ART^FOK LIFE'S^SAKE CHARLES-RCAF^ 1 1 1 'i n ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Digitized by the Internet Arcinive in 2007 witin funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.arcliive.org/details/artforlifessakeaOOcaffrich ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE AN APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF ART TO THE IDEALS AND CONDUCT OF INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE LIFE BY CHARLES H CAFFIN (B.A. Oxford) AUTHOR OF "how TO STUDY PICTURES," "THE STORY OF DUTCH PAINTING," "THE STORY OF SPANISH PAINTING," "THE STORY OF FRENCH PAINTING," "THE STORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING," ETC., ETC. . •: : oj • THE PRANG COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON ATLANTA DALLAS 11 IM s C3 COPYRIGHT, I913 BY CHARLES H. CAFFIN All rights reserved *\ THE- PLIMPTON -PRESS NORWOOD -MASS-U-S'A 7C^ TO THE READER THIS book is a product of some fifteen years experience as a lecturer on art, especially the art of painting. John Addington Symonds remarked more than a quarter of a century ago, "Painting has lost its hold upon the center of our intellectual activity. It can no longer give form to the ideas that rule the modem world." Since these words were written the ideas have continued to deepen and to expand until they con- sciously embrace the making-over of society, eco- nomically, intellectually, and spiritually, in order to realize more fuUy the possibiHties of democracy. In the evolution of this New Democracy the arts will continue to play their necessary and beautiful part; especially the arts of music and of poetry and the hterature and drama of life. But in the pres- ence of forces so varied and mighty as are moving the thought and action of today, no one of the arts nor all of them can ever again supply a form, com- mensurate with our ideals. They will continue to furnish inspiration and example; but the form, big enough to express the gathering ideal of Hiunan Betterment, can be no less big than Life itself. The supreme art of the New Democracy is to be the art of Human Life; the molding of the indi- 267991 d(-. :i/J3::{ ;. :;T0: TMS READER vidual and collective life into forms, efficient, healthy and happy, that shall embody with ever-increasing realization the Democratic ideal — Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness. Just as we have enlarged our conception of the scope of art, so we must broaden our conception of the meaning of Beauty. I have tried to show that the idea of Beauty, not metaphorically but actu- ally, involves whatever makes for the Healthful and Happy Growth of the Individual and Collec- tive Life. Lispired by this ideal of Beauty and working through the methods of the artist, men and women may become artists of their own lives and co- operate as artists in the whole hfe of the community. To hasten the coming of this supreme Art of Liv- ing should be the inspiration and controlling aim of education. It suppHes a practical ideal under which all the specialties of the curriculum can be corre- lated into a Oneness of motive and conduct. It promotes an ideal of intellectual, moral, and spirit- ual Oneness under which the citizens of the future may be trained to recognize, not only their individ- ual rights and opportunities, but also their individ- ual duties and responsibilities to society. It helps to reconcile the conflict of the Individual and the Collective ideal and tends toward the material and spiritual cooperation of All in the Whole Life. New York, February, igi2' CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. By Way OF Introduction 9 n. Concerning Barriers 15 m. The Aristocratic and the Democratic Ideal in Art and Life 22 IV. The Italian Renaissance: An Ideal of Aris- tocracy 31 V. The Scientific-Artistic Organization of Holland in the Seventeenth Century . 37 VI. Life: Living and Making a Living ... 45 VII. Organized Education 53 VIII. The World's Need of Art 62 IX. Nature — The Material of Art .... 70 X. The Motive of the Artist 75 XI. Beauty 82 XII. Beauty as an Inevitable Expression of Growth 92 XIII. Natural Beauty and Artistic Beauty. . . 100 XIV. Beauty in Art no XV. Standards of Beauty in Art 115 XVI. Ugliness in Art 127 XVII. Naturalism and Realism 133 XVIII. Religion, Morality, and Art 137 XIX. Beauty and Ugliness in Life 147 8 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XX. The Inventive-Constructive Faculty . . i6i XXI. The Reconciliation of Art and Machinery 175 XXII. Fitness 185 XXIII. Fitness in Our Public Buildings .... 192 J XXIV. Unity, Wholeness, Healthiness, Holiness . 205 XXV. Individualism and Collectivism . . . . 216 XXVI. Harmony 226 XXVII. Balance and Poise 235 XXVIII. Rhythm 245 XXIX. The Practical and the Ideal 260 XXX. Culture 270 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE 0art I CHAPTER I BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION " I ^ UT, my dear Sir, Saint- Gaudens is not an r^ artist; he's a sculptor." -^-^ This was said to me by a man who was himself a sculptor. He had no intention of dis- paraging Saint-Gaudens, whom he recognized as the foremost sculptor that America has pro- duced, one who holds his own among the best of his contemporaries in Europe. Clearly, therefore, he was using the term, artist, merely as the equiva- lent of painter. That was fifteen years ago, and the jolt which my mind received started the idea which has developed into the topic of this book. Briefly, the topic is: What is Art, and who is an artist? Do the old conceptions of these terms need extending in order to adjust them to the new conditions and ideals of democratic Life? Can we discover a more organic and therefore more vital relation between Art and Life than has existed under the old conception of Art, a conception for lo ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE which the conditions and ideals of aristocracy were responsible? For the core of our subject is Life and Art; Life which we cannot evade; Art which we may reject at our peril and cost; but Art for Life's sake, not only for Art's sake; not for selfish indulgence, but for the widest possible benefit to all; and not any one of the many arts; but all of them as embraced in the supreme Art — the Art of Living. ^ ^ * * * * ^ The aim today of the greatest thinkers and doers in the solving of our democratic problems, is to increase the efficiency and the happiness of Life. Judged by this standard does Art, as at present taught and accepted, represent a vital force? If it were necessary to forego for one whole year the services of the artist, as at pres- ent understood, or those of the engineer or the surgeon or the industrial organizer, would the world have any hesitation as to which it could better spare? We shall find, as we proceed, that the reason why the world would not dispense with its sur- geons, engineers and industrial organizers — citing these only as examples — is because they are live workers and thinkers; they are products of the democratic ideal and practice, to the further de- velopment of which they are so vitally contribut- ing. On the other hand the specialized artist's attitude toward Art and Life is apt to be one V BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION ii derived from a dead past. It is a superannuated survival of aristocratic conditions and ideals, which, so far as we are concerned, are past and gone, swallowed up for ever in the new ideal of democracy. In the New Ideal be it noted. For I am not speaking of what has passed current in school textbooks and Fourth of July oratory as the ideal of democracy. That, as some of the clearest and highest thinkers in the country are telling us, was aristocratic in its origin and development. The Fathers, though in revolt, were aristocrats, and the ideals inherited from them have been developed under a governmental and social system which virtually involves a bourgeois aristocracy and a proletariat. I speak of the New Democracy, the ideals of which are filling the hve minds of pro- gressive thinkers and workers and through their efforts are beginning to be reahzed. It will be a democracy founded not upon theories of the rights of man, or the rights of the governed or what not, but upon knowledge derived from the facts of Nature, — inanimate Nature and the Nature of man. It demands for its consmnmation the union of two vital operations: Science and Art. Science, which is the mastering of the facts and relations of Nature; and Art, which is the organizing of the knowledge and power acquired by Science, so as to further the efficiency of the worker and his happiness, j 12 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE Accordingly, this book is to treat of Art as the principle of constructive organization, not only in the Fine Arts but in the everyday conduct of Life. It aims to show that the qualities which go to the making of what we have been in the habit of regarding exclusively as a work of Art are analo- gous to those which make for efl&ciency in Life, ^^riefly, they are the product of Selection and Organization; the latter, based upon elements of Fitness, Unity, Balance, Harmony and Rhythm, with a view to Efficiency. The last-named prod- uct in Life is the equivalent of what the artist in the Fine Arts calls Expression.\ It aims to show that the iadtistrial organizer, the surgeon, the physician, the engineer and, in general, all who are working toward the highest possibilities of efl&ciency, are artists. That to govern a city well, or to order a house beautifully, or to build up an industrial unit of harmoniously related workers, achieving a maximum of produc- tiveness under conditions of welfare to the in- dividual and the community — needs Art and artists. Nay, further, that the Life of the in- dividual will be complete in its efl&ciency and happiness only in so far as it is regulated by the principles of artistic ethics; that men and women can be and ought to be, in their own lives, artists. On the other hand, in the work of the world, however much we may cooperate to make it a BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 13 work of Art, we are confronted by obstacles over which we have only partial control. Life is so complicated within ourselves and in our relations with others that we can only approximate to completeness of Fitness, Unity, Balance, Harmony and Rhythm. It is here that the speciaHzed artist has the advantage. Working in the world of his own imagination, controlling the materials with which he works, subject to no Hmitations save those of his own capacity, the painter, the poet, the writer of fiction, the dramatist, the composer and the artists in other mediums, can reach a more perfect Organization, a more complete Harmoniousness, a fuller Efficiency of Expression. If, therefore, they know and live up to the privilege of their high estate their works of Art should be symbols of what the rest of the earnest workers of the world, in their zeal for individual and collective better- ment, are striving with necessary incomplete- ness to attain. Hence the proud distinction of the artist proper, if he understand himself aright and be rightly understood, is to hold aloft the en- sign to humanity, pointing the way to nearer and nearer approaches toward perfection. For this gospel of the New Democracy, based upon the Union of Art and Science, and to be realized by individual and collective Organization, involves a reconsideration of our old notions re- specting the ideal and the practical. Hitherto 14 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE they have been regarded as antagonistic. But the new faith and hope in Life discover their identity, j The ideaHst of today, we shall find, must be practical; and the most practical man is he who has the vision of the ideahst* Rodin once remarked that "the greatest artist who ever lived was Jesus." The famous sculp- tor's meaning, as I understand it, may be ex- pressed in this way. While other artists have built, carved or painted, simg or written their ideals into the forms of their Works of Art, Jesus embodied His ideal of hiunanity in the Form and Works of His own Life. And thereby He left an example, which the world has been too slow to follow, how humanity, both individ- ually and collectively, may give form to its ideals in the grandest of all Works of Art — the Per- fected Beauty of Life and Living. The ultimate aim of this book, therefore, is to further the getting together of each and all, no matter what may be their specialized work, in an organized cooperation, animated by the ideal of individual and collective betterment. CHAPTER II CONCERNING BARRIERS TO return to my friend, the sculptor: his narrow understanding of the term, "ar- tist," was not confined to himself. It was then, and still is, far too common a habit to regard as an artist only one who makes pictures. Young people who have spent a few months in a school of drawing and painting will tell you, if you inquire their profession, that they are artists. Their idea of an artist is of one who has acquired more or less facihty in representing objects upon a piece of paper or canvas by means of pencil, crayon or brush. This is also very much the notion of an artist that is entertained by the general public. To the vast majority of people an artist is one who draws the originals of the advertisements in the street cars and newspapers; or who illustrates the magazines and comic supple- ments; or who represents incidents or scenes in easel pictures. It is in this narrow sense that Art is being popularized in the market place. For nowadays every progressive department store has its "Art i6 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Department'' in which the bargain hunter can find at marked-down prices "real handmade pictures." They are usually chosen with a view to satisfying the popular taste for seeing some- thing accurately represented and highly finished; that is to say, in plentiful detail, and rendered with photographic fidelity; the whole being wrought up to a smooth, shiny polish, until it rivals the surface of a varnished oak bureau. This to the average public is Art, which however, if I may judge from a remark I once overheard, is to be distinguished from "high Art." Two ladies were standing in front of the picture of a nude woman. Said one, "Just look at that, my dear." "Yes," replied the other with the assured tone of one who knows, "that is high Art." It seems, then, that according to the popular idea Art is the representation in picture form of something with which we are familiar, while the representation of that with which we are not supposed to be ic,miliar is "high Art." Meanwhile, the painters as a body have done their share in spreading this limited idea of Art. To themselves they arrogate the title artist, but they seldom extend it to sculptors or architects; while they qualify the smaller arts of design by calling them art-crafts and the workers in them art-craftsmen. But a man cannot be an artist without being a craftsman, and, if he is a crafts- man of the right sort, he is an artist. CONCERNING BARRIERS 17 Painters, and sculptors also, have further prejudiced the appreciation of Art by the arbitrary barriers which they have erected around it. They have regarded Art as the private preserve of artists, a sort of pleasaunce, walled about against intru- sion, with a sign over the gate: "No Trespassers." For their pose is that nobody but themselves can understand Art, that is to say, painting and sculpture; unless it be the art-connoisseur and the art-patron. These they welcome to their sacred inclosure; meanwhile, it is true, opening the gate on certain formal occasions to the general pubUc — Philistines, they are apt to call them — usually at so much a head for the privilege of viewing the exhibition. Then the public dribbles in and is confronted, in effect, with injunctions to "keep off the grass" and is baffled with jargon about "Art for Art's sake." It breathes a sigh of relief a^ it comes out, for it feels that it has done its duty; yet is puzzled as to what this Art has to do with Life. Nor is this astonishing, when one considers how many artists view Art as a thing apart from Life. I do not forget that many painters are trying to popularize Art by securing commissions to decorate our public buildings. But whether the kind of decorations which they provide bear much relation to our Life or whether they are in themselves calculated to fire enthusiasm for Art, is a question to which I may return later. i8 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Accordingly, the general public, for whom let me say this book is mainly written, thinks of Art as something to be collected in museums, displayed occasionally in Salons or National or Royal Academy exhibitions; or to be used as furnishings for the houses of those who like fine things and can afford to pay for them; or lastly, a commodity that serves the fads of rich collectors who rim one another up to fancy prices in the auction rooms. Viewed from any of these standpoints. Art is not an integral part of Life but a kind of orchid-like parasite on Life. And as such the public regards it, and, being very busy with real problems, feels that it "hasn't time to bother with Art." Meanwhile a great many people feel that Art ought to be related to Life and they are working hard to make it so, both for their own individual benefit and for the good of the community. For example, most of the Women's Clubs in America have an "Art Section" or Class, composed of a handful of earnest women who are eager to "do something for Art." Some have traveled and seen the World's masterpieces of Art; more hope to do so. Meanwhile, by studying books and engaging a lecturer once a year for an hour they try to keep the fire of "Art" alive in themselves and to hand it on to others. In nine cases out of ten what they understand by "Art" is painting and they invite a lecturer to talk on pictures and show them some lantern slides. All the time, CONCERNING BARRIERS 19 however, they are Hving in communities where pictures, or at any rate the sort of pictures they are studying, do not exist. For I have in mind not only the great centers of population, where the Art Museum takes its place alongside the Pub- lic Library, but the countless smaller cities in which the problems of our modem civihzation are being gradually solved; where the men and women are fired with high ideals of citizenship, and some of the finest products of the modern democratic spirit are to be found. It is the number of such communities and their achievement and promise that have helped to develop the idea involved in this book. I have had some fifteen years' experience as a lecturer before these Women's Clubs. When I am asked to give a lecture on "Art,'' it almost goes without saying that I am expected to treat some phase of the history of painting. Occasionally I may be invited to speak on sculpture or architec- ture; but, with the fewest possible exceptions, pictures are the theme. The chairman of the "Art Class" receives me, expressing the hope that there may be a good attendance. However, she is not sanguine for, as she explains, the "Art Class" is very small. As a matter of fact, it seems to be usually the smallest of all the groups into which the Club membership is divided. These will comprise Literature, Music, Drama, Sociology, Civics, Current Topics and so forth. 20 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Each group has its special meetings, to which the members of other groups are invited. But for the most part the ladies who are interested in Literature are not interested in "Art"; and those who "do something for Art" leave Civics to be attended to by others; and so on. For the most part the Club does not attempt to coordinate its units in order to promote greater efficiency. It comes near to being a Club divided against itself. After one of my talks a lady remarked: "Oh! if my husband could only have heard you. But he cares nothing about Art; the only pictures that interest him are the moving picture shows." This lady overlooked the fact that these were the only sort of pictures to be seen in this particular city. The women, in fact, were reading and talking about things which most of them had not seen and perhaps never would see, while the men were dealing with such facts — business, moving pic- tures and what not — as actually existed in their midst. The women were "getting culture"; the men, "doing things." Two points of view toward Life! Not united, but representing separate outlooks upon Life from the standpoint of a " Great Divide." The woman looking out to what she calls Ideals; the man, on his side, looking out upon what he calls the Practi- cal. The two, standing back to back, each front- ing a partial prospect; instead of standing shoulder to shoulder, fronting together the same wide CONCERNING BARRIERS 21 horizon in which both the Practical and the Ideal are united. Hence, as in the case of the Woman's Club, for lack of coordination of purpose and community of spirit there is less than there might be of sympathy and efficiency. The home is in danger of being divided against itself; the club likewise, while the city, because its men and women are at odds as to motives, is apt to be disorganized, misgoverned; with more bungling and waste than necessary and less efficiency — a place not so fit as it might be for productive in- dustry and for healthy, happy lives. CHAPTER III THE ARISTOCRATIC AND THE DEMO- CRATIC IDEAL IN ART AND LIFE ANOTHER reason for the public's indiffer- ence to Art is that artists and instructors in Art have been at so Httle pains to illus- trate the relation of the Art of the past to the ideals and conditions of its several periods. They have treated Art as a speciahzed subject, detached from other departments of human energy; as if, like Topsy, it had "just grow'd" and were not, as in fact it has always been, an expression of the life-spirit of its time. For, as Richard Wagner said, all memorable art has been produced in response to a common and collective need on the part of the community; or at least of that portion of it which was in the ascendancy, or possessed of sufficient power to make its need recognized. As we survey the past, we find that such power has been usually in the hands of a minority of the community; of a privileged class, who were able to impose their theory and practice of life on the more or less unquestioning submission of the masses of the people. Was it not Bismarck who cynically suggested the addition to the Sermon on the ARISTOCRATIC — DEMOCRATIC 23 Mount of another Beatitude, "Beati possidentes"? "Blessed are they who are in possession"; for "to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shaU be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." The history of society is mainly composed of chapters which either recog- nize the rights of Privilege, based on birth, divine ordinance, or on power gained by the sword or by superior physical, mental or material resources; or, on the other hand, records the struggle of the Unprivileged to wrest from the Privileged at least a portion of their rights. The pendulum swings between the two Ideals of aristocracy and democracy. The dawn of history and the myths which ob- scure it show the aristocratic ideal in the ascen- dant. The Bible begins significantly with the "fall" of man, because he had dared to exercise his will in opposition to the decrees of the deity. The latter was a "jealous god," wishing mankind to be happy, but in the way that he prescribed and so as not to encroach upon his prerogative of the knowledge of Good and Evil. The Woman, how- ever, seeing that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make men wise, took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave unto her husband with her and he did eat. Woman's intuition, as we might explain the incident today, divined the right that was hers and the Man's and the right of their 24 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Children yet unborn, and, while Man paltered, timorous of doing an act for which there was no precedent, she reached out and grasped the means to acquire the right. Even today the Man is haggling over precedents and rights. For many thousand years he had asserted the rights of privilege, founded upon precedent. Then he grew hot in revolt and enun- ciated theories of the rights of man as Man. But later his conscience overtook him and today, in the light of what he calls the scientific attitude, he is apt to maintain that all rights are a fiction. They can at best only be assumed to exist by courtesy or general consent. The fact is he cannot prove them by his reason and accordingly assumes that rights are non-existent. Meanwhile, modern philosophers, such as William James and Henri Bergson, have been teaching that reason is not man's sole guide; that instinct and intuition, too long treated by philosophers as of small account, have a very definite and important standing in the tribunals of thought. That intuition, in its antici- pation of reason, which later so frequently con- firms the intuition, is a most precious capacity of the human mind. It is the handmaiden and the nursing mother of reason and is distinctively the Woman's process of reaching after what she divines to be necessary and good. She divined, according to the old story, the necessity and goodness of knowledge and made it a human right. ARISTOCRATIC — DEMOCRATIC 25 But the old "moral" was otherwise. Woman was represented as having been tempted by the serpent, which to the Hebrew imagination sym- bolized everything inimical to mankind; and she in turn tempted Adam and he fell. In conse- quence, through Woman's sin, labor and sorrow entered into the world. Thus early, in fact, did Man reaHze that Woman, unless she were kept in subjection, might prove an obstacle to privilege. For by the time that Hebrew poets had invented this story of the Fall of Man and the Curse of Labor, the functions of a jealous god had been usurped by the patriarch. He imposed his will upon his dependents, wives and concubines, and found in the story a divine sanction for his privi- lege; one that explained, justified, and would maintain the subjection of the masses to labor and of the Woman to Man. Since then the patriarch's privilege has been superseded at one time or an- other by that of kings, emperors, popes, churches, trades-guilds, aristocracies of birth, of money and intellect. All have conspired to exploit the unprivileged and by flattery or force to keep the Woman as an appendage to the Man. ^ ^ * ^ * it * It is not necessary for our present study to attempt to trace the age-long conflict between the privileged and the unprivileged. Our main topic is Art in relation to Life, and, in order to show how close has been the relation in the past, 26 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE it will suffice to review briefly three epochs : the era of Cathedral Building, the Italian Renaissance and the Renaissance in Holland in the seventeenth century. The first and the last were northern movements in the direction of democracy; the Italian was a revival of Mediterranean culture and stood for aristocracy. It is my purpose to suggest in each case what was the Life-spirit of the time and how it was, respectively, represented in Art. We are prone to think of the Medieval period, which intervened between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance, as the Dark Ages. This term of contempt has come down from the Italians, whose enthusiasm over the revival of Classic literature and the harvest of architecture, sculpture and painting which flour- ished in the glow of the New Learning made them see nothing but darkness in the past. Because there had been an interval of chaos in the earlier period, before the German Empire and the French Kingdom had respectively assumed some degree of homogeneity and the Roman Cathohc Church had established its civilizing power in the West, they chose to belittle the great era of cathedral building. Since the Goths had devastated Italy, the revivers of Mediterranean culture dubbed the cathedral architecture ^ ^ Gothic. ' ^ The epithet was an insult, and a complete misnomer, the use of which now chiefly lingers in the English language. For it was out of Romanesque ecclesiastical ARISTOCRATIC — DEMOCRATIC 27 architecture, which itself was a development of the Roman basiHca, that the styles of the great cathedrals of northern France, England, the Rhine Provinces and the Netherlands were evolved in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Meanwhile, although their origin was Mediterranean, their achievement was a product of the northern genius. When men found that the completion of the thousand years of Christianity did not bring the anticipated end of the world, a new lust of life mingled with their gratitude to God. Thus com- menced the era of cathedral building, a movement of the people, headed by the Church. For amid the rivalry of the Privileged, the Church shrewdly and nobly arrayed itself on the side of the Com- monalty, especially in the cities whose growing wealth enabled them to extort from monarchs and nobility, in return for the taxes which they paid, certain rights of self-government. The movement, in fact, was a popular one, enlisting the pride and cooperation of the community. The cathedrals became the embodiment of the people's faith and aspirations; primarily temples of worship, but also community-centers of learning and culture; university settlements, one may say, built by the collective efforts of the Church and the Laity. Dramatic performances were held in them; inci- dents of Sacred Writ, at first produced under clerical supervision, later by the laity and accom- 28 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE panied by secular and even farcical interludes. Further, in some instances obtained the curious custom of opening the sacred edifice once a year to romping sports; a recognition, apparently, of the joint ownership of the Laity in what they had helped to create. These cathedrals of the north are the direct antithesis of Classic architecture. The latter, as represented most impressively in the Greek temples, embodies the reposeful dignity of the horizontal line, and is characterized by formulated refinement in the repetition of the details. But the distinguishing characteristics of the northern cathedral are the lines of upward growth and the variety in unity which their exuberant elaboration of details involves. They are the product of a union of the cooperative and individuaUstic methods. The master-builder — bishop, abbot or master-mason, planned the general design. Its development was intrusted to the mason guild, while individual members of the latter wrought their own skill and imagination into the details. The carved decoration has not the logic and uni- formity of Classic ornament. It has rather the spontaneity and artlessness of natural growth; including forms of ugliness as well as beauty; embodying in animal and human shapes, now Hfelike, now grotesque, the racial lust of life and the human experience of the conflict in life of good and evil. ARISTOCRATIC — DEMOCRATIC 29 No darkened or dimly lighted shrine, like the Classic temple, the cathedral was inclosed with windows that were fretted with tracery and jeweled with colored glass, through which the light of heaven poured in a wealth of multitudinous dyes upon the mosaic pavements, painted orna- ment, scrollwork of brass and iron, velvets and brocades of altar hangings and the vestments of the priests. Every art of skilled craftsmanship was expended on the fittings of the interior, while nave and aisles and transepts soared to subHme heights and stretched in vistas that terminated in the mystery of intersecting lines. Meanwhile, the vastness of the exterior was at once supported and reheved of heaviness by flying buttresses, embellished with sculpture and enriched with carved finials, the whole rising in majesty of grace and power until it reached its supreme growth in tower or spire. For growth is characteristic of its style; growth upward and expansive; growth like that of human life, representing oneness composed of infinite units of variation. And the Life which these cathedrals embody is pecuHarly northern in its genius; aspir- ing in spirit, audacious and adventurous in prac- tice; ever seeking out new problems and bringing to their solution the tireless patience of organiza- tion and daimtless Hberty of invention. The northern cathedrals, indeed, were the ex- pression in Art of the spirit of a race, which even 30 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE in those privilege-ridden times teemed with the desire of Liberty and Progress. Incidentally, this is a fact that too long has been ignored. For, whatever may be the particular strain which each of us carries in his blood we are very largely of one race and that is the northern, as contrasted with the races of the Mediterranean. Yet it is from the latter that for some three cen- turies our northern race has derived its culture. Meanwhile, in the conduct of Life our race has ever been animated with the spirit of adventure and the love of liberty. The result, therefore, of borrowing an aHen culture is that we have never really fitted it to our practice and ideal of living. This has been one of the fundamental causes of the great divide between Art and Life which has characterized our civilization. CHAPTER IV TEE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: AN IDEAL OF ARISTOCRACY IN complete contrast to the growth of the northern cathedrals, the splendor of the Italian Renaissance shone upon the ruins of national Uberty and progress. The old-time communal freedom of the cities had been usurped by hereditary or upstart nobility; Florence, for example, being dominated by the Medici, whose armorial bearings of three balls testify to their origin as money-lenders. The various dukes and their principalities engaged in constant internecine warfare and the country as a whole was the battle- ground for the rivahies of the kings of Spain and France and of the emperors of Germany, while the papacy fought and intrigued with all for the main- tenance of its temporal authority. Privilege, in its most aggravated form and attended by its worst results of human waste, was rampant. The common people counted for nothing but hewers of wood, drawers of water or pawns in the game of their betters. Yet out of this groundwork of social rottenness flowered the most stately and splendid art of 32 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE painting that the world can show. For it was an art of aristocracy, reflecting the pomp and glory of the privileged life at its zenith of mundane magnificence. I am speaking of the period of the High Renaissance of the sixteenth century, by which time the fervor of religion that survived from the Middle Ages and had burned so strangely amid the lurid excesses of the Early Renaissance had been all but superseded by a new religion, that of Hellenic culture. For the gods of Hellas had resumed their sway over at least the imagina- tion of men, while Aristotle and Plato, esteemed as scarcely less than gods, had captured their intelligence. By a strange paradox the privileged classes held the noblest theories of Hfe, while apt to practice in their lives complete unscrupulousness of conduct; and, though materialists to excess, affected the abstract ideas of Platonism. Particularly were they absorbed by Plato's doctrine of ideas, and learned from it to regard abstractions — Beauty, Love and so forth — as having actual existence, independent of the con- crete, particular examples in which they might be manifested; the particular being indeed related to the general as species to genus. It was upon this understanding of ideas that the artists based the idealism of their painting. In the earHer days of the Renaissance the painters strove to picture the incidents of the Bible story, and the subjects of death, judgment, THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 33 heaven, hell, as naturally as possible. But, as scholars passed on to them the lessons of Plato, they began to idealize their pictures by investing the concrete subject with an abstract beauty of presentment. Accordingly, they built up with lines of grace and grandeur and with masses, harmoniously juxtaposed, gracious and stately compositions, based upon elaborations of geometric design. To do this, they were compelled to aban- don the natural treatment of the figures. The grouping had to conform to the constructive dignity of the design; the poses and gestures were regulated to the demands of abstract beauty, and even the character of the heads was ennobled to harmonize with the general dignity. Thus, to secure an abstract perfection of beauty in the whole, the particulars, composing it, were also invested with a physical harmony of beauty, transcending that of Nature. The Itahan ideal- ism, in fact, was based not on the facts of Life, but on a theory of imaginary perfection. Hu- manity was exalted above mankind and the environment was treated as a background to its preeminence. This form of ideal motive was in complete accord with the notions held regarding the universe, and with the position of superiority enjoyed by the privileged few. For it was not until 1543 that Copernicus pubHshed his "hypothesis" of the revolution of the planets around the sun. This 34 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE was condemned by the Church and the belief persisted that the earth was the center of the universe and man the pivot on which all revolved. It was easy to pass from this to a behef in the divine ordinance of the privileged few and particu- larly to the right of preeminence inherent in the one or two superlatively big men, and to the magnifying and exalting of their divine right at the expense of their human environment. Moreover, this attitude of adulation toward the big man was complemented by the so-called "Platonic" attitude toward woman; not toward women in general but the privileged few who shone in the luster of courtly life. Their adulators exalted them to a pedestal of unnatural perfection and worshiped them not for their actual merits but as symbols of the abstract idea of womanhood, as being the perfected expression of beauty. Their devotion, while it lavished incense on the physical as well as spiritual perfection of woman, was aimed at no actual union of their lives with the objects of their adoration. It represented a purely intellectual and, possibly, spiritual satisfaction of an Idea, artificially constructed in their minds. It is not difficult to trace in detail the influence of these conditions of society upon the painting of the time, especially as the enthusiasm for Greek culture demanded of the artist the treatment of mythological subjects. Then the great man took his place as a god, and woman was trans- THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE 35 figured into a goddess. In fact, the beautiful system of Italian idealism, in its psychology, ignored humanity at large and the actual world which environs it and exalted the privileged, investing the superiority of the few with a divine right of preeminence, and also with an unnatural perfection. It was perfectly right and fitting that it should, for Art was simply responding to the conditions of a social system which upheld and basked in the splendor of the privileged hfe. During the High Renaissance of the sixteenth century, when Itahan ideal painting was at its zenith, the ideal also of the divine right of privilege* reached its climax in the person of Charles V, King of Spain and of the Spanish possessions be- yond the seas, he ruled the Netherlands, domi- nated Italy and was emperor of Austria and Germany. Not content, he made constant but fruitless attempts to conquer France. Only Eng- land escaped the hunger of his ambition. Nor was he satisfied to rule his subjects and tax them for his perpetual wars of aggrandizement; he also claimed dominion over their souls and everywhere put to fire and sword the followers of the Reforma- tion. A patron and, at times, a director of Art, he made Titian the painter of his august person, observing that only the greatest artist of his time was fit to commemorate Caesar. Among Titian's portraits of his patron is the superb equestrian portrait, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. 36 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE It represents the emperor riding forth in the rosy glow of a spring day to his conquest of the Protestant Princes at the Battle of Miihlberg. The picture is beyond words noble and magnificent, but the emperor's face is pallid with sickness and the grim underhanging jaw, fixed hard, not only with determination but with pain. For Charles was by this time eaten up with gout and debilitated by his life of exaggerated activity and his physical excesses. This was the last of his conquests: a futile one, since the flood of reform was only temporarily checked, while the menace of himself was drawing to its close. Eight years later, in 1555, he laid down the burden of authority and retired to the monastery of San Yuste, where for three years he dabbled in politics from a distance, played with clocks and watches, and indulged his inordinate appetite for eating and drinking. Meanwhile he sought the consolations of religion and died with his gaze upon The Gloria^ a canvas in which Titian depicted his patron, kneeling in Heaven before the Holy Trinity, while the Virgin pleads in his behalf. The death of Charles V marks the passing of the old era of undisputed privilege. The Hollanders freed themselves from the tyranny of divine rights and in establishing their liberty as a nation developed a new ideal of life and gave expression to it in a new form of the art of painting. CHAPTER V TEE SCIENTIFIC-ARTISTIC ORGANIZA- TION OF HOLLAND IN THE SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURY IT was in 1555 that Charles V handed over to his son, Philip II, his kingdom of Spain and possessions beyond the sea, as well as do- minion over the lives and consciences of his "dear Netherlanders." They had been the richest jewel in the imperial crown, contributing two thirds of the taxes which the monarch levied on his whole vast possessions. For while the northern prov- inces of the Netherlands were chiefly engaged in fisheries, cattle raising and dairy produce, the southern provinces, which today comprise Bel- gium, represented the greatest commercial and industrial center in Europe. Their looms pro- duced the finest weaves in tapestries, velvet, cloth and hnen; their workshops the finest craftsman- ship in gold and silver ware; while Antwerp was the great emporiima and distributing center for the trade from the East; four hundred ships daily passing in or out of her harbor and two thousand merchants daily thronging her exchange. Brus- sels, the seat of the vice-regal government, was a 38 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE city of palaces, set amid gardens and parks, and it was here in the hall of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, the most highly esteemed Order in Europe, that Charles turned over this industrious and prosperous people to his weakling son, as if they had been a herd of sheep for him to fleece or butcher at his will. Yet such was the acquiescence in the divine right of privilege then prevalent, that probably neither Wilham of Orange, on whose arm the Emperor leaned as he tottered into the hall, nor any other of the Netherland nobles nor any of the burgesses or scholars who witnessed the pro- ceeding, had the least inkling of its anomaly. Nevertheless, the day of questioning was near. Only eleven years transpired before William of Orange and these same nobles formed a League of Nobles to present a "Request" to the vice-regent, praying that the Inquisition and edicts against heresy might be withdrawn and the management of their own affairs restored to the Estates-General. Philip replied by dispatching Alva and ten thou- sand troops, who inaugurated the " Spanish Fury," in which eighteen thousand six hundred persons were put to death, beside those who were killed in armed resistance. Notwithstanding these enor- mities the Netherlanders were so habituated to the idea of divine right, that they attributed their troubles not to Philip but his emissaries, and it was not xmtil 1581 that the northern provinces finally HOLLAND IN 17TH CENTURY 39 severed their connection with the southern and issued at The Hague their Declaration of Inde- pendence. Thus, sixty years after Luther made his decla- ration at the Diet of Worms on behalf of responsi- bility of conscience and religious Hberty, was proclaimed the Hberty of a people to choose its own form of political government. It took sixty-seven years of struggle before the Hberty was confirmed to the Hollanders by the Treaty of Westphalia. Meanwhile, during this period of fighting, interrupted only by a truce of twelve years, the Hollanders were building up a nation upon modern lines of scientific-artistic organiza- tion, and developed a new art in direct response to their new need of life and desire of living. The Hollanders were sturdily practical; but they were idealists, also. Their idealism, however, was not directed toward imagining a Hfe of unattainable perfection; but was expended in making the conditions of the actual everyday Hfe as perfect as possible. Correspondingly, their artists treated the subjects of ordinary Hfe, but enhanced their significance and beauty by the ideal of loving, conscientious and accompHshed craftsmanship. There was scarcely a branch of human activity, open to the men of that day, in which the Hol- landers did not engage ; developing it always to a high pitch of efl&ciency. They signalized the 40 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE raising of the siege of Leyden, early in the war, by establishing in that city a university, which soon excelled the fame of Paris and Oxford. They welcomed the weavers from Flanders who sought refuge from religious persecution, until their own country, Holland, took the place of Belgium as the European center of the industry. They became renowned for their skill in constructing mathe- matical and astronomical instruments and grinding diamonds. They experimented with grasses until their cattle and dairy produce were the finest in Europe; cultivated the potato and other root vegetables for winter use and so stamped out the plague of scurvy; enlarged their fisheries, im- proved the methods of curing fish and developed a great naval and merchant marine. The one swept the Spanish from the seas and occupied her foreign possessions in India and the Celebes, while the other did the carrying of the world's commerce and monopolized the most lucrative trade in spices. Amsterdam took the place of Antwerp as the world's comrriercial metropolis; her exchange was thronged with buyers and sellers from every country, and her Bank, the first scientifically estabHshed institution of its kind, held in its vaults the wealth of kings, emperors and the world's merchant princes. These were but some of the ways in which this wonderful people in their new need of life and desire of living, expanded and enhanced by HOLLAND IN 17TH CENTURY 41 liberty, developed their material, commercial and intellectual resources and proved themselves the pioneers of the modern world. Their art partakes of their conditions. Cut oiGf by their revolt from the splendor of the vice-regal court and palace life and by their acceptance of the Reformed