93. Æsthetic contemplation may, indeed, receive its impulse from many interests other than the æsthetic, as also from aroused emotions. Art itself, however, is possible only in a state of mind sufficiently tranquil to permit an accurate and coherent apprehension of the simultaneously beautiful, and to experience the mental activity corresponding to the successively beautiful. Æsthetic objects adapted to the pupil’s power of appreciation must be provided; but the teacher should refrain from forcing contemplation. He may, of course, repress unseemly manifestations, above all the damaging of objects possessing æsthetic value and entitled to respectful treatment. Frequently imitative attempts--although very crude at first--in drawing, singing, reading aloud, and, at a later period, in translating, are indications of æsthetic attention. Such efforts may be encouraged, but should not be praised. The genuine warmth of emotion, which in æsthetic culture kindles of itself, is easily vitiated by intensifying artifices. Excess of quantity is injurious. Works of art appealing to a higher state of culture must not be brought down to a lower plane. Art judgments and criticisms should not be obtruded. 94. The sympathetic interests depend still more on social intercourse and family life than the foregoing classes of interests do on experience in the world of sense. If the social environment changes frequently, children cannot become deeply attached anywhere. The mere change of teachers and of schools is fraught with harm. Pupils make comparisons in their own way; authority that is not permanent has little weight with them, whereas the impulse to throw off restraint gains in strength. Instruction is powerless to obviate such evils, especially since instruction itself must often change its form, thereby giving the impression of a real difference in teachers. This fact makes it all the more necessary that the instruction in history impart to pupils the glow of sympathy due to historical characters and events. For this reason--a reason of momentous significance to the whole process of education--history should not be made to present to pupils the appearance of a chronological skeleton. This rule should be observed with special care during the earlier lessons in history, since on these depends largely what sort of impression the whole subject will produce at a future time. Of religious instruction, needless to say, we demand that it shall bring home to pupils the dependent condition of man, and we confidently expect that it will not leave their hearts cold. But historical instruction must coöperate with religious instruction, otherwise the truths of religion stand isolated, and there is ground for fearing that they will fail to enter as potent factors into the teaching and learning of the remaining subjects. CHAPTER VI =The Material of Instruction from Different Points of View=