PART II
THE EDUCATIONAL FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONS
CHAPTER I[ToC]
EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE DAY
Education, like all other institutions, has been charged, we know, with having contributed its share to the causes of the war. The Prussian school system, we have been told, was mainly a school of war; all the emotions and ideas necessary to produce morbid nationalism, distorted views of history, and a belief in and a love of war were there fostered and deliberately cultivated. There is, of course, some truth in this; it is a truth that is deceiving, however, if we regard it as at all indicating the true relation between education and practical affairs. If the school was a factor in the late war, such a creative effect of education appears to be rare in history. In general it is the negative effect of the school that is most conspicuous. It is what the school has not done to prevent war, what it has failed to do in not bringing nations out of their perverted nationalism into a life of more practical relationship with one another that really best characterizes the school.
It is difficult or impossible for us now, of course, to perceive what the war has done—in what way, all in all, the future will be different from the past. It is very easy and natural to look at everything dramatically now, see revolution everywhere and believe that all institutions are now to be radically changed. Or, going to the other extreme, we may become cynical, and say that, human nature being unchangeable, we shall soon settle down into the old routine and we shall see presently that nothing revolutionizing has transpired. Some will say, and indeed are saying that education must now be entirely remodeled; some will think that education had best go on as before—that nothing has happened certainly to require any new philosophy of the school, or any profound change in its form. We see these two tendencies in many phases of our present situation: in politics, in education, and in the business world.
It is impossible, we may repeat, to make wholly safe judgments now about the future, but still something must in the meantime be done. We must either stand still or go forward—or backward; we must act either with a theory or without one. The school is involved in this necessity. There is a new content of history that we cannot ignore, but must in some way teach. We must say something about the war; current events can hardly be kept out of the school, and to understand current events there must be a wider content of history than we have had in the past. There are new, or at least disturbed, conditions in the industrial and in all the social life, and these conditions cannot fail to have some effect upon the school. The school must adjust itself to them, and it must surely take into account new needs that have arisen. Patriotism may need to be taught now, or taught in a different manner. There is a problem of war and peace, the question of what ideals of national life we are to convey. Internationalism demands some recognition on the part of the school. It seems probable, therefore, and even necessary that a new interest in the function of education will be felt and must be aroused. Must we not indeed now examine once more all the foundations upon which our ideas about education rest? Certainly there will never be a more favorable time, or more reasons for such a task.
It is the impending internationalism, or the idea of internationalism now so vividly put before us all, that most incites new thought about education, and about all the means of controlling the ideas and feelings of the people. We hear much about reconstruction and readjustment, and these terms obviously imply the old ways and the old institutions. But internationalism is something new, having many possibilities; it means new relations among peoples; it opens up new practical fields and new phases of sociology and economics. It is because of this new phase of the social life and social consciousness of man, we might suppose, that education is most likely to be affected in its foundations, so that no mere readjustment will be enough. A new politics and a new science of nations appear, and we cannot fail to see that there is at the present time something decidedly lacking in education; that there is a larger life perhaps for which our present ways of educating children would not sufficiently prepare, and that to prepare for this larger life something more would be needed than an added subject in the curriculum. This is because internationalism is not simply more of something we have already; it is a turn in the road, and a turn which, it can hardly be denied, will finally affect all institutions. If internationalism has come to stay, it will need, and it must have, powerful support from all educational forces. It will need something more than support; education must produce creative habits of mind, which shall make and nourish new relations in the world, and it must make people intelligent, so that they can understand what the new and larger relations mean and what must be accomplished by them.
A casual observation of the educational situation might indicate that education is limited in two ways, so far as being a means of meeting our present needs is concerned. It is lacking in power; it treats children and youths still in a fragmentary way, and the process of learning is somewhat detached from the totality of living. There is a lack of richness of content, and a lack of responsiveness in the school to the stirring life outside the school. If we may say that history now turns a new page, and that society stands at a change of tide, education is also in a peculiar and interesting position. The school may, from now on, if our view of it be at all just, be expected to do one of two things: it may settle down to a relatively successful work, in a limited sphere of usefulness, training children well, especially fitting them to enter into our present social order; or, on the other hand, the school may now become a much greater power, and may seize hold upon fundamental things in life and society under the stimulus of new conditions—find a way to a deeper philosophy, a more consistent theory, attain a more exalted mood and higher purpose, and become a far more potent factor in civilization.
