the senses. (3) The philosophers of the present maintain that reality is the complete union of the spiritual and the material, the latter being the form in which spirit, in order to exist in this world, must embody itself. If (1) spirit is the solely important, that time is wasted which is spent dealing with the concrete; conversations, stories, and songs which treat of virtues and other abstractions will be the only valuable parts of the program. There will be a constant play of moods, but the essence of each will be lost because not embodied in form. If, on the other hand, (2) the material side is solely valuable, materials will be used as ends in themselves, acquisition of facts, perfection of form, and ability to practice technique will be the aim. Each thing, even the kindergarten itself as a whole, will be so complete that it will show a finish very pleasing to the adult. If (3) reality is the unity of the spiritual and the material, the kindergartner will lead a child to feel that there should be a guiding thought which seeks expression through all the materials at his command, thru conversation, story, song, rhythm, game, and handwork. Balance will always be preserved; the creative spirit will be called forth and take form. in something adequate to the significance of the moment. A child will gain a feeling of the self as an organic unity; thought and expression in perfect accord will intensify the personality.

The kindergartner's yearly and even daily plans will be influenced by her view concerning the teleology of the universe. She may think that (1) God's design is static and unchangeable, in which case she can have a fixed program which will be of use everywhere. She may believe that (2) there is no preconceived plan; that the purpose is gradually evolving, as the universe develops; then she will use any momentary suggestion of the children as a basis for work. But if (3) God's purpose is a living, growing one which man is helping to embody, the kindergartner will have a definite plan in mind but it will be a principle rather than a design, so flexible that it will allow for variations which would be more valuable for the children at the particular time and place than the detail she had prepared.

In the kindergartner's attitude toward good and evil will be found the key to her discipline. If (1) because the body contains a soul, every human being is naturally good, mature ideals will be held up for copy in the belief that this is all that is necessary to bring a child back to rectitude. If, on the other hand, (2) being in a fleshly body means a natural inclination to sin, the evil must be driven out at all costs even by negative, compulsory methods. There may be another view (3) that goodness is a relative term, according to the standards of society, which are constantly changing. If evil is untrained impulse, the teacher will generally notice an offending action by suggesting a more virtuous way to free the energy.

Lastly, the view which the kindergartner holds of the nature of unity will be at the basis of her attitude toward the principle of interaction and will determine her choice of topics and method of treatment. If (1) she leans to the ideal side, the adult will give much and the child little. Any subject which

the adult feels of value will be presented, trusting that the child will gain something from its consideration. If (2) emphasis is placed on the practical side, the respective shares will be reversed. Whatever interests the child will be taken up in the same way that a child uses it—for its momentary significance only. If (3) unity means the combining of two equal though unlike elements, both adult and child must have equivalent parts in carrying out the principle of interaction. It will fall to the child's lot to select the points of interest for discussion (these for a five-year-old child will be in his immediate surroundings), and to the adult to find wherein they can be stamped with the values which will lead toward the acceptance of race judgments.

In summing up, if it were possible to mention all the methods included under numeral one (1) under each point, they would be seen to carry out a very consistent philosophy. A totally opposing view, and yet consistent in itself, would be found under two (2); and the middle view under three (3). Very few people are extremists, yet there is a tendency to lean more to one side than the other. Along the middle line lies truth. Emphasis on either the ideal or the practical in the kindergarten program makes it one-sided. The true relation is the union of the two, and the degree to which this relationship is maintained depends upon one factor. That factor is a personality.

The usual program states the topic chosen, the idea which the children. are to gain from its consideration, and also the particular method and purpose of each part of the day. The real program can never be written, for the personal touch of the kindergartner arouses the controlling ideas and is the most powerful method.

DISCUSSION

MRS. ALICE H. PUTNAM, superintendent of Chicago Froebel Association.-It is interesting to consider the matter of habit. We hear much about spontaneity and freedom but little about habit. I should like to ask Mr. Barnes if we are harming the child by definitely directing his acts? Should he evolve his line of action from his own consciousness, or should he secure definite direction?

