3.
In the account previously given nothing was explicitly said about the
place of literature and the fine arts in the course of study. The
omission at that point was intentional. At the outset, there is no
sharp demarcation of useful, or industrial, arts and fine arts. The
activities mentioned in Chapter XV contain within themselves the factors
later discriminated into fine and useful arts. As engaging the emotions
and the imagination, they have the qualities which give the fine arts
their quality. As demanding method or skill, the adaptation of tools to
materials with constantly increasing perfection, they involve the
element of technique indispensable to artistic production. From the
standpoint of product, or the work of art, they are naturally defective,
though even in this respect when they comprise genuine appreciation they
often have a rudimentary charm. As experiences they have both an
artistic and an æsthetic quality. When they emerge into activities
which are tested by their product and when the socially serviceable
value of the product is emphasized, they pass into useful or industrial
arts. When they develop in the direction of an enhanced appreciation of
the immediate qualities which appeal to taste, they grow into fine arts.
In one of its meanings, appreciation is opposed to depreciation. It
denotes an enlarged, an intensified prizing, not merely a prizing, much
less—like depreciation—a lowered and degraded prizing. This
enhancement of the qualities which make any ordinary experience
appealing, appropriable—capable of full assimilation—and
enjoyable, constitutes the prime function of literature, music, drawing,
painting, etc., in education. They are not the exclusive agencies of
appreciation in the most general sense of that word; but they are the
chief agencies of an intensified, enhanced appreciation. As such, they
are not only intrinsically and directly enjoyable, but they serve a
purpose beyond themselves. They have the office, in increased degree,
of all appreciation in fixing taste, in forming standards for the worth
of later experiences. They arouse discontent with conditions which fall
below their measure; they create a demand for surroundings coming up to
their own level. They reveal a depth and range of meaning in
experiences which otherwise might be mediocre and trivial. They supply,
that is, organs of vision. Moreover, in their fullness they represent
the concentration and consummation of elements of good which are
otherwise scattered and incomplete. They select and focus the elements
of enjoyable worth which make any experience directly enjoyable. They
are not luxuries of education, but emphatic expressions of that which
makes any education worth while.
