tle more. We must always
remember that art is a result, not a product, and that sense of beauty
is a natural gift and not an accomplishment. On the other hand, much can
be accomplished by indirection, and by this I mean the buildings and the
grounds and the cultural adjuncts that are offered by any school or
college. The ordinary type of school-house--primary, grammar or high
school--is, in its barren ugliness and its barbarous "efficiency," a
very real outrage on decency, and a few Braun photographs and plaster
casts and potted plants avail nothing. Private schools and some
colleges--by no means all--are apt to be somewhat better, and here the
improvement during the last ten years has been amazing, one or two
universities having acquired single buildings, or groups, of the most
astonishing architectural beauty. In no case, however, has as yet
complete unity been achieved, while the arts of painting, sculpture,
music and the drama, as vital and operative and pervasive influences,
lag far behind, and formal religion with its liturgies and ceremonial,
its constant and varied services and its fine and appealing
pageantry--religion which is the greatest vitalizing and stimulating
force in beauty is hardly touched at all.

Bad art of any kind is bad anywhere, but in any type of educational
institution, from the kindergarten to the post graduate college, it is
worse and less excusable than it is elsewhere, unless it be in
association with religion, while the absence of beauty at the
instigation of parsimony or efficiency is just as bad. I am firmly
persuaded that we need, not more courses of study but more beautiful
environment for scholars under instruction.

I have touched cursorily on certain elements in education which need
either a new emphasis or an altogether new interpretation; religion,
history, art, but this does not mean that the same treatment should not
be accorded elsewhere. There are certain studies that should be revived,
such as formal logic, there are others that need immediate and complete
restoration, as Latin for example, there are many, chiefly along
scientific and vocational lines, that could well be minimized, or in
some cases dispensed with altogether: one might go on indefinitely on
this line, however, weighing and testing studies in relation to their
character-value, but certainly enough has already been said to indicate
the point of view I would urge for consideration. Before I close,
however, I