Faith from the splendor of ec- clesiastical decoration, the Hollanders had no use for works of magnificence. Their artists were required to paint small pictures to decorate the rooms of burghers' homes or larger portrait groups for the guildhall, the boardroom of a hospital, or the banquet chamber of a miUtary company. With the exception of these "Corporation Pic- tures," the art of Holland was expended on small canvases carried to a high pitch of workmanlike perfection. In fact, the School of Holland, carry- ing on the old Flemish tradition of craftsmanship, presents the most accomplished array of painters in the history of art. To say that it was a natural- istic school, taking for its subject the external r-jyorld, does not sufficiently dijfferentiate its motive; Lfor naturahsm during the seventeenth century ruled in Spanish art and even in Italian.; The distinction of the School was the quality of its naturalism, which may be summed up in the word "moral.'' I use the word as indicating a purpose, actuated by pride in oneself and one's work and by loyalty to the best that is in one to render the work as worthily, thoroughly and beautifully as possible. I 42 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE This was the code of Life, not promulgated in theories but practiced in conduct, which char- acterized the nation as a whole and found artistic expression in its painters. Rembrandt was a solitary genius, an exception to the School, in that he was not satisfied to render the external aspect of humanity. He penetrated into its soul. He carried the idealism of the School beyond that of perfection of craftsmanship and the enhancing of the significance of the familiar into depths of spiritual intent. But again, it is characteristic of the Hollander in him that his spiritual expression was not sublime but inti- mately, poignantly human; not based on imagined perfection, but evoked from the imperfection of ordinary human lives. During the eighteenth century the little nation became embroiled in foreign poHtics, and gradually decUned in power. Similarly, its painters no longer sought their motive at home. They became in- volved in the reaction toward Classic and Italian art which spread over Europe. They became imitators of the Italians' method and looked back to their national art of the previous century as being vulgar and commonplace, an opinion in which the rest of the world shared. Even Rem- brandt was considered a vulgar, slipshod painter! * * * -x- -jt ^ ■}«• It was reserved for the nineteenth century to rediscover his greatness and the general merits of HOLLAND IN 17TH CENTURY 43 the whole School. For, once more, the tide of naturahsm had set in. It was the result of the new attitude toward individualism and nature. Pope's assertion the "proper study of mankind is man'' received increased significance and gave impulse to scientists, educators, moralists, his- torians, dramatists and artists. Moreover the ap- plication of steam and the discoveries of science gave a new impulse to man's dominance over nature. Nature and Life became the material which the practical man and the idealist alike were bent on organizing. In the field of painting the example of the English naturahstic painter. Constable, was fol- lowed by the Barbizon artists in France, to whom succeeded Manet and the other impressionists, all devoted to the rendering of nature, as they saw and felt it. In consequence of this zeal for nature and life the Dutch art of the seven- teenth century has come again into rightful esteem. * ^t * * * * * The foregoing survey of these periods should demonstrate that Art is an expression of what is for the time being the need of life and desire of hving: a response to the spirit and conditions of the community, and that the artistic expres- sion of a people varies according as its ideals incHne to the aristocratic or democratic. It should also show by inference that, while a 44 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE nation may borrow principles and processes from the past, its only real inspiration must come from within itself. Its Art must not be an imi- tation, but a growth rooted in its own needs and conditions and fostered by its own ideals! ^ CHAPTER VI LIFE: LIVING AND MAKING A LIVING "1^ JW ^^ is bom unto trouble/' said Job's I \/ 1 comforter, " as the sparks fly upward." •*- ▼ -^ This submission to fatalism mankind, until recently, has accepted as an axiom of Life and done its best, or rather its worst, to justify. I can remember, as if yesterday, the room and the exact spot in it where I was standing, as a child, when my father in so many words told me this axiom of Life. I remember too my bewilder- ment as to what he could mean. "We are bom to sorrow?'' "Life is a scheme of unhappiness? " I could not understand. The idea was so con- trary to my nature; such a contradiction of my instinct. For I had, what every healthy child has, the instinct of the joy of Hfe. I was a creature of senses and sensibilities, with a mind, so far as it was developed, absorbed in the wonder and beauty of Life, and in the fascination of receiving impres- sions from it. I had not yet reached the stage of experience. It was out of his experience that my father spoke, and many times since out of my own 46 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE experience I have uttered the old cry of despair of the fatahst. But does the experience of the man prove that the instinct of the child is wrong? A thousand times no! The instinct of happiness, born anew in every child of man, as in every insect, though its span of life be measured only by a day, is the eternal principle of Life. The experience of man, on the other hand, is mainly the product, so far as it is unhappy, of his having misunderstood the principles of Life and accordingly distorted its purpose and development. It is man's experience of Life that is wrong because he has made it wrong. The child's instinct is right. But, alas! it is allowed to become blunted, subjected to distortion, and too often atrophied by disuse. The joy of the child's spirit and its sense of natural participation in the beauty of life become smothered in the cloak of experience. But since that day in my father's study the world has progressed. Leaders of modem thought, both men and women, are taking their stand upon an axiom of Life which makes happiness and not sorrow the basis of Life; the end to be aimed at and achieved. At the head of the march of prog- ress are the men of science, who explore the possibilities of Life and the causes which impair the health and happiness of Life and search for antidotes and preventives. They are not alone the medical fraternity, but also the men and LIFE 47 women engaged in all branches of sociological research; the teachers who are applying science to education; the engineers and inventors who are increasing man's dominion over the resources of nature and making Life more productive and capable of happiness, and such leaders of industry as are applying the resources of science not only to improved production but also to the better- ment of those who labor. Society is in ferment with new Hope in the possibiUties of realizing the nation's guarantee: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is a hope well assured, because it is founded not upon theories as to the rights of man but upon the facts of Life and Nature and Man's relation thereto. Meanwhile, it has to be admitted that progress is slower than it need be. Opposed to the en- lightenment of the comparatively few ^e the in- difference and ignorance of the masses of mankind, still subject to the unscientific and unhopeful traditions of the past and a prey to the greed and selfishness which they engender. Self-interest, privilege and a system of government which is more concerned with the welfare of party and the spoils of politicians than with the happiness of mankind and, even when it is honest, is clogged by antiquated and unscientific machinery, block prog- ress either with active opposition or dead inertia. The era of the New Democracy, founded actually 48 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE upon Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, will be delayed until the masses of men and women realize the beauty of it and band them- selves together to achieve it. Then mankind will realize Life and Liberty in a "partnership of in- dustry entered into in the pursuit of happiness/' The future in fact, as always, depends upon the new generation. It is the child of today who will be the New Democrat or the "Standpatter" of tomorrow. It is one of the hopeful characteristics of our time that progress is being based upon the educa- tion of the child; that child-culture is no longer left to the haphazard of good or bad parents, but is be- coming recognized as a first responsibility incum- bent on the community. Whereas the ancients pictured Destiny and the Future as lying in the lap of the gods, we more beautifully, because more truthfully, put them in the hands of our children as they lie in the laps of their mothers. By consequence, therefore, it is another hopeful characteristic of our time that the sanctity of Motherhood and Womanhood is beginning to be recognized and the duty of the community in respect to them is coming to be more generally acknowledged. The world is no longer to be the man's world, but the woman's world also; or rather it is to be a world of men and women, living in real liberty of mutual cooperation in the pursuit of happiness. And between them they LIFE 49 will see to it that preeminently it shall be the child's world, because the children are the potential fathers and mothers, thinkers and doers of the future. For the Future of the Race, now for the first time in the history of civiH- zation, is the definite aim of everything best that is being done and thought in the present. This is at once the Faith and the Hope of the New Democracy. What, then, are we doing for the children to fit them to be the artists of the New Democracy, to fit them to make their own lives and the lives of all more beautiful? Are we inspiring them with the highest ideal of Life; equipping them with the knowledge of Life and teaching them to compose that knowledge according to the princi- ples of beauty which artists apply in their works of Art? Are we training them in the principles of Fitness, Unity, Balance, Harmony, Rhythm, with a view to efficiency (or as artists would say, expression), by which alone they can make their own hves and the life of the community approxi- mate to the perfection of a work of Art? I am too little informed regarding the intricate questions involved in the modem system of educa- tion to have the effrontery to criticize. But I know the world outside the schools; and know that its ideal of Life is distorted and imperfect and that the children, when they leave school and enter into the world, are very apt to be swallowed up in 50 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE its imperfect ideal of Life. I wonder, therefore, whether the shadow of that imperfect ideal is not projected back even on to the school? For the world's ideal today overlooks one im- portant element of Life. It concentrates its energy on Making a Living and recks little of Living. This is not unaccountable. Our ideals are rooted in the past. And what did the civiliza- tion of the past do to promote happy and healthy living among the masses of the people? It was only a privileged few who enjoyed the privilege of living and for the most part abused it by ex- travagant self-indulgence. Their happiness, or what stood to them for happiness, was their right; it was the duty of the masses of humanity to contribute to it. Our roots being in the past we also have produced a privileged class that battens on the lives of the masses. Meanwhile, it is to our credit that we have adopted the new attitude toward Life; namely, that labor may be not a curse but a blessing. Our modem social system is founded on In- dustry. It was a necessity that it should be so founded, since the fathers had to carve a new world out of nature and, as population has multi- plied, their descendants have had to continue and develop the process. It demanded such magnitude of spirit and endeavor and the resulting achieve- ment is so marvelous, that it is little wonder that the Nation, as a unit, has elevated the making of LIFE SI a Kving into the ideal of Life. The nation's ex- pressed ideal, the Pursuit of Happiness; the ideal of life toward which all advanced modern thinkers and doers are striving, namely the leading of beautiful Kves, is regarded as of smaller account or entirely ignored. How far also, I wonder, is it not also neglected in preparing our children for life? In the necessary fitting of the children to take their part in what is still called the "struggle" of Ufe, is not the true ideal of Life, beautiful Living, overlooked? Is not education confined too exclusively to the practical necessities of making a Uving and too little concerned with the fostering of a high ideal of Hving? Yet the latter is quite as necessary if the expressed ideal of our democracy, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, is to be reaHzed. In a word, does not the business ideal of Hf e which the world holds, overshadow our system of education? If it is a fact that the future making of a living is held up before the child not only as a necessity, and an honorable one, but also as the chief aim in Life; that he is being allowed to grow up with the idea that success in business is the absorbing ideal of Life, then a false issue of Life is being presented to the child from the start. An artificial confusion is being created as to the ideas involved in the practical and the ideal, and a too narrow appKca- tion is being encouraged of the twin principles of conduct, "must'' and "will." 52 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE The child's creed should be: "I will lead a beautiful life and therefore I must work; and my work which is necessary shall be as good as I can make it, so as to add to the beauty and happiness of living." Unless the child is being taught such a creed and is being trained to realize it, he is not getting his "rights "in the light of the New Democ- racy. He is simply being fitted to perpetuate the imperfect ideals of an old democracy that is still vitiated by the aristocratic system out of which it grew. One hears our system of education criticized because it does not adequately fit the child for the making of a living. Insufficient attention, it is said, is given to technical and manual training and to the instruction in domestic science. Much has been done and more is contemplated with a view to meeting this deficiency. It is recognized that, if education is to be really scientific, it must be shaped to the actual needs and facts of the child's necessity of making a living. Education, like In- dustry itself, must be more specifically organized. But it must be organized to prepare the child, not only to make a living, but also to live. For the opportunity of labor is only a part of the right of every individual in a true democracy. He must also have the opportunity of leisure. The first is a practical necessity of his existence; the second, a means of realizing his ideals. y CHAPTER VII ORGANIZED EDUCATION SHALL the scientific education of the child be limited to the means of life and withheld from the end of living? Shall education in its concentration upon the necessarily prac- tical, ignore the equally necessary element of the ideal? There can be no doubt that advanced educators recognize the need of both and are working to satisfy it. The difficulty which they encounter is largely the result of the insistence of the necessary and practical in teaching, as in the world itself. For the child has been given a good true start' in the kindergarten. There the system is accom- modated to the child's Nature. The training is based upon its Instincts : its instinct to play and to do something, its instincts of curiosity and imitation. It is based also upon the child's Senses. The sense of touch, sight and hearing are gratified and developed. In response to its instincts and guided by its senses, the child learns to do something and make something, in the doing and making of which it finds happiness. 54 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE It is, by the way, a saying of Rodin's that every one who finds happiness in his work is an artist. While he may not have meant the remark to be taken with absolute literalness, he meant it to be taken with complete seriousness. For the first condition of artistic work is that the artist shall find happiness in the doing of it. He injects into his work of Art what he feels of beaiity and his joy of Life, and a sense of beauty and of the joy of Life is imparted by the work of Art to those who heed its message. In the kindergarten, then, reliance is placed on the child's natural equipment of instincts and senses. These and the child's physical well-being are made the basis of his work and play. His play is organized and he learns to find happiness in his work. The system recognizes the potential artist in every child and seeks to develop the natural gift. Thus, in the kindergarten the child receives its first Organized Training in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The training is thor- oughly scientific, being based on the facts of the child's nature. It is designed to evolve the growth of the child from within itself, by contact with the world outside, to develop the potential artist in the child, and to make him a little master of himself, at the same time inculcating the social habit by teaching him to recognize the rights of other children and his duty in respect to them. ORGANIZED EDUCATION 55 Then he enters the primary school, and a change ensues. Work and play are separated. Too often the school system undertakes no responsibility as to play; the child is left to find it how and when he can; usually not in harmony but in bitter rivalry with his playmates. Work starts off uninterestingly, for it is not associated with doing or making things, but in committing what seem stupid facts to memory. For it is the child's mind that is now taken in hand to be trained. His physical development receives little attention; his instincts and the clamor of his senses are scarcely heeded; his love of doing things and making things is allowed to lapse; his love of beauty dissociated from his work and play and treated, if at all, as a separate study. The development of the artist in him is arrested. It is, in fact, no longer the whole of him, but a part that is being developed. Nor is he given his full rights even in the matter of his mental development. He is taught a great many necessary facts and equipped more or less efficiently for the making of a living. But how much is he taught conceriting the facts of his own physical, emotional and mental self and the facts of the world in which he is to take his part? He is encouraged to be self-reliant and independent, yet defrauded of the knowledge on which alone the sense of Moral Responsibility can be effectually based. S6 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Meanwhile new instincts are stirring; the instincts, most insistent, of adolescence. The boy and girl are troubled with physical and mental disturbance; they are a prey to unrest, bewilderment, shame, fear; by turns puzzled, abashed, disheartened. They are facing the mystery of Life in themselves; generally in ignorance and with no one to help them. For it is the amazing stupidity of our curriculum that it makes either scant or no provision for training in the one subject that is of supreme importance: namely. Life and Living. For the parents are content to leave it to the teachers, and the teachers to the parents; and mostly the boy and girl are left to discover the knowl- edge for themselves. If they succeed in acquir- ing it, it is too often from undesirable sources and in distorted form. But to have a knowledge of themselves im- parted properly to them is not the only right of the young. They have a right to a scientific- ally organized training that will enable them to apply the knowledge and to solve the problem which their instincts have created. They have a right to be taught the high ideal of the Sanc- tity and Joy of Life, and to have their body and senses as well as their mind efficiently de- veloped not only for the Work of Life but also for the Beauty of Living. For Beauty, the Beauty of Life and Living, ORGANIZED EDUCATION 57 the watchword of the New Democracy, must become the watchword of Education. Beauty must no longer be treated solely as a matter of lines and shapes and colors, to be discussed only in classes of the art-instructor. Beauty of Life and Living must be put at the head of the cur- riculum and made to permeate the whole of it. Every department must be dedicated to this high Ideal in the Pursuit of Happiness. Beauty of Life and Living, the instinct born in every child, still remains an instinct of the adult, but has become perverted or atrophied by non- development. Hence the distortion of our ideals. For we live in a world of such material prog- ress that our standard of values has become deranged. We have grown to believe that lux- uries of life, colossal trade, stupendous stores and office buildings, speed elevators, rapid tran- sit, tickers, telephones and a thousand other contrivances and achievements are evidences of superior civilization. What they do attest is the superior possibilities of civilization now existing. But they are only a means to a higher civilization; they are not in themselves the great desideratum. Yet they have come to be regarded as such, and, since they cost money and a vast amount of money, to get money and still more money has become the prime necessity of life; the ideal that we hold before us in the making of a living and the standard by which we gauge S8 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE and teach our children to gauge Success or Fail- ure in Life. Even some of the modern supple- ments to religion make success in business a feature of their faith. Meanwhile this colossal structure of materialism is built upon the lives of men and women and children; the mad struggle for material progress is like a juggernaut car, be- neath which tens of thousands voluntarily hurl themselves, while ten times ten thousand are crushed by it with no choice allowed them. Yet the nation's guarantee is still in writing: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!" However, it is none the less true that Americans are a nation of idealists. Even the colossal materialism is not entirely sordid. It is, indeed, impregnated with a sort of idealism. Filled with the idea that the making of a living is the supreme end of Life, vast' numbers of men display extraordinary zeal for the highest possible develop- ment of this ideal, and shrink from no heroism to achieve it. They are building up business not only for selfish ends but in pride of city, state and country. Fired with this ideal of material advancement, they sacrifice life and enslave liberty to business and court death — too often an early one — in the pursuit of what they have made their happiness — namely, the elevation of making a living to the eminence of being the supreme end of Life. Since they are willing to lay down their own lives in the achieve- ORGANIZED EDUCATION 59 ment of their ideal they do not hesitate to sacri- fice the life, liberty and happiness of others. "It is all a part of the game," they say; forget- ting that their victims are not in the game from choice or regulating its play to an ideal, but are pawns in a game not their own, compelled thereto by the sheerest need of a minimum of food, shelter and clothing. On the other hand there are not lacking idealists of the higher kind, whose ideal is directed toward the Betterment of Living. Indeed, they abound throughout the length and breadth of the country. Some preach from pulpits, editorial desks and library chairs; some teach in classrooms; others go down and mingle with the masses and try to ameUorate their lot; still others are organized into agencies to improve the conditions of life and alleviate the disabilities that interfere with liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Further- more, there are merchants and manufacturers whose ideal of Life is not confined to business but embraces Living. And they are sharing this ideal with their employees by advancing the latters' opportunity of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. These are the practical idealists, whose success in business makes it impossible to say that they are pursuing a chi- maera, that they are faddists, armchair theorists or any other species of unpractical visionaries. They have put their idealism into practice, and 6o ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE have proved by practical experience that their ideahsm can be a vitalizing force in business. It was one of these men who gave me, when I was new to this country, my first insight into what Democracy will involve when men live up to what it stands for. I was traveling from New York to Boston by a Sound boat and after dinner went on deck to enjoy the sunset. I found myself in conversation with a man who was similarly occupied. From talking about the beauty of the evening we drifted to talk about beauty in pictures. Evidently he loved them and was familiar with the work of American painters. To my inquiry whether he had seen the pictures of the Old World he replied that the necessities of his business had made it impossible for him to travel abroad. It seemed sad, I remarked, that one who was so fond of Beauty should be denied the opportunity of seeing the world's beautiful things. He smiled indulgently. "You have not grasped," he said, "our American ideal. For myself, I am willing to forego the beauties of Art in the Old World if I can help on the Beauty of Life in this New World. If by working over- time and all the time myself, I can shorten the hours of work for those who come after me and improve the conditions of work, making it not only more efiicient but less exacting, so that people may have more time and opportunity and capacity to enjoy the Beauty of Living, I ORGANIZED EDUCATION 6i am satisfied." And then he quoted the Nation's guarantee: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." That was many years ago, and the man was Edgar Filene of Filene Brothers, engaged with their employees in a "Partnership of Industry in Pursuit of Happiness" in one of Boston's largest department stores. Today, who shall number the men who are actuated by a like spirit? They are still, however, the exception, not the rule. Yet their very numbers prove that the instinct of the Beauty of Life and Living is widespread and is developing opportunities of realizing itself. The greater, therefore, the reason why the New Generation should be trained in the science and art of living, that it may efficiently occupy these "openings" and increase their number. Imagine a new generation, marching into the world with its millions of young bodies and souls, united in a phalanx under the flag of Beauty, inspired by the ideal of the Beauty of Life and Living, equipped with the Science of Life and Living and trained by Art to organize their Science into effective practice! It is a Dream? Aye, but a dream of hope that is real and will in time be realized. For it is founded upon a fact; the Instinct of Humanity in its Desire of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. CHAPTER VIII TEE WORLD'S NEED OF ART • THIS book, I hope, will make it clear that Art is essential to Life; that without it we cannot conceive of Human Better- ment. Meanwhile, in the present narrow under- standing of the scope and capability of Art, it is apt to be regarded as a mere commodity of com- merce, or an embellishment and caprice of wealth. A few days ago, I was sitting in an Arts Club and could not help overhearing the conversation of four men. Their talk was of artists and pictures, but it might just as well have been about hogs and lard, for the price at which they could buy and the increased price at which they hoped to sell was the only aspect of the subject that interested them. Nor is it an imcommon thing to hear collectors who are honored as patrons of American art, boast of their having taken advantage of the artistes necessities. "I gave So-and-so $200.00 for that picture to save him from being put out by the sheriff, and today I could get for it ten times that amount." Or again, there is the collector who boasts of the large sums he pays. WORLD'S NEED OF ART 63 I could mention the name — well known throughout the country — of a man whom his professional colleagues, while they recognize the force of his personality, know to be crooked and a bully. His whole life has been a negation of the beautiful and has been built up on the ruin of the beauty of other people's lives, yet he visits the art-dealers' galleries in pursuance of his hobby as a collector. He marks down his quarry like a creature of prey and "goes for it" with the grim determination and absence of all human feeUng that have distinguished his professional operations and made him a menace to local and national welfare. Is there hidden away in his impenetrable super-individuaHsm some instinct for beauty, or is he only gratifying the grossness of his egoism by the acquisition of that which will demonstrate the superiority of his judgment and excite the envy of other collectors? Who shall decide? Perhaps it were fairer to assume that both motives influence him; in which respect he is an exaggerated type of thousands of less conspicuous people in this country. They have, though they will not acknowledge it, an instinct of beauty but they cloak the pursuit of it under a more or less avowed purpose of treating it solely as a commercial commodity. I was talking to a friend who knows this man in the way of business. "The weak spot," said my friend, "in your suggestion to make the 64 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE Beauty of Life and Living the supreme end of Life is that a generation, imbued with this ideal and living up to it, would be at the mercy of just such lawless, predatory egoists as the man in question. His dirty and selfish tricks must be fought with similar weapons. Would you con- vert society into lambs for the ravening wolves of this man's breed?'* But, surely, such a reasoning overlooks two very important facts. One is, that it is under conditions as they are that lambs a plenty have been sacrificed to the maws of this wolf. The second is, that his power for evil is based on the widely accepted axioms "business is business" and "sentiment does not enter into business." He is but one wolf in a vast pack of wolves, who would emulate his excess of wolfishness if they had his brains and opportunity. It is the envy and emulation of the pack which make him so formidable. By the time that a clean and high ideal of Living penetrates also the ethics of Making a Living, such unclean beasts of prey as this man will not be kings of the pack. They will be pariahs, driven from decent markets and habi- tations. That this consummation, so devoutly to be wished, will come, we are bound to believe, unless we are minded to forego our birthright of democracy and tear up as idle words the writing: "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness." How WORLD'S NEED OF ART 65 soon the ideal will be achieved rests with the New Generation and with our own, which has the privilege of training it for the future. * * ■}«■** * * Let us picture the advent of Art into the world. All man's advancement has been the product of his needs: his need or necessity of making a living and the need or desire of bettering his con- ditions. At first, for example, he satisfied his thirst by getting down on his hands and knees and lapping like a dog. Then he bethought him of curving his hand and lifting the water to his lips, and after some time hit upon the notion of fashioning a gourd into a cup. That he might know his own cup he put a mark upon it and in time, moved by the instinct for bettering what he had done, added some fanciful ornament. In the process of time came an advancement, so wonderful that the old poem-chronicle identi- fied it with a personality and made his name immortal. Tubal Cain was "instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." For by this time man had taken a natural product, converted it by heat into a material that differed in its con- stituents from the original product, and then from this material had shaped forms of his own devising to fit his necessities and desires. He had justified his belief that he was made in the image of his Creator; not in the anthropomorphic sense which led men to fashion gods in the like- 66 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE ness of themselves; but because he had discov- ered that he, too, could be a creator. He had entered into his dominion over nature. For man is the only member of the animal kingdom that can imagine and invent something that has never previously existed, and that can so control the resources of nature as to give his dream a form. He is, or can be, a creator; with imagination, will, power; not indeed to create a world; but to recreate this one, make it over and shape it to conform to his necessities and desires and his ideals. He, too, can be an artist. Here it is that we reach the true significance of the ideas involved in the words "art'' and "artist." It is no new one made by stretching the original use; it is the old usage, for the word art is derived from a Greek root, "ar," which has the significance of fitting and joining. It appears in a verb form, "aro"; of which, however, no present tense is found in literature, since the word was used by epic poets to describe the achievements of heroes of the past. Neither let us forget the Greek significance of the word "poet." It is the noun form of the verb poieoy which' means to "make"; and specifically in the old English usage of the word: "And God said, Let us make man in our image." The poet WORLD'S NEED OF ART 67 was the creator; specifically, the maker of a work of Art. In their Latinized form the two words come together in "Ars Poetica/' the title of Horace's treatise on the technique of the Art of Poetry. Nor are there lacking plenty of examples in modern usage of this use of the word Art, in the sense of organized skill, needing some qualifying word to explain the purpose. Thus we have the arts of peace and war; the art of conversa- tion; musical art, pictorial and plastic art; the art of the housewife; the art of self-defense; "the gentle art of making enemies," and so on and so on. Mr. Taylor's achievements in Scien- tific-Artistic Management have made it possible and proper to speak of the art of bricklaying. In time, when Scientific-Artistic Organization has been applied to municipal affairs, we shall be able to speak of the art of city govern- ment. Then the term "municipal art" will cover more than the external character of build- ings and bridges, lamp-posts and such like, and the selection and placing of statues and mural painting. It will involve the application of Science and Art to the whole mechanism of the city's body, life and spirit. It appears then, that the word Art, besides its specific meaning in connection with the fine arts, is used generally today in the same sense that it had originally. It implies the application 68 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE of systematized and organized knowledge, in order to secure efficiency. When we turn to the words artist and artistic, we note that their origin is much later than that of Art. The words come to us, not from Greek or Latin source, but from the Italians of the Renaissance. At that period the word Art had the general significance we have just noted and was used with a qualifying word. To distinguish the alliance between the arts of architecture, sculpture and painting which was so glorious an expression of the Renaissance, the three were grouped together as "le Belle Arte.'' The French still call them ''Les Beaux Arts." Our Anglicized phrase "the Fine Arts" is less happy; since "fine" conveys no definite impression; whereas "belle" and "beaux" explain the dis- tinction of these arts. They are the Beautiful Arts; the arts preeminently concerned with ex- ternal beauty of form and color. It was to the exponents of these arts that the Italians gave the generic name of artists; while to the beautiful but minor arts of decorative design they appHed the term artistic. If we have read the autobiography of Ben- venuto Cellini — that extraordinary peep behind the scenes of the Renaissance — we remember his ambition to qualify as an artist. He was not satisfied with the fame won by his beautiful creations in gold and silver: goblets, caskets, WORLD^S NEED OF ART 69 salt-cellars and so forth; in order to secure his recognition as an "artist" he made a statue of Perseus. The arbitrary ' discrimination between artist and artistic craftsman, under which Cellini chafed, still exists today and with much less reason. For the modern workers in the Fine Arts are neither collectively nor individually so great as their predecessors of the Renaissance; and many modern craftsmen are creating works of Art at least as beautiful as the works of Art of the so-called "artists." It is, in fact, time that wt freed ourselves from the cant of such discriminations. Other people are estimated ac- cording to their efficiency. Let us apply the same test to artists and recognize that an indif- ferent artist is nothing like as estimable, from the point of view of his output, as, for example, an efficient plumber. By the time we have gained the habit of sub- mitting an artist to the test of efficiency, which in the case of his art is his ability to create Beauty, we shall be prepared to follow the trend of this book and accept a new but quite reasonable conception of the artist. We shall embrace in the term any worker in any art whatsoever, whose motive is to increase the Beauty of Life and Living and whose efficiency in his particular art is such that he "delivers the goods." CHAPTER IX NATURE— THE MATERIAL OF ART TO every worker in the world, whether artist or not, there is only one material: nature; nature, animate and inanimate. We say that a painter is inspired by nature; we are in the habit of saying that such a one as Tubal Cain utilizes the resources of nature. If the distinction amounts to anything it is simply one of motive. We assume that the painter's motive is Beauty, while the other's is Utility; a distinction, however, which disappSS^rs, as we shall see, if the latter is actuated also by a motive of beauty which he has learned from nature. Meanwhile, the painter takes some phase of nature as the material or subject of his picture and organizes it into an expression of beauty; the worker in metal takes some product of nature and organizes it into something more efficient for the service of man. And, as this book set out to suggest, he will increase its efficiency for highest service, if he also makes it contribute to the Beauty of Life and Living. The artist of modern times who led the way in helping the world to ^understand the true relation of Art to Life, was Jean Francois Millet. THE MATERIAL OF ART 71 He was among the first of the moderns, certainly the first of modern painters to recognize the dig- nity of labor. This attitude of his was the result of instinct and experience. His boyhood and young manhood had been spent on his father's little farm at Gruchy, in Normandy, where he worked as a laborer. When he became a painter he struggled for a time to see and feel nature through the eyes and feelings of the painters who were satisfying the existing taste of the public. But, as he said, "the cry of the soil" was ever in his heart; and at length he dared to hearken to it; to be himself; to run counter to popular taste and become the leader of a new taste, which has helped ' to change the world's attitude toward Life. He took as his material that department of nature which he knew and in which his deepest feeling was involvedri the life of the laborer. And, as he felt it, labor was not a curse, but a necessary and beautiful part of the divinely ordered scheme of the imiverse. To his eyes and feeling the peasants of Barbizon, working in the fields, tending their herds and flocks and doing their chores about the house and farm, were links in the diurnal routine of labor, which holds the stars in their courses, makes the earth yield her increase in due season and occupies the activity of an endless succession of existences down to the remotest protoplasm. A curse? Nay, a transcendent miracle, an idea immeas- 72 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE urably wonderful and beautiful, this continuity of the universe through labor. And Millet discovered a form in which he could embody this idea, so as to impart its significance to the imagination of other men. He took his product of nature, the rude peasant in his un- couth shape, and organized his material according to the same canons that constitute the beauty of the finest Greek art. That is to say, while the action in which the figures are engaged con- tinues to be natural, it has taken on a superior Fitness for the task and is invested with the ele- ments of Unity, Balance, Harmony and Rhythm. What the Athenian sculptor did when he sought his material among the handsome youths- in the athletic games and produced his statue of the Disc Thrower, Millet did with the unlovely material (as it seemed to common eyes) of the Barbizon peasant. Millet, in fact But since the continua- tion of the sentence was written I have read an article on "Habits that Help" by Walter D. Scott, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. It appeared in "Everybody's Maga- zine," September, 191 1. I quote the opening para- graph, and put it alongside the interrupted paragraph about Millet. I must ask the reader to accept my word on two points: firstly, that my paragraph represents very closely what every student of Millet's work, whether painter or lay- THE MATERIAL OF ART 73 man, will indorse; secondly, that I have not altered it in any way to increase its analogy to the quotation from Professor Scott. Qtwtations from Everybody's After spending four years in an Eastern College, a young graduate was put in charge of a group of day laborers. He as- sumed toward them the attitude of the athletic director and coach combined. He set out to de- velop a winning team, one that could handle more cubic yards of dirt in a day than any other group on the job. He had no guidebook and no oflScial records to direct him. He did not know what the best "form" was for shoveling dirt, and he did not know how much a good man could accompUsh in an hour. With stop watch and notebook in hand, he began to observe the movements of what seemed to be the best worker in the group. He counted the different movements made in handling a shovelful of dirt, and the exact time required for each of the movements. He found that the best man was making fewer movements and faster movements than his com- panions. But he also discov- ered that even his best workman was making some movements which were unnecessary and that he was making some move- The Continimtion of my own Chapter Millet, in fact, studied the natural actions of the peasants, until he had discovered the prin- ciples underl3dng the movement of the body and limbs, by which the action might be made as easy and at the same time as efficient as possible. All else he rejected as superfluity. Thus his picture of The Sower does not represent any particular man sowing. Probably no man in performing his act of sowing ever reproduced the precise ac- tion of this one. But Millet by observation of many sowers and from his own knowledge and feeling of what the action of sowing involved, discarded all the unessential movements and coordinated the essentials into an organized unit, resulting in the highest possible efficiency in the act of sowing. He substituted for the Unes and movements of mere elegance and grace, such as an Academic painter trying to imitate the Greeks would use, lines and movements of eflSciency. He emulated the Greeks by study- ing nature until he had divined the secrets of her operations and could evolve from them her own harmonies and rhythms. The 74 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE ments too slowly and thus losing the advantage of the momentum that a higher speed would have produced and which would have enabled him to accomphsh the task with less effort. The young collegian then set about to standardize the neces- sary movements and the most economical speed for each move- ment required in the work of his group. He instructed his best man in the improved method of working and offered him a handsome bonus if he would follow the specifications and accomplish the task in the estimated time. The man, eager to earn the increase, fol- lowed the directions closely, and in a few weeks was enabled to accomphsh more than twice the work of the average workman. The improved habit of working was then taught to the other workmen and the result was a winning team. principles he employed were those of simplification and co- ordination; the latter, organized to secure Fitness, Unity, Har- mony, Balance and Rhythm, with a view to efficiency, or, as he would have said, expression. CHAPTER X THE MOTIVE OF THE ARTIST IT appears from the foregoing parallel that Millet and the young graduate, setting out with somewhat different motives, worked for the same end of efficiency or expression and obtained it by similar means. In each case, the natural functions, through being organized by Art, were heightened to superior efficiency. To clinch the point, let us note for a moment how Millet differed from the Academic or so- called Classical painter or sculptor. The latter, recognizing the beauty and dignity of Greek Art as the result of Unity, Balance, Harmony and Rhythm, sets out to reproduce these quali- ties in his statue or picture. But he overlooks the first and most important element of beauty, namely. Fitness. He does not make it the first aim of his composition that the position of the body and Hmbs of his figures shall be suitable to the action in which they are supposed to be engaged. He is thinking only of distributing and combining the lines and masses of his com- position in such a way as to produce an abstract balance and harmony. He is not interested in 76 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE organizing the natural functions of his figures. He is interested only in what he would call the artistic aspect of the matter. Fitness he leaves to those who are concerned with practical matters. He, forsooth, as he will tell you, is occupied with the "ideal." His ideal, in fact, is to keep Art separate from Nature and Life. Meanwhile, until recently, the "ideal/' equally narrow and false, of the practical man, has been to keep Nature separated from Art. Today we have reached a point when Millet among other artists has taught us that the ideal should be based upon the practical, and the lay- man is learning how the practical may be im- proved in eflSciency by working toward an ideal. I am prepared for a retort which in the present condition of thinking is sure to be made. The artist, it will be said, is working for the expression of Beauty; the layman for the accomplishment of practical results. Hence, although both