determines the quality of growth of the nerve-centers used in expression. We now take it for granted that mind-action depends upon physical nerve-action; that there is the closest relation between the two. Conscious action that does not move into expression is retarded and weakened. Take an image in consciousness for the initiatory; that image has a strong tendency to move outward, manifest itself to others. The quality of the image determines the quality of the nerve-action, if the image is expressed. The quality of the expression determines, also, the quality of the physical agent in expression. Then with this physical basis of nerves we have the expression thru physical agents. The educative value of thought expressed is determined by the motive of the expression. The higher the motive, the better the thought, the better the nerve-action. Education, then, from first to last, means the best that one can do.

Art is doing the best under the highest motive of which the doer is capable. Art depends upon quality of thought and expression. Like beauty and taste, art can never be defined except from a personal standpoint. It is entirely a personal matter. It means one's selfhood; it reveals one's best thought and emotions to others. Art is best doing in every way, and best doing depends entirely upon motive. The best may be a daub, a blotch, a shapeless mass of clay, a discordant cry, but it is art if it is the best. When that best is felt by others, when it reveals the selfhood of the artist, when it tells something to the observer of the inner nature of the one who expresses thought, then it is fine art. All the steps up to fine art are thru art. Fine art is the highest plane of art. From these facts we may get some sound pedagogical principles: 1. Expression should always be educative art.

2. All the modes and agents of expression should be brought into the fullest and most complete action.

3. There can be no expression without thought or knowledge behind it. The bare technique of modes of expression has little that is educative in it. The real education springs from the expression of growing thought, which has its sources in the study of man and nature.

4. Expression should always be the genuine reflex of the pupil's thought. The moment it ceases to be this genuine reflex it degrades itself into mere imitation.

5. Opportunities of expression spring from a close and careful study of man and nature. All knowledge thus gained becomes thru expression nutrition, and each mode of expression has its particular reacting function.

6. The quality of expression determines its educative value. Expression is educative movement.

The results of education are all found in the growth of the individual; in the growth of muscle, brain, mind, and motive. The

expressed product is the one means by which this, growth can be watched and criticised.

7. Doing the best always arouses enthusiasm, earnestness, and courage on the part of the doer. It stimulates persistence and opens a vista of

better things before.

PICTURE STUDY—ITS RELATION TO CULTURE AND

GENERAL EDUCATION

FRED J. ORR, SUPERVISOR OF DRAWING, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, ATHENS, GA. As I have thought of this subject, pictures in the schoolroom seem to have two general values, namely, cultural and technical; cultural, as they have to do with the training of mind, morals, and taste; and technical, as they may aid in the use of one or another medium of pictorial expression.

The question of the relation of picture study to education calls into debate the province of art. If art creations have no higher purpose than to chase away sadness, as Pericles put it; or merely to give pleasure, as a modern German expresses it, then art has not served its highest calling, tho it may perform in either or both these spheres and do well.

One definition of a work of art is that it is "the manifestation of some essential or salient character, consequently some important idea, clearer and more completely than is attainable from real objects." This means that the artist must possess the power to suppress and select to such a degree that his finished work presents only the concentrated essence of the matter in hand. If this is true, we may arrive quickly at the conclusion that a work of art is always a medium of interpretation. It is the distilled product of a master's skill. It is "man added to nature;" as in the case of Leonardo-"through whose soul, as through a clear glass, the bright figures of Florentine life, only made a little mellower and more pensive by the transit, passed on to the opposite wall." Hence, when we come before the canvas, it is with another's eyes that we behold. And thru this borrowed vision we may see beauty as a "transformer of the crude wealth of material goods into things of spiritual value."

So, a master's picture may be an interpretation of ideals: ideals of intellectual life; of moral life; of beauty and the sense of fitness; and of all these combined. The art of the Greeks was an embodiment in marble of the ideal of physical manhood which, for four hundred years, they had endeavored to realize. And Lessing states that "these beautiful statues, fashioned from beautiful men, reacted upon their creators; and the state was indebted for its beautiful men to its beautiful statues." It is the reflex influence of the best qualities of character represented in art that is to benefit those who study pictures; and the benefit will come, either in giving form to a poorly defined ambition, or by inspiring a desire and

pure ideal" And I believe the

love for higher things, which did not exist before. The " within many a breast dies for a want of development. lowest and poorest can be made to look upward if we but find the instrument which is strong enough, and yet simple enough, to fix the gaze. A picture attracts most strongly thru the simplicity of its appeal. The lesson which a poet-artist with his superior insight has extracted from nature is before us in plain and beautiful terms-easy and delightful to understand. Thus, such a picture as Millet's "Angelus," with its simple. landscape and two figures, may teach, as Drummond says of it, love, work, and worship; or a Bastien-Lepage may inspire purpose and patriotism by his peasant Joan; or a Da Vinci may show us in a single face, according to Pater, ten thousand experiences and all modes of thought and life.

And so, dormant impulses and sleeping activities may be aroused by a revelation of what is worthy and what is worthless; we may discover, not only what we like, but what is worth liking; taste and duty may be harmonized, and beauty made interpreter of goodness and truth.

Concerning the technical values: I quote from Emerson that "man is only half himself, the other half is his expression." And most frequently the latter half is painfully unable to give utterance to itself. The separation between abilities of conception and perception, and those of expression, is wide. As someone has said:

The thought that most thrills our existence is one

Which, before we can frame it in language, is gone.

