of development which has now been attained by what is at once the art
and the science of advertisement. "The study of advertisement," it
begins, "seems to have a perennial charm for the American public. Hardly
a month passes but some magazine finds a new and inviting phase of this
modern art to lay before its readers. The solid literature of
advertisement is also growing rapidly.... The technique of the subject
is almost as extensive as that of scientific agriculture. Whole volumes
have been compiled on the art of writing advertisements. Commercial
schools and colleges devote courses of study to the subject. Indeed the
corner-stone of the curriculum of a well-known business college is an
elective upon 'Window-dressing.'" That you may be under no
misapprehension, I must add that this article appears in what is
admittedly the most serious and respectable of the New York newspapers;
and that it is not conceived in the spirit of irony or hyperbole. To the
American, advertisement is a serious, important, and elevating
department of business, and those who make it their speciality endeavour
to base their operations on a profound study of human nature. One of
these gentlemen has expounded, in a book which has a wide circulation,
the whole philosophy of his liberal profession. He calls the book
"Imagination in Business";[4] and I remark incidentally that the use of
the word "imagination," like that of "art," in this connection, shows
where the inquirer ought to look for the manifestation, on this
continent, of the aesthetic spirit. "The imaginative man," says the
writer, "sends his thought through all the instincts, passions, and
prejudices of men, he knows their desires and their regrets, he knows
every human weakness and its sure decoy." It is this latter clause that
is relevant to his theme. Poets in earlier ages wrote epics and dramas,
they celebrated the strength and nobility of men; but the poet of the
modern world "cleverly builds on the frailties of mankind." Of these the
chief is "the inability to throw away an element of value, even though
it cannot be utilised." On this great principle is constructed the whole
art and science of advertisement. And my author proceeds to give a
series of illustrations, "each of which is an actual fact, either in my
experience, or of which I have been cognisant." Space and copyright
forbid me to quote. I must refer the reader to the original source.
Nowhere else will be found so lucid an