It is probable that History lends itself more readily to dramatic treatment than any other subject, but it is by no means the only subject that is dramatised in Utopia. An interest in Geography is awakened by scenes in foreign lands and episodes from books of travel being acted by the children. An interest in Arithmetic, by a shop being opened, which is well equipped with weights, measures, and cardboard money, and in which a salesman stands behind the counter and sells goods to a succession of customers. An interest in Literature by the acting, with improvised costumes, of passages from Shakespeare's plays, or scenes from Scott's and Dickens' novels. Simple plays to illustrate Nature-study are acted by the younger children; while the Folk Songs, which, as we shall see, play a prominent part in the musical life of the children, are acted as well as sung. However rude and simple the histrionic efforts of the children may be, they are doing two things for the actors. They are giving them a living interest in the various subjects that are dramatised; and, by teaching them to identify themselves, if only for a moment, with other human beings, they are leading them into the path of tolerance, of compassion, of charity, of sympathy,--the ever-widening path which makes at last for Nirvanic oneness with the One Life.[17] (3) _The Artistic Instinct_. The desire to reproduce with pencil, paint, or clay the form and colour of the outward world will, if duly cultivated, gradually transform itself into the desire to feel, to understand, to interpret, to express, not the form and colour only of the outward world, but also that less palpable but more spiritual quality which we call beauty. But in order that this transformation may take place, the child must always endeavour to reproduce with due fidelity the more palpable qualities of colour and form. In this endeavour he must bring many faculties into play. He must observe closely and attentively. He must reflect on what he observes. He must reflect on what he himself is doing. He must compare his work with the original, and try to discover how far he has succeeded, and where he has gone astray. The more faithfully he tries to reproduce what he has seen, the clearer and surer will be his insight into the less palpable properties of things,--into those details, those aspects, those qualities, which do not reveal themselves to the first careless glance, but which will gradually reveal themselves to those who will take the trouble to discover them. When he is asked to reproduce things which are intrinsically beautiful--flowers, branches, buds, shells, butterflies, and the like--he begins to realise that if his work is to be successful, he must do justice to many impalpable, though not imperceptible, details which go to the making up of beauty. So the sense of beauty, the feeling for it, the desire to bring it into his work, grows up in his heart; and a new kind of