
 went "steeple-chasing," made rubbings of memorial 
 brasses, and became an adept in the Gothic. In 1852, 
 he entered Oxford at Exeter College, matriculating for 
 Holy Orders. At that time, after long quiescent conser j 
 vatism, the University was in the midst of a strenuous 
 mediaeval revival, which was fostered on the one hand 
 by the Tractarian College of Newman, and on the other 
 by the artistic guild of the pre-Raphaelite Brothers. 
 Under the influence of Rossetti and other leaders of the 
 mediaeval reaction, Morris, with his college chum, E. 
 Burne- Jones, became a convert to romance. He passed 
 his college days in comparative idleness, yielding himself 
 to the enchantments of Oxford— ; hat Oxford that ever 
 summons its devotees to mark the lustre of ancient days. 
 Wholly aristocratic in his tastes and sympathies, un- 
 troubled by any rumors of the inhuman conditions of 
 the Great Black Country just then becoming rife, he lived 
 
122 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 in entire isolation, accepting from his environment only 
 the pleasurable contact of chosen companions. One en- 
 thusiasm only counted towards his later evolution — an 
 interest in Ruskin, which was aroused on reading "The 
 Stones of Venice," and maintained throughout the poet's 
 life till his tribute was paid in printing from the Ketm- 
 scott Press, Ruskin's essay "On the Nature of the Gothic." 
 In 1856, Morris and a few other poets and painters 
 started a monthly magazine, called The Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge Magazine. Like its prototype, The Germ, of 1850, 
 the organ of the pre-Raphaelites, it had an existence of 
 a year. To this magazine Rossetti contributed some of 
 his finest poems, including "The Burden of Ninevah" 
 and a revised form of "The Blessed Damozel." Morris, 
 the financial sponsor of the magazine, and its most active 
 contributor, wrote for successive numbers a series of 
 mediaeval romances, having such titles as "A Dream," 
 "Gertha's Lovers," "The Hollow Land," and "Golden 
 Wings." Each story, as might be imagined from the 
 titles, is conducted with an artist's love of color and 
 with a poet's imagery, and all are steeped in the spirit 
 of a time "long ago." 
 
 "Long ago," one begins, "there was a land, never mind where, 
 or when, a fair country and good to live in, rich with wealth of 
 golden corn, beautiful with many woods, watered by great rivers 
 and pleasant trickling streams; moreover, one extremity of it was 
 bounded by the washing of the purple waves, and the other by the 
 solemn watchfulness of the purple mountains." 
 
 There are a few poems in the volume also by Morris. 
 "Summer Dawn" is as beautiful as anything he after- 
 ward wrote, and is touched by that solemn grayness that 
 colors so many of his poems. 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 123 
 
 "Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips, 
 Think but one thought of me up in the stars, 
 The summer night waneth, the morning light slips, 
 Faint and grey, 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the 
 
 closed bars 
 That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: 
 Patient and colorless, though Heaven's gold 
 Waits to float through them along with the sun. 
 Far out in the meadows, above the young corn, 
 The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold 
 The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun; 
 Through the long twilight, they pray for the dawn, 
 Round the lone house in the midst of the corn. 
 Speak but one word to me over the corn, 
 Over the tender bow'd locks of the corn." 
 
 During a memorable journey afoot through France, 
 in company with Burne-Jones, while the spell of mighty 
 cathedrals was upon him, he decided to abandon his ca- 
 reer in the church and devote his life to the service of 
 art. Leaving Oxford, his next step was to enter the 
 office of Mr. G. E. Street, a London architect, famed for 
 his Gothic restorations, and as the builder of that com- 
 posite structure in the Strand known as the Law Courts. 
 Here he worked for nearly a year. Then, compelled by 
 Rossetti who demanded that all who could not be buyers 
 of pictures should become painters of pictures, he di- 
 verged to the study of painting and artistic decoration, 
 continuing his study of the Gothic he had learned to 
 love so well, doubtless building in fancy a house with 
 strange towers and quaint gables for each lady and lover 
 that thronged the avenues of his mind, without losing, 
 however, his love of architecture which he always re- 
 
124 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 garded as a co-operative art — an art not merely of build- 
 ing but of furnishing and decorations.* 
 
 In 1857, he was associated with Jones, Rossetti, Prinsep, 
 and others in painting upon the walls of the Oxford 
 Union Debating Hall, the frescoes, now but dimly visi- 
 ble, illustrating the Arthuriar Romance. The subject 
 treated by Morris was Sir Palomides' jealousy of Sir 
 Tristram and the fair Isulte, a story that seemed to at- 
 tract him by reason of its sadness. His first volume of 
 poems, "The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," 
 was published in 1858, under the interest awakened by 
 Tennyson's and Southey's studies of the Arthurian 
 period. Such delicacy of sentiment, such sense of 
 color, such realization of an evanished people, had not 
 been known before in England. In comparison with 
 Tennyson, Morris is a veritable child of the middle ages. 
 He writes of Arthur as a contemporary, seemingly hav- 
 ing strayed by accident into the land of Victoria, viewing 
 it as might an antiquarian ; while Tennyson is essentially 
 a subject of his queen, and pays tribute to"that old king" as 
 a troubadour alien or much belated. Morris at this period 
 might have said with Lamb : "Hang posterity, I'm going 
 to write for antiquity." The influence of Rossetti and of 
 Browning is distinctly marked in this early volume. 
 The general effect is that of the painter, but "The Judg- 
 ment of God," that brings before us the actual scene 
 with startling vividness, reads quite like one of Brown- 
 
 "A true architectural work is a building duly provided with 
 all necessary furniture, decorated with all due ornament, accord- 
 ing to the use, quality, and dignity of the building, from mere 
 mouldings or abstract lines, to the great epical works of sculpture 
 and painting, which, except as decoration of the nobler forms ot 
 such buildings, can not be produced at all." 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 125 
 
 ing's dramatic lyrics. There are poems also that in 
 melody and imagery are reminiscent of Poe. But withal 
 it bore the unmistakable marks of original genius. Of 
 it Swinburne spoke the final word: "Upon no piece of 
 work in the world was the impress of native character 
 ever more distinctly stamped, more deeply branded. It 
 needed no exceptional acuteness of ear or eye to see or 
 hear that this poet held of none, stole from none, clung 
 to none, as tenant, or as beggar, or as thief." It was then 
 prophesied that Morris would prove a "poet whom poets 
 will love." 
 
 In i860 Morris, having married and desirous of a 
 home, built the famous Red House on the outskirts of 
 London in the midst of an orchard, and served his 
 apprenticeship to handicraft by designing and executing 
 the interior decoration and furniture of the house. So 
 that by the next year he was ready to join with Madox 
 Brown, E. Burne- Jones, Rossetti, Philip Webb and a few 
 others, all artists with the exception of Faulkner, in 
 forming an art firm with the intent of designing and 
 manufacturing stained-glass windows, mosaics, wall- 
 papers, artistic furniture and general household decora- 
 tions. The distinguishing mark of these artists was their 
 conviction of the honor of labor and duty of thorough- 
 ness. They were gifted with a love of order and grace 
 and filled with a deep sense of the need of beauty in 
 human life. To join art to labor, to add pleasure to things 
 of common use, was the purpose of this company. After 
 varying fortune, but not until after they had initiated a 
 genuine revolution in the industrial arts, the firm dis- 
 solved in 1875, the work to be conducted henceforth 
 under Morris's own management. One result of the ex- 
 
126 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 reriment. not particularly counted on. was the educa- 
 ..;:: Morris himself received through coming in contact 
 with certain stern realities of living. The plan of monas- 
 tic brotherhcv; conceived and zealously labored for in 
 the old college days, was forever abandoned. From this 
 time a socialism," innate in his nature, became promi- 
 nent 
 
 The manufactory that Morris finally established was 
 located at Merton Abbey. It is a village on the Thames, 
 far enough from London that nature still lingers in its 
 environs, and the birds find room for joyful song. The 
 very name of the place is suggestive of a mediaeval 
 -kshop. In the twelfth century Gilbert Xorman, 
 Sheriff of Surrey, built here a monaster}* for canons of 
 the order of Saint Austin. It was patronized by Stephen 
 and Matilda and endowed with rich gifts. In 1236 there 
 was held within its walls., a parliament which enacted the 
 "'Statures :: Merton." wherein the English nobles replied 
 to the prelates : ' YVe will not change the laws of En- 
 gland.*' On a soil thus early dedicated to liberty, this 
 experiment in free labor was conducted. 
 
 The place was chosen from a special sense of fitre ss. 
 I remember, now many years after the time of my visits. 
 the exact look of the scene. An old mansion, half draped 
 with trees and hidden in shrubbery stood by the road- 
 side at the edge of the village. Behind the house, under 
 the great elms were grouped the low and unpretentious 
 buildings of the facton*. From the neighboring gardens 
 came an odor of grass and roses. The air was tumultu- 
 ous with the seengs of blackbirds and thrushes. Crows 
 cawed in the far elms. At one side, the slow waters 
 of the Wandel, gathered here into a lily-covered pond, 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 127 
 
 was coaxing a mill wheel, green with moss, lazily to turn. 
 Willows grew along the banks of the stream and bent 
 down over it ; willows and sky were reflected in the sur- 
 face of the water. Over all there was a sense of sunny 
 summer. The scene told of sympathy and loving har- 
 mony with nature. There was no air of the factory, 
 no clang of machinery, no dust, no haste or distraction. 
 Within the buildings men and women were at work weav- 
 ing at looms, dyeing and printing cloths, and putting 
 together windows. 
 
 In the designing room was Mr. Morris himself, half- 
 finished sketches, some bold cartoons from the hand of 
 Burne-Jones, were scattered about the room. Morris 
 was dressed as usual in a plain suit of blue serge and 
 flannel. He was short of stature, but robust, and full of 
 the most restless energy. His dress and rolling walk gave 
 him the aspect of a sailor. The features of his face were 
 large and rugged, but full-blooded, luminous, and well 
 modeled. A kindly poet's expression was given by 
 the filmed and rather inexpressive eyes and by the mobile 
 and delicately shaped mouth beneath the grey beard. 
 His head was covered with curly grey hair, which he 
 brushed back from his forehead with his hand as he 
 leaned to his work. One felt in the presence of a vital 
 personality, who was in love with labor and all the life 
 of the world. I was told of his extraordinarily busy and 
 laborius life. Upon all the arts of the hand he had work- 
 ed with utmost patience and devotion. He had taught 
 himself wood engraving by cutting the blocks himself 
 andmanuscriptillumination by copying the pages of an- 
 cient books. He had learned carving, weaving, tapestry 
 work and embroidery. He had studied the art of dyeing, 
 
128 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the making of stained glass, tiles, and cloth fabrics. 
 These arts he practised with an amount of labor almost 
 incredible. When asked how he accomplished so much 
 he answered it was easy ; he wrote at night and worked 
 at his shops by day. And, while he practised, his mes- 
 sage to the world was announced with equal ardor. 
 
 In speech, when aroused by his theme, Morris was 
 rapid, nervous, and often tumultuous and uncontrolled. 
 For thirty years he claimed for art a place in common 
 labor. He plead first of all for simplicity of life. From 
 simplicity of life would rise up a longing for beauty 
 and artistic creation, which can only be satisfied by mak- 
 ing beauty and art a very part of the labor of every man 
 who produces. Labor, he argued, is not a preparation 
 for living, it is our very life. And the rewards of 
 labor? The reward of creation; the wages, Morris said, 
 which God gets. Art comes back most to the artist. 
 Everything made by man has a form, and that form is 
 either beautiful or ugly. The one gives pleasure ; the 
 other is a weariness. Decoration is simply the expres- 
 sion of man's pleasure in successful labor ; it is the color 
 of the work. The true incentive to happy and useful 
 labor is, then, the pleasure in the work itself. And the 
 price of pleasure? Simply permission to the workman 
 to put his own intelligence and enthusiasm into whatever 
 he is fashioning; simply permission to make his hands 
 set forth his mind and soul. Only then is labor sancti- 
 fied, because then it is in the direction of a man's life. 
 A structure should rise out of the soul. Order, or mean- 
 ing, is the moral quality of structure. Make matter ex- 
 press a meaning, and the worker becomes a moral master. 
 We must, therefore, travel back from the machine to 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 129 
 
 the human. For men must "prove their living souls 
 against the notion that they live in you or under you, 
 O Wheels." The machine, the great achievement of the 
 nineteenth century, which promised to relieve our drudg- 
 ery — has it or has it not increased our burdens? The 
 wonderful inventions which in the hands of far-seeing 
 men might be used to minimize the labor of the many 
 seem only used for the enrichment of their owners. 
 
 With some such logic, Morris reverted in his concep- 
 tions of an ideal future, to the traditions of labor in 
 operation in the middle ages, when the human mean- 
 ing wrapped up in the term "hand-made" was well known, 
 when the handicraftsman took pride in his work : 
 
 "Let us think of the mighty and lovely architecture of me- 
 diaeval Europe, of the buildings raised before Commerce had put 
 the coping stone on the edifice of tyranny by the discovery that 
 fancy, imagination, sentiment, the joy of creation and the hope 
 of fair fame are marketable articles too precious to be allowed to 
 men who have not the money to buy them, to mere handicraftsmen 
 and day laborers. Let us remember there was a time when men 
 had pleasure in their daily work, but yet as to other matters hoped 
 for light and freedom, even as they do now." 
 
 When today the traveler, by some happy chance, comes 
 upon the work of that early day, — some homely cottage 
 or richer abbey-church, which seem to grow out of the 
 familiar nature amid which they stand, — he is touched 
 by their human happy significance. The people shared 
 then in art. However unequal men were in their social 
 relations as king and common folk, the art of that day 
 was free and democratic. By his labor, many a man, 
 enslaved in body, was free in spirit. "I know that in those 
 days life was often rough and evil enough, beset by vio- 
 
130 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 lence, superstition, ignorance, slavery ; yet sorely as poor 
 folks needed a solace, they did not altogether lack one, 
 and their solace was pleasure in their work." Under 
 these conditions, art grew until the material world seemed 
 bound beneath the spirit's rule. Then the Gothic ages 
 came to their end. The life of the Renaissance made all 
 things new. And, strangely, while in the new days the 
 difference between king and subject has been destroyed, 
 art has withdrawn from the people and become the 
 birthright of the few. 
 
 For himself, Morris repeated the conditions out of 
 which pure art alone can spring. He was a man before 
 he was a poet. He cultivated body, heart and brain, 
 choosing to live before he wrote. Out of his life sprang 
 pure art. All of his work was done with evident ease 
 and pleasure. By his own example, Morris called the 
 world back to the human, back to that labor, which is the 
 highest life. 
 
 Meanwhile Morris was writing rapidly and well. 
 "The Earthly Paradise" appeared ten years after "The 
 Defence of Guenevere." "The Life and Death of Jason" 
 was begun as one of the series of the epic, but was pub- 
 lished separately in 1867. During one of his holiday 
 rambles in company with E. Magnusson of Cambridge, 
 he had visited Iceland, where he was heralded as a 
 "scald" — and he looked the character — and together the 
 two translated several Icelandic sagas. In 1878 ap- 
 peared the "Story of Sigurd the Volsung" and some 
 Northern love stories. Translations of the Aeneids and 
 Odyssey, some Northern stories, lectures on art and so- 
 cialism, a volume of "Poems by the Way," and "Pilgrims 
 of Hope," originally contributed to socialistic publica- 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 131 
 
 tions, "The Dream of John Ball," an interlude "The 
 Tables Turned," "News from Nowhere," and some so- 
 cialistic pamphlets constitute his later writings. 
 
 III. 
 
 With his works before us we ask, What was the key 
 to the poet's life? Wttat was the m^m spring >i his 
 action ? 
 
 The first volumes from the poet's pen were wrought in 
 the spirit of the middle ages. They reflect all that was 
 most vital in the mediaeval period, its romance and 
 splendor, its gold and glittering steel, its fantastic pas- 
 sions and unreality, likewise its wonders, its doubts, 
 its desires, its haunting sadness. 
 
 "The Defence of Guenevere" was dedicated "To My 
 Friend, Dante Gabriel Rossetti." The genius of the 
 poet and the painter is very much akin. Both were 
 appointed from youth to the service of art and song. 
 Their genius was alike nurtured in a mediaeval household 
 where romantic themes were familiar, and heroic fancies 
 welcome. Early the two became staunch and sympathetic 
 friends. It is an Oxford tradition that both were enam- 
 ored of the beautiful lady, the "Beata mea Domina" of 
 "The Defence of Guenevere." 
 
 "All men that see her any time, 
 I charge you straightly in this rhyme 
 What and wherever you may be — 
 Beata mea Domina! 
 
 "To kneel before her; as for me, 
 I choke and grow quite faint to see 
 My lady moving graciously, 
 Beata mea Domina!" 
 
132 THE CHANG 1 NO ORDER 
 
 This is the wife to whom "The Earthly Paradise" 
 is dedicated, and who. with her daughter May, appears in 
 Rossetti's paintings, his type of sensuous and spiritual 
 beauty. Then for a number of years. Rossetti was a 
 constant guest of the Morris family at the Kelmseott 
 Manor House on the Upper Thames, a glimpse of which 
 is seen in Rossetti's "Water Willow" painting-. Their in- 
 terests were nearly identical. Their outlook upon life 
 was quite the same. Each had withdrawn to a world of 
 lovely forms and sweet sounds and dreams apart from 
 modern thought and struggle. Each drew his inspiration 
 from the beauty of old-world story. "Arthur's Tomb" 
 was drawn to illustrate Morris's poem, "The Blue Closet." 
 and "The Tune of Seven Towers" was written to accom- 
 pany Rossetti's pictures. They are both sensuous, both 
 colorists of a high order. Rossetti is excelled by none 
 since Titian, in the peculiar triumph of his touch in color. 
 Morris is gifted with a painter's vision: he is moved to 
 delight by the color and form of outward things. Ros- 
 setti's lavish gxeens and golds and scarlets are reflected 
 from the other's poems, which seem ever bathed in light 
 as from painted abbey-windows. The one is a poet- 
 painter : the other a painter-poet. In the work of each 
 there is an element of sadness. Those pathetic faces, 
 charged with dreams, so characteristic of the paintings, 
 look out from the pages of the poems. Even the colors of 
 the first decorative fabrics of the Morris manufactory, 
 those harmonies in olive and saffron, bronze, rusty-red. 
 grey-green and blue were conceived for the most part in 
 a mood of sadness. 
 
 What was it. indeed, that touched the brush of all those 
 brother painters ? The faces they drew are haunted with 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 133 
 
 not unpleasant but still pensive dreams. The pictures of 
 Burne- Jones have a wistful, sorrowful old-world beauty. 
 His Four Seasons might be used to illustrate the several 
 months of "The Earthly Paradise." Beautiful but sad 
 are Spring and Summer. Autumn stands wearily by the 
 side of a lake, looking pensively across the lillies. Chill 
 Winter, in life's November, is clad in hooded cloak, 
 warming her hands by the fire, and bending down over 
 a book of prayer, waiting for the end: "Who shall say 
 if I were dead, What should be remembered ?" 
 
 The haunting presence is Death. Morris dwelt con- 
 stantly upon the theme of Death, the lapse of time, the ap- 
 proach of age. To the carriers of the Golden Fleece the 
 sirens sing, "Come to the land wnere none grows old." 
 The mariners of "The Earthly Paradise" sail to the west 
 for a paradise of rest and immortality where age cannot 
 enter or death destroy. Death accompanies the young 
 men and maidens, even though they sing the carols of 
 the morn. Death whispers in the wind that showers down 
 the blossoms in the orchard. On the very dawn of May, 
 the merry month when the Lord of Love goes by, the poet 
 holds his breath and shudders at the sight of Eld and 
 Death. He cannot make death a little thing. His heart 
 is oft too weary to struggle against doubt and thought. 
 Seldom for his words can we forget our tears. 
 
 Morris has often been compared with Chaucer. "The 
 Earthly Paradise" was confessedly conceived under the 
 inspiration of "my master Chaucer." And earlier, in 
 Jason, he yearns for 
 
 "Some portion of that mastery 
 That from the rose-hung lanes of woody Kent 
 Through these five hundred years such songs have sent 
 
134 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 To us, who, meshed within this smoky net 
 Of tmrejoicing labor, love them yet." 
 
 And truly with the master the pupil may be matched in 
 faculty of portraiture and story telling, and in melody of 
 perfect verse. For Morris had use of every poetic means 
 at Chaucer's command, and did "bring before men's 
 eyes the image of the thing" his "heart is filled with." 
 But again they differ as sunshine and shadow. There 
 was for Chaucer no month but May. His pages are 
 steeped in light and dew. He has the candor of the morn- 
 ing, is jovial, sane and strong. Morris chooses rather to 
 string his lyre on some sad evening of the Autumn tide. 
 He lacks the elder poet's serenity of soul. Morris sang 
 the woe of Psyche, but her joy on entering her immor- 
 tality of bliss, he could not sing : — 
 
 "My lyre is but attuned to tears and pain. 
 How shall I sing the never ending day?" 
 
 If a mediaeval parallel to "The Earthly Paradise" be 
 sought, it will be found in the "Decameron" rather than 
 in the "Canterbury Tales" — in that account of men and 
 ladies, who fled from their plague stricken neighbors to 
 tell their idle tales in forgetfulness. And yet, while Mor- 
 ris is supreme as an epic narrator, objective and imper- 
 sonal, and tells a story, unlike Spenser and Tennyson, 
 but like Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Walter Scott, for the 
 story's sake, he is in a manner subjective, and his works 
 are permeated, perhaps unconsciously at times, by the 
 modern social lament that the world is "out of joint." 
 "The Earthly Paradise" is not merely a collection of tales ; 
 it is somehow Morris's solution of the problem of our 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 135 
 
 human life. For each tale ends the same, — "needs must 
 end the same and we men call it death." 
 
 "So if I tell the story of the past 
 Let it be worth some little rest, I pray — 
 A little slumber ere the end of day." 
 
 His growing seriousness of purpose is still more mani- 
 fest in the story of Sigurd and the Niblungs, which in 
 its splendid epical strength occupies a medial place be- 
 tween the early idyllic poems and the later socialistic 
 prose. The epic narrative is here determined by a central 
 thread of purpose. From the many loosely related and 
 unmeaning incidents of the traditional saga, our bard 
 has selected those only which should complete the one 
 essential tale of greed and wrong and redemptive love. 
 
 Richard Wagner, whose definite ideal intent none can 
 gainsay, out of the same materials constructed the Sieg- 
 fried tetralogy, a cycle of dramas of similar significance. 
 By reason of the requirement of a dramatic form, the one 
 is led to culminate the play with the death of Siegfried 
 and the consuming flames on Valhalla. Morris, as is 
 consistent with an epic narrator, continues the story to 
 the fall of the Niblung kings, but beyond this he cannot 
 go ; the work of fate is ended. Sigurd, faring forth to do 
 battle with the foes of the gods, thinks the time is long 
 "till the dawning of love's summer from the cloudy 
 days of wrong." So John Ball thought, and the writer 
 of "News from Nowhere" the same. 
 
 Probably Chaucer had less reason for complaint than 
 had Morris. Things were not well in England, as Lang- 
 land and the Kentish preacher said, but Chaucer and his 
 folk could still be "merrie." One wonders to-day how 
 
136 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 any one who takes thought of "the hard-used race of men" 
 can be merry. 
 
 "Think of the spreading sore of London swallowing up with 
 its loathsomeness field and wood and heath witnout mercy and 
 without hope, mocking our feeble efforts to deal even with its 
 minor evils of smoke laden sky and befouled river: the black 
 horror and reckless squalor of our manufacturing districts, so 
 dreadful to the senses which are unused to them that it is 
 ominous for the future of the race that any man can live among 
 it in tolerable cheerfulness." 
 
 Morris wrote, in short, in the spirit of a man who 
 recognized life's tragic conditions. In all his sweet lines, 
 we feel that the writer's soul was rilled with weariness. 
 Woe seemed to him inevitable and universal. The world 
 of his vision was like the weary Titan of Arnold's poem, 
 staggering on to the goal, bearing the too great load of 
 her fate. In spite of his Celtic ancestry, he was essen- 
 tially a Teuton with the pagan sense of fatalism. Fate is 
 the key-word of "Jason" and "The Earthly Paradise." 
 Sigurd and the Volsung heroes are guided ever by the 
 Norns : — 
 
 "And what the dawn has fated on the hour of noon shall fall." 
 
 "Yea, a man shall be 
 A wonder for his glorious chivalry, 
 First in all wisdom, of a prudent mind, 
 Yet none the less him too his fate shall find." 
 
 Unique indeed among literatures in pathos of anticipated 
 calamity is one of the "Poems by the Way," entitled the 
 "Burgher's Battle," where lamentation mingles with calm 
 resignation, exampling the pathos of foreboded fate: — 
 
 "Look up! the arrows streak the sky, 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 137 
 
 The horns of battle roar; 
 The long spears lower and draw nigh, 
 And we return no more." 
 
 Even the stories, "The House of the Wolfings" and "The 
 Story of the Glittering Plain/' are touched with a light 
 which is half sad, like the silver haze of the Indian sum- 
 mer presaging November snows. 
 
 The thought of love alone puts all doubts away. Yet 
 love cannot escape the universal law. 
 
 "Love while ye may; if twain grow into one 
 'Tis for a little while; the time goes by, 
 No hatred twixt the pair of friends doth lie, 
 No troubles break their hearts — and yet and yet — 
 How could it be? We strove not to forget; 
 Rather in vain to that old time we clung, 
 Its hopes and wishes, round our hearts we hung. 
 We played old parts, we used old names in vain, 
 We go our ways and twain once more are twain; 
 Let pass — at latest when we come to die 
 Thus shall the fashion of the world go by." 
 
 Yet love while ye may. The sufficiency of love is the 
 subject of the morality play of "Pharamond," which 
 showeth of a king whom nothing but love might satisfy. 
 Love sings, — 
 
 "I am the life of all that dieth not, 
 Through me alone is sorrow unforgot." 
 
 And the poet concedes, — 
 
 "Love is enough: though the world be a-waning 
 And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining." 
 
 In sear October, midst the failing year, he cries, — 
 
 "Look up love! Ah cling close and never move! 
 How can I have enough of life and love?" 
 
138 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 What begetteth all this storm of bliss ? 
 
 "But Death himself, who, crying solemnly, 
 E'en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness, 
 Bids us 'Bejoice, lest pleasureless ye die, 
 Within a little time must ye go by. 
 Stretch forth your open hands and while ye live 
 Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give.' " 
 
 Death and age and forgetfulness are so abhorrent that 
 every minute is made more mindful as it passes by. The 
 poet had a feverish eagerness to enjoy whatever is beau- 
 tiful — every love and friendship, every fine creation of 
 the artistic thought, every charm of nature, every touch 
 of sun and shadow, every note of the winds or the seas — 
 eagerness to take delight in life itself before the night 
 came when no man could enjoy. 
 
 "Love is enough: cherish life that abideth, 
 Lest ye die ere ye know him and curse and misname him." 
 
 The singer could not know the meaning of death. He 
 knew the meaning of life as little. 
 
 "Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant ; 
 Life have we lived through green leaf and through sere 
 Though still the less we knew of its intent." 
 
 Yet as if in rebuke to those of us who hate life though 
 we do not fear death, he cried, "What happiness to look 
 upon the sun \" So 
 
 "In the white-flowered hawthorn brake, 
 Love be merry for my sake; 
 Twine the blossoms in my hair, 
 Kiss me where I am most fair — 
 Kiss me love! for who knoweth 
 What thing cometh after death?" 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 139 
 
 The poet's philosophy of fated life was, however, in- 
 terwoven with a great faith in the consolation of art and 
 labor. Art was his own passionate delight. As an artist 
 he was content and calm. His poems are of unvarying 
 charm and purity, with every superlative metrical excel- 
 lence. The heart of the writer has been in his work. He 
 bade farewell to his finished books as a lover: "I love 
 thee whatso time or men may say of the poor singer of 
 an empty day;" "I confess I am dull now my book is 
 done ;" "I have now committed the irremediable error of 
 finishing the Odyssey. I am rather sad thereat." How 
 he delighted in the telling of a story ! He dallied at what- 
 ever attracted his interest. Greatest care was taken in 
 depicting works of human handiwork. He loved to 
 picture golden vessels and ivory thrones and webs of 
 price and sculptured gate and pictured ceiling and painted 
 palaces and marble halls. A city is thus described, — 
 
 "Walled with white walls it was, and gardens green 
 Were set between the houses everywhere; 
 And now and then rose up a tower foursquare 
 Lessening in stage on stage; with many a hue 
 The house walls glowed, of red and green and blue, 
 And some with gold were well adorned, and one 
 From roofs of gold flashed back the noon-tide sun." 
 
 Entering the palace the decorations are noted : — 
 
 "With hangings fresh as when they left the loom 
 The walls were hung a space above the head, 
 Slim ivory chairs were set about the room, 
 And in one corner was a dainty bed, 
 That seemed for some fair queen apparelled 
 And marble was the worst stone of the floor 
 That with rich Indian webs was covered o'er." 
 
140 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 These are the wonders of Aetes' marble house : — 
 
 "The pillars made the mighty roof to hold, 
 The one was silver and the next was gold, 
 All down the hall; the roof of some strange wood 
 Brought over sea, was dyed as red as blood, 
 Set thick with silver flowers, and delight 
 Of intertwining figures wrought aright. 
 With richest webs the marble halls were hung, 
 Picturing sweet stories by the poets sung 
 From ancient days so that no wall seemed there, 
 But rather forests black and meadows fair, 
 And streets of well built towns, with tumbling seas 
 About their marble wharves and palaces, 
 And fearful crags and mountains; and all trod 
 By changing feet of giant, nymph, and God, 
 Spear-shaking warrior and slim-ankled maid." 
 
 But how give people eyes and soul for art and beauty ? 
 How but by guarding the fairness of the earth and sky? 
 Must not the city be made as refreshing as the meadows, 
 as exalting as the mountains ? Art and nature are inter- 
 dependent. Art is the expression of reverence for nature. 
 The spirit of the new days is to be delight in the life of the 
 world, love of the very surface of the earth. Surely if 
 the seasons are to arouse in us no other feelings than 
 misery in winter and weariness in summer, then art too 
 will fail, and we shall live amidst squalor and ugliness. 
 
 Morris was passionately fond of the sun and air. He 
 loved the moist green meadows and silver streaming 
 rivers of his England. To the fields and woods he was 
 wont to go for sound and color and pure sensuous delight. 
 "If I could but say or show how I love it, — the earth 
 and the growth of it and the life of it !" His every work 
 is a witness to this loving sympathy. In the landscapes 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 141 
 
 of "The Earthly Paradise" he notes the elements of de- 
 light, — sounds, sights, and odors, the songs of birds, the 
 hues and tints of nature, the winds, orange-scented, or 
 heavy with odors from thymy hills, or laden with the 
 redolence of bean-flowers and clover and elder blossoms. 
 In some land "long ago" there was 
 
 "A valley that beneath the haze 
 Of that most fair of Autumn days 
 Shewed glorious; fair with golden sheaves, 
 Rich with darkened autumn leaves. 
 Gay with its water meadows green 
 The bright blue streams that lay between — 
 The miles of beauty stretched away." 
 
 In another country 
 
 "Midst her wanderings on a hot noon-tide 
 Psyche passed down a road where on each side 
 The yellow corn fields lay, although as yet 
 Unto the stalks no sickle had been set; 
 The lark sung over them, the butterfly 
 Flickered from ear to ear distractedly, 
 The kestrel hung above, the weasel peered 
 From out the wheat-stalks on her unafeared, 
 Along the road the trembling poppies shed 
 On the burnt grass their crumbling leaves and red." 
 
