Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/689

 MUNICIPAL ART 67$

enduring in these has been an expression of the life of the people. So much a part of our consciousness has this beauty become, this beauty and its revelations, that we cannot in our thought divest the world of it.

Someone has truly said that the question whether we shall have art in education is a question whether we shall be barbarian or civilized. And art in education means more than talks in the schools of things not seen ; more than pictures, as essential as books ; more than anything connected with day school or art school. It means the appeal of beauty, whether consciously or unconsciously felt, and the expression of beauty, since all true education comes both from the influence of environment and from activity of the self, in the everyday surroundings and work ; without as well as within the school ; for adult as well as for child. "The school," says George Kriehn, one of our leading workers for municipal art, "is only the begin- ning of that greater education which begins when school ends" he would better have said, begins with existence "and ends only with life itself." It is unquestionably true, as someone says, that "only by re-creation of the sources of art can it be restored as a living force." But how can the sources of art within the mind and soul of man be re-created ? We know, certainly, some things which do not tend to such development filth, disorder, ugliness. Man needs to have restored to him his birthright of beauty, of which he, as an inhabitant of this fine old earth of ours, should never have been dispossessed. " Humanity has a feeling soul," is a truth we should do well not to forget in the matter of education of young and old. Culture involves more than the mere getting of knowledge. Back of this truth is a philosophy which, correcting our worship of the intellect, will make us recognize art as one of the greatest sources accessible to man of the purification of the emotions, and of stimulation and guidance of the will. Art in its message to us, and as expression, holds much of the joy and solace of the elevation and inspiration of life. This surely for art were excuse enough for being and for becoming a necessity of life and education; "unless," to quote Morris again, "the progress