s, which is the effort to
relate art to life. The old banality, "Art for Art's sake," is obsolete,
and the vital meaning of art is in a more rational and beautiful
expression of life, as it were, the continent art of living well.

This is the ideal and educational aspect of applied esthetics. Within
the limits of its exclusive circle and within the radius of its special
activities there is a trend to contentment with the production of
objects of "worth and virtue." The object of luxury, which in fact has
no vital meaning to either the producer or consumer. Were the production
of such things to be its only aim, it would soon defeat its own end. But
this movement has in reality wider and more democratic ideals. Because
of its power to stimulate self-expression and the creative impulses, its
greatest and most vital influence is more social than artistic. It
principally concerns itself with the desire of the worker to express in
his work whatever impulse for beauty may be his. There is no surer way
of feeling the pressure of present economic conditions. The value of
applied esthetics is as a medicine to stir up social unrest and
discontent. Its keynote is self-expression, and it is when men and women
begin to think and act for themselves that they most keenly feel social
and economic restrictions, and are made to suffer under them. But if
suffering is necessary to growth, let us have it and have it over with
by all means. No sane being will stand much of it without making an
effort to get at its cause. It has been said that the most important
part of progress is to make people think; it is vastly more important
that they should feel. The average individual is not discontented with
his surroundings, else he would go to work to change them. As a product
of them he is benumbed by their mechanical influence, and consequently
expresses himself within their limits. He is the mouthpiece of existing
conditions, and, accordingly, acts in law-abiding fashion.

The larger emotional life, or inner social impulse emanates from those
pioneers who, living beyond existing conditions, are the dynamics of
society. Through them life pushes onward. The inner impulse becomes
public opinion, public opinion becomes custom, custom crystallizes into
law. Now the fresh impulse is needed for new growth; where shall it be
sought if not in the expression of the emotional life? What form shall
the expression take unless it be the purest and most spontan