 A different aspect of nature is presented in the story 
 of Sigurd, where Nature encompasses the heroes about 
 with the likeness of a fate. In harmony with the North- 
 ern sense of fatalism, days and nights form the back- 
 ground of deeds. Morn falls to noon-tide, and the sun 
 goeth down in the heavens, and the dusk and the dark 
 draw over, and the stars to heaven come, and the white 
 moon climbeth upward, and the dusk of the dawn begins, 
 
142 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 and the day opens again, — 'mid light and darkness the 
 heroes ever move. Follow Sigurd as he rides with Regin 
 to the Glittering Heath : — 
 
 "And the sun rose up at their backs and the grey world changed 
 
 to red, 
 And away to the West went Sigurd by the glory wreathed 
 
 about." 
 
 * * * * 
 
 "So ever they wended upward and the midnight hour was o'er 
 
 And the stars grew pale and paler, and failed from the heav- 
 en's floor, 
 
 And the moon was a long while dead, but where was the 
 promise of day? 
 
 No change came over the darkness, no streak of the dawning 
 grey; 
 
 No sound of the winds uprising adown the night there ran; 
 
 It was blind as the Gaping Gulf ere the first of the worlds 
 began. 
 
 * # * * 
 
 "But lo, at the last a glimmer, and a light from the west there 
 
 came, 
 And another and another, like points of a far off flame; 
 And they grew and brightened and gathered; and whiles 
 
 together they ran 
 Like the moonwake over the waters ; and whiles they were scant 
 
 and wan, 
 Some greater and some lesser, like the boats of fishers laid 
 About the sea of midnight, and a dusky dawn they made, 
 A faint and glimmering twilight." 
 
 Then through the twilight, Sigurd wends his way to meet 
 the foe of the Gods, and ere daylight is come the heart of 
 the serpent is cloven. 
 
 "Then he leapt from the pit and the grave and the rushing 
 river of blood, 
 
A TYPE OF TRANSITION: WILLIAM MORRIS 143 
 
 And fulfilled with the joy of the War-God in the face of earth 
 
 he stood 
 With red sword high uplifted, with wrathful, glittering eyes; 
 And he laughed at the heavens above him for he saw the 
 
 sun arise, 
 And Sigurd gleamed on the desert, and shone in the new born 
 
 light, 
 And the wind in his raiment wavered and all the world was 
 
 bright." 
 
 After reading "The Earthly Paradise," it is not sur- 
 prising to find in "News from Nowhere" that the very 
 essence of the new day of fellowship and rest is delight in 
 the natural beauty of the world. The poet is not now 
 describing a land long ago, but his England new-created ; 
 and this is his picture of an old house on the upper 
 Thames and of the new joy : 
 
 "On the right hand we could see a cluster of small houses and 
 barns, new and old, and before us a grey stone barn and a wall 
 partly overgrown with ivy, over which a few grey gables showed. 
 We crossed the road, and again almost without my will my 
 hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we stood presently 
 on a stone path which led up to the old house. . . . My com- 
 panion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment; nor did 
 I wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was 
 redolent of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one 
 another with that delicious superabundance of small well tended 
 gardens which at first sight takes away all thought from the 
 beholder save that of beauty. The blackbirds were singing their 
 loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof ridge, the rooks in the 
 high elm trees beyond were garrulous among the young leaves, 
 and the swifts wheeled whirring about the gables. And the house 
 itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of sum- 
 mer. 
 
 "Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said: 'Yes, 
 friend, this is what I came out for to see; this many gabled old 
 
144 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 house, built by the simple country folk of the long-past times 
 . . . is lovely still, amidst all the beauty which these latter 
 days have created. ... It seems to me as if it had waited for 
 these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of happi- 
 ness of the confused and turbulent past.' 
 
 "She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sun- 
 browned hand and arm on the lichened wall as if to embrace it, 
 and cried out, '0 me! me! How I love the earth, and the sea- 
 sons, and weather, and all things that deal with it, and all that 
 grows out of it — as this has done!'" 
 
 IV. 
 
 The development of Morris's life has been gradual. 
 His genius, we can now see, was nurtured and matured in 
 a dim, mediaeval atmosphere. His early writings were 
 suited to the fragile sense of some lady of an ancient 
 bower whose eyes might wet when "heaven and earth 
 on some fair eve had grown too fair for mirth." The 
 poet confessed his verses had no power to bear the cares 
 of the earners of bread. "My work," he said of himself 
 at this period, "is the embodiment of dreams." For him- 
 self and for those who could be lulled by his empty songs, 
 he built a shadowy isle of bliss, "East of the Sun and 
 West of the Moon," in the golden haze of the past. 
 Each year, however, his work became more wide and 
 sane. Each work advanced on the last in intensity of 
 human feeling. From the romantic mysticism of his 
 stories he was summoned to epic narrative. The story 
 of Sigurd is easily the strongest and most effective epic 
 of its century. The influence of Rossetti was outgrown 
 and the twain parted to follow diverse roads. Rossetti 
 lost himself in artistic mysticism. Morris's robust nature 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 145 
 
 led him into the arena of daily life. As early as 1877 he 
 helped to institute a Society for the Protection of An- 
 cient Buildings, and the Eastern Question Association, 
 his interest in the former being the immediate occasion 
 of his first public address, his devotion to the latter 
 leading to his adoption of a dogmatic Socialism. 
 That year he wrote his first political verse, a stirring 
 ballad, "Wake London Lads," which was sung at an 
 Exeter Hall meeting of protest. Sigurd written at this 
 epoch of his evolution is concerned with ideal human 
 life. Said Sigurd to the King of the Niblungs : — 
 
 "And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the 
 
 weary should sleep 
 And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth 
 should reap." 
 
 In "The Dream of John Ball," the most exquisite of his 
 prose romances and the most profound among his social 
 writings, and "News from Nowhere," an idyl of Revolu- 
 tion, Morris grasped at length the concrete problems of 
 social existence. In "Poems by the Way" and "Pilgrims 
 of Hope" he poetized the democratic concepts of the 
 new world as they had never been rendered before. 
 "The cause of art," he now saw, "is the cause of the peo- 
 ple." All through the 8o's his energy and ardor were 
 given to propagandism. He was one of the prime sup- 
 porters of the Democratic Federation, which he joined 
 in 1882. He became the recognized leader of a Socialist 
 League, founded at the close of the year 1884, acted 
 as its Treasurer and edited its official publication, The 
 Commonweal. In a letter written in 1886, he said: "The 
 ideas which have taken hold of me will not let me rest; 
 
146 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 nor can I see anything else worth thinking of." In 1890, 
 withdrawing from the Socialist League, because of its 
 growing anarchistic tendencies, a seceding group with 
 Morris as leader formed the Hammersmith Socialist 
 Society. To the ending of the commercial age and the 
 dawning of a day of peace and good will, Morris now 
 looked forward with the same feeling as when in Sigurd 
 he pictured the twilight of the gods of greed and the 
 rising of the sun in Balder the Fair. 
 
 To Morris's first readers the abandonment of aesthetic 
 for social standards must have seemed a wandering in 
 the wilderness — so little is the true nature of literature 
 understood. So little is the unity of Morris's many-sided 
 career comprehended it has been left for sociology, the 
 newest of the sciences, to discern the real meaning of 
 literature. Literature, in truth, is social in its origin, 
 social in its nature, and social in its results. It was the 
 same Morris who at different times composed poems, 
 designed wall papers, printed books and devised plans of 
 social reform. Poets are idealists. The condition of their 
 writing at all is that they have the power of creating 
 certain ideal forms. It is now a matter of indifference 
 whether these ideal forms are projected into books or 
 upon canvas, or into society itself, but projected they must 
 be. The lives of such authors and artists as Victor Hugo, 
 Zola, Shelley, Millet, Ruskin and Tolstoi furnish proof 
 of this. The connection between literature and life is 
 indeed so intimate that it is doubtful if anyone can either 
 create or understand great literature who has not the 
 genius for social reform. Lester Ward defines genius as 
 a sociogenetic force, socially not personally advantageous. 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 147 
 
 In becoming" a socialist Morris proved the vitality of his 
 poetry and the integrity of his own soul. 
 
 It is true that he was a fatalist. But his sense of fate 
 increased the value of life. Life, he found, is worth 
 living for its own sake, for love of friends, and joy and 
 work and freedom. Early he had reached a profound 
 conviction of the purpose of art as an indispensable ele- 
 ment in human life. 
 
 "Beauty which is what is meant by art, using the word in its 
 widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident of human life which 
 people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity 
 of life, if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is unless 
 we are content to be less than men." 
 
 It was the spectacle or art d\ing out under the system 
 of capitalism that first drew his attention to Socialism. 
 In his combined claim for art and labor — the return of 
 art, that is to say of the "Pleasure of Life," to the people 
 — shall it not be acknowledged that Morris reached by an 
 elemental instinct a great truth of the world; for indus- 
 trial liberty, to gain which the world is now struggling, 
 is the most intimate and personal of all emancipatory 
 modes. Industrial liberty means the return of manhood 
 to common work. "Life," says Ruskin, "without indus- 
 try is guilt, and industry without art is brutality." The 
 world, to-day, in short, is under the necessity of grati- 
 fying the art instinct; that is, of humanizing labor, of 
 giving soul to the Titan's body, or of suffering enslave- 
 ment to mere materials. Any economy worthy of the 
 name must enforce the need of uniting art and industry. 
 
 So after many years the social burden of £he times was 
 laid upon the poet's mind and heart. His passion for 
 life and beauty inflamed him with a desire to bring all 
 
148 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 men within the circle of their ministration. But before 
 him perpetually was the city of London, huge and un- 
 sightly. He heard the murmur and moan from the race 
 of men. From his home by the river he saw the working 
 of a selfish commercialism which had taken monetary 
 profit and loss, and not the human kind, as its basis for 
 calculation. With a heart laden with anger, he entered 
 a protest against "man's inhumanity to man." With a 
 heart laden with love, he preached the doctrines of 
 brotherhood. His position was revolutionary. 
 
 "I have more than ever at my heart the importance for 
 people of living in beautiful places; I mean the sort of 
 beauty which would be attainable by all, if people could 
 but begin to long for it. I do most earnestly desire that 
 something more startling could be done than mere con- 
 stant private grumbling and occasional public speaking 
 to lift the standard of revolt against the sordidness which 
 people are so stupid as to think necessary." 
 
 The key to his revolutionary position is contained in 
 an address made before a Trade Guild assembly : 
 
 "I do not want art for a few, any more than education 
 for a few, or freedom for a few. No, rather than that 
 art should live this poor thin life among a few excep- 
 tional men, despising those beneath them for an ignor- 
 ance for which they themselves are responsible, for a 
 brutality which they will not struggle with; rather than 
 this, I would that the world should, indeed, sweep away 
 all art for awhile — rather than wheat should rot in a 
 miser's granary, I would that the earth had it, that it 
 might quicken in the dark." 
 
 The democratization of art was, in short, the special 
 social aim of William Morris. The "Cause," as Morris 
 
A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 149 
 
 always called the object of his devotion, pertains to the 
 well being of every individual. That civilization which 
 does not carry with it the whole people is doomed to 
 failure. Pertinently he makes his plea : 
 
 "Let me remind you how only the other day in the life time 
 of the youngest of us, many thousand men of our own kindred 
 gave their lives on the battle field to bring to a happy ending a 
 mere episode in the struggle for the abolition of slavery: They 
 are blessed and happy for the opportunity came to them, and 
 they seized it and did their best, and the world is the wealthier 
 for it: and if such an opportunity is offered to us, shall we 
 thrust it from us that we may sit still in ease of body, in doubt, 
 in disease of soul?" 
 
 Revolutionary as Morris was in theory, in practical 
 temper he was eminently sane and constructive. "For 
 the most part," he would say, "we shall be too busy doing 
 the work that lies ready to our hands to let impatience 
 for visibly great progress vex us much. And surely, 
 since we are servants of a cause, hope must be ever 
 with us." 
 
 As a prophet of new industrialism, William Morris 
 was one of the most significant men of the nineteenth 
 century. He must command respect even from those 
 who cannot share in his socialistic hope. Be it observed 
 that no stunted capacity or sordid aims ranged him on 
 the side of socialism. All in all he is the most distin- 
 guished Englishman of the 19th century, and his utter- 
 ances must be received with respect. It was furthermore 
 a real burden which he bore. He had reverence for the 
 life of man upon the earth. To the cause of humanity, 
 he subordinated his whole poetic genius. With a strenu- 
 ous hope and with a sturdy strife at breast, he turned to 
 
150 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the future, and with that longing for rest that never kit 
 him, created in the heroic age to come, a romance of rrst 
 and peace and good will. And if others can see it as he 
 saw it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY. 
 
 (AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ILLINOIS STATE 
 TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, DECEMBER, I904.) 
 
 The maker of this program had a philosophic and dis- 
 cerning mind. He perceived that play is a principle of 
 such universal bearing that it has a science, a sociology 
 and a philosophy. Play, to use the terms of science, is 
 a mode of motion. Wherever there is movement there 
 is play. If we may believe Lucretius as to the loves and 
 hates of atoms play is an attribute of all matter. The 
 principle of play was first given formulation, I believe, 
 by the German poet Schiller. Its universal significance 
 was first detected by Herbert Spencer who traced the 
 aesthetic activity of man to the play of animals, the se- 
 lective sense of beauty in plants, and the sentient life of 
 the atom. Play in the human sphere may be defined as 
 the free creative functioning of the self. 
 
 The properties of play may be determined by a study 
 of its modes among animals, and of its processes when 
 it becomes humanized and consciously artistic. For art 
 is the freest play-ground of the spirit. What are the con- 
 ditions under which necessity passes into freedom and 
 the useful is idealized and transfigured? 
 
 The function that beauty serves in evolution is an im- 
 portant one. Not infrequently the law of the survival 
 of the fittest means the survival of the most beautiful. 
 The graceful feathers of the lyre-bird, the gorgeous color- 
 
152 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 ing of the peacock and humming-bird, the calls of mon- 
 keys, birds and insects, the brilliancy of flowers — all repre- 
 sent evolutionary selection in lines of beauty. Fair forms 
 and colors are the summons sent from objects to objects 
 for fusion and union. Impressionability to beauty implies 
 a conscious aesthetic sense on the part of those creatures 
 thus affected. That there is aesthetical feeling among the 
 lower forms of life is proven beyond a doubt. The 
 famous bower-birds of Australia furnish the most notable 
 instance of aesthetic display among animals. For use dur- 
 ing the time of courtship these birds construct bowers of 
 twigs and grass. These halls are not made for practical 
 use, but serve as festal structures, or avenues of assembly, 
 in which their owners may plume and display themselves. 
 The greatest care and taste are lavished upon the work. 
 Foundations are laid in the ground, and a bower of grass 
 and bushes, several feet in length, is arched overhead. 
 The courts at the end of the bower are paved with small 
 round pebbles, and bright stones, shells and feathers are 
 so displayed that a color adornment is secured. Such 
 structures, not being intended for nests, but simply to be 
 used during a special festal period, are wholly ideal in 
 their nature, and evidence the presence of the spirit of 
 play. 
 
 The aesthetic display in man began with the same refer- 
 ence to his mate, but the feeling was gradually extended 
 to comprise outside persons, and having assumed sociolog- 
 ical import, it became in time a most efficient instrument 
 in the struggle for existence. The savage adorned his 
 body, decorated his utensils and weapons, shaped and 
 colored his dwelling place. To the adornment of his 
 home he further employed sculpture and painting. Under 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 153 
 
 excitement he sang — a simple musical chant, and to its 
 rhythms he danced, and out of the dance poetry and the 
 drama arose. Everything in primitive life points to the 
 immense importance of the aesthetic activity. The quality 
 of the art and the stage of culture correspond intimately. 
 When men ceased to hunt, and settled as agriculturists, 
 the richness of their art compared with the former pov- 
 erty, is a sign of social advance. But this very improve- 
 ment is in part due to the order and unity introduced 
 into the fluctuating life of hunting tribes by various forms 
 of art, particularly the dance, which by engaging whole 
 family groups, furthered greater social union. 
 
 What now is the source of the artistic impulse and 
 with what life process is it associated ? Among the low- 
 est forms of life all the energy of being seems to be ex- 
 pended in sustaining and preserving life. Among the 
 higher orders, where the conflict of life is less fierce, 
 opportunity is afforded for escape into ideal action. The 
 energy of being, not fully exhausted in the effort to sup- 
 ply physical needs, engages in some form of free expres- 
 sion, as directed by more or less conscious ideal desire. 
 Play implies freedom from physical need, an excess of 
 life functioning, some degree of self-determination, some 
 conscious satisfaction, and a certain power of abstraction. 
 
 To justify this statement let me pass in review a series 
 of activities ; advancing from the simple to the complex 
 and from animals to men. 
 
 The simple aimless running about of animals and men 
 in play rises into the more complex forms of the leap 
 and gesture, in a more advanced civilization passing to 
 forms of the dance. The simple shout and cry develops 
 into successive and pleasing notes, as of a bird, and issues 
 
1'54 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 in human song. The purposeless clawing and cutting of 
 animals and men become some form of pleasure-giving 
 construction, such as purposeful carving and adornment, 
 with delight in form. The simple color sense leads to 
 decoration for pleasure and with a sense of harmony. 
 The adornment of nests with bright objects proceeds to 
 construction, with a sense of form, and, among men, to 
 building with a conscious feeling for proportion. 
 
 Now examine the later modes of these activities and 
 note the common characteristic ! The dance, the complex 
 form of running and leaping, is distinguished by con- 
 scious rhythm. The song, the higher form of the cry, is 
 characterized by a conscious sense of time. Carving, 
 the artistic outcome of cutting, is differentiated by a 
 knowledge of design. Color decoration, the complex 
 form of a simple sense for bright objects, is distinguished 
 by perception of color harmony. Finally, building, the 
 higher form of construction, is done under knowledge of 
 proportion. What is added in the second series to the 
 first? Plainly in the first series the activity is aimless; 
 in the second there is order and design. The presence of 
 order evidences the introduction of mind into the process. 
 The savage dances in rhythm, sings in time, paints in 
 color, builds in proportion, because it is pleasing to him 
 psychically to engage in an ideal self-determined exercise. 
 Here, then, play-activity becomes aesthetic; his play is 
 carried on with conscious purpose, freedom, self-deter- 
 mination, and pleasure. 
 
 Where purpose does not enter, the activity is not truly 
 denominated play. The deer in running strikes his hoofs 
 in order, but the order is mechanical and not self-con- 
 trolled. The bird sings in successive notes, the beaver 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 155 
 
 builds dams, ants build hills, bees construct cells ; but 
 these results are not intentional. The animal is uncon- 
 scious, merely under the control of evolutionary forces; 
 the excellence of the result not being dependent upon 
 conscious intelligence, but upon fixedness of habit and 
 the very narrowness of the line of improvement. The 
 flower displays its color, but it has no sense of its har- 
 mony in the field. Birds sing pleasing notes, but not, as 
 in a choir, with a knowledge of general harmony. 
 
 Mentality is perhaps most readily perceived in music. 
 The cries of animals and the notes of birds can hardly be 
 designated as song. The indefinite shouts and irregular 
 cries of primitive man were expressions which had not 
 yet arrived at aesthetic value. Sounds become musical 
 when mind controls the succession and co-ordination. 
 Music ascends from simple concord of two notes to ever 
 more complex phrases, strains, songs and choruses: — 
 ever higher and higher above the plane of sensation, 
 until in orchestral and symphonic music the effect is al- 
 most wholly mental. Into the work of art reflection, 
 intention and invention enter. 
 
 A convenient savage for our scrutiny in these respects 
 is Browning's Caliban: a primitive man, yet one suf- 
 ficiently evolved to exhibit racial characteristics. He is 
 undeveloped, yet old enough to be taught of deity by his 
 dam, and to think somewhat for himself. His sensory 
 experiences are of a low order. Within the range of 
 his interests his senses are keen, but only now and then 
 does he see or hear aesthetically. He has learned the 
 look of things in relation to his physical safety. He 
 would examine clouds and sunsets as tokens of storm. 
 The range of his interests is shown in his first reflection : 
 
156 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 "Will sprawl now that the heat of day is best, 
 Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, 
 With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin, 
 And while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 
 And feels about his spine small eft-things course, 
 Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh; 
 And while above his head a pompion-plant, 
 Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, 
 Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, 
 And now a flower drops with a bee inside, 
 And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch — 
 He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross 
 And recross, till they weave a spider-web — 
 Meshes of fire some great fish breaks at times, 
 And talks with his own self." 
 
 In one of these sensory experiences: namely, when he 
 looks out over the sea and watches the play of sunbeams, 
 Caliban is receiving an aesthetic effect which has no rela- 
 tion to his bodily pleasures ; it is not a sensuous pleasure 
 only, but, also, an intellectual enjoyment. Furthermore, 
 he is a creative artist. Thus he compares himself with 
 Setebos : 
 
 "Tasteth himself no finer good in the world 
 When all goes right, in this safe summer time, 
 And he wants little, hungers, aches, not much, 
 Than trying what to do with wit and strength, 
 Falls to make something; piled yon pile of turf a 
 And squared and stuck there piles of soft white chalk, 
 And with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, 
 And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, 
 And crowned the whole with a sloth's scull a-top 
 Found dead in the woods, too hard for one to kill. 
 No use at all in the work, for work's sole sake." 
 
 The conditions of his artistic activity are thus his 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP PLAY V57 
 
 physical safety, satisfaction, and consequent excess of 
 energy. He is freed from external objects and permitted 
 to give his ideal faculties full play. All that he does, 
 thus conditioned, is characterized by the presence of de- 
 sign; all is proportioned, harmonized and well ordered. 
 He was under no compulsion to make these objects; 
 he was purely self-conditioned in doing so, and mani- 
 festly he works to the end of pleasure. 
 
 Evolutionary aesthetics, then, establishes several im- 
 portant facts about art and the artistic impulse. The es- 
 sential characteristic of artistic expression is freedom. 
 Art is not a product of necessity or related to use. It 
 affords gratification to instincts and feelings which find 
 their exercise only when necessity and use are satisfied. 
 Practical activity serves as means, aesthetic activity is an 
 end in itself. When savage tribes engage in warfare, 
 their energy is practical. When victory is celebrated 
 with dancing, the aesthetic is brought into play to the 
 degree of pleasure experienced by the dancers in their 
 own rhythmic movements. In art, man is not the creat- 
 ure of fate, but the arbiter in the ideal realm, at least, of 
 his own destinies, the maker of his own world. The 
 artist is absolutely the only free man. 
 
 And connected with this attribute is that of self-deter- 
 mination. When moved by the impulse to create, the 
 artist proves his individuality. He becomes conscious 
 of possessing ideal faculties which, in order to realize, 
 he must objectify for his contemplation. Thought must 
 be expressed. Freedom is not lawlessness. But inner 
 control is exchanged for outer law. When the artist 
 creates a form and embodies himself therein, he is made 
 
158 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 aware that he is a free, self-determining, law-abiding per- 
 sonality. 
 
 The third characteristic implied by the other two is 
 what I shall call, for want of a better term, ideality. It 
 is not the function of art to reproduce the real world. 
 We have senses of our own and can take the artist's skill 
 for granted. What we want displayed and defined is 
 personality. What is the man's mystery? As we have 
 seen, simple play becomes aesthetic, when it is conscious 
 and conducted in freedom to the end of self-realization. 
 Order, proportion, harmony are laws of art, not from 
 any enactment on the part of critics, but from the very 
 nature of mind. Mind is itself an order, a rhythm, a 
 harmony. The history of art, therefore, is the history of 
 a freely developing personality. As the soul expands 
 and contains more, it expresses more. Mediaeval art is, 
 in a sense, greater than Grecian art, since it contains 
 more of life and experience. Gothic art may be inferior 
 in point of skill and manipulation, but its soul is greater, 
 its feeling more intense, its grasp of ideality more com- 
 plete. The ancient world has no counterpart to Michel- 
 angelo, with his fierce, vital, electric face and his tur- 
 bulent, strenuous soul. The difference between the classic 
 and the mediaeval is well expressed in Gilder's poems of 
 the Two Worlds : one the world of the Venus of Milo : 
 
 "Grace, majesty, and the calm bliss of life, 
 No conscious war 'twixt human will and duty. 
 Here breathes, forever free from pain and strife, 
 The old, untroubled pagan world of beauty." 
 
 The other is the world of Michelangelo's Slave : 
 "Of life, of death the mystery and woe, 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP PLAY 159 
 
 Witness in this mute, carven stone the whole! 
 That suffering smile were never fashioned so 
 Before the world had wakened to a soul." 
 
 To the same effect is a passage in Lowell's "Cathedral." 
 
 "The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness. 
 But ah! this other, this Gothic that never ends, 
 Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, 
 As full of morals half-divined as life, 
 Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise 
 Of hazardous caprices sure to please, 
 Heavy as night-mare, airy-light as fern, 
 Imagination's very self in stone! 
 Your blood is mine, ye architects of dreams, 
 Builders of aspiration incomplete." 
 
 To illustrate the growth in ideality one might bring a 
 Greek of the age of Pericles into the Western world. 
 How much of the mediaeval and the modern would he 
 comprehend ! He would stand before a Gothic Cathedral 
 with amazement. The meaning of the structure, the 
 sign of the Cross in transept and nave, everywhere the 
 symbols of aspiration, of the yearning of the soul to 
 reach through material forms to a spiritual truth far 
 higher than Olympian heights : these would pass his un- 
 derstanding. If taken to a Symphony Concert, he would 
 have neither the sensory experience nor the ideality 
 necessary to comprehend the different movements. How 
 could he, who thought to enter the region of calm ten- 
 anted by Zeus, feel the mighty passion, the tumultuous 
 struggles of Beethoven's Heroic Symphony! Take him 
 into a gallery of painting — would he not be bewildered 
 by the complexity of modern life? What reading would 
 he make of the pain and power in Millet's peasant faces? 
 
160 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 What conception could he have of the tragedy and depth 
 of the life conducted on the vast laborious earth? So 
 would not the more recent psychic experiences of the 
 race be beyond his apprehension? 
 
 While the World's Fair was building at Chicago I 
 watched the simple Java folk erect their huts and wattled 
 fences beside the complex gigantic Ferris Wheel. I could 
 not see that the Javians looked upon the wheel even with 
 any wonder. They were hardly curious. The whole 
 mechanical mystery was utterly beyond their grasp. 
 The ideality of the wheel, the principles of its construc- 
 tion, were many fold greater than that of their simple 
 dwellings. 
 
 The whole Fair, by the way, was a colossal play:— 
 the Titanic sport of a summer, a buoyant lyric endeavor 
 just meant to exhibit for a moment the hidden prophetic 
 intentions of an ideal people, the scope of whose ideality 
 was but inadequately measured by the vast arches that 
 spanned the space of the manufactory building. Fes- 
 tivals, shows, pomps, may be as important as the reali- 
 ties of the streets, opportunities for ideal exercises, for 
 which trade and commerce are the preparation and the 
 background. When the complaint is heard that World's 
 Fairs represent economic waste, it is well to be reminded 
 of that saying of Schiller : "Man only plays, when, in the 
 full meaning of the term, he is man, and he is only com- 
 pletely man when he plays." 
 
 When man plays he is free, he is self-determined. 
 Freedom, self-determination, ideality: — these are the 
 characteristics of aesthetic play. 
 
 An important truth remains now to be stated. It is 
 this : whenever a man expresses himself under conditions 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 161 
 
 of freedom and self-control, he is an artist — whatever 
 his occupation or field of activity — and he receives the 
 rewards and gains of an artist: the reward of pleasure, 
 the gain of an enlarged personality, and an increasing 
 personal force. What are called the Fine Arts are by 
 no means the only aesthetic field. These have to-day 
 limited an instinct which is common to all, usurped a 
 privilege that should be shared by all. It has come about 
 through historical changes that the artist, in these more 
 specialized spheres, is the only free man in the world of 
 work; all others, in some degree, live under compulsion. 
 Therefore, the problem of freedom in the modern world 
 is to extend that freedom which the artist alone enjoys 
 into every field of industrialism. We may summarize 
 our freedom thus far in these terms: Man is free po- 
 litically. We have struggled with thrones and tyrannies 
 and have won victory. If we suffer misgovernment to- 
 day, we have ourselves to blame. So man is free in 
 religious matters. We have battled with priesthood and 
 ecclesiasticism and have gained the right of worship ac- 
 cording to our conscience. If we remain evil, the fault 
 is at our own doors. In these realms we are practi- 
 cally free, shapers of the laws and creeds for ourselves. 
 These matters have already receded in special interest, 
 and special devotion to them bespeaks a retarded develop- 
 ment. But, in the way of work, in what is for most of 
 us most intimate, we are little better than slaves living 
 under necessity, obeying machines, attending to masters. 
 Now, as political liberty does not mean license and law- 
 lessness, but rather the right to be a law to oneself, as 
 religious liberty does not mean the right to have no reli- 
 gion, but rather to be self-directive in worship and ser- 
 
162 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 vice; so industrial liberty does not mean freedom from 
 labor, but freedom in labor. For this right of self- 
 directive labor, or, in the terms of this paper, for the right 
 of play, the modern world is battling. Disguise the situa- 
 tion as we may, the industrial world is in a state of war- 
 fare. Various compromises have been agreed upon, 
 whereby a partial freedom is enjoyed. Thus, we dis- 
 tinguish between our activities; setting aside a portion 
 of the day to toil and drudge, yielding this much to sub- 
 mission, hoping to escape at night, when we can indulge 
 our higher desires and live a moment spontaneously and 
 instinctively. Meanwhile, we clamor for shorter hours 
 of labor and a longer time for play. So long as labor is 
 under bonds, untransformed by freedom, so long will 
 this division and clamor continue. But the granting of 
 an eight-hour day is no real solution of the problem. It 
 is simply compromise and leaves the situation unchanged. 
 The only satisfactory solution of the labor problem lies 
 in the consecration of labor to the ends of life, to the 
 ends of personality. Toil is a "curse" to none but slaves. 
 To a freeman it is pleasure and desire. Conditions must 
 so be changed that the laborer can find in his very work 
 his genuine satisfaction. He must be granted the privi- 
 lege now enjoyed by the artist only: the privilege of free 
 expression, of self-determination, of ideal creation. Art 
 and labor must so be associated that the one be extended 
 and made universal as labor, and the other be redeemed 
 and made delightful as art. It was some such associa- 
 tion that Thoreau was making, when he said, at work in 
 his field of beans: "It was not I that hoed beans, or 
 beans that I hoed." He had in mind a celestial kind of 
 agriculture and was raising a transcendental crop of 
 
. £HE PHILOSOPHY OF. PLAYjJ , 163 
 
 virtues, patience, manliness, clear-thought and high- 
 mindedness. It is better to produce great men than 
 abundant crops. The reversal of this proposition as ap- 
 plied in modern industrialism is provocative of mirth, — 
 when one is not too angry at the spectacle. I submit 
 that how to make a freeman at play out of a slave at work 
 is the problem of history, the problem of democracy, the 
 problem of today. 
 
 The problem of education in a democracy is the same 
 as that of industrialism. Shall education be motived by 
 the desire for a special culture, a sort of objective product, 
 or for a special character, a form of interior life? It 
 seems to me that our education is even yet too formal and 
 objective, too much concerned with knowledge and ma- 
 chinery, and not enough with character. The ideal pre- 
 vailing in our centers of education is that of the cultured 
 gentleman: — a culture special, possible to the few, a cul- 
 ture dependent upon refinement, intelligence and knowl- 
 edge of books in a library, a culture that tends to separ- 
 ate men, that erects barriers between the wise and the 
 not-wise, that is selfish and unsocial. This is an ideal 
 which we have inherited from feudal countries and from 
 the theory of the leisure class. The cultured man, in fine, 
 is prepared to live in an aristocracy and not in a democ- 
 racy. His sympathies are untouched. His im- 
 agination is without vitality. His fellows have 
 no interest to him save as they are comprehended 
 in the same exclusive circle. However attractive the 
 ideal may be, it is destined to fade away before the slowly 
 unfolding meanings of democracy, — fade as the ideals of 
 kings and knights and priests have faded and become lost 
 in the distance. Democracy demands a man of generous 
 
164 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 sympathies, with imaginative if not actual community 
 in every experience, a genuine social being, "a fluid and 
 attaching character :" one capable of living, not in an ex- 
 clusive aristocratic coterie, but in an inclusive democratic 
 society, and one able to live at large, not with conde- 
 scension, but with full sympathy. Now, personality is 
 the one common possession of all men — this is the com- 
 prehensive and unifying principle. It is of no account to 
 hold men together by a written constitution. A nation 
 is compacted by love and sympathy. Extend the essence 
 of each until he comes to include the multitude; until 
 his right becomes the right of all, and his law the 
 law of all. Produce great men; the rest follows. Edu- 
 cate the interior man ; avoid the ceremonial ; educate for 
 freedom, self-control, ideal action, creative character. 
 