may employ the principles of Fitness, Unity, Harmony, Balance and Rhythm, it is straining analogies to say that the layman can be an artist. Let us see. The whole matter turns on what we under- stand by Beauty and by practical results. Before committing ourselves to anything approaching a definition, let us review the proceedings of the young graduate. He was keen and eager to MOTIVE OF THE ARTIST 77 "make good'' in his first job. Having individ- uality, he began to size up the conventions of his job alongside of his own experience; possessed also of imagination, he began to have a vision of what might be done, if under the impulse of his idea he could utilize his experience. When results ensued, it is safe to say he was filled with joy and enthusiasm. Can we doubt that some of this joy and enthusiasm was communicated to his gang of laborers? As the character of their labor was improved, it is impossible not to believe that to some extent the character of the laborers was bettered. They must have been the happier and consequently the better for their work. They were no longer treated as mere drudges; they had been encouraged to feel them- selves more capable and efl5cient, to have a senti- ment of pride in their achievements and in themselves. The dignity of their labor had been heightened and by so much also the value of their lives both to themselves and to the world. Whether the arousing of this expression of sentiment and character in his men formed an element in the young man's motive when he started out to secure increased efficiency, is purely a matter of conjecture. Perhaps, the odds are that it did not. On the other hand, it seems safe to believe that, having realized the happiness which ensued all round in his relations with 78 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE these men, he will include it as an element in his motive when dealing subsequently with others. While concentrating upon efficiency, he will view it in relation to the larger circum- ference also, as an expression of himian character and sentiment; as a source, not only of increased productiveness, but also of greater good for the worker; as a step in the direction of superior happiness and of advancing the Beauty of Life and Living. If this becomes his motive, his ideal, he is working in the spirit of the artist. Add to this, that he applies to his work the principles which characterize a work of Art. Wherein then, does he differ from the Artist? Only in the matter of degree. He cannot attain to the latter's possibiHty of perfection. On the other hand, if he work solely to secure efficiency, solely to make more dirt fly, with no conscious ideal of improving the conditions of labor, of heightening the happiness of the worker and generally promoting the Beauty of Life and Living, then he falls short of being an artist. He is only an efficient human machine, correspond- ing, shall we say, to a pianola, which increases the happiness of the world, but itself remains merely an ingenious piece of mechanism. * ^ -jf * * * * This train of thought has surely had some bearing on the xmderstanding of what is beauty and what are practical results. As regards the MOTIVE OF THE ARTIST 79 latter, the issue comes down to this: Does the scientific organizer possess merely eyesight or has he also vision? Does he look merely at the job in front of his nose : the laying of more bricks in a given time or the making of more dirt fly? Or has he the vision of imagination which pictures ahead the results, no less practical, that will succeed in a logical train from the first practical result? After all it does not need such a mighty power of vision. A very little observation of facts will help one. I remember the manager of a local bank near New York telling me that the most satisfactory depositors were Italian laborers, of whom a great number were employed in the district upon water- works, railways and highways. Their deposits were regular and represented assets on which the bank could reckon. Meanwhile, when winter came, the bank with equal certainty had to reckon upon large withdrawals. A considerable number of the depositors cashed out their savings and returned to Italy to spend them. Why not? They had no sentiment for America. They were treated as human tools; to be used to the last capacity and then thrown away, like a worn-out spade. They acquiesced in the brutal contract because it suppHed them with funds to realize such ideals as they had in another country. But suppose that our young graduate arouses in these ItaUans laborers a pride in their work 8o ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE and in themselves? It is only a question of time when the mean conditions in which they are at present willing to live will prove irksome; and as the desire of improved living grows, a desire for permanency of conditions will follow, and they will more and more closely identify themselves with American life. Their ideals will root into its soil and by degrees take on finer growth. They will become centered in the desire of having children and of bringing them up to better advantages than their fathers possessed. Surely these are practical results; firstly, the purely material result of keeping money in the country and of stimulating a higher productive and purchasing standard; sec- ondly, the spiritual results of an improved standard of citizenship. And this example is fairly typical. It appears then that the higher practical results involve not merely the efiiciency of labor, but also the Betterment of the Worker and the en- hancement of the Beauty of Life and Living. We are justified, therefore, in questioning the scien- tific organizer as to his motive. Is it solely increased productivity, or is the latter to be re- garded as a means toward Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Is the motive a personal and selfish one or directed toward the betterment of the race? It will advantage the race but little, if at all, that a woman be trained to produce MOTIVE OF THE ARTIST 8i two shirtwaists in the time in which she now produces one, unless, in the first place, her work is thereby rendered less exhausting, and secondly, some of the time thus saved, is given back to her for Life and Living. Yet the tendency already is to abuse the blessing of Scientific-Artistic Organization by narrowing its motive to producing two shirt- waists for one, on some fancied analogy between this and making two blades of wheat grow where one grew before. But even in the latter case, overproduction or continuous sameness of pro- duction will exhaust the ground. Meanwhile, the earth is fulfilling itself in yielding increase. Grant, therefore, to humanity the same privilege of fulfilling itself; which it must do, not only by contributing to the necessary production of the world but also by satisfying those Desires of Life and Living which are instinctive in the hiunan soul. We have now reached a point where we can agree upon an understanding of beauty. CHAPTER XI BEAUTY WE noted in the previous chapter the correspondence which may exist be- tween the methods of the layman and those of the artist; which, in fact, must exist if the layman organizes his work according to the methods of Scientific- Artistic Organization. For, to repeat, the latter is nothing more or less than the application to crudely natural methods of the same principles which an artist employs to produce his work of Art. They are the prin- ciples involved in Selection and Organization; the latter, with a view to Fitness, Unity, Balance, Harmony and Rhythm. Thus far the correspondence is inevitable and complete. It is only when we pass from the consideration of methods to that of motive that the divergence may appear. For it has been taken for granted that ^ the business man is work- ing for business while the artist works for beauty. This indeed has been the difiference, accepted hitherto, as if it were necessary and proper. "Business is business" has been the catch-phrase, adopted as an axiom of the market place, the office and the street. BEAUTY 8s This means in plain English that the business man conducts his business solely for the sake of business. He considers business as itself the End of Life; not as a necessary means to the supreme end, the ideal of Better and Happier Living. In sole pursuit of his ideal, business for the sake of business, he rotates in a restricted circle, like a dog trying to catch up with his tail. Hustling round in this narrow and, to be frank, vicious circle, men lose their larger sense of values. Honest outside of it, they are not ashamed to be within it dishonest. Though naturally, it may be, not devoid of kindness, they become in their specific circle, from which the larger issues of Life and Living are excluded, selfish and remorse- less. They harden their conscience by asserting that business is business. They make of it a warfare and fortify their conscience with the primitive patter-words — "all's fair in love or war." What boots it that to the decent sense of modern times all is not fair in love or war; that an international conscience insists upon curbing the brutal excesses of warfare and that individual consciences of men and women repu- diate the brute and the deceiver in love? Yet in business, too usually, men still animalize themselves, by adopting the old savage law of the jungle, where food and the female were the prey of the strongest, the swiftest and the fiercest. What will they say of a new watchword — 84 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE "Business is Beauty," meaning that the motive of business may be and should be the Beauty of Life and Living? As in the case of Christ's gospel, of which this new message is but a belated fruitage, the latter will be at first "unto the Jews a stumbling-block and unto the Greeks foolish- ness." To those who "require a sign," that is to say who judge everything by its immediate monetary return, it will appear as a hindrance to their greed, and to those who "seek after wisdom," the wisdom that excels in overreaching others, it will seem but folly. Yet to those who are watching the trend of progress it is abundantly manifest that the best thought and effort of the present are from a variety of different approaches reaching the same con- viction of the need and possibility of a new ideal of life. It shall embrace the Means as well as the End of Life; government, for example, business, commerce and industry. It believes and is resolved that both the means and the end shall be organized into happier conditions, approxi- mating more nearly the ideal of Beauty. It will help the realization of this belief and resolve, if all the thinkers and workers in this new enterprise get together onto a common platform. Every new movement, before it can capture the imagination of the multitude without which it cannot swell into a current of united effort, needs a watchword. Why should we not BEAUTY Ss join in accepting as our watchword, BEAUTY? Let us boldly affirm that Beauty ought to be, may be and shall be, at once the motive of Life and Living and the standard by which Success and Happiness in Life shall be gauged. But as a foundation for . our creed we must agree upon our understanding of what the idea of Beauty involves. For at present much confusion con- cerning it exists. The so-called "practical" man is afraid of beauty or, at least, distrustful of it; while the so-called "idealist" conceives of it in a too restricted sense. It is, in fact, the habit of all of us to think of Beauty as a specialty, as a quality pertaining to a specialized aspect of life. Since Beauty is the recognized motive of the artist, we have learned to think of it in relation to Art rather than to Life. To take a concrete example — the idea involved in "The City Beautiful." It represents an ideal, happily phrased by architects, painters and sculp- tors, who would make our cities the visible expression of the pride and belief and hope that we have in the material and spiritual resources and possibilities of our democracy. It is a noble and logical ideal; but its nobiHty may easily be too restricted, its logic too curtailed. For its significance, in the imagination of many, stops short with the attainment of grandly planned streets, boulevards and parks, stately and monu- S6 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE mental buildings, and all those evidences of artistic culture such as characterized the cities of the old world in their periods of greatest splen- dor. Meanwhile, if the City Beautiful stops short with these material evidences of Beauty, it may be "like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly but within are full of dead men's bones and of all unclean- ness.'' What of the lives of the masses? What of the conditions under which they live and die, toil and take their pleasures? It is out of beau- tiful lives, living in healthful and elevating sur- roundings, that the modern city, if it is to be truly beautiful, must be builded; founded upon right- eousness, the right of all to a chance of fair and wholesome living, both spiritual and material. This, you observe, is not to discourage the artists who would occupy their talents in giving outward and visible sign and expression to the ideals of our civilization, but to reinforce their efforts by the cooperation of every man and woman and child who in any way whatsoever is working for the Betterment of Life and Living. It is to preach and practice Beauty in the grandly comprehensive understanding of what is involved in the idea of Beauty; to regard it as the whole embracing motive of Life, to which every thinker and doer in his or her respective way may contribute a share of stimulus and realization. BEAUTY 87 In order to grasp this large conception of Beauty let us begin by realizing how our con- ception of Beauty has been limited by our habit of thinking of beauty in its relation to Art rather than to Life. Following, for ex- ample, the guide of the painter we have learned to look for beauty in the external appearances of objects of sight; in the combinations of lines, forms and colors. We have grown accustomed to the painter's dictum that such and such a combination of these elements is beautiful, and are disposed to accept his ruling that we are " Philistines" if we do not agree with him. Meanwhile, painters, like doctors, disagree. What one set of painters eulogizes another con- demns. Even among artists there is no absolute canon of what is and what is not beautiful. For instance, there is authority for admiring the work of Bouguereau who, divesting a young girPs face and figure of the accidents and irregular- ities of line and form and color, which make up her individual personality, reduced everything to a conventionalized symmetry that represented to this particular artist his ideal of beauty. Or, on the other hand, we shall be in good company if we admire the work of Rembrandt, who cher- ished the accidents and irregularities of his sub- jects as being significant of individual character; who, so far from artificializing the externals, either recorded them faithfully or merged them 88 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE in obscurities in order that the eye might not dwell upon the outside of his subjects, but that the imagination might be drawn in to penetrate the mystery of the subject's soul. Here are two ideals of beauty, supported by artistic authority yet as divergent as East from West! It is clear that neither can have a monopoly of rightness. Indeed, if we push the lesson of their difference far enough and take into account the innumerable variety of stand- ards and ideals of Beauty held by artists in the several fields of painting, architecture, sculpture, music, drama and literature, we recognize that there is no absolute right and wrong in the matter. Yet all the squabbles, and they are legion, which crowd the pages of the history of Art are the result of an assertion of the rightness of this or that standard and the wrongness of others. Meanwhile, the tendency of the present time is running counter to all dogmas, whether of religion, art or morals. It represents, on the one hand, a consciousness of the Oneness of Life, and, on the other, a realization of the multiplic- ity of units out of which the Oneness is composed. It recognizes the infinite variety of human nature, and at the samg. ,tinle the perpetual changes which are taking place in the life of every individual. Science has taught that change or movement is the law of life; that life is the BEAUTY 89 sum of all our yesterdays, plus or minus some- thing which today, nay this very moment of existence, is giving or taking from us; and that, as we change, so change the needs and desires of our nature. We can find the analogy of this Oneness of Life and multiplicity and variableness of the units composing it in the artist's attitude toward Beauty. On the one hand, all artists are agreed in drawing their inspiration from Nature, while on the other, their standard or Ideal of Beauty varies according to their attitude toward Life. And the latter is determined for the time being by the needs and desires of their own individual natures. It is quite a usual thing for an artist to begin with one ideal of Beauty and to pass to another. Moreover, the work of every consid- erable artist shows a continual growth. On the contrary, where an artist's motive becomes fixed, it is evidence that he has ceased to grow; that he no longer feels the stimulus of needs and de- sires which demand to be satisfied. It corre- sponds to a hardening of the arteries in his physical nature. His artistic nature is stiffening into conventions; it has become moribund and is developing the symptoms of death. Consider, in connection with the above, your own experience. If the circumstances of your bringing up have caused you to take pleasure in pictures, you know that many which pleased 90 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE you once, do so no longer; that you enjoy today pictures which at one time it would have seemed impossible you should care for. Similarly, one's preferences in literature, music and the drama, have undergone a change. With some things that once absorbed our interest we now have little patience; while other things continue to delight us but now present further breadth and depth of interest. We have discovered in them a satisfaction of our fuller needs and desires. This common experience gives a clue to the larger comprehension of Beauty in its relation to Life. In a general way that, which for the time being satisfies some craving of our nature, seems to us to he beautiful. * ^ -x- * * * * Now all the cravings of our nature have their source in a common instinct : the Need of Life and Desire of Living. In the case of the infant the instinct works automatically; but very early in childhood it grows to be more or less a conscious instinct. Later it becomes reinforced by knowl- edge and experience, and in time is capable of being influenced by intelligence. We recognize our needs and desires and consciously set out to satisfy them. We do so in one of three ways. Either we follow our instinct blindly, yielding ourselves without reflection to the call of our senses; or, profiting by our experience, we temper our needs and desires by reason. In those cases BEAUTY 91 where we have no direct knowledge or conscious experience to guide us, we rely upon the habit of acting in submission to reason and bring into play that developed form of instinct — intuition. But whether intuition or reason guide us or instinct lead us blindly, it is our Need of Life and Desire of Living, under the prompting of the senses, that demand satisfaction. We are but fulfilling, more or less consciously, more or less intelligently, the craving of Life for Self-Realiza- tion. Beauty, then, is that which stimulates and enhances our Need of Life and Desire of Living. CHAPTER XII BEAUTY AS AN INEVITABLE EXPRESSION OF GROWTH IT is a defect of our civilization and conse- quently of our system of education, that until recently we have encouraged realiza- tion not of the whole self but of part of it. In our preoccupation with the Reasoning Faculties we have all but ignored the Desire of Living and the Claims and Satisfaction of the Senses. " They are dangerous guides — the feelings." So we have conspired to pretend that they don't exist. We have played the ostrich in regard to our natural instincts. It is the result partly of our puritan heritage and partly of that ideal of life which confuses success with money-making. Our fore- fathers in their zeal for a religion founded upon reason and in their horror of anything that savored of the senses, confounded sensuous with sensual and, frowning upon whatever tended to the Joy of Living, thrust Beauty out of their lives and set the mark of Cain upon its forehead, that all might be warned against it as the murderer of the soul. Beauty, in consequence, has re- mained a social outcast. And later, the modern EXPRESSION OF GROWTH 93 world, making business its religion and shaping its morality to the shrewd and callous ethics of the market place, has maihtained the ban on Beauty, regarding it as a snare and a delusion: a foolishness, only fit for women and weaklings. Meanwhile, humanity not being able to crush out its natural instincts, being, notwithstanding its effort at self-mutilation, a creature of senses as well as intellect, has satisfied as it could and dared its need of life and desire of living. But since Beauty was banished from the high places of life and denied the reverence and worship due to it, men and women have had to seek their satisfaction along lower planes: in excessive eating and drinking, in frivolous and vacuous amusements, or in the dark places where the miasma glimmers with phantom-shapes that beckon to the Desire of Life and lead to Spiritual and Physical Death. Knowing this, we have pretended not to know it and have made of much of our civilization a huge hypocrisy. ******* Meanwhile, a change in our attitude toward Life is manifesting itself everywhere. A new nation is in the melting pot and Puritanism is being fused with other elements: the spiritual and emotional ardor of the Celt, the appetite for life of the Scandinavian, the Latin love of con- crete beauty and the idealism of the Slav. In consequence the new nationalism is being infused 94 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE vjith a still nobler conception of what is involved in the American ideal of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. There is an awakening conscious- ness of the Desirability and Need of Beauty. It is operating in two directions: affecting already our attitude toward Art, and beginning also to be in a general sense our ideal in relation to Life. ^ ¥r Mr * ^ ^ ^ Our growth in the Desire of Beauty, as repre- sented in the outward and visible forms of Art, may be dated with sufficient accuracy from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. It is true that the artists, more particularly the architects, had given previous stimulus to the Desire of Beauty. But, until then, these influences had been felt only here and there throughout the country and in a way to affect the imagination only of the few. Chicago, however, represented an organ- ized effort on so vast a scale that it attracted the notice of millions, who carried back the fame of it to the uttermost corners of the Union. How was it achieved and for what did it stand? It stood for the Wholeness of Life; was the product of an enlightened Cooperation. It assembled into one great object lesson the manifold varieties of man's energy and creativeness; the triumphs of the inventor and the scientist, the educator, the philanthropist, the salesman, the artist, the handicraftsman and the organizers of commerce EXPRESSION OF GROWTH 95 and industry. It showed the work of all as related achievements in man's spiritual and material uplift. It showed too that the bond which united all these numberless manifestations of man's dominion over nature in response to the aspirations of his ideals was the bond of Beauty. For the conditions under which the exhibits were displayed were planned and designed as an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of Beauty. On every hand stood temples or palaces, which you will, dedicated to the arts, sciences, and industries; stately edifices, enriched with the work of the sculptor and the painter. Every building, down to the smallest and those intended for the humblest utilities, contributed something to the Beauty of the Whole. All were arranged upon a cunningly organized plan, which opened up in every direction mag- nificent vistas, interspersed with lawns and foli- age, lakes, fountains, statuary and other devices of the landscape artist. Out of the dirt of the flat prairie sprang up, by the magic of man's Will under the impulse of his Desire for Beauty, that miracle of ''The White City." I have seen many an exposition, but nowhere one so beauti- ful or so significant of the part that Beauty can and should play in giving expression to man's Need of Life and Desire of Living. And, once more, how was this miracle achieved? By the Cooperation of Business Men and Artists; 96 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE by the wedding together of the Practical and the Ideal. That was nearly twenty years ago and since then a new generation has grown up, to whom the fame of the White City is but a hearsay. Meanwhile, of those who saw it, not all have profited by its lesson. I could mention the name of a man, prominent in the erection of that City Beautiful, who has disfigured one of the finest sites in his own city of Chicago with a huge structure of unpardonable ugliness. Moreover, is such general improvement as Chicago itself can show at all commensurate with the example of Beauty which she erected under that temporary stimulus of enthusiasm? But Chicago is not alone in this respect. Most American cities are ugly, just as most modem centers of industry and commerce in the Old World are ugly. Everywhere, indeed, material progress is scarred with the blight of Ugliness; the latter a visible sign of Ugliness of spirit. Why is this? In a large measure, because the ideal and the desire of making Beauty have been ousted by the ideal and the desire of making Money. This has been a temporary dire result of the increase of machinery which, on the one hand, has supplanted the individual worker and, on the other, has made possible increased production and profit for the capitalist. Machinery, of itself, is already a boon to hu- EXPRESSION OF GROWTH 97 manity and will be a greater one. But, mean- while, men have not learned to adjust themselves to the economic change involved. The workman is too often regarded as a human machine; he too often so regards himself. The pride of individual craftsmanship is abated or gone; and workmen through the trades-unions, temporarily necessary for their self-protection, have still further flat- tened out their individuality. Add to this the fact that the facilities of machinery have tended to increase the qimntity rather than the quality of the output, and to create the belief that suc- cess is to be estimated by amount of production. The result is that machinery has tended too much to enslave rather than to liberate the work- man. From the men at the top who drive to the lowest of the men below them who are driven a false issue is in operation. Machinery, instead of reheving the lot of the toiler by permitting him greater possibiUties of indulging the Desire of Living, has clinched anew the curse of labor by making it not a means of Life but the end of Living. Consequently, pride and joy in labor are rare. Labor is tending, not to invigorate but to devas- tate human life. There is waste rather than con- servation of the Hves of men, aye, and of women, and, still more shameful, of children also. How can such conditions fail to make for Ugliness, material, moral and spiritual? For they are the 98 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE antithesis of those which make for Beauty; namely, the stimulating and the enhancing of the Need of Life and the Desire of Living. They contradict our natural instincts. For what is the constant clamor of the healthy child? Is it not: "Mother, tell me something to do?'' Let it be doing something or making something in which it can be interested and the child is happy. It is satisfying its instincts and at the same time heightening its nature through the joy it finds in the act of work and in the thing produced. And to the adult also, his or her work should be joy, a source of stimulus and enhance- ment of his or her Need of Life and Desire of Living. It should be, and it can be made so. Further, it must be made so, if the democratic ideal of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness is ever to be reaHzed. The C3niic will sneer at this as moonshine. But the cynic is no part of the New Democracy. The man of Httle faith will doubt its possibility; but in the New Democracy there is no place for little faith. The man of selfish greed who fears for his profits will cry "To Hell with reform"; but in the New Democracy there is not even standing room for greed and selfishness. The soulless workman who would voluntarily remain a mere cog in a machine will growl his disapproval, but for the soulless, as for the sneerer, the faint- hearted and those who aggrandize self at the EXPRESSION OF GROWTH 99 . expense of the lives of others the New Democracy has no use. It calls for the Faith that wiU re- move moimtains, for the Hope that can work and wait, and for the Love which encompasses both Hope and Faith with the aureole of an Ideal — the Ideal of the Beauty of Life and Living. CHAPTER XIII NATURAL BEAUTY AND ARTISTIC BEAUTY LET us consider the relationship between Beauty and Happiness. What is Happi- ness in the truest sense but the conscious- ness of Self-ReaHzation? And the means thereto is Beauty. That which stimulates and enhances Self -Realization is to each of us for the time being Beautiful. The vernacular of a people, like its folklore, is forged out of its conscious instincts. Thus our common phrase, "to have a good time" is very close to the heart of truth. Boys and girls, yoimg men and women, make up their minds to have a good time, and when they have had it, they will agree that they have had a beautiful time. There is more living truth in these phrases of quite ordinary usage than in much of the wisdom of the world. For what do they involve? Firstly, that childhood and adolescence are conscious of the craving to realize the Need of Life and the Desire of Living; secondly, that they discover the means in Beauty, and, thirdly, that they recog- nize the Beautiful as Good. NATURAL AND ARTISTIC BEAtJTk' loi Thus, the colloquialism of our children, giving untutored expression to the needs and desires of their natural instincts, corresponds with the reasoning of Plato that the Good is the Beautiful and the Beautiful is the Good, and that the single idea involved in both must be the motive and means of man's material and spiritual uphft. That, in a word, Beauty and Morahty are twin aspects of a single human need and that the sciences which treat of them. Esthetics and Ethics, though arbitrarily separated, should be in fact identical. The notion that Beauty and Morahty are not only separate but even antagonistic is due in a large measure to the fact that Beauty has been made responsible for a great deal which Morahty quite properly condemns. In consequence the artist has incurred the distrust and aversion of the morahst and has retahated by asserting that Morality is no concern of Art. But the real cause of the misunderstanding Hes deeper. It is to be found in the fact that neither the artist nor the morahst has recognized the Oneness of Life. Each has viewed his subject in relation only to a part of hfe: namely, in relation to the senses. The artist is engaged in stunulating the senses, the morahst in^^ubdiungjthetn. Each is right, yet simultaneously wrong, because both treat the senses as if they represented the whole of Hfe, whereas they are but the conscious avenues I02 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE through which the Hfe of the individual maintains communication with the Hfe outside itself. And what is this supreme and total thing — Life; as represented in every human being? Physically it is explained as an aggregate of coimtless cells,' each self-existent and obeying its law of self-reaHzation, yet aU coordinated fitly and harmoniously, so that their mutual purpose is the self-reaUzation of the whole. This urge to self-realization, which in effect is a continual creation of self by self, represents the mystery of the generative force in Hfe. This complexity of units, completing a totality of organism, may be illustrated, as Henri Bergson suggests in his "Creative Evolution" (page i66 of the English translation), by a hive of bees. "When we see the bees of a hive forming a system so strictly organized that no individual can Hve apart from the others beyond a certain time, even though furnished with food and shelter, how can we help realizing that the hive is reaUy, and not meta- phoricaUy a single organism, of which each bee is a ceU, united to the others by invisible bonds? The instinct that animates the bee is indistinguish- able, then, from the force that animates the cell, or is only a prolongation of that force.'' But each individual bee is also a total organism, composed of a complexity of self-realizing units. So the organism of the hive is not only an illustration of the individual hvmian organism, NATURAL AND ARTISTIC BEAUTY 103 but also of the complexity of individuals that compose the social organism. The parallel stops short when we take into account the scope of seK-realization. The hive and the individual bees, and the cells comprising each of the latter, perform their functions of self- reaHzation under the impulse of an instinct which apparently is directed solely to the perpetuation of the species. But the human organism, while it primarily obeys the instinct of perpetuation, consciously possesses other instincts, and through their action on the brain has developed an intelli- gence that accumulates knowledge and utilizes it, is capable of organizing unorganized matter and of creating tools and products of its own inven- tion, and can even speculate about conceptions that transcend the experience of both its senses and intelligence. Man, in fact, is endowed with instinct, sensation, emotion, volition, intelligence, imagination, and with intuition that reaches ahead of reason to spiritual consciousness. Self-realiza- tion demands the satisfaction of all these Needs and Desires of Living; and perfection would be reaHzed if all were actively cooperating so as to produce a harmonious balance of the whole. Meanwhile, short of such perfection, the aim of education and of Hving should be to approximate as nearly as possible to a Harmoniously Balanced Whole. Here again the vernacular is illuminating. I04 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Our English word "whole" is not only the equiva- lent of the Latin-derived "unity," "oneness," but also signifies "healthy." To the man who had had "an infirmity thirty and eight years," Jesus said, "Wilt thou be made whole?" The same meaning reappears in "wholesome." Origi- nally the latter signified "healthy, sound in mind and body": for example; "Like a mildewed ear, Blasting his wholesome brother" (Hamlet HI. 4.65). Today its significance is "contributing to health of body, mind or character." But still more significantly suggestive is the fact that "health," "whole" and "holy" have a common derivation. In fact, our northern ancestors, with their simple intuition divined the truth, that holiness and health are fimdamentally identical and are to be attained through the development of man's several endowments into a harmoniously balanced whole. This truth, maintained by Plato, became for- gotten or at least neglected in practice through the world's refusal to recognize the Wholeness of Life. Accordingly, health ceased to be con- sidered in relation to moral and spiritual issues, and holiness was divorced from its relation to the whole of Life. This refusal of the Wholeness of Life involved susjticion of the instincts and sen- sations; a subjugation instead of a wholesome development of the "flesh," and, generally, on the part of religion, a disregard of the material NATURAL AND ARTISTIC BEAUTY 105 facts of life and a detached preoccupation with the imagined conditions of a life to come. Today, however, the new Faith in Life, no longer depending solely on intuitions but rein- forced by the knowledge accumulated by science, recognizes as a first principle the organic Oneness of Life in the individual, and, as a corollary, the potential Oneness of the Life of the Community. And it justifies its faith by works; by striving to promote the development of all the constituent parts, so that each may realize itseK by contribut- ing to the balanced harmony of the whole. Its aim, in short, is Beauty: the Beauty of Holiness or Wholeness and the Wholeness or Holiness of Beauty. It is this recognition of the Beauty of Whole- ness that will save the pursuit of happiness from degenerating into mere pleasure-seeking on the part of the individual, or into self-realization of the individual at the expense of the community. We must practice and teach the superiority of Organized Beauty; that is to say of Beauty which is regulated and enhanced in accordance with the principles of Fitness, Unity or Wholeness, Balance, Harmony and Rhythm; in a word, of artistic beauty as compared with unorganized or natural beauty. * ^ * * ^ * * People are disposed to overlook the difference between these two kinds of Beauty. They will io6 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE say of a sunset, for example, that it is as "beauti- ful as a picture"; or of a picture that it "looks so natural." But as a matter of fact, a sunset as we see it in nature is not beautiful in the way that a picture of it should be beautiful; and, if a picture has only its naturalness to commend it, it runs the risk of being a poor work of Art. Nature's beauty is unorganized, haphazard, prodigal of detail, without finality. The eye embraces, for example, a landscape; with a wide or narrow angle of vision, as the case may be, but with no fixed limits beyond which it cannot wander. The scene involves beauty of Hues and forms and color, but they are unrelated to one another. They happen here and there and there is no completeness. Moreover, there will be a far greater quantity of detail than the eye can receive. There is, in fact, from the point of view of the observer, a waste of beauty. A camera may reproduce this prodigality of detail; but a painter cannot. Hence of necessity he must ehminate certain things and more or less generalize or summarize. Out of this necessity — and, be it noted, that everything in Art as in Life is conditioned by necessity and that, in both, the highest results are obtained by conforming to necessity — the painter has formulated the first principle of his work. He simplifies by Selection; discovering the sahent and the charac- teristic and eliminating the unessentials. This NATURAL AND ARTISTIC BEAUTY 107 represents his first step in passing from the painter to the artist. The second is reached when he proceeds to organize the objects he has selected; so that his picture will comprise a Unity, deter- mined and complete, in which all the parts are related to one another and to the whole in a balanced Harmony. By this time his picture is a work of Art. We can now see why it is that we may tire of a scene in nature and yet find a constant and in- greasing deUght in an artist's rendering of the scene. It is because by organizing the im- organized material the artist has enhanced the natural beauty. He has done for the expressional quality of Beauty what another man does for Labor, when he replaces the haphazard, wasteful and inconsequent methods, which men naturally adopt, by Scientific- Artistic Organization. Both increase the eflSciency of the result, by working for wholeness rather than disintegration. And Wholeness again is Healthfulness. The cells in a healthy himian organism are realizing themselves by cooperating together in the reali- zation of the whole. This further explains why a work of art will move us more deeply and contin- uously than a work of nature. It satisfies our more or less conscious instinct of self-realization; contributes to our will to live more fully. It enhances our Need of Life and Desire of Living. So the function of the artist is twofold: firstly, io8 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE to discover the beauty in unsuspected aspects of Life; and, secondly, to show us how we may enhance the Value of Life by Organization. It is his privileged function to awaken the sluggish senses, the indifferent inteUigence, and to give living witness through the expression of his Art to the abundance of the Beauty of Life and Living. But it is also his higher privilege to point the way to an enhanced Beauty of Life and Living which may be attained through superior Organization. And there is another aspect of the difference between organized and unorganized beauty which is worthy of consideration. We speak in our loose way of an artist's feeling for the sentiment or poetry of nature. But sentiment implies sensations, emotions, intelligence; poetry is a product of added imagination and of a gift of utterance. Nature, however, is inanimate, im- passive. "If man should perish utterly from the earth," as Turgenieff said, "not a needle of the pine forest would tremble." Sentiment is not in nature but in man; and the artist is discover- ing the human need of feeling in himself when he makes a landscape interpret some mood of sentiment or poetry. Now observe the analogy to this in business. We are continually reminded that there is no sentiment in business. Certainly there is not, any more than there is in nature. But there NATURAL AND ARTISTIC BEAUTY 109 may be sentiment in the business man even as there is in the artist. He may approach the problems of industry and commerce, not indeed in a sentimental spirit, but with a reasonable sentiment or feehng for the rights of all to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness; bent on making the necessity of business not only more productive but more humane, and a means to the promotion of Beauty of Life and Living. As a matter of fact thousands of business men are doing this already. As they apply to the imorganized or rudely organized material of labor principles of superior organization, such as are involved in the method of the artist, they are becoming con- sciously influenced also by the motive of the artist. As they realize that the change of method is working for Social Betterment, they include betterment in their program and are making even business an expression of the sentiment of Beauty. No, Beauty as the supreme motive in Life and Living is not an idle chimaera ! It is already being practically tested and foimd efficient. The time, indeed, is ripe for all thinkers and workers of whatsoever kind in the field of hiunan progress to get together and to proclaim aloud the watchword of Beauty as the motive of the New Democracy. Beauty, the aim of Life and Living; and Scien- tific-Artistic Organization, the means thereto! CHAPTER XIV BEAUTY IN ART THE understanding of Beauty, as that which stimulates and enhances in us the Need of Life and the Desire of Living, is unalloyed with fancifulness or sentimentality. It is on sure ground, because it is based upon the physiological facts of human nature. It is one that men and women, no matter what their voca- tion may be, can lay hold of and apply to their own experience. It is equally one that can be grasped by the immature mind of the child. Beauty, so understood, is the urge, the impulse of growth of the Whole Life, the Healthy Life, the Holy Life in all its faculties of sensation, emotion, volition, inteUigence, reasoning, imagination and intuition. It is that which impels to the full and free recreating continually of self by self which in the highest sense is Living. On the other hand. Ugliness is that which checks and dimin- ishes the Need of Life and the Desire of Living, tending toward atrophy, the moribund and death. To enforce the practical and ideal value of this understanding as a basis of conduct and a goal of ideal striving, I propose briefly to show its application: firstly, to the artist and to our BEAUTY IN ART m appreciation of works of Art; secondly, its appli- cation to the life of the individual and to the Collective Betterment of the community. What is it that impels an artist to his particular kind of art? I am thinking, of course, of the artist who works in the spirit of free inspiration; not of him who, having acquired a facility in doing something, repeats himself for the mere purpose of making a living. It is an old saw that an artist is not made but bom. This, as we should phrase it today, is the recognition of the physiological cause of one man being a painter, another a musician, a third a poet and so on. His physiological equipment has an overmastering bias in such and such a direction, so that, if this bias is not checked or is of sufficient momentum to surmoimt obstacles, he naturally realizes himself in some one or other of the forms of Art. But, while the saying is true in its primary statement it is not true in its secondary implication: namely, that the artist is thereby different from other men. For it is equally true of men whose physiological bias results in their becoming surgeons, industrial organizers, statesmen; who display a genius for machinery, invention or teaching; or distinguish themselves as workers in wood or metal or indeed in any direction whatever; provided, I suppose, that they are working in enthusiasm. For it is 112 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE only when this quality goes with skill that a man in any department of action can properly be con- sidered an artist. An artist, in the specific sense, shares with his fellow-men the Need of Life and Desire of Living and craves for that which will stimulate and en- hance both. He is notably sensitive to the sen- sations derived from the world of sight, the forms and colors of things, their relations, harmonies and rhythms. They arouse in his imagination abstract sensations of ideal harmonies, relations, color schemes and forms. Both the concrete and the abstract sensations stimulate and enhance his Need of Life and Desire of Living. He dis- covers in them a vast source of what is good in Life, of what makes Living a joy. The concrete inspires him, in the truth-revealing idiom of our vernacular, to "feel good"; and feehngs, still more good, are aroused by the abstract sensations, by his own mentally recreated image of the world of actual sight. Yet, so far, he has not proved himself different from a very great many laymen; he has not fitted a form to his impressions either of the concrete or the abstract sensations; he has not yet demonstrated that he is an artist. But he has the constructive faculty, the need and the desire to find a form for his image, and he experiences the pangs of parturition. He must give birth to his vision in a shape that may be sensible to others besides himself. If he is a painter BEAUTY IN ART 113 it is to his arm and hand that the constructive energy rushes for an outlet; it tingles in his fingers and streams like a fluid force from their tips. He has probably experienced the sensa- tion from earliest youth and has discovered only one way to satisfy it: to take a pencil, crayon or brush and set it moving in response to the crea- tive impulse within him. He has found it to be the readiest and most natural way of satisfying his Need of Life and Desire of Living. Watch him as he summons the vision into clarity in his brain. He is apt to make passes in the air with his hand, outhning the masses of his mental composition. Then watch him put pencil or charcoal to paper. He is still making tentative passes, allowing the tool to leave only faint indications on the paper and mostly in lines that suggest the salient volumes of the composi- tion. He is feeling for the form and for its proper place within the area of the paper. For he is already composing in response to the principles of Fitness, Unity and Balance. At this period his drawing presents something of the effect of a landscape, viewed through a mist. Only masses are faintly visible. But, as later the mist will withdraw and reveal the objects in clearer and clearer distinction; so with the drawing — its forms grow gradually to definition and character. For the act of drawing, as practiced by an artist, is an act of birth and growth. He may 114 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE use a model to reinforce his sense of structure and of action in the figure; but it should be only as a stimulus to his creative faculty. If he merely imitate the model, the result betrays itself at once to the seeing eye as not having the quality of creativeness, of being, indeed, nothing but a more or less clever stunt. It ought to be not the model, but the image in his brain to which he is giving form; and as he feels the latter grow beneath his hand, he experiences that enhancement of Living which comes of recreating seK through self. ******* An artist, like every one else, has times when the weight of things drags down upon him, the zest of Life is faint and the need and power of creation fail him. But, when he is properly him- self, the forms and colors of the visible world stimulate his Need of Life and Desire of Living. They are to him Beauty, and it would be beauti- ful to further enhance his craving for recreating self through self by giving form to the vision they have aroused in his brain. So he draws or paints his picture; primarily, to satisfy his own need of self-realization; secondarily, in the hope that it may stimulate and enhance the Need of Life and Desire of Living in others. To every one whose craving for Life he thus heightens his pic- ture is Beautiful. CHAPTER XV STANDARDS OF BEAUTY IN ART LET us briefly analyze how a work of art affects us with a sense of Beauty; that is to say, with a sense that our Need of Life and Desire of Living are stimulated and enhanced. We have been speaking particularly of the painter and his picture; but our hne of thought embraces the worker in any work of Art whatsoever, even the workers in the arts outside the specific field of art. For, as we proceed with our subject, I hope it is appearing to be more and more incon- gruous to separate by an arbitrary barrier the so-called artist and very many of the so-called laymen. The analogy between the professed art of the former and what may be, and in so many cases is, the art of the latter, becomes constantly more evident; since it is an analogy based on physiological Oneness: the essential Oneness of himian nature and the essential Oneness of the spirit of man in its striving after better and higher Life. It is often said, and really it amoimts almost to a truism, that in order to appreciate a work of Art we must enter into the spirit of the artist; ii6 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE assume as far as possible his point of view and, as far as we can, see his work through his own eyes. We have noted that an artist finds stimulus and enhancement, that is to say, Beauty, in the world of sight; and that he experiences another stimulus and enhancement of his need of creating self by self in giving a form to his vision. Here then are two sources of Beauty; the one coming to him from outside himself, the other originating within him in his need and desire to create. The latter, as we have said, is what constitutes his claim to be an artist. It is, in fact, his need to incorporate his vision in some form, his ability to do so and his skill in doing it — in a word his capacity of technique. Quite naturally, there- fore, efficiency of technique occupies a chief place in the artist's endeavor as well as in his estimate of his own work and that of his fellow-craftsmen. To him efficiency of technique is Beauty; for his joy in the power that he thereby possesses and his exercise of it stimulate and enhance his Need of Life and Desire of Living. This fact, however, is overlooked by too many people in their endeavor to enter into the point of view of the artist. They are satisfied to appreciate in a general way the expression of the picture, but miss the additional enthusiasm of studying how the spirit is embodied in the tech- nique, of discovering the interpenetration of cause STANDARDS OF BEAUTY IN ART 117 and effect which vitaHzes both into a Oneness of Beauty. Are you a baseball enthusiast? If so, you attend a game generally with a preference for the success of one or other of the teams. Should the players of your preference win you are elated. But, if the stimulus and enhancement of hfe that you derive from the game be limited to this, you are a poor sort of enthusiast. What about the skill of the players in both teams, even in the beaten one: their efficiency of technique? Do you not watch every movement of the play, stimu- lated to enthusiasm by its surprises of skill? Indeed, provided the technique of the players has been excellent, you are reconciled even to the defeat of your favorites. Now the fact that baseball is a game of highly specialized technique and that it is the national game, is suggestive. It proves that, as a nation, Americans can appreciate efficiency of technique. Moreover, in other activities of Ufe, proofs of this abound. Yet it is also true that there is no one thing that the country needs more imperatively than a vitalizing sense of the Beauty of Efficient Technique. We are apt to be obsessed, on the one hand, with the importance of size and quantity rather than quahty and, on the other, with the eagerness to "get there" quickly — "there" being the goal of quickest profits. Both in the trades and the professions practice outstrips ii8 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE preparation; people crowd into work for which they are only partially equipped and, since the amount of their output is mainly the standard by which they are judged, seldom have the opportunity or the ambition to improve their technique. The result is that our ruling principle is not, as it should be, "the best is none too good" but Peer Gynt's easy opportunism — "good enough.'