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mands the attention of the gymnast, the masseur, the chiropodist, for a fine material, the soul, which demands the service of the intellect and of the spirit. There is no danger that our Brother the Body will ever be neglected, or that material things will be despised. Goethe was no disciple of our Lady Poverty; but he held that a man's wealth consists less in what he owns than in what he thinks and in what he is.

National sentiment has had a mighty career in the nineteenth century, witness Italy, Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Servia, as well as the United States; and has by no means confined itself to political patriotism, witness the attempted revival of the Irish language and of Provençal; but whether patriotism concern a race, a nation, a language, or a cult, it is by its very definition a limitation. The Preacher of universal compassion said, 'Whoever shall do the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.' Patriotism has its own virtues, but among them is not that of maintaining Goethe's ideals. Even during Germany's war of liberation against Napoleon, Goethe was absolutely indifferent to patriotism, at least in its political form. He maintained the position

Da wo wir lieben Ist's Vaterland

(there where we love is our country). Then there is the strong current of humanitarianism, which tends to regard man as an animal with material wants, and spends itself on factory legislation, hygiene, sanitation, and almsgiving. Goethe was not deficient in benevolence toward his fellow men; but he subordinated this interest to his prime concern for completeness, for moulding within the individual a harmonious, beautiful, heroic nature; and since such an ideal for the mass of men VOL. 117-NO, 3

is outside the pale of achievement, he did not extend his serious interest to them.

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Added to these and this cause of the failure of Goethe's ideals has perhaps been more effective in America than elsewhere — stands democracy and all democracy means. Democracy has solid foundations of its own, — just as patriotism, humanitarianism, and science have, and possesses its own defenders and eulogists. Goethe was not among them. He was an aristocrat: he believed in the government of the best in all departments of human society. The right of the best to dominate, even at the expense of the inferior, was to him axiomatic. Democracy, with its tenderness toward the incompetent multitude, with its ideas of equality and fraternity, with its indifference to quality when quantity is concerned, with its good-humored inefficiency and its vulgar self-satisfactions, was wholly alien to his spirit. He felt no equality or fraternity between himself and the multitude. In democracy the mass of the people possess not merely a voice in the political government, but also a voice in the moral government of the nation, a share in the formation of the ethical, intellectual, sentimental, and ideal character of the people. Goethe would as soon have trusted these supreme interests to Demos, as Don Quixote would have entrusted his knightly honor to Sancho's keeping. Goethe regarded man primarily as a creature charged with the duty, and endowed with the possibility, of self-perfectioning; but democracy values men according as they possess distinct and special capacities, according as they can do the immediate task needful to be done. Democracy, having many interests of its own, pays little or no heed to matters not congenial to it. Democracy is indifferent to form, because for democracy form and sub

stance have no necessary relation; but to Goethe form and substance were one. Democracy is indifferent to elegance, because elegance is unsuitable to the multitude. Democracy cares little for beauty, because beauty establishes a caste apart.

Democracy neglects art, for art rests upon the privileges of nature, upon the endowment of gifted individuals, upon special sensitiveness and special capacities; art, by its very nature, means achievement by the few, enjoyment by the few. Democracy looks to the achievements and the enjoyments of the many. Aristocracy is the assertion of quality, of rareness of vision, of clearness of conception, of refinement and finish; it lays stress on the unusual, on the beneficent injustice of nature that enables lesser men to have greater men to look up to, and charges the greater men with deep personal responsibility. Democracy tends to belittle reverence, for reverence is devotion to that which is greater than ourselves, and seeks to find an object on which to spend itself. The reverent soul must believe in something greater than itself, whether in the human or the superhuman; it discovers, it unfolds, and, if necessary, imagines, something above itself. But Democracy has a passion for leveling, for reducing all to a common plane, so that no one shall complain that others have more than he, or are better placed. Such, at least, are some of the criticisms which the few pass upon the ideals of the many.

It is the same with the democratic idea of fraternity. What, aristocracy asks, is the worth of brotherhood unless brothers have a goodly heritage to divide? The important thing is to create an inheritance, whether of beauty, of virtue, of glory; then let who can possess it. The two points of view also take issue over the idea of liberty. Democracy too easily abases its concep

tion of liberty to the liberty to eat and sleep, the liberty to lie back and fold one's arms, the liberty to be active for activity's sake (as Mr. Dickinson says of us), liberty to do what to one's self seems good; whereas aristocracy demands self-renunciation for the sake of an ideal, demands discipline, obedience, sacrifice. Democracy tends to set a high value on comfort, on freedom from danger, on ‘joy in commonalty spread'; whereas aristocracy asserts the necessity of danger and of pain in the education of man. Democracy values human quantity, aristocracy human quality. Democracy tends to render the intellect subservient to the emotions, while aristocracy tends to put emotion to the service of the intellect.