 It was not without reason that Lincoln was called by 
 Lowell "The First American." For this man was the 
 very embodiment of the democratic idea. He had a 
 culture that was as broad as life, as generous as love. 
 Frederick Douglas said of him : "He was the first man in 
 whose presence I forgot I was a negro." That is a 
 sublime testimony, and signifies what I mean by an in- 
 clusive character. Lincoln was not educated in our 
 schools. The college might have instructed him, but 
 it would have destroyed him. Democracy contemplates 
 the possibility of education through the simple life pro- 
 cesses, or at least, through the expert selection of those 
 especially fitted for education. Lincoln's associate in 
 democratism was Whitman, a man who escaped the tra- 
 ditional discipline of the schools, but who, in secret 
 striving for the culture of life, achieved a character that 
 so combined the intellectual and the sympathetic, the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 165 
 
 individual and the social, that in his own personality he 
 comprehended humanity. If Lincoln was the only man, 
 "Leaves of Grass" is the only book to which Douglas 
 might come and find himself sympathetically compre- 
 hended. One of the greatest lines in modern literature 
 is Whitman's address to the poor outcast: "Not till 
 the sun excludes you do I exclude you." In one of his 
 poems, he proclaims the ideal of life in a democracy: 
 
 "I announce natural persons to arise. 
 
 I announce uncompromising liberty and equality. 
 
 I announce splendors and majesties to make all previous politics 
 of the earth insignificant. 
 I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd, 
 
 I announce the great individual, fluid as nature, chaste, affec- 
 tionate, compassionate, fully arm'd. 
 
 I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, 
 
 I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its 
 translation." 
 
 The educational problem presented by the lives of these 
 two men, the first practical democrats the world 
 has known, is profound and not easily solved. They rep- 
 resent the ideal around which the sympathies and im- 
 agination of men must henceforth gather. They exhibit 
 a special development of personality and to their making 
 ages of history have gone. Dare we face this ideal? 
 Might not education assist the individual through some 
 method of self-activity? Might we not adopt for our 
 whole educational system the principle of play ? Man has 
 something to learn, something to receive, but also some- 
 thing to give and achieve. The educational watchword 
 of a former generation, the generation of culture, was 
 discipline. The watchword of the present, the genera- 
 tion of knowledge, is observation. Might not the future, 
 
166 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the generation of personality, take for its sign the watch- 
 word, play? The need of the hour is education by exe- 
 cution, by creation, by modes of self-realization — con- 
 trolled always by the motive of helpfulness. By such 
 modes alone the personality is extended and the individual 
 rounded full-circle. 
 
 The beginnings of such education have been made in 
 the kindergarten ; this being the latest, the most modern 
 in spirit and most democratic section of our educational 
 system. This is the children's age, and a little child 
 is leading us away from formalism and traditionalism, 
 and compelling a more sincere study of the actual field. 
 In the kindergarten the principle of play is frankly 
 adopted. The application of the principle in the upper 
 grades, where traditional ideas are entrenched, has yet 
 to be accomplished. By the introduction of manual 
 training, which is only a name for the educational prin- 
 ciple of self -activity, a means of self-expression is af- 
 forded the older pupils. In the more progressive schools 
 there is taking place a reconstruction of the school pro- 
 gram with the various art studies as the coordinating 
 center. Vacation schools in the larger cities are experi- 
 menting with the new ideas, and it is not unlikely that 
 the success of their freer methods will bring about ex- 
 tensive modifications of the traditional curricula. All 
 these are signs of the evolution of play; of the effort 
 made by modern man to adopt social forms to current 
 idea. 
 
 That this adjustment of man to his immediate environ- 
 ment will continue in all the fields of human endeavor, 
 there is not the slightest doubt. The evolutionary forces 
 are always at work. Nature creates today, as in the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 167 
 
 early ages of the world. Man's creative power is deep- 
 ening and widening. There are many evidences of in- 
 crease in personality, most notably, perhaps, in the arts 
 which still afford the field of purest play. I refer par- 
 ticularly to the instance of music, the art at present 
 in most rapid process of development, the one most cap- 
 able of bearing the high emotionalism and the complex 
 idealism of the modern world. The history of music 
 shows that an enormous distance has been passed from 
 Mozart to Brahms. Once the former was thought to 
 have reached the perfection of composition. Then came 
 Beethoven with newer modes. Then followed Wagner 
 and Brahms and Richard Strauss, each adding some- 
 thing to the expressiveness of music. Today, Mozart is 
 simple, hardly interesting, apprehensible to a child. 
 Wagner is now at the point of full reception. But few 
 have the capacity to follow the complexities of the latest 
 composers. But will not Brahms be as simple to the 
 ordinary ear, as Mozart is now to the critical musician? 
 What does this growth in apprehension signify, if not 
 that the race is advancing farther and farther into the 
 interior region, where harmonies are realized and ideals 
 formed ? 
 
 In conclusion, the matter may be summed up by saying 
 that, at every stage of his being, man has possessed an 
 ideal self-determined life, existing side by side with but 
 apart from his life as conditioned by material needs. 
 The origin of this freedom is lost in the dim evolutionary 
 regions ; the poets and scientists postulate a certain de- 
 gree of sentient life in the material atom. Certainly, the 
 higher animals experience a degree of freedom. In such 
 moments, they engage in play. In the lower grades of 
 
168 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 life, this activity is merely play; in the higher grades, 
 it takes the rational and significant form of artistic cre- 
 ation. 
 
 In some future golden age, foretold by poets and 
 prophets, it may be that all work will be play, all speech 
 will be song, and joy will be universal. 
 
DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 Tfie life of an organism is preserved and fulfilled 
 through its right adjustment to environment. If the 
 organism fail to accommodate itself to its conditions it 
 is doomed to a life of tragic conflict, a weakness increas- 
 ing to decay, and to final extinction. The school is an 
 agency devised by the social intelligence or instinct to 
 prepare the young organism for more effective exist- 
 ence. Its function is two-fold : First, to enable the young 
 to appropriate the inheritance which the past bequeaths ; 
 and, second, to hasten and facilitate their adjustment to 
 present conditions and future growths. The first service, 
 being fairly constant, tends to maintain in all educational 
 institutions that conservatism which so irritates the pro- 
 gressive educator whose attention is given to the work of 
 readjustment. From the conditions of the problem it 
 must be seen that the stability of institutionalism is over- 
 come at the fulfillment of the first function. After that 
 everything is subject to change according to the varia- 
 tion of the social environment. It is at this point that 
 institutionalism may become pernicious and subversive. 
 A given system becomes conventionalized, loses vitality, 
 ceases to move with the times, educates for conditions 
 long outgrown, retards progress, and enslaves the very 
 life that created it. Then the Promethean soul is bound to 
 the rocks and tyrannized over by the Jupiter of custom. 
 
170 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 But evermore, wise through its pains, it destroys the order 
 of routine and shapes its life anew. Meanwhile, the ac- 
 credited institution is upheld at an enormous waste of 
 energy. Individual organisms have been subverted and 
 destroyed. The so-called "graduates" of schools, in order 
 to be effective in their environment, are required not 
 infrequently to overcome the disability of their education. 
 If the individual is weak it drags out a wretched life, 
 querulous, dyspeptic, and finally perishes. I think the 
 life that goes out on battle fields is a small measure of the 
 energy wasted in schools. The tragedy of the "educated 
 man" is perhaps the most pathetic under the sun; a 
 tragedy not less grievous because of its frequency. And 
 of these tragic misfits the schools of today, by reason of 
 peculiar conditions of transition, are furnishing an un- 
 ending line. Our traditions, as those bearing upon 
 "school discipline" and "school studies," have reference 
 to military, priestly, scholastic, or other special ideals 
 of times long past; whereas the necessity of the day is 
 for a genuine social being, with varied practical and 
 industrial capacities, generous democratic sympathies, 
 and inclusive as light. "Where does the great city 
 stand?" asks Whitman. 
 
 "Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the common words 
 and deeds, 
 Where the men and women think lightly of the laws, 
 Where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases, 
 Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of 
 
 inside authority, 
 There the great city stands." 
 
 The question thus viewed is an important one, not to be 
 
DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 171 
 
 lightly passed : How shall the schools educate in view of 
 "triumphant democracy?" I venture to discuss this topic 
 in three of its phases: (i) The personal ideal to which 
 the modern man owes allegiance; (2) The social ideal to 
 which the school should conform; (3) The school work 
 calculated to accomplish the ends desired. 
 
 II 
 
 My general thesis may be stated first in abstract terms. 
 The conditions of democracy require an education that 
 shall be directed to the equipment of the individual in 
 respect of his self-sovereignty on the one hand and of 
 his socialism on the other. The individual, who shall be 
 fitted to live in a democratic community, must be taught 
 to control himself as a "simple, separate person" and to 
 govern his conduct with reference to his place in the 
 social system. Neither phase of his character can be 
 safely neglected. Of the two sides, however, the individ- 
 ialistic would seem to be the more important, for true 
 self-realization is both individualistic and social. By the 
 realization and continual enlargement of the self — a self 
 that is in its very nature social — the individual comes to 
 include the multitude and his right becomes their right 
 and his law their law. A genuine federation of men is 
 not to be accomplished by the written agreement of 
 lawyers, but only through the identification in ideas and 
 interests of the separate members of the groups and 
 communities. A perfect democracy is possible only with 
 persons who are completely developed in every aspect of 
 personality, and able therefore to substitute an inner for 
 
172 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 an outer bond of union. Create great individuals, estab- 
 lish the right personal ideal — the rest follows. 
 
 When viewed from the standpoint of the democratic 
 man, the various ideals about which the imagination and 
 sympathies of men have gathered in times past — the 
 military ideal, the priestly ideal, the cultural ideal — all 
 fall short of measuring the status of the true man of the 
 age. The military ideal, formed when the world was 
 a great soldiers' camp, was the necessary concomitant 
 and support of thrones and empires. Chivalry, furnish- 
 ing opportunity for spiritual strivings, was the beauty 
 and perfume that attracted to a rigorous ideal the souls 
 of finer nurture, and through the ages life has been 
 construed by poets and thinkers in terms of warfare — 
 terms that have become the very counters of our speech 
 and determine the texture of our thinking. From an 
 ideal so universal it is difficult for anyone to escape. 
 Nevertheless, it is an ideal outgrown and should be ut- 
 terly abandoned. It enforces principles of obedience to 
 the will of others in authority and interferes with the true 
 self-activity proper for the democratic man. Upon the 
 model of the military all religious systems and moral 
 tenets have been formed, not excepting those of the more 
 recent Protestant churches, whose devotion to bishops 
 or Bibles or creeds betrays their acceptance of the mili- 
 tary principle. It is a simple fact that the religious 
 life of all peoples today is grounded in authority of some 
 kind. The success of the Salvation Army is an evidence 
 of an attitude of mind that would seem to be almost 
 universal in matters pertaining to religion. Yet priest- 
 craft in all forms is destined to pass away : the army or- 
 ganization, the word of command, the obligation of 
 
DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 173 
 
 service, the deputed authority — all must pass. The ideal 
 of culture is based, likewise, on privilege. Learning has 
 always been the special instrument of priestcraft. In 
 the middle ages learning was a practical monopoly, the 
 possession of those who held the symbols of knowledge. 
 It was the avenue to place and dignity. Even Dante 
 thought it more worthy to be learned than to be a poet. 
 The egotism of culture is not less striking today at the 
 seats of learning. Culture is exclusive and unsympathet- 
 ic. We erect barriers between the wise and the not- 
 wise. It is, in fact, obtainable only by the few. Appro- 
 priate to the ends of a selfish aristocracy it is destruct- 
 ive of that good fellowship requisite for a democracy. 
 Democracy demands men and women who are capable 
 of self-rule and who, at the same time, are able to com- 
 prehend the experiences of other persons sufficient to 
 respect their will. All ideals that spring from authority 
 or eventuate in privilege must yield to one that is free 
 and fluid. 
 
 For the uses of democracy there must be produced 
 great individuals "fluid as nature, chaste, affectionate, 
 compassionate, fully arm'd." To this end the imagination 
 and sympathies of men must become associated with 
 the culture of life rather than with the learning of schools. 
 To hold up the ideal of a special class — any ideal short 
 of the entire personality, is to retard the progress of 
 democracy by neutralizing its effects. 
 
 III. 
 
 As the ideal of life is not submissiveness or perfection 
 
174 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 of conduct or intellectual distinction but social sympathy 
 or breadth of experience, the test of the school is its sensi- 
 tiveness to social influence. It becomes the mission of the 
 school to correct the gross egotism of youth that displays 
 itself in strife for preferment, in eager pursuit of prizes 
 of distinction, by inculcating principles of mutual depend- 
 ence and developing a sense of social obligation. The 
 degree of relationship felt by the members of a school 
 for each other and for the community of which they are 
 a part becomes the real test of efficiency. The school, in 
 its true modern meaning, is not a group of persons with- 
 drawn from society for a period to the end of preparing 
 for society when the school years are finished, but a com- 
 munity whose activities are ordered according to their 
 place in the evolution of life. The home with its varied 
 adult interests affords little opportunity for the child's 
 self-expression. Into the world of business, motives other 
 than educational enter to affect character. The school 
 provides community of interest and rightly conducted, 
 freed at once from the domestic and economic environ- 
 ments, becomes the child's true home, where the bodily 
 activities may be trained, where shy emotions may emerge 
 and vague thoughts define themselves, and where the 
 sense of kinship with others, implicit in the home, may 
 enlarge to the outer circumference of the social environ- 
 ment. To isolate the child, to require him to be 
 silent, to restrict his play, to destroy spontaneity, to 
 teach him to be passive and accept authority, is to per- 
 petuate feudalism. Only when the rigid book is laid 
 aside, the law relaxed, the child surrounded by other 
 children in free commerce, when all are permitted to 
 question and probe with eager interest, permitted to 
 
DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 175 
 
 be active and creative — only then is there chance for 
 republics. 
 
 From the school as a whole proceed other lines 
 of relationship. Under conditions of exclusiveness, 
 such as colleges formerly maintained, an antagonism 
 between the "town" and the "gown" is inevitably 
 occasioned. The presumption of the gown is met by 
 the scorn of the town. The scholar, separated from 
 the vital currents, shrinks to a pedant; the citizen, 
 missing the leadership of thought, swells out to a 
 boor. In true community life each needs the other, 
 the one that his abstractions may be tested by life, 
 the other that life may have meaning. There is noth- 
 ing so dead as dead knowledge; there is nothing so 
 vapid as a purposeless life. 
 
 From the point of view of social training, the fail- 
 ure of the military, priestly and cultural ideals is to 
 be noted. For they are essentially non-social and by 
 enforcing the external and mechanical dependency 
 of one mind upon another tend to break up that so- 
 cial connection founded upon sympathy. Graphically 
 these older ideals assume the form of a pyramid upon 
 the apex of which but the favored few can subsist. 
 They imply rank and gradation fatal to community 
 life. To the military ideal belong all the irrational 
 restrictions incident to "school discipline" that tend 
 to destroy individuality of action — restrictions in re- 
 spect of natural speech and spontaneous play accord- 
 ing to the tyranny of the teacher. The priest depends 
 upon some form of revelation and according to his 
 authority separates between the good and the not 
 good. Culture confirms the tyranny of the book and 
 
176 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 compels in the reader the passive attitude of listen- 
 ing. In these ideals there is no place for self-expres- 
 sion or for that unity that springs from a community 
 of interests. 
 
 The social motive has hardly emerged as yet into 
 educational consciousness. Among the newer move- 
 ments the "Vacation School" is especially significant. 
 Under the excuse of a vacation the ordinary discipline 
 is relaxed, the usual routine abandoned, the book set 
 aside, the format and mechanical relegated to a sec- 
 ondary place. Active and self-directive factors are 
 introduced. Sessions are conducted in the open air. 
 Nature is studied at first hand. The governing watch- 
 words are Impression and Expression. The children 
 in some degree seek their own ends — the school run- 
 ning parallel with life itself. From these experiments 
 in free methods it will doubtless be discovered that 
 the pupil in his spontaneous and creative moments is 
 a better educational guide than the teacher burdened 
 by the feudal traditions. And it is not at all unlikely 
 that the spirit of vacation will spread until it perme- 
 ates the entire school system. 
 
 Along more definite and conscious lines of school 
 development an experiment in genuine democratic 
 education was conducted by Professor John Dewey 
 at the elementary school formerly in connection with 
 the University of Chicago. The passage from the 
 aristocratic, the principle of dependency and passiv- 
 ity, to the democratic, the principle of originality and 
 activity, was there at length completed. The tra- 
 ditional equipment, desks, books, studies, monoton- 
 ous recitations, examinations, uniform courses and 
 
DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 1T7 
 
 classes, teachers in authority, — all these were conspic- 
 uous in their absence. In their stead were means for 
 occupations — for doing things. The school started 
 with the natural resources of the child and built upon 
 his own interest and desires — his threefold interest 
 in discovery, communication, and construction, his 
 desire to find out things, to tell things, and to make 
 things. In the traditional and feudal school the centre 
 of gravity is outside the child — in the teacher, the 
 book, the recitation, or the examination ; here the cen- 
 tre was found in the child himself. A child in acting 
 individualizes himself and forbids the formation of 
 classes. He desires, however, to communicate his 
 experiences to others and to receive criticism or fur- 
 ther suggestion for work. The "recitation" springing 
 from this need has the child still at the centre. For 
 the doing of things the child needs knowledge — but 
 only the knowledge that is related to his need. Ob- 
 stacles confront him in carrying out his idea into 
 concrete form ; his struggles with his materials consti- 
 tute his "discipline," his training in attention, con- 
 centration and will. Some organization such as is nec- 
 essary for community life is effected; from it arises 
 unification and the sense of the social whole. The 
 school is a miniature society. 
 
 In so far as these experiments in the new education 
 witness to a general tendency they disclose the mod- 
 ern transition from authority to freedom, from what 
 is mechanical and enforced to what is natural and 
 desired. The new factor in education is simply the 
 discovery that life itself is education : that the school 
 is itself social. 
 
178 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 IV. 
 
 The subjects calculated to develop the democratic in- 
 dividual and to effect the socialization of the school 
 are manifestly the constructive ones. The foundation 
 of modern education should be industrial. And as the 
 most educative form of industry is that pertaining to 
 art the central activities will be artistic. The arts 
 aim to give expression to thought and experience. The 
 realization of experience in art forms involves creation 
 through self-determined activity. The peculiarity of 
 art is that it is in part a discipline, in part a science, 
 but in largest measure a creation, the objectification 
 of feeling or idea. Hence its immense educational value. 
 
 The best type of the creative arts is music. Music 
 is free creation : it makes no reference to natural forms 
 and is not, therefore, a product of sensation. Being 
 artificial and conventional it becomes the sole crea- 
 tion of the inner being. It exposes the very motions of 
 the soul and is the personality in its barest guise. For 
 a musical idea has two elements, melody and har- 
 mony, each of which must first be conceived and dis- 
 played in the musical consciousness and then developed 
 from within outward. The working out of these con- 
 ceptions from consciousness to form gives the best 
 type of conceptive development. 
 
 The plastic arts are conceptive in development but de- 
 pend more upon imitation. Architecture, however, is 
 more like music, an art of idea. Painting takes its rise 
 both in idea and in nature. It is therefore at once 
 creative and imitative. But painting may be employed 
 in education by making the exhibition of the self 
 
DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 179 
 
 primary and letting the form occupy a subordinate 
 place, as indeed it does in the best art. 
 
 Literature, having language as its medium, furnishes 
 one of the best means of self-expression. Literature 
 serves not only the ends of creation but in its recorded 
 forms affords the finest exercise for the creative imag- 
 ination in interpretation. Fiction, for instance, is con- 
 densed human experience. It records motives, dis- 
 plays the operation of cause and effect, analyzes char- 
 acter, portrays actual or ideal states of society. To 
 read fiction with sympathy is to enter into the history 
 of the world and to repeat the processes of the 
 mind. To the development of personality literature 
 must so be presented that a vital experience results 
 from the contact rather than lifeless knowledge to 
 encumber the memory. The democratization of art 
 means its use as an energizing and creative power. 
 
 In close connection with the fine arts, but employing 
 a slightly different set of activities and interests, is 
 the group of the industrial arts, or what is more fa- 
 miliarly known as the "arts and crafts." The pure 
 conceptive process is here interfered with by the neces- 
 sity of use. But the more stubborn the material which 
 the hand must shape the greater the training in con- 
 centration and power. Considering the bearing of 
 such training on both the arts and the crafts, the nec- 
 essary association of the artistic and industrial tempera- 
 ments, the social value of a School of Craft can hardly 
 be overestimated. Some day the education of a man 
 will be measured by his capacity to do things rather than 
 by his knowledge or his receptive faculty. I think no 
 one will deny the attainment of William Morris, who 
 
180 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 was called derisively the poet-upholsterer, but who 
 thought good upholstery was quite as important as 
 good poetry. 
 
 The ordinary trades that have only economic bearing 
 have less educational value than work that admits of 
 conception. Under higher ideals of life, and with 
 the increased use of machinery for the tasks involv- 
 ing mere power, the skilled workman will tend to rise 
 to the plane of educational industry. 
 
 To constructive work the instructional studies now 
 primary will be subordinated. Geography and history 
 are the most essential of the related interests. For 
 it is possible to pursue these studies actively and to 
 realize in imagination the historical life of nature and 
 man. "The student," said Emerson, "is to read his- 
 tory actively and not passively, to esteem his own life 
 the text, and books the commentary.. All history is 
 subjective; there is properly no history, only biog- 
 raphy." 
 
 But to elaborate a course of construction to take the 
 place of the present course of instruction, or to name 
 the employments to be substituted for the traditional 
 studies, is beyond my intention. My purpose is to in- 
 sist that education to be democratized must follow the 
 lines of action and expression. 
 
 Democracy, to summarize, presents to the individual 
 a new ideal of culture, establishes a new relationship 
 among all the members of the social group, and prom- 
 ises to displace the disciplinary studies and methods 
 by the introduction of a new activity and a new method 
 that approximate the play-principle of the creative 
 artist. 
 
"WHERE IS THE POET?" 
 
 Soon after the assassination of President McKinley at 
 Buffalo, a question was raised in a public journal with 
 reference to the celebration of the event: "Where is the 
 Poet?" As a preface to the question the factors tending 
 to make the incident worthy of poetic treatment were 
 enumerated : 
 
 "The tragedy at Buffalo sounded the whole gamut of human 
 emotions. Love, hate, fear, anger, sympathy, compassion — all the 
 primal passions were aroused. Nothing could have been more 
 dramatic than the spectacle of a single, cowardly, skulking wretch 
 throwing a nation into tears. Nothing could have been more 
 pathetic than the deep, yet hopeful, silence in which the people 
 waited for the news from Buffalo. Nothing could be more inspir- 
 ing than the way in which they rallied from the shock and faced the 
 future with the confidence that 'God reigns and the government at 
 Washington still lives.' Nowhere was ever given a more beautiful 
 example of devotion than that which bound together the President 
 and his wife. Never was a deathbed illumined more brightly by 
 the light of Christian hope and faith. There was everything to 
 inspire the poet." 
 
 That the theme was not lacking in elements of sub- 
 limity is proved by the witness of another journalist : 
 
 "Let us think, if we can, of the solitudes of mighty forests; 
 imagine as we may the majestic sweep of storm-driven clouds lit 
 with the forked flame of lightning; let us recall the mystic roar 
 of the tireless Niagara; climb in imagination the solitary heights 
 of mountain fields; let the mind follow the measureless ranges of 
 earth's great highlands, the Rockies, the Andes, the Himalayas, 
 
182 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 and still -the sublimity and the solemnity of all these fade into 
 insignificance compared with this more sublime and mystic mani- 
 festation of the life in common that summons a tearful nation 
 around an open grave." 
 
 Though the pages of magazines teemed at the time with 
 verses of a certain order of merit, it must be acknowl- 
 edged that the first poem worthy the subject has yet to 
 appear. Where, then, was the poet? Was the theme too 
 large, was the event too near for poetic treatment ? No — 
 for its scope was immediately perceived, as is indicated 
 by the quotations given above. We must search else- 
 where for an explanation of the poet's silence. May it 
 not be that the time has passed when deeds require special 
 poetical celebration? Another question obtrudes itself: 
 "What is the need of the poet? If all the elements that 
 constitute an incident poetic are perceived by the whole 
 people with as much clearness as is exhibited by the 
 passages quoted, may we not rest in the greatness of the 
 fact and take the poet's rhetorical skill for granted? 
 Could any poet add anything to the effects conveyed by 
 the headlines, the news items, and the illustrations of the 
 daily press — for it was by this avenue that all the facts 
 of the incident came to the consciousness of the people. 
 Let it be remembered that this is the twentieth century, 
 and that we are trying in America to realize democratic 
 ideals in literature as well as in life. If democratic poli- 
 tics means the dispersion of power among the people, 
 may not democratic aesthetics mean the dispersion of the 
 poetic sense among the same people ? And if a people be 
 aesthetically developed, is not the special poetic celebra- 
 tion of deeds rendered unnecessary — to the degree, at 
 least, of popular participation in the deeds. In the case 
 
"WHERE IS THE POET?" 183 
 
 referred to the question is readily answered: the ques- 
 tioner is himself the answer. 
 
 But now this event in respect to its imaginative quality 
 is but typical of the life of the entire American people. 
 I venture to affirm that life in America transcends in 
 significance any record that can be made of it. With us 
 personality is so subtle, it is woven of so many racial 
 strands, it is blended of so many associations ; with us 
 men move in such masses — like ocean tides ; with us 
 events rise with such swiftness, they are knit of so varied 
 and complex relations ; nature itself is so vast and expan- 
 sive, furnishing an adequate background for dramatic 
 incidents : in short history in modern America is so ener- 
 gized that persons and objects assume an importance 
 in themselves never before discerned, an importance that 
 is surely not enhanced by the straining words of the most 
 stalwart poet. Once admit that persons and events may 
 reach a state that they become themselves poetic, then 
 the poetry which is dependent for its effects upon the 
 skill of a writer in arranging rhymes and constructing 
 phrases to satisfy an exquisite sense for form seems 
 unreal and childish. An ode on Lincoln placed by the 
 side of Lincoln the man appears an impertinence. What 
 Lincoln was and what he did certainly exceed in value 
 what he wrote. It seems likely that with the growth of 
 democracy the present relationship of literature and life 
 will be reversed. Up to this time literature has been the 
 leader ; it must now learn to serve. Literature has been 
 accorded the superior position because it has been su- 
 perior. It has been the home of ideals and representative 
 of freedom. But life has been in bondage to its own con- 
 
184 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 ditions. Unable to live freely men have dreamed of free- 
 dom. Arnold said of the great Goethe : 
 
 "He looked on Europe's dying hour 
 Of fitful dream and feverish power; 
 His eye plunged down the weltering strife, 
 The turmoil of expiring life: 
 He said, The end is everywhere, 
 Art still has truth, take refuge there!" 
 
 So art has been the refuge of the despairing man. Men 
 have represented in art what they have desired in their 
 inmost soul. Art is life shaped after the heart's desire. 
 European literature has been superior to its life since the 
 literature represents the ideals which the life could not 
 exhibit. Shelley's life was ineffectual, but his poetry 
 was prophesy. The poet knew from experience the truth 
 of his remark : 
 
 "Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 
 
 The literature of Europe, furthermore, has been aristo- 
 cratic and descriptive of feudal relations because kings 
 and nobles have alone been privileged to live in compara- 
 tive freedom. The only life possible to depict, such as 
 men desired for themselves, was the life of the upper 
 classes. In modern and democratic America the re- 
 straints are in some measure removed, the fetters are 
 broken, the energies of the people are given free play, 
 and life itself, for the first time in history, becomes 
 positive and creative. The industrial supremacy of 
 America in the world to-day arises from the conditions 
 of democracy: it implies first of all removal of limita- 
 
"WHERE IS THE POET?" 185 
 
 tions. Now when ideals are brought down into the 
 market-place and the factory, when doing is more highly 
 regarded than dreaming, life itself is able to be a fine art, 
 tragic or lyric, ordered well or ill, romantic or real. Then 
 it is possible to read history as an open page: things be- 
 come words, the factory and field form the stage, the 
 workers appear as heroes, their work is heard as a song. 
 If the truth of this statement be conceded that life in 
 America is superior to literature, another question is 
 disposed of which is frequently asked. "When will 
 America enter upon its due artistic development?" The 
 thought behind this question is of course that art is the 
 measure of civilization and any other form of culture is 
 ignoble and despicable. We shall not rise to the rank of 
 a great people, it is assumed, until upon the basis of a 
 material civilization a temple of art be reared. In this 
 view all our past history amounts to nothing except as 
 a preparation for artistic products. When we have 
 gained wealth enough to afford the fullest opportunity 
 for leisure, then, it is urged, we shall proceed to cultivate 
 the refinements and humanities; when we have enacted 
 our Iliad, the time will come for its recording. It is 
 clear that in the minds of these cynics the idea held of the 
 "humanities" is that in vogue in Europe in the period of 
 aristocracy. Then, truly, art represented the adornment 
 and entertainment of the noble and leisure classes. But 
 an art of this type is no longer possible. In the first 
 place the ideal of life in a democracy pertains not to leis- 
 ure but to activity. In the second place there is not the 
 slightest sign anywhere that the men who are doing the 
 world's work are tiring of their strenuous exercise. We 
 believe in work and are actually finding in our work the 
 
186 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 highest satisfaction. In truth work is, with us, as has 
 been said, "a form of noble exercise/' The time hoped 
 for by the literary cavillers will never come. The new 
 "humanities" relate not to leisure but to labor. The 
 standard of our civilization is not artistic but industrial: 
 we are to proceed from an industry that is crude to one 
 that is fine, not from a condition of labor without art 
 to a condition of leisure with art. This must involve 
 the absorption of the artistic sense in actual living: it 
 must mean that poetry is to inhere in what we do rather 
 than in what we write : it must mean that heroes are to be 
 found in the men who walk the streets. I am not in the 
 least displeased at the absence of great art in America, 
 well knowing that what has disappeared is not the essence 
 but only the form. I derive more satisfaction from the 
 daily papers than from romantic fiction and am more 
 pleased with secular magazines like the World's Work 
 than with literary journals like the Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 If I have interpreted aright the phenomena of an in- 
 dustrial civilization ; if it be true that the men who built 
 cathedrals and wrote great epics are now exercising 
 genuine creative genius in the field of work ; if instead of 
 discarding a material civilization it is the part of wise 
 men to humanize that civilization, then it appears to be 
 necessary that the factors existing most closely in rela- 
 tion to these phenomena be held in higher estimation 
 than they have hitherto been. My thesis is that in 
 America, in democracy, that is, life itself absorbs the 
 genius hitherto directed in artistic lines. 
 
 From this point of view the newspapers take on a new 
 importance. Their function is to convey to readers the 
 news of a day — to describe the incidents of the day, to 
 
"WHERE IS THE POET?" 187 
 
 picture the men and women who have on that day done 
 some deed or suffered some fate worthy of record. He 
 who is unable to extract romance, tragedy, poetry or truth, 
 from the morning's paper is not yet adjusted to the con- 
 ditions of modern life. 
 
