good, which characterizes the American
people to a degree hitherto unknown in the world since the outburst of
the Renaissance, issues, as in the Renaissance, in an enormous
multiplication of the machinery by which the enjoyment of life and its
outward embellishment are promoted. But more than this and far
better--the eager pursuit of the means for enhancing physical and
mental gratification has coincided with a growing desire for the
general welfare;--hence the aesthetic movement of recent years, and the
zeal for social betterment which excludes no section or class or
occupation, tend to unite, and at the same time to work inward and
develop a type of character which seeks joy not only in beauty but
also in the desire to give beauty a home in the low as well as in the
high places. Whatever may be one's view of the final value of the
recent American productions in literature and the fine arts, the
social, democratic tendency in them is unmistakable. The company of
enthusiastic men and women who are preaching the gospel of beauty as a
common human birthright is neither small nor feeble. The fine arts are
emerging from the studios, professional schools, and coteries; they
are no longer conceived as the special prerogative of privileged
classes; not even is the creation of masterpieces as objects of
national pride the pervading motive;--but they are seen to be
potential factors in national education, ministering to the happiness
and mental and moral health of the community at large. It was
impossible that the most enlightened directors of our colleges,
universities, and public schools should not perceive the nature and
possibilities of this movement, hasten to ally themselves with it, and
in many cases assume a leadership in it to which their position and
advantages entitled them.

=The educative function of music=

The commanding claims which the arts of design, music, and the drama
are asserting for an organized share in the higher education is also,
I think, a consequence of the change that has come about in recent
years in the constitution of the curriculum, the methods of
instruction, the personnel of the student body, the multiplication of
their sanctioned activities, and especially in the attitude of the
undergraduates toward the traditional idea of scholarship. The old
college was a place where strict, inherited conceptions of scholarship
and mental discipline were piously maintained. The curriculum rested
for i