aesthetic education by which the whole system of human impulses
becomes harmonized and unified. The chance movements are blended into
a beautiful whole, and this reflects on the entire inner setting.
Educators have for a long time been aware that calisthenics, with its
subtly tuned movements of the body, develops refinement in the
interplay of mental life. The personality who understands how to live
in gentle, beautiful motions through that trains his mind to beauty.
In Europe, for instance in Hellerau near Dresden, they have recently
begun to establish schools for young men and women in which the main,
higher education is to be moulded by the aesthetics of bodily
expression, and the culture of the symbolic dance.

This aesthetic character of the dance, however, leads still further. It
is not only the training in beautiful expression; it is the
development of an attitude which is detached from practical effects
and from the practical life of outer success. The dance is an action
by which nothing is produced and nothing in the surroundings changed.
It is an oasis in the desert of our materialistic behaviour. From
morning till night we are striving to do things, to manufacture
something in the mill of the nation: but he who dances is satisfied in
expressing himself. He becomes detached from the cares of the hour, he
acquires a new habit of disinterested attitude toward life. Who can
underestimate the value of such detachment in our American life? The
Americans have always been eagerly at work, but have never quite
learned to enjoy themselves and to take the aesthetic attitude which
creates the wonders of beauty and the true harmonies of life. To
forget drudgery and to sink into the rhythms of the dance may bring to
millions that inner completeness which is possible only when practical
and aesthetic attitude are blending in a personality. The one means
restless change; the other means repose, perfection, eternity. This
hardworking, pioneer nation needs the noisy teachings of efficiency
and scientific management less than the melodious teaching of song and
dance and beauty. In short, the dance may bring both treacherous
perils and wonderful gifts to our community. It depends upon us
whether we reenforce the dangerous elements of the dance, or the
beneficial ones. It will depend on ourselves whether the dance will
debase the nation, as it has so often done in the history of
civilization, or whether it will help to lead it to