of the vision
of his seeing eye through an early training in art. Vachel Lindsay (as he
himself proudly asserts) was a student at the Institute in Chicago for
four years, spent one more at the League and at Chase's in New York, and
for four more haunted the Metropolitan Museum, lecturing to his fellows
on every art there shown from the Egyptian to that of Arthur B. Davies.

Only such a background as this could have evolved the conception of
"Architecture, sculpture, and painting in motion" and given authenticity
to its presentation. The validity of Lindsay's analysis is attested by
Freeburg's helpful characterization, "Composition in fluid forms," which
it seems to have suggested. To Lindsay's category one would be tempted to
add, "pattern in motion," applying it to such a film as the "Caligari"
which he and I have seen together and discussed during these past few
days. Pattern in this connection would imply an emphasis on the intrinsic
suggestion of the spot and shape apart from their immediate relation to
the appearance of natural objects. But this is a digression. It simply
serves to show the breadth and adaptability of Lindsay's method.

The book was written for a visual-minded public and for those who would
be its leaders. A long, long line of picture-readers trailing from the
dawn of history, stimulated all the masterpieces of pictorial art from
Altamira to Michelangelo. For less than five centuries now Gutenberg has
had them scurrying to learn their A, B, C's, but they are drifting back
to their old ways again, and nightly are forming themselves in cues at
the doorways of the "Isis," the "Tivoli," and the "Riviera," the while
it is sadly noted that "'the pictures' are driving literature off the
parlor table."

With the creative implications of this new pictorial art, with the whole
visual-minded race clamoring for more, what may we not dream in the way
of a new renaissance? How are we to step in to the possession of such a
destiny? Are the institutions with a purely literary theory of life going
to meet the need? Are the art schools and the art museums making
themselves ready to assimilate a new art form? Or what is the type of
institution that will ultimately take the position of leadership in
culture through this new universal instrument?

What possibilities lie in this art, once it is understood and developed,
to plant new conceptions of civic and national idealism? How far may it
go in cultivating concerte