* Men are satisfied if they can make their work "go" or, to use another of our slang idioms, "get away with it." The work is intended only to satisfy a temporary convenience or tickle a momentary sensation, and is accepted in a cor- responding spirit of easy tolerance. It is used today, discarded and forgotten tomorrow. From the material with which we clothe our persons and furnish our houses to the printed matter which supplies our mental food and the forms of amusement that fill our idle hours, almost every- thing is ephemeral; produced in a hurry and hurriedly used without reflection. So long as it serves its brief purpose, it is "good enough." The result is a plethora of unmatured craftsmen, passing out their half-baked goods to a pubHc of immature knowledge and taste. Notwithstanding our vast system of education we put a premium on mediocrity of motive and achievement and are in danger of becoming a nation that is too busy or too tired to think. STANDARDS OF BEAUTY IN ART 119 In our haste for results we neglect the principle that is implied in "art for art's sake" : namely, that the foundation of all good work is pride and delight in the doing of it well. What is lacking is Morality. For both the exercise and the appreciation of fine craftsmanship are the products of sincerity, of conviction, of beHef in the essential value of what one sets out to do and of respect for the work, for ourselves and for our fellow-beings. Contrasted with this, the attitude of "good enough" is essentially immoral; a systematic prostitution of what is best to what is easy and expedient. In the Wholeness of anything that is made or done the form is inseparable from the thing. You do something "with a bad grace" and thereby impair the whole goodness of the act. To use fine ornament on shoddy material, or to apply it to fine material with poor craftsmanship, is to insure that the thing will not be wholly good. Technique, indeed, is inseparable from the form. It becomes not only " bone of its bone " but spirit of its spirit. It enhances or it mars the goodness of the whole. •X- * * 4f * * * On the other hand, embodied in the artist's technique are the spirit and substance of the vision of beauty which his mind has recreated out of the beauty of the world of sight and from his own experience. Let us take, as an example, I20 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE the work of the painter. The substance of his picture is what is popularly called the subject; the spirit being represented in the quahty of the motive, with which he has treated it. Thus, in the case of Raphael, the subject may be Madonna and Child, while the spirit animating it is the purity, peace and loveliness of motherhood. We shall be apt to appreciate — that is to say esti- mate and value — the subject in two ways. First, objectively, according to our knowledge and observation of things seen, and, second, subjectively, according to our prepossessions in favor of such and such a type of feminine beauty. But the spirit of the picture will draw even more largely on our subjectivity. Whether we appreciate it or not will depend upon our mental and spiritual attitude toward the subject in particular and toward Life in general; upon the sum total of our mental and spiritual experiences and consequently upon the kind of Beauty that we crave for the stimulus and enhancement of our Need of Life and Desire of Living. It may be that we are not conscious of mental and spiritual cravings; or that the cravings of which we are conscious have, on the one hand, not yet reached the point of growth of the artist's or, on the other hand, passed beyond what he had needed to stimulate and enhance his own need of growth. Thus, the Beauty of the subject and spirit of a picture is relative. It depends, STANDARDS OF BEAUTY IN ART 121 not only upon our capacity of appreciation and need for the time being of just such stimulus and enhancement as it offers, but also upon the scope and quality of the artist's own need and desire of self-realization at the time he painted the picture. He may have felt only the urge of the senses, in which case he will appeal solely to our own need and desire of stimulating and enhancing the sensations. Our enthusiasm, like his, will be confined to the sense perceptions of sight and touch. We shall enjoy the shapes and colors and textures of his forms; the evidence of vitality which they exhibit ; the skill with which each has been made to occupy its own plane in relation to the others and to the whole; the general har- mony of arrangement in the forms and colors. The artist, taking the raw material of nature — be it but some fruit and vegetables — has by eliminating the unessential quahties and em- phasizing the salient, and by organizing his material into a harmonious unity, enhanced its natural Beauty. We may receive from his pic- ture not only a greater sense of Beauty than we might have derived from the raw material, but also a very enjoyable heightening of our sense perceptions. For what the artist has done is to lift our perception from concrete to abstract sensation. And it is the abstract, overriding personal, local and temporal perceptions, par- 122 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE taking as it does of the universal, which affords the most powerful and elevating stimulus. We recognize in this fact, for example, the reason why a story such as that of Othello and Desdemona might in actual life disgust us, contributing as we say to the sensational; whereas in the play, because it has been treated in its abstract relation to universal humanity, we may discover a purify- ing and ennobling tragedy. Again, an artist, while feeling more or less the need of stimulating his sense perceptions, may also require an urge to growth through his emotions. His work becomes more subjective; interprets, as the phrase is, the moods of his own feelings. They may range from tender sentiment to moods of spirituality, from joy to sadness, from romantic ardor to heights of tragic intensity. Or again, the urge, instead of being purely emotional may be tempered by the operations of his intelligence and reason. It will be through interpreting his experience of the feelings of others, outside him- self, that he will realize his own growth. He will prove himself, in various degrees, an analyst and estimator of the causes and consequences of happi- ness and pain in the world about him, and will interpret the conclusions of his experience, either solely as they occupy his intelligence and reason- ing or as his imagination correlates them to the universal issues of human Hfe. STANDARDS OF BEAUTY IN ART 123 What is true of the artist as painter is corre- spondingly true, with modifications, of the artist in any other department of art. The musician, for example, quick to feel his Need of Life and Desire of Living stimulated and enhanced by the visible world, is gifted with a supersensitive sound-sense which impels him to translate his impressions into structures of melody and harmony. The poet, dramatist or novehst, alert to the stimulus of the world of sight and sound, is so constituted that he subjects his impressions to processes of intelli- gence and reasoning or heightens them by the gifts of his imagination, and then revisualizes in terms of words his vision of things, as they are or as he would have them be. In^jveQL rase the artist derives from common life the urge which stimulates and enhances his own Need of Life and Desire of Living and weds it to the urge within himself of giving a form to his impressions and thus recreating self by self. Correspondingly his work of art will heighten our own need of growth and self-realization in so far as our needs and desires approximate to his, either through our own actual experience or through the imagined experience that his gift of suggestion enables us to share with him. Thus the Work of Art is not only a growth >U)ut of the artist's need of individual growth but a source of recreating growth that stimulates growth in others. It is, or may be, the highest 124 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE perceptible expression or symbol of that perpetual, endless process of recreation which is Life. Meanwhile, just as Ygdrasil, figured by our Teutonic forefathers as the "Tree of Existence," had its myriad diversities of branches, twigs and leafage, corresponding to the infinite varieties of human capacity, so vary also the scope and quaHty of the artist's faculty to stimulate and enhance the growth of Life. They vary according to the scope and quaHty of his own need of growth- enhancement; as to whether they embrace one or more or all of the elements of the whole con- scious life; namely, sensation, emotion, voHtion, inteUigence, reason, intuition and imagination. There are artists a plenty who feel the need of satisfying only their sensations; there have been a few who have felt the urge to satisfy all the needs of their organism. They are the great Artists; who have come nearest to being Whole Men and whose Art, by reason of its Wholeness, has a high universal significance. * * ***** In order that a man may approximate toward Wholeness of ideal and conduct it would seem, at any rate in a democracy, that he must mingle sympathetically and understandingly with the larger Hfe outside himself. And this the great majority of artists in America, if I mistake not, fail to do. They miss, so they say, an "art atmosphere" and, accordingly, retreat into the STANDARDS OF BEAUTY IN ART 125 privacy of their own studios or the narrow and narrowing congeniality of professional cliques. Thus they retaUate upon an unsympathetic and non-understanding world by limiting their own sympathies and cutting themselves off from a full and free comprehension of their fellow-men. Eschewing the larger Ufe of human fellowship, they starve their own individual growth; and hold aloof from the democratic hosts, like Achilles sulking in his tent because he could not have things entirely his own way. And who, if not the artists, should be foremost in creating an "art atmosphere '7 But an atmos- phere that will penetrate the community cannot be created by sprinkling patchouli in studios or burning little pots of incense in coteries. It can only come of the free, full commingling of the artist and the layman in reciprocity of sym- pathetic understanding; the one stimulated to comprehend and value the other by the latter's eagerness to value and comprehend him; in fact, by a getting together of all in the interests of the Whole Life of the community. The consequent absence of such a sense of mutual comradeship, which would be truly an art atmosphere, not only saps the higher growth of the community but also reacts upon the artist, lessening his growth and unfitting him to be the highest expression of the Life-spirit of his time. For our atmosphere is astir with mighty forces, 126 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE making for extraordinary material development and none the less for developments that are spiritual and social. From every part of the Union is gathering the impulse toward a fuller, freer, richer and higher Democracy. Never yet has there been in the air such a volume of hope and promise for humanity. But of this atmos- phere of material, mental and spiritual uplift how much have our artists breathed? We are still waiting for the poet and the musician who can do for New America what Goethe, Beethoven and Wagner did for yoimg Germany; for the drama- tist and noveUst who can visualize the bigness of American endeavor and its spiritual eagerness, as well as for the painter and sculptor who can interpret the same in their respective mediums. Only the architect, so far, is grappling with American problems in the American spirit. And the reason is clear. He only is brought in touch with the large conditions of Life and compelled to adjust himself to their demands. For when the truly American artist arrives, it will be found that his Americanism will not be declared so much in his choice of subject, as in the largeness of his outlook upon Life and the grandeur of his spiritual horizon. Full of the passion of life and strong in the honesty of Art for Art's sake, he will have at- tained the supreme goal of Art for the sake of Life. CHAPTER XVI UGLINESS IN ART IF the artist's motive is Beauty, can there be a place for Ugliness in a Work of Art? The question seems to involve its own answer in the negative. Yet the matter is not as simple as it appears upon the surface. Artists them- selves have wrangled over the question, while to laymen the appearance in a work of art of what they feel to be ugly has been a stumbHng-block. The fact is that laymen and artists alike have been prone to judge of Beauty and Ugliness by the narrow standard, too common among reH- gionists and moraHsts. " Orthodoxy is my doxy," is the virtual creed of -many a rehgionist, "the other fellow's doxy is heterodoxy"; while some morahsts, at least, "Condone the sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to." Let us note a few of the squabbles concerning Beauty and Ugliness, that have occurred during the past century in the story of Painting. When in 1824 Delacroix, the chief exponent of the Romantic movement in pictorial art, exhibited his Massacre of Chios, the picture was stigmatized 128 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE by one of the artists of the Academic motive as "the massacre of painting/' It was said to be "barbarous" and calculated to drag French painting down to "destruction." Later, his critics characterized Delacroix as "the tattooed savage who paints with a drunken broom." Some twenty-five years later Romanticists and Academicians forgot their mutual antagonism in a common scorn of Courbet, the reahst. He was the "Anti-Christ of painting," his work the "ruination of art." Today there is a group of painters in Paris who are called the "Wild Men." "Artists and laymen shook their heads,' not know- ing what to make of them. Some smiled and went indifferently on, while others were indignant in their condemnation of this degradation of art." These words might have been written of the "Wild Men." As a matter of fact, however, they were directed against Courbet, whose work today, thanks to the perspective of time and re- flection, can be estimated dispassionately and understandingly. Accordingly, it finds its place now in the National Museum of the Louvre, side by side with the work of other "revolutionists," who were judged by their contemporaries to be compassing the "destruction," "ruination" and "degradation" of the art of painting. The moral of these examples among many is, on the one hand, that the art of painting is not stationary, with fixed boundaries and sacrosanct J UGLINESS IN ART 129 methods and motives, but a living growth, con- tinually adjusting itself to the growing conditions of social ideals; and, on the other, that Beauty and Ugliness are not absolute but relative. The Academician, since his method and motive are based on the example of the Classic tradition, which he has derived chiefly from the ancient sculpture and architecture of Greece and Rome or through the Florentine painting of the Re- naissance, loves to preserve in its integrity and purity the contour of lines around his figures and to put the latter in attitudes of "ideal" grace and dignity; lines and masses building up to a stately composition. To secure this "abstract" result and in pursuance of what he has made his "ideal," the Academician "improves on nature." This, in his case, means that he presupposes an absolute perfection of form, and an absolute per- fection of composition, based upon the canons of Greek art. Accordingly, he omits aU the irregularities and individualities of form, which in nature make up the personal character of the figure, and also places the figures in attitudes and groupings, selected primarily to make a dignified composition and not for the purpose of expressing the action in which they are supposed to be engaged. Thus, to the out-and-out Academician "abstract" means withdrawn from the facts of I30 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE life, while "ideal" is something lifted above the attainment of human nature. This understanding of the terms "abstract" and "ideal" overlooks one principle of art that was never overlooked by the Greeks: namely, fitness. If the Greeks had made a statue of a peasant sowing, they would have preserved his identity as a peasant and seen to it that his attitude and gesture were efl&cient for the act of sowing. That they did not use a peasant as a subject was because they considered labor a degradation and exacted it from helots or slaves. Contrasted with the motive of the Academician is that of the Romanticist. It is not static repose which attracts the latter but the dynamic force of life; exhibited in character rather than in form, in color rather than in line; and interpre- tive of the ardor and passion of human striving and achievement. Delacroix, for example, con- tended that in their place and degree the flat nose and huge lips of the negro may be as beautiful as the delicate elegance of a Narcissus; while to himself one of Rembrandt's portraits of an old man or woman by reason of its irregularities and imperfections, so eloquent of the individual life, was infinitely more beautiful than the devitalized, despirituaUzed, mannered perfection of the Aca- demician. And, even as his point of view was diametrically opposed to the latter's, so was his method of painting. Like his contemporary UGLINESS IN ART 131 Romanticist in literature, Victor Hugo, indeed like all Romanticists in any medium, he composed in color; relying not on clearly outlined definition but on the effect of masses, vivid with movement, often startling in the surprise of their unusualness, orchestrated into harmonies of color, tone and value of light and shade. Meanwhile, all life is not made up of stress and storm, and the Romanticist, in his zest for passion and the unusual, is disposed to draw his themes from times and places whose distance lends enchantment to the view. Accordingly, as the attitude of the modem world became one of scientific study of the world of nature and the present concerns of life, the Romanticist was superseded by the Naturalist and the Realist, each of whom "Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in everything." To each the idea of Beauty is Truth to nature and to life, as he sees and feels it; particularly in the more normal, everyday aspects of experience. In these, what the Academicians call "Ugliness" and the Romanticist, " Commonplace," take their place in harmony with what all are agreed is Beautiful. For even as hght imifies the antago- nisms of color and form in nature, so the Wholeness of life draws good and bad into a harmonious ensemble. Just as light affects the values of 132 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE relation in the world of outside nature, so the var3dng values of human nature become har- monized when viewed through the embracing medium of the Whole of Life. -jLn fact, it is by the study and realization of the multiplex values of Life and the harmonizing of these relative simi- larities and contrasts into an Organized Harmony, that the artist would stimulate and enhance in himseK and others the Need of Life and Desire of Living. Thus, in the present day, so occupied with the phenomena of nature and the problems of Hf e and living, either Naturalism or Realism has become the chief motive in every branch of art. CHAPTER XVII NATURALISM AND REALISM IT is customary to use these terms, Naturalism and Realism, as if they were equivalent in meaning. But even then it is necessary to dis- tinguish between two kinds of naturalism, or two kinds of realism, as the case may be. Accordingly, it is convenient to adopt the habit which is coming into vogue of making Naturalism stand for one of these distinctions and ReaHsm for the other. Both the Naturalist and the Reahst take the material of nature and preserve its natural charac- ter even when they enhance its significance by organizing it. The difference appears in the scope of the significance, as a result of the scope of the artist's point of view. Is he satisfied to hmit his view of Ufe to the actual conditions and characters which are the immediate object of his study? Or does he view the same in relation to the larger issues of Life as a Whole? Is he simply a NaturaUst, enhancing our appreciation of the facts selected, or does he by his capacity to cor- relate these particular facts to universal principles merit the higher title of Realist? One artist, for example, will organize his vision of men and things into a play, true to the condi- 134 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE tions of Life represented and to the conflict of characters involved, and thereby intensify our realization of this particular phase of Life. An- other, for example Ibsen, will do the same and more; for he will make us view this selected cross-section of Life in relation to the large back- groimd of some universal idea, such as that of individual responsibihty, based upon the free exercise of the will. His play, in consequence, will have the significance of universal Truth; while the significance of the naturalistic play will be rather episodical, a matter of fidelity to what is temporary, personal and local. While Darwin was engaged in his observations of nature, he was the Naturalist; when he cor- related the results with one another and with a possible principle of the origin of species, he was the Realist. After he had accumulated his knowledge, he fertilized the knowledge with im- agination. From a segment of facts he set him- self to complete the circle of a universal truth. He extended the actual facts so as to embrace the possible fact of a universal plan of Life, which at first existed only in his imagination as an idea. So today in all the laboratories of research, scientists, as they bend over their microscopes and test-tubes, perform the necessary function of the Naturalist, collecting and verifying the data with which they or other scientists will per- form the fimction of the Realist who in imagina- NATURALISM AND REALISM 135 tion already conceives the idea and in practice works toward the ideal of a regenerated race — healthy, whole and holy. The Sociologist, grappling with problems of poverty and crime, may limit his labor to the alleviation of actual local, temporal and personal conditions, or may endeavor to extend his knowledge of immediate cause and effect to the ultimate possibilities of cause and effect, con- tained within the wide circle of the Body Social. Thus it was as a Realist that George Bernard Shaw said: "Poverty is a crime and Society is the criminal." Others again serve our need of the Naturalist when they investigate the tene- ment-house problem; they are serving the fuller and deeper need of the Realist, in so far as they view their subject in relation to the extended circle of city planning and improvement that make for healthier and holier conditions of the Whole Life. The same distinction holds good in industry and commerce. One man, in oper- ating his store or factory, will concentrate his purpose solely with a view to the output of business. Another with a somewhat wider angle of intention will find that it is good for business to do something for the "welfare" of his em- ployees. If his ideal stop here, he is but a nat- uralist. I have a case in mind: A palatial establishment with lunch rooms, sim-parlors and an emergency ward; on the one hand, a magnifi- 136 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE cent advertisement, and, on the other, a humane policy — at least iupon the surface. But so far his scheme involves only a low average wage for the rank and file of the girls whom he employs. These girls, who are becoming habituated to lux- urious surroundings and are learning to feel the need of them outside the shop, receive an average weekly wage of about five dollars! Their em- ployer can scarcely have viewed their condition in relation to the moral and economic problem of the Social Whole. He is not a Realist. The point to be emphasized is that the Realist extends the actualities of facts to em- brace the possibilty of greater and nobler actu- alities. He works for the Wholeness of Life. Gifted with imagination, he is a seer, a prophet, poet; inspired with an idea and working toward an ideal, which shall advance the boundaries of the local, temporary and personal, in an endeavor to complete the circle of the Whole Life. He is the true idealist. For while the dreamer-idealist conceives his idea or ideal and tries to squeeze the world of men and things into the mold of his own invention, the practical-idealist, the Real- ist, works by nature's methods. Firmly footed on the actualities of fact, he takes the material of life and helps it to evolve from itself its own growth toward higher and higher conditions of individual and collective Health, Wholeness and Holiness. CHAPTER XVin RELIGION, MORALITY AND ART RELIGION, Morality and Art should be inseparable in the Wholeness of Life. For Religion represents man's attitude toward the universal; Morality, the code of conduct which he shapes thereto, while Art is inevitably the symbol or expression of what he has made his code of conduct and of his attitude toward the universal. Too long have men, with their inveterate habit of disintegrating the Whole- ness of Life and of erecting arbitrary and arti- ficial barriers, treated these necessaries of life as separate. The reason is that they have deposed Art from its high position as the interpreting element which cements the union of ReUgion and Morality. It was not so in the days of the Renaissance; for the Itahans were a people who, like the Greeks, instinctively invested, as John Addington Symonds says, " every phase of their intellectual energy with the form of art.'' They interpreted in terms of Art both their attitude toward the universe, which mingled the Medieval faith with the Religion of the New Learning, and their Morahty which had grown out of these two sources of inspiration. 138 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Art was the high intellectual, emotional and spiritual expression of the union of the needs of the body and the soul. Meanwhile, north of the Alps, the Renaissance did not contribute to the unification of ReHgion and Morality as they existed, but developed into a protest against the conditions involved in both. Men began to submit both Religion and Morahty to reason and evolved the ideals of religious and poHtical liberty. But, as reason usurped the func- tions of the whole mind, Art was driven from its rightful place. It drifted away from the vital concerns of Life and became an appendage of fashion, interpreting the passing whims of the privileged few. And, as the unifying influence of Art was removed. Religion to a great extent lost its hold on the emotions and imagination of mankind, and Morality hardened into a narrow code that ignored the Oneness of Life and set up arbitrary restrictions against the development and growth of the Whole Life. Today Morahty and Religion are practically divorced and each in its separateness is character- ized by differences rather than unity. Rehgion is disintegrated into sectarianism, and Morality, while professing to be uniform, exhibits, as for example in the question of divorce, confusion in its code of conduct. But in this very disintegra- tion and confusion there is hope for the future, since they represent a reaction from rigidity and RELIGION, MORALITY AND ART 139 narrowness and are the necessary preliminaries to a reconstruction, more clearly reflecting man's attitude toward the universal and toward his owi^ Whole Life and the Wholeness of the Life of the Community. What is needed today is the restoration of Art to its proper place in the hfe of the individual and the community. Art, however, must be restored not in its rigid and narrow sense, but in its old wide, universal preeminence as the unifying medium of the ideal and the practical. * -X- * "}(• * * -Jf It is a significant fact that with the decline of Art as a prime factor of Life, there grew into exist- ence the science of poUtical economy. It was reason's substitute for Art. Originally, as the name implies, it was rather an art than a science, the art of extending to the affairs of state the principles of good housekeeping, developed in the home. By the nineteenth century, however, it shrank into a narrower scope and became chiefly concerned with principles governing the production and distribution of wealth. It has grown to be the Bible of Mammon, and, in the opinion of many thinkers, is totally inadequate as a solution of the problems which today affect the lives of in- dividuals in relation to the Whole. Life of the community. Hence a new system of economics is in process of formation; one that is based upon the physiological and material facts of life and, em- I40 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE bracing the ideal as well as the practical, endeavors to harmonize the relations of man with himself and with his fellows. Every problem, say these thinkers, is a question of economics. Economics, in fact, represent to them the Art of Life and Liv- ing. From their own point of view and in their own way they are working in the spirit that in- spires this book and to the same end. In fact, from various directions all roads of earnest thought are leading today toward an identical goal, the Whole- ness of Life and Living. ^ 4^ * * * * -:^ But now to return to our topic of a previous chapter. Ugliness in Art. We may seem to have digressed from it; but I hope it is rather that we have pursued the subject by a curve of thought rather than a straight line; and that the curve has contributed to the realization of two points: that the distinction between Beauty and Ugliness is a matter of relativity and that both are moral questions. The artist is often afraid of the words moral and morality. He has seen a writer set out to urge a moral issue in his poem, novel or play, and become so carried away by the zeal of the preacher as to sacrifice the intrinsic Beauty of the Work of Art. Painters, similarly, will sometimes forget that they are artists and occupy themselves with moral narratives. But to recognize these mis- appHcations of the true function of Art does not RELIGION, MORALITY AND ART 141 justify the sweeping statement, frequently made, that there is no relation between Art and Morals. Such an attitude is absolutely fallacious, if we accept Art as the unifying medium in Life. Nor can we conceive of Beauty as that which stimulates and enhances the Need of Life and Desire of Liv- ing, without at once recognizing that the tendency and motive powers of Art are moral. It is only by rejecting these ideas of Art and Beauty, and by putting both back in the narrow pigeonhole of being concerned alone with problems of line and form and color that you can evade the moral issue. Beauty and Ugliness, in faci, are equivalent to good and bad. What, for example, an artist puts into a picture, in response to his own need and desire of self- realization, of recreating self by self, is, for him at least. Beauty and Good. Contrariwise, whatever finds its way in as the product of check in his healthy growth, is Ugliness and Bad. Thus, in his own case. Beauty and Ugliness are relative. They become also relative, and with a complexity of cross relations, in the effect that his picture may have upon others. What was Beauty to him may have the effect of Ugliness upon ourselves and vice versa, according as our Need of Life and Desire of Living does or does not correspond to his. Let us select a concrete illustration. Titian at- tained to within a few months of a century of active work, and at an age when the vigor of most 142 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE men is ebbing, took on a new lease of life. His masterpiece, already alluded to, the Equestrian Portrait of Charles F, was one of the works of his seventy-first year. From that point onward his religious works became more poignant and solemn; while his nudes lost the vigorous wholesomeness of the earlier ones and grew to be appeals to the sensuous enjoyment of female loveliness. Such are the Venuses and so-called Poesies of the Prado, which were furnished to Philip II. It was the artist's habit to include one of these with each of the religious pictures which he forwarded for the approval of his royal patron. Are we to suppose that Titian deliberately tickled Philip's well-known propensity for both kinds of subject and regard these nudes as evidence of the artist's own decadence? It is scarcely possible to dismiss them with so summary a judgment, in view of the quality of his latest religious pictures. These culminated in the intensely moving and spiritually exalted Pietd on which he was working when the plague carried him off. It was "reverently completed" by Jacopo Palma, the Younger, and, as it hangs today in the Academy of the Fine Arts in Venice, the brushwork of the one artist cannot be distinguished from that of the other. But the conception and composition are Titian's; so too is the character of the expression. It is that of a master whose great age, while it had dimmed his physical vigor, RELIGION, MORALITY AND ART 143 had but endowed him with a profounder insight into the spiritual depths of Life. Therefore may we not rather discover in these nudes a necessary step in Titian's evolution toward the deeper religious emotion which solem- nized his later years? For we have already dwelt upon the fact that aU growth in Life and in Art is through the senses, which are the only stairways of approach to the loftiest chambers of the intellect and soul. A man having reached his highest chamber may shut himself therein, denying aU intercourse with outside life, and conceivably do some great work. But this is not the way of the great artist; his genius needs to be constantly refertilized through his sensations. So considered, these nudes were the product of Titian's Need of Life and Desire of Living; marked by a decHne in the natural wholesomeness of his physical force, but indicating no moral or spiritual decadence. Yet, if this be granted, the question will arise: How are we to regard the effect of these nudes upon others? While a source of Beauty to the artist, may they not prove to others the occasion of Ugliness? There is no doubt they may and will, in the case of those who are not fortified by experience and conviction to resist their possibil- ities of suggestiveness. Then, it will be urged, is there danger to others in exhibiting them? Unquestionably. Therefore, should not their pub- lic exhibition be discontinued, even as a censorship 144 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE is exercised upon the exhibition, for example, of moving picture shows? Before answering this question, however, another is in order. What was the intent of that which may appear objectionable in a moving picture show? Was it in response to Beauty or to Ugh- ness? Was the motive of the maker of the pic- ture to contribute to his own life's growth and to enhance that of others; or was he stimulating the decay of his own life and pandering to latent germs of the moribund in others? This point must be determined before the case can be considered as analogous to that of Titian. It is but another application of the old truth that a tree is known by its fruit. But, it will be said, granted that the motive is pure, may not the effect be dangerous for those who are unqualified by experience and conviction to accept it as a source of healthy growth to them- selves? Again the answer must be: Unquestion- ably. Yet a moment's reflection will assure us of the fact, that to those who are thus unqualified even our streets are beset with dangers; every newspaper contains some incitement to Ugliness; not a magazine but has some lurking danger; that, in a word, life itself is full of dangers — and not only from without but from within. Our bodies are the lurking places of biUions of germs that, but for the conflict they continually wage upon one another, would inevitably produce our RELIGION, MORALITY AND ART 145 physical decay and death. Similarly, there is a continual conflict amid the activities of our senses, as they urge toward natural and healthy growth or, through excess, to what is moribund. With dangers rife within us, it is not strange that the world without presents a corresponding labyrinth of dangers. How are they to be faced? Perhaps you say, by lessening the opportimities of temptations. But, if you dam the torrent at one place, will it not burst out in another? Is not the problem too vast to be settled by patchwork methods? Moreover — and this is a truth, too often for- gotten — Ugliness is no less UgHness because it is not seen of men; nor sin less sin because it operates in secret. Sin and Ugliness are forces in life which, once started, begin by poisoning the life of the individual who is responsible for them; and from him spread their poison, no less effectually because unsuspected, to all who come in contact with him and thence to others in an ever-widening circle. This is spiritually as well as physically a fact, and to ignore it is only a part of our habitual hypocrisy, which thinks to cure an evil by smother- ing it out of sight or pretending in the face of facts that it does not exist. For the only force which can combat the insidious poison of what is Bad and Ugly is that of Good and Beauty. We have got to rely on the wholesome germs to coimteract the unwholesome. 