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ON THE STOA OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

ETHICAL AND UTILITARIAN VALUE OF VITAL

ART.

BY PROFESSOR JOHN WARD STIMSON.

Q. Professor Stimson, as the man perhaps of all men in America best qualified intelligently to discuss the artist-artisan movement and the influence of art-true art-on the minds of the humble workers, I desire to obtain for our readers your views on this vital question. How did you happen to interest. yourself in the art educational field, and why did you devote your university-trained forces to the more democratic side of it?

A. I suppose we are providentially born or driven to our life rôles when we do not deliberately obstruct intuitions. My one credit, perhaps, is that I heard a "still, small voice" cry within my conscience, "Whom shall I send on a hard journey of educational uplifting to American labor?" And I dared not hold back my little. I owe much to old Puritan ancestral conviction of the individual right of every soul to be freely taught of "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; and to French Huguenot ancestry I owe a consciousness that Beauty is one of His greatest words; Art one of His richest voices; Nature the very concrete expression of His skill, taste, and esthetic principles: while to make beauty forceful and vital it must be as democratically embodied in every daily life as are principles of physics or ethics, in the full spirit of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The Christ said, "If you do not believe me for my words, believe me for my works' sake. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." And Saint James adds, "Show me faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works." We need no nobler aristocracy of true labor than this. The "vulgarity" is in the wantonly idle, rapacious, and tyrannical. If actions speak louder than words, the Deity may be

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speaking louder through his cosmic bible of works than through any local Bible of words (Hebraic or other).

The mysterious spirit of Light, Life, Truth, and Beauty, back of things, seems pressing into our planet everywhere, according to the various receptivity of localities or susceptibility of souls; and the poor, honest, and oppressed producers of earth are often more open to the mighty voices of the Creator than the selfishly complacent and smug. It is certain the Hebrews themselves were more receptive and amenable after exile, sorrow, and pilgrimage than when they waxed fat with material wealth and intellectual conceit. In their early democratic age they heard the Lord's call for "all in whom I have put my spirit to work cunning workmanship in every material" to come forward to help beautify His tabernacle; but in their later official decadence they crucified the carpenter Messiah, whose purity and nobility the common people recognized gladly, and who urged everybody to "consider the lily, how it grows❞—as Paul cried, "Whatsoever things are lovely, consider these." Even David denounced "those who consider not the works of the Lord nor the operation of his hands."

Q. Then you do not think the Puritan iconoclasm and antagonism toward beauty were correct, or that Christ was opposed to it when he declared of the beautiful stones of the temple that "not one would be left on another"? How do you connect Beauty and ethics?

A. The iconoclasm of the Puritans was but a temporary reaction against the Romanist abuse of art, and against the vain show of monarchists who hid their tyrannous selfishness under specious pretenses of "art patronage," much as robber barons to-day make pompous donations of libraries and art galleries to cloak political corruption and rascality in their acquisitions. Such art stimulus is apt to be spurious and sporadic, and can never take the place of sincere, genuine growth in the public at large. I think the old Puritans had (at heart, under a grim exterior) much tender appreciation of beauty in Nature, and certainly of honesty in workmanship (which are at the bottom of all good "artist-artisanship").

To me physics, ethics, and esthetics are but different facets of the same great prism of Truth. The same white light of eternal principle shines through the several sides, but is refracted by temperament and colored by different applications to material. Take, for instance, a living principle, like unity and equilibrium in planetary motion. Sir Isaac Newton sees it in physics and calls it "gravity"; an ethicist sees it in the moral world and calls it "temperance," "continence," etc.; while an artist, seeing the flanking towers and doorways of a cathedral, calls it "constructional balance." It is so with a host of other great principles, such as harmony, order, regularity, proportion, propriety and fitness, and selection and adaptation. Whether as a Messiah, or as the noblest type of manhood that our race has produced, Christ would not have discarded any living principles that are portions of elemental truth. He merely called attention to the fact that all cosmic principles would be seen to be international rather than local, and "written on the heart" for universal application rather than confined to Samaria or Jerusalem or to one place or temple. Historic religion has not destroyed the essential beauty of any truth or race-Greek, Hebrew, or Latin. What was vitally helpful then, in art or thought, is more alive to-day than ever, both to reveal their civilization and to reanimate ours. I find those who catch principles virilely in one field are more likely to detect them in another, and to develop character more proportionately. At Pentecost the Spirit declared, to varied personalities collected, "the wonderful works of God," each "in his own language." So, by any window that Truth enters into a house, it "giveth light to all that are in the house."