 Given the facts of life as reported over a wide area by 
 the daily paper, it is the function of the poet and novelist 
 to interpret a select series of facts with such skill that 
 their readers discern, as unaided they are perhaps not able 
 to discern, the inmost reality of the facts admitted. 
 
 One poet at least among the American writers has fully 
 comprehended the power and significance of fact and 
 shifted his ground from transcendentalism to reality. 
 Walt Whitman is the first practical democrat in litera- 
 ture. His case is interesting and illustrative. Before he 
 began to write he made this direction in his note book: 
 "Beware lest your poems are made in the spirit that comes 
 from the study of pictures of things and not from the 
 spirit that comes from the contact with real things them- 
 selves." Elsewhere he had declared his conviction that 
 modern poets might take the same departure in poetry 
 that Lord Bacon had taken in science and emerge directly 
 from nature and its laws and from things and facts — 
 not from what is said about them, the stereotyped fancies 
 or abstract ideas of the beautiful. Hence we find in his 
 poems such sentiments as these: "I am enamored of 
 growing out of doors ;" "the press of my foot to the earth 
 springs a hundred affections;" "a morning-glory at my 
 window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books ;" 
 "I swear there can be no theory of any account unless 
 it corroborate the theory of the earth." His poems open 
 
188 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 to the modern world not only the theory of the earth, but 
 also that of space and time : 
 
 "Haughty this cry its words and scope 
 To span vast realms of space and time, 
 Evolution — the cumulative growths and generations." 
 
 It is instructive to note how the adoption of cosmical 
 standards influenced his poetic method. Trying his art 
 by the concrete, he found the tests applicable to his poems 
 were of such exacting character that he was freed from 
 all ordinary artistic and technical requirements. He 
 fancied the ocean, the mountains and forests putting 
 their spirit in a judgment on his book. Then upon the 
 concrete, though always fluid and rhythmic forms of 
 nature, he actually based his lines. In certain of his 
 catalogues of objects the presentation of facts returns al- 
 most to the rudiments of perception and language. But, 
 plainly, the poetry resides not in the words, but in the 
 objects. Literary cynics, trained in the literature of words, 
 scoff at his recitals. And of course he who feels no poetry 
 in life or nature will find no poetry in Whitman. But he 
 to whom the names New York, Chicago, San Francisco 
 convey images of vast cities with panoramic views and 
 moving tides of men, will thrill to Whitman's every page. 
 And not only did Whitman imitate the forms of nature, but 
 he caught its spirit and expressed himself freely and 
 frankly. Without any more explanation, excuse or se- 
 lection than the earth makes in the unceasing round of 
 creation, Whitman emulated the processes, amplitudes, 
 coarseness, equilibrium and great charity of nature. I 
 speak here of Whitman at some length for the reason 
 that he furnishes the only complete illustration of what 
 
"WHERE IS THE POET?" 189 
 
 literature will be when the transition I have referred to 
 in the first part of this paper occurs. 
 
 The doom of romantic fiction has already been pro- 
 nounced — pronounced, let us say, by the "fates," since 
 tendency itself forbids its continuance. Nothing can be 
 more grotesque and absurd than the so-called "historic 
 novel" of the day — it is grotesque because it is unreal, 
 it is absurd because it is opposed to the whole tendency 
 of modern civilization. Its vogue indicated a temporary 
 insanity of the public mind. It rose into favor during the 
 time the people were cultivating a barbaric spirit of war. 
 The great number of such stories is due to the fact that 
 any third- or fourth-rate writer can invent an historic 
 novel. It requires no originality to play with puppets — 
 no thought is called for, no insight into life, no experience. 
 An historic novel may be written according to receipt — 
 such as Pope gave in the eighteenth century for the com- 
 position of epics. 
 
 The interest of democracy is in character and the 
 course of events. "The life of man," said Emerson, "is 
 the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, 
 will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction." 
 To the same effect Whitman said : "As soon as histories 
 are properly told there is no more need of romances." 
 Bernard Shaw regards romance as "the great heresy to 
 be rooted out from art and life." "To me," he remarks, 
 "the tragedy and comedy of life lie in the consequences, 
 sometimes terrible, sometimes ludicrous, of our persistent 
 attempt to found our institutions on the ideas suggested 
 to our imagination by our half-satisfied passions 
 instead of on a genuinely scientific natural history." So 
 it happens that fiction is the last place one would go to 
 
190 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 to elaborate a natural history. When Whitman tells the 
 truth about life we are shocked — not because the things 
 told are true, but because they are told. The fault is not 
 with experience, but with the makers of literature. 
 
 If a complete record could be made of the life of any 
 one who has attained distinction in the world of affairs — 
 if a frank and full confession were made of thoughts, 
 feelings, motives and deeds — such a record would surpass 
 in interest the most imaginative tale of the fiction 
 mongers. Yet such a record does not exist in literature. 
 Ordinarily the man who does things cannot write, and the 
 man who writes cannot do things. Such a record as we 
 have is dependent upon the sympathetic understanding of 
 other lives by the imaginative writer. David Harum was 
 drawn doubtless from a live model, but why not report the 
 real life of an actual David. Mary MacLane has placed 
 on record the inner history of her life for a given period — - 
 does it detract from the literary interest of the book that 
 Mary MacLane is a real woman? John W. Mackay 
 is dead ; why not publish his "Life and Letters ?" I know 
 of nothing finer in literature than Grant's Memoirs. With 
 a little encouragement the great silent men, the men who 
 do things, might be persuaded to keep journals and note- 
 books, to write familiar letters and finally to attempt their 
 autobiographies. The field of biography is infinite in 
 scope and profound in its meanings. Upon its cultiva- 
 tion depends the future of literature in America. 
 
 At the present time it is the field of industry which is 
 most open to the creative energies. Romantic realism has 
 passed from the church, it has left the army, 
 it is just disappearing from the state. It reap- 
 pears in the school, but its manifestation is 
 
"WHERE IS THE POET?" 191 
 
 most apparent in business. Speculation, adventure, dis- 
 covery are still possible in a business career. One knows 
 what churchmen and statesmen will say before their 
 message is uttered ; for the life they deal with is stereo- 
 typed. In modern industrialism life is a game, a form of 
 exercise, requiring insight, imagination, creative ability, 
 culture. I almost envy the fortune which has given to 
 such writers as Hamlin Garland, Owen Wister and Frank 
 Norris, the education necessary to write characteristic 
 chapters of the Epic of the West. I envy more the chance 
 enabling other men to play the role of epical heroes. 
 These men are to me intensely interesting. I have just 
 been reading a clever sketch of Charles T. Yerkes, writ- 
 ten by T. P. O'Connor, the Irish journalist. This is the 
 man as he appears to a foreign observer : 
 
 "A man rather below the middle height — with a heavy 
 snow-white moustache, a pale complexion; with that 
 slight tendency towards an enlarged girth that comes with 
 middle age ; with white hair, with fine dark eyes, and with 
 a soft voice and a subdued manner— such is Mr. Yerkes. 
 The first, indeed the supreme and most lasting, impres- 
 sion he makes upon you is serenity. He comes, I believe, 
 of Quaker blood, and the face is a Quaker face, with 
 that quietism which is and always remains the expres- 
 sion of the man or woman who has begun life amid the 
 prolonged silences and the stern self-discipline and self- 
 control of the Society of Friends. The voice — soft, low, 
 never raised above a minor key — is in perfect accord with 
 the expression ; and the eyes — with their curious immo- 
 bility and a certain sweetness, and last the least touch of 
 mocking humor — complete this picture of one of those 
 silent, quiet, iron men that rule the storm and ride the 
 
192 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 cyclone in the elemental and Titantic wars of American 
 industry. 
 
 "The pallor of the complexion, ivory in its intensity, yet 
 indicates health, not fragility — a certain distinction and 
 refinement — as of a man who has always exercised self- 
 restraint, and who has never poisoned his system and 
 colored his cheeks with the flowing wine or the overboun- 
 teous, overladen table. And Mr. Yerkes is, indeed, a man 
 who has sternly controlled himself. He never takes tea 
 nor coffee, and he never smokes, though he may be 
 tempted into a couple of glasses of light champagne at 
 dinner. And yet, with all this impression of supreme 
 serenity, you cannot be with the man for more than half 
 an hour without becoming conscious of all the iron 
 strength there is behind the ivory cheek, the soft brown 
 eye, the low voice. He speaks slowly, with something of 
 the characteristic American drawl, and he seems much 
 more disposed to listen than to talk — unless he finds that 
 the atmosphere is sympathetic and appreciative and that 
 he can reveal his inner self. 
 
 "And then you hear talk worth listening to. Cold, 
 easy, with every word spoken slowly and every word com- 
 ing out as clear cut, as fitted to the word that has pre- 
 ceded and will follow as though he were making a mosiac 
 of jewels. Mr. Yerkes tells the tale of his life; of his 
 conflicts ; of his enemies ; of his friends, and often leaving 
 these behind, he sums up his theory of the world and his 
 lessons from life in some anecdote told with brevity, 
 without a superfluous word, with quiet but expressive 
 gesture — above all, with full appreciation of the dramatic 
 points." 
 
 I rub my eyes a little at these statements, for this is not 
 
"WHERE IS THE TOET?" 193 
 
 the Yerkes I have been told of in Chicago. But I am 
 ready to admit that hitherto my eyes have not been open. 
 The notice concludes after more detailed characteriza- 
 tion: 
 
 "Such is the man that has undertaken the gigantic task 
 of revolutionizing our methods of locomotion in London. 
 Curiously enough, the accumulation of money has been 
 rather an accident than a purpose of this strange and 
 potent man's life. He speaks of tramways, of electric 
 light, electric power, with a quiet passion which you 
 might expect from Mr. John Sargeant talking of a pic- 
 ture; from Paderewski talking of music; and when he 
 begins to describe the smoke, the closeness, the incon- 
 veniences of steam engines in our underground, there is 
 a look of positive pain in his features. To make an under- 
 ground system which will be clean, cheap, fast, worked 
 by electricity — a joy instead of a horror — such is the am- 
 bition of Mr. Yerkes. 'I have never,' he said, 'interested 
 myself, in anything but tramways and traction ; that's my 
 business, and I've never gone one second outside that 
 business. And men are judged usually by their last 
 work. This is my last work ; this is my final ambition.' 
 
 "Such are my impressions of that strange, new portent, 
 the American millionaire, that, sighing for new worlds to 
 conquer, has come to London to reverse our methods, to 
 startle and renew our old systems and methods, to bring 
 to Europe the gigantic projects, the fearless daring, that 
 are so characteristic of America, with her rivers that are 
 seas, her states that are continents, her simple private 
 citizens that are forces more potent than armies, or fleets, 
 or Czars." 
 
 Such are the fruits of democracy. Add to what is now 
 
194 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 known of men, the knowledge of nature revealed by 
 science, and one is forced to admit that the world as 
 modernly conceived transcends in imaginative significance 
 the highest fictions of poet and novelist. 
 
THE NEW DOCTRINE OF LABOR. 
 
 If it be true, as political economists assert, that an in- 
 dustrial civilization is now forming, it becomes pertinent 
 to inquire what attitude it is proper to assume towards 
 labor — towards that which is necessarily central in such 
 a civilization. It is manifestly impossible to build up a 
 civilization on the basis of labor as it exists in the world 
 today. If labor is to be a factor in civilization it must be 
 itself a civilizing agency. No one can be so blind to ex- 
 isting conditions as to assert that labor at the present 
 time is anything but a sordid makeshift, without character 
 and without meaning. The questions now which arise in 
 the mind are these: Is there an ideal of labor human- 
 istic in its import? Is there a form of labor cultural in 
 its results ? 
 
 The theological doctrine of labor is probably every- 
 where outgrown — the doctrine that labor is a curse, in- 
 flicted upon mankind for disobedience and sin. In the 
 middle ages the theological interpretation of life coin- 
 cided with the system of political feudalism then forming, 
 and a social civilization came into being in which the work 
 of the world was given over to slaves and underlings, 
 the masters meanwhile maintaining a cultured grace with 
 special privileges, highly ornate and ceremonial, fashioned 
 upon leisure. 
 
 Political feudalism was destroyed by the many revolu- 
 tions in Europe at the turn of the century. While these 
 revolutions were nominally political they were in reality 
 industrial. The French Revolution initiated the present 
 
196 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 industrial system. This system is purely materialistic, 
 taking its rise in the general skepticism and rationalism 
 of the eighteenth century. Labor lost its stigma ; it rose 
 to the position of a commodity. Economic considerations 
 determined its value. The nexus between master and 
 man ceased to be personal, feudal, religious, or political, 
 and came to be impersonal, economic, and mathematical. 
 Work was undertaken from necessity — the degree of 
 necessity being measured by the wage. The present in- 
 dustrial order is therefore based upon material goods and 
 properties. There is no spiritual principle present any- 
 where in it. Labor, viewed as a commodity, as something 
 for which a price is paid, is simply an incident in an ex- 
 change which is formal, brutal, without sentiment, with- 
 out the spirit of service, and with no cultural attachments 
 or rewards of any sort. The struggle in the industrial 
 world is between those who have and those who have not. 
 The ordinary laborer accepts the materialistic valuation 
 of his services and strikes for the only thing which has 
 worth in his eyes — a higher wage, a reward, that is, in 
 terms of property. His demand is quantitative, and is, 
 of course, of the same kind as the quantitative civiliza- 
 tion he helps to maintain. 
 
 The word civilization has been employed here, but the 
 term is quite inappropriate. Civilization refers to a cer- 
 tain quality of life and not to an accumulation of goods. 
 It would seem that if the industrial system is to endure 
 it must change its character to harmonize with the ideas 
 of those humanistic philosophers who have conceived of 
 a culture suitable for an aspiring and spiritual race. To 
 accomplish this change it will be necessary to promulgate 
 a new doctrine of labor, and to effect a revolution in the 
 
THE NEW DOCTRINE OF LABOR 197 
 
 character of labor itself. Must labor always be measured 
 materially by alien standards ? May it not have spiritual 
 rewards? May it not find its value in itself? May not 
 life become expressive — may not labor, that is, be con- 
 ducted in the line of one's own life? Why should educa- 
 tion be always leisuristic? Is it not possible for work to 
 be cultural ? May it not even be religious ? Might it not 
 gather to itself the sentiments which humanize and 
 civilize ? 
 
 The new doctrine of labor was enunciated first of all 
 in England by Carlyle. In its simplest form it stands on 
 his pages thus : "It is the first of all problems for a man 
 to find out what kind of work he is able to do in this 
 universe." Work, as to its import, is character, knowl- 
 edge, power, life. "He that has done nothing has known 
 nothing." Thus understood, when regarded as having 
 cultural rewards, work becomes perverted the moment it 
 demands a wage and falls under bondage to Mammon. 
 "The wages of every noble work," said Carlyle, "do yet 
 lie in Heaven, or else nowhere." 
 
 These statements of Carlyle were elaborated by his 
 pupil Ruskin and realized in practice by Ruskin's pupil 
 Morris. But apart from a relatively small number of 
 workshops here and there, it must be confessed the doc- 
 trine of "labor as a pleasure in itself" is practically inop- 
 erative in the modern world. Yet it is the ideal which 
 must inform the world if advance is to be made in the di- 
 rection of a rational industrial civilization. By its appli- 
 cation alone, by the changes wrought in the character 
 and substance of labor itself, will it be possible to escape 
 the materialism of present day commerce and its soul- 
 destroying wage-slavery. 
 
198 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 If a change in our attitude toward work and a change 
 in the nature of the work itself — if these changes can at 
 once be effected, the two claims now made by employees of 
 employers for a higher wage and a shorter day will be ren- 
 dered nugatory. If the rewards of labor can be attached 
 to labor itself, if it should not be necessary on the one 
 hand to search for a culture outside of one's employ- 
 ments, and on the other hand to consider an equivalent 
 for labor in another medium, the main objects for which 
 labor unions exist and on account of which strikes are 
 entered upon would become secondary and unimportant. 
 In accepting a wage as the measure of efficiency, in de- 
 manding rewards in forms of property, the labor unions 
 are in truth subjecting themselves to the bondage of 
 economic materialism and are losing such advantages as 
 might come from a spiritual interpretation of life. The 
 struggle for higher wages is one thing — the motive being 
 purely materialistic and selfish ; the struggle to be freed 
 from wage slavery altogether is quite another thing and 
 must involve a certain idealistic perception. If the 
 struggle for property continues as insistent as it now is 
 there is nothing but strife and eventually revolution to 
 look forward to. If an evolutionary advance is to be ex- 
 pected, improvement must arise from a change in direc- 
 tion and an acceptance of a new point of view. For again 
 real improvement is qualitative and not quantitative. Will 
 Chicago teachers, who joined the Federation of Labor, 
 materialize their own function and motives by accepting 
 the economic doctrine of labor, or will they help to edu- 
 cate and spiritualize this body by upholding a new doc- 
 trine of labor and disclosing the play of a social motive ? 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART. 
 
 "I feel that in this class I have been given a key to 
 something rightfully belonging to me, but which some- 
 how or other I have been cheated out of up to this time. 
 I have been compelled to spend time over 'the dainty 
 figures' of Collins and the 'sentimentality' of Gray, but 
 always under protest. A serious and rational human 
 being can have little interest in these things. You have 
 let me see the real significance of great literature." 
 
 Such was the note of commendation I received not 
 long ago from one of my pupils. I may be pardoned for 
 placing it at the head of this paper since in answering the 
 letter I was led to formulate more definitely than I had 
 done before the few principles which had governed my 
 study and interpretation of literature. 
 
 "Been given a key to something rightfully belonging 
 to me, but which somehow or other I have been cheated 
 out of up to this time." This sentence, it will be ob- 
 served, is the record of a revelation ; it is at the same time 
 a statement of a claim and of an arraignment. A reader 
 has a right to the whole truth of literature, a right to 
 appropriate for his own enrichment whatever has entered 
 into the composition of a work of art. In the case of great 
 literature which embodies not only a great personality, 
 but also the essential life of a whole people, or it may be 
 the vital forces of a complete epoch, it is not to be ex- 
 pected that everyone will have the capacity to assimilate 
 its entire substance. But it has been my experience that 
 
200 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 success in the study of literature is due largely to one's 
 ability to bring himself into right relationship to a given 
 subject. It is mainly a question of attitude. If a given 
 literature be approached from the right point of view, and 
 in the right spirit, the appropriation is dependent then 
 solely upon the capacity of the reader to receive; but i£ 
 through the ignorance or carelessness or actual incom- 
 petency of the teacher, the student is turned away from 
 the true path to the "mountain of vision," he has a right 
 to bring a charge of deception and fraud against the 
 teacher or critic. Personally I feel the responsibility of 
 a teacher in perhaps an excessive degree ; I should hate 
 to have it said of me that I was a blind guide to the blind. 
 It is the function of teachers to provide pupils with keys — 
 to use the figure of my correspondent — and in literature 
 there is the key philogical, the key philosophical and 
 ethical, the key psychological, the key historical, the key 
 sesthetical, and, I will add as something relatively new, 
 the key sociological. It was the last of these keys, I may 
 mention, which had been placed in the hands of the class 
 referred to, and this key did in truth appear to unlock 
 unsuspected stores of material which other keys, least of 
 all the sesthetical, had failed to uncover. I call this key the 
 sociological for the reason that I first learned its use from 
 a sociologist. It was another sociologist who most 
 clearly defined for me the true nature of literature. How- 
 ever, as a matter of fact, the application of social prin- 
 ciples has been a marked feature of recent criticism, even 
 that of professional critics. It is seen that only when 
 literature is considered as one of the arts, and when art is 
 considered as one of the processes of idealization by 
 which all psychic forms and social institutions are shaped, 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 201 
 
 that its proper place appears in the circle of social agents. 
 The reason for the late appearance of social criticism 
 would seem to be that not until recently has it been pos- 
 sible to connect the facts of organic evolution with the 
 processes involved in the development of a poetic idea. 
 
 Art, it may be argued, is one product of the creative 
 imagination. The same imagination precedes religious 
 prophesy, philosophic speculation, scientific hypothesis, 
 mechanical invention, and social construction. Thought 
 itself is an idealizing process, a form, that is, of "creative 
 synthesis" — to use the terms of Professor Lester Ward, 
 one of the sociologists mentioned above. And deeper 
 still the subjective evolution of mind is paralleled by the 
 objective evolution of nature. In the organic world the 
 course of evolution is from the homogeneous to the hetero- 
 geneous through successive differentiations. An undiffer- 
 entiated plasm contained the potency of all the varied 
 forms evolved from it. In the same way a poetic idea, as 
 Ward states it, "is homogeneous undifferentiated truth" — 
 it is a psychological plasm with the power of development 
 in a number of directions, but, in its first forms, character- 
 ized by vagueness and indefmiteness. The illustration 
 of such "poetic idea" given by Ward is Emerson's state- 
 ment of the truth of evolution in an essay published in 
 1836, and antedating Darwin's "Origin of Species" by 
 twenty-three years : 
 
 "And striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 In this instance the differentiation of the poetic idea took 
 place in science. In other cases the differentiation occurs 
 in sociology. The condition of progress in the different 
 
202 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 fields is essentially the same — and this condition is stated 
 by none so well as by Emerson in the passage just cited : 
 namely the psychic power of forming ideals. Creative 
 imagining is the first step ; this is followed by efforts to 
 realize the ideal conceived, in some concrete objective 
 way. Man, as John is made to say in Browning's 
 "Death in the Desert :" 
 
 "Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, 
 And in this striving, this converting air 
 Into a solid he may grasp and use, 
 Finds progress, man's distinctive mark." 
 
 It happens that John's illustration of the process is taken 
 from the art of sculpture : 
 
 "The statuary ere he mold a shape 
 Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next 
 The aspiration to produce the same; 
 So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, 
 Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see': 
 Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, 
 From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself." 
 
 But now these poetic conceptions may be of many 
 kinds. If a poet be warm-hearted, sympathetic, highly 
 sensitive to the imperfections of the social order, whereby 
 injustice and suffering fall heavily upon men, it is quite 
 inevitable that he turn his attention to social reconstruc- 
 tion. The nineteenth century has been well called the 
 Century of humanity: for during this period psychology 
 became social, and few there were not conscious of the 
 imperfections of the social order and uninfected by 
 Shelley's "passion of reforming the world." There were 
 some who were timid and abstracted, and did not go farth- 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 203 
 
 er than to outline dreamily a Utopian scheme of society. 
 The aggressive types entered militantly into a program of 
 revolution. Whatever the poet did he remained the poet. 
 If he wrote for a people a new constitution he was still 
 the poet. If he established a new institution he was not 
 less the poet. John Ruskin's "socialism," his Society for 
 the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, his Village In- 
 dustries Movement, his Society of St. George, not less 
 than his verses and paintings and criticisms, are evidences 
 of poetic idealization. Morris did not consider it a degra- 
 dation that he subordinated poetry to craftsmanship and 
 social reform. Where should Victor Hugo be placed if 
 not in the front ranks of political liberals ? Berlioz handled 
 a musket at the barricades in Paris. Byron and Shelley 
 were active revolutionists in the political and social 
 spheres. Wagner joined the later revolutionary move- 
 ment in Europe. Tolstoi is perhaps the foremost advo- 
 cate of social reconstruction in the modern world. These 
 men exercised their creative genius in producing a social 
 art, an art that is greater in some respects than the 
 aesthetic art we have been accustomed to. 
 
 The scientific explanation of social art was left for 
 Ward in his "Pure Sociology" already referred to. The 
 poetic explanation of the same phenomena will be found 
 in Shelley's "Defence of Poetry," the full import of which 
 has been strangely overlooked. The first conception ap- 
 peared thus some eighty years before the facts were 
 known scientifically. "Poetry," said Shelley, "in a gen- 
 eral sense, may be defined to be the 'expression of the 
 imagination/ ' This led to the affirmation that all forms 
 of order and beauty, according to which the materials of 
 human life are susceptible of being arranged, are poetry, 
 
204 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 in the universal sense. "Poets are not only the authors of 
 language, and of music, of the dance, and architecture, 
 and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of 
 laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors 
 of the arts of life, and the teachers of religion." Because- 
 of the secondary nature of the written poetry of Rome, 
 and of the perfection there of political and domestic so- 
 ciety, Shelley spoke of Roman art as social: "The true 
 poetry of Rome lived in its institutions ; for whatever of 
 beautiful, true and majestic, they contained, could have 
 sprung only from the faculty which creates the order in 
 which they consist." 
 
 Shelley not only defined poetry in terms of society, but 
 he was also interested in the interaction of the poet and 
 the social system. Poetry, he perceived, "is connate with 
 the origin of man." Illustrations of the social origin of 
 poetry are given in the "Defence of Poetry," but the full 
 elaboration of the principle is contained in a recent volume 
 by Professor Gummere, entitled "The Beginnings of 
 Poetry." Professor Gummere regards all literature as 
 the expression of man's social nature. "Poetry," he de- 
 fines, "like music, is social; like its main factor rhythm, 
 it is the outcome of communal consent, a faculte d' en- 
 semble \ and this should be writ large over every treatise 
 in poetry, in order to draw the mind of the reader from 
 that warped and baffling habit which looks upon all 
 poetry as a solitary performance." "In rhythm," I quote 
 further, "in sounds of the human voice, timed to move- 
 ments of the human body, mankind first discovered that 
 social consent which brought the great joys and great 
 pains of life into a common utterance." 
 
 These statements are corroborated in a monograph of 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 205 
 
 still later date, issued by Professor Tufts, and entitled "On 
 the Genesis of the Aesthetic Categories." One of his 
 theses is stated in the following terms: "Art has its 
 origins, almost without exception, in social relations ; it 
 has developed under social pressure ; it has been fostered 
 by social occasions ; it has in turn served social ends in 
 the struggle for existence. In consequence, the values 
 attributed to aesthetic objects have social standards, and 
 the aesthetic attitude will be determined largely by these 
 social antecedents. Or, in other words, the explanation 
 of the aesthetic categories is to be sought largely in social 
 psychology." Beyond a doubt these utterances repre- 
 sent the trend of the most authoritative modern thinking 
 on the subject. 
 
 And what literature is as to its origin it remains as to 
 its progress and development. There is never a time in 
 the history of literature when it is not possible to test its 
 value according to its derivation from and its contribu- 
 tion to the whole of human life. There is no great writer 
 at any time who is not in the main a teacher of social 
 ideals. The mere singer, the unsocial egotist who ignores 
 the broad democratic social ties, may himself be ignored 
 by modern criticism, as failing to meet the requirements 
 of the social method of interpretation. 
 
 It was what I have just called the social method of in- 
 terpretation as distinguished from the individualistic 
 aesthetic that Whitman had in mind when in "Good Bye 
 my Fancy" he expressed his opinion in these terms: 
 "My own opinion has long been, that for New World 
 service our ideals of beauty (inherited from the Greeks) 
 need to be radically changed, and made anew for to- 
 day's purposes and finer standards." Whitman's own 
 
206 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 poetry is, of course, social in its origin and nature and, 
 like Shelley's poetry, with which it is very closely allied, 
 makes no pretense to conform to aesthetic standards, but 
 displays its real merits to the critic capable of social fel- 
 lowship. 
 
 The time would seem to be ripe for a shifting of the 
 critical point of view. Criticism has been occupied with 
 individualistic estimation; it has considered literature as 
 a product of individual genius ; it has written text-books 
 of literature which treat of individual authors as unre- 
 lated to time or place. This is done in the face of the fact 
 that not one of the sciences considers man today in isola- 
 tion, that philosophy finds no significance in the individual 
 apart from society, that psychology itself traces mind to 
 its source in nature. Gossip about authors is, of course, 
 intrusive, the veriest impertinence. One man is no more 
 worthy of regard than another, except as he is more repre- 
 sentative, except as he incarnates more of the Time- 
 Spirit, except as he is more absorptive with respect to 
 heredity and environment. If the artist be such an inclu- 
 sive individual, personalities fall aside, mere dexterity in 
 the handling of materials counts for little, the merits 
 which have seemed to attach to vocabulary, style, con- 
 struction, species ir kind of literature, are held in second- 
 ary consideration. Aesthetic criticism is today overspecial- 
 ized and to the degree of its specialization it has lost con- 
 tact with life. What should count are the typical quali- 
 ties, the democratic averages, imaginative sympathy, 
 idealization, the social forces. 
 
 Evidences accumulate of the dawning of the social 
 sense in modern art. I have already referred to Shelley 
 and Whitman as illustrating a poetry socialized in its 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 207 
 
 main effects. A notable instance of a somewhat obscure 
 type of social art is furnished by Wagner's music-dramas. 
 The striking feature of Wagner's dramas is the complete 
 unity effected of several different arts in the interest of 
 the drama as a whole. The dramatic unity involves here 
 the subordination of the separate arts of music, poetry, 
 and acting, hitherto existing in specialized form. There 
 could not be a better illustration of what necessarily fol- 
 lows upon socialization. When each individual art con- 
 tributes its impulse to the whole the total effect is well 
 nigh overwhelming. In order to increase the social 
 bearings of the work, philosophic and religious ideals 
 were embodied, the dramas being dedicated to the Ger- 
 man people to foster nationality. There could not be a 
 better illustration also of the failure of the current criti- 
 cism. The criticism which at first assailed Wagner was 
 of course of the more aesthetic type. No one of his critics 
 had the insight to perceive that a new art had been given 
 to the world, or the sagacity to adjust his criticism to 
 the conditions of art purposely subdued to social uses. 
 Tolstoi throws the weight of his great name to the 
 side of social criticism. His "What is Art?" contains the 
 fullest and most elaborate discussion of the social theory 
 that has yet appeared. Discarding the metaphysical and 
 aesthetic theories of art, as leading to work tending to be- 
 come exclusive and debased, Tolstoi reaches a definition 
 of art distinctly social in its import: "The infection of 
 one man by another with the feelings experienced by the 
 infector." And as it is the first requirement of social art 
 that it be actually socialized, that is, that it reach and in- 
 fluence as many members of the social order as possible, 
 its special mission is to transmit the truth that "well- 
 
208 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 being for men consists in being united together/' or, in 
 other words, to "establish brotherly union among men." 
 It is clear that the art calculated to effect the union of 
 men is of a kind totally different from an art intended to 
 please the educated taste of the aesthetic classes. "Good 
 taste," of the kind that creates divisions among men, or 
 that exalts one man above another, is the least desirable 
 faculty to educate in a democracy. Sympathy and univer- 
 sality are the marks of great modern art. 
 
 We now perceive also that the criticism of Ruskin and 
 Morris — of all the great moderns, indeed, who are moved 
 by the spectacle of "man's inhumanity to man," is of the 
 social type. "I say," said Ruskin in the first volume of 
 Modern Painters, "that art is the greatest, which conveys 
 to the mind of the spectator, the greatest number of the 
 greatest ideas." "Painting, or art generally," he says 
 again, "is nothing but a noble and expressive language, 
 invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself noth- 
 ing." "By itself nothing" — in these words condemning 
 an art which exists by reason of the beauty of its tech- 
 nique, or the glory of its words, or the perfection of its 
 form. "No weight, or mass, nor beauty of execution can 
 outweigh one grain or fragment of thought." 
 
 Add to such statements the sayings of Morris on 
 the subject of art and we begin to gather a body of 
 social criticism respectable in its amount and influen- 
 tial in its appeal. "By art, I understand," said Morris, 
 "the pleasure of life," and it became the aspiration of 
 his heart and mind to restore to the people that pleas- 
 ure of life which had been lost to them through the 
 refinement and abstraction of the art impulse. 
 
 What will be the outcome of such criticism? What 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 209 
 
 will the new art come to be when redeemed from 
 specialization and created by and for the people? 
 