146 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE And here arises a thought which is illuminating. To make sure of subduing the unwholesome germs in our bodies physicians will prescribe an anti- toxin, which, in exciting a mild form of the disease, prevents the virulent. Does not this throw light upon the relativity of Beauty and UgUness as well in Art as in Life? While Beauty is the main source of natural, healthful growth of Life, and UgHness is the main source of arrested growth, leading to decay and death; UgHness may at times be needful as an anti-toxin for the ultimate de- velopment to Beauty. The purist, in fact, who denies this, dares to reject the plain teaching of modem physiology. The moralist, however, if he is an honest thinker, tries to face every phase of the complexity of Good and Bad, of Beauty and Ugliness. If he grapples with Ugliness and receives no harm, it is because he is also an honest liver, prepared by conviction and experience. The conclusion is clear: to promote Beauty in oiu*selves and others and to reduce Ughness of life, we must be honest thinkers and honest livers. How far are we training our children in this direction? What are we doing in the home and in the school to develop thinking and, particularly, thinking based upon knowledge of the Functions of Life and the Science and Art of Living? o CHAPTER XrX BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN LIFE " ^^""^ H, Mother, it was beautiful ! " It was in this way that a girl of nineteen who was training to become a nurse, summarized the impressions she received from her first ex- perience of a surgical clinic. It had occurred after her day of duty in the wards, which had succeeded a class reunion, prolonged with dancing until early morning. She was mentally and physically fatigued. Her mother, knowing this, awaited with some anxiety the outcome of the ordeal. She would have been more anxious had she also known that the first operation would be performed upon a child, for her daughter had a singularly tender soUcitude for children. The following day, during her hour off duty, the girl reported to her mother. Bounding into the apart- ment without a trace of fatigue and radiant with happiness, she flung herself into her mother's arms : "Oh, Mother, it was beautiful!" As she proceeded to describe her experience it was upon the cleanliness, precision and order of the proceedings that she commented: the perfect cooperation between all the assistants and the operating surgeon : the marvelous organization of 148 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE the affair — the Art of it. Had the operation involved any slovenHness or lack of devotion to the high seriousness of the occasion, she would have been quick to detect and resent it. As a matter of fact, when she gradually analyzed her own sensa- tions, it was the sincerity of everybody concerned that had left the most lasting impression. In a word, she had discovered something which unex- pectedly and strangely stimulated her own very real Need of Life and Desire of Living. "Oh, Mother, it was beautiful!" This seems to me an excellent illustration of the true understanding of Beauty, as it affects the growth of the individual in its need of recreating self by self. For Beauty and Ugliness in Life are to be esti- mated solely as they promote or retard growth in Wholeness, Healthfulness and Holiness of Life; growth from within, self-realization, the creation of self by self; not the imposing of formal conven- tions of Beauty and Ugliness from without. In the present constitution of society some formal conventions both of written and unwritten law are necessary. But they can only be fit in so far as they are voluntarily imposed by the con- sensus of the whole body, or at least the real majority of the community, upon itself. In so far as they are in the interests only of a section of the community and are arbitrary, repressive and not conducive to voluntary growth, they tend to BEAUTY AND UGLINESS 149 Ugliness rather than to Beauty. Meanwhile, even when voluntarily imposed by a community on itself, they possess no perpetual sanction. Change of conditions, resulting from the collective growth of the community, may cause that which once had been a means of promoting growth to become a means of retarding it. By this time such a law or convention makes for Ugliness not Beauty. The same applies to the rules that it may be necessary or fit to impose upon a child in the early stages of its development. They should, in the first place, be regulated in the interest of the child as well as of its elders and by what is really in the interest of the child's growth, so far as latest science has ascertained it. Secondly, they should be regarded only as temporary substitutes for the rules of conduct which the child will voluntarily impose upon itself. Unless they tend to estabHsh in the child a habit of conduct, controlled by its own Will, in the interests of its Whole Life and that of the conmiunity, the rules are merely re- pressive and, so far as they retard the recreation of self by self, are Ugly. A very suggestive side light is thrown upon this matter by the method of instruction in drawing, which advanced educators have for some time adopted in the case of children. Briefly, they treat it as a means of promoting the child's growth. They do not impose upon it, as in the old system, the duty of copying certain models, so as to con- ISO ART FOR LIFERS SAKE form as closely as possible to what somebody else has felt to be beautiful. They encourage the child to make its own observations of the outside world and to record its own vision in its own way. And in developing this process of natural growth, the educator has become a student of psychology. He has learned that the child in the early stages of its development is interested in things as things and in things that touch its life famiharly. Thus the teacher will invite the child to make a drawing of the parlor at home or of something in it; or, finding that the child has been interested in the scene, say, of a fire, encourage it to reproduce the impression in a drawing. He tries to develop the child's faculty of observation and its interest in its own record of things noted. Later in the child's growth there develops an interest in the way in which the record is made; a rudimentary instinct of technique and crafts- manship. If, for example, a wagon is being drawn, the child will be dissatisfied unless the wheels seem to be round like real wheels and to be really touch- ing the ground. If the subject is a ladder set against a wall, it will correct and work over its drawing until it is satisfied that the ladder seems to be planted on the ground and to be supported by the waU and that the rungs are properly placed. ' Thirdly, as the age of adolescence arrives a . rudimentary esthetic sense begins to stir. It is no BEAUTY AND UGLINESS 151 longer only observation and correctness of repre- sentation that interest the child, but also a feeling for the Beauty of the subject; for its qualities of line and form and color and some appreciation of the sentiment involved. These are the successive steps which, in degrees varying with the individual, mark in a general way the child's physiological development. Accord- ingly, the scientific educator makes them the basis of a course of drawing; using the latter as a means to Self-expression and Growth, not as an end in itself. For he knows that if a child has a distinct gift of drawing, it will need no encouragement. A child who has the making of an artist cannot be restrained from drawing; while, on the other hand, the child who has not the gift, is only discouraged in its growth by an attempt to im- pose upon it the discipline of drawing correctly. Meanwhile, if it is encouraged to approach draw- ing in its own way and as a means of expressing itself, the discipline that it will impose upon it- self will assist its growth. For it is the Self-discipline by the child of its own instincts and will, that is the true source of Healthy, Holy growth toward Wholeness of Life. This implies the need of experience; and, while a child's experience may be assisted by the sugges- tions derived from the experience of others, it can only be acquired in such form as to become an active constituent of its growth by the child 152 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE actually touching life for itself. Hence to shield a child from all contact with what is assumed by its parents to be Ugly may be a mistaken excess of kindness, tending to retard rather than promote the recreation of self by self. Such a negation of the child's need of discovering its own experiences for itself is the result of a sort of moral cowardice and hypocrisy which will tend to breed the same in the future of the child. For to pretend that Life is all Beauty and that Ugliness has no part or meaning or use in it is to give the child a false experience of Life at the outset. Parents are apt to say that they wish the life of a child to be "all sunshine"; that they would shield it as long as possible from the "shadows" that are to come. But I wonder whether these metaphors are not the product of confusion? We use the expression, "darks and lights of life," "life's sunshine and shadow" and so forth always with the implication of the mingHng in hfe of joy and sadness, of Beauty and Ughness. Such metaphors are, of course, drawn from pictorial art, but it is worth noting that they misrepresent the true relation of darks and lights in a picture. For there are three purposes for which a painter may employ chiaroscuro; and all of them suggest an interesting analogy to the relativity of Beauty and Ugliness in life. In the first place, he may introduce shadows as well as light into his picture in order to increase BEAUTY AND UGLINESS 153 the sense of bulk, substance and strength in the forms; to make the suggestion of life more vivid and actual. Secondly, the contrast may be introduced in order to enrich and give variety and character to the design. Thirdly, the mutual reinforcement of Ught and dark, with their infinite gradations, may be the means of enhancing the picture's expressional appeal. Depth of shadow in a picture may suggest mystery or be designed to arouse pity, awe, even terror; yet the darkness is not used or felt as Ugliness. It has its share in heightening the Beauty of the Whole; the reason being that the dark does not operate separately but in harmony with the light, both contribut- ing their relative value to the enrichment, the moving power and the significance of the whole composition. Light and shade in a picture are, in fact, ele- ments in the composition of the Whole, just as the rest of the color scheme and the lines and masses are elements in the Wholeness. The painter himself, when he has secured harmonious relations, cannot alter the quality or quantity of these elements without a dislocation of the Whole. Even if he feels that the harmony and balance are not as complete as they might be, he will hesitate to alter anything, since one alteration would necessitate another, and this yet another and so on. Rather than tamper with the sensitive inter- play of the relations, he will, in the experience he 154 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE has gained from this picture, commence another, with the hope of reaching a still more harmonious Whole. Nor in Life itself are the relations between Beauty and Ugliness less sensitively adjusted. In- deed, the balance is far more sensitive, because the elements which compose it are in continual growth and movement. There can be no constant factors. The elements, therefore, need to be continually readjusted; and, even so, perfection of balance is only to be approximated. Hence the futility of laying down hard and fast rules for the guidance of a child. The same consideration suggests also the need from time to time of readjusting the principles of Morality in order that they may conform more nearly with the moving changes of Life. For what is Morality but a general consensus that such and such a balance of relations between man and man wiU best conduce to the common good? It can be represented in diagram form by two parallel straight Hues of unequal length. As long as each line retains its original length, and the distance between them is unchanged, their relations are constant. But if either of them is lengthened or diminished or deviates from parallelism or the space between them is varied; then instantly the balance of their relations is disturbed. In the harmony of Life such variations are occurring all the time. Consequently, no written constitu- BEAUTY AND UGLINESS 155 tions or systems of Morality, however shrewdly they may have been adjusted to the common need of their day, can be appUcable to the needs of all time. Hmnan Kfe is continually outgrowing the best laid plans for its regulation. This is as true of the individual Life as of that of the community. Hence, while society is compelled in the interest of the whole to set up standards of average con- duct, it must depend ultimately upon the conduct of each individual composing it; and will reach a higher aggregate standard by fostering in all a sense of independent responsibihty. To return to the example of the picture: no system of rules can teach a painter to secure anything but a mechanical approximation to- ward Harmony and Balance. Certain principles may help him; but to give them living applica- tion he must feel within himself the Beauty of Harmonious Balance and then through his own experience, successes and mistakes train himself to create it. The analogy holds in the conduct of individuals and in the training of the child. You may repress a child with rules, but the moment the pressure is removed and your back is turned, there is a risk that it will run counter to the rules. For they themselves run counter to his inclination, that is to say, the urge of his natural instincts and, since he has not been trained to train his own conduct, he will follow his instincts blindly. iS6 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE And be assured that sooner or later every child will wish to play with Ugliness. Curiosity and the spirit of adventure prompt it to touch Life for itself. It will take no one's word for the unde- sirableness and danger of this or that; it will insist on testing for itself the Ugliness. The result will depend upon the condition of its preparedness or lack of preparation to discover the relation of Ugliness to Beauty. Almost certainly the Ugliness will at the first touch seem to be Beauty. Actually also it will be a step toward Beauty, if the child have the habit of self-reliance and self-responsi- biHty. For the child will then for itself adjust the relations between Beauty and Ugliness and make a growth toward harmoniously balanced conduct. If, on the contrary, it have no such habit, the odds are aU against the child. It will discover the partial Beauty that is in Ugliness; but not having been trained to think for itself and to adjust its conduct to the Beauty of the Whole Life, it will mistake the partial for the Whole Beauty, and be in danger of resting satisfied with Ugliness. Time and experience and the urge of growth in its young life may arrest the decay, but who shall say what it wiU suffer in the process or in how mauled a state it will issue from the ordeal? ^ * * * * -x- * Sometimes one meets a mother or a father or a teacher who has succeeded in helping the child to gain for itself its own experience of the relations BEAUTY AND UGLINESS 157 of Beauty and Ugliness in Life ; to grow out of itself into a continually stronger growth of self-disci- plined responsibility, a more harmoniously bal- anced adjustment of the instincts and the will, a superior fitness for the actualities of Hfe and a habit of conduct, more penetrated with the rhythm of spiritual purpose. When one does, it is to discover another miracle of growth. The mother, the father, the teacher have simultane- ously promoted their own growth. By sympa- thetic understanding of the child's needs, they have promoted their own need of arresting the decay of age, and have preserved a larger portion of their own youth and its blessed quaKties of resilience, and growth-capacity. In such cases one is spared the unhappy spectacle, which the old system of education too often involved, of the "Httle mother,'' an object of more or less respect- ful pity to her children, of the father who has drifted out of the lives of his boys, of the teacher, grown tired and stale from the futile task of imposing his or her own will and standards upon the young. In such cases there is less or none of that an- tagonism between the young and the old which was all but inevitable under the old system. For age and youth were not regarded as complemen- tary forces in the Harmony of the Whole Life, but as encroachments upon each other. When the New Generation knocked at the door, the Older 158 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE trembled. If it could or dared, the latter turned a deaf ear; then, if the door were forced, treated the young comer as an intruder, bent on ousting it from its hold on Hfe. What a twofold tragedy is pictured in Ibsen's drama, "The Master-Builder!" The older man, vainly trying to maintain his grip on life by crush- ing the growth in others, is at last confronted with the unconquerabiHty of the New Generation. Too late he recognizes what reinforcement to himself the latter might have been and reaches out for it. But the law of life is growth and, since he has destroyed his own growth by checking that of others, he cannot enter into possession of what Life brings him. In his desperation he snatches for it, fails in the attempt and dies. No less tragic is the unfulfilled need of the New Genera- tion. It yearns to believe in the Old; entreats, cajoles and finally dares the Old to justify its belief. In vain! The law of life is peremptory; what is moribund cannot grow back to what it might have been. Ibsen, with the certainty of the analyst, put his finger on one of the diseased spots of the civilization of his day; but with the prescience of the poet implied the future remedy. Too many readers, however, miss this implication and note only the diagnosis of disease. Hence they brand as a pessimist the man who has been one of the living forces in the promotion of a true optimism; BEAUTY AND UGLINESS 159 a faith, that is to say, not merely inflated with hope, but made possible of realization because it is based on the fundamental facts of natural Hfe. Ibsen makes in this drama a plea for the integrity of the Whole Life — the union in Life of New and Old — and for the need of perpetual recrea- tion of self by self; yet not in the way of selfish aggrandizement but for the harmonizing of the self-growth with the growth of the Life of the Whole. Today we are beginning to realize the unnatural- ness of imposing our will upon a child's will; our habits of thought, upon their still fallow minds; our conventions, on the freedom of their young lives which are opening not to the past but to the future. The child's growth must be from within itself; our share in the evolution being Hmited to securing for it the utmost possible help of wholesome and invigorating environment. Even in the matter of correction, the child's will should be trained to perform the operation for itself. The child is not a plant to be pruned and shaped to the will and caprice of another; but an organism to be controlled by a will of its own and with responsibilities which it must meet or evade at its own peril. Any system of education which ignores this, stands convicted of ignorance or impotence; for it is arresting and not promoting evolution, the continual recreation of self by self. This may seem a hard saying and it is very difficult i6o ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE of accomplishment for those who have been brought up under the old system of regarding the child as something to be shaped, curbed and fostered according to the notions of its "elders and betters. '^ But it is a necessary corollary of the principle of physiological human evolution. CHAPTER XX TEE INVENTIVE-CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY IN his famous letter to the Duke of Milan Leonardo da Vinci enumerates what he is able and willing to do in the Sforza's service. He is prepared in time of war to make Ught and portable bridges, scaling ladders and other engines for offense and defense, and to remove water from ditches and excavate timnels, even, if it be neces- sary to pass beneath ditches or under a river. "In time of peace, ^^ he says, "I beUeve I could equal any other as regards works in architecture. I can prepare designs for buildings, whether public or private, and also conduct water from one place to another. Furthermore, I can execute works in sculpture, marble, bronze and terra cotta. In painting also I can do what may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may." Leonardo is conspicuous as the most miiversal genius known to history. Painter, sculptor and architect, he was also an engineer, inventor and musician. He was a precursor of GaHleo, Bacon and Descartes, and in optics, heat and magnetism anticipated the discoveries of modern science. "He united," says Alexander von Humboldt, i62 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE "remarkable knowledge of mathematics with the most admirable intuition of nature." In me- chanics he restored the laws of the lever and was the originator of the science of hydraulics; while among his inventions were derricks, apparatus for raising buildings, rope-making machinery, a stone- sawing machine, roasting-jack, machines for file- cutting and grinding colors, a door-spring and a wheelbarrow. He was also a poet, philosopher and student of the Classics. Of exceedingly hand- some face, with finely proportioned figure, he excelled in conversation and courtliness of manner. Leonardo, in fact, was the most signal example of the "Whole" man of which there is any record. To a passionate thirst for knowledge he joined extraordinary constructive and inventive facul- ties and an ardent love of Beauty. His ideal of Beauty was so exacting that, although he labored four years over the portrait of Monna Lisa, he threw down his brush, admitting that what he sought to render eluded him. Yet, notwithstand- ing his idealism and his profound researches into the mysteries of nature and Hfe he could be as practical as any man and found enjoyment in being so. His life is a testimony to the fact that the func- tions of one human brain can embrace the specula- tive, the practical and the artistic; that there is no necessary or essential antagonism between these mental operations and that a great and CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY 163 harmoniously balanced mind manifests the corre- lation existing between all forms of mental activity. While the universaUty of Leonardo's mind was an exception, the Renaissance produced many artists who combined with painting and sculpture the practically constructional art of architecture, which, as today, involved the art of engineering. Michelangelo, for instance, commenced the dome of St. Peter's, carried forward its construction as far as the drum, and at his death left drawings and models for the completion of the structure up to the lantern. The example of such generously rounded per- sonalities recalls the origin of the word "art," as noted in a previous chapter; its significance of fitting and joining and its analogy with "poet" — the maker, creator. At the core of Leonardo's genius was the desire of fitting, joining, mak- ing, fused with the imaginative ardor of the poet — the instinct of invention and construction. From this core as a center radiated the various lines of direction along which his creative energy exerted itself. The radii differed in length. One radius, for example, extended only to the periphery of a small circle, circumscribing the purpose of a wheelbarrow; a purely practical scope. Others pushed on to adventurous circles of speculation in mechanics and natural philoso- phy; others again to gHmmering border lines of abstruse reasoning; others to circles of sensation, i64 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE as the creative energy was exerted in constructing the forms of musical or pictorial expression. These were but a few typical instances of the in- numerable radii of inventive and constructive energy, extending to innumerable concentric cir- cumferences, which bounded the various scopes of Leonardo's universal genius; all issuing from a common center — the Listinct of Invention and Construction. Does not this attempt to interpret through a diagram the universality of a unique genius, picture also the universaHty of the collective genius of mankind in relation to the individual capacities of the human constituents? The Whole- ness of Life presents infinite concentric circles, embracing efforts and ideals of all imaginable varieties and scopes; each measured by the radius of individual capacity, while all the diverse ener- gies of individual men and women have their center in a common Inventive and Constructive Instinct. Without claiming for this diagrammatic design anything more than a suggestion, can we not find in it a help toward realizing the Wholeness of Life? It is too generally taken for granted that in- dividual human beings differ in kind; that an Edison, for example, represents a different order of genius from that of a Michelangelo; that an engineer, a musical composer, a captain of industry, a sociologist, a dry-goods merchant, a philosopher, CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY 165 an educator and so on and so forth — that all these, because they are specialists must necessarily differ in kind from one another, with the result that each is apt to regard the efforts and ideals of all the others as outside the practical scope of his own. Thus specialization, which is a necessary feature of our day, is distorted from its highest opportunity of efficiency. It tends to a disin- tegration of Life and human endeavor, rather than to a more scientific cooperation and artistic or- ganization, which would further the Wholeness, Health and Holiness of Life. Man is not alone in having the constructive faculty; the lower ranks of creation also represent successive circles of widening scope. The squirrel and the mouse, for example, Hne the hollow which they have chosen for a nest, with soft and warm material. The bird, however, actually builds its nest, displaying a faculty of invention in the selection and use of the materials that it employs. A still higher order of inventiveness is shown by the beaver, which not only builds its hut on the edge of a stream but connects it by timnels with the water. Further, when the water is not deep enough for its safety, it erects a dam, constructed of trees, which it has felled with its incisor teeth, and of sticks, mud and stones; the whole being water-tight and presenting a convex surface to the i66 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE direction of the current. And the beaver gives further evidence of invention when it has been much disturbed by hunters, for it will abandon its usual method of dams and hut-building and adapt itself to the altered conditions by excavating holes in the banks to serve as a residence. Moreover, beavers prefer to live in community and cooperate in their "public works.'' Then at the top of the scale of inventive and constructive fa,culty in the animal world comes the marvelously purposeful, complex and adaptable exercise of it, as exhibited in the community life of bees and ants. But in all these examples, typical of the dijfferent grades of the inventive-constructive faculty in its development from a rudimentary instinct to an instinct increasingly purposeful, complex and adapted to variabilities of environment, the motive seems to be limited to the perpetuation of the species, while the tools used are limited to the creatures' own organs. It is here that man parts company with the animal world. His inventive- constructive faculty is exercised, not only for the purposes of making a living and of perpetuating his kind, but also in response to the stimuli of his sensations, emotions, volitions, intelligence, intui- tions and imagination. Further, under the im- pulse of these needs and desires he can make for himself tools, modify the natural materials he uses and vary indefinitely the form, scope and character of the thing he constructs. CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY 167 The thing he has invented and constructed may be palpable to touch in every part, as, for example, a reaping machine; or, while tangible and visible, may, as in the case of the electric telephone, in- corporate an "imponderable and invisible agent." Again, as in the case of a picture, it may be per- ceptible to the eye and yet involve more than visible perception, having the quality in itself of causing the spectator to reconstruct in his own imagination an impression. And the latter may differ from the constructor's own impression of his picture and more or less from the impressions reconstructed in the imaginations of all other spectators. Or again, the impression, similarly varied, may be derived from the ear alone, as in the case of a musically trained audience listening to a sonata. They are in the first place conscious of the inventive construction which has built up the mechanism of the composition, as it establishes successively two themes, develops them and finally restates them in the original keys with a conclusion. In the few minutes or so that the performance lasts, their mind's eye perceives the fabric of sound grow to organized completion as actually as the optical eye can watch, over a long period, a building rise from its plan to final complete unity. Or again, a mathematician or philosopher wiU invent and construct a fabric of organized thought which will appeal solely to pure reason. i68 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE But it is needless to multiply illustrations. All mankind's activities, whether physical or mental, except such as are purely destructive, involve the faculty of invention and construc- tion, and a vast number stir to activity the Inven- tive-Constructive Faculty in others. They not only create, but also recreate. At the foot of the social scale a man may dis- play his invention only by discovering what there is for him to do, while at the top he imagines what may be done and discovers the means of doing it. Low down in the scale of labor, as for instance, in the case of the scavenger, it may seem to be straining the meaning of words to describe his work as constructional. But this is due to our habit of disintegrating life. We regard him as a single being, an instance of specialization. As soon as we correlate him with the Wholeness of Life, we see him engaged, however himibly, in his share of building up the collective health, comfort and convenience of the community. In the aggregate of the social structure the scavenger is necessary as well as the poet or the statesman. Meanwhile, as the social structure becomes more scientifically and artistically organized, the char- acter of labor, even in its humblest functions, will be ameliorated. For example, in the case of scavenging, it is only a question of time how soon the pneumatic cleaner which has been introduced into the interior of buildings will be found practical CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY 169 for outside purposes. Regarded solely as a me- chanical problem, we are told that already it has been found practicable; but that there are condi- tions which still militate against its application; some of which are physical and some human, that is to say affecting existing relations between man and man. It is not necessary for our present purpose to specify these objections; but rather to suggest that this may be one of the innumerable instances, exhibited during the past hundred years or so, of men opposing mechanical contrivances, which the wit of the inventor-constructor has devised for social betterment. For machinery has not only been opposed at every step by the man who views it as a rival that will oust him from his job, but is still de- preciated by spiritual and artistic idealists. They profess to see in it the substitution of inanimate, conscienceless force for the liberty of inventive creativeness and the individual's pride in the work of his own hands. Yet there is no possible getting around the fact that, as soon as individualism was liberated by the American and French Revolutions, the most immediate and signal use it made of its liberty was to devise a myriad mechanical contrivances for relieving itself of individual effort. The profound distinction, differentiating the past century from previous ones, is that it has been a scientific and mechanical age. Its temples I70 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE have been laboratories, the high priests of which are the chemist, biologist, physiologist, bacteri- ologist and surgeon; its studios the workshops of the engineer, the inventor and the machinist. The scientists have ministered to a new religion, that of the Wholeness, the Holiness, the Healthful- ness of Life; while the mechanicians have labored to reduce the strain on life and increase its effec- tiveness over nature. The achievements in both departments have been so rapid and marvelous that mankind has not yet adjusted itself to the magnitude and splendor of the new horizon of hope and promise, unfolding to its view. En- franchised from arbitrary restrictions, mental, political and social, it has reenslaved itself; this time to matter and to the machinery of its own invention. In its preoccupation with the scien- tific it has grown blind to the spiritual; in its in- fatuation for the mechanical it has lost its sense of the artistic. The consequence is, that the blessings which science is bestowing do not flow freely through the common life. Even the Healthfulness of Life is less abundant than it might be, while the Holiness is but little increased. Both are checked by a mechanicalness that devastates the Whole- ness of Life. The reason is that machinery is viewed and treated too much as a means of increasing man's effectiveness over nature; too little as a means of reducing the strain upon his CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY 171 life and of liberating it for the Pursuit of Happi- ness through Beauty of Living. Today the employer of labor turns a crank and the electric current sets in motion the hun- dred, five hundred or thousand sewing machines in his shop; and the hundred, five hundred or thousand men and women, relieved from the fatigue of producing the power in their individual machines, can operate with their heads and hands more freely and effectively. So far, so good. But the employer gives another turn to the crank. As every automobilist has experienced, there is such a fascination in the sense of power within the control of the hands that it is hard to resist the temptation to "let her out a bit farther.'* Moreover, in the case of the employer there is the added temptation of increased production and increased profits. He gives another turn. More power leaps forth and the speed of the machines is multiplied. To keep pace with it the hands of the workers must increase their speed, and at greater risk of being caught and maimed in the machinery. In avoiding danger and accom- modating themselves to the speed, the tension upon the brains of the workers is unduly strained. The extra stress upon the machine the employer puts down to profit and loss; but where is the profit and who counts the loss in the case of the men and the women who thereby have been reduced to human machines? They are turned 172 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE off in the evening when the power is turned off and turn up in the morning when the power is turned on. But what of the interval: the only part of their lives which they can call their own? For the rest of their Life is the price they pay for Living. It is dijB&cult to see how that interval can be spent in the Healthful Pursuit of Happiness. Either the sensibility of the workers is blunted by the prolonged strain, so that a stupor of fatigue oppresses them; or it is stimulated to a nervous intensity which only the sensational can appease. They must devour the most sensational papers or walk the streets in a hunger for sensa- tion. Moreover, the evil does not stop with these men and women. They are the future fathers and mothers of the race. What sort of breed of bodily stunted and mentally abnormal children is in actual everyday process of being produced? This illustration is typical of one aspect of our mechanical age. There is another. It is typi- fied in what you may witness in a visit to one of the steel-rolling mills. Here, if anywhere, is to be witnessed the triumph of invention over brute force, of mind, embodied in constructional mechanics, over matter. The operations are of Titanic proportions, yet the processes, to the uninitiated, seem so simple that a child might work them. Indeed, the marvel is, that the material, after it has been started on its way, CONSTRUCTIVE FACULTY 173 appears to be pursuing its own development; issuing from the mill, red-hot and eager, pushing forward with steady, stealing movement; then halting and returning in its tracks to reenter the mill, again to issue forth, more tempered, to reach a still further goal of purpose. You watch the pro- cess and it needs almost an effort of imagination to realize that somewhere at the back of it man is actually regulating every stage of the proceedings. Or again, you may witness, as I did on one occasion, the demoUshing of the used-up fire-clay lining of a furnace. It was still livid with heat. Nearly two days would have been necessary for cooling before it could have been entered by men. But there approaches down the length of the lofty shed a traveling crane, suspended from the roof so that it seems to be riding in the air. It halts before the furnace and thrusts into it a long neck, terminating in a beak, with which it batters and pecks at the red-hot lining. This way and that over the surface and into the corners moves the craning neck, and every thrust of its beak is followed by the crash and roar of crumbHng flakes of fire clay. Meanwhile, high up in the cool of the shed, free from the lung-choking dust, sits a man, controlling the monster's strength and directing its efforts with a few levers. If this man, outside his hours of labor, fails in the Pur- suit of Happiness, it would seem as if the blame could not be laid to machinery. Yet there are 174 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE people who still decry this mechanical age; and others, again, who employ the miracles of machinery not for the healing but the enslaving of their fellow-beings. It seems to be lack of imagination that causes people to decry machinery. They see it only as inanimate matter; they have not the imagination to reaHze that some of the spirit of man has been already breathed into it and more will be; that the machine is to become to man his alter ego, his second self, more and more to liberate his first seK from the bondage of his needs and to leave him freer and freer to cultivate the desires of the spirit. Imagination must be fostered in the young. They have it at the start; but it is flattened out of them by the steam-roller of our systematised, rather than organized, methods of education. The great need of our time is more imagination; I mean, spiritual imagination. For there has been no lack of imagination; during the past century there has been imagination more abundant than ever before, but it has been ex- pended chiefly on mechanics and science, until the imagination even of those who are not scien- tists or inventors has become mechanical and limited to material issues. Through our children must be restored to mankind the spiritual imagina- tion with its vision of Beauty of Life and Living. CHAPTER XXI TEE RECONCILIATION OF ART AND MACHINERY THE protest against the mechanicalness of the age is also founded upon, so- called, artistic considerations. Machin- ery and factories, conducted upon commercial lines, it is contended, have almost entirely superseded the individual artist's working in the joy and pride of his handiwork and in the pursuit of Beauty rather than of profit. The craftsman's products were stamped with his own personality; they grew under his hand in response to the lively creativeness of his brain. Even if the general design were repeated, the feeling and expression had the variety of separate, creative acts. As compared with this, the ma- chine-made articles are multiplied with Hfeless uniformity; their expression is not of liberty of creative invention but the monotonous uni- formity of an inanimate, soulless machine. Such production, while itself inferior in artistic quali- ties, also robs the workman of his privilege as an artist and condemns him to the "damnable iteration" of mechanical toil. 176 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE This is the pith of the criticism leveled against machinery in connection with the production of articles which permit of beauty of design. You will observe that I have not included the inferior- ity of design represented in machine-made goods. This used to be advanced as an objection; but improved knowledge and taste on the part of manufacturers and the public have already led to an improvement in the qualities of design, and there is no inherent reason why the advance shall not be continued. Unquestionably it will be, until the finest available designers will be employed to direct their production. Nor is it to be forgotten that not every craftsman, because he takes a pride and joy in his work, is necessarily a good designer. By no means all are Benvenuto Cellinis, nor was Cellini always as good as himself. There have been, and still are, among individual craftsmen exceedingly poor designers, and much modern Arts and Crafts work is unquestionably inferior in design and not seldom inferior in crafts- manship to the output of the factories. For, after all, perhaps, it is less a question of system than of men. And it is here that we may detect a possible solving of the problem. For even in the "good old days" a master- craftsman maintained a workship and assistants, who reUeved him of the more mechanical parts of the labor and were in turn inspired by him to higher standards of achievement. Such a system ART AND MACHINERY 177 of mutual helpfulness practically existed between the late John La Farge and the firm which trans- lated into glass the master-artist's designs for decorated windows. He had worked with the same men so continually and intimately, that he had imbued them with a sensibility of feeling which enabled them to interpret with extraordi- nary sympathy and understanding the subtleties of his designs. Here, surely, is the clue to the future of the artistic handicrafts. It leads to some such sys- tem as the following. An artist, for example, in jewelry, such a one as the great Lalique in Paris, will continue to work in his own studio upon his own designs. But during a part of his time he will be employed as the master-artist at the head of a jewelry workshop. He will have in the designing room a staff of assistant designers, eager for the privilege of working under his guidance and inspiration. He will walk in the workshops and mingle intimately with the crafts- men, helping them with criticism and encourage- ment; also training the assistant designers to be similarly helpful. As far as possible — and who knows how far that will be? — much farther than today we dream of — the limitations es- tabHshed by machinery will be counteracted. Machinery will do the purely mechanical part, but it will not enslave the liberty of the crafts- man's spirit. Some means wiU be discovered to 178 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE make machinery a more tractable and less exact- ing servant. Meanwhile the factory will be per- vaded with a new atmosphere of comradeship in the Pursuit of Beauty and perfect craftsmanship. From the employers and master-artist downward all will work in love of their craft and with a com- mon pride in the product of their united labors. It is only in some such direction as this that the future of the handicrafts holds any promise of advancement. For machines and the factory output will continue to be facts which have to be reckoned with. They are here to stay; essential elements in the modern progress toward collective social organization. It is no use regretting or ignoring them. We must accept them and dis- cover the means to correct their crudeness and compel them into the service of Beauty; Beauty in the thing made and Beauty in the Hves of the workers. The enthusiasts who are trying to stimulate the handicrafts by extolling the indi- vidual craftsman at the expense of what they call contemptuously the "commercial system" and are booming a good deal of individual work, fully as crude and inefficient in the way of Beauty, are simply attempting to stay the on-moving ocean tide with a mop. Moreover, they are main- taining one of the artificial barriers which interfere with the Wholeness of Life. For this distinction assumes an inevitable antagonism between what is "commercial" and what is "artistic." ART AND MACHINERY 179 There may be some artists who are absolutely indifferent to commercial considerations, as there certainly are some commercial people who are indifferent to considerations of art. But most artists are properly conscious of being, like other workmen, worthy of their hire, and need and enjoy the money-profits of their art. On the other hand, most commercial people not only realize the need of enhancing the value of their commodities by artistic means but also take a pride in doing so. What stands in their way is really the ignorance of a very large part of the public as to what is beautiful. It is in training the public, especially the yornig people, to desire and appreciate Beauty and to demand the evidence of it in every department of hfe, ^ and also in cooperating with employers to secure more Beauty in their factories and products and in the Lives of the workers, that our enthusiasm would be better expended. In a word, while firm in the belief that the world must continue to need great individual artists, let us recognize that the bulk of the world's work must be done through the medium of machinery and factories and accordingly con- centrate our enthusiasm on organizing to higher efl&ciency the capabilities inherent in these col- lective processes of adding to the Beauty and Happiness of Life. This vision of the factory, inspired by the i8o ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE master-artist, is permeated with the spirit of comradeship, cemented in love of the craft and pride in the product. It is only so that liberty can be regained by the worker and that his enslavement to the machine can be averted. For machinery and the factory involve of necessity a division of labor. No man can take the full joy and pride in doing his particular stunt of work, as does the worker who sees and feels the product grow from start to finish under his own hand. If the worker in the collective organiza- tion is to be able to recover this joy and pride of craftsmanship, it must be in himself as part of a common Whole, in the joy of cooperation and the pride of Collective Effort. It is the joy and pride of the Grand Army man: aroused, however, not by comradeship in the arts of war but by comradeship in the arts of peace. It is possible and it must come; for organization of All in the Whole represents the spirit of the age and the spirit must be informed with pride and devotion to the common cause. When this ideal becomes a living motive of work, the mechanicalness of the age will gradually lose such ruthlessness and crudity as it now in- volves. Machinery will become a miraculous tool in man's hand to complete his Scientific- Artistic Organization of Life; a means, not only of in- creased efficiency, but also of lightening the burden of labor and of giving to the individual a larger ART AND MACHINERY i8i share of his Life for the Pursuit of Beautiful and Happy living. * * * * ♦ * * Everyone knows, but many overlook the significance of the fact, that machinery has not only taken possession of the domain of material production, but has also invaded what used to be regarded as the sacred inclosure of the arts. We have grown so accustomed to the power- press that we overlook its influence upon not only the quantity but the character of literature. In our familiarity with the photograph we are apt to lose sight of its effect upon painting. Similarly, we may have ignored the import of the mechanical player and gramophone in re- lation to music and of the moving-picture show to the drama. We accept the facts of these things and are blind to their significance. They are evidences, if any were needed, that machinery is a corollary of Democracy. That, as society becomes more scientifically and artis- tically organized, so must be organized also all the processes by which its needs and desires are satisfied. That the multiplication of those who demand to have their needs and desires satisfied necessitates a multiplication of the means. That human hands can no longer suffice to sup- ply the demand, and that the very extension to the many of the privileges, once enjoyed only by the few, renders machinery not only a neces- i82 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE sity but a blessing to Democracy. Possibly, indeed, it is not overstating the case to assert that machinery is the greatest triumph yet achieved by Democracy. That when the latter has organized the human relations to the same degree of efficiency that it has organized the mechanical components of a machine, it will verily have attained to its ideal of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Nor will this involve a suppression of what is finest and most valuable in the individual. There will only be the greater, because more widely demanded and more fully appreciated, need of the great inventor, constructor, organ- izer, artist. The gramophone will demand more than ever the services of the great singer; the mechanical player, of the great interpreter of music; the moving-picture show, those of the most elevating and compelling actors. What these artists will lose by not being in