The Proof of Seeing

...A beginning has been made in teaching according to this basic order in music within its own subject— the art of music itself is taught as interpreted by a chosen instrument rather than "how to play the pianoforte...

...If the teaching and practice of such a training are consistent, useless conventions must fall before an opening mind...

...It would seem evident enough as the world shrinks at the touch of science, and facts multiply overnight, that in order to teach anyone to relate these multitudinous facts to himself and the universe, the mind itself must be trained to turn its powers in any required direction...

...Children are profoundly interested in causes...

...It was felt that the results of the experiment might be published and the work continued in a larger laboratory...

...A clearer vision will not be confused by cumbering detail or deadened by the multiplying assaults on the attention of the age...

...Education might be said to consist in the cultivation of the ability to hold causes steadily in the mind while observing, classifying, and producing effects...

...If we can add to this aim a training in direct responsibility based on an objective personal measure, education is secure to carry the heavy burden of an age ir> which the pace of the machine has out-distanced the human stride...

...Children of seven and mature persons tell their graphic stories using the same alphabet...

...A portrait or a monument contains its own excuse for being, but the man of affairs often suspects a pose when he finds no practical reason for the preoccupation of others with the indefinable...

...A deliberate attempt to return to a basic principle is the only short cut to such a training—indeed the only way to acquaint any human being with contemporary opportunity in the time given to education...

...Although a better seeing is the first object, good drawing must be the result of that better seeing...

...The gradual reeducation of the public must take place before drawing and painting can be generally considered from this point of view...

...In this way, it becomes possible to stimulate observation, to give each individual a unique personal measure of his own mental state as well as to restore the one language that can be called universal...

...Keen observation implies not only seeing, but thinking and feeling also...

...These two necessary points in the renewal of education—the retaining of causes in the mind and an objective personal measure—can be covered in a natural and vigorous way through the use of the only language common to every country in the world...

...They have lived in words that are symbols after all, and their contact with reality is limited to the weather...

...The ability to concentrate their attention will be restored to a new generation who will be the better armed to solve the various problems of their environment through a conscious and a subconscious recognition of unifying causes...

...The same facts are only at the beginning of their application in the case of drawing and the problem of technique is being solved in the recognition that whatever the mind can clearly conceive the hand can do January 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 293 and the mystery placed, where it belongs, in the personal equation of the artist...

...The means discovered toward this end are, according to one authority, "what any fool can do and yet the masters are still trying to do...

...Every child has an impulse to draw and there are but few people who would not like to express themselves in graphic form if they could be relieved from the responsibility of producing art...

...If we put the thought of art aside and forget the convention that special talent is needed for drawing, a graphic language may be freely used for personal expression and as a record of mental action, and a sure means secured for the basic training required...

...On these human impulses a course in observation has been developed free from mechanical means, and designed to train the mind through the objective measure of drawing and painting to keener and more orderly thought...

...The human stride and reach cannot be superseded...

...As a result of our present methods the self-made man or woman, forced by necessity to the consideration of cause and effect, often succeeds when the thoroughly schooled person remains a mediocrity...

...After six years of laboratory work with pupils of all ages from three to seventy, all doubt had been removed as to the many-sided possibilities of a course in observation and the practical success of the means employed...

...If more direct means to this end can be suggested, they will be tested and substituted for the means already in use...

...There is no better way of proving what we see—how we see—or whether we see at all than through the effort to clear our minds by the statement in some graphic form of what we have seen...

...Children brought up in this way will look at pictures with understanding...

...Assent serves chaos...

...Instead of disclosing subject only, a picture will be read as the story of an idea or of a sensation...

...The children who had no ear were lost to music until the mind behind the ear was recognized as a factor and the discovery made that nearly everyone could make the necessary mental adjustment...

...For every small child is doing his best to educate himself until his early curiosity about causes is educated out of him...

...An emphatic "no" carries back of many causes to the Kingdom of Heaven...

...It is an unfortunate result of our history as a pioneer nation that a large proportion of the active men feel baffled and helpless because their lives have furnished them with no clue to the enjoyment and understanding of the fine arts...

...The experiment of developing a course in observation was initiated six years ago by Charles Herbert Woodbury the painter, drawing being used with a double purpose—as mental training in the accuracy of thought necessary for real observation and to give the measure of that thought through the means used to express it...

...While the drawing has no connection with art as such or with an attempt to make a picture, it should lay a firm foundation for both and give the only possible basis for an appreciation of the arts in the conviction that the artistic sense is not an isolated phenomenon but the superior development of a common quality...

...A course in proved observation without emphasis placed on any less practical quality will give the major part of our male population the rules of the most alluring game in the world—a chase in which the quarry is swifter than any fox—the pursuit of the permanent in the passing, the capture of the significant moment as it flies...

...The elders' first attempts are like the children's, for, in an age of universal reading, many of them have never looked clearly and with thought at nature or any object...

...When their eyes have been opened, objects change from things to be used or avoided, to fresh material for the arts of thinking and seeing...

...The originator of the plan has* stated that the intention is not to establish a method, but certain principles for the development of which practical means have been found...

...The intention behind the line or color will be questioned and the work valued for integrity of intention and performance...

...The discovery is made that nature is the final motion picture, with the price of the continuous day and night show well within reach if one chooses to pay the price...

...Man must retain the use of his legs even when the aeroplane has lifted him from the face of the earth...

...The separated worlds of the arts and of practical living will tend to become one as older persons also gain a new insight into the artist's intention through their personal efforts...

...He is asking every one he meets the eternal question—"Can anything happen without a cause ?" On his final answer to this question depends whether the man he is to be commits himself to reason or chaos...

...For the most part, however, we still teach subjects and facts with faint gropings for correlation but no authoritative effort to establish the thought of cause as a subconscious mental habit...

...The character of their elders determines whether this instinct for hunting causes is smothered by convention and adult lazymindedness...

...Those who use the training for better seeing and thinking are acquiring, in a minor degree, the equipment of the mature artist and sharing his point of view to the measure of their capacity...

...The present educational program will be altered as major subjects are correlated and minor ones absorbed until the few remaining take their places on a fresh sheet as ways by which mental power ready to serve in any direction may be proved and used...

...Everyone—old and young—can look and make some objective record of his look...

...Every early question can be reduced to the formula—"What makes the wheels go round...

...The result may be elementary but it gives a true graph of the mind by which can be read both the story of accomplishment and of what is needed for better thinking and, therefore, better seeing...

...Fifty years ago, music was only for the talented...

...He also has an angry suspicion that he even is lacking in business values, for some pictures bring large prices and highly paid art is invading the field of advertising...