subject itself. The actors in these historical scenes are, as I have
said, expressing their own interpretation of the various parts, and
their own perception of the meaning of each episode as a whole. This
means that they are training their imaginative sympathy,--a
sovereign faculty which of all faculties is perhaps the most
emancipative and expansive,--and training it, as I can testify, with
striking success; for the dramatic power which they display is
remarkable, and can have been generated by nothing less than
sympathetic insight into the feelings of the various historical
personages and the possibilities of the various situations.

It is probable that History lends itself more readily to dramatic
treatment than any other subject, but it is by no means the only
subject that is dramatised in Utopia. An interest in Geography is
awakened by scenes in foreign lands and episodes from books of travel
being acted by the children. An interest in Arithmetic, by a shop
being opened, which is well equipped with weights, measures, and
cardboard money, and in which a salesman stands behind the counter
and sells goods to a succession of customers. An interest in
Literature by the acting, with improvised costumes, of passages from
Shakespeare's plays, or scenes from Scott's and Dickens' novels.
Simple plays to illustrate Nature-study are acted by the younger
children; while the Folk Songs, which, as we shall see, play a
prominent part in the musical life of the children, are acted as
well as sung.

However rude and simple the histrionic efforts of the children may
be, they are doing two things for the actors. They are giving them a
living interest in the various subjects that are dramatised; and, by
teaching them to identify themselves, if only for a moment, with
other human beings, they are leading them into the path of tolerance,
of compassion, of charity, of sympathy,--the ever-widening path
which makes at last for Nirvanic oneness with the One Life.[17]

(3) _The Artistic Instinct_.

The desire to reproduce with pencil, paint, or clay the form and
colour of the outward world will, if duly cultivated, gradually
transform itself into the desire to feel, to understand, to
interpret, to express, not the form and colour only of the outward
world, but also that less palpable but more spiritual quality which
we call beauty. But in order that this transformation may take place,
the child must always endeavour to reproduce with