direct touch with their audience they will more than gain in the consciousness of the vaster audience they appeal to. They too, like the workers in the factories, will learn to find their highest joy and pride in being a vital part of the immense collective Whole. They will win a greater reward in the universality of their influence, and will have the greater incitement to the highest kind of ambition. It will lead eventually, not to the degradation but to the further uplifting of Art. ART AND MACHINERY 183 For note what has happened in the case of painting. There was a time when painters en- joyed a monopoly of the art of picture-making. Then, about the time that the invention of raised type and the printing press made it possible to multiply books, there arose the etcher and engraver, who multiplied their pictures at com- paratively small cost; either their own original pictures or copies of those of others. Some three hundred and fifty years later, namely, in 1796, Senefelder developed the multiplying process of lithography. Finally, in 1839, Baguerre intro- duced his process of photography. Now, the latter differs from the previous multiplying processes in several particulars. The engraver, etcher and lithographer can draw either from the model or "out of their own heads," and, if they use a model, can include as much or as little of it as they choose and alter its shape and expression and character as they will. But the photographer is much more de- pendent on his model. He, too, by his manage- ment of the hght and by his skill and art in all the processes of making a negative, developing and printing, can exercise selection and eliminate and modify the expression of the model; so that the result is not a mere mechanical record but actually a picture, characterized by the qualities of tone and light and shade, by Fitness, Balance, Unity, Harmony and Rhythm. Within i84 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE its range a photograph can be a work of art. Meanwhile, although it can now reproduce color and the actual movement of life, it is still, in the final analysis, dependent on the original model. It cannot do without the latter and can only deviate a little from the actual appearance. It can modify but not use it freely in response to that high faculty of the human mind — the creative imagination. Hence photography is beginning to react on painting to the latter's betterment. It is begin- ning to be realized by painters that in their pursuit of the naturalistic and impressionistic motives, they have been voluntarily accepting the rivalry of the photograph. That those motives, since they rely on the actual appear- ance of the model, are in essential fact photo- graphic. Meanwhile they have neglected too long the imaginative-creative motive and it is to this that the most modern painters are returning. In a word, this is only another instance of the fact that ultimately art which is produced by mechanical aid will not exterminate but inspire to higher purpose the individual artist. For Samson's riddle is still the riddle of life: "Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness." But, to this end, the need of Art is more spiritual imagination in the Artist. CHAPTER XXII FITNESS IT used to be said of an American artist, now deceased, that he had a great deal of taste, some of it good. His art might have been described as the art of selling old lamps for new. For he was an architect and, whether the problem that confronted him was that of a Hbrary or a private residence, a store, railroad station or office building, he would base its design on one or more examples of Greek, Roman or Italian Re- naissance architecture. In fact, the inventive- constructive faculty in him had been reduced to an ingenious plagiarism, which sometimes resulted in a building^/ for its modem purpose — wherein he demonstrated his "good" taste — and sometimes did not. Of one of his examples of unfitness a story is told which has the earmarks of being true. He had prepared a design for a college Hbrary and showed it to his partner. The latter being also an architectural resurrectionist, was deHghted with this piecemeal adaptation of sundry temple designs. He turned to his colleague and was surprised to see his face clouded with indecision. i86 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE "What's the matter?" he exclaimed, "don't you like your design?" "Oh! the design is all right," was the reply, "but I don't see where they are to put the blamed books!" The library stands today, a signal example of a beautiful building that lacks the first element of true Beauty, namely. Fitness, as "they," to wit, the librarian and his staff, who are still wondering where to put the books, can attest. Another example of architectural unfitness is presented by one of the small parks in a crowded section of New York. The site was originally a disused cemetery which the City had been in- duced by the newly founded Playground Associa- tion to convert into a place of recreation for the people. The commission was given to a well- known firm of architects. Consider for a moment the nature of the prob- lem. It was a twofold one: firstly, to provide a place of rest for adults and of play for the children; secondly, to do it in such a way that the value of these breathing spots in a congested neighborhood might be clearly demonstrated. For, at the time, the movement, started by private citizens for playgrounds and small parks, was a new one and needed to commend itself to the intelligence and support of the public at large. But these practical considerations apparently did not enter into the viewpoint of the selected architects. For they, too, were resurrectionists, FITNESS 187 engaged in the business of architectural body- snatching. Grimly appropriate, you may say, since they were operating on a graveyard! However, it was from graveyards as far distant as Italy in the period of aristocratic preeminence; to be precise, from the model of the gardens of princely villas of the Renaissance, that these men took their motive for a playground in one of the poorest parts of our modem democratic city. "Per Bacco!" one can fancy them exclaiming, "here is a chance to erect a Belvidere, from the base of which water shall spout into an ornamental basin, surrounded by a path for stately prome- naders; the sides to be enclosed by beveled walls of turf, terminating in an upper promenade for fair dames and gallant gentlemen!" So they dis- turbed the long repose of bygone citizens by excavating a huge and deep hole that occupied some two- thirds of the available area; laid their paths in cement and, regardless of considerations of grass-mowing, constructed the steep slopes and completed the artistic (?) character of the design with a balustraded terrace, surmounted by a little classic device of a dome, standing on col- immed legs. Then they rested from their labors, happy in the conviction that they had promoted the cause of civilization and of art in that be- nighted neighborhood. They had, however, omitted to plant trees or provide a particle of shade except the patch which i88 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE traveled round the classic dome. So when the tired mothers came out of the tenements, they had to sit in the sun with their feet on the sun- baked pavements, where alone was playroom for the children. And, as they sat and stewed in the heat, ever and anon the air would be riven with a tiny cry, echoed by the scream of a mother, as she saw her babe rolling down the slope and heading for the water basin. But for the Irish policeman, detailed to keep watch over this Italian incongruity, who shall say how the rate of infant mortality would have been increased? As it was, the babies had committed a technical violation of the ordinances by trespassing on the grass. So the blessings of classic civilization and of art made small progress among the mothers and failed to commend itself to the intelligence of the Playground Association. The "artistic'' layout was discovered to be quite unfit for its purpose. Accordingly when an addition was made to the park, the architects were left severely alone, a large flat place was cleared and swings were set up and sliding boards, so that the Uttle ones could make merry, while their mothers rested, and the City be freed from the charge of being accessory to infanticide. Lately, when I visited the Park, this end of it resoimded with happiness; while the other was abandoned to its aristocratic Unfitness for our democratic requirements. FITNESS 189 When artists themselves can be so foolishly indifferent to the claims of Fitness in design, it is not surprising that a practical pubHc is disposed to be suspicious of Art. Nor does the plagiarism stop short with the architects. It extends to the painters. Called upon to decorate the "Classic" buildings with mural paintings, they have been taught by the architects that their work must be in "subordinate harmony" with the architectural structure. Since the latter has been pieced to- gether with details borrowed from ItaHan Renais- sance designs, the paintings must exhibit their imitation of the same motive. Sometimes the painter has been sent to Italy to copy directly and slavishly a ceiHng or the interior of a chamber. More frequently he is required to work "in the style" of ItaHan art. Accordingly, in most cases, he takes Raphael for his model and tries to imitate not the spirit but the manner of that great decorator. For Raphael belonged to the spirit of his own time. That spirit, on the one hand, was impregnated with the newly acquired Greek culture and, on the other, was accustomed in its dramatic representa- tions to the elaborate mise-en-scenes of masques and the abstraction of allegory. These Raphael made the models for the designs of his decorations in the Stanze or ceremonial chambers of the Vatican. They are the superb reflection of an age of splendid aristocratic Ufe and still remain I90 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE profoundly interesting, because they embody the religion, culture and psychology of their own day. If our painters wish to emulate the greatness of a Raphael, they should work in a like spirit, as interpreters and exponents of the ideals of our modem Democracy. If they did so, they would discover for themselves a manner in which to fitly represent them. But to copy only the manner of Raphael is to attempt to construct something Hve out of dead bones. Yet this is what a great deal of our mural decoration repre- sents. The painter introduces Classical allusions which are gibberish to the vast majority of our citizens, or allegorical suggestions which are equally remote from the modern consciousness. Raphael represented, for example, the idea of Jurisprudence as composed of three elementary ideas: Truth, Moderation and Firmness. These were embodied allegorically in draped female figures, holding, respectively, a mirror, a bridle and an oak branch. This was intelligible to the men of his generation, and is so to us, if we put ourselves inside the thought of that day. But it is not the habit of thought of our own day. We think in the concrete rather than in abstractions. If you wish to bring an idea home to the consciousness of people, you must invest it with concrete significance. A lady draped in cheesecloth, holding a toy steamship, will not convey to the modem imagination the complexity FITNESS 191 and magnitude of the idea involved in "Com- merce." Nor, if you substitute a toy building for the steamship, are we adequately impressed with the significance of "Architecture''; while the same lady holding a retort, fails to suggest the miracles and the blessings of "Science." Certainly we need to have the virtue of "Truth" enforced in our day; but are not likely to be inspired thereto by a naked lady staring at a mirror; the more so that, if the Artist gives her a self-satisfied smile, we are asked to recognize her as "Vanity." Nor will the painting of a lady, distinguished by a bandaged eye, a sword, and a scale, thrill us with a sense of the Need and Beauty of "Justice." Yet this is what is being done by too many of our painters. While they should be fitting new forms to our new habits of consciousness, com- mensurate with our democratic ideals and prog- ress, they are using old forms which do not fit the modem needs. For our life and aspirations are too real to be expressed by cheesecloth and allegorical junk. It was a banker of the Middle West, himself a lover of the arts, who characterized the whole of this stuff as "Purity handing a pianola to Agriculture!" CHAPTER XXin FITNESS IN OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN the earlier days of our Republic, when there were practically no art traditions and the few schools of art were inadequate, it was neces- sary for our artists to derive their inspiration and instruction from the Old World. It is still neces- sary that they travel abroad and acquaint them- selves with the masterpieces of the past. But it should be for their general culture, to enlarge their vision and their comprehension of the possi- bilities of Art, even as a wide and thorough knowl- edge of history is useful to a statesman in his grappHng with the problems of the present. A statesman, however, does not imitate the manner and form of the past, since he knows them to have been associated with conditions and ideals that differ from those of today. But he learns to distinguish in the past such institutions and laws as were the products of perennial conditions and ideals and such as were the reflection of accidental or temporary conditions or the mere hasty response to ideals not yet sufficiently reaHzed. He thereby gets a grip on fundamental principles which he can apply to the new require- OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 193 ments of his own age. And such should be the artist's attitude. But, until recently, this has not been the atti- tude of our artists; notably of the architects, whose art, being largely a product of necessity, always takes the lead in the Fine Arts. For a time our leading architects were graduates of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. They brought back, on the one hand, a refined taste and a knowledge of the science of organizing the plan of a build- ing; spreading, in consequence, an improved taste throughout the community and gradually dis- persing the common notion that architecture is only building. On the other hand, they brought back the fixed idea that the only architecture which amounted to anything is that which em- bodies the Classic, that is to say, the Greek or Roman styles, or that of the Italian Renaissance. Their only recipe for big buildings has been: Set up columns in a row; place a cornice upon them and surmount with a pediment; then, if the appropriation runs to it, top off the whole with a dome. For smaller buildings the recipe has been: Use columns and pediments, not as part of the construction, but applied to the surface as ornament, and crown with cornice. For sug- gestion as to the whole design and information as to details consult the measured drawings and pho- tographs of heathen temples, or St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, or Roman, Florentine, Venetian 194 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE palaces ad lib. Meanwhile, see to it that your craftsmen express no feeling of their own, but copy exactly the copy that you have made of the antique original. These architects, in fact, after divesting them- selves of all creative individuality, have prevented the growth of creative ability in the craftsman, not excepting, in many instances, the mural deco- rator and the sculptor. Their borrowed and imita- tive "art" is in itself and in its influence upon the craftsman a direct contradiction of the genius of the coimtry, for this is exhibiting itself in a growth of creative individuality that is phenomenal. However, there is this much to be said for these imitative architects, especially in connection with their designs for private houses and for the stores which cater to the rich. They have responded to a partial symptom of our so-called democratic civilization. For the latter in one respect, at least, resembles the aristocratic conditions of the Italian Renaissance; it stUl involves a privileged class: a Plutocratic Aristocracy. So, for the present, there may be some reasonableness in money and power entrenching themselves in pal- aces that are modeled on those of ItaHan palaces and French chateaux^ and furnished with the belongings which have been imported from them. But in any consideration of Art in relation to our Life, do not let us take seriously these imitative panderings to American privilege. OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 195 One would rather contemplate, as character- istically Democratic, the way in which the art of the architect is being expended upon school- houses and hospitals. For in these the architect is working in response to the collective needs of the community and in touch with the most ad- vanced science of Life. Informed by scientists, whether educators, physicians, surgeons or chem- ists, as to the nature of the needs, he is using his creative-inventive faculty to meet the demand by buildings organically fit and efiicient. Hence, all about us there is represented in schoolhouses and hospitals a renaissance of the art of archi- tecture. Many of the buildings proclaim in their external design the dignity of their high purpose. All should and in time all will, as we realize that external Beauty is the fit complement of internal Fitness; the outward and visible sign of the faith that is in us. Meanwhile, there is another branch of archi- tecture which has grown out of the needs of our conditions and is gradually becoming expressive of the national aspiration. I allude to what are popularly called "skyscrapers": namely, office buildings, business buildings and loft buildings. The origin and the growth of these have not been conditioned by fashion or luxurious whim but by necessity. The high value of land in the business parts of cities has made it impracticable to spread 196 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE the buildings horizontally. There was only one alternative — to raise them skyward. This verti- cal growth was made possible by the improved methods of steel-rolling-mills, the invention of the elevator and the science generally of the engi- neer. The skyscraper, in fact, is a creation of engineering; the only strictly architectural prob- lem involved being that of clothing the steel structure with a veneer of marble, bricks, terra- cotta or concrete. For the solution of this problem there was no direct help to be gotten from antique data, since of the only building which might have offered suggestion, the Tower of Babel, the record is but scanty and not of expert or technical precision. Accordingly the architects began by piling one arrangement of columns on another, or by merely stacking up the necessary number of rows of windows. This method unfortunately still con- tinues. Meanwhile, certain architects, thought- fully considering the artistic principle involved, discovered the analogy presented by a column. The latter is mounted on a base, ascends in a shaft and terminates in a capital; its beauty consists in its upward growth, terminating in a conclusion. So they reasoned from this that a skyscraper could be transformed from a mere repetition of horizontal parts into an organic, vertical Unity by emphasizing the idea of upward growth. This could be done, when the cost OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 197 permitted, by running ribs of projecting masonry up the entire height. These would counteract the horizontal repetition and carry the eye up unin- terruptedly. Or, when the cost precluded this, the same effect could be obtained by so arranging the windows, that some of the vertical intervals of wall-space should be wider than the others, thus producing shafts of masonry which carry the eye upward. The former method is in the nature of appUed features; the latter, however, is purely one of construction, involving neither more nor less material, but simply organizing it for greater efficiency of expression. By a little observation everyone can see for himself how far this principle has been applied in a given building and its effect upon the latter as compared with buildings where it has been ignored or applied less happily. The skyscrapers, even when the external design is not as satisfactory as it might have been, are marvels of engineering organization. For buried deep in the ground is a complex system, reduced to order, of machinery for supplying heat, light, ventilation and elevator service; while the upper part involves a network of wires and pipes, con- necting the multitude of offices, many of which are fitted with highly organized arrangements for the convenient dispatch of business. Many house during the day a population equal to that of a small-sized city, while almost all are in their internal arrangements marvelous examples 198 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE of what can be accomplished by organized co- operation, if there are the will, the energy and the inventive capacity behind it. The expression of these skyscrapers, at present, is by no means solely of Beauty. Many of them are monuments of Ugliness, the expressions mainly of aggressive materiahsm. All tend to convert the narrow streets into canons, robbed of sunshine and swept with the tempestuous eddies of down- draughts of wind. Their immediate Fitness for specific conditions has not yet been accommodated to the general Fitness of city-designing; and their more than occasional Ugliness testifies to crude- ness, ruthlessness and disregard of the finer ele- ments of life in commercial and civic conditions. Yet, if you will view them not as separate build- ings but in their aggregate relations, it will be found that they compose into masses and sky lines, not only titanic but grandly impressive. Viewed in their Wholeness of relation, individual short- comings become merged in an ensemble as mar- velous as it is inspiring. For their Wholeness does not appeal only to the eye of sight. It appeals also to the eye of vision. The imagina- tion discovers in these products of necessity not only their Fitness to material needs, but also a fit expression of the aspiration, dauntless ad- venture and superb independence of the soul of this new civilization. They illustrate the truth that man, when in earnest, ever builds better OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 199 than he knows; and that his work, while it may reflect his weakness, is a symbol and expression also of the best that is in him. Moreover — a fact of happy augury — they are in their beauty and their ugliness, an expression of the northern genius as contrasted with the Mediterranean. They derive from those elements in our race which still survive from its primitive origin, when the untamed freedom of spirit of the race, and its far-reaching and gigantic vision, fashioned its life on large and natural lines against a spiritual background of mighty heroes and uncouth elemental gods. As its energy became controlled and organized, the genius of the race expressed itself in the "unity of variations'' that characterizes the Gothic cathedral. Today, the same genius, similarly characterized by the sig- nificance of unity in variety, is working toward an expression of itself in architecture which will be an adequate symbol and expression of its faith and hope in Life. When that faith shall have become as noble, embracing and intent upon the common good as was the Medieval ReHgious faith, its embodiment in architecture will grow to be as beautiful — in a different way, its own way — as was that of the cathedrals. Indeed, it may become more beautiful, because it will be associated with beautiful and healthful conditions and with the evidences of Beauty, not only in certain buildings 200 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE and their aggregate relations, but in their wide- spread relations to all the other varieties in unity of the true City Beautiful. Meanwhile, they already involve the assurance of this hope being some day realized, since their conspicuous element is Fitness; fitness to their immediate needs, and fitness to the genius of the race. They have grown out of facts and have in them the fact of growth : needing for their develop- ment only a further Fitness to the higher and finer elements that are growing in our civilization. And this involves the need that the community itself shall fit its conduct and ideals closer and closer to the possibilities of Democracy. For it is not alone in the specific field of Art that our present conditions betray evidences of unfitness. In all directions we find ourselves encumbered and checked in progress by the per- sistence of the past. Nor are we singular in this respect. Everywhere the modern world is strait- ened in its growth by the tight-fitting clothes that it has inherited from the wardrobe of the past. Especially is the pinch felt in countries Hke the United States and Great Britain, for in them the democratic ideal has made greatest headway and yet is perpetually thwarted by the hold-over of the aristocratic, the grip of which has been clinched by the growth of a bourgeois aristocracy, OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 201 founded upon money and the power thereof. Every reform in the interest of all is hampered by the need of compromising with these vested interests. None gets an opportunity of being devised and tested solely on the basis of its Fitness to secure the end, in which, as a nation, we pro- fess to believe: the right of all, irrespective of class, creed or color, to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. It will be objected that it is the wisdom of experience that every step forward must be based upon compromise with that part of the present which belongs to the past. I admit it; for the only reforms which prove worthy and lasting are those that represent a growth from what has been to what shall be. But in healthy, natural growth the inheritance of the past is not stubbornly op- posing the expansion of the present; which is too frequently the case in the story of human growth. In the latter the compromise is seldom a frank and sincere adjustment of old and new conditions. It is rather an extortion of concessions from re- luctant interests, when they find themselves con- fronted with the inevitable. The recognition of the Fitness of any given step in growth is apt to be all on one side. Meanwhile, is it not a fact that all progress is the result of continual refitting: due to a live recognition of what is fit and what is unfit? The progress, for example, which is being made in the 202 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE government of cities is due to the acknowledgment, that the business of municipal government has been conducted on lines which in the management of private business would mean bankruptcy and accordingly would not be tolerated for a moment; and that mimicipal reforms are a question of economics, wherein the Fitness of the means to the end is a principle of first importance. On the other hand, the slowness of progress in this and other reforms is due to the indifference to^ Fitness which is displayed by the masses of the people in all matters which do not immediately concern their selfish, individual interests. Nor is the cause of this far to seek. What provision is made for training the young in a sense of the importance of Fitness? We are recognizing the importance of vocational training and progress is being made in providing it. But this, at best, is only provision for the specific purpose of making a Living. What provision is being made to train the child in the abstract principles of Fitness that wiU prepare it for the larger vocation of Life and Living? What, if any- thing, is being done to fit it by knowledge for the proper management of its own body: to fit it for the proper exercise of its sensations, emotions and intelligence? What to fit it for citizenship? I do not speak of generalizations in connection with the. flag and patriotism. These are useful in creating a fine spirit; but what is being done OUR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 203 to direct this spirit toward the specific duties, responsibilities and privileges of citizenship? Is the child being taught to think along specific lines that will fit him to apply the principles of Fitness to each and all of these as he will meet them in the life outside the school? Hitherto, our schools, while unsectarian, have been also unpoHtical; that is to say, they have not attempted to bias the child in the direction of the Republican or Democratic point of view. But this sectarian idea of politics is everywhere being swallowed up in a larger idea of politics; namely, that it is a question of economics. Is nothing going to be done to fit the child in advance for useful citizenship in this economic idea of government? The question surely involves its own answer. And the plea I make is that we need to supple- ment the abstract ideas of patriotism, with the abstract ideas with which this book concludes; the first of which is Fitness. Fitness should be taught as a great elemental principle, on which all true growth of Life must be established. Fitness should be one of the ideas continually presented to the child, until the necessity of it becomes a fixed habit of thought. And in their several degrees each one of the specific branches of study should be made to illustrate continually the Beauty and Value of Fitness, as associated with Wholeness, Harmony, Balance and Rhythm in the Beauty of Life and Living. 204 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Such coordination will infuse fuller life, mean- ing and interest into the specific study, while the knowledge that all the other branches of study are being similarly coordinated to these basic principles will infuse with fuller life and meaning the whole curriculum. CHAPTER XXIV UNITY, WHOLENESS, HEALTHINESS, HOLINESS UNITY, the second of the principles upon which scientific-artistic organization must be based, has already engaged our attention. It is in a measure the topic of this entire book, in its plea for the removal of all artificial barriers which check the free growth of Hfe and consequently obstruct the fulfilment of the democratic ideal. Nor have we overlooked the fact that its EngUsh equivalent, Wholeness, is derived from the Germanic root whence also sprang Health and Holiness. In fact, the primi- tive instinct of our Northern race divined the truth and the promise which the latest modern science has ratified, that the highest physical, ethical and spiritual Health are the product of organic Wholeness. The instinct of Wholeness has ever been one of the chief motives of the artist in organizing his work of Art. He has taken the raw material of nature and by transmuting it into an organic Wholeness has enhanced its efficiency, significance and expression: its efficiency in the case of things 2o6 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE constructed for useful service, its significance and expression in the case of things intended primarily to impress our mind and feeling. The idea of Wholeness the artist learned from nature. For example, every plant and tree, in its complete- ness of root, stem, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit and seed-vessels, proclaims it. And the Wholeness of each plant or tree is the result of the relation of the parts. This is the secret whereby the artist has been able to render the Wholeness of his work of Art superior to that of the works of nature. He has carried further the principle of relativity. That oak tree, for example, developing under favorable conditions of light, air and space, has spread its roots through what there was of soft and energizing soil and fastened their grip about the rocks; has folded layer after layer of strength around its trunk; stretched its ample arms in the freedom of heaven and clothed their muscles with abundant glory of foliage. It is a noble instance of whole growth. But in the hap- hazard of nature it shares no Wholeness with the surrounding landscape; it has no directly organ- ized relationship to its environment. The artist, on the other hand, selecting this oak tree for the subject of his picture, selects also just so much of the meadow, hillside and sky as shall combine with the tree into an Organized Whole. He organizes his "composition,'' so that UNITY, HEALTHINESS 207 a new relationship is established between the tree and its surrounding; with the result that the significance of the tree and indeed of the whole selection of nature is enhanced; its expression rendered more noticeable and compelling. He has achieved this by judicious distribution of the lines and masses and colors over the surface of his canvas; thereby organizing the relation between all the parts of the composition, in order that their combined effect may be one of complete Wholeness. Shift the position of the lines and masses, change the disposition of the colors, or cut a piece off one side of the canvas and you disturb the relation and impair the Wholeness of the combination. It was ignorance of this principle of Wholeness that made the citizens of Amsterdam in the early part of the eighteenth century mutilate Rem- brandt's famous picture, the so-called Night Watch. They cut strips off the sides to make it fit the space in the room to which they removed it! Fortunately, before the outrage was com- mitted a copy of the picture, on a smaller scale, had been made by Gerrit Lundens. It now hangs in the National Gallery, showing not only that two figures have been lost from the group but also that the relation of the two principal figures to the whole has been changed. In the original, as it is to be seen in the Rijks Museum, in Amster- dam, they now appear to be stepping out of the 2o8 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE picture, whereas it was characteristic of Rem- brandt to keep all his figures within the hollow space that is represented, each occupying exactly its own space in due relation to the Whole. Simi- lar indifference to the principle of Wholeness is also frequently displayed by art-editors, who will sHce ojff a bit of the photograph of a picture to make it fit a space on the page. I doubt if they would permit the tailor to slice a bit off their own shoulders in order to fit them to a coat that he wished to sell them! Precisely similar mutilations are sometimes practiced by magazine editors upon short stories submitted for their approval and by theatrical managers on a play. In each case the artist has taken the raw material of nature and converted the straggling incidents, as he might have received them by hearsay or through the reports of a news- paper, or from his own observation of Hfe, and has organized them into a compact and interlocked Whole, thereby enhancing their significance. He has discovered the essentials of cause and effect which are involved in the incidents and also the essentials of character involved in the people who participate in them. He has searched into the relations which these facts of character establish between the different people and the influence which will be reciprocally excited by the individ- uals upon the incidents and by the incidents upon the individual. Thus, by paring away all unessen- UNITY, HEALTHINESS 209 tial details he has got down to the bone of the "conflict" which the clash of character and inci- dent involves and then proceeded to organize the essentials. Thus, the result, whether in the short story or the play, is no longer a mere recital of casual facts but presents in epitomized form an abstract of the Wholeness of Life. He begins with his Introduction. He intro- duces to us the characters and their environment, telling us just so much of their past as will help us to know them and to follow intelligently and with interest what is about to happen to them. Then he proceeds from the Introduction to the next step in the organizing of his plot — the Development. The characters being so and so and the conditions under which they come together being such and such, he gradually shows us how certain situations naturally grow out of this con- flict of personahties and environment. Thus he builds up, brick by brick, to the third stage, that of the Climax. This is the turning point of the story or play. It should have grown naturally out of all that has gone before, involving neither more nor less than what we have been shown of the characters and the conditions and the result- ant situations. It may or may not involve the shock of a striking situation, but it must be con- ditioned by the logic of cause and effect and be the direct and necessary product of what has pre- ceded it. Then follows the Denouement: the 2IO ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE untying of the knot, the unraveling of the snarl which the conflict of character and situation has occasioned. Sometimes the knot will be severed, as by the old Greek device of the "god in the machine," by the manifest interposition of Provi- dence, or by some surprise which the author springs upon us; or again, it may be loosened by everyday means. But, whatever the means adopted, the Denouement must be effected by some method that does not outrage probability; one, in fact, for which the author has in some way prepared us, so that the solving of the plot seems reasonable. And now the end is in sight. The artist takes his final step to the Conclusion or Catastrophe. Frequently a story or play ends in disaster to one or more of the characters, so that catastrophe has come to have a sinister meaning. But Hterally and originally it implies simply the " sudden turn " that is given to the plot to bring it to a finish. It is a figure of speech, practically equivalent to the "shutting to of the doors" implied in Conclusion. Each brings the organic growth of the plot to a completeness. The growth has been natural; but, because it has been organized, the Whole enhances the signifi- cance and impressiveness of the unregulated natural facts. Facts, which we forget as soon as we have read them in a newspaper or which we pass unnoticed in actual Hfe, become poignant, compelling and durable in memory, when they UNITY, HEALTHINESS 211 have been related into the Wholeness of a Work of Art. Meanwhile, how much do the public in their ignorance or indifference to Art care about natural growth and organized Wholeness? They are not seeking true and durable impressions of Hfe, but only to be amused for a few idle moments. Accordingly, many magazine editors and theatri- cal managers, knowing this and catering only or mainly to the cheapest and most commonplace sensations and emotions of their cHentele, insist upon a "happy ending" for the story or play. No matter how the facts of life may be distorted or the logic of cause and effect defied. Nature and Art alike must be abused in order that the dear people may be kept in their childish good humor with, as it were, a stick of candy. It is particularly in the case of plays that this mischievous tampering with natural growth and organized Wholeness of the plot is per- petrated. If we are disposed to dwell with despair over the scarcity of vital American plays and the inadequacy with which the few that are produced represent the facts and ideals of American life, it is but fair to remember the odds that confront the dramatist, especially the young one. Before he can get a chance of satisfy- ing the public, he must satisfy the manager. And the latter is interested in theatricalism, not in the drama of life. He is a creature of traditions, de- 212 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE rived from the box oj05ce. Such and such a play has paid ; such and such a one has not. He does not analyze the causes of the one or the other result; how far the latter was due to the period or conditions of its presentment. The one play paid; the other did not; so it is plays resem- bling the former that he chooses; anything that suggests a kinship with the latter he rejects. Moreover, having chosen the play that seems to correspond with the one which has already succeeded, he will not hesitate to alter it in rehearsal, to cut out this or insert that, in order to convert it more nearly into what he supposes will be a "safe thing,'' a "sure money-getter." Thus, the young writer soon discovers that his vision of Hfe counts for nothing, beside the musty, fusty, theatrical stage trickery which the manager relies upon to catch the dollars of the public. The beginner is not strong enough to hold his own; and, if after all his play fail, the manager lays the blame on him; whereas, if it succeed in making money, the manager takes the credit. "There, my boy," he explains to the author, "you see I was right." And perhaps the young author does see it in that Hght and thus rivets round his neck the gold chain by which the manager will lead him on, like a performing poodle, to further triumphs of theatrical somersaulting. Or he is obdurate in his ideal of representing real Hfe truly, kicks against the vulgar pricks and — starves. UNITY, HEALTHINESS 213 Meanwhile, the intelligent part of the public wonders why so Httle progress is made toward a real American Drama. One hope in sight for it and for the intelligent, conscientious author is through the movement that has been set on foot by inteUigent, would-be playgoers. It is known as the Drama League of America. Here again is an effort toward organized Wholeness. The scattered hosts of people, who would go to the theater, if they could be sure of an intelligent play, but have lost the habit of going through continual disappointment, are enrolling in this organization which already covers some twenty-eight States and includes a membership of over fifty thousand persons. Through a system of circulating bulletins which draw attention to meritorious plays and to the character of their merit, they are in a position to ignore the misleading rubbish which is circulated by the press agent and to select their plays with a reasonable chance of not being disappointed. The Association, in fact, is leading to the formation of an Organized Audience, which already is making the managers prick their ears and will in time compel them to recognize that the public are not all fools who can be fooled all the time. This indeed is but one more instance of the growing recognition in every department of Life of the value of Cooperation. For it is an unmis- takable feature of our time that the principle 214 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE of Collective Organization is superseding the older system of unquestioned Individualism. It is no doubt true that many combinations have been conceived and developed in defiance of the rights of others and are used for purposes which, if they benefit the community, do so only indirectly. But the same is true of the individuaHstic system. "Malefactors in high places'' and "predatory barons," restrainers of trade and of the lives and liberties of their fellows are as old as history. They worked for themselves and their own in- terests all the time; and for the most part were above the law. In fact, most of the great crimes of history are crimes of excessive individualism, beside which the crimes of combination pale into insignificance. But, unlike individualism, com- bination carries within it the possibihties and cer- tainty of reform, since it is a step in the direction of Cooperation. It is a phase, even though at present it may be a diseased one, of the Social Spirit, whereas aggressive Individualism is in its nature Anti-Social. Although the motto of our Government in- volves the principle of Cooperation, individuahsm was a necessary phase in the opening up of the vast waste places of the continent. The pioneers marched ahead of law and order and won the right to live, solely by their own strong hands and hearts. But, no sooner was settlement effected than the social instinct of Democracy everywhere, UNITY, HEALTHINESS 215 declared itself. The Collective Idea began to grow up alongside of that of individualism; and it is only a question of time when the logic of the Social Principle of Democracy will be fulfilled and the idea of Cooperative Wholeness will super- sede the waste and inefficiency of individualistic disintegration. If at present we are threatened with the evils of unregulated combination it is only because Democracy is progressing more quickly than the wit of man can keep up with, clogged as it stiU is with the economic encimi- brances of the past. CHAPTER XXV INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM IT is symptomatic of the leaps and bounds with which the spirit of Democracy is moving, that Napoleon is now being subjected to criticism. To his contemporaries in Europe he was a menace; but America, from a safe distance, regarded him as a hero, because he put himself at the head of a republican France, upset thrones, and to increase the embarrassment of England, coquetted with the United States. So far, the hero-worship of Napoleon in this country was mainly sentimental; but it took on a real devotion after the pioneer days when Individualism here was at its zenith. Then Napoleon, the arch individuaUst, reigned for a time unquestioned in the imagination of Ameri- cans. Now, however, with the development of the Collective Ideal of Democracy, first one his- torian and then another has dared to impugn the excessive individualism of the popular hero. They find him to have been anti-social, using the awakened republicanism of France for his own ends, stifling it in imperial mummery and thereby setting back the clock of his nation's progress; able to win, but not to hold; eminently destruc- tive, but too selfish for constructive statesmanship; INDIVIDUALISM — COLLECTIVISM 217 reckless of others' lives; using men, and women also, as food for his ambition and desires, then ruthlessly discarding them. In fact, historians are beginning to discover that it was Napoleon's lack of the Social Instinct which was the cause of his final undoing. Meanwhile, we have boasted of our own "Napo- leons" of this and of that, just as we have bowed down to "czars'' and "barons" in our midst. But these high-sounding names have lost their ring of sycophantic admiration; they have be- come unpopular. For the * Social idea of De- mocracy is rising and flowing every day more full; and people are getting together in their masses, and learning, however slowly, to cooperate with one another collectively for the common good. As woodmen mark the trees that are to be felled, so privilege, whether of individualism or com- bination, is scotched to go, as space for better opportunity for growth is being opened up to the largest possible proportion of the community. In a word, our motto "E Pluribus Unum," is in process of gaining deeper significance. From being the principle of the federal organization it is being carried down into the concerns of state, city, town and village, as men and women are learning to organize in a Cooperation of Ideals and Conduct to promote the Wholeness of Democratic life. * * * * -je- * •)(• Nor is Collectivism a negation of the Individual. 