456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



objective standard. For example, as literature, we teach analytical 

 grammar, philology, history and events. As a regular exercise in 

 English literature in many schools, students are required to put a 

 beautiful passage of Shakespeare into English ! Now, in reality, such a 

 process never carries one beyond the mere incidents of a literary 

 masterpiece, and the one element which makes it a work of art, namely, 

 its power to infect the reader, with the emotion of the writer eludes all 

 such analytical pursuit. Many of us after leaving college, take up 

 Shakespeare, Lowell, Wordsworth or Hawthorne, and are astonished 

 to find them interesting and inspiring. Our apparent purpose in teach- 

 ing music is to develop dexterity, as though every child were to be a 

 musician. 



The plastic arts are taught as parts of an external body of knowl- 

 edge which the pupil may take in and then give out again, as though 

 his nervous system were glass with the power of transmitting, with 

 more or less accuracy, forms, colors and sounds. Such strong emphasis 

 on the acquisition of technical skill reduces the study of art almost to 

 the level of learning a trade. Those teachers and pupils who pursue 

 higher ideals find themselves in conflict with the accepted educational 

 canons. These, as I said above, demand measurable results which are 

 most easily secured in the plastic arts by devoting the time to training 

 all the faculties to bear upon production. While the appreciation of art 

 may be learned, incidentally, by this method, the index of progress is 

 the amount of dexterity acquired so that all the faculties become set 

 towards making something. This, no doubt, is an excellent way to 

 learn a handicraft, but a questionable method of cultivating under- 

 standing and appreciation. Although it can not be denied that a 

 thorough knowledge of how a work of art is produced, of the skill dis- 

 played in overcoming special difficulties, affords a peculiar pleasure, 

 we must not forget that the same pleasure comes from seeing, for the 

 first time, anything skilfully done, the difficulties of which one under- 

 stands. And this is true whether it be artistic or purely mechanical. 

 Whether it be the production of a tone on the violin or the ingenuity of 

 a knitting or type-setting machine. Such ephemeral pleasure comes 

 not from esthetic emotion but from scientific knowledge. 



In the days when manufacturing was by handicraft and every work- 

 shop was a school of art, there was less need for teaching art in any 

 ether way. But since the factory has displaced the workshop, and the 

 operative the handicraftsman, there is no chance in industry for the 

 application of art, except in a few cases. Art is no longer a quality of 

 the product of every-day work as formerly, and it is hopeless for us to 

 expect it to be. And with its departure from industry, art has vanished 

 from the daily life of men. This is not surprising, because, although 

 the long and toilsome road to art by way of production is closed up by 



