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We who are battling for art in education should, with equal courage, fling our shaft-our belief in the spiritual nature of man-into the thick of the opposing hosts that are now clamoring for the supremacy of the material forces in education, and with a sublime faith struggle forward through all misunderstanding, distrust, and antagonism, until we reach the goal of all true education, the point where the real shall be interpreted by the ideal, and the two be harmoniously blended in the education of every child.

THE PLACE OF ART EDUCATION IN GENERAL EDUCATION.

Delivered by John S. Clark in Denver, July, 1895.

One of the greatest gains made during the half century now closing is the clearer insight of men into the meaning and the implications of evolution. There was a time when the newly discovered facts of the past history of the earth and its creatures, seen dimly and without much relation to other facts, staggered all but the most courageous minds with the vastness and ominousness of the problems they involved; but as years have gone by men have come to see the same gigantic and enigmatic facts in clearer mental perspective and under brighter light. Now the philosophy of evolution, as Dr. John Fiske and others clearly proclaimed it years ago, and as Henry Drummond has lately so admirably reaffirmed it in his work on the Ascent of Man, is the common possession of most thoughtful people. This evolutionary history of the world of man is only the scientific, detailed tracing out of the means and ways by which there has been brought about the stupendous fact of man's place in the scale of creation, which keen philosophic speculation had long ago made him conscious of, even while unable to understand or account for it. The theologian of three centuries ago meditated in the old Hebrew phrase: "When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon, and the stars, which Thou hast ordained-what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" But to-day, in the light of evolutionary science, the thought takes a different accent: "When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained-what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? * * * Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hand; Thou hast put all things under his feet."

Whichever road we travel-the old path of ontological speculation, or the new path of scientific investigation -we come out upon the same intellectual hilltop, namely, the thought that man, as a physical being, is the consummate product of material creation, while, as a spiritual being, he is the appointed master of material creation and the beginner of a new world of spiritual growth and spiritual creation.

The essential, distinguishing fact about him is his more direct relationship through his personal feelings and desires to the divine-that is, to the eternal spiritual reality of the universe-than exists in the world of matter around him, which can only passively reflect the divine.

I shall assume that we agree to start out from this standpoint in considering the question before us to-day; for, in order to think to any real purpose about the place of art education in general education, we should first obtain a clear idea of the relation of education itself to human development, and then the place which the arts of the race-literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture-hold in the development and training of spiritual man.

The first proposition that I have to offer you is one upon whose acceptance or rejection the general character of the whole scheme of public education must logically depend. It is as follows:

Proposition I.-That the human soul is a self-acting spiritual entity, which is more completely a revelation of the divine spirit behind all which is than

is shown in the material world; and that this soul or spiritual entity, when properly developed, dominates man's physical powers, making them and the material world subservient to itself.

We hear much in these days about the human soul as having no demonstrable existence per se, as being merely the sum of the material forces of the universe, and as possessing only such powers as are induced in it by the play of these material forces upon the bodily organism. This standpoint is practically assumed by that portion of modern empirical psychology which has been aptly described as "psychology without a soul." Ribot, in his work on German Psychology of To-day, accepts this phrase ("psychology without a soul") as fairly describing, in its negative aspect, that new psychology which confines itself to studying forms and conditions of mental action without any regard to the question of what the soul is or even whether there be a soul, and which treats psychic forces as merely differentiations from the material forces studied in physics, chemistry, and animal physiology.

Of course it can not be claimed that the mind or the soul is independent of the physical organism. We can not conceive of the human mind as being able to annul the laws of external matter. What I wish to claim is simply that the mind, being an entity in itself, has a certain power of control over that very material mechanism (the brain) whose conformation and functions condition it; and that it has also a certain original power of combining with and taking advantage of the forces of the material world so as to modify their actions and transform their applications.

Nor is it intended to deny that the senses are the appointed gateway through which we can come near to the things and the forces of the outside universe, or through which they can come near to us, and furnish our minds material to work with. What I do wish to remind you of is the fact that the spiritual entity behind and above all the man's sense-organs, that to which sense-impression appeals, is the thing of first and greatest importance.

You remember the famous aphorism of Leibnitz: "There is nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses-except the intellect itself!"

As a matter of fact, the stoutest champions of the theory of soul as a combination of differentiated physical energies can not keep their footing on its slippery ground. They can not explain, or indeed fully express, their own theory without falling back upon assumptions which are inconsistent with that theory. * * * The fact is, the whole scheme of experimental psychology or any dilutions of it-which aim to reduce mental phenomena to unmediated physical energies originating in the forces of the material world, and so to dispense with self-activity in the intellectual life of man-is (as Professor Ladd has pointed out with such clearness and vigor) based wholly on an assumption of the self-active intellect itself; that is, on the purely mental hypothesis of the existence of atoms and molecules, through which the primal energy can transmit and manifest itself. And this hypothesis is a pure synthesis of the mind. So we have the paradox of human beings denying that the human mind has any real essential existence as a selfacting entity, and yet asserting that the ultimate basis of all so-called mental phenomena is traceable to physical forces acting in certain minute units of matter, whose very existence is, after all, merely a convenient conjecture of this dependent physical mind itself!

