82 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



ing that in this regard, I could ask no better or fitter audience, I 

 ask your attention to Art as a means of Education. 



Of the mechanic arts, admirable as are their results, we do not 

 now speak. But our concern on this occasion is with those arts 

 which are called par e^ninejice Fine Arts, or more commonly "Art." 

 These serve not for mere material uses, for our comfort, or con- 

 venience, or for the facilitation of business ; not to sustain the nat- 

 ural life, or even to promote in any way mere physical well-being ; 

 but they speak directly to the intellectual and moral nature of 

 man, adding to his stock of knowledge, educating or leading forth 

 his noblest powers, conducting him both onward and upward, by 

 inciting to love and delight in the beautiful and good. How nec- 

 essary is this moral elevation, we realize from the words of the 

 poet, " unless above himself he can erect himself, how mean a 

 ihiiig is man ! " Art, so understood, is the embodiment or utter- 

 ance of those ideas modified by the imagination, whose nature it 

 is to awaken sensibility or emotion. 



Then how wide the realm of art ! Every object in nature, every 

 fact in history, every truth in science, and nearly al! such have 

 their poetic aspects, whose tendency it is to awaken feeling, may 

 become the subject of art. Nay, the realm of art extends above 

 and beyond nature ; every thought and imagination concerning 

 the mind of man, and its relations ; concerning the supernatural ; 

 concerning other states of existence ; concerning Grod himself, is 

 the legitimate subject of art. Still more, every influence given to 

 these thoughts and imaginations by our moods and feelings be- 

 comes in itself poetic. 



The chief elements of art are the sublime, the beautiful, the 

 characteristic, the humorous, the fantastic and the grotesque. 



The particular modes of manifestation of art-feeling, or language 

 of art, are poetry, painting, statuary, music, and architecture. 



Poetry is art in articulate language ; painting, in color, form, 

 light and shadow; statuary, in form only; music, in sound; and 

 architecture is art in the application of beautiful and grand forms 

 to uses, in the construction of buildings. 



Having defined art generally, let us now look more particularly 

 -at art-ideas as differenced in kind from truths of science. Scien- 



