From the law of gravity to Shelley’s “To a Skylark,” beauty is the central element. In physics, in mathematics, in astronomy, in chemistry, there is the same perfection of order and sequence, the same correlation of forces, the same attraction of matter which, operating in the fine arts, brings about what we call “painting,” “sculpture,” “poetry,” and “music.” The whole of nature is a postulate of this doctrine, and there is no subject taught from kindergarten to college which may not be taught as in accord with it. There is a rhythm of beauty in all things animate and inanimate--an endless variety around a central unity. The individuality in nature and in human life is as a rhythmic diversity to a divine and central unity. The leaves of a maple tree are all alike and all different; the difference between the mechanical arts and the fine arts is a difference of rhythmic flexibility: one is fixed in rhythm in accordance with physical laws, and acts in perfect sequence and regularity; the other is a free individualized rhythmic play around a fixed center. The painter may not dispose the objects on his canvas as he pleases--nature allows him only a certain freedom; the sculptor may distribute his weights and his rhythms around the axis with only so much freedom from the demands of nature as his particular purpose justifies; even the strain of music, which seems to wander so much at will that it is often called a “rhapsody,”--it, too, is merely a play of rhythms and contours around a fixed center, and conforms to a common purpose just as a maple leaf does. A machine acts in mechanical synthesis, a melody acts in æsthetic synthesis; neither is free. So we say there is no such thing as an isolated fact, or subject, or idea. Thus everything taught to children can be taught as beauty, and if it is not so taught, its very essence must dissolve and disappear. “The mean distance from the earth to the moon is about two hundred and forty thousand miles”; “two and two make four”; “an island is a body of land entirely surrounded by water”;--so a child learns his lesson in what are called facts (the most deceptive and soulless things in the world). To him “the moon” and “a mile” are little more than words; 2 + 2 are troublesome hieroglyphics; “an island” is, perhaps, merely a word in a physical geography book; but to you all these objects and quantities are, perhaps, beautiful; for you “The moon doth with delight Look around her when the heavens are bare”;