 Doubtless America furnishes the opportunity for 
 the freest play of the social impulses. Although our 
 art is in considerable measure traditional and aristo- 
 cratic, there are yet evidences of fundamental 
 changes taking place in the conception of art, which 
 bring production more in harmony with the modern 
 forces. American literature as a whole and in its main 
 phases is a social literature — a literature devised, that 
 is, for purposes of social communication. The first 
 literary products in the New World were a child's 
 primer, a hymn-book, and an almanac. A people 
 whose government is republican must necessarily 
 proceed by debate and persuasion. Identity of inter- 
 ests and ideas must be created and maintained. For 
 this reason the literary spirit of America is manifest 
 not so much in its poetry as in its prose, and its 
 greatest prose is found in certain political documents 
 and in the addresses of its great publicists. Of style 
 in the technical sense there is little in the typical 
 American prose. A speaker who wishes to address 
 all minds and carry conviction to all hearts will not 
 divert attention by refining upon phrases. The char- 
 acteristic American prose is the plain prose of Lin- 
 coln — a prose so perfect as a medium of expression 
 that its value lies wholly in what it communicates. It 
 reveals large sympathy and implies the presence of mul- 
 titudes of men. It is literature of the purest social type. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the creative impulse in 
 America finds other channels than the conventional 
 ones. The fine arts are not quite native to us; they 
 
210 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 are with us derivative, the result of conscious and will- 
 ful seeking and adaptation. But in certain popular 
 and industrial forms our art has been original and 
 creative. We originated the public park, for instance, 
 and have carried its aesthetic forms to a perfection not 
 equalled elsewhere in the world. America's greatest 
 artist is a landscape architect. We created also com- 
 mercial architecture, and today the American steel- 
 frame business temple represents the one new and 
 original departure made in the art of architecture 
 since the period of the Gothic. After Olmstead our 
 most distinctive artist is Sullivan, an architect. It 
 is probable the industrial arts will receive their final 
 perfection here. A foreign observer, M. Bing of Paris, 
 speaking of L'Art Nouveau of which in Europe he is 
 the chief exponent, has recently said: "I express the 
 conviction that America, more than any other country 
 of the world is the soil predestined to the most bril- 
 liant bloom of the future art which shall be vigorous 
 and prolific." The public park, commercial structures, 
 the communal crafts, are modern social types of art. 
 They are signs of the revolution wrought in recent 
 years in the political and social spheres of endeavor. 
 They represent social concepts and imply the presence 
 and the co-operation of the people. 
 
 In the history of "Exposition" building in this 
 country we have again an apt illustration of the 
 growth of a social consciousness in respect to art 
 forms. Taking our greater expositions in review, 
 it is seen that they represent many phases of 
 the evolution of a true art spirit. The Centennial 
 Exposition was an exhibition only. Instruction was 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 211 
 
 its guiding motive. It was a show primarily of the 
 world's products. Little was given to beauty for 
 itself, and the feeling of unity was altogether lacking. 
 The architecture was neither beautiful in itself nor 
 did it subserve function. At the World's Fair at Chi- 
 cago the exhibition was held somewhat in abeyance, 
 the construction having more the intention of a spec- 
 tacle. There was still wanting the principle of func- 
 tion and the conception of a true unity. The first 
 violation of function and the fundamental error, so- 
 cially speaking, was the choice of the classic style for 
 the architecture. "World's Fair" conveys to the mind 
 the idea of a holiday. An excursion to a World's 
 Exposition represents a lyric moment thrust in be- 
 tween the incidents of business and worldly cares. 
 The .time is a play spell — one is in the holiday mood, 
 not seeking to be edified alone, or alone to be moved 
 by a spectacle of beauty, but to be free and festive 
 even. Grecian architecture, perfect for Grecian use, 
 is almost meaningless when set down on a level plain 
 by a lake side — altogether meaningless when forming 
 an arena for a democratic people on holiday. Be- 
 tween the rigid and severe simplicity of the classic 
 styles and the essential sentiment of a "Fair" there is 
 no possible reconciliation. The "White City" made a 
 beautiful "show," and as a show it was enjoyed and 
 highly commended. But it stopped far short of unity, 
 since it was not built with primary reference to the 
 people. Instead it was built timidly and negatively, 
 in actual distrust of the people. The fair would have 
 been as beautiful if there had been no one to behold it. 
 It derived nothing of its meaning from the people 
 
212 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 present, and the people saw nothing of themselves 
 reflected in the Fair. The third of our great expo- 
 sitions, the Pan-American at Buffalo, showed a strik- 
 ing advance upon all previous conceptions and ap- 
 proximated a perfect social art. Its primary purpose 
 was sociological — the purpose, that is, of creating a 
 festal scene appropriate to a people on holiday. Based 
 on this elemental fact of function, the exposition car- 
 ried out the same principle throughout its entire struc- 
 tural scheme. To indicate the nature of the particu- 
 lar enterprise a Spanish Renaissance style was 
 adopted for the architecture — a style which lends it- 
 self admirably to festivity and admits a lavish use of 
 color and ornamentation. Architecturally the expo- 
 sition converged toward the electric tower, which, 
 with its suggestion of Niagara, was naturally the 
 focus of all paths. The principle of socialization was 
 perhaps most apparent in the coloring. For the color- 
 ing was not independent, but, so to speak, sociological. 
 The color scheme, extending from south to north, 
 typified the advance of civilization from barbarism 
 to culture, as the milder tints of the central buildings 
 pointed to the intellectualization of mankind. There 
 were two exceptions to this order. The electric foun- 
 tain, having come to the dignity of a "fine art" (that 
 is, an independent art), could not be socialized and 
 was therefore banished to an island by itself — an 
 "art for art's sake." The other exception was 
 strangely the government building of the "United 
 States." For some reason the government could not 
 be socialized, and hence this building stood as an 
 excellent illustration of the fact that our present gov- 
 
THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 213 
 
 ernmental forms pertain to a conception of the people 
 older than the one implied by the exposition itself. 
 The sculpture, of which there were some five hundred 
 pieces, also formed an integral part of the plan. The 
 sculpture, like the color, told the story of civilization. 
 There were three series, each conveying a distinct 
 historic progression; the story of Man, the story of 
 Nature, and the story of Industry. Besides these 
 main histories the group at the tower revealed the 
 history of the subjugation of Niagara, which is indeed 
 the most splendid story of human achievement. Each 
 building had its own appropriate symbols in addition 
 to those which served the general plan. For the first 
 time American sculpture displayed an original genius, 
 "finding itself" in social service. In such a manner 
 the Fair effected a complete unity of the arts, in the 
 way, it will be observed, of the Wagnerian drama. 
 And this unity extended so as to include the people, 
 since the entire spectacle took meaning from the peo- 
 ple, and the people recognized their own history at 
 every turn. "Art for art's sake" had at length given 
 way to "art for life's sake." 
 
 Here then the whole issue lies. In the interest of 
 a Commonweal are we willing to give up specializa- 
 tion and cultivate instead the social spirit? Instead 
 of trying to be something by ourselves, may we not 
 trust, as Emerson advised, the cosmic forces? Is 
 there not a Social Intelligence in the world of men as 
 active and efficient as the Spirit of the Hive, according 
 to which, as Maeterlinck, shows, the bees conduct their 
 small but marvellously complicated economies? Will 
 criticism face the artistic problem involved in the substitu- 
 
214 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 tion of social for individual standards? In ethics and 
 in some other departments of thought the transition 
 has already taken place, but criticism remains on the 
 individualistic ground. Of course many of the old 
 ideas and principles of criticism will suffer change or 
 loss. Most of all we shall need to revise the meta- 
 physical and aesthetic theories of art. Socially speak- 
 ing it is not necessary that art be beautiful; it is not 
 necessary that it be of good report — unless it should 
 happen that beauty and perfection are social neces- 
 sities. We need not deny beauty its place, or good- 
 ness its function, but there is a larger fact than either 
 abstraction; namely, the actual needs of human life, 
 energized and driven by forces larger than itself, 
 forces which compel expression characterized at 
 times by neither beauty of phrase or Tightness of mo- 
 tive, but yet revelatory of spiritual experiences and 
 cosmic impulses. "I harbor," said Whitman, in the 
 spirit of the new time, "for good or bad, I permit to 
 speak at every hazard Nature without check, with 
 original energy." In this one direction America can 
 move with originality and power: and all other ways 
 are closed. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BETTERMENT 
 
 MOVEMENT. 
 
 In the world in which we live there is little evi- 
 dence of the conscious possession by any group of 
 men and women of the full community sense. Busi- 
 ness is competitive and individualistic, and conducted 
 to the end of private profit. It is true, a modification 
 in the industrial system was made when the legal 
 fictions of the firm, the corporation, the trust, and 
 other forms of combination, were devised. But in 
 truth these corporations socialize their business only 
 within the limits of the group, their motive still re- 
 maining selfish and egotistic. Now and then, in 
 times of want and special crisis, as during the 
 recent coal famine, the terrible unrelieved selfishness 
 of the business world stands revealed in all its 
 ugliness. Every man's hand seems raised against 
 every other, or, where combinations have been formed, 
 the different groups seize every opportunity to prey 
 upon the public at large. Ruskin's plea for the so- 
 cialization of business has apparently not found lodg- 
 ment in any mind. No one has conceived how an ad- 
 vantageous code of business conduct can be based 
 upon the social affections. 
 
 The union which has been effected in the labor 
 world is in like manner superficial and partial. There 
 is, of course, a growing class consciousness, and it 
 
216 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 seems likely that in the next few years the labor world 
 will be quite fully solidified. It is important to note that 
 already the group contract is superseding individual 
 contract, this fact pointing directly to the socializa- 
 tion of labor interests within the labor group. 
 
 Combination is the order of the day; but the union 
 of the conflicting elements with the public has yet to 
 take place. In labor disturbances the public is of all 
 the parties concerned the first to be disregarded. In- 
 deed, strikes depend commonly for their success upon 
 the amount of suffering and inconvenience which can 
 be imposed upon the public. 
 
 Politics is based openly on a party system, the 
 absurdity of which in matters relating to the general 
 welfare has not escaped the notice of political philoso- 
 phers. The party system is social to the degree that 
 the trust and the labor union are social, and no more. 
 The tendency is for politics not to purify, but to de- 
 generate into a means for private profit at the hands 
 of scheming politicians — to return, that is, to the level 
 of business. How little communistic in its motive 
 politics is may be seen at times when a public good is 
 desired, such as parks and schools, and then every 
 effort is made to keep these matters "out of politics." 
 In view of the partial nature of party action it has 
 been deemed necessary for the people to demand the 
 "initiative and referendum," these being devices to 
 secure so far as possible the record of community will. 
 
 The truth will probably appear that there is not a 
 single democratic institution in America, either in 
 politics or business or social life. A very positive in- 
 terest, therefore, must attach to what is called the im- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BETTERMENT MOVEMENT 217 
 
 provement association, which is in fact a new public 
 institution taking shape beneath the play of certain 
 communal forces. 
 
 The improvement association is different from 
 other voluntary associations in that its purpose is po- 
 litical in the true sense of the word, and is virtually 
 a new institution. It is proposed, indeed, as a sub- 
 stitute plan for one which has failed to work. There 
 is something wanting in the constitution of govern- 
 ment — some inherent defect in it. The failure noted 
 is not limited to any one locality nor can it be said to 
 be due to the size of the city, for the defect is equally 
 obvious in other places and in towns and villages. A 
 few days ago I listened to a report of the improvement 
 association of Morgan Park, Illinois. Reference was 
 made to the apparent inability of the town council to 
 get the most necessary things done, or even to correct 
 abuses where things were left undone. The streets 
 or parks were not properly cared for. The space 
 about the railroad station was an unsightly waste. 
 There was no gas or other means of lighting in the 
 village. The improvement association was formed to 
 do precisely what the original town government was 
 designed to do, but which it was practically unable to do. 
 What we perceive, therefore, is the birth of a new so- 
 cial institution, and this institution, it will be observed, 
 is the only one so formulated as to embody the com- 
 munity spirit. The improvement association is, in 
 short, an improved type of the town meeting — so im- 
 proved, however, as to constitute virtually a new or- 
 ganization. 
 
 The "town" is perhaps the most democratic of 
 
218 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 American political institutions. Above the town the 
 principle of representation is employed, and, in conse- 
 quence, the county, state, and national forms of gov- 
 ernment reveal a constant tendency towards bureau- 
 cracy. To show that I am speaking not simply as a 
 theorist, I may mention that I have an intimate 
 knowledge of town government, having held its of- 
 fices in a community where local self-government 
 counted for a great deal. I now see that while the 
 town is the most democratic of our governmental 
 divisions, its one fault is that it is not democratic 
 enough. There is no real reason why the members of 
 a town meeting should be limited to men of legal vot- 
 ing age. Such a limitation may be justified in view 
 of the increasing difficulty of delegating authority in 
 the higher stages of government, but on the popular 
 plane, suffrage should be absolutely universal with- 
 out limitations of race, sex or age. 
 
 It is at this point that the first distinctive feature of 
 the improvement association is noted. Membership 
 in the association goes by right of residence. I am 
 not informed whether or not any "woman suffragist" 
 is at the bottom of this movement. Perhaps, without 
 intending it, the problem of suffrage has been solved 
 in a perfectly natural and spontaneous way. And 
 now that we see the success which attends the efforts 
 of a united community to help itself, it is quite evi- 
 dent that the failure of former institutions was due to 
 their partial nature. What more natural or more 
 necessary than that women should assist in house- 
 keeping a city? And not the least good accomplished 
 is the care the children learn to take in maintaining 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE BETTERMENT MOVEMENT 219 
 
 the good report of the neighborhood. Never before 
 have the children been brought in to co-operate in the 
 maintenance of order. The inculcation of patriotism 
 in the public schools on special days devoted to the 
 celebration of Washington and Lincoln anniversaries 
 is of little importance if the lesson of citizenship is 
 not learned in the community near by. 
 
 A second distinctive feature of the improvement 
 association is its principle of voluntary taxation. In 
 the long run voluntary service is the best and most 
 permanent. There has been some talk of securing 
 legislative sanction for these associations, enabling 
 them to lay taxes for public improvements. This 
 modification of the voluntary plan I should view with 
 disfavor. When a law is established, counter cur- 
 rents are liable to be engendered in opposition to the 
 law, such antagonisms rendering the united action of 
 a community impossible. Behind a tax legally laid 
 stand the police and the army. The unity they secure 
 is an outward and formal unity. Said Walt Whitman : 
 
 "Were you looking to be held together by lawyers? 
 Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? 
 Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere." 
 
 It is much better, then, to place the emphasis upon a 
 common need and educate the community to a united 
 action than to risk disruption by compulsory methods. 
 The immediate dependence of the work of the asso- 
 ciation upon the support of the neighborhood will 
 lead to carefulness and economy and wise expendi- 
 ture. Only in this way can the association escape the 
 satire of Emerson upon government when he said: 
 
220 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 "Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. 
 Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, 
 except for these." 
 
 I hope you do not think I am treating this subject 
 too seriously. What is an improvement association 
 to call out a discussion involving questions of politi- 
 cal philosophy! Perhaps you have thought the ob- 
 ject of the association is simply to clean streets and 
 dispose of garbage, and is of passing interest at best. 
 For my own part my interest in the organization is 
 aroused because it promises to become a genuine so- 
 cial institution. Those who administer the various 
 associations are certainly convinced of their per- 
 manency. I am a member of a committee of the South 
 Park Improvement Association of Chicago, which is 
 just now giving out contracts for the planting of trees, 
 and plans have been made to bring our whole district 
 within a single scheme of landscape gardening. This 
 much of the work at least is done in faith, and thus 
 far it has the marks of permanency. It is among the 
 possibilities that this association will some day build 
 a town hall of a new type, not as a place for political 
 chicanery, but as a center of social culture. 
 
 Looking at the subject with a broader view we per- 
 ceive that there are other causes besides local improve- 
 ment waiting upon the development of the com- 
 munity spirit. To take a single instance, consider for 
 a moment the program of the Municipal Art League 
 of Chicago. This league is organized "for the purpose 
 of promoting art in the city, and of abating public 
 nuisances as preliminary to the stimulation of civic 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BETTERMENT MOVEMENT 221 
 
 pride." Among the public improvements thought 
 worthy of consideration by the league are : 
 
 "The suppression of the smoke nuisance as a necessity for mak- 
 ing all other improvements appreciable. 
 
 "The improvement of the whole lake front; not only the Lake 
 Front Park, but the boulevard system of the North Side and its 
 connection with the Lake Front Park by an outer viaduct and 
 bridge or subway. 
 
 "The improvement of the designs in use for gas and electric 
 light posts, patrol boxes, and waste paper receptacles, and the 
 introduction of electrically lighted street name signs. 
 
 "The proper regulation of bill boards. 
 
 "The harmonious grouping of business or private houses 
 belonging to different owners, without detriment to the interests 
 of each. 
 
 "Conversion of vacant lots into temporary lawns and play- 
 grounds, by consent of owners and co-operation of neighbors. 
 
 "Improvement of the designs for signs on business buildings, 
 end asking co-operation of the real estate board in adoption of 
 standard designs for lots for sale and houses for rent." 
 
 Such are some of the objects of this most praise- 
 worthy association. To a reasonable person there is 
 nothing unreasonable in any of the suggestions made 
 for civic betterment. Yet why is improvement so 
 slow? There is no lack of support for other institu- 
 tions. A Crerar founds a library, a Rockefeller en- 
 dows a university, a Field builds a museum, a Hutch- 
 inson supports an art institute. But there is no Na- 
 poleon to rebuild Chicago, and, in the nature of things, 
 there can not be. Chicago must be reconstructed by 
 its citizens working in the spirit of co-operation and 
 mutual concession. The other institutions mentioned 
 are in a sense external to the life of the city. They 
 exist and flourish because they depend for their main- 
 
222 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 tenance upon the accumulation and overplus of 
 money and property in egoistic hands. It is to the 
 interests of these cultural institutions that the indi- 
 vidualistic method of business be retained. More than 
 one library has been built out of what from another 
 point of view is a public nuisance. For the sake of 
 additional libraries we will put up with smoke-be- 
 fouled air, we will sacrifice the general comfort and 
 health, we will harden our hearts to the cries of the 
 oppressed, we will hearken to the alderman who tells 
 us if we do not like Chicago to go elsewhere : for pros- 
 perity, forsooth, is created out of smoke. The more 
 smoke the more libraries; the more libraries the 
 greater the smoke nuisance. But municipal art strikes 
 at the heart of business itself. It insists that selfish- 
 ness and personal greed shall be driven from the com- 
 mercial process. It demands that business shall be 
 socialized. 
 
 Is a social civilization too much to hope for? Must 
 antagonisms always exist among the individuals of a 
 community? Are we to be forever driven by economic 
 fear? Might not a city of rational beings devise a 
 method of living contentedly together? 
 
 It is just possible that in solving our problem of lo- 
 cal improvement we are making a contribution to the 
 history of civilization. 
 
INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM—AND AFTER. 
 
 I do not know when and by whom it was first dis- 
 cerned that the modern industrial development of the 
 world is nearly identical as to its main features with 
 the political evolution of an earlier time. It is now 
 almost a commonplace to use the words "Industrial 
 Feudalism" in describing the modern status of indus- 
 try. Mr. Ghent seems to think that in his essay on 
 "Benevolent Feudalism" he was the first to apply the 
 principle of feudalism* in explaining modern "Cap- 
 italism." In truth the conception of a monarchic 
 order in industrialism is a familiar one and is implied 
 in the popular designation of the great owners and di- 
 rectors of properties as "Kings" and "Barons." It is 
 now clear that these terms represent very real facts, 
 and that the stage now reached in industrial progress 
 
 *In my volume entitled "Chapters in the History of the Arts 
 and Crafts Movement," written early in 1900, I made the fol- 
 lowing statement: "In the present relationship [between ex- 
 ploiters and exploited] all the features of feudalism are found. 
 And as the world is only at the beginning of its industrial evo- 
 lution it is likely that the process will run parallel at all points 
 with the development of government. The old domestic sys- 
 tem of industry, which the factory system superseded, was simply 
 undifferentiated and unorganized industry. Corresponding to 
 the political era of petty warfare was the period of competition. 
 Competition has been the agent for the selection of the strong 
 and the elimination of the weak. It has created 'Captains of 
 Industry' on one side, and an army of workmen reduced to order, 
 and compelled to service on the other, etc." 
 
224 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 is distinctly feudal and monarchic. The most success- 
 ful and perfectly controlled businesses in recent years 
 have been those organized and built up on feudal lines. 
 Competition, corresponding to the private wars of the 
 middle ages, has forced the issue from without. With- 
 in the competitive groups the wage and salary in regu- 
 lated scale have furnished the nexus to bind their 
 members together in the relation of master and man. 
 The war-game is played with dollars and not with 
 arms and men. From the combination of groups, 
 principalities are being formed, presided over by petty 
 Kings. These pay tribute to the few individuals who 
 constitute the real government. The monarchic state 
 is of course not yet perfected and will not be till the 
 "universal trust" is formed whereby competition is 
 wholly destroyed and supreme control is placed in the 
 hands of one man. This one man will derive his au- 
 thority not from the subjects, the workers, but from 
 "God." In order that the magnate's action may have 
 higher sanction a theory will be formed correspond- 
 ing to the "divine right of Kings" — a theory im- 
 plied by the devout attitude of many industrial po- 
 tentates and which is already formulated by a certain 
 "coal-baron" in words that have burned deep into the 
 consciousness of the times. 
 
 The monarchic conclusion is inevitable. There will 
 be no great change in the industrial system until the 
 present centralizing tendency is ended — until all are 
 absorbed in the industrial idea, and until all have 
 come to industrial consciousness. 
 
 Industrial despotism will be tempered, of course, 
 by occasional benevolence — there will be "good" mag- 
 
INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 225 
 
 nates as there were "good" kings. This class will 
 seek to solve the social problem from above, through 
 various agencies looking toward "industrial better- 
 ment." Even now the up-to-date business has a "so- 
 cial secretary" whose function is to improve the con- 
 ditions of work by providing libraries, lectures 
 picnics, flower-beds and the like, and by bringing into 
 the corporation that personal element which the cor- 
 poration as a "legal fiction" cannot presume to con- 
 tain. The rule of the benevolent will often be 
 thwarted by rebels and protestors who think they 
 want simple justice and not benevolence and flower- 
 beds. But, as the system will prove beneficial on the 
 whole to the masses of the people during the time of 
 its formation the rebellions will be of short life and 
 ineffective. 
 
 There will be a growing difficulty also in maintain- 
 ing feudal authority, because of the very perfection 
 of the machinery of production, the enormous increase 
 of products making it increasingly difficult for the own- 
 ers to consume that which is produced. The indus- 
 trial baron must work out and solve, at the risk of 
 losing his position, the problem of employment. One 
 unemployed person is a menace to the whole order. One 
 unconsumed product is as dangerous to the industrial 
 order as was the outlaw in the mountains of Europe to 
 the political order. Yet I do not doubt that new ways 
 may be devised of spending money and of setting the 
 task for labor. 
 
 The advantage of industrial feudalism is two-fold. 
 It brings order into the chaos occasioned by compe- 
 tition — an order greatly to be desired to satisfy our 
 
226 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 repugnance at social waste. It cannot be denied that 
 the system of individualistic production is attended 
 by enormous loss of every kind. The law of economy 
 requires the co-ordination of effort, such as is at- 
 tained in the corporation and trust. And as the world 
 is not yet rationalized we must depend for the elimi- 
 nation of waste upon the strong hand of an over-lord. 
 The second gain in feudalism is the education the 
 people receive in industrialism, whereby the way is 
 prepared for the assumption of industrial control by 
 the people when feudalism shall have fulfilled its func- 
 tion. 
 
 But now the question presents itself — After feu- 
 dalism, what? The answer seems clear: Some form of 
 industrial democracy. 
 
 In political democracy the world's political evolu- 
 tion is doubtless culminating. After the dispersion 
 of political authority to the individuals of a group the 
 political system as such is subject to disintegration. 
 The ballot box was once regarded as the "palladium 
 of our liberties" — something to suffer for, to fight for, 
 and to die for. It is now looked upon by the majority 
 of citizens with considerable indifference. The whole 
 scheme of political democracy is upheld largely by 
 tradition. Government has been handed over to poli- 
 ticians who enter into politics because they can get 
 something out of it for themselves. And for the pres- 
 ent the people — again for traditional and sentimental 
 reasons — pay the bills of appropriation : though with 
 increasing bad grace. Long ago Emerson noted that 
 of all expenditures the people paid the taxes with the 
 least willingness. The vital thought of the people is 
 
INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 227 
 
 not to-day in politics. The real problems are not 
 governmental but industrial. Is there a single politi- 
 cal issue before the American people to-day? Is it at 
 all likely that political issues will arise in the future? 
 Doubtless the President of the United States will one 
 day be a political figure-head precisely in the manner 
 of the King of England at the present time. What 
 we are witnessing at the present moment is the trans- 
 fer of interest from the field of politics to that of in- 
 dustry. But let it be observed that the transfer is 
 made not from a political democracy to an industrial 
 democracy, but from a political democracy to an in- 
 dustrial feudalism. This is the real cause of the im- 
 mense confusion of our time. Men are independent 
 with respect to political government: they are de- 
 pendent with respect to industrial control. The bat- 
 tle for human freedom has to be fought all over again 
 on a new field and with new weapons. The lesson of 
 political democracy is, of course, well learned. Never- 
 theless the time is not yet come for the establishment 
 of business upon democratic lines. In the first place 
 the higher ideals of labor have not become universal. 
 In the second place there are too many inefficient 
 workers. A revolution at the present time to effect 
 the destruction of industrial feudalism in the manner 
 of the French Revolution, which brought about the 
 ruin of political feudalism, would result in chaos. 
 Industrial consciousness is too imperfectly developed 
 for all men to assume industrial self-control. But 
 when the feudal order is perfected and when the su- 
 perior magnate has held control long enough for the 
 people to realize that loyalty to him is in truth loy- 
 
228 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 alty to themselves — that he is nothing by himself, 
 but only as he represents the will of the whole people, 
 then the dispersion of the magnate's authority will be 
 effected gradually — it may be by some revolution. 
 
 A sign of the times is that the transfer of inter- 
 ests to industrial feudalism is made by means of "Re- 
 publican" politics. The rise of the Republican Party 
 to power coincides with the modern evolution of busi- 
 ness. This is more than accidental. The Republican 
 Party stands for centralization. It is Hamiltonian in 
 its policy — Hamilton being of all political leaders the 
 most monarchic in attitude. Meanwhile the policies 
 of Jefferson are obscured. The Republican Party 
 stands also for property, and property owners do well 
 to contribute to the Republican campaign fund. 
 Meanwhile the people must wait for their recognition 
 at the hands of the government until materials are 
 fully organized and the rush for property has sub- 
 sided. It is doubtful if labor will gain anything by 
 affiliating with the Democratic Party or by forming 
 an independent Labor Party, for the reason that in- 
 dustrial democracy can never be established on the 
 basis of a political system. Business is strategic and 
 centralizes in regions which ignore the artificial 
 boundaries of state and county. The strength of labor 
 lies in its unions and federations — which are federa- 
 tions of men and not governments of laws. The true 
 policy of labor is to maintain and perfect the interior 
 organization of the union, waiting the while for the 
 culmination of the present tendency. History can 
 but repeat itself. The next step after industrial feud- 
 alism is industrial democracy. This means that in- 
 
INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 229 
 
 dustries will be conducted by and for the people ; and 
 this means, of course, that production will be carried 
 on, not for the sake of production or for that power 
 which wealth secures, but for the sake of the people. 
 
 Already, in isolated places, the transition from feu- 
 dalism to democracy has begun. I do not refer to the 
 building of "model" workshops or villages or to any 
 other similar scheme of benefaction, whereby the 
 feudal lords seek to conceal the rigor of their rule. I 
 refer to the beginnings of industrial control in certain 
 factories and stores where proprietorship is nominal, 
 and where interior control is effected by the ballot. I 
 refer also to the "co-operative movement" which is 
 destined to increase and include both production and 
 consumption. I refer also to the workshops building 
 here and there under the influence of the teaching and 
 example of Ruskin and Morris. Voluntary individual 
 co-operation is, I believe, the ultimate form of indus- 
 trial democracy. 
 
 Assuming that evolution at this stage of life is ra- 
 tionally inclined, what factors, now, can be depended 
 upon to continue and perfect the new tendency? 
 Knowledge, for one thing, or what is called science. 
 By science the monarchic conception of the universe 
 is forever disproved. There is no Absolute Deity 
 which rules the universe as with a sceptre. The uni- 
 verse is a republic and not a kingdom. The more we 
 know of the nature of things the more certain does it 
 appear that intelligence and will reside in the atom 
 and groups of atoms. The law of form is function and 
 service. The human body is a veritable republic, its 
 very life being dependent upon the co-operation of 
 
230 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the individual cells composing it. Probably the purest 
 type found in Nature of an industrial community is 
 the bee-hive. Apiarists have miscalled the maternal 
 bee the queen. But the bees at work are controlled 
 not by the queen but by something which Maeterlinck 
 in his wonderful book on The Bee calls "The Spirit of 
 the Hive." It may seem inappropriate to make this 
 reference to knowledge, but the fact remains that 
 any given change will occur in the social order only as 
 the members of that society shape an ideal in which 
 all may share, and to which all will conform. The 
 sanction of a feudal order was found in mediaeval the- 
 ology. The sanction of the new industrialism will be 
 found in science. A democracy more than any other 
 social form is dependent upon education. 
 
 A second factor is the love of freedom. This, prob- 
 ably, is the ultimate human impulse. Governors, mas- 
 ters, rulers of every sort, who do not plan their gov- 
 ernance with reference to the love of liberty in all 
 hearts, prove their incapacity to exercise authority at 
 all. Said Whitman to the foiled European Revolu- 
 tionaire : 
 
 "Courage yet, my brother or my sister! 
 
 What we believe in waits latent forever through all the con- 
 tinents, 
 
 Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, 
 is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, 
 
 Waiting patiently, waiting its time. 
 
 When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor 
 the second or third to go, 
 
 It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last." 
 
 How, then, does the case for liberty stand now? 
 What is lacking in the free scope of free men? 
 
INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 231 
 
 Clearly, free action is wanted on just one point. We 
 are free in matters of religion. There are no recent 
 instances of persecution, except in remote places. We 
 are equally free in matters of political practice. There 
 are, perhaps, more exceptions to political freedom 
 than religious freedom, but still political freedom is 
 practically assured. But no one today enjoys indus- 
 trial freedom. No one is self-directive in the field of 
 work. Every workman must find an employer. The 
 functions of hand and head are performed by differ- 
 ent individuals. So long as this condition exists there 
 will be warfare between the executive and servile 
 agents. Industrial freedom means the privilege of 
 self-control in respect to one's work. It involves the 
 making of every workman his own employer. This is 
 not an easy relation to sustain to oneself, it is admit- 
 ted. But it is not more difficult than serving as priest 
 and king over oneself. Industrial freedom, like reli- 
 gious and political freedom, depends for its effective- 
 ness upon character and capacity in the individual. 
 Religious feudalism and political feudalism were so 
 ordered as to afford the best possible training in self- 
 control in their respective fields. Industrial feudalism 
 will doubtless furnish a discipline equally effective. 
 When men are ready for the assumption of authority, 
 such authority will be readily assumed. The shifting 
 of control will be gradual — so gradual that there will 
 be no break in the unity of industrial life. The work 
 of the world will go on very much as it does now. No 
 one will stop working, but work will be done from a 
 new motive : not under compulsion but voluntarily. 
 This is the very essence of industrial freedom. When 
 
232 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Great Britain abrogated the political government of 
 Massachusetts with the intention of forcing submis- 
 sion by this means, the province subsisted for a year 
 without governors of any kind — without governors but not 
 without government. In one of the workshops of the new 
 industrialism, surprise was expressed by a visitor that 
 there was not special distinction in the product. The 
 answer of the workman to the query was that the ob- 
 ject of the workshop was not to make an unusual kind 
 of chair but to make the usual chair with a new kind 
 of workman. The chair was after a traditional pat- 
 tern ; the workman was the product of a revolution. 
 
