Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/690

 676 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of civilization is to be as causeless as the turning of a wheel that makes nothing." For, what is civilization good for if its end is not character, if it aims not at a destiny for man higher than that to which the satisfaction of his animal desires, or of his mere love of acquisition, whether material or intellectual, will lift him ? Art in its broad, its true sense, including all pro- duction which involves creative thought and beauty, if a rough- hewn definition may be ventured, should become a positive necessity of life and work. It is not the end of education to make people content with whatever costs the least effort, to cultivate what Lassalle calls " the cursed habit of not wanting anything." It is to make us all want the things really worth having, and to enable us to get them through activity, that is itself life and joy to us; "if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is, unless we are content to be less than men." The second function of art, its influence in education, in life, in civilization, as expression through some part of the everyday work of man, involves a great change in our industrial, as well as our strictly educational, system. This, however, does not do away with the fact that, if beauty be provided for the people by the public, it may immeasurably hasten the time when we may have an art by the people, ultimately, truly, an art 0/the people.

Art as a factor in education, to the specific end of citizenship, is surely a matter with which the public should be concerned. What may be the effect of a great public work of art is sug- gested by that often referred to, of Michael Angelo's David, its effect upon every citizen and every citizen-to-be of Florence, representing, as it did, the release of the city from the tyranny of Cesare Borgia, a grandly impressive symbol of the love of, and the struggle for, political freedom. Here in America, particularly needed because of our vast foreign population, how great may be the effect of this symbolic, impressive way of teaching some of the great facts of our land, its institutions, and its men !

With all of this truth before us, of the great value of art as a factor in education of young and old, and of the pleasure of