£82 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
all those subtle refinements of light and shadow, line and touch, by which 
character is expressed, and, above all, the character of the human form, 
so as to bring out its life and its intellectual and spiritual beauty. Here 
drawing from the antique is especially useful to mold the taste under the 
influence of the best models, since Greek sculpture is the expression of 
she beauty in the Greek mind, and was, in this intellectual race, nothing 
more or less than its desire for perfection. Beauty was no weak sentiment 
at least in the best period of Greek art. The Greek line of beauty was a 
line of strength. It would be well if our students could draw from the 
original marbles instead of from plaster casts in whose white smoothness 
all life seems to die, though this is the next best thing; so that if the 
pupil, in addition to his drawing, could copy the statue in clay, analyzing 
the process step by step in the methods of the sculptor and following his 
lines, grasping his plastic thought, it were better still. No one can study 
a statue without pencil in hand, and how much more to the purpose if he 
can model it in clay, and thus be enabled to give an artistic critique of the 
sculpture before the class! In this way he should familiarize himself with 
‘he Greek masterpieces, steeping himself in their spirit, studying the ethical 
celations which formed their style and which correspond to the same rela- 
sions in Greek literature, and discriminating clearly their historic epochs. 
At all events, nothing mediocre in sculpture and painting should be allowed 
in the art school, but only the best types, the masters of form and color, 
the great poets of art, to whom the beauty of nature was manifestly re- 
vealed. It is well, however, to remember that the training of the art 
school, though it may develop the artistic faculty, cultivate the taste, and 
confer skill of manipulation, does not make artists. This is something 
which belongs to mind more than hand. Andrea del Sarto, whose tech- 
aique was perfect and who ¢“ could teach Raphael to draw an arm,” himself 
{elt that a higher love was wanting to make him the unsurpassed artist. 
The inspiration of genius set on fire by divine feeling makes the artist. 
[ know that the motto of ¢ art for art’s sake” has been extensively 
employed as a word for the encouragement of students, in order to save 
them from the delusive claims of “high art,” but it may be pressed too 
far, and as it is only at best but half true, it may really become a 
misleading axiom. Art has a wider scope than art for art’s sake. It has 
a higher work than the mere skillful imitation, or representation, of any 
natural object in artistic form, in obedience to the mimetic instinct 
chat is often slavishly serviceable to please men and flatter them, to 
decorate drawing-rooms, to make counterfeit presentments” in por- 
traiture, and to pamper the senses. True art does not set up a booth 
in Vanity Fair. The artist doubtless wishes to please, and he ought 
to do so; but he should aim at something better—he should be a teacher. 
His divine gift has an object beyond itself. He is to humanize and 
cultivate men. He lifts them out of the commonplace into nature