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There are solid grounds on which democracy may be eulogized, the ground of justice, for example; that was not Mr. Dickinson's business, nor is it mine; democracy's main fault consists in its failure to confine itself to economic matters, to politics, to material things, consists in overflowing its proper limits and touching matters with which it has no proper concern. Goethe had little sympathy with democracy, especially in the violent form which it assumed in his day, in those manifestations that accompanied and followed the French Revolution.

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Another influence, springing from science, humanitarianism, and democracy, adds its strength to theirs. Goethe's ideal for the human spirit, however different from the ideals of democracy, bears no small analogy to the Christian's ideal of the soul. For the Christian the soul is everything, life is its opportunity, pleasure is a means of acquiring strength by renunciation, grief an aid to mounting higher, earthly losses are spiritual gains; his highest hope is to render his soul as perfect, as beautiful, as fully in accord with celestial harmonies, as may be. In Goethe

this ideal was replaced by the ideal of a human spirit that triumphs over the obstacles of life, uses the affections, the passions even, for fuller self-development; that aims at the harmonious fulfillment of all its capacities, and seeks knowledge for the sake of finer communion with deity in nature. The trend of practical religion, under the pressure of humanitarianism, is to regard the devotion that strives to render the soul perfect, as a form of egotism, and a kindred feeling swells the general flood of modern conceptions that have swept away Goethe's ideals.

It might have been thought that the religious element in Goethe's ideal would have preserved it, at least in America, from destruction; for we are a religious, or at least, as Mr. Dickinson would say, a superstitious people. Goethe's attitude concerning the theory that the human spirit tends toward a point of gravity at the centre of our universe, is consonant with permanent human needs; so is his sense of form, of beauty, of dignity. But whether it be the effect of democracy, of a childlike desire for novelty, of an undisciplined impatience with tradition, or of self-confidence in our power to create new forms of religion that shall more fully satisfy our own needs, or whatever the cause, the reasonableness, the conservatism, the restraint, that mark the religious element in Goethe's ideal, have accomplished nothing to maintain that ideal with us.

So far it would appear that the causes which have combined to overthrow Goethe's ideals are scarcely more American than European; and that theory is confirmed by the popular attitude toward Goethe's ideals in Germany, where they seem to have fared no better than elsewhere. The old gods of serenity and beauty, Goethe and Beethoven, have been taken down from their pedestals, and Bismarck and Wag

ner have been set up in their stead. The ideal of duty toward self has certainly not suffered loss of power, but the self that is the object of duty is a self of dominion, not over fate and inward lack of harmony, but of dominion over other men. The heroic model is no longer that of Phoebus Apollo, but of a sinewed and muscular Thor. Domination, not harmony, is the teaching of the most eminent German of letters since Schopenhauer. It is true that Nietzsche is the greatest upholder of aristocracy since Goethe; but Nietzsche did not care for measure, proportion, harmony, pure beauty. The whole development of Germany, the most brilliant there has been since that of Italy of the Renaissance, — in energy, in material well-being, in orderliness, in science, in self-confidence, in ambition, has moved far from the conception of full-minded completeness of character, intellect, and spirit, which Goethe taught in confidence that, like light in the dark, like warmth in the cold, such completeness would receive the gratitude and honor of men.

Are we not forced to the conclusion that the Zeitgeist is opposed to Goethe's ideals, that Mr. Dickinson's criticism fits democracy and its attendant phenomena rather than America? Is it not democracy rather than America that is 'contemptuous of ideas, but amorous of devices'? The Latin democratic countries must be excepted, for Latins have a natural gift for form and a special respect for intellectual accomplishment that colors even their democracy; besides, democracy comes to them more naturally than to northern peoples. But if Mr. Dickinson had been traveling in Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, would he not have come to very much the same conclusion?