MR. BARNES.—A child should yield unquestioning obedience to someone before he is a year old. He should receive definite instruction in matters relating to personal habits or social intercourse and should obey without coaxing, begging, or delay, so that gradually these acts will become subconscious, leaving the conscious mind free for more important things. This obedience should, as the child develops, be transferred from the individual to the social group and its laws and then to the divine law. At the same time we must take care not to dictate to a child with reference to religion, art, or any of the higher and unsettled problems of life.

THE ART IMPULSE; ITS EARLY FORMS AND RELATION TO MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

LILLIAN S. CUSHMAN, INSTRUCTOR IN ART, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILL.

One is tempted to believe that in the matter of art education surely the final word has been spoken. Yet to every teacher whose work is alive the old

fundamental questions are as new, as germane, as if he were the first to ask them.

How does art relate itself to the life of the child and what contributions does it make to the sum total of experience? This query is not to be turned aside. The entire fabric of the course of study-the specific problemsthe technical sequence and method are molded in accordance to the

answer.

To explain my meaning, we must know what kind and how well developed an interest it is which stimulates a child to express himself thru pictorial and decorative art. I am using the term interest in its largest sense. In a group of thirty children, engines, boats, birds, flowers, animals, thirty individual interests may be expressed by their drawings. That the thirty children show a rather common tendency to scribble something denotes a more universal motive power back of the specific engine or bear. It is this impulse which I have in mind.

It is evident that if the art work which we organize in the school is to function normally in the lives of the children it must respond in the fullest degree to this genetic motive. Hence, our question-The Art Impulse, its nature and relation to mental development?

Is it play? the mere physical resultant of the contact with suggestive material-the joy of pounding-of sticking fingers into soft clay, of wielding a paint brush? If so, then the educational attack must be planned thru materials selected with reference to the nature of stimulation and response. Is it utilitarian? Does the child picture his ideas primarily in order to communicate them? When he makes things is he dominated by the desire to use them? Why does he decorate them-is it because the decoration will enhance their significance? Is it because he plays with material or is it that he has an innate feeling for beauty which thus finds expression? Is this art impulse perchance wholly aesthetic?

If we answer that it is utilitarian, use becomes the point of contact. If it is aesthetic, we have but to give more and more opportunity for the exercise of those impulses which will finally lead to the consciousness of the laws of order and beauty. Doubtless we would all agree that aesthetic development is the educational function of art in the curriculum. Therefore the last plan would appear to represent the direct mode, consequently the economical method of fitting means to end. An art course which is at all points essentially aesthetic is most attractive.

But second thought is a reminder that such a plan represents economy only in case it is built on the real basic motive power. We have seen boys prepare a field for their athletic sports, or execute other projects distinctly their own. In the presence of the overwhelming momentum generated by enthusiastic desire we realize the waste that occurs in the schoolroom. Economy can be gained only by utilizing this energy. Any plan which we adopt, no matter how well organized, sinks to the level of a formal technical drill, attended

by the evils of isolation, unless we make this vital contact. tion is still before us.

And so our ques

The answer must be sought outside of the schoolroom in the wider fields of art itself. Not the art of the adult race with the highly specialized interest of a renaissance, but the art of a culture which corresponds most closely with the stage of consciousness of the kindergarten or primary grade. This takes us back to the first scratchings on clay and to the primitive use of the picture and decoration. We need to know how these happened to be and what values they represented, if any, in the aesthetic history of the race. From this primitive art let us ask two questions: (1) The nature of the art impulse; (2) The direction of its development and the influences which have contributed to its growth.

You who are familiar with the literature of the subject know that formerly scientists assumed some one motive as the source of all these phenomena. Pictographs, personal adornment, decorative art, were all either motor, utilitarian, or aesthetic in origin according to the point of view of the writer.

