lly, to look round cheerfully,
and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such
conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that
occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our
will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of
fear."
The application of this principle to the reading of these lines would
seem to justify the method the teacher was pursuing. A smile is
acceptedly the indication of happy emotion, the outward symbol of inward
rejoicing or joy. The June day is full of joyful emotion,--the joy of
awakening life. Applying Mr. James's theory, a legitimate way to induce
the inward emotion would seem to be to assume the outward sign. But wait
a moment. Let us look to our premises. Mr. Lanier, who sings of Nature
with joyful understanding, cries in _Sunrise_:
"Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied Tree
That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know
From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?
They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.
Reason's not one that weeps.
What logic of greeting lies
Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?"
Here is a great master of verbal expression whose inward joy finds its
outward symbol not in a smile but in a tear. So you and I may respond to
Mr. Lowell's "high tide of the year" with smiles or with tears, with
bowed head and closed eyes, or with eyes wide and head raised to meet
the returning flood of life.
The effect upon me of the beauty of this day as Mr. Lowell has painted
it, my personal emotional response is interesting psychology, but is not
my concern as an interpreter. My own emotion and its personal response
belong to my preparatory interpretative efforts in the study; but when
the interpretation is ready for the audience-room, the emotion must be
assimilated into the interpretative act and appear only as part of the
illumination of the bit of life I am presenting.
The object of all great art, whether creative or interpretative, is not
to exploit the personality of the artist, but to disclose at some point
the personality of the very God himself, which is life. The revelation
not of personal emotion but of universal life is the legitimate aim of
all artistic effort.
Emotional response will accompany every vital mental conception.
Abandonment to that response is a legitimate and necessary part of full
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