That education will remain unaffected in profound ways by the war, is difficult to believe. One may very readily, as we say, see these impending changes in too dramatic a way, and begin to talk about profound upheavals and ideals that certainly will never be realized (and we ought to guard against this easy idealizing, which leaves human nature out of the reckoning); still we cannot but feel that in some way a new dimension has been added to the social life as a result of the war, and that education, in dealing with this greater society, must itself be raised to a higher power. If we think, educationally speaking, in terms of a world at all, rather than in terms of individuals, or communities, families and nations, we are quickly impressed by the sense of living in a new order of educational problems, and possessing, it may be, a new variety of self-consciousness. Nations in this new view are thought of as parts of a world, as having many external relations, whereas formerly almost all education has had reference at the most to the internal life of nations. Patriotism has been the expression of its most distant horizon.
If we believe that anything new is about to be realized in education, it might seem natural to begin to think about changes from the standpoint and in the terms of the old chapters and topics. We might ask what this or that subject of the curriculum means or must produce that it did not mean and did not produce before; or we might consider the old and the new requirements in the education of the feelings, the will, the intellect; or we might take any other of the educational categories as a basis for a discussion of the philosophy of the school. These programs, however, do not seem to be very inspiring. Would it not be better now to try to distinguish the main fields of life and the main interests in regard to which new questions and new needs have arisen, and see what changes in our educational thought are really demanded by them? On such a plan, internationalism itself would first demand attention, and indeed most of all. In a sense all questions about education must now be considered with reference to internationalism in some way. Then there are the problems already raised during the war and widely discussed, about the teaching of patriotism. Patriotism becomes a new educational problem, a chapter in our theory of education, in which we become conscious of ourselves in a new way, and are aware of our larger field and changed conditions. There are questions, too, about the teaching of the lessons of the war, what we shall think about war in general as a good or an evil, how we shall conceive peace and its values. Changes are taking place in government, and in our ideas of government, and governments are being put to new tests. Political education can hardly fail to be now one of our most serious concerns. Democracy appears to be our great word; the control and education of the democratic forces and the democratic spirit becomes an urgent need. Industry acquires new meanings; we must take up again all the theory of industrial education, for we have seen of late that industry contains possibilities of evil we did not before understand. Social problems arise in changed forms. The new world-idea or world-consciousness becomes an educational problem of the social life. Class difference can never again be ignored as it has been in the past in the schools. Moral, religious and æsthetic education seems to have a different place in the school, just to the extent that all life has become more serious on account of the war. These demands made upon the deepest elements of the psychic life suggest the need once more of a new philosophy of education, or, at the least, a greatly increased recognition and application of the philosophy we already have.
Before the war there was a sense of security and the feeling that our education was adequate to meet all demands. We were proud of our educational system. Our democratic ideals, people said, were safe in the hands of the public school. Industrial education was meeting fairly well the needs of the industrial life. There were no very pressing class problems. The troubles of capital and labor, although always threatening, seemed to demand no educational interference. The religious problem was temporarily not acute. Aesthetic forms had been attended to in the curriculum sufficiently to meet the demands of the day. Hygiene and physical education and individual attention seemed to be making rapid advances. All of these had been influenced by the scientific methods of treating educational questions. On the whole we seemed to have a good school. But now the question must be asked whether this school of yesterday will be adequate to meet the needs of to-morrow; whether new conditions do not call for new thought, new philosophy, new schools. These things of course cannot be had for the asking. We cannot give orders to genius to produce them for us. But a generation that does not hope for them, we might suspect of not having realized what the war has cost. For so great a price paid have we not a right to expect much in return, especially if we are willing to regard the war as a lesson rather than as a debt to us, and bend all our energies to make it count for a better civilization?