We must remember that this question as to whether the soul is a self-acting entity or merely a higher differentiation of molecular energies is more than justa curious problem for the biologist and the metaphysician.

It has a distinct bearing on the problem of child education. If mind development is taken to be merely a matter of automatic transformation of physical force through sense activity into thought activity, the general spirit and plan of educa

tion (which aims at mind development) will naturally be quite different from its spirit and plan when it is conceived of as an appeal to a spiritual entity, a selfdetermining ego, with powers both of assimilative and creative self-activity, capable of being indefinitely developed according to the individuality of that ego.1 Let me not be misunderstood as underestimating the value of contemporary physiological psychology to education. Understood in its right relation to educational problems, it can be of great practical assistance in educational work. The actual effect of bodily conditions on mental activities is nowadays being better understood than ever before. Our practical appreciation of this understanding is shown in improved systems of ventilating, heating, and lighting schoolrooms, and in thoughtfully planned courses of physical culture. The actual importance of individual sense experience, as basis and material for mental activity, is nowadays better understood than ever before. And our practical appreciation of this understanding is shown in the great movements for form study, for manual training, and for the experimental study of natural science. The more we understand of the subtle interrelations between the physical and the mental, the more directly we can go to the point in class-room teaching without so much futile misdirection of effort as has often been inevitable in the past. But the danger involved in this new enthusiasm for physiological psychology, or the study of "consciousness content-wise," is the danger lest it be taken to cover the whole educational problem, when it really covers only the lesser half of the problem. Educators to-day are in danger of overlooking that larger factor, "consciousness function-wise," in the child, which, though it can not be measured or weighed or tabulated in any sort of psychological statistics, has more weight in the determination and direction of mental activity than all physical and material factors combined. Practical education should not be suffered to fall into the mistaken, exclusive extreme into which is seems to be drifting, where circumstance and environment, acting automatically on the brain, are reckoned as all effective, and the elements of personal effort and personal responsibility on the pupil's part are hardly recognized. This extreme is, of course, easily comprehensible as a reaction from the old-time formal teaching. But either extreme is bad. And as a safeguard against the current tendency to suppose that sense contact with the things of the natural world may be trusted to solve the whole problem of right spiritual development, I feel that a firm stand should be made for the recognition of the individual soul with its

1 When we have once separated matter from thought, when we have called matter what is perceived, in opposition to thought or what perceives, we must not eat our own words or swallow our own thoughts by saying that, for all we know, matter may think or mind may be touched and handled.

From this point of view I call materialism no more than a grammatical blunder. It is the substitution of a nominative for an accusative, or of an active for a passive verb. At first we mean by matter what is perceived, not, indeed, by itself, but by its qualities; but in the end it is made to mean the very opposite, namely, what perceives, and is thus supposed to lay hold of and strangle itself. What causes the irritation of our senses is confounded with what receives these irritations; what is perceived with what perceives; what is conceived with what conceives; what is named with the namer. It is admitted on all sides that there never could be such a thing as an object, or as matter, except when it has been perceived by a subject or a mind. And yet we are asked by materialists to believe that the perceiving subject, or the mind, is really the result of a long-continued development of the object or of matter. This is a logical somersault which it seems almost impossible to perform, and yet it has been performed again and again in the history of philosophy.-F. Max füller, The Science of Thought.

While mind and matter may both be called substances, they are different kinds of existences. We know them by different organs the one by self-consciousness, the other by the senses. Again we know them as possessing altogether different properties; the one as perceiving, reasoning, feeling, willing; the other as extended and exercising energy. The properties of the one can not be predicated of the other. Thinking and feeling have no place in that stone; nor have softness, hardness, or gravity in our souls.-Dr. James McCosh, in Preface to Ribot's German Psychology of To-Day.

self-activities, developed through and responding to, but not derived from, the material forces of nature, as of the first and greatest importance in educational psychology and in practical educational work.

My second proposition is:

Proposition II.-That man, by virtue of this self-acting soul, becomes, in his highest estate, not only a transformer of the material conditions which surround him, but also an actual creator of new spiritual values of an altruistic character; hence his arts.

I can take time merely to suggest in the briefest fashion how man is a transformer of the material conditions round about him, and how his activities are imbued with the altruistic character; how he, and he alone, in contrast to all other living creatures, sets to work with conscious and deliberate foresight to change those very material facts which, to a certain extent, experimentally condition his range and mode of inward life; and how his activities, crystallized into arts, have changed the face of the earth and the semblance of many of its creatures into something quite unlike their original estate, making nature immensely more contributory to his own well-being.

Man's activities may be classified into two divisions, the useful arts and the fine arts.