More recent methods of scientific investigation have led ethnologists to a different view of the situation. Dr. Kroeber clearly states this change and so I quote:

Every explanation of an origin in anthropology is based on three processes of thought which are unobjectionable logically but are contrary to evolutionary principles and the countless body of facts that support these principles. First is the assumption in the word origin that before the beginning of the phenomena explained, itself and its cause were absent; second is the belief that a suddenly arising cause singly produced the phenomenon; and third, is the idea that this cause as suddenly and completely ceased as it had before sprung up and that its product has remained unaffected by other causes unaltered but for wear and tear to the present day. The fundamental error of the common anthropological method of investigating origins is that it isolates phenomena and seeks isolated specific causes for them. In reality ethnic phenomena do not exist separately. They have their being only in culture. Much less can the causative forces of the human mind, the activities or tendencies, be truly isolated.1

In Dr. Kroeber's exposition of the matter, we have a view of the primitive consciousness in which the motives of later life exist in an embryonic and undifferentiated state. Instead of certain well-developed interests we are led to expect a composite in which are all sorts of individual variations, due to the dominance rather than the isolation of certain ones. It accounts for the fact which impresses the student of primitive art; viz., that in a way there is no such thing. That is to say, he cannot conduct his research as he would if he were studying the art of Greece or of the Renaissance. The decorative art of the Haida or of the Pueblos does not stand out by itself. range of material in their culture of which one can say from their labor and said 'Let us rejoice and be glad. ourselves beautiful things just for the joy of the making.""

There is no wide "Here they rested Let us make unto As their religious

A. L. Kroeber, The American Anthropologist, Vol. III, p. 308: chapter on "Decorative Symbolism of the Arapahr."

ceremonials are a part of their scheme of self-preservation so their art is inseparably bound up in those activities which have to do with the life processes.

On the ivory handle of the skin scraper, on the bird snare, and the harpoon, on the bead moccasin and the skin par-flêche, on the tepee, the blanket, and robe, on basket and bowl, on the warrior's shield and club, on the wrappings of the dead and at the altar of sacred mysteries we find their art. It is a part of the entire range of primitive culture. Evidently it was not a festal garment to be assumed and discarded at will. The fact of its universality and of its rich content of associated meaning argues that it emanated from the mainsprings of being.

To the educator the significance of the discussion of primitive origins lies in the fact that these motives are so rudimentary that even experts have differed concerning their nature. It argues that if he is dealing with an equally elementary mind he will not be justified in assuming a fully developed or even clearly distinct interest. That on the other hand motives will be complex. Does not this correspond to facts?

When I have tried to check up my observations by former theories I could never quite succeed. If I concluded that utility started the machinery of artistic development I found cases where there seemed to be only a play interest. In other instances there was every evidence of its being aesthetic. If I built a course of instruction, however, on the last assumption, the results were too artificial and the children were too passive to indicate its universal dominance.

In fact, can you put your finger on any one genetic force which prompts a play activity? When a group of children laboriously fashion a retreat in wide-spreading branches and become tree-dwellers can you prove that it results from the love of climbing or from the delight in building, or from the enjoy ment of the song of birds and the lace net-work of sky and green leafage? We know that all these and something more which eludes analysis are a part of that happy playtime, a playtime which is just as real as any experience of later life.

To state the conclusion concerning the nature of the art impulse as it exists in primitive consciousness let us say that it is true. It is motor activity, a response to the physical stimulus of material. It is utilitarian. It is aesthetic. There is something of all of these in every primitive art form. The dominant characteristic is determined by individual bias, by the persistence of some one of these interests. The universal fact is that whether in the race or the child these impulses are bound up in those pursuits which are centralizing and social.

We come to the second question-The direction of aesthetic development and the influences which have contributed to its growth. This necessitates explanation of the term aesthetic as applied to those qualities which are visual.

All of the fine arts have this in common; viz., they interpret to the same