 Without elaborating these suggestions further, I 
 may state succinctly the theses I have had in mind to 
 prove. 
 
 1. An industrial order is now being established 
 which corresponds in all essential respects with what 
 is known in political history as feudalism. 
 
 2. The political order, so far as it is shaped by the 
 same individuals who control industry, partakes also 
 of the nature of feudalism; hence the recrudescence 
 in the United States of the principles of Hamilton and 
 the dominance of the Republican Party. 
 
 3. When the feudalistic tendency culminates into 
 the establishment of a centralized control of all indus- 
 tries, then the conscious and deliberate appropriation 
 of that power by the people will begin, till work be- 
 comes free and the worker self-directive. 
 
 4. Biology and psychology testify to the ultimate 
 triumph of the principle of self-activity. In other 
 words, all the forces of evolution are on the side of the 
 people. 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL. 
 
 A short time ago I received a letter from a graduate 
 student in a certain university in which he stated that, on 
 account of the lack of a sufficient sum of money to "carry 
 him through," he was forced to support himself. "This 
 I do," the letter reads, "by manufacturing a few hundred 
 cigars a week. If you use cigars, I should esteem your 
 patronage a great favor. I make the cigars myself, and 
 manufacture only high grade goods." The condition de- 
 picted here is one with which I was familiar, yet never 
 before was one aspect of our education brought so forcibly 
 and clearly to my attention. The letter betokens the com- 
 plete divorcement that has grown up between education 
 on the one hand, and industrialism on the other hand. 
 Education, it seems, is a leisuristic pursuit which entails 
 the sacrifice of one's trade or profession. Furthermore, 
 one's trade or profession is not regarded as having any 
 educational value and is at best a means of gaining a live- 
 lihood. Taking this young man's case as typical, how 
 should such a problem be solved? Should he seek to 
 abandon his trade altogether and win at all hazards a 
 special and supposedly higher culture; or should he go 
 back to the workshop and yield all hopes of becoming an 
 educated man; or should he do what he is now doing; 
 devote part of his time to his work (which is one thing) 
 and a part of his time to education (which is another 
 thing) ? 
 
 Let us suppose that he despises his work as ignoble 
 
234 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 and chooses to become a man of culture — then, he rejects 
 that which is at least real, and enters upon a path that 
 tends toward unreality, till perchance he loses himself 
 in abstraction and ceases, therefore, however reined he 
 may become, to be a vital factor in the world's work. 
 But is the other alternative any better? He gains, let us 
 say, a livelihood by his work ; he surrounds himself with 
 the bodily comforts and indulges occasionally in luxuries ; 
 he becomes perhaps a foreman in the shop or rises to the 
 position of proprietor, promoter and trust-magnate. But 
 if, in this process, he is uneducated, his work is still unre- 
 deemed and is virtually unprofitable, however vast his 
 worldly possessions. Recently a man who had chosen the 
 way of business and in the pride of his success had assert- 
 ed that a college education was a detriment to a man of af- 
 fairs, passed his vacation in Europe. It was observed that 
 when away from his business he was reduced for pleas- 
 urable exercise to gambling at Monte Carlo. We were a 
 little shocked at this, not that we regard gambling as a 
 sin, but that Monte Carlo seemed so trivial in view of the 
 stimulus which Europe offers to a man of true culture and 
 insight. But is the third solution a way out of the dif- 
 ficulty? Should our young man study half of the time 
 and work at his trade the rest of the day? This solution 
 is reached, of course, by way of a compromise — a 
 compromise of the same nature as that presented in the 
 labor world by the eight-hour day. It consists in reducing 
 what is offensive and undesirable to its lowest terms, in 
 order that when necessity is satisfied, the worker may be 
 free for a season to do that which to him is pleasurable. 
 I cannot imagine a torture more grievous than that. In- 
 deed, the orthodox hell, as described by Milton in Para- 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL. 23'5 
 
 dise Lost, consisted in just this alternate freezing and 
 burning. The case of this young man, or of any young 
 man, seems to me at this time to be hopeless. There is 
 simply no chance in the world today for a man to be in- 
 tegral, to live an entire life; he must be divided and di- 
 vided according to the divisions which obtain throughout 
 the whole range of modern life. 
 
 I see only one remedy for the class system of modern 
 society — that is, to reconstruct the institutions that em- 
 body the social spirit ; to create a school which is not so far 
 removed from the workshop as to obliterate real processes 
 and objects — to create a workshop which shall be so fully 
 educative in itself that it will be a virtual school. I can 
 conceive that even a cigar factory might be so conducted 
 as to be instructive. If one really understood the work he 
 was doing, the part he was playing in the world's vast 
 intricate scheme of industry; or if one really knew in all 
 its relations the object he was handling — in this case, let 
 us say, the history of the tobacco plant, such a workman 
 would not pass as a wholly uneducated man. In contact 
 with his fellow workmen, he might develop to the full the 
 life of comradeship : that human sympathy without which 
 education of any sort is empty and unprofitable. My illus- 
 tration is perhaps unfortunate. To King James, who ut- 
 tered a counterblast against tobacco, or to Emerson, who 
 thought a cigar was a crowbar thrust in among the deli- 
 cate tendrils of the brain, the illustration would be un- 
 savory. But it was of a plant of less importance than the 
 tobacco plant that Tennyson said : 
 
 "Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand! 
 
236 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Little flower — but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 But I do not wish to anticipate my conclusion. I do 
 contemplate the creation, at no far distant time, of a com- 
 bined workshop and school : but meanwhile there are cer- 
 tain considerations which must be understood in order that 
 our evolution may be rational and the end desired be pre- 
 pared for. 
 
 The dominant tendency in the world today is the indus- 
 trial. Broadly speaking, the industrial issues are the 
 vital ones. The most virile and energetic minds of the 
 modern world are engaged in solving the problems that 
 attach to material things. The men who, at other times 
 in the world's history, erected altars, built cathedrals, led 
 armies, conducted diplomacy, formulated systems of phil- 
 osophy, and mastered the technique of the arts, are today 
 engaged in industry. That was a sublime story of the 
 history of mankind told at the Buffalo Exposition by the 
 series of buildings and sculpture groups which centered 
 in the Electric Tower. There at the focus of all paths 
 stood resplendent the shining tower. By ways of savagery, 
 and step by step through various forms of culture, the race 
 reached a point where it could engage successfully in 
 struggle with the more subtle forces of its environment. 
 There, I say, at the center of all historic radii rose up 
 triumphant the electric tower — a symbol of what ? symbol 
 of man's greatness in respect of religion, or art, or poli- 
 tics, or laws ? Not of these, but of his genius in industry. 
 It is not quite correct to say that the light which streamed 
 from the tower was a "symbol" of man's genius, for it 
 was rather the evidence of it. It was a light objective 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 237 
 
 and material, a light made of the energy transmitted 
 from Niagara. Here was the secret. Niagara had waited 
 a million years for its conqueror, its subjection to the ser- 
 vice of man, and this conquest was regarded by the build- 
 ers of the Fair as the supreme achievement of the race 
 thus far. For the first time, we recognized and published 
 and celebrated the fact that an electric tower, thus de- 
 vised and illumined, was worthy to stand in the place of 
 honor where hitherto cathedrals and armies and thrones 
 and constitutions and art had stood. That Exposition 
 was the apotheosis of labor ; it was the exaltation of ma- 
 terials. And as a further evidence of our industrial civili- 
 zation it was noticed that he who was then our political 
 leader, in his last great address, spoke not of political, 
 but of industrial problems. President Roosevelt's recent 
 message to Congress dealt almost entirely with industrial 
 questions. The part our President played in settling the 
 coal strike was a prophesy of what the function of our 
 highest officer is destined to become. What do these signs 
 indicate if not that the time has come to estimate the 
 genius of an individual or of a people by capacity to con- 
 trol materials ? When Sir William Hamilton asserted that 
 Aristotle had a genius as great as Homer's, he seized upon 
 the primary fact that genius may be exercised in many 
 directions. Genius is not greater or smaller by virtue of 
 the materials it works upon; genius is power, the power 
 of an organizing, effective mind. 
 
 Accepting then the statement that the dominant ten- 
 dency in the world today is the industrial, we are ready 
 to carry our inquiry farther back and to ask why the place 
 of primacy should be given to the industrial hero. The 
 answer is not far to seek. The result appears to be due 
 
238 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 to the working of that social force we call democracy. 
 The most democratic peoples today are those most suc- 
 cessful in the field of industry — and the connection is 
 more than accidental. America has assumed the leader- 
 ship among industrial nations, much to the perplexity 
 and alarm of competing factories. The secret of this 
 leadership seems to be little understood. In vain do for- 
 eign manufacturers provide new machinery for their 
 workshops and introduce new methods into their business. 
 It is soon discovered that success is not a matter of ma- 
 chinery and method ; it lies farther back in the social sys- 
 tem and environment. Our American success in indus- 
 trial enterprises is explained by the fact that immense 
 stores of energy, latent and unemployed, are released for 
 service through the opening of opportunity occasioned by 
 democracy. A democratic people is not a religious people, 
 not an artistic people, not a political people, but a working 
 people. We are constituted of men who do things. We 
 sweep all transcendental visions and fictions aside and start 
 from the ground of the concrete fact. And we are dis- 
 covering more and more that successful doing of things 
 is a form of noble exercise. It i? necessary to emphasize 
 this fact, since if we are to enter rationally into a given 
 line of evolution we must understand what is important 
 and what is meaningless. The significance of evolution 
 pertains far more to the future than to the past or present. 
 If it is clear that the industrial tendency is the dominant 
 one, and if back of that there is to continue the perpetual 
 pressure of democratic forces, then it is the part of wis- 
 dom to create institutions that relate to industrial democ- 
 racy and withdraw our support from old and outworn 
 ideals. Let the arts and the religions and the political 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 239 
 
 systems that took their rise from, and furnished the sus- 
 tenance for the feudal aristocracies of Europe — let them 
 wither, I say, and pass from men's memories and minds ! 
 In naming democracy as the force that is shaping the 
 modern world, and as the fact which must condition all 
 our thinking, I imply, of course, the presence still among 
 us of the opposite force and fact variously known as mon- 
 archy, feudalism, and aristocracy. And it appears that 
 while the modern spirit is democratic, the forms and in- 
 stitutions still in evidence are derived largely from mon- 
 archy. Many of our religions, in particular the Salva- 
 tion Army, are clearly monarchic in character; for they 
 strive to establish on earth "the kingdom of God." 
 Thrones, judgment-seats, commands, punishments — these 
 linger in theology, while in science and in actual affairs 
 the universe is regarded as a republic. Especially in 
 prayer-books and hymn-books do the feudal ideals linger. 
 Even our National Hymn closes with a reference to "God 
 our King." The art we try to keep alive in a poor, thin 
 fashion was originally provided for the noble and leisure 
 classes of Europe, and is still an incident of wealth and 
 luxury. What can be more undemocratic than the prin- 
 ciple of "art for art's sake," according to which most of 
 our art is produced, and by the acceptance of which those 
 gifted with special aesthetic taste defend their exclusive- 
 ness? Our public schools have been democratized to 
 some extent, yet even here there is a considerable trace 
 of foreign ideals. The emphasis still placed on culture 
 and learning as such, and upon formal thinking, upon in- 
 tellectual discipline, upon reading and writing, upon ex- 
 aminations and prizes, upon authority and discipline, 
 upon athletics — these emphases are signs of the belated 
 
240 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 militarism in the American school. Strangely enough, too, 
 our present industrial system, though modern in spirit, is 
 formed on the lines of the military, and we speak of 
 "Captains of Industry" and not infrequently refer to the 
 great trust-magnates as "kings" — "sugar kings," "to- 
 bacco kings," "oil kings," etc. The "trust" is a federation 
 of principalities, and it has been prophesied that if the 
 present tendency continues, in twenty years an Emperor 
 will be ruling at Washington. The latest suggestion is 
 that we are forming in this country a "benevolent feudal- 
 ism." I do not know of a single perfected democratic 
 institution, though there are abundant tokens of change 
 and transition. 
 
 The purpose of my remarks thus far has been to call 
 your attention to the conditions I have just noted. We 
 live in a new age ; we are impelled by new thoughts ; yet 
 we are trying to put up with old forms. Our interior life 
 is one thing. Our exterior life is another thing. Is it not 
 possible to create new institutions — institutions that will 
 not be masks and lies, but represent what we really think 
 and are or hope to be ? One such institution I propose — the 
 institution of the workshop : a workshop of a new type, 
 such as may be properly the unit of organization in the 
 industrial commonwealth we are forming. 
 
 The workshop I have in mind will embody to the full 
 the high ideals of labor, conceived by such writers as Rus- 
 kin, and current in the world for nearly a century. It 
 will be a genuine manufactory where materials shall be 
 shaped into the things we use. It will be a "studio," 
 where work shall be creative and not devoid of a sense 
 of beauty. It will be a school where the doing of things 
 shall be educative, since work will there be conducted to 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 241 
 
 the ends of expression, as art is at its best and as life 
 is at its freest. In a sense, it will be a state, since it will 
 be a community of self-governing individuals. In a sense, 
 too, it will be a church, since it will be established upon 
 the basis of co-operation and comradeship. Such a work- 
 shop is a dream, you say, impossible of realization. But 
 let us examine the factors more in detail. I said the work- 
 shop would embody certain high ideals of labor. For a 
 century there, has been proclaimed a gospel of labor, which 
 came into being apparently in opposition to the leisur- 
 istic ideal of aristocracy. Carlyle was one of the ablest and 
 most outspoken advocates of the new doctrine. There is 
 splendid passion glowing in Carlyle's words concerning 
 the "toilworn craftsman that conquers the earth and makes 
 her man's" There is a passage in his writings which I 
 can never read without a quickening of the heart : "Ven- 
 erable to me is the hard hand, crooked, coarse, wherein, 
 notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, 
 as of the scepter of this planet. Venerable, too, is the rug- 
 ged face, all weather tanned, besoiled, with its rude intel- 
 ligence ; it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh ! but 
 the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we 
 must pity as well as love thee, hardly entreated brother! 
 For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight 
 limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our conscript, 
 on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so 
 marred. For in thee lay a God-created form, but it was 
 not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it stand, with the thick 
 adhesions and defacements of Labour ; and thy body, like 
 thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on ; 
 thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest 
 for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread." From 
 
242 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 the terms employed and the feeling displayed, it is evident 
 that Carlyle had but just made the discovery of this crafts- 
 man. But through how many cruel cerements he was 
 obliged to penetrate! We have seen this workman — he 
 still walks our streets. Yet in the same age another 
 craftsman has appeared — a craftsman of which William 
 Morris is the type — erect and forceful, who wins his way 
 by sheer strength of personality, who actually realizes 
 the ideal of the nobility of labor that Carlyle pronounced 
 to be possible. Now Carlyle belonged to the first half of 
 the nineteenth century and Morris to the second half. 
 Carlyle simply outlined the doctrine of labor as from a 
 pulpit. But Morris exercised his energy within an actual 
 workshop. Will you dare to say that in the next half 
 century the possibilities of labor may not be realized by 
 multitudes of men and women ? Is it not our function to 
 make this realization simple and rational ? 
 
 Just how the institutional workshop will arise, and in 
 what guise it will appear, I can not say. But I conceive 
 that in this workshop real work will be conducted, and 
 that we shall make in it all those things we need for as- 
 tual use. This institution will be at least self-supporting. 
 It seems to me a defect of our institutions that they are 
 really parasitic and exist by virtue of the labor of others, 
 as represented in taxes as to the state, in contributions as 
 to the church, in patronage as to the arts, in endowments 
 as to the school. We do not want to add another charity to 
 this series. This much is clear: the workshop will be a 
 commercial enterprise. This surely will not be difficult, 
 considering the long training the world has had in pure 
 acquisition. 
 
 With successful commercialism as the basic fact, we 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 243 
 
 may then add to that the element of art. I do not mean 
 that the fine arts will be given place in the workshop. That 
 is not necessary. Art is simply free creation. Beauty is 
 not something added to an object, it is a quality of work. 
 It comes into evidence whenever a man takes pleasure in 
 his work, whenever his hands are permitted to do what 
 his own desires determine and his own will directs. The 
 difference between art and not-art is that the one is work 
 accomplished in freedom and the other is work done under 
 conditions of slavery. It seems we are free today in every 
 respect but one — we may go where we will, we may think 
 and speak what we will, we may worship when we will 
 and vote for whom we will ; but very few men today can 
 work as they will. The workman must discover an em- 
 ployer, the lawyer must find his client, the doctor must 
 wait for his patient, the preacher must be called to his 
 pulpit, the teacher must be invited to his chair. There is 
 almost no free work in the world today, and probably 
 cannot be under our present organization. Recently I 
 have learned that workmen are not desired in factories 
 after the age of forty-five. If this be true — if a man is 
 shut out from the worlds work at forty-five, then is our 
 industrial civilization dangerous and altogether question- 
 able. So long as this condition lasts art is impossible. 
 Art will enter into the workshop only when the worker is 
 in some degree at least a free agent. As I look back upon 
 the recent past, I discover but one genuinely free work- 
 man — this same William Morris, and in all the industrial 
 world I discover only one movement that looks towards 
 the real redemption of labor — the arts and crafts move- 
 ment which Morris again was instrumental in initiating. 
 If, then, we desire art in our workshop we must add to the 
 
244 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 system of exchange some principle of free workmanship. 
 The workshop as school is already provided for when 
 work is made creative. In the truest education there is 
 always a double activity — the primary mental activity in- 
 volved in plan or design; the secondary motor activity 
 concerned in the execution of the plan or design. The 
 failure of the present school is that it exercises the mind, 
 but stops at the point where thought tends to pass out 
 into action. This error is by no means corrected when the 
 school adds to its equipment a gymnasium, or encourages 
 the playing of foot-ball or base-ball. The failure of the 
 present workshop, in its turn, is that it employs the motor 
 energies, but does not admit of original design. And this 
 error is not counteracted when some individual is secured 
 to do the thinking and designing for the whole com- 
 munity of workers. In the school we get unreal thinking ; 
 from the workshop we get unintelligent work. In both 
 cases the education is partial, and so far as I can see, the 
 education of the school is as imperfect as that of the fac- 
 tory. If the one tends to increase stupidity and ignorance, 
 the other tends to develop priggishness and pride. I have 
 been reading with much amusement the account of two 
 educated men in Ernest Crosby's "Plain Talk in Psalm 
 and Parable :" 
 
 "Here are two educated men. 
 
 The one has a smattering of Latin and Greek; 
 
 The other knows the speech and habits of horses and cattle, 
 and gives them their food in due season. 
 
 The one is acquainted with the roots of nouns and verbs; 
 
 The other can tell you how to plant and dig potatoes and car- 
 rots and turnips. 
 
 The one drums by the hour on the piano, making it a terror 
 to the neighborhood; 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 245 
 
 The other is an expert at the reaper and binder, which fills 
 
 the world with good cheer. 
 The one knows or has forgotten the higher trigonometry and 
 
 the differential calculus; 
 The other can calculate the bushels of rye standing in his 
 
 field and the number of barrels to buy for the apples 
 
 on the trees in his orchard. 
 The one understands the chemical affinities of various poisonous 
 
 acids and alkalies; 
 The other can make a savoury soup or a delectable pudding. 
 The one sketches a landscape indifferently; 
 The other can shingle his roof and build a shed for himself in 
 
 workmanlike manner. 
 The one has heard of Plato and Aristotle and Kant and 
 
 Comte, but knows precious little about them; 
 The other has never been troubled by such knowledge, but he 
 
 will learn the first and last word of philosophy, "to 
 
 love," far quicker, I warrant you, than his collage-bred 
 
 neighbor. 
 For still is it true that God has hidden these things from the 
 
 wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes. 
 Such are the two educations: 
 Which is the higher and which the lower?" 
 
 As Mr. Crosby states the case, his question can receive 
 but one answer. The educated man is the workman, and 
 he is educated precisely because he has combined the two 
 factors of mental and motor activity. The farm is still a 
 place where a workman may think out his task, but I be- 
 lieve we can do better in the improved workshop. I do 
 not care whether you introduce manual training into the 
 school, or whether you carry freedom to the factory. 
 The modification of either institution in the direction I 
 have indicated will result in the new workshop which 
 educative industrialism demands. It is likely, however, 
 that the school will be the first to suffer change. It will 
 
246 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 be easier to persuade the schools to engage in real pro- 
 cesses than to train workmen to think about the work. 
 The doom of the old school was pronounced when the first 
 work-bench was let into the basement or garret or unused 
 class-room. The work-bench is destined to crowd out the 
 desks and text-books and the other signs of passive learn- 
 ing. Now we have a fair chance of getting what Kropot- 
 kin well calls "integral education." It is probable that 
 the schools will be the first of our institutions to be demo- 
 cratized. And it may be that, by way of the school, the 
 industrial system will itself be transformed. 
 
 I have suggested also that the workshop might be the 
 unit of the community organization. When it becomes 
 the function of states to develop and conserve industries — ■ 
 when we magnify industrial instead of legal relationships, 
 the workmen who may unite to form a guild will have an 
 importance not now accorded them. Membership in a guild 
 would constitute citizenship with its duties and responsi- 
 bilities. The workshop would be a place for the develop- 
 ment of community consciousness. I perceive already in 
 the "labor unions" the vague working of such a conscious- 
 ness. A "Labor Party," however, competing with politi- 
 cal parties for political ends and legal rights, would seem 
 to be a very illogical outcome of such consciousness. An 
 industrial structure can never be laid upon a political or 
 legal foundation, industrial democracy being a co-part- 
 nership of men and not a government of laws. A State 
 boundary line, for instance, is a legal fiction, and its truth 
 is challenged by every railroad line that crosses it. I do 
 not pretend to know what institutional forms will arise 
 upon the ground of the workshop, but I can see that they 
 must be different from those we now possess. 
 
THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 247 
 
 The religious aspect of the workshop is summed up in 
 the word brotherhood, or comradeship. Take away from 
 labor its compulsion, let one be free to choose his asso- 
 ciates in work as freely as he is now able to join a church 
 or club, and an opportunity for comradeship will be given 
 that does not now exist in the world of labor. The nexus 
 in nearly all industrial enterprises is the wage, and men 
 are forced to work together whether that association be 
 pleasing or not. With a freer system of labor, it might be 
 possible to restore to the workshop that courtesy and sym- 
 pathy, once so common, but now so rarely met with. The 
 working classes are not merely "unchurched;" they are, 
 from their conditions of work, quite generally irreligious, 
 But I am sure that it was for the members of the recon- 
 structed workshop that Whitman wrote his poems of com- 
 radeship, the group called "Calamus," representing the 
 new ideas of chivalry, and especially the poems entitled, 
 "I Hear It was Charged against Me," and "I Dream'd 
 in a Dream": 
 
 "I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy 
 
 institutions, 
 But really I am neither for nor against institutions, 
 What indeed have I in common with them? or what with 
 
 the destruction of them? 
 Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of 
 
 these States inland and seaboard, 
 And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large 
 
 that dents the water, 
 Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, 
 The institution of the dear love of comrades." 
 
 A more practical or more beautiful religion than this 
 I do not know. 
 This, then, is my conception of an ideal workshop or 
 
248 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 school — a conception made of the specialized ideas of 
 factory, studio, school, state and church- — a synthesis 
 that is forced upon the mind from the desire to coun- 
 teract the terrible devisive and disintegrating forces 
 in modern life. I feel certain that we are approaching 
 a period of synthesis and correlation. The competitive 
 system is nearing its fall. Specialization has been car- 
 ried to an extreme and in the near future we must co- 
 ordinate specialties. We are beginning to think with 
 Ruskin that men may be of more value than products. 
 If you think that what I have presented be unpracti- 
 cal, let it be noted that I have introduced no factors that 
 do not already exist, and that I have but read the perfect 
 logic of the situation. In some way, we shall arrive 
 at this conclusion — must so arrive from the very pres- 
 sure of social forces. 
 
 Whitman was once asked to write a poem for the 
 opening of an industrial exposition in New York city. 
 The theme was to him an inspiring one, since beyond all 
 other seers, he cherished the vision of an idustrial com- 
 monwealth. From the Song of the Exposition he 
 wrote for that occasion, I take these lines : 
 
 "Mightier than Egypt's tombs, 
 Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples, 
 Prouder than Milan's statued, spired cathedral, 
 More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps, 
 We plan even now to raise, beyond them all, 
 Thy great cathedral, sacred industry, no tomb, 
 A keep for life, for practical invention." 
 
A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART. 
 
 I. 
 
 "The ideal university," James Russell Lowell once 
 said, "is a place where nothing useful is taught." It 
 is clear that Lowell approved a purely intellectual and 
 aesthetic education. He meant that the school should 
 be controlled as little as possible by practical needs, 
 should lie outside of employments or other conditions, 
 and be devoted to increasing capacity of enjoying 
 books and art and enriching passively the spiritual 
 life. The transcendental conception of education is 
 lordly, ideal and attractive, and in a state of society 
 that permits the maintenance of a leisure class it is 
 an ideal of ready acceptance. As a matter of fact it 
 was the ideal cherished by the New England colleges 
 throughout their early history, whose model instructor 
 was at once a scholar and a gentleman, and as a con- 
 sequence of their influence, education in America has 
 been associated largely with the leisuristic and pe- 
 cuniary classes. While nominally open to all, our 
 schools have always been schools of privilege. The 
 primary three Rs are fundamentals only of an intel- 
 lectual culture. The New England colleges built up 
 a genuine aristocracy, which was not less inclusive in 
 that it was intellectual, or, as the saying is, "an aris- 
 tocracy of brains," which, in contradistinction to the 
 European feudalism of family, was asserted proudly 
 
250 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 to be the "only aristocracy worthy the name." Mean- 
 while the American people, as to their masses, were 
 developing their vast industrial system, and the 
 leisuristic tendency was crossed and recrossed by 
 the industrial stream. In the effort latterly to 
 reconstruct an education more in harmony with the 
 social democracy, the first intention was to extend the 
 privilege of education to all members of the social 
 whole. During this period of reconstruction, through 
 liberal public and private endowments, a widely ex- 
 tended and nearly inclusive system of popular educa- 
 tion has been established. But for the most part the 
 education thus extended was the same education of 
 privilege that had its rise in the leisure class. Hence, 
 the emphasis placed upon the mere symbols of learn- 
 ing, reading and writing. The tendency is still to cre- 
 ate a culture representative of caste. Notwithstand- 
 ing the modifications in the scope of the school forced 
 by the industrial democracy, such as are signified by 
 technical, commercial, and manual training depart- 
 ments in the midst of cultural studies, it must be ac- 
 knowledged that the leisure-class theory of education 
 is still in the ascendent. The benefits of even the 
 public schools, supported though they are by general 
 taxation, accrue to an intellectual aristocracy. The 
 divorce between the hand and the brain, which is de- 
 structive of any genuine integral education, continues 
 in full force. The people, as to their industrial ac- 
 tivities, remain unserved and even unrecognized. 
 Except in certain schools for Indians and negroes it 
 is not possible today to receive instruction in the fun- 
 damentals of industrial education. What is needed at 
 
A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 251 
 
 this juncture is not a further extension of an education 
 of privilege, but the complete abrogation of privilege 
 and the establishment of schools upon entirely new 
 grounds. Mr. Albert Shaw, in a paper descriptive of 
 Hampton Institute, recently made the statement that 
 "the finest, soundest, and most effective educational 
 methods in use in the United States are to be found in 
 certain schools for negroes and Indians, and in others 
 for young criminals in reformatory prisons." Can it 
 be that Hampton Institute, founded for the instruc- 
 tion of negroes in the fundamental employments, is 
 the model institute for America! Such may prove to 
 be the case. The time has come for schools whose aim 
 shall be to serve the needs of modern industrial de- 
 mocracy, that shall build upon that fine instinct for 
 workmanship that is the very life of industry when not 
 permeated by caste, — schools that shall declare: "The 
 ideal university is a place where nothing useless is 
 taught." It belongs to an aristocracy to support the 
 useless — useless garments, ceremonies, athletics, learn- 
 ing and whatnot — as the sign of an ability to indulge 
 itself in reputable expenditure. A democracy justifies 
 its existence on the ground of its usefulness, its ability 
 to create and do, and its faculty to enjoy creating and 
 doing. The new school will start with the construc- 
 tive energies; it will unite the senses and the soul; it 
 will employ the hand equally with the brain; it will 
 exalt the active over the passive life; it will love 
 knowledge for its service; it will make a real and not 
 a false use of books ; it will test production not alone 
 by its pecuniary results but by human values — whether 
 it yields pleasure or pain. The problem of democratic 
 
252 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 education is not to give the people a culture alien to 
 their lives, but to transform that which they have into 
 something more rational and harmonious. The old 
 humanities were secured by refining and secluding; 
 the new humanities will be discovered among the peo- 
 ple The chief agency of popular education will be the 
 very labor through which life is sustained. Industry 
 employs the mind that its work may be intelligent; it 
 provides for moral training in that its work must be 
 sincere. 
 
 The folly of the extension of an exclusive culture is 
 made very evident in the case of the American negro. 
 When released from slavery he became, through the 
 zeal of Northern abolitionists, a victim of an intel- 
 lectual civilization. He was provided with schools 
 of the Northern type, instructed in the caste distinc- 
 tions of New England, and directed henceforth to live 
 by his wits. The assumption of the superiority of 
 separate mental training is proven by the history of 
 the negro to be untrue. It is now conceded that the 
 philanthropic policy of the North was mistaken. It 
 was not access to libraries or knowledge of the classics 
 that the negro needed; and not necessarily the ability 
 to read the printed ballot the North placed in his 
 hands. His field is that of the elementary employ- 
 ments : here alone is his energy initial and educative. 
 Hampton Institute demonstrated the way of entrance 
 into the promised land. When independent in ele- 
 mentary labor, the negro may learn an independence 
 of wider application. 
 
 If called upon to write a prospectus of a school 
 fitted for industrial democracy I would not have in 
 
A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 253 
 
 mind a trades-school that should be simply an ad- 
 junct to the present industrial system, though I am 
 willing to acknowledge the necessity of such a school 
 and the importance of the present system. Calcula- 
 tion should be made of tendencies and growth. The 
 domestic system of production gave way to the factory 
 system with its machinery, and this in its turn seems 
 destined to yield to a higher industrialism wherein the 
 individual will have freer scope than ever before to 
 control his hand and brain, and will need therefore a 
 more skillful hand and a more cunning brain. Under 
 present conditions of specialization the master is sepa- 
 rated from the man, the designer from his tool. These 
 conditions would require that the tool be sharpened 
 for the designer, that the man be disciplined for the 
 master. However advantageous this relationship 
 may be economically it has little value educationally. 
 It destroys the totality of work and the integrity of 
 life. It sinks the individual in the product. It per- 
 mits no one in the whole series of specialized activi- 
 ties to be, in the full sense of the term, a creator. It 
 tends to develop experts, but not full rounded men. It 
 is almost totally defective in idealism. The theory of 
 the new industrialism is that in industry the whole of 
 life may be contained. The true workman loves his 
 craft for its life quality, because the thing upon which 
 he works is somehow a part of his own inner ideal. 
 His work must be creative and in becoming creative it 
 is also educative. If this theory of independent in- 
 dustry seems to be in opposition to the machine and 
 the trust, it will be seen that the machine, through be- 
 coming more and more automatic — and a self-acting 
 
254 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 machine is promised by physicists — and the corpora- 
 tion, through greater and greater centralization, will 
 bring about the release of innumerable agents now en- 
 gaged in production and control, and permit their 
 advance to a more intelligent private workmanship. 
 The plea for a new education is necessarily linked with 
 an argument for a new industrialism. 
 
