expression of the scientific faculty. We build, manufacture, classify, investigate, and theorize, under the first-named power. It clothes, warms, feeds, protects, and instructs man, and is the prime agent of his comfort, material progress, and general knowledge. But our pleasure is more intimately related to art as the producer of what delights the eye and ear and administers to sensuous enjoyment.

This is, however, merely an external or superficial view of art and science, and has reference simply to mundane objects. The final definition is based upon their connection with the unseen,

that subtile and diviner sense, which, as it makes Science the material expression or image of Wisdom, so it renders Art the spiritual representative of Love. By its inspiration, art aims to convey or suggest ideas and feelings, which, by appealing more directly to the imagination, lift us above the ordinary laws of matter, into the world of spirit, and, as it were, lets its light shine through upon our physical senses, so veiled by material beauty that we can endure its effulgence; or, we may say, like pictorial language to children, it brings down the incomprehensible, by a species of incarnation, to the range of finite faculties.

Art-forms are, first, the expression of man's attempt at a portraiture of nature, in its manifold variety, according to his individual understanding thereof; and, secondly, a reaching-forth after the possibilities of his faith and imagination. In this latter sense it is the instrument

ART-EXPRESSION.

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of the spiritual and intellectual creative faculty, and its mission is to foreshadow in matter the thoughts of man in his search of the beautiful or infinite. This is its Idealistic bias, as the former is its Naturalistic. The one is based upon the perceptive and imitative faculties, the other upon the inventive and creative. For the first, God has written a plain copy in the material creation; and for the second, he has let into the soul, as a window, imagination, through which reason catches glimpses of a nature more perfect than that seen only by the external eye.

Although we consider Art-expression as dualistic, from the fact that nature itself is divisible in relation to art into two great divisions, namely, that which is the fruit of the external senses alone, and that which is more particularly the product of idea, yet, generically, art-motives are threefold:

First Decoration, or that which has for its object ornament and pleasure, and is addressed chiefly to the sensuous faculties. This is the most common, and enters largely into food, clothing, building, manufacture, and polite manners, in short, everything which, over and above absolute necessity, gratifies the æsthetic sense.

Secondly: Illustration, or that which has mainly reference to the intellect; teaching, preservation, and reminiscence being its chief aims. This includes historical, descriptive, and portraying art, and is based directly on facts and natural truths.

Thirdly: Revelation, or the imaginative side

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ART A TEST OF CULTURE.

of art, expressing the inner life and its subtile element, as inspired by the religious or poetical faculties, or, under the control of a debased will and the inferior passions, revealing the possibilities of the spirit for the base and sensual.

Art, consequently, has varied aspects, according as it is inspired by the perceptive, rationalistic, or imaginative faculties. Although we find in different ages and artists an intermingling of these three characteristics, yet in general there exists a predominance of one inspiration above the others sufficient to particularize an epoch, and permit us to speak of it as the ruling motive. In any of its phases art is simply a medium by which the thought or feeling of the time and artist is spread open like a book, to be read and judged of all men. Of itself it is neither good nor evil, but speaks equally or mixedly the language of sense, intellect, or spirit, as the will dictates. From its passivity it is a delicate test of the moral and intellectual culture and inmost life of all who employ it; because, being the result, in material expression, of man's aspirations, feelings, and faith, it discloses, with the exactness of the daguerreotype, the precise condition of the individual mind, and the general characteristics of the era in which it has its being.

Poetry, music, and the drama, as well as painting and sculpture, must be included in the generic term Art, because, in each, truths of beauty and harmony of form, color, sound, action, or thought, are sought to be expressed under combinations

the most pleasing and incentive alike to our sensuous, emotional, and mental faculties; and we are in consequence more or less let out of ourselves into general nature or particular humanity, or made to penetrate deeper into the mysteries of our own being, rather through the force of sympathetic feeling than of logical analysis.

Therefore whatever has the power to thus affect men, and is neither directly derived from innate or pure reason and science, nor is the manifest language of nature itself, but suggests the spirit, power, or presence, alike of the seen and unseen, and yet is only their artificial expression, — that is ART.

The Importance of Art as a Teacher. - Liability of overestimating it. Liability of under-estimating it. - How it affects the Uncultivated Mind. To be cultivated. Its Importance as a Vehicle of Knowledge. Its Utility in Elementary Education. - Relative Nature and Functions of Science and Art. - The Dangers of Art. - The Chief Obstacles to Science. - Character of Inspiration. - Knowledge essential to Art-Understanding. In what Manner Art becomes Efficacious.

INCE art bears so close a relationship to our faculties, it follows that it must

be of vital importance to our civilization. In the enthusiasm of a favorite pursuit or sudden mental illumination we are liable to overrate its instrument, as, later, when having entered upon new and more exalted reaches of knowledge, a tendency to underrate the previous agencies of our progress is apt to occur. Art is peculiarly liable to misconception in either of these particulars, on account of the difficulty of defining its limits, and from its alliance with feeling, by whose impulses judgment is so often overborne and justice obscured.

The simple rule by which art affects the uninstructed mind is that of natural affinity. To whatever we are most inclined inwardly, we turn