DEVELOPMENT OF ART INSTINCT. 467 
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she pursuit of business, war, science, or self-amusement, it is the supreme 
testimony of history that the destiny of all great civilization is decided 
not so much by belly or brain as by the profounder power of the emotions 
and higher sentiments; in short, the ideality, poetry, imagination, and 
heart sensibilities of the race. So that the remark of Fletcher, ¢“ Let me 
make the ballads of a people, and I care not who make its laws,” or the 
caution of Solomon to “keep the heart with all diligence, as out of it are 
‘he issues of life,” comes home with force at this hour. 
When all cruder activities and competitions have faded, the great art 
(nstincts and inspirations of every noble people have infallibly rescued its 
record from vulgarity and oblivion, immortalizing while concentrating the 
vital genius of that nation, so that we may safely say, not only of a man 
but of each fraction of mankind, “as he thinketh in his Zeart, so is he,” 
or, in scientific phrase, ‘“according to its intellectual convictions relative 
bo its emotional faculties,” so assuredly must it measure in the standard 
of fame as well as the actual competitions of finer civilization. 
Art surveys her brilliant past, her growing present, and yet more glorious 
tuture, and, scorning apologists, exclaims of her spirit of beauty: “The 
Oreator Himself is her defense, and the God of glory her reward.” 
My remarks shall concern not the worth of art to our school systems, 
out the worth of our present school systems and conceptions to essential 
art education (according as over twenty years’ professional experience at 
aome and abroad compel my judgment). 
Indeed it seems to me that once to state the question of “essential” art 
education vitally and fairly would almost be to answer it. For in the 
leep and true significance, “national art” was never the vast accumula- 
tion of promiscuous and borrowed splendor, as when Rome ravaged Greece 
for official pride and plunder (to the ruin of herself), but was ever and 
sssentially that mysterious and magnificent evolution of ssthetic prin- 
ciples and divine methods of self-manifestation employed by nature in 
axpressing her own poetry, and variously felt, comprehended, and re- 
applied by nations, as different as Greeks from Japanese, to express their 
own organic genius, their own inspirations, their own delights in nature 
nd discoveries of her beauty. This was ever quickened and qualified by 
their own national aspirations, religions and social ideals, concomitant 
poetry, industry and experience, giving the unique flavor of * national” 
*haracter, historic significance, and local charm, constituting genuinely 
organic ‘¢ style.” 
Now, this wonderful esthetic life, that scintillates in every gem, unfolds 
‘rom every shell, or bursts from every redolent flower ; is omnipresent to 
yuide the oriole building its nest, the Polynesian carving his paddle, the 
Pueblo weaving his mat, the Japanese his silks ; and which has covered 
Ganges, Euphrates, Nile, and Rhine with miracles of national enthusiasm, 
was never the outcome of really borrowed or superficial culture. but flamed