 The new industrialism embodies first of all as a fun- 
 damental factor the principle of self-activity. So long 
 as a man works for another, or after another's plans or 
 designs, he is not self-directive and his work is not 
 therefore educative. The individual is to be treated 
 as integral, having his own talents to employ and his 
 own faculties to exercise. Under conditions of free- 
 dom industry changes its character and becomes 
 aesthetic. Beauty is whatever is added to an object to 
 make it expressive. In an object of utility it is the sign 
 of the pleasure the maker takes in his own activities. 
 It is the flowering of labor, the decoration of materials 
 at the hand of a free workman. The new school brings 
 art and labor into necessary association — labor to give 
 substance, art to yield pleasure. 
 
 The same principle of self-activity provides for the 
 inherency of the design. The separation between the 
 designer and his mechanical or human tool is detri- 
 mental to both the designer and the workman. This 
 form of specialization implies that a brain is not motor 
 and that hands are not intelligent. With proper care 
 during the first stages of education the hand and the 
 brain become co-ordinated and the best brain coin- 
 cides with the best hands. When working in separa- 
 tion the brain tends to refine and to weaken its tissues, 
 
A SCHOOL OP INDUSTRIAL ART 255 
 
 and the hand to coarsen and become mechanical. After 
 centuries of such divorce the fine arts on the one hand 
 have become too refined for industrial use, and indus- 
 try on the other hand is too coarse for the artist. The 
 breach between the castes is not closed when the artist 
 condescends to design for the workman : the division 
 ought not to exist. It would be the function of the new 
 school to create a class of craftsmen who would have 
 ideas to communicate and perfect rhetorical skill for 
 their expression. 
 
 To associate art and industry : to change the charac- 
 ter of labor so as to make industry educative, and to 
 develop the instinct of workmanship and elicit the 
 pleasure belonging to good workmanship so as to 
 make the industrial life complete — such may be said 
 to be the aims of industrial education. 
 
 II. 
 
 The aim of the school is suggestive of its proper 
 designation. The term Manual-Training has come 
 into popular use as descriptive of institutes or depart- 
 ments of schools that seek to educate the hand. The 
 objection to the title is that, having arisen at a time 
 when the caste divisions between the hand and brain 
 were in force, it represents the opposition between 
 manual training and mental training, whereas the new 
 education is not primarily manual and afterwards 
 mental, but wholly integral. Trade School and Indus- 
 trial Institute seem to emphasize too much the me- 
 chanical and professional aspects. The term Arts 
 
256 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 and Crafts is advocated as representing the fusion of 
 mental and manual education, but while descriptive, 
 the term is awkward. I have chosen as an equally 
 significant and more dignified appellation, the caption : 
 Industrial Art. 
 
 III. 
 
 The location of a School of Industrial Art is a most 
 important matter for reflection. It should be in the 
 environs of a large industrial city, not so far from the 
 city as to obscure the commercial and social bearing 
 of industry, and not so far from nature as to lose the 
 suggestiveness of natural forms and growths. Fields, 
 streams, and woods should be accessible. It would be 
 necessary to maintain a garden for the propagation of 
 plants for scientific and industrial purposes. In order 
 that the local flora and fauna may provide the basic 
 motive for design it is essential that with these forms 
 there should be intimate and loving association. Na- 
 ture alone initiates. If either factor is to be ignored it 
 should be the city rather than the country that should 
 be abandoned. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The building should be substantial but need not be 
 conspicuous or in any way extravagant. The tendency 
 of the leisure classes is to uphold their reputability by 
 vain expense and useless display. Let an industrial 
 
A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 257 
 
 school be at least sincere. The architecture should be 
 native, its styles suggested by the buildings' use, its 
 symbols indicative of the social environment. All 
 evolution of structure represents, of course, growth 
 out of the past ; but it is more necessary in the case of 
 an industrial school to create types for future use, 
 however simple, than to employ the mature and com- 
 plex modes of past stages of civilization. However, 
 if an historic style should be preferred, study may be 
 given to the Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries, when the prophecy of a people's art was first ut- 
 tered, when there was the most complete co-operation 
 between artist and workman. But happy the architect 
 who can take his stand among the people of his own 
 time, realize the significance of the modern forces, and 
 create symbols and styles for democracy. The build- 
 ings should be of such a size and character as to pro- 
 vide class-rooms, laboratories, a museum, a library, 
 and other features dependent upon the scope of the 
 school. 
 
 V. 
 
 Instruction would proceed upon the belief that in 
 the work of the nature I have described, and in the 
 knowledge attendant upon such work, the integral per- 
 sonality may be contained, and from work and the 
 knowledge necessary to make work intelligent the 
 fullest democratic culture is to be achieved. A few 
 principles will govern the emphasis of instruction. 
 The aim of the school being to employ the creative 
 
258 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 energies, the work-shops become the central feature. 
 From the work-shops all other interests radiate; back 
 to them the results of laboratories and class-rooms re- 
 turn. As a plan, an ideal, is the initial stage of any 
 work, especial attention should be given to the study 
 of design — not design in the abstract so much as de- 
 sign in relation to given materials and usage. From 
 general culture and science those studies will be se- 
 lected which are best calculated to equip a workman 
 with ideas and to render his work intelligent. These 
 principles lead to a threefold division of the work of 
 the school, according as design, construction, or in- 
 struction receives the emphasis. In the drawing- 
 rooms training would be given in free-hand, mechani- 
 cal and architectural drawing, representation of nature 
 and the human figure, clay-modeling, composition, 
 color and decoration. In the work-shops, equipped 
 with hand and power tools, furnaces, dyevats, presses 
 and other necessary appliances, would develop all the 
 constructive processes in wood, metal, leather, stone, 
 glass, the earths, paper and textiles. Adjacent to the 
 designing rooms and work-shops would be chemical 
 and biological laboratories and the general experimen- 
 tal rooms. In the class-rooms would proceed instruc- 
 tion in geography, history, psychology, the English 
 language, rhetoric and general literature. In tabu- 
 lated form the work of the school would appear accord- 
 ing to the following scheme: 
 
 (1) Drawing 
 I. Department of Design ^ (2) Clay Modeling 
 
 ( 3 ) Composition 
 
A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 
 
 259 
 
 II. The Work Shops 
 
 (1) Decoration 
 
 (2) Printing and Book 
 
 Binding. 
 Construction in 
 
 (3) Wood 
 
 (4) Metal 
 
 (5) Leather 
 
 (6) Paper 
 
 (7) Stone 
 
 (8) Glass 
 
 (9) The Earths 
 (10) Textiles 
 
 A. The History Group 
 
 B. The Philosophy Group 
 
 C. The Mathematical Group 
 
 D. The Art Group 
 
 E. The Science Group 
 
 III. Department of Science and Art 
 
 1) History 
 
 [2) Political Science 
 -s (3) Sociology 
 [ 4 ) Economy 
 1) Psychology 
 ;2) Ethics 
 
 1) Numbers 
 
 2) Geometry 
 
 1) English Language 
 
 2) Rhetoric 
 
 3) Music 
 
 4) Literature 
 1 ) Geography 
 
 [ 2 ) Physics 
 
 i (3) Chemistry 
 
 (4) Biology 
 
 It is understood that the work of any pupil is to 
 be co-ordinated as fully as possible. While a general 
 course, say of chemistry, may be undertaken, yet the 
 chief function of chemistry in the school would be to 
 assist those engaged in work involving a knowledge of 
 chemistry for its prosecution. Printing would be as- 
 
260 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 sociated with composition, free-hand lettering and 
 page decoration, illustration, the related processes of 
 paper making and bookbinding, and the general his- 
 tory of language and of human culture. The history, 
 philosophy and art groups that have reference to more 
 general ideals would be more universally prescribed. 
 Of the cultural subjects geography and the history 
 group which disclose the development of the earth as 
 the home of the human race and the evolution of man 
 in his industrial, economic and artistic aspects, are the 
 most important. Free-hand drawing in various color 
 media, modeling in clay, composition, music, language 
 and rhetoric are fundamental courses in the art of ex- 
 pression. Training in music might be given to all in 
 daily assembly. Architectural and mechanical draw- 
 ing are subservient to special needs. The processes of 
 the work-shop all relate to objects of social utility, 
 and while primarily educative of personality, aim to 
 prepare pupils for professionalism in the different 
 crafts. No provision is made in this plan for the study 
 of language other than English, all other literatures 
 being used in translation. Physical culture as an in- 
 dependent object is rendered unnecessary by reason 
 of the absorbtion of physical energy in the work-shops, 
 though opportunity should be given for the recreation of 
 outdoor sports. 
 
 This scheme contemplates the complete harmoniza- 
 tion of all the incidents of education in line with the 
 general democratic import of the school: the centrali- 
 zation of administration, but fully co-operative instruc- 
 tion; the individual treatment of pupils according to 
 capacity and intention; free education, under counsel, 
 
A SCHOOL OP INDUSTRIAL ART 261 
 
 both as to choice of work and the time employed; the 
 co-ordination of courses; a continuous session of the 
 school without special assemblage or ceremonials; the 
 giving of certificates of proficiency (but not degrees) ; 
 the encouragement of independent organizations 
 among the pupils; and instruction above all else in 
 self-control. 
 
 Such a school may be wholly autonomous, itself a 
 free creative activity, its initiation extending even to 
 the writing and printing of its text-books and the in- 
 vention and manufacture of its tools and equipment. 
 It would organize research into fields that are today 
 almost untouched by trained explorers — the field of 
 industrial physics and industrial chemistry. A lab- 
 oratory devoted to the problem of the industrial appli- 
 cation of energy might become a factor in racial prog- 
 ress. The school might hope to become a training 
 place for inventors. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS 
 GROUND: WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 I. 
 
 The religious system of Christendom, in almost 
 the entire range of its theologic and ethical concep- 
 tions, is patriarchal, monarchical, or feudal in origin 
 and character. In the terms "Our Lord" and "Our 
 Father" the whole occidental idea of divinity is con- 
 tained. The Kingdom of Heaven was modeled upon 
 the kingdoms known to men at the time when the 
 idea was first conceived; only in the place of a weak, 
 corrupt and defective king, there was substituted a 
 perfect Being whose word was absolute Truth and 
 whose acts constituted absolute Justice. Around the 
 "Emperor of Heaven" — to use Dante's phrase — vice- 
 gerents of lesser realms were thought to subsist, de- 
 clining in authority, rank by rank, to the lowest 
 priest in the earthly hierarchy, each dispensing truth 
 and justice as deputized by the rulers higher in the 
 scale. Over a realm of "chaos and old night" Satan 
 and his myrmidons ruled in identical manner. The 
 philosophic ground of this system is known as dual- 
 ism. 
 
 Towards their various rulers mortals held the re- 
 lation of vassals. The whole theory of duty, obliga- 
 tion, punishment, and salvation, the very attitude men 
 assumed in supplication, was feudal in character. The 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 263 
 
 very term Lord, employed to describe one person of 
 the triune throne, is indicative of the feudal conception 
 in the whole warp and woof of western theology. In 
 early English the apostles were designated also 
 as thegns, the title for the lesser nobility or kingly 
 servitors. The ethical codes, corresponding to the 
 monarchical theology, such as describe the relations of 
 men to their rulers or to their compeers, were mili- 
 tary in effect. "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" 
 represent the ways of kings to their servants. A sys- 
 tem of rites and ceremonials was further invented by 
 the priests to express the relation of lord and vassal. 
 "Order" — to use Pope's word, meaning gradation or 
 rank — being "Heaven's first law," a proper series of 
 deadly and venial sins and their corresponding vir- 
 tues was constructed, and up the painful path the sub- 
 jects of the King were enjoined to labor, if so they 
 might enter the heavenly kingdom and glorify God 
 forever. 
 
 From this point of view distinctions were drawn 
 between the natural and the spiritual. In so far as 
 man was related by bodily birth and inheritance to 
 the order of Nature, he was of necessity base, corrupt- 
 ible, sinful, and in need of redemption; in so far as 
 he was spiritual, his soul tended toward the good. 
 Here were the elements mingled for an unending war- 
 fare. For its help the soul had the sword of the spirit, 
 the breastplate of faith, the helmet of salvation, the 
 whole armor of righteousness. 
 
 God, the Divine Ruler of the Universe; Man, the 
 vassal under surveillance; Nature, the arena of con- 
 flict: such are the three general terms of Christian 
 
264 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 theology formulated by the church fathers, subscribed 
 to by Dante and Milton, and current today in every na- 
 tion of the Occident. Even in America, the organized 
 churches and denominations, Catholic and Protestant, sub- 
 sist upon the feudal traditions. Our National Hymn 
 concludes with an appeal to "Great God, our King." 
 Indeed it is not too much to say that if the notion of 
 king and subject, of judge and convict, were discarded, 
 if the dualistic distinctions relating to good and evil 
 were dismissed, if the gulf between man and nature 
 were closed, almost the whole content of orthodox theol- 
 ogy would be dissipated in a twinkling — and yet the 
 whole of modern life would remain. The creeds, the 
 homilies, the books of prayer, the codes of conduct 
 bequeathed the churches by past centuries, offend the 
 scientific and self-dependent mind. The future belongs 
 to the new tendencies. Either the churches must recon- 
 struct their systems in terms of democracy, vitalize their 
 theology by renewal at the founts of modern life, or 
 simply decline in influence till they become mere anti- 
 quarian symbols, reminiscent of ancient peoples and old 
 beliefs. Said Emerson: "We too must write Bibles to 
 unite again the heavenly and the earthly world." 
 
 II. 
 
 I turn for illustration of what may be done in formulat- 
 ing a new and modernized theology to Whitman's 
 "Leaves of Grass," the one book of considerable impor- 
 tance known to me that breaks utterly with feudal forms 
 and assumes the processes of democracy, and that is at 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 265 
 
 the same time intentionally religious in basic purpose. 
 "I will see," Whitman said to himself, "whether there is 
 not, for my purposes as poet, a religion, and a sound 
 religious germinancy in the average human race, and in 
 the hardy common fibre and native yearnings and ele- 
 ments, deeper and larger, and affording more profitable 
 returns, than all mere sects or churches — as boundless, 
 joyous, and vital as Nature itself — a germinancy that 
 has been too long unencouraged, unsung, almost un- 
 known. The time has certainly come to begin to dis- 
 charge the idea of religion from mere ecclesiasticism, 
 and from Sundays and churches and church-going, and 
 assign it to that general position, chiefest, most indis- 
 pensible, most exhilarating, to which the others are to be 
 adjusted, inside of all human character, and education, 
 and affairs. The people, especially the young men and 
 women of America, must begin to learn that religion is 
 something far, far different from what they supposed. 
 It is indeed, too important to the power and perpetuity 
 of the New World to be consigned any longer to the 
 churches, old or new, Catholic or Protestant — Saint this, 
 or Saint that. It must be consigned thenceforth to dem- 
 ocracy en masse, and to literature. ,, 
 
 More than any other thinker of his generation Whit- 
 man realized the need of creating new religious ideals 
 for America, new "mind formulas" as real and large and 
 sane as the continent itself, and while acknowledging to 
 the full the indebtedness of America to "venerable priestly 
 Asia" and "royal feudal Europe" he accepted the oppor- 
 tunity of a new world and a new time to plant the seeds 
 of a new gospel. "I too, following many and followed 
 by many, inaugurate a new religion." It was not his 
 
266 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 purpose, however, to organize another religious sect, 
 but, acting as a poet and not as a priest, to arouse the 
 religious consciousness in men and women so they might 
 be religious in themselves and write Bibles and creeds 
 at the height of their enlightenment. Of himself he 
 said: "I know I have the best of time and space, and 
 was never measured and never will be measured." And 
 to those who would become his followers he gave warn- 
 ing: 
 
 "I tramp a perpetual journey, 
 My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut 
 
 from the woods, 
 No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, 
 I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 
 I lead no man to a dinner -table, library, exchange, 
 But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, 
 My left hand hooking you round the waist, 
 My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the 
 
 public road, 
 Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, 
 You must travel it for yourself." 
 
 The capacity of any individual to write passages of 
 experience for inclusion in the Bible of the race is 
 claimed on the ground of the essential centrality of 
 thought in the universe. Whitman is the author of a new 
 anthropomorphism. Wherever anyone stands there is 
 the center of all days and all races, the past summed up, 
 the future foretold, all antecedents tallied, all laws real- 
 ized, all objects encompassed. Bibles and religions pro- 
 ceed out of the heart of man and the issues of life as 
 leaves from the trees and as the trees spring from the ever 
 pregnant soil. 
 
 The philosophic ground of Whitman's work is modern- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 267 
 
 ly known as monism, or the conception of the unitary- 
 nature of the universe. This is not to say, as promised 
 by metaphysics, that the universe is resolved into any 
 single property, as mind or motion, from which every- 
 thing else is derived, but that the universe is one universe, 
 organized into one system. Whitman is the first great 
 prophet of cosmic democracy. In the circle of life not 
 one thing is alien, not one disenfranchised, not one 
 thrust out and doomed to failure. A vast similitude in- 
 terlocks all. His great words are unity, fusion, envelop, 
 enclose, ensemble, encompass, identity — the "flowing 
 eternal identity" — evolution, and immortality. He is the 
 "true poet" of his own song, the "full-grown poet," who 
 takes nature by one hand and the soul of man by the 
 other and stands between the two as blender, reconciler, 
 and lover. The entire volume of "Leaves of Grass" 
 is dedicated to the cause of unity — unity in oneself, 
 unity with others in love and comradeship, unity of states 
 in nationalism, unity of mankind in a spiritual identifica- 
 tion. In separate poems he showed his own identity with 
 the sun-set breeze, with the husky-haughty sea, accepted 
 his relations with animals, and claimed all men and 
 women as his lovers and comrades. Almost his most 
 passionate poems relate to his love of nature's elements. 
 
 "I am lie that walks with the tender and growing night, 
 I call to the earth and sea half -held by the night. 
 Press close bare-bosom'd night — press close magnetic nourish- 
 ing night! 
 Night of south winds — night of the large few stars! 
 Still nodding night — mad naked summer night. 
 
 Smile, voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! 
 Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 
 
268 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topt! 
 Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with 
 
 blue! 
 Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! 
 Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for 
 
 my sake! 
 Far-swooping elbow'd earth — rich apple-blossom'd earth! 
 Smile, for your lover comes. 
 
 Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore I to you give love ! 
 
 unspeakable passionate love. 
 
 You sea ! I resign myself to you also — I guess what you mean. 
 
 1 behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, 
 I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, 
 
 We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of 
 
 sight of the land, 
 Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, 
 Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you. 
 
 Sea of stretch'd ground-swells, 
 
 Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 
 
 Sea of the brine of life and of unshovelPd yet always ready 
 
 graves, 
 Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, 
 I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all 
 
 phases. 
 I am he attesting sympathy." 
 
 On its passional and devotional side Whitman's religion 
 may be said to be constituted by cosmic enthusiasm. 
 
 Comprehensive as is the scope of Whitman's thought, 
 familiar as is his usage of the terms God and Nature, his 
 doctrine of divinity is primarily a doctrine of Man. After 
 all is said of the cosmos that can be said in celebration he 
 returns to the center, to the one "chained in the adamant 
 of Time" from whom the celebration proceeds, and de- 
 clares: "You are not thrown to the winds, you gather 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 269 
 
 certainly and safely around yourself, yourself! yourself! 
 yourself, forever and ever!" "The whole theory of the 
 universe," he affirms, "is directed unerringly to one sin- 
 gle individual." It is not the sky, the night, the sea, that 
 is great : it is the individual man that is great. "Dazzling 
 and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill me, 
 if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me." 
 For the individual "the divine ship sails the divine sea" ; 
 for him "the earth is solid and liquid" ; for him "the sun 
 and moon stand in the sky." It is constantly iterated that 
 "nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is." 
 "I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner 
 than I sing the songs of the glory of you." "I only am 
 he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, 
 beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself." 
 
 "What do you suppose creation is? 
 What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free 
 
 and own no superior? 
 What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred 
 
 ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? 
 And that there is no God any more divine than yourself? 
 And that is what the oldest and the newest myths finally 
 
 mean?" 
 
 With sublime rebellion against the ideal of master and 
 lord Whitman announced the import of the democratic 
 man: 
 
 "From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary 
 lines, 
 
 Going where I list, my own master total and absolute." 
 
 He values the "beauty of independence, departure, ac- 
 tions that rely on themselves." He praises the "bound- 
 less impatience of restraint" he had observed among the 
 
270 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 American soldiery. No joy is greater to him than the 
 joy of a "manly self-hood." 
 
 "O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, 
 To meet life as a powerful conqueror, 
 
 No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, 
 To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, 
 
 proving my interior soul impregnable, 
 And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me." 
 
 A radical foundation of the new religion is the divine 
 pride of man in himself. 
 
 [The supremacy of man in the universe is due to the es- 
 sential creativity of thought. In an idealistic sense the 
 universe is created and upheld by thought. No thinker 
 can by any possible means escape from himself. Space 
 and time and all other categories whereby the universe 
 is known are methods of thinking. The universe, in 
 short, as humanly known, is thought thinking itself. 
 Within the same circle conceptions of deity occur, which 
 are commonly the highest and most universal ideals the 
 mind can form in respect of its own evolution. "Man is, 
 and always has been," John Burroughs declares, "a maker 
 of gods. It has been the most serious and significant 
 occupation of his sojourn in the world." When an 
 ideal of the highest good ceases to serve the end for 
 which it was created, the mind sadly and painfully de- 
 stroys it and erects a higher good to be held in honor in 
 place of the fallen idol. Prometheus willed that Jupiter 
 should control his being : when the god became tyrannous 
 when laws, customs and decrees hardened and became 
 stereotyped, the same will pronounced the god's eviction. 
 All along the pathway of thought are strewn these 
 pathetic figures of idols discredited and discarded. The 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 271 
 
 philosophic mind views the spectacle without regret. Says 
 the wise Maeterlinck : "The hour when a lofty conviction 
 forsakes us should never be one of regret. If a belief 
 we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps within us; if 
 we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, 
 this is proof of utility, progress, of our marching steadily 
 onwards, and making good use of all that lies to our 
 hand." In "Leaves of Grass" the God-idea is once more 
 corrected and modernized. What is "the greatest thing 
 in the world?" The greatest minds answer that the 
 greatest thing is Love. Love, when concretized in human 
 life and absorbed in personality, produces the Lover, the 
 Comrade, the One in whom all other lives and experiences 
 are contained and brought together. To the perfection 
 of Comradeship the whole universe tends. All forces 
 have been steadily employed to complete the Great Com- 
 panion. And the process is unending. "My rendezvous," 
 says the poet, "is appointed, it is certain." 
 "Reckoning ahead soul, when thou, the time achiev'd, 
 The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done, 
 Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aims attain'd, 
 As filFd with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother 
 
 found, 
 The Younger melts in fondness in his arms." 
 
 In the illumination of this thought the past of human 
 life is interpreted. 
 
 "Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Ger- 
 manic systems, 
 Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and 
 
 Hegel, 
 Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato, 
 And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine 
 having studied long, 
 
272 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 I see reminiscent today those Greek and Germanic systems, 
 See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see, 
 Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the 
 
 divine I see, 
 The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend 
 
 to friend, 
 Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents, 
 Of city for city and land for land." 
 
 From the height of this vision the poet perceives the 
 line of "compassionaters" — how they have labored to- 
 gether to transmit the same charge and succession, how 
 they enclose continents, castes and theologies, and how 
 they will arise the whole earth over till times and eras 
 are saturated and the men and women of races prove 
 lovers and comrades. 
 
 It is certain that in Comradeship the idea of Nature 
 is also contained. The democratic man is to show 
 affiliation with all phenomena. Of course nature may 
 be known objectively by the intellectual categories of 
 knowing: but the real knowledge of nature, the knowl- 
 edge that Whitman had in view when he said: "I say 
 the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for re- 
 ligion's sake," is subjective, the consciousness of identity 
 and kindred impulses among all created things. The 
 poet confronts the shows of the day and night, acknowl- 
 edges their copiousness, then absorbs their growths into 
 himself. He stands and looks at animals and they display 
 their relations with him and show tokens of himself in 
 their possession. There is no smallest particle of nature 
 beyond the reach of the soul. From the "rolling earth, ,, 
 the "high-vibrating stars," the "mystical moist night- 
 air," the "gorgeous clouds of sunset," the "scallop-edged 
 waves of flood-tide," the sea's "husky-haughty lips," the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 273 
 
 "myriad leaves" of the Redwood-tree, "bravuras of birds," 
 "bustle of growing wheat," "gossip of flame," "winged 
 purposes of wood-drake" — from all natural sources with- 
 out exception a kindred response vibrates back to the 
 soul's invitation. The "damp of night" drives deeper into 
 his soul than logic or sermons. A morning glory at his 
 window teaches more than the metaphysics of books. 
 "Why are there trees I never walk under but large and 
 melodious thoughts descend upon me." He needs but 
 to "lie abstracted" to hear "beautiful tales of things and 
 reasons of things." 
 
 "Air, soil, water, fire — these are words. 
 I myself am a word with them — qualities interpenetrate with 
 
 them — my name is nothing to them, 
 Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what 
 
 would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name? 
 A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are 
 
 words, sayings, meanings, 
 The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and 
 
 women, are sayings and meanings also. 
 
 The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the 
 
 earth, 
 The masters know the earth's words and use them more than 
 
 audible words." 
 
 "I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate 
 
 those of the earth, 
 There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate 
 
 the theory of the earth, 
 No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, 
 
 unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, 
 Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of 
 
 the earth." 
 
 Manifestly the intention of all his songs of nature is to 
 
274 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 demonstrate the infinite relationships within the universe 
 and the value to the soul of man of the intercommunica- 
 tion. 
 
 Whitman's celebration of the individual culminates in 
 his songs of evolution and immortality. His poems con- 
 tain the strongest assertion and argument respecting the 
 continuity of being that can be found anywhere in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 "I know I am solid and sound, 
 I know I am deathless, 
 I know I am august, 
 
 My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite, 
 I laugh at what you call dissolution, 
 And I know the amplitude of time." 
 
 So necessary is the conception of evolution to the 
 philosophy of democracy, it would seem that if the soul 
 of man had not already known its immortality, Whitman, 
 as the spokesman of the New World, must have invented 
 the idea for the furtherance of his theory of man. For 
 by the thought of physical and spiritual evolution every 
 atom in the universe is given place and importance and 
 its place and condition are fully justified. In the cosmic 
 elemental stream all conditions are levelled and made 
 as one, however distinctive the special attainments of 
 anyone may be. Size is only development. 
 
 "Have you outstripped the rest? Are you the President? 
 It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there everyone, and 
 still pass on." 
 
 "Births have brought us richness and variety, 
 And other births will bring us richness and variety. 
 I do not call one greater and one smaller, 
 That which fills its period and place is equal to any." 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 275 
 
 "The universe is duly in order, everything is in its place, 
 What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in 
 its place." 
 The universe is seen as a procession with measured and 
 perfect motion. Shadows advance before the object and 
 reached hands bring up the laggards. "Always the 
 procreant urge of the world." 
 
 "I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they 
 had at the asylum, 
 And I know for my consolation what they knew not, 
 I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, 
 The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement, 
 And I shall look again in a score or two of ages, 
 And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmM, 
 every inch as good as myself." 
 
 The poet meets death with equable mind. With "keys 
 of softness" the soul loosens the "clasps of the knitted 
 locks." Life and "Heavenly Death" provide for all. 
 When any orb is enfolded, the spirit "lifts that level" 
 and continues beyond. "The goal that was named cannot 
 be countermanded." 
 
 To such an inclusive spiritual democracy there can be 
 no limitations or probations. Immortality is necessary 
 and universal. 
 
 "I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! 
 
 That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is 
 for it, and the cohering is for it! 
 
 And all preparation is for it — and identity is for it — and 
 life and materials are altogether for it!" 
 
 Indeed "the smallest sprout shows there is really no 
 
 death." 
 
 "Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, 
 No birth, identity, form — no object of the world, 
 Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing." 
 
276 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 In a philosophy devoted to the identities the dualistic 
 distinctions between good and evil fail of their meanings 
 and the orthodox ethics is thrown to confusion. The 
 doctrine of good and evil in the mediaeval theologies was 
 comparatively simple; it consisted in forming fixed cate- 
 gories of right and wrong by absolute standards. But 
 as life was never static but ever flowing it was difficult 
 even during the vogue of dualism to fit practice to the 
 theory and it became easier to modify the theory than to 
 enforce right conduct. Extremists like William Blake 
 denied the sacred codes in toto and reversed their cate- 
 gories. Milder men, like Emerson and Browning, at- 
 tempting reconciliation, extended toward Satan a gener- 
 ous hospitality and appropriated his evil as an agency 
 in the good. Both thinkers abandoned the restrictive 
 codes and trusted to the soul's original energy. It re- 
 quires but one more step to reach the monistic plane and 
 but a little more courage to give up the attempt at recon- 
 ciliating differences that pertain only to a past philosophy 
 and construe life on wholly new terms. Probably Whit- 
 man in general would adopt the saying of Emerson : "Vir- 
 tue is the adherence in action to the nature of things: 
 The only right is what is after my constitution, the only 
 wrong is what is against it." And if the retort be made : 
 "These impulses may be from below," Whitman would 
 respond as cheerfully as did the elder sage : "If I am the 
 Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil; no law 
 can be sacred to me but that of my nature." However 
 Whitman is more inclined to deny the validity of the 
 terms good and bad altogether and would use them — as 
 Blake did in his "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" — only 
 as traditional counters of speech, very much as one still 
 
THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 277 
 
 speaks of the rising and setting of the sun. "I resist 
 anything," he said, "more than my own diversity." "I 
 will stand by my own nativity pious or impious so be it." 
 "Clear and sweet is my soul and clear and sweet is all 
 that is not my soul." Knowing the perfect fitness and 
 equanimity of things he is vexed at "showing the best 
 and dividing it from the worst." "Evil propels me and 
 reform of evil propels me. I stand indifferent." "What 
 is called good is perfect and what is called evil is just as 
 perfect." In a poem that recalls Emerson's "Mithridates" 
 he declares that in earth's orbic scheme "newts, crawl- 
 ing things in slime and mud, poisons, the barren soil, 
 the evil men, the slag and hideous rot" are all enclosed. 
 Or in other words of his : "The roughness of the earth and 
 of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth 
 and of man." He thinks the elementary laws do not need 
 to be worked over and believes that from the unflagging 
 pregnancy health will emerge. The problem of modern 
 life is not as in mediaeval days to achieve righteousness 
 but to entertain sincerity and truth. And in the last 
 thought of the universe "all is truth." Everything, in- 
 evitable and limitless, appears in the line of its inheri- 
 tance and is allowed the "eternal purports of the earth." 
 
 "I sing the endless finale's of things, 
 I say Nature continues, glory continues, 
 I praise with electric voice, 
 
 For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, 
 And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the 
 universe." 
 
 Thus the motive of Whitman's entire gospel is to es- 
 tablish man in undisputed mastery over himself. The 
 center of authority is shifted from what is without the 
 
278 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 soul to the soul itself. The ethics of authority is for- 
 ever void. Responsibility attaches to the self. And no 
 one ever taught more insistently than Whitman the im- 
 possibility of eluding "the law of promotion and trans- 
 formation" that inheres in one's own acts and thoughts. 
 Theft comes back to the thief as love returns to the 
 lover. "A strong being is the proof of the race and of 
 the ability of the universe." 
 
 The intention of the old theology was to reduce man, 
 to make him submissive, to take from his autonomy. The 
 new proposes to exalt man, to deny mastery, to prove 
 capacity for self-rule. The old convicted man of sin, 
 initiated a division and conflict within the self, filled 
 him with lamentations, postponed his rewards. The new 
 knows but one compact indivisible impulse, permits man's 
 original energy its joyful utterance, yields his pains and 
 pleasures now. The old tended to develop in man a sense 
 of alienism in the midst of all cosmic forms. The new 
 seeks to place him in rapport with the universe, to arouse 
 the abysmal passions whereby he becomes the lover of the 
 cosmos, the interpreter of its occult meanings and an ac- 
 complice in its ends. 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST. 
 
