Religions, on the other hand, have frequently emphasized man's social duty. In Christianity this is largely a derivative of the highly regarded virtue of Charity. Interest in one's own well-being was a prerequisite for the devout, but interest in the welfare of others was equally enjoined. To help the poor and the needy, the widowed and the fatherless, to bring succor to the oppressed and justice to the downtrodden, have been part of the religion whose Founder taught that all men were the children of their Father in Heaven. The mendicant orders of the Middle Ages were devoted to philanthropic works; and with religious institutions, throughout their history, have been associated works of philanthropy and social welfare. Very recently urban churches in this country have been showing a tendency to reorganize with emphasis on the church as an instrument of social cooeperation rather than as an aloof exponent of dogmatic theology. It is the ideal of some liberal theologians to use the churches chiefly as instruments for giving social effectiveness to the religious impulse and at the same time for making social betterment a spiritual enterprise. CHAPTER XIII ART AND THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE ART _VERSUS_ NATURE. In the Career of Reason man has gradually learned to control the world in which he lives in the interests of his own welfare as he imaginatively contemplated it. Deliberate control has been made necessary because of the fact that man is born into a world which was not made for him, but in which he must, if anywhere, grow; in a world which was not designed to fulfill his desires, but where alone his desires can find fulfillment. Art may thus, in the broadest sense, be set over against Nature. It is the activity by which man realizes ideals. He may realize them practically, as when he builds a house which he has first imagined, or reaps a harvest in anticipation of which he has first sown the seeds. He may realize them imaginatively, as when in color, form, or sound he creates some desiderated beauty out of the crude miscellaneous materials of experience. Art, in the broad sense of control or direction of Nature, arises in the double fact of man's instinctive activities and desires and the inadequacy of the environment as it stands to afford them satisfaction. Because nature is not considerate of his needs, man must himself take forethought, and devise means by which the forces and the materials of Nature may be exploited to his own good. And the realization of this forethought is made possible through the fact that natural conditions do lend themselves to modification. Nature, though indifferent to man's welfare, is yet partly congruous with it. While the wind blows careless of the good or ill it does to him, yet man may learn by means of windmills or sailboats to turn the wind to his own interest. Though the river may flow on forever, oblivious to the men that come and go along its shores, yet