An artist who believes in significance merely enough to recognize the necessity of representing it in some way can, with a very few thrusts of his knife, to say nothing of his brush, at one and the same time relieve the inflammation of chapped cheeks, and inject into the veins some of the blue blood of aristocracy.

As intimated a moment ago, those who claim that the highest quality of art can be produced without regard to significance are conceiving of art as if it involved exclusively that which is in the domain of science. Yes, it may be answered; but are not those who insist upon the requirement of significance, especially significance of an elevated character, conceiving of art as involving that which is in the domain of religion? Certainly they are, yet not as involving this exclusively. Art includes something that pertains to the domain of science, and also something that pertains to the domain of religion. When an artist depicts nature just as it is, if there be any such thing as natural religion, he produces upon the mind something of the effect of natural religion. If he depict humanity, he produces if there be any such thing-something of the sympathetic effect of social religion. And in both cases he adds to the effect the influence which each has had upon his own character, and produces, if he have any, something of the effect of personal religion. Art combines the influences of God in nature, God in humanity, and God in the individual. It makes an appeal that is natural, sympathetic, and personal; but it does all this in a way that seems divine, because the factors of representation are reproductions of the divine handiwork. As applied to literature, for instance, it is a fact that, when spiritual discernment and brotherly charity that judge by faith that is deeper than creeds, and by motives that lie nearer to the heart than actions, fulfil their missions of guidance and enlightenment for their age, the very same ideas which, if stated in plain prose, would send their writer to ostracism or the stake, are accepted and approved, if, through the suggestive methods of art, they are represented in what may be called the divine terms of nature. What would have become of Dante, in his age, if he had proclaimed that a pope could be kept in hell or a pagan be welcomed in Paradise? Yet, when he pictured both conditions in his great poem, how many questioned his orthodoxy? We may apply the same principle to any form of literary art. It is less the modern pulpit than the modern novel that has not only freed the slave and unfrocked the aristocrat, but has snatched the standards of sectarianism from

the hands of hypocrites and bigots, and restored for all the Church the one standard of Constantine, and that one not held up by the hands of man, but flaming in the sky. So with the other arts. Even in the rhythm and harmony of music, though representing laws almost too subtle for our comprehension, there is something that tends to make not only every pulse throb in unison, but also every protoplasmic fibre tendrilled nearest to the soul. Under the pediment of the temple, the arches of the cathedral, the dome of the mosque, always, too, in the degree in which these are great works of art, the predominating impression is that of the universal fatherhood of God, which all alike represent. Nor is there a statue or a painting which depicts natural life, especially human life, as we are accustomed in our own day to see it, yet notice that this argument could not apply, even remotely, to anything approaching deformity or vulgarity,- but every curve or color in it that forms the line of contact where the waves, bearing their burdens of joy or sorrow, break against its palpitating frame, but every curve or color in it seems to frame the soul of one to be loved, not by another, but by ourselves; and, so far as Providence sends spiritual development through imparting a sense of sympathy with friend, brother, sister, father, mother, wife, or child, there, in the presence of art, that development for a time is experienced.

In fact, in every department of art, if only our powers of apprehension were sufficiently subtle, its influences might be perceived in the aspects of great natural forces streaming up from the surface of the globe through the senses of those inhabiting it, and radiating into a spiritual halo stretching starward above every realm and age that the world whirls upward, as it goes spinning through its course.

But enough. The conception suggesting this paper has been sufficiently unfolded, if it has been made clear in what sense it is true that æsthetic studies, among which one may include anything that has to do with elocution, poetry, music, drawing, painting, or modelling, whether we consider their influence upon the artist or upon the patron of art, are needed, in order to connect and complete the results of education as developed through science alone or through religion alone. These studies can do for the mind what science cannot, crowning its work with the halo of imagination and lighting its path to discovery. They can do for it what religion cannot, grounding its conceptions upon accuracy of observation and keeping them true to facts. Art unites the purely intellectual in

fluences of the two other spheres. It can not only hold the mirror up to nature, but it can make all nature a mirror, and hold it up to the heavens. In times of intellectual and spiritual storm and stress, when night is above and waves below and winds behind and breakers ahead, its voice can sometimes speak peace to the troubled waters, and bring a great calm; and then, in the blue at our feet, we can see not only a little of the beauty of a little of the surface of the little star in which we live, but something also of the grandeur of all the stars of all the universe.

II. DEPARTMENTS OF FINANCE AND SOCIAL ECONOMY.

I. CO-OPERATIVE BANKING IN THE UNITED

STATES (1873-1898).

BY F. B. SANBORN, OF CONCORD, MASS., CHAIRMAN OF THE
DEPARTMENT.

[Read Wednesday morning, August 31.]

Before introducing the speakers of this morning's session, permit me to speak of a subject which has at various times occupied the attention of our Social Economy Department, and was one of the first which it investigated, after its organization in 1874. I mean Co-operative Banking,—what is more commonly called by the less descriptive name of "Building and Loan Associations," a multitude of small organizations which do a banking business of a special character, and have lately combined themselves in State Leagues and a national League which met this summer at Omaha, and has since published Proceedings of much interest. In addressing this Omaha meeting, at the invitation of its officers, I had occasion to recall events connected with our Social Science Association, and may therefore quote what was then said:

"It will soon be a full quarter-century since that public-spirited citizen of Boston, the late Josiah Quincy (grandfather of the present mayor, and grandson of the Revolutionary patriot of the same illustrious name), first brought to the notice of the American Social Science Association, of which I was then a Secretary, the Philadelphia banking institutions, then only known under the title of 'Building Associations.' They were new to most of us, though they had existed in the Middle States, to the number of several hundred, for twenty or thirty years, and had spread from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Cincinnati and other Ohio cities, where Savings-banks were virtually unknown. Mr. Quincy soon after published a pamphlet on the subject; and our Association appointed a committee, of which I was a member, to investigate the

...

history and results of this peculiar form of co-operative savingsbank. Several of our members among them Robert Treat Paine, Gamaliel Bradford, and J. S. Ropes - became interested in what they discovered concerning the methods and general good result of the Philadelphia Associations; and means were taken to procure legislation to authorize similar banks in Massachusetts. This was more than twenty years ago; and now there are in Massachusetts alone more than one hundred and twenty such banks, controlling many millions of property, and with a record of safe and useful business. In other States a like extension of the system has taken place, until there are now, I suppose, more than six thousand such 'People's Banks' in the forty-four States of our Union."

Several times, after 1875, when Mr. R. T. Paine discussed these co-operative banks at some length in our Detroit meeting, have committees of this department taken up the fruitful topic; and it was in a communication on the associations of Illinois that we first learned the merits of our Finance Chairman, Professor Jenks, as investigator and reporter. Such banks seem peculiarly appropriate for consideration in our department, since they represent and foster a form of Social Economy, as distinct from Public Economy, giving to households of small income the opportunity of owning their own homes, and thus promoting that welfare in minor matters which our department was organized to consider and promote.

Falstaff told the chief justice, in one of his memorable conversations with that dignitary, "It was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common." Something of this sort has been of late years the fortune of the American Building and Loan Associations. Their great success, when confined to localities and managed on a small scale, together with something a little mysterious in the old way of premiums and rate of interest, which easily gave opportunity for bewildering the imagination of investors, has encouraged "promoters," of whom the London blackguard, Hooley, is just now the typical instance, to set up investment companies under the name of "national" building associations, which have had little success, except in the way of giving their officers high salaries. same time the genuine local co-operative banks have been either too thickly placed or too carelessly managed, so that fraud has crept in sometimes, or loans too insecurely made, where honesty