Our neglect to follow Goethe's ideal, however, remains our own fault, even if other democratic countries have

committed the same fault. We have brought Mr. Dickinson's criticism on our own heads. We must profit by that criticism, and return to Goethe's ideal. Some steps to be taken are obvious. First of all we must fully satisfy the democratic desires of the Zeitgeist by making pure democracy prevail in all matters of politics and economics. Then, when democracy shall have received its due, it must no longer seek to lay its hand on literature, art, higher education, pure science, philosophy, manners. And then, - when the mass of men are politically and economically free, we must preserve the sacred fire of intellectual light by setting apart a priesthood, a body of intellectual men who shall worship the God of truth and him alone. Our professors at Harvard, Yale, and elsewhere constitute, or should constitute, such a

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priesthood; but the public is not satisfied to have them serve the sacred flame: the public wishes them to apply that sacred flame to furnaces and dynamos. We do need, as Mr. Dickinson implies, intellectual traditions of generations of educated men; those traditions should be taught as a sacred cult; and their priests should be held in special reverence. Those priests should be most honored when they serve intellectual concerns, in which the public sees no profit, such as philosophy and the classics. We do need, as a quickening fountain, in the midst of us, a spirit of reverence for intellectual beauty. Had such a spirit of reverence existed among us, should we have been so exposed to Mr. Lowes Dickinson's criticisms, and should we now be almost as remote from Goethe as from Dante or Plato?

MUSIC FOR CHILDREN

BY THOMAS WHITNEY SURETTE

I

In what I have to say about music for children I am not unmindful of the diversity of American life, and of the prevalent idea that Americans do not pay much attention to music (or to any other form of beauty) because they live in a new country in which the greater part of their energy is devoted to subduing nature and carving their fortunes. As a nation we are said to be too diverse to have evolved any definite æsthetic practice, and we suppose ourselves too busy with the practical

things in life to pay much attention to it.

While it is doubtless true that there are numberless prosperous American families in which the words 'art' and 'literature' mean nothing whatever, this condition is due, in most cases, not to lack of time, but to lack of inclination. We, like other people, do what we like to do. No real attention is paid to the cultivation of a love of the beautiful in childhood; very little attention is paid to it in the educational institutions where we are trained; so we grow up and enter upon life with a

desultory liking for music, with a distinct lack of appreciation for poetry, and with almost no interest in painting or sculpture.

And this condition is likely to increase rather than diminish as time goes on, until, having finally arrived at moments of leisure and finding that neither our money nor any other material possession gives us any deep or permanent satisfaction, we turn to beauty only to be confronted with the old warning: "Too late, ye cannot enter now.' For we have arrived at the time when, in Meredith's phrase, 'Nature stops, and says to us, "Thou art now what thou wilt be." For this capacity for understanding and loving great books and paintings and music has to grow with our own growth and cannot be postponed to another season. The average American man is supposed to have no time for these things. He has time, but he refuses to turn it into leisure, — leisure which means contemplation and thoughtfulness, though he very likely knows that this has been accomplished over and over again by men who have saved out of a busy life for that purpose a little time every day.

One recalls Darwin's pathetic statement wherein he describes his early love for poetry and music, and the final complete loss of those faculties through neglect. "The loss of these tastes,' he says, 'is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.'

The intellect of man, in itself, is never supreme or sufficient. Feeling or instinct is half of knowledge. 'Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy,' says Whitman, 'walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.' Of any man, American or otherwise, who lives his life unmindful of all beauty we may

justly say, as Carlyle said of Diderot, 'He dwelt all his days in the thin rind of the Conscious; the deep fathomless domain of the Unconscious whereon the other rests and has its meaning was not under any shape surmised by him.'

Must not the education of children in beauty begin, then, with their parents? Must they not be aroused, at least, to an intellectual conviction of its value, even though they have missed its joy? Can the matter be safely left to the jurisdiction of the schools themselves, whose curricula are already overcrowded with methods of escape from this very thing? Does not the school answer the general conception of education obtaining among the fathers and mothers of the school-children? Can it be expected — is it possible for it to rise far above that conception? Our object is therefore to suggest, first, that the perception of beauty is, in the highest sense, education; second, that music is especially so, because it is the purest form of beauty; and, third, that music is the only form of beauty by means of which very young children can be educated, because it is the only form accessible to them.

Need we point out that there has never been a time in the history of mankind when human beings have not paid tribute to beauty? In their attempt to escape what may be called the traffic of life and to rise above its sordid limitations, have they not always and everywhere created for themselves some sort of detached ideal by means of which they justified themselves in an otherwise unintelligible world? This ideal may have been a god of stone, but it figured for them a perfect absolution. Surrounded by brutal forces about which they knew nothing, subject to pestilence, to war, to starvation, to the fury of the elements,

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