*

entirely forgotten, the heroine gives as her reason for wanting to travel that until she has seen the whole world there will be something about herself she does not know. This remark has mingled itself in my consciousness with Whitman's poem of the child who became the objects he looked upon, with Mr. Alcott's orphic saying that man is omnipresent and lies all about himself, and with the puzzling metaphysical statement that the world is mind turned inside out. The precipitate I get from this compound solution is that the contents of mind

* There was a child went forth one day,

And the first object that he looked upon, that object he be

came,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe bird,

And the apple trees covered with blossoms, and the fruit afterward; and woodberries and the commonest weeds by the road,

And the schoolmistress that passed on her way to the school And the friendly boys that passed, and the quarrelsome boys, And the tidy and fresh-cheeked girls, and the barefoot negro boy and girl,

And all the changes of city and country wherever he went. WALT WHITMAN.

are ideas, and that could we turn mind inside out and, as it were, spill its contents without destroying their order, the result would be the display of all possible ideas as separate objects in an articulated system. Such an outpouring of the divine mind is the universe; only as he becomes its mirror does man have ideas of his own, and only as he possesses ideas does he achieve concrete individuality or true personality. Opposed to this true personality is the natural or abstract self which is simply a plastic energy molding experiences into a specific form. Obviously, therefore, the concrete individuality will be rich or poor in proportion to the range of experience, and it is literally true that until we know the universe we can neither be nor know our real selves.

With insight into the truth that the progress of mind is from object to subject, from the world to the self, we get new light on the significance of imitation. The child makes himself into a weathervane, a clock, a bird. This means that he makes over these objects into himself. Notice, moreover, that since he imitates the activities of these objects he defines and assimilates not their outer semblance, but their informing idea. Through imitation he

penetrates from the sensuous fact to its producing energy, and produces in himself a reflection of this energy. Thus it is that by imitating the rhythmic utterance of the clock, and the rhythmic swing of the pendulum, he begins on the one hand to understand the nature of the clock as a measurer of time, and on the other to develop in himself those ideals of order and punctuality which are the soul's practical responses to time measurement.

You must be getting tired of my repeated insistence upon the fact that the Mother-Play singles out for imitation objects and actions which have both an allurement for all children and a general educative value. It is superfluous to give illustrations of the fascination of the clock, but you will learn much of the nature of mind by considering its source. This source is a life veiled in mystery, and expressing itself in rhythm. All mystery quickens the imagination; a rhythmic mystery stirs it profoundly because of " a certain remote kinship with the form of our soul activity." To define the tie between rhythm and spiritual activity will be to understand the allurement of the clock, but before attempting such a definition I want to sug

gest to you a sufficient number of related facts to awaken a premonition of the reason imbedded in all.

Why do children love rhythmic games? Why do youths and maidens delight in dance and song? Why "does the sailor work better for his yo-heaveo," and the "soldier march better and fight better for the trumpet and drum?" Why were the first dances regularly repeated leaps, the first poetry metrical chants, the first musical instruments those which marked off or measured sound? Why can we speak of a scale of color and define architecture as frozen music? Why do we feel that in a very deep and true sense music is the soul of all the arts? Why do we cherish Job's thought of morning stars singing together for joy, and cling to the Pythagorean conception of the music of the spheres? These questions are answered by reflecting that art is the self-revelation of spirit, and hence that all its products must bear the image of consciousness which is the distinctive characteristic of spirit. Consciousness is "the knowing of the self by the self." This implies an annulled distinction between subject and object. Such an annulled distinction is identity, and the ever-repeated move

ment from distinction to identification can be described by no better word than rhythm. Hence all rhythmic movements and all rhythmic sounds may be translated into the tireless affirmation I am I. What rhythm is to the arts of movement and sound, proportion or visible rhythm is to architecture, sculpture, and painting. Finally, since the world is the self-revelation of the divine mind, it too is a work of art into which the supreme Artist has breathed his own life. Quickened by this insight, I remember with strange pleasure that the very word rhythm points by its derivation to the undulating stream. The swaying grass, the waving wheat, the rhythmic flight of the bird, the accordant colors of flowers, touch me with new emotion. I find deeper meaning in "the primal chimes of sun and shade, of sound and echo." I picture to myself the mazy courses of the stars and their harmoniously proportioned periods. I behold the "dance of Nature forward and far," and hear the very "atoms marching to tune." At last I learn from science that "the flux of power is eternally the same, that it rolls in music through the ages, and that all terrestrial energy, the manifestations of life as well as the display of phenomena, are but