2i8 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE So far from being a hindrance to him, it can be an incentive. The Federal Cooperation of the States has laid no embargo on State individuaHsm. Each State, indeed, in the large enthusiasm of the Whole Nation has been saved from hostile rivalry with the other States and thereby has been the freer to work out its own individual growth. For the essential point is this : Is Individualism working for itself alone or through itself for the Good of the Whole? The one kind represents the lees of the past, the other is full of the ferment of Democracy's new wine. The older imposed itself upon the community and battened on it: the new is evolved from the community and will be the finest flower of its growth. It will result in an aristocracy, not of privilege but of inevitable, because completely natural, evolution. Indeed, one cannot conceive of the principle of Collective Organization, without realizing the need as well as the enrichment of IndividuaHsm, at least if we hearken to the lessons of Art. A musical composition, for example, is built around a theme or motif which through all the mechanics of harmonic combination asserts and again and again reasserts itself. Similarly, the plot of every novel and play revolves around one or two leading characters. The whole of the basic idea of "Macbeth" may be that of the Hf e of man as environed on aU sides by the supernatural; yet the efl&ciency of the INDIVIDUALISM — COLLECTIVISM 219 lesson is achieved by individualizing to a pitch of intensity the personaHties of Macbeth and his wife. Or take our own experience as we arrange the pictures and ornaments in our homes or plan out the ensemble of our garden. Our instinct leads us almost invariably to give piquancy to the Whole by individualizing some one object. Its impression is, or should be, enhanced by the sur- roundings, while the latter are more efficiently expressive through their cooperation with this distinctive feature. Or take the example of the Capitol in Washington. Having once seen and enjoyed the superb simplicity of its ensemble, could we be satisfied with the combination with- out the individual distinction of the dome, or conceive of the latter without the cooperative enhancement of the rest of the Unity? But it is perhaps in pictures that the principle of IndividuaHsm in Cooperation is most clearly demonstrated. Shall we select out of myriads of examples the Marriage at Cana by Paolo Veronese, which hangs in the Louvre, and is familiar through photographs? For this is indeed a "colossal com- bination,'' twenty feet high by thirty in width, involving grandiose architecture and thronged with close upon a hundred figures. In such an aggregate of forms and colors the individual figure of the Saviour might well be merged. But the artist has correlated it to the complexity of the composition by making the nimbus-crowned 220 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE head the focus point both of the main perspective lines of the architecture and of the lines of inclina- tion of the bodies, heads and limbs of a number of the other personages. The artist, in fact, has effected a structural adjustment of the Individual to the Whole Composition. Yet you can see for yourself that the divine idea of Christ is all but completely lost in the mundane magnitude of the scene; the spiritual idea of the miracle, swamped in the material com- plexity. The picture is, indeed, as heartless as the composition of a machine, as imdisguisedly material as it is customary to assume that a busi- ness combination must be. For it was Veronese's business to be a "captain" of material organiza- tion and right bigly and superbly in this case he did his business. But, for an assurance that artistic composition need not involve a smothering of the soul of man and the soul of the facts, seek in another gallery of the Louvre Rembrandt's Supper at Emmaus, Here there is no pageantry of splendid ceremonial, for the picture was not painted, as the other was, under an aristocratic regime in response to the pomp of privilege. It was a product of the Holland democratic spirit; in response to the national zeal to get at the facts of man and his natural environment, which in Rembrandt's own case meant penetrating the material envelope and reaching in to the soul of facts. The Saviour's INDIVIDUALISM — COLLECTIVISM 221 mien carries no outward evidence of superiority. It is that of an everyday man in his workaday guise; a plain man of the people, not distinguish- able externally from his fellows. Unless it be for his eyes! His eyes have the distant, steady vision of those who have looked into the soul of things or have faced death without dismay. You may note the same vision in the eyes of social workers who have gone down, like Christ, into hell that they may better the condition of humanity; in the eyes of great surgeons who have penetrated the mystery of pain to achieve its alleviation; in the eyes of firemen who have been through the flames for the sake of others; in the eyes of sailors and fishermen, accustomed to the mystery and vastness of the ocean; indeed, in the eyes of any man or woman, who for the time being has forgotten self in the absorbed enthusiasm for bettering humanity. And in this picture the Saviour's figure is the center of light, which emanates from Himself and irradiates the obscurity of the chamber, touching into varying degrees of prominence just those parts of the other figures which will most efii- ciently enhance the expression of the Whole Com- position. For it is not upon lines and forms and traditional dogmas of arrangement that the structural Individualism-in-Unity of this collect- ive organization is based, but upon what the artists call values. 222 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Artists use the term "values'* to express the variations in the quahty and quantity of the Hght that is given off from each and every part of an object. If you think of it, it is by the hght on certain parts of an object, and the gradations of more and less light in other parts and the shadows on some, that we distinguish the shapes of things; that is to say their individual forms and charac- ters. Without the varieties of values the objects would appear flat and tend to be uninteresting. In consequence of the range of values they acquire the significance of actual bulk and substance. Carry this idea farther and imagine a number of objects within a room, and it is not difficult to reahze that the variation of values not only pro- claims the character of each object but also its place in the Wholeness of the room, its relation to the latter and to aU the other constituent objects. It is in this use of values that the Holland artists of the seventeenth century excelled. They learned the principle from nature; noting how the light not only brought out the individuality of objects but also tended to fuse their antagonisms. Accordingly their best pictures are examples of Organic Unity, in which every part is given its due distinction and all are intimately related to the Balanced Harmony of the Whole. This principle is the secret of the expressiveness of Rembrandt's picture, The Supper at Emmaus, INDIVIDUALISM — COLLECTIVISM 223 For, inspired by the source of light in the central figure, each of the other objects in the composi- tion reflects its own special contribution of light, in absolute adjustment to the expression or, let us say, the Efficiency of the Whole. This composition by values, then, is foimded on the physiology of nature. But, while it lends itself to a highly efficient rendering of the ma- terial aspects of life, as we may see in the case of Frans Hals, it also, witness Rembrandt, lends itself, as no other method does, to the expres- sion of the spiritual that is embodied in the material; or, as in the case of another Hollander, Jan Vermeer, to the expression of the kindly and pleasant reasonableness that may inform the relations of everyday life and its surroundings. In fact, the Relativity of Values, as the principle of Collective Organization, effecting the most complete Wholeness, while allowing for the highest Efficiency of the Individual parts and conducing to the finest harmony between each and all, is the principle that prevails in Art, and today is begin- ning to prevail in the cooperative organizing of the Social Whole. It is the basis of modern music, of Rodin's superiority as a sculptor, Ibsen's eminence as an analytical and constructive drama- tist, of what is significant in fiction, and in the art of the surgeon, the engineer, the educator, the statesman (when you find him), the efficient home-maker and, indeed, in the work of each 224 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE and every man and woman, who is attacking the problem of Hfe in the Scientific-Artistic spirit. And, once more, because it is all-important to the ultimate fulfilment of the Democratic ideal, this principle is not only efficient for the material combinations of life but capable also, as no other yet in sight, of promoting the Spiritual and Social Comradeship without which the cooperative or- ganization will be only a machine without a soul. Translated into still simpler terms of speech — so that even he who does his reading, running, may not miss it — this means that the highest idea of organized cooperation whether in life or art is based on the following principle. The most complete and efficient Wholeness is attained by recog- nizing and giving coordinate play to the varying values, spiritual as well as physical, of each and every Individuality in the Collective Organization, Tending to this consummation is the fact, told me lately by a civil engineer. We were fellow- travelers on an Atlantic steamship. "Has it ever occurred to you,'' he said, "as very wonderful, how seldom a voyage is interrupted through a breakdown of the machinery?" "The reason," he continued, "is that no other machine has been so simplified as the nautical engine. It is com- posed of very few parts, so that they can be made as nearly perfect as possible and can be adjusted to a corresponding degree of perfection. The engineer, listening to the harmony of the engines' INDIVIDUALISM — COLLECTIVISM 225 hum, can detect in an instant any discordant note and determine at once the place and cause of friction or disturbance." My companion added that the automobile had been brought almost to an equivalent pitch of efficiency and by the same means; indeed, that Simplification is today the crowning achievement of machine construction. It does not need a Gamaliel of the law to point the moral of this in reference to our political and judicial machinery, or a professor of economics to explain its analogy to Social and Industrial Organization. It throws a new light on the idea of the " Sim- ple Life." The latter is often understood to imply a cutting oneself off from the fullness of Life. But it should imply a more intelligent and organized participation in a well roimded and complete life, which can only be reaUzed in co- operation with one^s fellows. The secret of its simplification is to be found in the recognition and adjustment of human values. I know no better example of complexity, thus ordered into simpleness by Scientific-Artistic Organization, than the Holland genre picture. CHAPTER XXVI HARMONY HARMONY, the third of the principles upon which artistic organization is based, has aheady been anticipated in what we have said in the preceding chapter concerning ^'values.'' It implies the coordinated adjustment of partial similarities and differences. It does not ignore discords but resolves them into Harmony. Take, for example, the most elemen- tary principle of musical combination, on which, however, the whole structure of Harmony is built. You strike the common chord of C, com- posed of the partial similarities of the first, third and fifth notes of the scale, and the sound is har- monious. Strike these in combination with the seventh and a discord is introduced; but let the seventh lead on to the octave and immediately the discord is resolved, the Harmony recovered. To repeat the common chord even with inversions tends to monotony; but the occasional introduc- tion of the Discord tends to vitaUze the expression of the Harmony. You may say that this is a musical platitude, and it is; but the analogy of it to Life is quite frequently overlooked. HARMONY 227 In the derivation of the word "harmony" we discover again the old root "ar" — fitting, join- ing — the root idea, as we have seen, of "art." It has become aspirated and produced the word "harmos," which means the act of fitting or join- ing, the word which the dictionaries assign as the origin of Harmony. Meanwhile it is suggestive that "monos" means single. Therefore it may not be altogether fantastic to detect in Harmony a combination of this word with the root "ar." This may not suit the et)anologist but it exactly fits the meaning of the word; the Union of Single^ Individualities into a Scheme of Relativity. The idea is truthfully, if vulgarly, represented in the old folk-rhyme — "Jack Sprat woiJd eat no fat, his wife would eat no lean, And so between the pair of them they licked the platter clean." Their marriage may or may not have been made in Heaven. But it was based on something more substantial than the iridescent gossamer of a golden dream; namely, on the recognition andl adjustment of their inherent differences^ Their matrimonial harmony would scarcely have been as complete, if both had liked fat. Yet it is a common sentimental error to suppose that the success of marriage and of any other cooperative imity depends upon similarities of taste, judg- ment and conduct. 228 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE If it were possible to find any two persons whose tastes were absolutely similar — a phenomenon almost impossible — it could only be because their tastes were of a very mild character, and not developed much beyond the rudimentary instincts of Httle children. Further, even if their tastes agreed, it is scarcely conceivable that their separate minds could reach the same judgments and base upon the latter the same conduct. If two people, united in cooperative Wholeness, profess such unanimity, we suspect at once and with justifica- tion that their minds are imitative and their con- duct a mere habit of convention. In fact, that pretty conceit of lovers, "two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one," was the contrivance of a man-poet to rivet on woman the desirabiHty of always thinking as her man does and subjecting her conduct to his. Marriage, indeed, under this fallacy of understanding was rarely, if ever, a Harmony. It was either the sub- jugation of one will to the other's, or else the tacit or expressed agreement that the man should go one way and bury himseK in his own interests while the woman followed separately her own inclinations, or else it was a continual cat-and-dog fight, discreditable and demoralizing to both parties and ruinous to the healthy growth of their children. In business such a condition of affairs could only produce bankruptcy, so the man has done in that, what, if the truth is to be told, he HARMONY 229 would fain do in his home. He has formed his own judgments and compelled those about him to shape their conduct to his views. In fact, the principle of life has been subordination, whereas today, in the light of the Democratic ideal, coordination is the goal. And this impHes of necessity the recognition and adjustment of differences. For, as the artificial barriers are being torn down, so that we can see more clearly and freely and begin to comprehend the Wholeness of Life, we realize that there are natural differences; differences of sex, differences between man and man and between woman and woman; differences that have their root in the infinite variety of the physical, sensational, emotional, mental and spiritual elements in human nature; in fact, that Difference and not similarity is the first charac- "^eristic of Human Life. Nor is it otherwise in the lower levels of the scheme of creation, where voUtion grows less and less until it disappears. For while scientists may classify the exuberant differences of nature into this or that genus, they admit the looseness of the classification and the endless variety even in the species, so that no two leaves upon the same tree are exactly similar. The questions accordingly arise: are we going to ignore this principle of difference and continue the old aristocratic idea of subordinating every- 230 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE thing and everybody to the one man or one woman rule? Or are we proposing to admit not only the fact of differences but its essential value, and learn by adjustment to promote the fuller Harmony of the Whole Life? I suppose nobody, as a matter of Beauty, pre- fers the uniformity of a rectangular reservoir, bounded by concrete walls, to the natural irregu- larity of a lake. Nor, even in the matter of util- ity, is the old-fashioned reservoir sizing up to the larger needs of modern cities. The growth of the latter demands fuller and more comprehensive schemes of water supply, so that engineers today are throwing dams across valleys and converting the latter into lakes, bounded by the natural irregularities of the surrounding hills. Thus, while organizing nature for man's larger needs, the scientific-artistic genius of the engineer is conforming more closely than before to nature's plan. The analogy of this to the organizing of human life is plain. It is not by shaping and arranging men and women into the artificial uniformity of f concrete walls that we are going to enhance the Utility and Beauty of Life; but, firstly, by per- mitting each individual to evolve naturally his ■ or her own utmost value; and, secondly, by dis- l covering an adjustment whereby each may be- \ come a quota in promoting the Harmony of the Whole. HARMONY 231 \/ It is the recognition of this principle that con- demns the present form of trades-imions. The latter, by their negation of the principle of individ- ual values, achieve merely an artificial unity, that may seciure within its ranks the agreement imposed by subordination, but does not attain the Har- mony which can result alone from Coordination. It is at best a temporary expedient, adopted in necessary self-defense against the equally artificial combination of capital. For capital also has found it expedient to ignore the natural functions of individuals and to lump itself into a syndicated force, without conscience or feeling. Indeed, the very use of the words, capital and labor, is significant. Like "supply and demand" and other such collective abstractions, they are the product of a poHtical economy that is still under the sway of the class-idea of society, and which views hiunanity not as individuals but in the mass. It has tried to systematize human rela- tions, whereas the modem science of economics, based on the physiology ol hiunan life, aims to organize them. For today the economist realizes that he is not dealing with inorganic matter to be classified, tabulated and card-catalogued to suit his own theories, nor even with forms of life that are unendowed with sensations and volitions, but with hving growths, involving infinite differentia- tions of value; each having the will to Hve, and needing the freest opportunity of self-realization 232 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE in the interest of the community as well as of itself. In fact, the aim to strive for is Organic Wholeness, founded upon the active Harmony of each and every one of the parts. This idea is spreading and is being practically tested with admirable results in many industrial organizations which are partaking more and more of a cooperative character. It is also being technically recognized as a principle of practical value in the welfare departments that are coming to be considered a necessary feature in any up-to- date establishment; although these are in the nature of palliations of the old system rather than actual organization. Meanwhile, every step in the direction of recognizing Human Values counts for something and is to be encouraged, provided it be not regarded as an end in itself, but only as the means to a fuller and more efficient Coopera- tion in the Harmony of the Whole Life. This great end can only be gradually evolved, as the result of a fuller and wider Social Sense on the part of the community; and to promote such a sense should be one of the chief objects of education. One means by which it may be taught is through the analogy of Wholeness and Harmony in works of Art. But it will not suffice to familiarize the child with photographs, for example, of the great works of architecture or of the world's acknowl- edged masterpieces of painting; still less to cram HARMONY 233 his or her mind with a compendium of the history of Art. The Hving relation of these things to the child^s consciousness of growing Hfe must be estabHshed. We must make it plain, as I have said before, that artists are men like ourselves, stirred by the same instinct of betterment, and working toward the same higher end of Beauty and by the same means, only with a freer sense of Beauty and a less impeded opportunity of achiev- ing it. Nor will it be enough that only the teacher of art shall illustrate the principles of Wholeness and Harmony, and show the child how these are as necessary to the organization of Life as to that of a work of Art. The same principles must be enforced and made pleasant and familiar in every department of the curriculum. In fact, a living comprehension of the meaning and the Value of the Arts must become the foundation of all training in the Art of Teaching. Our "normal" schools are so-called because they are supposed to be established on laws and principles, and to conform to types and standards of education. Yet at present, if I mistake not, they treat as incidental rather than fundamental, the laws and principles, t3^es and standards that are the foundation of all organized human life, namely, those which are exemplified with such abundance of illustration and so clearly and suggestively in works of Art. Presumably the normal school is what it is in consequence of what 234 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE the State Committee is. The latter, for the most part, is composed of earnest and public- spirited citizens, who believe in education as the bulwark of our Democracy, but have not had the opportunity to make a thorough study of the subject. Or, if they have, not on the Scientific- Artistic lines which today are becoming the only efficient ones for the promotion of Industrial and Social Organization. They too, fail to compre- hend the true Relation of Art to Life. But it is only a question of time and no very long time either, before it will be realized that the true foundation of all Education, as of all Organ- ized Life, is Art. Then the normality of the Normal School will be estabHshed upon the prin- ciples of Art: Selection and Organization; the latter in accordance with the principles of Fitness, Unity, Harmony, Balance and Rhythm. For this is the one and only recipe for Scientific- Artistic Organization, in any Department of Life whatsoever. When the principles of Art are made the basis of all Education, the latter will come to be less like the famous, or infamous. Bed of Procrustes, on which that Attic bandit laid his victims, stretching the limbs of those who were too short to fit it and lopping a bit off the legs of those who were too long. CHAPTER XXVII BALANCE AND POISE BALANCE is an instinct of human nature, and the artist, employing the principle of Balance in the organizing of his work of Art, is but responding to a human need. If our usual center of gravity be disturbed, as aboard ship, we instinctively adjust ourselves to the change or suffer the consequences of being at variance with natural conditions. If a strain is put upon one of our arms, as in Ufting a heavy bucket, we instinctively put a strain on the other arm by Hfting it free of the body. If we swing our arms as we walk, instinctively the inclination of the right arm follows that of the left leg, and vice versa. If we stoop forward to pick something from the floor, we maintain our Balance by ex- tending our other hand backward. In fact, the Principle of Balance, as those of Wholeness and Harmony, is not a matter of choice but of physio- logical necessity, to interfere with which breeds trouble. The artist, in consequence, accepts this prin- ciple of necessity and, as usual, raises it to a higher capacity of efficiency or expression in his 236 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE work of art, illustrating thereby its esthetic and ethical value in the Organization of Life as well as of Art. For, when the principle of Balance is analyzed, it is found to involve another applica- tion of the law that all Wholeness is composed of an adjustment of partial similarities and contrasts. It is concerned, however, chiefly with large rela- tions. / Suppose, for example, a dozen young men, / bunched close together in the dash of a hundred / yards' race. A common momentum impels each \ individual and the strain of all their bodies is in \ one direction. But this does not distress us, as we watch the race; indeed it is a source of the keenest exhilaration, since for the time being all our interest is solely absorbed in the outcome of the race. But let an artist undertake to represent this scene. Immediately he will organize the group in relation to its environment. His interest, therefore, must extend around the group of runners; he must consider them in relation to the Wholeness of the picture. If he does not, the group is likely to have the appearance of running out of the picture, or of having been propelled by a momentum over which it has no control. It is necessary, therefore, that he adjust the group very carefully to the area of his canvas; placing it not too high or too low or too much to one side, but just where it will best hold its own within BALANCE AND POISE 237 the composition. Again, to offset the excessive inclination in one direction, he may find it expe- dient to introduce the contrast of horizontal and, possibly, vertical lines. By thus correlating the group to its environment and balancing his com- position he has not behttled the exhilaration of the scene; but on the contrary has enhanced it, because he has imported into the scene large elemental principles. The picture, in conse- quence, is not only a record of a particular occa- sion, but suggestive also of the imiversal joy in eager, vigorous life. Suppose, again, that a sculptor wishes to repre- sent an athlete in the act of throwing a weight. As compared with a painter, he works under a limitation; for he has no scene outside the figure to which he can correlate the latter. Its Balance must be secured independently of outside help, solely by the correlation established between the various parts of the figiure itself. This wiU demand the nicest adjustment; for, in the first place, the position of all the parts must represent a con- certed action and, secondly, no one of the parts must carry its share of the action too far, other- wise it will defeat the suggestion of force that the sculptor wishes the whole composition to express. Therefore he must discover at just what point of extension or contraction of the muscles he will represent the action of the body and hmbs. If he strain the body and limbs to extremity, the 238 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE vitality of the action will be exhausted; while, if the strain be not sufficiently developed, the action will appear as if it were not fairly started. In each case there will be a suggestion of inherent lack of vigor. Accordingly the sculptor has learned another Principle of Balance: that to secure a balance between the parts and the whole of his composition in the interests of efficiency he must preserve the elasticity of the action, allow for the rebound as well as for the thrust of the muscles; in a word, maintain the growth of the action and the suggestion of its recreating self by self. It is a grave symptom in an individuaFs life when he finds his body losing its elasticity and resihence; a graver still, when his mind becomes similarly affected. And it is a grave symptom in the collective Life of the Community, when the relations between individuals are strained to the utmost, when whole masses of people are con- demned to actions that sap the elasticity of their growth and upset the Balance necessary to self- recreation. That it is a symptom of our day, both in the hfe of the Individual and in that of the Community, needs no prophet to proclaim. As a nation we are hampering self -growth by the extremity of the strain that we lay upon ourselves and one another. There is scarcely a department of Life, whether it have to do with the Needs or the Desires of Life, which does not contribute I BALANCE AND POISE 239 to exhaustion rather than to conservation. And this in respect, not only of natural resources but of the most precious of all our resources, the National Character, the National Ideal, the Hope and Spirit of this new race in its Democratic heritage of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is here that the idea of poise touches that of Balance. Balance is the economic principle; poise, the state of mind that conduces to and grows out of it. When amidst the flux and stress of circumstances we come upon really great men or women, we find that poise is the essence of their greatness. They are characterized by a habit of weighing and balancing, by a fine sense of values, by a noble capacity to adjust their conduct to the largest and most vital relations of Life. They are not the ones who lose their resihence and become "set in their ways.'' They grow continually, yet not as the jungle grows, choking its wholesomeness with excess of vitality, but as the oaks of our temperate zone, which rise clear of the tangle of smaller growths, stand square to the four winds and lift their wealth of foliage freely and abundantly to the heavens. How ignoble by comparison the condition of hustle for the sake of hustle, and the idea that progressiveness consists in jumping at everything that is new, because it is new, and then dropping it as soon as something newer appears on the 240 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE horizon! How futile for healthy growth is the attitude of mind which is expressed in the phrase : "I am crazy about this or that"; which can be stimulated only by excess of sensations and needs the stimulus in continually stronger doses. How much, for example, of what we crave as reading matter is either an intoxicant or a narcotic for overstimulation ! It is indeed a grave problem how to promote the wholesome growth of children whose lot is cast in big cities. In all directions their impres- sionable minds are confronted with the evidence not of Harmony and Balance, but of discord and excess. Their very eye-sense is apt to be robbed of its fineness and habituated to vulgarity. For nowhere has the unbridled lust and sordidness of excessive individuality been so rampant; dis- figuring at every step the achievements of the few in the direction of City Betterment and Beauty. There is probably not a street in any city of the world so flamboyantly vulgar, so sordidly meretri- cious, trumpery and defiant of decency — in the sense of what is becoming to a great metropohs — as New York's "Great White Way." Yet it has been so heralded throughout the country and held up as a miracle of beauty, that it has passed into a household word, and this medley of tawdry saloons, poor shops and palatial hotels and resorts for guzzhng; this street, shabby in the dayhght and at night flaunting electric signs of whisky, BALANCE AND POISE 241 chewing gum and corsets against the sky, has become as a Mecca to the imagination and foot- steps of Americans from all parts of the States. A pretty comment truly on the efiSciency of our Education! Yet in New York, no less than in other cities, young men and women are developing in fine and healthy growth. And whenever you come upon them, you find they have acquired the habit of weighing and balancing. They have some critical sense of values which makes for poise. It is to be feared, however, that they are in the minority; and, if this be true, it is because for the most part such a habit of not being swayed by noise and show has been bred into them in their homes. On the other hand, if the majority are otherwise, indifferent to choiceness in their own lives, ignorant of their duty toward the community in the way of working for the Harmony of the Whole Life and of helping to adjust the Balance between man and man, is it not because these principles of true citizenship are omitted from the curriculum of the schools? The present one is more adapted to acquisition of information than to digestion and assimilation of what is essential; more cal- culated to promote alertness — excellent in its degree — than the crowning habit of a properly Balanced Whole Life — Poise. 242 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE In promoting a sense of the value of poise or Balance in relation to Fitness and Harmony of the Whole, educators are beginning to reahze the part that may be played by encouraging the child's dramatic instinct. By no means every child is bom with the equip- ment that wiU enable it to develop into an actor or actress. But almost all are bom with the dramatic instinct. In the very games which they invent, they play at make-believe, imagine scenes and enact their parts. The educator, there- fore, ever watchful of the child's instinct as a source of self-growth, avails himself of the dra- matic instinct and seeks to organize it. In this connection it is a pleasure to pay tribute to the work that Mrs. Emma Sheridan Fry has accompHshed in New York. She began with some of the children of the East Side, as dramatic director of the "Children's Educational Theatre" under the auspices of "The Educational Alliance" and achieved results so remarkable that their evident value is gradually being appreciated. Before her marriage, as Emma Sheridan, she had made her mark on the professional stage. But this does not explain the secret of her power. For the principle of stage instruction is to impose on the student certain rules and formulas of voice- production, gesture and so forth. Mrs. Fry, how- ever, helps the children to evolve their dramatic ability out of themselves. Moreover, the play- BALANCE AND POISE 243 producer of the stage seeks to subordinate the will and the action of all the players to his own individ- ual conception of the play's requirements. Mrs. Fry, on the contrary, trains the children them- selves to coordinate their own individuaHties to the Fitness, Harmony and Balance of the Whole. She, in fact, uses acting, as I have described other teachers using drawing; not as an end in itself but as a means of self-growth. It becomes a source of recreation in the truest sense, namely, that it helps the child in its growth of recreating self by self. Those who have watched her work testify to the Beauty that it has brought into the children's lives and I can add my own testimony to the Beauty of the result, as exhibited in the perform- ance. My appreciation of the value of her system is the greater, since aU my life I have at intervals trained young people and older ones in dramatic representations. But I have done this according to the old method of showing them what they should do and how to do it; by subordination instead of coordination; by the arbitrary method instead of the natural one of self-reaHzation. Nor does her system tend to encourage the children to wish to become professional actors and actresses any more than the natural system of teaching drawing tends to multiply professional painters. It is merely organizing for greater Efficiency of Beauty one of the instincts of the 244 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE child, which in after years, as I have seen over and over again in my experience, will be outgrown or will develop indirectly into some other channel. Meanwhile, I hear a reader say, "I thoroughly beUeve in school dramatics as a means of recrea- tion." But how do you encourage it? Is it by the usual sterile method of imposing your directions upon the children, or by leaving them alone to do the best they can for themselves? I have seen the results of the latter and they are worse than those of the former. For it, at least, produced an artificial Wholeness of Fitness, Harmony and Balance and taught the value of thoroughness, to promote efficiency. But the result of leaving the child, unaided, to its own unorganized efforts, is often pitiable. It encourages the notion of "good- enough" and reduces the recreation to a mere pastime, instead of Hfting it, with increased hap- piness and value to the children, into a source of true recreation. It is entirely unscientific and inartistic, for it leaves the natural instinct to grope and straggle instead of helping it to organize itself into healthy, purposeful and efficient growth. CHAPTER XXVIII RHYTHM THE essence of rhythm is accented move- ment. Its principle is regular recur- rence but not mere repetition; for it is quickened into finer life by a regularly recurring accent. We carry within us the secret of its vital quahty in the circulation of our blood that yields the pulse beats in rhythmic sequence, so that the use of rhythm is an instinct. Every child declares its possession of the instinct when it puts its feet in motion to the music of the street piano. It stops its spasmodic running or desultory walking and regulates its steps to the accent of the tune; and the magic of the organized movement passes from the feet through the legs and sets the body swaying to the beat and stimu- lates the sensations of the brain, until the child's whole nature is enhanced in the joy of organized impulse. Or reckon the young man's Joy of Life as he does his share in the crew of an eight-oared boat. It is much to be part of a living Whole, animated with Balanced and Harmonious action; but the glory of the sensation is in the Rhythmic move- 246 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE ment: the catch of the oar as it grips the water, the grim pull-through and the recovery of the hands as they are carried forward and then the body's forward movement of suspended force. The action throughout is one of measured master- fulness, but it is the accent of the catch and the recovery that lifts it to the highest pitch of physi- cal exaltation. Who that has known it can con- ceive of grander physical sensation? One can get something of it as he pulls alone in a racing skiff; more of it in a two-oared boat; more still in a four- oared, but I instanced the eight-oared boat because that represents the largest crew of usual experi- ence. And it is through sharing the rhythmic impulse with as many as possible that one's own individual sensation is most highly exalted. And for efficiency of rowing, especially over a long course, we are all agreed, I beUeve, that nothing can match this accented method. For it has not always and everywhere been in vogue. Many years ago I recall a crew from this side of the Atlantic visiting the EngHsh Thames to race against one of the rhythmically trained crews. The visitors started off at a tremendous cUp; their oars flashing in and out of the water in regular but not accented movement; the bodies of the men swinging in rapid repetition. A minute had scarcely elapsed before their boat was ahead, and a few minutes more showed it clear of its rival, and the interval steadily increasing. It looked as RHYTHM 247 if the race were over. But gradually the accented catch and recovery of the other style began to tell. Inch by inch the home boat began to creep up; lessening with resistless impetus the interval of daylight. Now its bow had nosed up to the stem of the other; and hand over hand began to draw alongside, until the bows of both were on a level. Ye gods and little fishes! what a disturbance of old Thames's repose, as it was churned into tumult by the quick dash of one set of oars and swept into eddies by the slower, rhythmic beat of the other. Yet the chance of parallel comparison was brief. Resistlessly the home crew forged ahead, until the original position of the boats was reversed and the race ended in a procession. It was a triumph not of the EngHshmen but their method. It afforded one out of innumerable illustrations which could be cited of the superiority of the Rhythmic Principle, in its effect both upon the Mechanics and the Spirit of Collective Effort, as compared with that of mere repetition, however spirited and vigorous. But let us interrupt the consideration of Rhythm in relation to. Life and note its apphcation in some of the Arts. Its effect, wherever it is introduced, is to render the composition more elastic, more fluid, and to unite all the parts into a more living harmony. Before we analyze this quality in pictures, suppose for a moment we think of the ocean at rest. We know, as a fact, that the water 248 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE is elastic and that its cohering parts move in harmony with the attraction of the moon. But we can feel more fully the elasticity and fluidity of the ocean and the living character of its Harmony when its surface is threaded with the successive rise and fall of waves, as they course one another in natural Rhythms. A quaHty as of life has been imparted to the water; moreover, because of the rhythmic sequence of the waves the sense of life in the water is enhanced. To our imagination it is more actually alive than, for example, the soHd plunge of a waterfall. Or again, think of a sky, barred with layer upon layer of cirrus clouds. In this case we will suppose that the clouds do not seem to be moving, yet the natural rhythm of their curling masses conveys a sense of movement and in consequence the sugges- tion to our imagination of pulsating, elemental Hfe. Now it is from the hint of nature's Rhythms that the artist quickens the Hving element in his composition. It matters not whether the latter present a group of figures actually in movement or figures or objects in repose. For rhythm is not the same as action nor necessarily connected with movement; it is something interwoven with the composition or, if you will, interpenetrating it, with the effect that a liveHer, more living, sense of Harmony is produced. We may take as an example of the Rhythm of moving figures the frieze which a Greek sculptor RHYTHM 249 designed to embellish the walls of the Parthenon. It represents a procession of youths on horseback and figures afoot, bound for the altar of the virgin goddess, Athene. The action of the horses and ■figures varies, but there is no suggestion of confu- sion or irregularity of movement, as there will be in a crowd which, though it is moved by a common purpose, is not marching in step. Moreover, a subtler principle than that of keeping time with their feet links together the Variety in Unity of this procession. It is that of Rhythm. You will note in the composition a succession of curving inclina- tions in the movement of the forms; no two alike, but all suggesting a sequence of accented flow, such as differentiates and yet harmonizes the waves of the ocean. The effect of this Rhythm in the case of the frieze is to unite the actions of the young forms in a Commimity of Spiritual Enthusiasm. Or, for an instance of Rhythm appHed to com- position of static calm, turn to a photograph of Michelangelo's Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici. Here we find examples both of formal and of fluid Rhythm. Study the formal Rhythm in the architectural features of the background and sarcophagus; the Rhythmic repetition of vertical and horizontal lines, relieved of monotony by the variety of their lengths, the planes they occupy and the functions they perform. Note also how the formahty of the architecture is alleviated by the various bands of Rhythmically repeated ornament. 