We may already see in a general way what the effect of the war is to be upon the mind of the educator. The journals begin to be filled with plans for the participation of the school in the work of reconstruction. There are many suggestions for the improvement of the school. Industrial education, the classics, history, military education, social education are all being discussed. Evidently many minds are at work. Some of them, indeed many of them, are apparently most concerned about what changes we shall make at once in the day's work of the school. Many wish to know what we are going to do now with Latin, or history, and how we can improve the method of teaching in this or that particular. But there are some deeper notes. Thinkers are asking elementary questions about the whole of human nature. They wish to know what the original nature of man is, and what the limits of our control over human nature are. Such books as Hocking's "Human Nature and its Re-making" and Russell's "Principles of Social Reconstruction," which grapple with the basic problems of human life, are signs of the times. No one can yet predict what the final result of the increased intellectual ardor that has come out of the war will be, but it seems certain that that striving of the mind which has made the literature of the war so remarkable a page in the history of the human spirit will continue, and in the field of education as elsewhere in the practical life there will be new vitality and earnestness.
CHAPTER II[ToC]
INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL
If we take a serious and an optimistic view of education as a social institution, and think of it at all as standing in functional relationships with the social life as a whole, we must conclude that internationalism as a new movement and idea, and the school as an institution in which changes in the social order are reflected (but in which also changes in the social order are created) are closely related. Adjustment is a relatively easy matter; it is the conception of the school as a creative factor that challenges our best efforts. Let us think of the school as a workshop in which there must be created the forces by which we must make a desired and an otherwise unrealizable future come to pass and we have a new and inspiring view of education. The school perhaps must do even more than educate the forces; it must help even to create the vision itself by which the future is to be directed. The school becomes, so to speak, the working hypothesis of civilisation. In it the ideas and the desires by which nations live must be made to take shape.
The idea of internationalism implies certain changes in the external relations of nations which, whatever the form internationalism will take on its political side, are not difficult to perceive. These in turn imply internal changes. We might readily outline or psychologically analyze what could be called the mood of internationalism, in order to see its relations to education. It contains a number of factors, more or less related to one another. First, there is a recognition of a world of growing, living historical entities which we call nations; and this recognition implies new understanding and an enrichment of knowledge. Second, there is a change in the consciousness of nations, slow but visible, by which they become more willing to investigate freely and fairly their own place in history, understand their own desires, functions, virtues, faults, the value of their culture and civilization. Without such an attitude all talk of internationalism in any real sense is idle. Third, there is a new and different practical interest. We begin to conceive our world as a world of complex practical relations, and this idea of a practical world is likely to become one of the leading thoughts of the future. Fourth, by extending, so to speak, this idea of a world of practical relations, we idealize a world in which there is a common interest in great international achievements,—a world devoted more than it is now to coördinated efforts to accelerate progress, more conscious of the needs of a distant future, perhaps, or even of an ideal of universal efficiency as a means of realizing some one world purpose or many good purposes. This is not now, as it once might have been called, merely an Utopian dream. In some slight degree it is already being accomplished. Fifth, social and moral feelings are widened in scope, and must be still further extended; it is in the form of the democratic spirit, that these feelings must find expression. And this democratic spirit is on one side practical, but it is also something more than the emergence of the common mind; it is the aristocratic idea carried out universally that we look forward to, an enthusiasm for all true values, a mood and activity in which all people participate. Sixth, there is a necessary attitude toward world organization or world government, according to which we think of world government or world organization as a means of accomplishing results which fulfill fundamental desires and purposes of the peoples of the earth; as a growing structure, something to be added to and improved. Seventh, if so general a tendency and demand may be made clear, there is a philosophical mood, which must be made a part of the ideal and the attitude of the future, if that future is to realize even the practical hopes of the world. This philosophical attitude is first of all a way of living comprehensively and more universally, in the world both of facts and of ideas. It means a less provincial and a more widely enriched life for all. It means also an ability to choose the good not according to preconceptions and narrow principles, but according to the wisdom contained in the experience and the selective powers of mankind as a whole. This means a life in which men live, so to speak, more collectively.
These factors of the idea of internationalism, whatever we may think of the possibility of their realization, make in their totality an educational problem: they are specifications, so to speak, laid before us for the making of a new educational product. If we say that it is useless to think of such things, we are saying merely that it is useless to hope to be a factor in conscious evolution, or that the world as a whole has no purpose and no goal. If we believe education has any function in the larger work of the world, educational philosophy must take these things into account, see how they may be created or sustained, and how they can be made to work together to help bring to pass the kind of future men are talking so much about.