 I. 
 
 There are certain periods in history described as awak-* 
 enings and new births, during which, after long quies- 
 cence, the human spirit rouses itself from stupor, breaks 
 the bonds of code and custom, and strikes out in new direc- 
 tions, makes discoveries of new continents and skies, is cre- 
 ative and expansive in unwonted fields, and attains thereby 
 a new plane of consciousness. The sign of awakening is 
 an unusual activity — an activity vague and unregulated at 
 first, but with an ever-increasing definiteness of purpose. 
 The expansion is commonly at once geographical, scien- 
 tific, and theosophical. The accidents of history determine 
 the direction of discovery and provide the particular ex- 
 ternal materials for the spirit's use, but the whole move- 
 ment accrues eventually to character and becomes per- 
 manent in an enlarged racial consciousness. Egypt, India 
 and Persia at some time passed through such spiritual 
 epochs, but the awakening of the peoples of Europe in 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is known above all 
 other similar events as the Renaissance. There was then 
 a genuine new birth of the human spirit, an advance for 
 two mystic centuries into a new condition of freedom, 
 an elevation of mind and soul such as the race had ex- 
 perienced before but once or twice in its history. The 
 vague unrest of the Crusades was an early sign of gesta- 
 
280 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 tion, of awakening energy. The new birth was announced 
 by the revival of the sense of wonder and by the de- 
 sire for exploration. Undiscovered lands and seas offered 
 the opportunity of physical expansion. The unsolved 
 problems of the stars excited the mind to explore the 
 heavens. The accident of the fall of the Greek em- 
 pire occasioned the migration of scholars westward; 
 their absorption in the humanistic movement inaugurated 
 by Petrarch and his followers increased the scope of the 
 New Learning and led to a more complete resuscitation 
 of the past. To the wisdom of the Jews were added the 
 forgotten speculations of the Greeks. It happened that 
 Virgil was the first of the classic texts to be printed, but 
 Greek was the favorite symbol of scholarship ; Homer 
 was printed in 1488; Aristotle in 1498, and Plato in 1513. 
 The affiliation with the Greek spirit was the primary fact 
 of the Italian renaissance. Through the retention of the 
 germs of spiritual freedom contained in the literature 
 of Hellas, the desire for knowledge was quickened, the 
 sense of the beautiful was restored, and the horizons of 
 speculation were widened through all the western lands. 
 The immediate direction of energy, the materials upon 
 which the new life was expended, were the accidents of 
 the environment. That which was permanent was a cer- 
 tain elevation of soul and freedom of spirit — a freedom 
 that still gives a motive to the modern world. 
 
 The nineteenth century will be known in history as the 
 beginning of another European renaissance. An ex- 
 pansive movement in human affairs became conspicuous 
 about the middle of the century, the tide of which was felt 
 upon the farthest shore. An old order was closed in 
 Europe by the popular revolutions at the end of the 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 281 
 
 eighteenth century. An impulse for freedom was initiated 
 by the cries of fraternity and equality sounding from the 
 French Revolution. The century witnessed the liberal 
 movement in religion, the republican movement in poli- 
 tics, the romantic movement in art, the scientific move- 
 ment in education, the industrial movement in sociology. 
 Geographical expansion has been effected through the 
 exploration of the Dark Continent, the settlement of un- 
 tilled lands in other continents and the conquest of in- 
 ferior peoples by the dominant races. Natural forces 
 hitherto unknown or unemployed have been discovered 
 and applied to service. By means of improved micro- 
 scopes and telescopes the minute and the distant have 
 been brought within the ken of science. Philosophic spec- 
 ulation has been more daring and far-reaching than be- 
 fore. Never was man more active, more efficient, more 
 like a god. All outward motion is a sign of inward 
 growth. Outer expansion answers to inner expansion 
 — even as conservatism and contraction of boundaries 
 testify to inner decay. Man has awakened again spirit- 
 ually. A cycle of growth is completed and new and 
 more psychic paths are entered upon. Not now to Greece 
 but to the Orient — to that which lay behind Greece, to 
 that which tinctured the lore of Plato and the dialectics 
 of Aristotle, to more primitive sources of life — the West- 
 ern race is tending. The privilege that the nineteenth 
 century enjoyed above all other centuries was its access 
 to the East. 
 
 II. 
 
 The way to the Orient had been found as early as the 
 
282 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 year 1500 by Portuguese sailors, and by the year 1600 
 trade with India and China was inaugurated by English 
 merchantmen. And still to the Orient all vessels are 
 turning. That was a memorable historic event in 1853, 
 when Commodore Perry with his "black ships" entered 
 the harbor of Yedo to sue for a treaty of trade with 
 Japan. Equally significant was the year 1869, when the 
 Suez Canal was formally opened and the Union Pacific 
 rails were laid across the American Continent. In 1885 
 the Canadian Pacific Company completed its three thou- 
 sand miles of highway to Port Moody, and another 
 oceanic route to the East was established. In 1891 the 
 Czarowitz drove the first spike for the Siberian railway 
 at Vladivostok, on the Japan Sea. More recently the 
 course of events established the United States in Hawaii 
 and the Philippines on the route to the Orient. Other 
 highways are being surveyed across Europe and Asia. 
 Easy intercommunication is everywhere assured at the 
 opening of the century. 
 
 Trade and commerce with the East have been effected, 
 not merely in goods and fabrics, but also in subtler prop- 
 erties. In the ships of the tradesmen scholarship sailed. 
 As in the earlier renaissance, scholastic criticism preceded 
 the appropriation of spiritual results. What Petrarch, 
 Marsigli, the eminent Chysolorus, and other Florentine 
 scholars did for Hellenism, Sir William Jones, Schlegel, 
 Bobb, Du Perron, Spiegel, Mueller, Whitney, Harper, 
 and other noted scholars accomplished for the Oriental. 
 While remembering the disclosures of science respecting 
 the operations of nature, it is not too much to say that 
 the chief conquests in the new learning in this age have 
 been made in the field of human history. Whole acts in 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 283 
 
 the drama of the world have been discovered. Treasures 
 have been unearthed that surpass in human value the 
 discoveries of all previous centuries. The entire sacred 
 literature of the race is disclosed for the student of relig- 
 ions. The veil is drawn from the mysteries of Egypt. 
 India, the home of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Budd- 
 hism, and the refuge of Zoroastrianism, is as an open 
 book. Through the work of philologists we know some- 
 thing of the history of words and conceptions, and of the 
 momentous events, the intellectual battles, the life dramas, 
 that words represent. 
 
 It is astonishing to find how recently the Occident 
 came into its inheritance of Oriental wisdom. The ignor- 
 ance of Europe regarding the East was nearly total at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century. "I do not like 
 the fashion of your garments," said King Lear in blind 
 reproof of Edgar. "You will say they are Persian." A 
 hundred years ago Persia was still hardly more than a 
 name ; India, a vast outlying region ; Egypt, a sphinx 
 hidden in the sands. The demand made by Voltaire for 
 the substitution of the ancient moral systems for Chris- 
 tianity was based upon the slightest knowledge of those 
 systems. The Eastern poems of Moore, Southey, and 
 Byron do not strike below the surface of their subjects. 
 It was not until 1783, when Sir William Jones published 
 a translation of the Indian poem "Sa Kuntala," that 
 English scholars became even aware of the existence of 
 an immense and complete Indian literature. The Upani- 
 shads were accessible to European scholars only in a 
 translation of a Persian version rendered into Latin by 
 Auquetil du Perron in 1802. The celebrated Indian 
 Rammahun Roy, who visited England in 183 1, was the 
 
284 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 first Brahman to appear in Europe for the interchange 
 of ideas. It was not till 1832 that a chair of Sanskrit was 
 established in Oxford. Professor Wilson, the first in- 
 cumbent of the office, translated only a part of the "Rig- 
 Veda Sanhita." Professor Max Mueller published in 
 1849 tne text and commentary of the "Rig- Veda." The 
 oldest book of the Aryan race was then for the first time 
 accessible to students. As with the Vedas of the Brah- 
 mans, so with the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the Pitaka 
 of the Buddhists, the Kings of the Confucians, the Koran 
 of the Mohammedans, and the Egyptian Book of the 
 Dead. Until 1859 the language which the Parsees — the 
 modern disciples of Zoroaster — used in their worship 
 was an unknown tongue even to themselves. The Ro- 
 setta stone was found in 1779, but waited long for Cham- 
 pollion and Letronne to use it for unlocking the vast 
 religious literature of Egypt. The researches of M. 
 Edouard Neville and Flinders Petrie in Egypt are known 
 to the youngest. The verses of Omar may fairly be 
 classed in our current literature. It seems but yesterday 
 that Lafcadio Hearn became a member of the college at 
 Tokio and began the publication of those wonderful es- 
 says that alone interpret the inner life of Japan to West- 
 ern observers. It was left to Kipling to annex an en- 
 tirely new field to literature. To the closing years of the 
 century belong also the right reading of our own He- 
 brew scriptures and the just recognition of the Oriental 
 forces affecting the early Christian theology, and it 
 seems not unlikely that the classics themselves will be 
 reread in the light of the new learning. 
 
 The activity of European scholarship is not without 
 its spiritual ground. The search in the Orient is instinc- 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 285 
 
 tive and intuitive. For fourteen centuries and more the 
 Greek manuscripts lay in the Italian libraries unnoticed, 
 waiting the development of an intelligence capable of 
 interpreting them. It was not their discovery that caused 
 the Renaissance ; it was the Renaissance that caused their 
 discovery. Today some spiritual attraction, some feeling 
 of kinship, is drawing the West to the East. It is too 
 soon to measure the results of the influence ; it is hardly 
 time to be predictive. This much may be understood: 
 that the best will be absorbed. Schopenhauer, on read- 
 ing the Upanishads, pronounced the Vedantic philosophy 
 a product of the highest wisdom, and predicted that In- 
 dian wisdom would flow back upon Europe and produce 
 a thorough change in its knowing and thinking. In the 
 first edition (1818) of his Welt als Wille und Vors- 
 tellung he stated his belief that the influence of Sanskrit 
 literature would not be less profound than the revival of 
 the Greek in the fourteenth century. As is well known, 
 Schopenhauer's own philosophy was strongly impreg- 
 nated by the fundamental doctrines of the Upanishads. 
 The Orient is the original home of theosophy, a term de- 
 noting that form of philosophic thought which claims a 
 special insight into the divine nature. It is safe to say 
 that the whole transcendental movement, from its rise in 
 Germany to its evaporation in the excesses of the "new- 
 ness" in New England, was profoundly affected by the 
 theosophical teachings of Eastern sages. One of the re- 
 markable features of the New England "Dial," the or- 
 gan of the new philosophy, was the chapters on "Ethnic 
 Scriptures," which contained texts from the Veeshnu 
 Sarma, the laws of Menu, Confucius, the Desatir, the 
 Chinese "Four Books," Hermes Trismegistus, and Chal- 
 
286 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 dean oracles. Modern theosophy was founded in the 
 United States in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel 
 Olcott, the objects of the society being "to form a nu- 
 cleus of universal brotherhood" and "to investigate the 
 unexplained laws of nature and the physical powers of 
 man." The extension of this and similar orders in 
 America and Europe has been phenomenal. Antique 
 oracular style, allegorical and esoteric methods appear 
 again in the fables and apothegms of so modern and an- 
 tagonistic philosopher as Nietzsche. The Oriental in- 
 fluence will most certainly count on the side of idealism. 
 It will tend to emotionalize the European intellect. It 
 will quicken imagination. It will work for unity. It will 
 effect brotherhood. 
 
 Some of the practical effects of Orientalism may be 
 determined by its modification of Western modes. The 
 Greek influence on Italian art was in the direction of 
 more perfect and elaborate form. Painting lost its de- 
 scriptive and symbolical power and assumed the motive 
 of pure form. By the time of the high Renaissance art 
 forms had become fully abstracted from meaning, and 
 in the next century in Italy art was so conventionalized 
 that it failed to serve any human interest and the life- 
 energy came to be exercised elsewhere. But theosophi- 
 cal growth is inner: it depends upon experience and 
 eventuates in character. Such beauty as it evolves will 
 be characteristic, or that which corresponds to the inner 
 thought. The outer form will tend to attenuate till it 
 becomes the veriest symbol. The more mystical the feel- 
 ing, the more vague and indefinite will be the form. The 
 formlessness of Oriental literature has often been re- 
 marked upon. Japanese art, while not particularly mys- 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 287 
 
 tical, inclines to the characteristic. The music-dramas of 
 Wagner well illustrate the new mode in the West. 
 Beethoven was the last exponent of the music of classic 
 form. Wagner through Schopenhauer became a convert 
 to Orientalism and created a music of character depend- 
 ent upon a philosophical system. Sounds exist not for 
 themselves but for what they signify. The symbolistic 
 manner is carried still farther in the plays of Maeterlinck, 
 where outward action almost ceases, that the observer 
 may follow the play of feeling and fancy with unimpeded 
 motion. "The time will come," says Maeterlinck, "when 
 our souls will know of each other without the inter- 
 mediary of the senses." 
 
 An exception to the general philosophic influence 
 seems to be afforded by the writings of Omar, which are 
 unidealistic and seek the ultimate peace in sensation: 
 "A moment's halt — a momentary taste 
 Of being from the well amid the waste — 
 And lo ! the phantom caravan has reach'd 
 The nothing is set out from — Oh, make haste!" 
 
 But Omar was himself a rebel against the orthodox 
 Puritanism of his time, and the explanation of the amaz- 
 ing hold his rubaiyat have suddenly acquired upon the 
 English race is their association with the same rebellious 
 spirit in the West. Their acceptance betokens profound 
 dissatisfaction with the current orthodoxies, and Omar 
 in reality works indirectly for the spread of the idealism 
 he opposed. The company of Omarians that meet in 
 London in the midst of roses and over wine are simply 
 agnostic; and if their contentment is not in thought, it 
 is certainly not in sensation. 
 
 Science and theosophy represent different phases of the 
 
288 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 great awakening in the nineteenth century. The em- 
 phasis is now on the outer and now on the inner. But 
 it is wisdom and not knowledge that endures. The new 
 cycle will witness the positive increase in the human race 
 of thought, of experience, of character, of the life of the 
 spirit. 
 
 III. 
 
 It is now possible to predict the affiliation of democ- 
 racy with Orientalism. A casual observer would not fail 
 to note the Pacific interests of America, the mainten- 
 ance of the "open door" eastward for commerce, the in- 
 terest of American scholars in Oriental subjects, the 
 intervisitation of the teachers of all systems — the mis- 
 sionary activity of the Churches in one direction and the 
 successful propagandism of the new Vedantism in the 
 other direction. It is recalled that at the foundation of 
 the University of Chicago, the youngest of the univer- 
 sities, the fullest provision was made for the oldest lan- 
 guages ; that the first doctor's degree given by this uni- 
 versity is held by a student from Japan for proficiency 
 in the Semitic field ; that its first building for the use of 
 a department of language was an Oriental hall ; and that 
 its endowment provides for a series of lectures to be 
 given annually in the cities of the East by Western 
 scholars. And when one sees in America vast concourses 
 of people wearing the garb and bearing the symbols of 
 devotees to some "mystic shrine," he is impelled to won- 
 der at the strength of migratory secrecies. There are 
 these many outer signs of an inner identity. In certain 
 emotional, imaginative, and reflective states, Americans 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 2SD 
 
 are often farther from Europeans than from many 
 Asiatics. Amid all our diversity, there is in America a 
 profound sense of unity. To win independence first and 
 then union, our two great wars were fought. The phi- 
 losophy of individualism is our inheritance from Europe. 
 To the Indian philosophy of oneness we turn for confir- 
 mation of our principle of unity. The absorption of all 
 in a common principle gives importance to the members 
 of a group; it also provides for brotherhood. It is this 
 consciousness of a common life direction that is bringing 
 together again the various ethnic streams of the Aryan 
 race, after a separation so long that the recollection of 
 their common source has been completely lost. 
 
 Three American writers illustrate different phases of 
 the reunion. In the works of Bayard Taylor, Emerson, 
 and Whitman, I find the affirmation of my thesis. 
 
 Bayard Taylor was one of the first among American 
 men of letters to be possessed with a passion for travel. 
 He was an American Ulysses, "always roaming with a 
 hungry heart." Other lines of Tennyson's poem spring 
 to memory at the suggestion, and one is surprised to 
 find how applicable the poem is to Taylor and all wander- 
 ing men : 
 
 "I cannot rest from travel; I will drink 
 Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd 
 Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those 
 That loved me, and alone. . . . 
 
 I am a part of all that I have met; 
 
 Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 
 
 Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades 
 
 Forever and forever when I move." 
 
 Beginning his wanderings in his youth, Taylor visited 
 
290 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 in the course of his lifetime nearly every country of the 
 globe. During a single journey, begun in 185 1, he trav- 
 ersed most of the countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, 
 traveling a distance of fifty thousand miles. He went 
 with Commodore Perry to Japan in 1853. Keenly ob- 
 servant, with insatiable curiosity, with a ready and re- 
 liable pen, he was our best reporter abroad. But more 
 than a mere observer and recorder, he had the genius of 
 identifying himself with the life of many peoples. On 
 the whole, he was the most conspicuous ethnic identity 
 of the age. He seemed to be German, Spanish, Syrian, 
 at need. Undoubtedly the most interesting and valuable 
 part of Taylor's experiences abroad was his travel in 
 India, China, and Japan. He felt himself drawn to these 
 peoples as to no others. Not inappropriately Hicks, 
 when commissioned to draw his portrait, painted him in 
 Asiatic costume, turbaned, smoking, sitting cross-legged 
 upon a roof-top of Damascus. E. C. Stedman, remark- 
 upon Taylor's affinity with the East, noted the Oriental 
 likeness "in those down-dropping eyelids which made his 
 profile like Tennyson's ; in his aquiline nose, with the ex- 
 pressive tremor of the nostrils as he spoke; in his thinly 
 tufted chin, his close-curling hair; his love of spices, 
 music, coffee, colors, and perfumes; his sensitiveness to 
 outdoor influences, to the freshness of the morning, the 
 bath, the elemental touch of air and water, and the life- 
 giving sun." It was to be expected that his "Poems of 
 the Orient" would give him freest outlet for song. Un- 
 restrained, glowing with color, languorous, heavy with 
 perfume, these lyrics not only represent Taylor's fresh- 
 est, most vivid, and most spontaneous poetic work, but 
 also are superior to anything of their kind in literature, 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 291 
 
 being freed from the "honeyed monotony of Moore's 
 Orientalism and the bookishness of Southey." They 
 are indeed the "flowers of a life that had ripened in the 
 suns of many lands." When the poet came to the "Land 
 of the East," his soul seemed native: 
 
 "All things to him were the visible forms 
 
 Of early and precious dreams — 
 Familiar visions that mocked his quest 
 
 Beside the Western streams, 
 Or gleamed in the gold of the clouds, unrolled 
 In the sunset's dying beams." 
 
 Flowers, too, shed their welcome; the birds claimed 
 kinship. 
 
 The Poet said: "I will here abide, 
 
 In the Sun's unclouded door; 
 Here are the wells of all delight 
 
 On the lost Arcadian shore: 
 Here is the light on sea and land, 
 
 And the dream deceives no more." 
 
 When the poet bade farewell to sun and palm, he was 
 frank to make the following confession : 
 
 "I found, among those Children of the Sun, 
 The cipher of my nature — the release 
 Of bafflled powers, which else had never won 
 That free fulfillment, whose reward is peace." 
 
 Taylor was attracted to the East because of its per- 
 mission of free emotion and high imagination; Emerson 
 was drawn thither that he might appropriate its deep 
 speculative wisdom. Some would think to select Alcott 
 rather than Emerson as an exponent of oracular wisdom ; 
 
292 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 but Alcott was fed by the speculations of Greece and in- 
 troduced no thought that is not in Pythagoras or Plato. 
 Emerson was the sage, the seer. Brahmanism being a 
 state of being rather than a creed, he may be said to 
 have attained its highest condition. His very features 
 recall the idea of Nirvana. Said an Indian visitor of 
 Emerson : "There is that hushed, ineffable, self-contained 
 calmness over his countenance so familiar to us who have 
 studied the expression of Gotama's image in every pos- 
 ture." In "Representative Men" Plato is described as 
 visiting Asia and Egypt and imbibing the ideal of one 
 deity in which all things are absorbed. From the same 
 source Emerson drew much of his serene idealism. The 
 Bhagavad Gita and other Upanishads, the writings of 
 Saadi and Hafiz, were among his favorite reading. "He 
 delights," said W. T. Harris, "in the all-absorbing unity 
 of the Brahman, in the all-renouncing ethics of the Chi- 
 nese and Persian, in the measureless images of the 
 Arabian and Hindoo." Without dwelling upon all 
 aspects of Emerson's Orientalism, it may be said that it 
 was his mission to translate to Western readers the phi- 
 losophy of unity. Above all men of his generation in 
 America, he perceived the occult relationship between 
 man and the universe. Matter, a Hindoo seer might ex- 
 plain, is not a mere succession of appearances, nor yet a 
 creation of the brain of man, but a mysterious marvelous 
 putting forth in outward form of beauty that which is 
 inwardly realized in the human soul. There is nowhere 
 in literature so admirable an epitome of the Bhagavad 
 Gita as the poem "Brahma" — that poem which was 
 greeted with smiles and looks of amazement when it 
 appeared in the first number of the Atlantic Monthly in 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 293 
 
 1857, which is still not so well understood, forty and eight 
 years after, as not to need quotation: 
 
 "If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
 Or if the slain think he is slain, 
 They know not well the subtle ways 
 I keep, and pass, and turn again. 
 
 Far or forgot to me is near; 
 
 Shadow and sunlight are the same; 
 The vanished gods to me appear; 
 
 And one to me are shame and fame. 
 
 They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 
 When me they fly I am the wings; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 
 
 The strong gods pine for my abode, 
 
 And pine in vain the sacred Seven; 
 But thou, meek lover of the good, 
 
 Find me, and turn thy back on heaven." 
 
 Probably the poem still needs the commentary of a prose 
 passage in "Representative Men," which summarizes so 
 admirably the spirit of the Indian philosophy: 
 
 "The Same, the Same : friend and foe are of one stuff ; 
 the plowman, the plow, and the furrow are of one stuff; 
 and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of 
 form are unimportant. 'You are fit/ says the supreme 
 Krishna to a sage, 'to apprehend that you are not dis- 
 tinct from me. That which I am thou art, and that 
 also is the world, with its gods and heroes and mankind. 
 Men contemplate distinction, because they are stupefied 
 with ignorance/ 'The words 7" and mine constitute 
 ignorance. What is the great end of all, you shall now 
 
294 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 learn from me. It is soul — one in all bodies ; as pervad- 
 ing, uniform, perfect, pre-eminent over nature; exempt 
 from birth, growth, and decay; omnipresent, made up 
 of true knowledge, independent; unconnected with un- 
 realities, with name, species, and the rest; in time past, 
 present, and to come. The knowledge that this spirit, 
 which is essentially one, is in one's own and in all other 
 bodies is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of 
 things. As one diffusive air, passing through the per- 
 forations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a 
 scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, though 
 its forms be manifold, arising from the consequence of 
 acts. When the difference of the investing form, as that 
 of god, or the rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction." 
 The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who 
 is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the 
 wise as not differing from, but as the same as themselves. 
 I neither am going nor coming; nor is my dwelling in 
 any one place ; nor art thou, thou ; nor are others, others ; 
 nor am I, I.' As if he had said, 'All is for the soul, and 
 the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient 
 paintings ; and light is whitewash ; and durations are de- 
 ceptive; and form is imprisonment; and heaven itself a 
 decoy.' That which the soul seeks is resolution into 
 being, above form, out of Tartarus, and out of heaven — 
 liberation from nature." 
 
 After such acknowledgment of the doctrine of unity, 
 it is not surprising that Indian thinkers claim Emerson 
 as of their own blood. From far Calcutta, Mazoomdar, 
 a Brahman, wrote of Emerson: "He seems to us to 
 have been a geographical mistake. He ought to have 
 been born in India. Perhaps Hindoos were closer kins- 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 205 
 
 men to him than his own nation, because every typical 
 Hindoo is a child of nature. All our ancient religion is 
 the utterance of the Infinite through nature's symbolism." 
 But no! India is not so much a geographical region as 
 a condition of being, a spirit, an attitude. India is here 
 or nowhere. It is one of the romantic incidents of his- 
 tory that the ancient sacred texts were recovered, even 
 for their own peoples, through the agency of Western 
 scholarship ; it may happen that the spiritual mantle of 
 Elijah will fall upon some Western Elisha. 
 
 Emerson was a home-stayer, but Whitman, like Taylor, 
 was a traveler — a spiritual traveler, to be sure, but none 
 the less did he know all lands, observe all facts, absorb 
 all lives, contain all thoughts. He stands conspicuous 
 among men for his enormous absorptive capacity. His 
 was a "balanced soul," even as Emerson described Plato's 
 to be, at home at once in the "phenomenal" and the 
 "real." The East and the West are equally understood 
 and included in his all-containing pages. 
 
 "My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around 
 
 the whole earth, 
 I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for 
 
 me in all lands; 
 I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them." 
 
 His Oriental attachments are unmistakable. His own 
 countenance suggested being, rather than thinking. He 
 spoke with peculiar pleasure of the primitive faiths. 
 
 "My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, 
 Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between an- 
 cient and modern, 
 Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thou- 
 sand years, 
 
296 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting 
 
 the sun, 
 Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with 
 
 sticks in the circle of obis, 
 Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, 
 Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt 
 
 and austere in the woods a gymnosophist, 
 Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas ad- 
 
 mirant, minding the Koran, 
 Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and 
 
 knife, beating the serpent-skin drum, 
 Accepting the Gospels, accepting Him that was crucified 
 
 knowing assuredly that he is divine." 
 
 And in his salutations to the world he did not forget the 
 old empires of Persia, Assyria, India, or Egypt: 
 
 "I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass 
 
 with the showers of their terrible clouds. 
 I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling 
 
 on the breast of the black venerable vast mother, the 
 
 Nile. 
 I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque. 
 I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice putting 
 
 to sea at Okotsk. 
 I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms. 
 I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, 
 
 adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who 
 
 wrote three thousand years ago." 
 
 In his vision appear plainly the Himalaya mountains, 
 the waters of Hindustan, and the China Sea, "the spread 
 of the Caspian," "the four great rivers of China," "the 
 windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder," "the fall- 
 ing of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara," the 
 steppes of Asia, the tumuli of Mongolia, the tents of 
 Kalmucks and Baskirs, the highlands of Abyssinia, Afri- 
 can and Asiatic towns, the "Turk smoking opium in 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 297 
 
 Aleppo," the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva 
 and those of Herat/' "the caravans toiling onward," "the 
 place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in 
 human forms," "the spots of the successions of priests 
 on the earth," the place of pyramids and obelisks, Japan, 
 and all the islands of the sea. 
 
 His thought also spans these vast distances. The 
 speculations of India illumine his pages. It is remarkable 
 that Vedantists and Parses grasp the significance of 
 "Leaves of Grass" at first reading: they understand its 
 principles of distinction and unity, its celebration of the 
 Self, the deference of the "Me" to the "real Me," its con- 
 tentment with being, its mystic pantheism, its doctrine 
 of translations and avataras, its nature worship, its all- 
 embracing symbolism. This gladness at birth, immense 
 egotism, acceptance of evil, content at death, do not of- 
 fend them as many Western readers — for their own 
 philosophy teaches the necessity of many births and 
 deaths, the importance of personality, the acceptance of 
 such conditions as the soul selects in birth and life. "On 
 the Beach at Night Alone" is as all-absorbing as any In- 
 dian poem. "All Is Truth" is readily received by a mind 
 that understands Emerson's "Brahma" and "Uriel." 
 
 Yet what is remarkable about Whitman is not his 
 translation of another literature but the attainment in 
 his own personality of a given plane of being. His was 
 an original wisdom, an intuitive comprehension of things. 
 "I need no assurances ; I am a man preoccupied of his 
 own soul." There is no reason, however, for belittling 
 his knowledge or conscious motive in chanting the songs 
 of the Orient. He was well aware of the course of events 
 that was bringing the geographies together, and took 
 
298 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 upon himself the task of furthering the tendency. In 
 "Facing West from California's Shore" he knew full 
 well the import of the circle : 
 
 "Facing west from California's shores, 
 Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, 
 I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, 
 
 the land of migrations, look afar, 
 Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled; 
 For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of 
 
 Kashmere, 
 From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the 
 
 hero, 
 From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice 
 
 islands, 
 Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd, 
 Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous — 
 (But where is what I started for so long ago? 
 And why is it yet unfound?)" 
 
 Two other poems set forth Whitman's understanding 
 of the effects of the interaction of East and West: "A 
 Broadway Pageant" and "Passage to India." In 1867 
 certain envoys from Eastern peoples visited New York. 
 
 "Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come, 
 Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys, 
 Leaning back in their open barouches, bareheaded, impassive, 
 Ride today through Manhattan." 
 
 The pageant was for Whitman the occasion of a 
 prophecy. He perceived in the "nobles of Niphon" the 
 errand-bringers of the whole Orient. 
 
 "The Originatress comes, 
 The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld, 
 Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, 
 Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, 
 
THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 299 
 
 With sunburned visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes, 
 The race of Brahma comes. 
 
 Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent 
 
 itself appears, the past, the dead, 
 The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable, 
 The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, 
 The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, 
 
 the ancient of ancients, 
 Vast desolated cities, the gliding present — all of these, and 
 
 more, are in the pageant-procession." 
 
 The coming of the envoys betokened the opening of 
 the Eastern doors. The sleep of the ages had done its 
 work. The first cycle of progress from the start in Para- 
 dise was finished. From America, the "Libertad of the 
 world," would spring a "greater supremacy :" Asia to be 
 renewed for a second cycle through absorbing the ex- 
 periences the race had gained in its journey westward. 
 
 "Passage to India" reverses the prophecy. Its occa- 
 sion was the opening of the Suez Canal and the comple- 
 tion of the Pacific Railroad, by which the rondure of the 
 world was at last accomplished. Passage to India meant 
 passage to the "most populous, wealthiest of the earth's 
 lands ;" it meant passage to "primal thought," "wisdom's 
 birth," "innocent intuitions," passage to "flowing litera- 
 tures," "tremendous epics," "budding bibles," passage to 
 "old occult Brahma," and "the tender and junior 
 Buddha." It meant passage to more than India, the solv- 
 ing of "aged fierce enigmas," "mastership of strangling 
 problems," the telling of the "secrets of the earth and 
 sky." It meant the liberation of the soul, the explora- 
 tion of "Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and 
 Death." 
 
300 THE CHANGING ORDER 
 
 "0 Thou transcendent, 
 
 Nameless, the fiber and the breath, 
 
 Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou center of 
 them, 
 
 Thou mightier center of the true, the good, the loving, 
 
 Thou moral spiritual fountain — affection's source — thou reser- 
 voir, 
 
 Thou pulse — thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, 
 
 That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, 
 
 Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, 
 
 How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, 
 if, out of myself, 
 
 I could not launch, to those, superior universes?" 
 
 Taylor betrays the closeness of kinship between the 
 West and the East in point of personal character and 
 emotional and imaginative temperament. Emerson at- 
 tained through natural evolution the condition of a Brah- 
 man, and promulgated, with a conscious knowledge of 
 its source, the Indian doctrine of unity. Whitman, test- 
 ing the principle of unity, passed in compassion around 
 the circle of the globe, perceived the cyclic currents of 
 progress — that "the lords of life pass from east to west" 
 — and predicted from the course of the sun the spiritual 
 rejuvenescence of America through contact with Asiatic 
 thought, and thence the spread and ultimate supremacy 
 of the democratic principle. "In our own day," writes 
 William Sloane Kennedy, "the great task is ended, and 
 we now stand, with hand over eyes, gazing far over the 
 blue Pacific to the ancestral home whence ages ago we 
 set out." 
 
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