must
result from a social mind in which the aesthetic demand for harmony and
proportion is insufficiently developed. The one great need of the land
is a systematic cultivation of this aesthetic spirit of unity. It
cannot be forced on the millions by any sudden and radical procedures.
The steady, cumulating influences of the whole atmosphere of civic
life must lead to a slow but persistent change. Fortunately, many such
helpful agencies are at work. Not only the systematic moulding of the
child's mind by art instruction, and of the citizen's mind by
beautiful public buildings, but a thousand features of the day aid in
bringing charm and melody to the average man.

Seen from this point of view the new fashion in the makeup of the
periodical literature is a barbaric and inexcusable interference with
the process of aesthetic education. A page on which advertisements and
reading matter are mixed is a mess which irritates and hurts a mind of
fine aesthetic sensitiveness, but which in the uncultivated mind must
ruin any budding desire for subtler harmony. The noises of the street,
with all the whistles of the factories and the horns of the motor
cars, are bad enough, and the antinoise crusade is quite in order.
Yet the destructive influence of those chaotic sounds is far weaker
than the shrillness and restlessness of these modern specimens of
so-called literature. The mind is tossed up and down and is torn
hither and thither, following now a column of text while the
advertisements are pushing in from both sides, and then reading the
latest advertisement while the serious text is drawing the attention.
It is the quantity which counts. The popular magazines which circulate
in a million copies and reach two or three million minds are the
loudest preachers of this sermon of bewilderment and scramble. A
consciousness on which these tumultuous pages hammer day by day must
lose the subtler sense of proportionate harmony and must develop an
instinctive desire for harshness and crudeness and chaos. To overcome
this riot of the printing press is thus a truly cultural task, and yet
it is evident that the mere appeal to the cultural instinct will not
change anything as long as the publisher and, above all, the
advertiser, are convinced that they would have to sacrifice their
personal profit in the interest of aesthetic education. If an end is to
be hoped for, it can be expected only if it is discovered that the
calculation of profit is e