The useful arts exercise his creative powers chiefly on but one plane of his existence and that the lowest, namely, the physical. While they mark a nation's upward growth to a certain limited extent, they do not of themselves embody all of our race experience, nor even the best of our race experience.

The fine arts (poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture) are the forms in which the higher life of man embodies itself. It is to these fine arts that we always have to look in order to learn in what way and to what degree a people have climbed up above the level of mere animals, clever enough to secure good things to eat, effective shelters from the weather, and convenient coverings for their bodies.

In a certain sense it may be said that there is a large part of the best of our race experience which never gets embodied in any tangible material form at all, but acts for the creation of new conditions rather than new things, refining and elevating the quality of personal character and daily life, but never shaping itself into any explicit forms of art creation. It is not quite true that these particular spiritual energies are unmet with in the fine arts-for, in indirect ways, the most commonplace toil helps make the work of art possible (we all remember our nursery stories of how the farmer and the miller help prepare the child's breakfast for him),—and, in a still higher sense, every noble inward life helps create a more healthy spiritual atmosphere for all other men to breathe.

But the fact remains that if we would direct our thought to the definite, tangible records of man's higher life, we must look for those records in the various forms of the fine arts.

Creative activity which brings forth the useful arts is service rendered in laying the foundation of material civilization. Creative activity which brings forth the fine arts is service rendered in building the superstructure of spiritual civilization. Man is so constituted, and human society is so constituted, that the higher powers and activities of the race naturally and necessarily ultimate in the fine arts as the very condition of ever-developing character.

Now, if we accept the doctrine of evolution, man's soul or spiritual self is the latest and fullest revelation of the divine cause of all that is. As has been said, this spiritual self has been developed through, but not derived from, physical creation, and this spiritual self coexists with the animal frame and the animal nature which constitute physical man the climax of physical creation. A constant struggle is going on between his animal nature, which is inherited from his animal

ancestry, and which works for self, and his spiritual nature, which is altruistic and which is impelling him forward to work for others. Man's arts are at once the evidence and the result of this conflict.

This is the unanimous affirmation of science, history, and religion.

My next proposition is:

Proposition III.-The history of civilization is the record of man's progress in the creation of spiritual values through the subjection of his own animal nature and surrounding material nature to the service of his spiritual needs and ideals-hence the world of art. For the arts of man are not merely incidental to civilization. They are the supreme products of his creative spiritual activities, the condition and promise of higher civilization.

It can not be too strongly emphasized that art is not a mere incidental phase of the life of man. Some people have an idea that it is so; that it simply happened in successive ages that people spent their playtime in building with blocks on a large scale, making "stone dolls," and composing tunes, rhymes, and fantastic tales-occupations whose remains are well enough to interest the idler of to-day, but which have no solid significance for practical people.

This notion of art is as far as possible from the truth of the matter. The fact is that in every age man's creative energies have embodied themselves in art forms in order to satisfy the irresistible divine instinct of creation within him, and make a way in which to share with his fellows his inward personal experiences.

The fact that we ourselves stand to-day where we do stand in the progressive march of civilization is due in no small measure to the earlier fact that generations of men before us, who lived and loved and suffered and hoped, and who wrought their own wonderment and desires, their aspirations and their hopes, into art forms, have bequeathed to us their arts as their richest and most beneficent legacy. We hold this legacy now in the form of the world's great epic and lyric poems, and in its fiction and dramas, instinct with human passion and human aspiration, peopled with personalities of man's own imaginative creation, even more real in their influence to-day than the shadowy names of history. We hold it in the form of the great treatises on philosophy, government, and the sciences, the very condensation and crystallization, as it were, of the human intellect. We hold it in the world's bibles, the legacy of the religious thought of the race. We hold the legacy again in the form of the world's great music-the symphonies that still make our world palpitate with exquisite harmonies once conceived by human genius, the oratorios and operas, and the songs that, like unquenchable torches, kindle the souls of each successive generation of human kind with fires of joyousness, of patriotic ardor, of religious ecstasy.

And we hold the legacy yet again in the form of monuments and temples, cathedrals and majestic colossi, eloquent of the questionings and longings of souls facing the great mysteries of life and death. We hold it in the form of treasured remains of sculptures, eloquent of old-time insight into the divineness of beauty and old-time delight in such insight. We hold it in the form of the world's great paintings, eloquent of all man's widest range of interests and sympathies, of his love for the good and the right, of the gradually clearing vision which has enabled him to see the divine in nature and the still higher manifestations of the divine in humanity, and to make the vision manifest to all mankind.

On another occasion I shall discuss the bearings of art education upon the labor problems of the day, and through labor upon all the interests of social well-being. On this occasion I can only remind you of the immense significance of art from the economic point of view.

Now, standing as we do to-day in the possession of this art legacy from the men of flpst, can we rationally minimize it, and consider the child merely as a particu la ly high differentiation of physical energies, the passive subject of nature, molded

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