what avail is the old ideal of external authority? A marked transformation is taking place likewise in the field of art, both in respect of theory and of subject matter. Tolstoi would define art in terms of experience and William Morris in terms of pleasurable activity. "One day," Morris said, "we shall win back art to our daily labor: win back art, that is to say, the pleasure of life, to the people." And that was a profound saying of his when denied the laureateship at Tennyson's death: "If I can't be the laureate of writing men, I'll be the laureate of sweating men." So the people are finding inclusion in the books. One recalls now with a new sense of their significance the innovations begun by Euripides in the direction of the realistic drama, the new spirit of Chaucer who gave the miller and plowman a place among his pilgrims, the greatheartedness of Burns who sang the glories of the home and field, the wide sympathies of Wordsworth who depicted with all sincerity the dignity of the commonplace. For these are among the historic tokens of democracy. Changes, springing from the same impulses are taking place in education. Nearly every school building is the arena today of a conflict between the old and the new. Every teacher and pupil feels, in some degree, the turmoil of transition. The ideal of a special culture is yielding. The scholar, once revered as holding the keys of that knowledge which was power, is losing place and function-receding into the past like the vanishing forms of nobles and priests. But life is becoming itself educative. Schools are being established with methods based on the principle of self-government. And for the discipline of the intellect there is being substituted the culture of personality. So into all realms of thought

the spirit of democracy is penetrating. Religion is perhaps the last to suffer change. For long ages the Christian world has been taught to observe the judgments that arise within the "Kingdom of God"-how God is a king, who has established a kingdom, who compels service upon subjects whose duty is to obey. But these conceptions, king, kingdom, subject, duty, obedience, find little response among men who as to all other affairs are living in federation and under republican forms. And at length prophets are arising upon whose lips the word king is never heard, and in whose minds the conception of kingship is never formed-prophets, that is, of cosmic democracy. The doctrine of immortality was once aristocratic; it is now inclusive and democratic. These, then, are the type of phenomena that I have in mind to describe. It should be understood that from the very nature of the subject the discussion can not always be elaborated but must be conducted largely by the method of suggestion.

II.

Nothing betrays the force of tradition more than the persistency with which democracy in America has been construed in terms of a system of politics. Our forefathers were political revolutionists, and when the principles of free government were formulated and political equality was secured for all, it was supposed that the citizens of the new republic were safe in their pursuit of happiness. The social ground work which the Colonists actually laid was industrial democracy, which requires for its well being not a government of laws, but a copartnership of men. Notwithstanding this condition,

our national difficulties have been adjusted by political instruments, and the deposit of a ballot and the enactment of a law have been regarded as the chief duty of man. What these instruments really recorded were industrial changes. The American Revolution was fundamentally a war undertaken for the independency of labor. The Civil War was the occasion of a conflict between two opposing ideals of life-that attendant upon labor and leisure. The principles of representative government in the one case, and of state and national sovereignty in the other, were secondary matters. Our fathers gained certain industrial rights by the one struggle and their sons abolished one form of industrial slavery by the other. The result of confusing the issues so completely has been to place excellent sets of laws upon the statute books, but to leave the community in unregulated turmoil. Our actual democracy is crude in the extreme; the first lines of relationship proper for an industrial community having hardly been drawn, the first principles of justice having hardly been considered. As Morris once said succinctly: "The industrial situation is bad. I wish it would better."

It is seen that political equality does not mean industrial equality and that manhood suffrage does not bring manly independence. And save for the professional politicians no one engages very seriously today in government. We look back upon our political declarations very much as we read the XXXIX Articles, or the Book of Homilies, surprised at the disputes they occasioned: "As certain Anabaptists do falsely boast," "As the Palagians do vainly talk"-how little "understanded of the people" are these differences now! The political issues of the so

called political parties are equally obsolete and outworn. Men belong to parties by tradition, accident, or according to locality, no longer by conviction-because there are no longer political questions at issue. The real problems of life in America are neither ecclesiastical nor governmental: they are industrial. What men are struggling for today is industrial freedom. We have still to make any genuine Declaration of Independence, or to write a Constitution adapted to the needs of a non-political community. Doubtless it has been well that those who were publicly inclined have had the bauble of government to play with. They have toyed eloquently with the surface of things and left the deeper forces opportunity to become conscious and gather for emergence. In the year 1899 more than fourteen thousand laws were enacted by legislative bodies in the United States, not that laws were needed, but that legislatures might have occupation. If, in the revolution now upon us, our political institutions should be greatly changed or even swept away, it would not much matter. Administration is practically the only vital function left in any state; for the most part our legislation is simply for the sake of legislation. If government had much significance today, it would point to the vast degeneracy of peoples. For, as Tacitus penned, "When the state is corrupt then the laws are most multiplied." As it is with us today a corrupt government may be the sign of a healthy popular condition, an indication of the fact that men are attending to the vital issues of life. What is needed at this hour is not to establish free government but to develop free men-"not," as William Morris once said, "to establish socialism, but to educate socialists."

DEMOCRATIC ART.

I.

Democracy, to repeat, is not merely a political term: it is a universal idea, whose entertainment determines conduct in every one of the spheres of human activity. It will not prove itself established until its principles have permeated society in every part. Its function is to bring to growth out of the social soil strictly autochthonic education, religion, philosophy, and arts, which shall be uniform with progress; corroborating in the fullest degree the immediate land and contemporary life.

The progress of transformation and adjustment which the fine arts are undergoing, in passing from an aristocratic to a democratic basis, is one of the most important and significant, though generally unrecognized, movements of the modern world. Although the subject is beset with difficulties, I propose, in this first study, to examine with some care the nature and extent of the specific changes, compelled in art by the Time-Spirit, in the midst of the general results flowing from universal emancipation. The movement is, of course, incomplete in its operation. The present period is one of transition. An adequately representative art does not exist today in any democratic community, not even in any portion of America, which is still the most perfect and consistent embodi

15