In order to sharpen the tongue or make facile the pen, to every youth is given, for study, examples of masters who have excelled in the use of written and spoken language. And, to appreciate musical composition and harmony, we are trained to repeat the melodies of a Bach or Wagner. In like manner, to render practical the powers of pictorial expression, the mind must be saturated with the excellencies of a Raphael and an Angelo, a Rembrandt and a Millet. Ruskin wrote that "the more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention; and, what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conception." William Morris Hunt has said practically the same thing.

Now, intimacy with products of brush, crayon, or pencil can in no way be so well cultivated as by the effort to reproduce. This does not mean to argue for one moment that servile copying is healthful. The benefit lies in the study of methods, and, as above, the borrowing of another's eyes for a while to give training in the task of elimination and selection. To see what another has done, and thereby in some degree to understand the range of possibilities, and the manner of their accomplishment, is of immense value to the amateur.

An urchin of Phil May's or Edith Farmiloe's, to illustrate vitality in a line; a reproduction from Gibson, to show deftness in handling; a study

of Ross Turner for flowers and foliage; of Pennell for a street scene. Or we may study a Millet for composition; a Rembrandt for light and dark effects; the Japanese for their beautiful arrangements in notan; or a Michael Angelo for magnificent lines. And so the student finds here a bit of concentrated expression, as it were; there an effect of texture; in this, vivid sun effects and atmospheric qualities; in that, a lesson in perspective.

Or, again, the same instruction may be had from reproductions in other fields of art, as: to gain ideas of good proportion from a picture of the Parthenon; or of graceful line from a Gothic arch, or from a Greek "Victory;" or of space arrangement from a Venetian façade or Giotto's Tower.

Picture study is therefore valuable in placing before young minds the teachings of great men who have been able to present their lessons in simple and attractive form, easily understood and gladly studied. Their delineations of great themes inspire thought and a desire for truth; their outlines of figures and faces shine with goodness and spirituality; and their combinations of line and space, shade and shadow, satisfy the yearning for that which pleases and delights the eye.

It is also practical in the union of the beautiful and useful, in the combination of the theory and practice of æsthetics, and in exciting at desire to create as well as to copy.

It is in a double sense cultural and educative.

THE RELATIVE VALUE OF BRUSH AND PENCIL AS MEDIUMS OF EXPRESSION

MISS BONNIE SNOW, SUPERVISOR OF DRAWING, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. There has been during the last two or three years a great wave of enthusiasm for the use of the brush and color, which has swept over the educational world and whose influence has been felt in nearly every city and town where drawing is included in the public-school course of study. Teachers and pupils alike have caught the infection. The school exhibits displayed in educational conventions during the last two years have been almost entirely in color. Old courses of study have been neglected, and many principles of drawing formerly considered fundamental and of great importance have received recently little or no attention because of the emphasis given to the new medium. No one can doubt, in the face of such overwhelming evidence as to the delight of the children in this new work, that it possesses immense educational value. No one who has experienced its phenomenal development, its influence on the attitude of the children, not only toward their work in drawing, but in many instances

toward their whole school life, can question its right to a large place in the adjustment of our curriculum.

However, without becoming unduly critical, it will do no harm to take a calm and retrospective view of what we have been doing for the last year or two, with a view of determining whether or not we have been carried too far, thru our love for color, and whether we have held fast that which is good in our effort to prove all things.

The Minneapolis exhibit of pupils' work which hangs in an adjoining room may properly be considered an illustration of half of the subject announced the value of the brush as a means of expression. It may also be taken as typical of the character of work resulting from this wave of enthusiasm for color and the brush. It bears witness to the intense interest taken in the new medium by children and teachers, and it also stands as a living example to be pointed at by the more conservative of our friends who are lifting a warning voice against what seems to them the overwhelming predominance given to the brush as a tool in the hands. of children, and who loudly regret the passing of the pencil. While it is possible, and very likely probable, that our enthusiasm for color has carried us too far away from the standards, the methods, and the instruments of the past, we must remember two things:

First, to fall very much in love with an idea, to be greatly influenced by it, to be what is called entirely carried away with it, is not in itself a bad thing; it is a very good thing, even if, while under the spell and charm of this idea, we are not always as coolly judicial as when the fire of enthusiasm has died down. Time, tide, and the resistless influences of passing events can be depended upon to correct extremes. It really is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all; and, if we can still love without losing, surely 'twere a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Second, we cannot but perceive that the objections to the too exclusive use of the brush come mainly from those interested in the publication of drawing-books and from the manufacturers of pencils. The inference is obvious. We do not say that the objections come solely from these sources, or that such objections are not without foundation. We believe that they contain something more than the elements of truth, and it is the purpose of this discussion to look at both sides of the question, to admit the weaknesses and omissions of the work of the last year, and earnestly to seek for that which will strengthen it and make it more complete. We must remember, however, that it is not really the brush or the pencil, water-color or charcoal, pen or pastel, which is of the slightest consequence, except as they concern the happiness and well-being, the usefulness and open-mindedness, the proper culture and development, of that most interesting organism in the created world the little child. Let us especially remember, then, his interests and desires - his needs, his