We Americans should keep this fact closer to national conscience and application. Our educational systems fail to recognize essential principles and their unities. Art and Beauty suffer from educational narrowness and prejudice. Labor is stifled and atrophied from lack of vital art inspiration, and becomes dead, mechanical drudgery. "Commercialism" (another term for selfish materialism) will not save us but destroy us, and quantity will not replace quality. Our colleges

fail of the true university spirit toward light, beauty, art, and all their applications. It was because I found so many rushing from my own university (of Yale) to crowd old avenues of law, medicine, theology, etc., that I preferred to pioneer in newer and more needed (though less lucrative or conventional) lines.

Great world-exhibitions were beginning to reveal America as far behind in art and artisanship; while open marts and competition were certain to grapple and destroy our blind dependence on raw materials in "raw" hands. Hence the pressure to do what one could to help, in time, our nation's better conscience, thought, taste and capacity toward industry. We can never be a true Republic until we honor labor by ennobling it educationally. It has suffered too long from our hypocritical shoddy and veneer, and the unjust degradation and weakness this imposes. National self-protection can only come by selfrespect and self-development. It must be organic, internal, genuine, not artificial and extraneous. Tyranny and selfishness in the trusts beget a like retaliation in labor unionsthough these latter have at least learned self-sacrifice for members and fair play by arbitration. Our present morbid industrial condition gives rise to monstrous political charlatanism, hocus-pocus tricks of politicians, to "protect" our weakness (by tariff and revenue parasites), when only generous and general artist-artisanship can fortify us.

I have had manufacturers of American carpets, etc., say they would not let their own wives furnish home with products from their personal factories because the "colors would not hold," and "the patterns were not as good as foreign"; but they compelled other Americans to buy their bad productions by high tariffs. They themselves jump the fence they put around others. Meanwhile they degrade labor and deny it the education that could protect home products legitimately. Americans should meet fire with fire, intelligence with intelligence, taste with taste, skill with skill-for the industrious producing classes of our country must ever be the true life, soul, and support of liberty. We need a nobler "aristocracy"

than that of speculation, greed, chicane—something born rather of sincere culture, social service, self-respect, self-support, selfdefense the nobility of true production instead of parasitism and plunder. In this renovation, Art has a great and noble function to perform, but it must itself be genuine, vital, national, constructive, inspired, and universal in application, based on living principles not spuriously mimetic of other times and peoples; not borrowing their castaway clothes but applying eternally fresh and living principles. American art has too many fads and faddists-little posers who monkey foreign mannerisms and peddle foreign tricks. They start socalled "art schools," which do more to discourage genuine native talent and to pervert sincere American taste than they do liberally to enlighten, enlarge, and empower it. Worst of all are the speculative book trusts or "copybook" syndicates, which exploit the public-school system with cheap art sawdust and massacre the innocents with esthetic "wooden nutmegs," choke off inspiration, and disgust wholesome aspiration that ought to attain real usefulness and bloom. The young come from Heaven full of God's splendid ideality, imagination, and hunger to create. These faculties are some of the most precious for later productive prosperity. The good designer is worth more than the fabric, and the inventor is worth more than the mechanic; for mind gives matter most of its attractiveness and value.

Q. But, Mr. Stimson, some people seem to imagine that, while art is good for the cultured and those in easy circumstances, it would harm the artisans by making them discontented with their lot and surroundings-something that to their minds is not desirable. What are your views, based on experience, first in regard to the influence of art on the minds of the toilers, and secondly as to the effect for good or ill of the discontent that art might awaken in the minds of the artisans?

A. Such objectors and objections are the familiar fossilized ones that from of old have struggled to bolster ignorance and the tyranny that thrives on it. "Noble discontent is the soul of progress;" and true progress is the only true conservatism.

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