word for word. In cultivating the memory, the training should be
first for the attention, then for the imagination and the power of
suggestive thought; and from the opening of these faculties a true
memory will grow. The mechanical power of repeating after once
hearing so many words is a thing in itself to be dreaded. Let the
pupil first see in mind a series of pictures as the poem or page is
read, then describe them in his own words, and if the words of the
author are well worth remembering the pupil should be led to them
from the ideas. In the same way a series of interesting or helpful
thoughts can be learned.
Avoidance of mere mechanism cannot be too strongly insisted upon;
for exercise for attaining a wholesome, natural guidance of mind and
body cannot be successful unless it rouses in the mind an
appreciation of the laws of Nature which we are bound to obey. A
conscious experience of the results of such obedience is essential
to growth.
XV.
ARTISTIC CONSIDERATIONS
ALTHOUGH so much time and care are given to the various means of
artistic expression, it is a singular fact that comparatively little
attention is given to the use of the very first instrument which
should be under command before any secondary instrument can be made
perfectly expressive.
An old artist who thanked his friend for admiring his pictures
added: "If you could only see the pictures in my brain. But--"
pointing to his brain and then to the ends of his fingers--"the
channels from here to here are so long!" The very sad tone which we
can hear in the wail of the painter expresses strongly the
deficiencies of our age in all its artistic efforts. The channels
are shorter just in proportion to their openness. If the way from
the brain to the ends of the fingers is perfectly clear, the brain
can guide the ends of the fingers to carry out truly its own
aspirations, and the honest expression of the brain will lead always
to higher ideals. But the channels cannot be free, and the artist
will be bound so long as there is superfluous tension in any part of
the body. So absolutely necessary, is it for the best artistic
expression that the body should throughout be only a servant of the
mind, that the more we think of it the more singular it seems that
the training of the body to a childlike state is not regarded as
essential, and taken as a matter of course, even as we take our
regular nourishment.
The artificial is tension in its many trying and disagreeable
phases. Art is freedom, equilibrium, rhythm,--anything and
everything that means wholesome life and growth toward all that is
really the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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