I. The Essential World Idea
Our present situation has plainly made it necessary for us to understand the world in which we live far better than we have in the past, and to be willing to make more dispassionate judgments about it. For better or for worse we have entered upon a new stage of history, in which heavy responsibilities fall upon all peoples, and upon none more than upon ourselves. Enlightenment beyond all our present understanding is a necessity. We have been peculiarly isolated and separated from the world's affairs; now we are peculiarly involved. We have, however, one great and unusual advantage. In our case it is ignorance rather than prejudice that we must overcome in ourselves. The world feels this and recognizes the unusual place this gives us. We have no thousand years of continuous strife to distort our historical perspective. We out to be able to be just interpreters of the history of the world. Our universities ought to be the greatest centers of historical learning, and as a people we should feel ourselves called upon above all other people to know the world.
As a nation we pass out of a local into a broader political field. We become citizens of a world, but this world is no mere habitation of individuals who are to be affiliated with one another. It is a world of national wills. Internationalism is first of all a recognition of the legitimate desires of nations. But such a recognition of the legitimate desires of nations cannot be effected merely by spreading abroad good will. A widespread education in the meaning of history must first be made the foundation of international justice in the minds of the people. Current history and future events seen in the light of all history, of history as the science and story of all human experience, become our chief intellectual interest to-day. The war has taught us how little the people in the world know bout the world as a whole. All history thus far has been local history. Everywhere there tends to be the prejudice in some degree that comes from the private need of using history for political ends. Unless we can now put history, real history, at the head of our sciences, the war will have failed of a great result, whatever in particular, in a political way, it may have accomplished.
With such an understanding of what is to be meant by history we say, if that seems an adequate way of expressing it, that the teaching of history becomes one of the fundamental problems of the educational work of the day. It might be better to say that living in the historical spirit is demanded as a way of salvation of the world. However, adding geography and economics to history we have a content that must somehow be taught in the schools. History, as the most concrete science of the actual world in which we live, now seems to have become a new center for the curriculum. Hitherto we have tended to regard history too lightly, as the story of the world; now there must be a deeper view of it. We must have an understanding of the motives and the desires of peoples; history must not only be broader and more comprehensive but more penetrating and psychological. It is the purposes of nations, working themselves out in their history, that we must understand. There must no longer be great unknown places on the earth. Germany, Russia, Japan must not continue to be mysteries. National psychology must be made a part of historical interpretation. This new history must be the means of showing us our world in a more total view than we have thus far had of it, so that we may better discern the continuity, if there be one, behind the detached movements and multiplicity of facts presented by the world's story; for perhaps, in this way, we should better understand what the future is to produce, and what, more important still, it ought to be made to produce.
The need first of all is for a continuation of the interest inspired by the war—an interest showing itself in the form of an universal interest in all history, and an intensive investigation of history. We need now, indeed, the most comprehensive study of the world that has ever been conceived or dreamed of by man. This is the duty of the historians. This new history must show us what nations are at heart, what they desire, what they can do. Such an understanding of nations is, we say, the real beginning of internationalism. It is a necessary foundation for it, if internationalism is to be anything more than a merely practical, prudential or political arrangement among nations. In the school-room eventually, and indeed beginning now, there is demanded a readjustment of interest by which history takes a new and more central place. We must endeavor to give the new generation a world-idea. And upon the nature and clearness of this world-idea much, in the future, will depend.
Such a demand upon the school opens once more, of course, all the old problems of the teaching of history. All the dreary questions of the precise order in which history should be taught—whether backwards or forwards, local first or the reverse, may be brought up if one chooses to do so. But after all, these questions are not very fruitful. What we need most is the historical spirit. We want a dramatic presentation of the world's whole story, by which the true meaning of history is conveyed. The methods of art must be added to the methods of fact. A persuasive use of the materials of history must be made. This means a change finally, perhaps, not only in the methods of teaching history, but in the whole mood and spirit of the school. Methods are likely to adapt themselves to necessity. Certainly the slow methods of presenting facts, sometimes if not generally employed, the tedious lingering upon details, seems wholly out of place. We need a broader outlook in history. Even the young child must have a more comprehensive world-idea, some sense of the whole of the great world in which he lives. This is one of the instances, it may be, in which we must set about breaking up any recapitulatory order, natural to the child, which suggests an advance from the local to the more general and wider knowledge. The universal interests of the day so strongly affect the child, the social consciousness so dominates the individual consciousness that even the natural law of development must to some extent yield if necessary. This social consciousness, the interests and purposes expressed in the child's social environment, present the experience of the adult world dramatically and intensively, exerting as we might say, a creative power upon the mind. That indeed is precisely what the higher teaching, whether in the form of art, or in the form of vivid experience, conveyed though the practical life does everywhere in education.
