The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1912-03-20
THE INFLUENCE OF BEAUTY UP
ON THE MORAL AND MENTAL
NATURES
:. III, Edmunds-Supcrintcn City
Schools.

! introduce this subjcct-The influence
f Beauty upon the NJ entail and Moral
Natures-than by a quotation from
the Republic Of Plato: surely the
art Of the painter and every other
creative and constructive art are full
of the graces and harmonies. In all
Of them there is grace or the absence
Of grace. Ugliness and discord and
| inharmoniOus motion are nearly al
| lied to ill-wOrds and Immature, as
grace and harmony are the twin sis
ters of goodness and virtue and bear
their likeness. We would not have
our children grow up amidst images
of moral deformity, as in some nox-
ious pasture, and there browse and
| feed upon many a baneful herb day
by day, little by little, until they ST.
! lently gather a fostering mass Of
| corruption in their own soul. Let our
| artists rather be those who are gifted
to discern the true nature Of the
| beautiful and graceful; then will our
youth dwell in land of health, amid
| fair sights and sounds, and receive
I the good in everything; and beauty,
! the effluence Of fair works, shall
| flow into the eye and ear, like a health
giving breeze from a purer region,
! and insensbly draw the soul from
| earliest years into likeness and
sympathy with the beauty Of reason.
! And when beautiful soul harmonizes
with beautiful form. and the two
are cast in one mould, that will be
| the fairest of sights to him who has
| an eye to see it. And the fairest is
| also the loveliest." These are alb
! stract truths-deep and far-reaching;
| but the soul in it's essence is abstrac ct
| and complex and we deal with the
deepest truths when We study the
| soul in the abstract Beauty Of soul
! however. is the resultant of myriads
Of forces and these forces fortunately
| are concrete. and in studying them we
| need not deal with the abstract and
| thus need not be quite so dry and te-
dious.
"A former State Superintendent Of
; Education was fond Of giving in sub
stance the following illustrations:
In one of the up-country schools a
| sewing department was established
1t fell TO the lot Of one of the girls
| to make a beautiful white apron
an apron so resplendent in its white
, ness as to make the school sur
roundings appear dull and dingy. Life
In such an atmosphere of contrast
was intolerable. The demand was
made for paint and whitewash and
the old schoolhouse fairly glistened in
became almost binding and to sof-
ten its glare the schoolyard was
planted in green shrubs and vari-
colored flowers 1t did not stop here
The father Of the girl with the apron
noticing the marvellous change in the
school house and its surroundings,
and fairly oppressed with the white
, ness of that apron, continued to re-
model, repair and rewritten until his
premises were cleaning likenesses of
| their former selves. The whiteness of
/ one little apron wrought transfor-
little thing to produce so great a
| change. but after all the little things
I in our lives determine their conduct
and cnreer. y single beautiful flower
demands the presence of other beau
, tiful flowers; a single noble impulse
produces other noble impulses, whose
resultants are generous deeds and
Ieautiful characters.
The essence Of beauty is harmony,
, and the result of harmony is rest
not that rest that is but a euphemism
for idle inactivity but that rest that
| results from the harmonious exercise
of all the faculties. To attain unto
rest in activity is to be in love with
ones work and to this end ones sur
roundings should be beautiful We
have said that the mind and the soul
are complex. that is they partake of
the nature of those things upon which
| they feed. How important then that
| the mind and the soul of the child
| and harmonious. The Greeks, noted
| for their beauty and their grace,
realized 50 keenly the potency Of the
| Gr"cian matronS looked only upon