250 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE Further, observe how the curve of the sarcophagus is echoed in the curved pediments over two of the wall compartments; nor fail to notice how the plain spaces above the central one tend to help the impressiveness of the figure seated below. This is not a portrait of Lorenzo, but an ideal figure, commemorating his studious tastes, as exhibited in his famous collection of manuscripts. The figure is wrapt in meditation so completely, that Michelangelo's contemporaries gave the name which cHngs to it yet, *'I1 Penseroso," Thought. It is detached from the figures of "Dawn'' and "Evening," yet linked to them by some subtle aflSnity. When you analyze the means employed to effect the suggestion it is found to consist in the main curves of direction which pass up through the recumbent figures to the head of the seated one. Further, if you analyze these curves you discover that the one on the left is composed of a Rhythmic succession of concave curves, while the other is similarly composed of convex. Again, the right hand and head of "Dawn" are curved to the front like the right elbow of the seated figure, while the inclination of the latter's head and left hand is repeated in that of the head, hand and arm of "Evening." These are but some of the salient Rhythms of the group viewed from the front. If you have the opportunity of studying a cast of it or the original in Florence, it is to discover that, as you vary your angle of vision, fresh ripples and RHYTHM 251 waves are continually disclosed. It is, indeed, this Orchestrated Rhythm, penetrating the group through and through, which is the secret of its won- derful Harmoniousness, notwithstanding the diver- sity of feeling exhibited in the figures separately. For it is the miracle of Rhythm, as an active Principle of Life, that it can embrace in a spiritual unity the diversities of condition, conduct and temperament. As the active principle of Patriot- ism, for example, it unites by myriad waves of affinity, sometimes obvious, more often subtle and scarcely perceptible, the congenial and the antagonistic elements of a nation into a Spiritual Harmony. We have our individual necessities, ideals, competitions and struggles, but at bottom, in the depths of our souls, we are all Americans. This, however, represents a Spiritual Rhythm that is not distinctive of Democracy. It is just as characteristic of an aristocratic form of govern- ment, and the examples we have so far drawn from Art to illustrate the principle are those of the aristocratic ideal of society. So far, also, we have been studying artistic Rhythm as an element of line and form. Let us therefore turn for illustra- tion to the example of democratic art in its relation to the everyday things of life and as it is revealed in color, a medium that is less tractable to rules and much more intimately an expression of temperament and feeling. To gain an appreciation of color Rhythm we 252 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE cannot do better than return to the study of some of the pictures by Rembrandt and the genre painters of Holland in the seventeenth century. Before doing so, however, let us turn our eyes again on nature. Immediately, we discover the close affinity between color and light, that indeed, they are practically inseparable. We know, for example, that the local color of a certain field is green; but the green varies in hue and intensity according to the quality and quantity of the light and the angle at which it strikes. The green may verge upon blue in the shadows or upon yellow in the full sunshine, meanwhile passing through varying degrees of greenness according as the grass is long or short or the meadow dips or rises. Again to take our illustration of the ocean. When it is calm, the color and light spread over it uni- formly; but let the surface be scored with waves, and their endless convolutions break up the color and light into a myriad diversities. Now, as we watch the flow of wave succeeding wave, it is Ukely that we pass from a consciousness of the changing forms and begin to be absorbed in the change of color and light. Greens and blues and purples mingle and dance adown the gHde of water and breast the upper slope, then separate in a burst of laughing spray, and reunite, and again disperse, to wreathe again in an endless sequence of kaleido- scopic light and color, until their Rhythms fill one's spirit with strength and gladness. RHYTHM 253 Or study the glory of a sunset sky. The horizon, maybe, is flooded with rose, while above it layers of rosy-orange cloud streak the greening sky. Higher yet are tufts of vapor, paling to primrose or deepening in their rose to violet, as the green of the sky passes overhead to blue and melts into purple at the zenith. But the Rhythms of light and color baffle words. The sky itself must be searched for the wave-like sequences of tone, for the accents of hue echoed in infinite varieties of intensity and for the subtler web of values, which unite the separate elements of beauty into a wondrous Whole of Spiritual Satisfaction. K we refer again to the photograph of Rem- brandt's "Supper at Emmaus," a careful study will assure us that the poignancy of the picture's spiritual appeal is largely due to the eddies of light which surround the central illumination. They are not continuous or regular, as when the surface of a quiet pool is disturbed. They are broken up and resolved into suggestions of varying value, accented, graded and distributed with infinite subtlety. It is this very Subtlety of Rhythm that makes the scene penetrate one's imagination so profoundly. Similarly, in the Dutch genre pictures it is the Rhythm of light and color which draws the simple scenes of these interiors, occupied with one or two figures, doing nothing in particular except hving, into such a Wholeness of general Harmony. The 254 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE third dimension of depth or distance plays so im- portant a part in these pictures that their composi- tion has been described as based upon the cubic principle. You look into a definitely inclosed concavity, lighted by a visible or invisible window, usually on one side. Sometimes you look through one room into another, and occasionally through the latter into the street beyond. The whole scene is filled with the sense of atmosphere in which each figure or object has its individual bulk and occupies its space with absolute adjustment to the natural appearance of the whole scene. Usually the color scheme is based on some one color. Jan Vermeer, for example, the greatest of all the genre painters, was partial to blue. With this he would contrast lemon color and add sparingly of red; and then echo these hues with higher or lower tones, distributed throughout the picture, so that the whole vibrates with Harmony. Meanwhile — and this can be seen even in . a photograph of his work — some parts of the picture are in full illumination, others drowsy in shade, while varying values of light bound from point to point, hovering a moment and then leaping to alight elsewhere, and so on in a wreathed dance of light that makes the whole hollow of the interior sparkle and glow with grace of fancy. The whole composition is woven into a closer web of Harmony by the Rhythm of values of light and RHYTHM 255 One may find the counterpart of this in actual life when a few friends are gathered in the home of a clever and genial host or hostess. The gracious- ness and intelligence of the latter irradiate the scene, touching into activity the wits of every member of the group, so that the talk, now gay, now grave, circulates freely. Thought leaps out to join with thought and smiles and animation glance from the Ups and eyes of all, as he or she contributes a share to the Rhythmic Harmony of the occasion. In a word. Rhythm is that element which both quickens and refines the Harmonies of Life and per- meates them with the Oneness of Spirit. It was a sense of the graciousness of Rhythm that inspired the Greek personification of the Graces; of which Spenser wrote with so beautiful an appreciation of the practical value of the idea in Life. "These three on men all gracious gifts bestow Which deck the body or adorn the mind, To make them lovely or well-favored show; As comely carriage, friendly ofl&ces that bind, And all the complements of courtesy. They teach us how to each degree and kind We should ourselves demean, to low, to high. To friends, to foes; which skill men call civility." In promoting this finer kind of "civiHty," so essential to the Harmony and Rhythm of Life, we are coming again to a recognition of the part that should be played by the human voice. For 256 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE in the hurry and turmoil of progress during the last twenty-five years many of the graces of life have been slurred over and none more disastrously than that of speech. Our problem is a singular one, for it has been complicated by two causes: the enormous immigration and the pubHc school system. The adult foreign element has dropped the amenities of speech and manner that it brought from the old country without completely acquiring those of the new. On the other hand, in the pub- lic schools children of all conditions are brought into close and daily contact with one another; the rough mingling with the well-nurtured, and many being still in the stage of learning our language. Further, the classes are large so that individual instruction is difficult, and the child, being at the mimetic stage, readily picks up the speech and manner of its fellows. Meanwhile, this very mingling of all classes of children offers a wonderful opportunity, scarcely to be found elsewhere, of making Beauty of Speech a national asset. If one travels about the coimtry, it is to find that everywhere the children are using the same slang. Is it, therefore, too much to hope that the day will come when a corresponding purity and precision of speech will possess the entire community? But it can only come about when the tone of the class is no longer derived from its lower strata but from the teacher at the top. ■ f At present it is rather the exception to find RHYTHM 257 teachers who have a proper control of what should be their chief source of influence, namely, their voice. Even if they use words correctly, the method of speech is likely to be uninspiring, if not positively deadening in its monotony or rasping in its hardness. Yet I doubt if there is any living language on earth so apt by turns to stir and to woo the imagination as our English tongue; for it combines with the pure vowel sounds of the South the stiff, trenchant consonant sounds of the North. It is a vehicle of endless expressional possibility. But its instrument, like any other, to be played upon proficiently, demands training. Yet how often does the culture of the speaking voice find a place in the curriculum of the Normal School? It would be a queer sort of mihtary system that put a rifle into the hands of each of its recruits and omitted to train him in the use of it. But, for the most part, this absurdity prevails in the educational system. While the vocal inefficiency affects every hour in the day^s school work, it deals its worst havoc in the Literature classes; for, here, it is upon every aspect of Literature, save its one vital quahty of sound in relation to the sense, that the teacher, who is not trained in the use of the voice, is com- pelled to dweU. And what is the result? The child is bored. It has some of the finest passages of Literature set before it and learns to hate them. "Oh! they wouldn't like 'Julius Caesar,'" said a 258 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE High School girl to me when I proposed it as a play for her class to produce at a festival. I asked her why and she said, "Because we have studied it in class," adding as a general proposition, admitting of no discussion, "Whatever they study in class they hate." "But you," I rejoined, "like the play." "Oh, that's different," she explained. "I read it at home before I went to High School." And I remembered that her mother was a good reader. As for those teachers of Literature who have not equipped themselves as good readers, is it too harsh to quote St. Matthew xxiii, 2? "Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law. ... Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." For whither have they guided? Is it to a reverence for and a joy in what is fine in Literature and so on to habitual appreciation of what is choice and fine in Life? Is it not rather toward a taste for what has the glitter of novelty, is shallow in senti- ment, meretricious, tawdry, superficial; tending to blunt the susceptibilities and blind the imagina- tion to the large Harmonies and subtle spiritual Rhythms of life? For you cannot make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. •X- ^t * -Jt 4t * 4f It is one of the best results of our Public School system that it produces among the children a RHYTHM 259 Rhythmic harmony of loyalty and devotion to the collective interests of the whole school. Yet this may fail of its greatest possibility of good, if the interests of the school and not the value of the principle be made the motive; unless, in fact, the idea of the school as a collective organization, depending for its best growth on the Rhythmic Harmony of all the members, be treated as a type of the larger opportunities of Collective Organiza- tion that will ojffer themselves in the Hfe outside the school. As it is, one meets too commonly men and women who retain in after life a loyalty to their school, college, fraternity or sorority, but display no sense whatever of the need and value of Rhythmic Harmony in the general business and conduct of Hfe. It survives as a sentiment of their youth, but is not operating as an active principle of their maturity. Yet until the whole conduct of hfe be penetrated with the spirit of Rhythm, the full Beauty of Collective Organization can never be attained. FoTy to repeat. Rhythm is that which quickens and refines the Harmonies of Life, and welds them into a Spiritual Wholeness. CHAPTER XXIX THE PRACTICAL AND TEE IDEAL MAN cannot live by bread alone. Still less for bread alone. If he have not a vision of a better state than his present one and the opportunity to shape his course there- to, his life is not living, but a bare existence — hand to mouth, whether the hand grips a crust or flourishes a golden spoon. For its recreation of self by self humanity needs an Ideal. The Ideal changes from age to age, according as man's attitude toward Life changes. When his hold on Life has been most eager, his Ideal has been closest to the possibihties of betterment which Life itself presents. It is when the hold has slackened that his Ideals have merged themselves in visionary dreams. Thus, to the Greeks, when the zest of Ufe, both in its physical and intel- lectual opportunities was at its zenith, the Ideal discovered itself in a perfected humanity. In the Middle Ages, brutalized with war and darkened with the ever present menace of death, men and women of the finest type retreated into monasteries and convents, feeding their hope of betterment solely on the dreams and visions of a life to come. PRACTICAL AND IDEAL 261 Then as the recovery of the Greek and Roman classics opened anew the floodgates of the Beauty of Life, those who had the opportunity to enjoy it built a splendid fabric of IdeaHsm; not, however, on the general life of the community but upon their own favored Hfe of privilege. Such was the Ideal of Italy of the Renaissance. It was suc- ceeded by the Ideal of Holland of the seventeenth century, which was very close to the hope of all the community, being foimded on the general betterment. But even Holland during the follow- ing century reacted to the aristocratic view of Life, which prevailed throughout Europe; and everywhere IdeaHsm, so far as it related to Life, was confined to society and courts, while in matters of Art it represented a soulless affectation of that of the Renaissance. Then came the nineteenth century with its leveling of old faiths, dogmas and caste barriers, its profession of a regard for the rights of man and its scientific examination of all the facts of Ufe. Gradually the world joined hands with the Hollanders of the past in the search for an Ideal, intimately founded on the actual betterment of the everyday Life of the Community. Meanwhile, in the process of evolution, hu- manity, both in its Practice and Ideals has ad- vanced beyond those of seventeenth century Holland. Its attitude toward Life has changed. With an increased sweep and directness of scien- 262 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE tific vision it is learning to solve the problem of the Whole Life. The Individualistic point of view is yielding to the Collective. Government is presimied to be by the people for the people; the work of the individual artisan has been absorbed into imions; that of the in- dividual craftsman into factories; the individual resources of money are now syndicated into com- binations of capital; individual businesses, com- bined into department stores. Collectivism has even invaded the home and thereby changed the status of the individual housewives. They have closed for ever the individual stiUrooms; no longer twist and dye their own yarn, weave it into textiles and stitch the material into clothing and furnishing for the household. For almost every necessity and luxury of Hfe they rely upon the output of Collective Industry. Hence woman, ousted by the change of social conditions from her former sphere of inclusive individuality is begin- ning to think of and work for her sex collectively; just as she is also beginning to think of and work for the child collectively. Nor is woman alone in this. Thinking men as well as women are studying social conditions in their Collective aspects: marriage, eugenics, pov- erty, prostitution, health, sickness and so on. Not only are these and corresponding conditions being studied in the Whole, but also as they affect the Whole Community. Accordingly the latter is PRACTICAL AND IDEAL 263 coming to be regarded as responsible for the treat- ment of conditions and Collective Organization is everywhere in train to supplant the unscientific, necessarily wasteful and less efficient methods of the individualistic system. All honor is due to the individuals who have stepped into the breach that public indifference had left uncared for. But in time to come their greatest honor will be found in the fact that it was through their public spirit that the community itself was stirred as a whole to its duties and responsibihties. Accordingly, the Ideal of today is one of better- ing others as well as ourselves. It is the Ideal of Christ which, after being held up and thwarted through two thousand years by the greed and selfishness of privilege, is now gradually in process of being achieved by the awakened conscience and courage of a veritable Democracy. For in the final analysis the Ideal of a Community, as of an Individual, is neither more nor less than the basis of its faith, the goal of its hope. And today our Faith is founded on humanity and our Hope aims at its collective betterment. This Faith is the sure product of a more thoroughly scientific knowledge of the nature of humanity, and the Hope is justified by being based on natural processes of evolution. Both the Hope and the Faith, there- fore, are Practical. Today, in fact, there is not the separation that has at times existed between the Practical and the Ideal. The idealist no longer 264 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE floats on iridescent dream-clouds; he has his feet squarely on the ground and is working toward the heaven of his hope with as strict a reliance upon the means at his disposal as the mariner. Nor does the truly Practical man ignore the need and value of the Ideal, since he is learning what a momentum it gives to the wheels of Practical Ufe. We have discovered, indeed, that the Practical is most efficiently Practical when it is inspired by the Ideal; and that the Ideal without the Practical is as a soul without the body. It is through body and soul cooperating in the Whole man, and in the Whole Community, that the highest Collective Good is to be achieved. The possession of such a Faith and Hope is not to be acquired without imagination. Yet is it not a fact that our system of education tends rather to starve than to stimulate the imagination? It is bound to lay great stress on informational instruction in order to prepare the child for the Practical necessities of Hfe; but if it does so to an excess that neglects the needs of the Imagination it is imperiling the child's growth in Wholeness. For aU but a few children start in Life with Imagi- nation. Knowledge has to be acquired, but Im- agination belongs to them as a natural faculty; and their early essays in Life and Living take the shape of supplementing what they know with ^^ make-believe J ^ In this rudimentary stage they anticipate the later growth of the faculty of PRACTICAL AND IDEAL 265 intuition, which, trained and disciplined by knowledge, will anticipate the knowledge of what is to be by a sort of prevision. It was such a prevision that characterized James J. Hill when he fixed his Faith and Hope on driving his railroad through to the Pacific. Judged solely by the knowledge and experience of his time, he was an unpractical dreamer. But his Faculty of Imagina- tion used the knowledge and experience as a "spring-board," whence he leaped forward to a future that he could not know but most surely divined. His intuition substituted, for the child's make-believe, the man's matured equivalent of Faith and Hope. And now this "dreamer" is recognized as being one of the most practical men of his time. Indeed, today, we are ready to admit that Imagination is essential for the achievement of any great enterprise. On the other hand it needs but little reflection to reahze that the great obstacle to progress in the direction of Collective Betterment is a prevailing lack of Imagination. Too many men and women never see beyond their noses. They will not even permit their eyesight to penetrate as far as it might; naturally, therefore, they have no vision of an horizon beyond the Hmits of present actual sight. Yet all progress in civilization has been the result of an ever-widening horizon, divined by the intuition of the few. It is not until such an intuition shall become the faculty of the many 266 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE that the true harvest of Democracy will be reaped. Meanwhile, there is another phase of the Im- aginative Faculty which must not be overlooked. It is that which can conceive of the Desirability of Beauty for its own sake. This was the vital principle involved in the idea of "Art for Art's Sake." We have already used the phrase as implying the artist's love and pride of craftsman- ship — that it is beautiful to do a thing well and that a thing well done is beautiful. But it was distorted by some to mean technique for the sake of technique and so the phrase fell into merited discredit. Meanwhile, in so far as it involved the idea of "Beauty for the Sake of Beauty, " it embodied a principle which, though it is essential to the highest progress, has been grievously neglected in modern civilization. We have rightly acquired the habit of judging every- thing by its value to human life and progress; but, in doing so, have been prone to confine our estimate to material values at the expense of spiritual ones. We have overlooked the incentive to Practical achievement which is rendered by the Ideal. And the latter in its purest sense is "Beauty for the Sake of Beauty." A scientist, for example, sets out to discover a bacillus that may combat some dread disease. His own Need of Life and Desire of Living is stimu- lated and enhanced by the Faith and Hope with PRACTICAL AND IDEAL 267 which the end inspires him. But, as he proceeds step by step in his experiments and investigations, he becomes absorbed in the actual processes. Each one stimulates and enhances his enthusiasm; is a source of Beauty to his Life. Even if he fail to reach his ultimate goal of Beauty he has ex- perienced the joy and reinforcement of Beauty for its own sake. Indeed, one may feel sure that it is the sense of Beauty for its own sake that is the prime element of motive with all men and women who work for great ends; that no truly great end was ever accomphshed without it. It is given only to a few to reach great ends; most of us have to be satisfied to do our best in the aggregate of human progress. We, therefore, even more than he who wins out to recognized achievement, need to have our hves and work reinforced and gladdened with Beauty for its own sake. For the need of stimulus and enhancement to Life is a natural instinct in all of us. But we have not recognized the need as being a need of Beauty, because it has been customary to associate the latter too exclusively with the notion of beauty in line and form and color. We have separated Art and Life and in our preoccupation with material considerations have beheved we could do without Art or have treated it as a hobby or an outward token of our material success. As, however, we come to realize that even the latter is 268 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE achieved by methods similar to those of the artist, the artist's motive of Beauty for its Own Sake begins to appeal to us not only as desirable but necessary. And by this time we recognize that the work of Art is the nearest approach in concrete evidence of something conceived in a spirit of Beauty and developed imder the stimulus of Beauty for the sake of Beauty. It is the sym- bol, the outward and visible sign, of the Fit and Balanced, Rhythmic, Harmonious Unity which represents to our Imagination the Ideal of all Human Betterment. Hence, as far as possible, we will utilize the resources of the artist. He wiU make our cities, for example, as beautiful as possible, that they may be witness not of our indifference to physical, moral and esthetic hygiene but of our Faith in Beauty and our Hope of handing on to our children still richer Opportunities of Beauty. We will see to it that the Spiritual Harmony of the home shall be evidenced in Harmony of Ordering and Arrange- ment; and that its adornments shall be character- ized not by superfluity but by the actual stimulus and enhancement that every detail brings to our Need of Life and Desire of Living. So too we will see to the Beauty of our schools, in order that out- wardly they may proclaim our faith in Beauty, while the furnishings of the classrooms shall give the children daily visible proof of the Beauty of Fitness, Unity, Harmony, Balance, and Rhythm. PRACTICAL AND IDEAL 269 In a word, while Beauty shall be the motive of our Lives, we will lose no opportunity of giving concrete expression to our Faith and Hope in it. We will develop into nation-wide growth a tree of knowl- edge of Good and Evil that shall be known to all men by its Beauty and by the abimdant wealth of its fruits. To this end, it cannot be too often repeated, we must cultivate imagination. CHAPTER XXX CULTURE RECOGNIZING the Kinship of the Practi- cal and the Ideal, we are in train to form a just estimate of the need and value of Culture. For, while the word with what it impHes is of honorable heritage, it has become discredited. It is not unusual to hear Culture sneered at, as an affectation of superiority or the crazy delusion of unpractical enthusiasts. One of the stock jokes of Europe is the American who scours over the continent at express speed, "getting culture." I myself remember meeting a Westerner in a hotel in Rome who told me he had arrived that morning and was leaving that night and in the interval had "done" the Eternal City. He explained that after finishing his business in Paris, he had found he had a few days to " speculate with" and determined to reaHze the dream of his Hfe. In anticipation of the possibility, he had provided himself before leaving home with a list of the principal "features" and by paying double rates to a guide and cabman had succeeded in "taking them ?lU in." In high satisfaction he showed me the list with each item duly ticked off. CULTURE 271 Now it is easy enough to smile at this or to deplore it as pathetic; but for my own part, I see something fine in this naive episode; yes, and finely characteristic of American enterprise and spirit. It is not such men as this that retard our Democracy, but those sleek overfed citizens who lie back in their easy-chairs after the day's business and see in the smoke of their fat cigars dreams only of further money-making. The very hunger and thirst for further knowledge and new experience of sensations, which characterize the American nation as a whole, represent a great Spiritual Asset. So, before we join the sneerers at our national propensity for seeking Culture, let us take heed what Culture is. Regarded as the method of systematically improving and refining the mind, "Culture," wrote Matthew Arnold, "is the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit." Regarded as the result of such a process, "Culture," according to W. K. Brooks, "is in its wider sense a thorough acquaintance with all the old and the new results of intellectual activity in all departments of knowledge, so far as they conduce to welfare, to correct living and to rational conduct." It is scarcely necessary to point out that the latter definition, in its inclusiveness, is one of absolute and impracticable perfection. No one man could have acquaintance, much less a thor- 272 ART FOR LIFERS SAKE ough one, "with all the old and the new results of intellectual activity in all the departments of knowledge." But the definition does imply that an acquaintance with new as well as old results of intellectual activity makes for culture and that they are to be gleaned in all departments of knowledge. In fact, as another writer, E. B. Tylor, says, "Culture or Civilization is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beHef, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." This last phrase, concerning capabil- ities and habits, should be read alongside the previous quotation which speaks of all depart- ments of knowledge, "so far as conduce ta welfare, to correct living and to rational conduct." For the point to be emphasized is that Culture differs from scholarship for the sake of scholarship or learning for the sake of learning. It is knowledge applied to Life and Living; and in a Democratic state should be knowledge appHed to the welfare not only of the Individual but of Society. It is, in fact, knowledge organized for Social ends. Accordingly, while hogs that Kve in a Democratic community may be excused from desiring Cultiu-e, no man or woman can be — except at the peril of being ranked a Httle higher than the hog. It behooves every individual in a Democracy to acquire, according to his or her capacity, knowl- edge of things outside the necessities of his or her CULTURE 273 living that the Collective Betterment of Society may be continually promoted. It is the instinct of this truth that impels the nation in its desire of and search for Culture. But it is the essence of Culture that, so far as it goes, it should be thorough, that is to say efficient. It is the haphazard pecking at knowledge and the smattering of results attained which have brought Culture into disrepute. Such processes and results are almost worse than useless toward the discipline of the individual mind and of even less benefit to the welfare of the community for they tend to make Culture seem ridiculous. The secret of our material progress and of the advance in scientific knowledge and its appHcation to daily life is proficiency, bred of thoroughness and productive of efficiency. It is still as true as ever that the jack of many trades and master of none is the enemy of progress; most dangerous when he prides himself on being progressive. Therefore it is an elementary principle of Culture, that each of us should concentrate on that branch of knowledge, not only for which we have the most pronounced appetite but in which also we may have the best opportimity of attaining thoroughness. Thus, for example, situated, as we are, far from the museums of the old world with only a few in this coimtry that possess examples of ancient art, it is upon the work of our own artists that we should base our study of Art; 274 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE just as we begin our study of history with the history of our own country. It was so that the Greeks of antiquity and the ItaKans of the Renais- sance studied art. They were thoroughly familiar with the work of their own artists; watched them grow; were eagerly interested in their develop- ment and awarded praise or censure according as the work did or did not seem to them to size up to the needs and conditions of the time. There were some, no doubt, who were familiar also with the work of the past and accordingly could judge comparatively. Their criticism may have been helpful; but only in so far as it put more Hfe into the living work of the present. So also today there exist in most cities of America some few or more, who have traveled and studied abroad. Their fuller knowledge of Art as a whole will conduce to raise the standard of taste and judgment in their communities; but not if they merely babble of antique and foreign art and are not thoroughly informed as to our own. For it cannot be too often repeated that true Culture consists in applying everything we know to the actual Living Needs of the present. There is no value whatever in the study of pictures, except in so far as it adds to the sum of Beauty, stimulating and enhancing the Need of Life and Desire of Living in ourselves and the community. Similarly, to this end, the Culture of the in- CULTURE 275 telligent citizen should include the study and criticism of our modern architecture; aided by such help as the expert with a knowledge of the world's architecture can give. For this is one of the topics in which the community as a whole should insist upon taking an interest, since the man who puts up a building and the architect who designs it can do more to make or mar the Beauty of the locahty than most people. The planning of our public streets, the architecture that abuts on them, the park, the playground, the water front and every feature that can affect the appearance of our cities and thereby influence the physical and spiritual welfare of every citizen, should not be left to any one man's caprice. It is a vital question in the Kving growth of the community and as such should enlist the collective interest of all intelligent and public-spirited citizens. It is a shortsighted kind of Culture that overlooks this. So also with the sculpture selected to adorn the public place or pubhc building. Whether donated by a private individual or paid for out of public fimds, it becomes the possession of the Com- munity, influencing for good or bad, however imperceptibly, its future welfare. So too, all through the range of objects which admit of Beauty in their design. They can just as well be made beautiful as ugly or commonplace; and it should be part of a community's Culture to learn the difference between these two qualities 276 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE and to insist that it gets its money's worth in Beauty. It is a fact, not to be questioned, that what was finest in a race or a period has always flowered into its perfected expression in forms of Art, whether they were the arts of beautiful design or the arts of music, drama or Hterature. Art, in one form or another, has always been a symbol and expression of man's attitude toward Life. Can the attitude of Democracy toward the Collective Welfare prove an exception? It is impossible to beheve it. Indeed, as a nation, we can already show thousands of proofs to the contrary, sprinkled over every part of the country, while everywhere is stirring broadly the conviction of the Need of Artistic Beauty. At present, however, it is penetrating the con- sciousness of Individuals rather than that of the Commimity. Perhaps because Collective Con- sciousness is a state toward which we are at present only moving slowly. It is a common phrase, that such and such a city is a "live" community. But how far is it ahve collectively? Is there no part of it that is moribund? If there is not it must be a very exceptional community. Meanwhile, if it is tridy and abundantly alive, we shall not need to be told the fact. We shaU know it by the evidence of our eyes; for not only will the life- spirit be manifested in the energies of the citizens, but there will be no signs of squalor and ugliness, CULTURE 277 and on every hand Beauty will testify to the Collective Welfare. It is "by their fruits ye shall know them." ******* For it is a well-estabhshed fact of human nature that it needs an outward and visible sign. The patriotism, for example, of every nation needs its flag to rally to. The collective spirit of a community must have its rallying place, the equivalent of the Cathedrals of the Middle Ages which were the communal centers of the culture of the period. We have made a step in this direction in the art museums which are appearing in so many cities. But the danger of the museum is twofold: first, that it may be merely a mauso- leum of dead art; secondly, that its devotion to certain forms of art may easily obscure the con- current importance of other forms of art and thus perpetuate the barriers that part one branch of human knowledge from another, thereby militat- ing against the broad idea of Art as a Whole in its proper relation to the Whole Life. The first danger can be and is being reduced by systematized instruction in the galleries, so that those who have the opportunity and the will to attend may be stirred to a living interest in the contents of the museum. Otherwise, to the vast majority of visitors the exhibits may easily have Httle or no meaning. As to the second objection, it is possibly true 278 ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE that in cities of the largest size, separate buildings cannot be avoided and may be an advantage. In a community as large, for example, as New York, the art museum, the natural history mu- seum, the public library and the concert hall could not well be contained in one group of build- ings, as in Pittsburg, where the technical school also is in close proximity. But for cities of smaller size, where the Com- munity Idea has the best chance of being realized, the Pittsburg plan comes nearer to what should be the model. But the actual model of the future will be owned and administered by the People and will embrace still more branches of Art. Indeed, there will be nothing that makes for the People's Welfare but it will have its place there and find therein its opportunity of being recog- nized, tested and, if found Fit and Beautiful, adopted. This Home of the Common Welfare, as one's imagination may picture it in the future, will be the center of a system of Welfare Homes, dis- tributed over the city according to population. These will be no other than the present Primary and High Schools, put to a further degree of use- fulness. Already, in some cities, these are utiHzed in the evenings for lectiures. This practice will be expanded to include other forms of physical, mental and moral Beauty. They will become the Recreation Centers of their respective neighbor- CULTURE 279 hoods; some for the service of the children, others for the young men and women, who have gone out into the world and are in such dire need of wholesome places, where they may feel that they are at home with their fellows. Exhibitions of pictures or photographs will be held in these centers: organized in time by the young people themselves. They will be the centers also of the neighborhood's love of music: the people them- selves, with the help of professional guidance, rehearsing music for the love of it and giving con- certs for the delight of others. Similarly, they will be centers of the love of literature and drama. Readings and recitations will be frequent; dra- matic performances will be rendered by the young people, who will also paint and build their scenery, design the costumes and even write the plays and compose pageants. They will be the homes, too, of the arts of dancing and physical culture; forums also for discussion; places where inventors of all devices for Human Betterment can exhibit their schemes, and those who have specially at heart the beautifying of the city, the improvement of tenements, the eradication of disease and every other organized effort to enhance the Beauty of Living will stimulate Collective enthusiasm by exhibitions and discussions. The imagination pictures these local Welfare Homes as being affiliated with the Central Home of Welfare. This will be more than a Museum of 28o ART FOR LIFERS SAKE Art. It will be the active heart of all the Arts of Living: the arterial center of the Faith and Hope of the Community. Here will be grouped the galleries for works of art, the main library, the concert hall, forum and theatre of the people and accommodation for civic ceremonies and enter- tainments. It will be a visible center of culture such as was the Doge's Palace in the proud days of Venice; but not for the Council of Ten, nor the Council of One Hundred, but for the People. It will be the hub of a University of Civic Culture. Further, the imagination pictures a system of university extension. The local Welfare Homes will be af3[iliated with the School Centers of Welfare in the smaller towns and the latter, in turn, with those of the villages. The bigger communities will share with the smaller their privileges and pass them on to the still smaller ones, until the whole state is organized into a Collective Whole by an Arterial System of Culture. Visiting con- cert and dramatic parties, traveling libraries and traveling exhibitions of works of art and of all things tending to the Beauty of Living will circu- late in eddies of Culture from the central home. Meanwhile, exhibitions of things pertaining to the country will travel toward the city. Grad- ually the divorce between urban and rural life, which is one of the problems of today, may be healed, as city, town and village cooperate CULTURE 281 in closer harmony for the Collective Betterment of the whole State. A dream, you say, that needs a miracle for its accomplishment ? But the power of the miracle is within us. It is the miracle of the possible Wholeness of Life; the Wholeness of the Individ- ual Life, correlated to the Wholeness of the Life of the Community. And the means also is in our hands. It is the miracle of Art; of Scientific- Artistic Organization, inspired by Beauty of Life and Living. What is needed for the working of the miracle is Spiritual Imagination; Imagination to vision forth the possible ideal in the actual; the far- sight which pictures the local, temporal and personal in relation to the rounded completeness of a Universal Whole; that Spiritual Wholeness of purpose, which is founded upon Faith, Hope and Love. In the might of its Spiritual Imagination the New Democracy must prevail. INDEX aristocracy: Italian Renais- sance an art of, 32; persists in democratic countries, 194, 200. art: what qualities go to make work of, 12, 123, 268; popular understanding of term, 16-20; public's in- difference to, cause-t>f, 20, 21; divorce from life, causes of, 30; definition of, 43; manner of advent into world, 65; derivation and meaning of word, 66, 67, 163; relation of, to life, 12, 18-21, 233, 234, as imderstood by MiUet, 70, 71; highest results of, come through necessity, 106; should be one with religion and morality, 137; unifying medium of ideal and practi- cal, 139, 141; and machinery, 175-184; expression of man's attitude towards life, 276. ART FOR art's SAKE: UOt Sole end of art, 10, 266; implies delight in workmanship, 119, 266; and in beauty, 266. ARTIST: attitude of, towards art and life, 10; specialized, advantage to, 13; function of, to point way to greater beauty of life, 108; meaning of word in Italian Renais- sance, 68, future meaning, 69; definitions of, 15, 16, 54, 69, 124; where layman re- sembles, 76-78, 112; selects from material nature offers, 106, 107; gives vision form and enhances life, 112-114, 1x6, 123. balance: adjustment of sim- ilarities and contrasts, 236; in pictorial art, 236, 237; in sculpture, 237; in life, neces- sary to self-re-creation, 238, 239; of mind, or poise, 239- 241; one method of instruct- ing children in, 242-244. beauty: principles of, 49; com- prehensiveness of term, 57, 85, 87; no absolute canon of, 87, 88, 129; ideal of, changes with growth of individual, 89, 90, or of art, 127-129; definition of, 90; watchword of future, 8s, 109; should be motive of all, 86; once ban- ished from life as irreligious, 92; fell into disrepute, 93; awakened sense of need of, 94; impetus given to, by 284 INDEX World's Fair, 94, 95; moral- ity and, two aspects of one need, loi; of wholeness, 105; artistic, as compared with natural, 105; enhanced by organization, 107, 121; illus- tration of, resulting from organization, 147; stimulates need and desire of life, iio- 114, 141; of technique, es- sential part of work of art, 1 1 6-1 19; of both technique and spirit found in greatest artists, 124; judged by effect on spiritual growth, 148; knowledge of, needed in world of commerce, 179; in or- ganized life, quickened by sense of rhythm, 259; to be motive of our lives, 269. BEAUTY OF LIFE AND LIVING: may be greatest work of art, 14; he is an artist who in- creases, 69; search for, com- bined with industrial eflfi- ciency, brings social better- ment, 76-81, 109. BERGSON, HENRI: views on in- stinct and reason, 24; quota- tions from, illustrating value of co-ordination of imits, 102. CATHEDRALS, GOTHIC: develop- ment of style, 27; demo- cratic in spirit, 26-28; ex- pression of growth, 29. children: future of race in hands of, 48, 49; equipment for life, 49, 146; beautiful living as ideal for, 51, 52; practical and ideal equally necessary in education of, 53; training and suppression of artistic instincts in, 54, 55; lack of guidance in adoles- cence, 56; development of esthetic sense in, 149-151; self-discipline necessary to choice of beauty of life, 156; training of, in principles of fitness, 202, 203, of harmony, 232, 233, of balance, 242-244, of rhythm, 256-259. collectivism: see Individual- ism and Organization. co-operation: of business ment and artists resulted in miracle of World's Fair, 95. See, also, Organization. culture: hunger for knowledge, preparation for, 271; defini- tions of, 2.71, 272; promotes collective betterment, 272, 273; is knowledge applied to life, 272-275. DA viNCi, LEONARDO: Signal ex- ample of the "whole" man, 161, 162. democracy: anecdote defining, 60; cathedral-building era and Renaissance in Holland, fruits of, 26, 41; promise of truer, 126; machinery, out- come and corollary of, 169, 181; co-ordination, not sub- ordination, ideal of, 229. See, also, New Democracy. INDEX 285 expression: what creates, 74; synonym in art for efl&ciency in life, 75. fitness: most important ele- ment of beauty, 75; example of, in Millet's "Sower," 72, examples of unfitness, 185- 191; sometimes overlooked by classic idealists, 129; for purpose, should be guide of artist, 195; internal, comple- mented by external beauty, 195; skyscrapers example of, 196; evil results of indiffer- ence to, 202, 203. GOTmc: term misnomer, 26. harmony: derivation and mean- ing of word, 227; co-ordi- nates similarities and differ- ences, 226-229; admits value of differences, 230; of parts in organic wholeness, human aim, 232. IBSEN : a true optimist, 158, 159; depicts law of growth in "The Master Builder," 158. ideal: not antagonistic to prac- tical, 13, 14, 21, 76, 263; in- vades material Hfe, 58; and practical combined in Leon- ardo da Vinci, 161, 162, and in other Renaissance artists, 163; changes from age to age, 260; of Greeks, 260; of Mid- dle Ages, 260; of the Renais- sance in Italy, 261; of 17th century Holland, 261; of present day community bet- terment, 261-263; definition of, 263; finds embodiment in practical, 264. imagination: spiritual, the need of the age, 174, 184, 269; needed to enlist machinery in service of beauty, 178, 179; of children should be fed, 264; needed for collective better- ment, 265; for pursuit of beauty, 266-269. individualism: inevitable in pioneer days, 216; being superseded by collectivism, 214, 215, 262, 263, yet en- riched by it, 218, 219, 224. instinct: value of, 24; of the child for happiness, 45, 46. intuition: handmaid of reason, 24; a developed form of in- stinct, 91. JAMES, WILLIAM: views on in- stinct and reason, 24. JOY OF life: instinct of, in childhood, 45, in maturity, 46. life: happiness, basis of, 46; as transcending making a living, 50, 51, 64; true ideal of, 51; oneness of, 101-105; aim of, should be harmony, 103; stimulated by beauty, no; growth, law of, 157, 158. life, liberty and pursuit of happiness: foxmded on facts 286 INDEX of life, 47; child's training in, in kindergarten, 54; can be realized in joy in work, 98; can be lost in overwork, 171, 172, MILLET, JEAN FRANCOIS: re- lated art to life by painting common life about him, 71, 72; contrasted with classical painters, 75. NATURALISM: distinguished from realism, 133-136. NETHERLANDS: Struggle for liberty, 39; industrial de- velopment in 17th century, 40; artistic development nat- uralistic and moral, 41. NEW democracy: product of science and art, 11, 13; what founded on, 47; aim of, 49; rights of children in, 52; watchword of, 57, 109; calls for faith, hope and love, 99; will prevail by spiritual im- agination, 281. oneness: see "Wholeness." organization: of material to increase beauty, 72, 108; to obtain imity, 105-107; scien- tific-artistic, example of, 73, 74; parallel to work of Millet, 75 ; dangers besetting, 78, 79, 81; definition of, 82; anecdote illustrating beauty through, 147; collective, su- perseding individualism, 214, 262, 263. practical: not antagonistic to ideal, 13, 14, 21, 76, 263; at its best when inspired by ideal, 264, 266. precedent: woman's indiffer- ence to, 23. privilege: claims of, 25; cli- max of, in person of Charles V, 35; not yet eradicated, 50. realism: distinguished from naturalism, 133-136; the prac- tical idealism, 136. reason: not sole guide, 24. REMBRANDT: exception to paint- ers of his day, 42; rediscov- ery of, in 19th century, 42; foimd beauty in individuality, 130; "Supper at Emmaus" shows democratic ideal, 220, 221, and organic imity, 222. renaissance, dutch: demo- cratic in intent, 26, 40; naturalistic and moral, 41. RENAISSANCE, ITALIAN:' based on aristocratic ideal, 32; earlier days of, marked by religious fervor, 32; later days by pursuit of imaginary perfection, 33, 34. rhythm: definition, 245, 259; of physical movement brings joy, 245-247; in nature, 247, 248; in art, produces a living sense of harmony, 247, 248; in moving figures, 248, 249; RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (415) 642-6753 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW SEP^C1931 267991 ^ia4s UNIVERSITY OF CAl/fORNIA IvIBB^Y