First learn to walk, then try running.  An artisan of exceptional sensibility may get something from the masterpieces of the National Gallery, provided there is no cultivated person at hand to tell him what to feel, or to prevent him feeling anything by telling him to think.  An artisan of ordinary sensibility had far better keep away until, by trying to express himself in form, he has gained some glimmer of a notion of what artists are driving at.  Surely there can be no reason why almost every man and woman should not be a bit of an artist since almost every child is.  In most children a sense of form is discernible.  What becomes of it?  It is the old story:  the child is father to the man; and if you wish to preserve for the man the gift with which he was born, you must catch him young, or rather prevent his being caught.  Can we by any means thwart the parents, the teachers, and the systems of education that turn children into modern men and women?  Can we save the artist that is in almost every child?  At least we can offer some practical advice.  Do not tamper with that direct emotional reaction to things which is the genius of children.  Do not destroy their sense of reality by teaching them to manipulate labels.  Do not imagine that adults must be the best judges of what is good and what matters.  Don’t be such an ass as to suppose that what excites uncle is more exciting than what excites Tommy.  Don’t suppose that a ton of experience is worth a flash of insight, and don’t forget that a knowledge of life can help no one to an understanding of art.  Therefore do not educate children to be anything or to feel anything; put them in the way of finding out what they want and what they are.  So much in general.  In particular I would say, do not take children to galleries and museums; still less, of course, send them to art schools to be taught high-toned commercialism.  Do not encourage them to join guilds of art and crafts, where, though they may learn a craft, they will lose their sense of art.  In those respectable institutions reigns a high conception of sound work and honest workmanship.  Alas! why cannot people who set themselves to be sound and honest remember that there are other things in life?  The honest craftsmen of the guilds have an ideal which is praiseworthy and practical, which is mediocre and unmagnanimous, which is moral and not artistic.  Craftsmen are men of principle, and, like all men of principle, they abandon the habit of thinking and feeling because they find it easier to ask and answer the question, “Does this square with my principles?”—­than to ask and answer the question, “Do I feel this to be good or true or beautiful?” Therefore, I say, do not encourage a child to take up with the Arts and Crafts.  Art is not based on craft, but on sensibility; it does not live by honest labour, but by inspiration.  It is not to be taught in workshops and schoolrooms by craftsmen and pedants, though it may be ripened in studios by masters who are artists.  A good craftsman the boy must become if he is to be a good artist; but let him teach himself the tricks of his trade by experiment, not in craft, but in art.