418 Life as a Fine Art. 



ly, the world sorrowfully knows. Nevertheless, let us give 

 all such honest efforts due meed of honest recognition, not 

 judging them unfairly by their failures to accomplish defi- 

 nite aims. They have stimulated thought ; they have created 

 new ideals for worthy activities ; they have afforded scope 

 for altruistic efforts in their devotees ; they have helped to 

 expose the imperfections of the existing order and to con- 

 centrate efforts for its betterment. Let us be thankful for 

 the ideal republics, the Utopias, the Icarias ; for formu- 

 lated creeds, whether religious or socialistic, which are better 

 than no beliefs at all ; for all these are incentives to thought 

 and guides to altruistic endeavor. They emphasize the 

 growing importance of social and religious problems, and 

 stimulate wise minds to seek for their true solution. But, 

 seeing that this world is a growing world ; that the condi- 

 tions we have to deal with are not statical but dynamical ; 

 that they belong, indeed, both in the individual and in so- 

 ciety, to the department of organic dynamics rather than of 

 inorganic to the super-organic, indeed, involving the added 

 factors of human self -consciousness and volition ; seeing 

 that society is no plastic mass of inert material to be mold- 

 ed at will, but an innumerable body of living, seething, 

 struggling, aspiring individual units, no two of which are 

 identical in nature more than in form or feature the wise 

 student of man will not anticipate the success of any of 

 these definite plans for social regeneration. He will rightly 

 distinguish the method of art from that of artificiality. 

 His effort should be therefore to enrich the soil, to remove 

 obstructions, to give free play to natural forces, to stimulate 

 thought along evolutionary lines, and thus, by a wise oppor- 

 tunism, to adapt his efforts to existing conditions and make 

 the most and the best of the forces instantly operating, 

 without the unnecessary destruction and waste implied in 

 radical deviations from the line of existing social tenden- 

 cies. He will strive to 



" Know the seasons, when to take 

 Occasion by the hand," 



and thus make his work most fruitful in beneficent results. 

 His method, in other words, will be that of evolution instead 

 of revolution, that of biology and sociology rather than of 

 abstract mathematics, that of the artist and philosopher 

 rather than of the empiricist or scientific dreamer a method 

 which, being practical and conforming spontaneously to the 