We do not yet know what history, taught thus dramatically and intimately, under the stimulus of the greatest events of all time might do for the mind of the child or for all the future of the world. We have never had the most favorable conditions for the teaching of universal history. We have been obliged to create interest. History has been taught externally, from the standpoint of a far-away observer. Now history may and must be taught more as it is lived. The world has become more real to every one; this sense of reality of a world of historical entities must be made to persist. We must not go back to our unreal and intellectualized history. The spirit of the nations must be made to live again, so to speak, in the minds of the coming generation. What each nation stands for, its ethos, its personality, must be made clear. Powers says that all governments and all nations are sincere. It is the soul of nations, then, their own realization of themselves that must be made the real object of history. We must go back of the individual and the event at least, to the desires that have made history what it is; we must see why events have taken place, and while sacrificing nothing of our own principles and standards, understand and feel what the principles and the nature of these widely differing nations really are. For the actual teaching of history, it is likely that the story, carried to its highest point of art, will still be the chief method. But pictorial art must be heavily drawn upon, and all the resources of symbolic art, as we pass from the lower to the higher stages in education, or, we had perhaps better say, as we try more and more to convey moods and the spirit of nations and epochs and to appeal to the deep motives in the subconscious life of the individual. Plainly there is much work to do in the investigation and the teaching of history for every grade and department of the educational system, from the government and the higher universities to the teacher of the young child. It is an age of history, a day in which all sciences have as one of their tasks to aid in the understanding of history. In the broader world and the universal life which the idea and the reality of internationalism has opened up to us, all must live in some way, if only in imagination. History is a part of the necessary equipment for that life.
II. The Reëducation of National Desires
The second factor in internationalism is also, on its educational side, related to a knowledge of history. This is the attitude which peoples must take toward their own purposes and ambitions. We must begin to speak of the education of national consciousness. This process of the education of nations must be such as will teach peoples to surrender certain visions most of them have in regard to a future which cannot now be realized. The content of the desires of nations must now be changed. The future of many peoples will depend upon the extent to which they can remain progressive and enthusiastic without the stimulus of imperialistic ambitions.
Considering our own situation in America, it seems plain that we have confronting us a serious educational problem, that of imparting to the rising generation and of acquiring for ourselves, a better understanding of the meaning and place of our country in the world, and a more earnest interest in its functions and its welfare. This requires something more than a teaching of American history. It is time for us to take stock of all our material and all our spiritual possessions. We need perhaps to discover what our ideals really are and what the ideas and the forces are that have made our history what it has been; and what in the future we are likely to do and to be, and ought to do and be. We must question deeply at this time our own soul; we must look to our institutions, our literature and our art for an understanding of ourselves.
This more profound knowledge of ourselves must be made the basis of our especial educational philosophy. Here is the most urgent of all our educational problems. Education is, or should be, a process by which national character is constantly being molded. In the school the nation must learn much that cannot be read in books. It must learn to believe things that cannot be proved, or perhaps even definitely formulated as truth. The soul of the nation must be subjected, in a word, to some kind of spiritual leadership. Constructive statesmanship must be felt as an influence in the school. The problem is really nothing less than that of educating and forming national character. Now that we stand less alone as a nation our character cannot safely be left so much to chance and to the effects of our favorable environment and our original stock of virtues. We cannot continue to be so naïve and so unconscious of our country as we have been. What we are and what we must do as a people, we say, ought to be better understood. We should bring these ideals of ours out of the mists of partisan thinking and give them more definite shape, and at the same time translate them into the language of sincere living. National honor ought to be made a clearer idea. We ought at least to be sure it contains the idea of honesty. Such prejudices as our history has encouraged in us must be recognized, and computed in our personal equation. These prejudices we certainly harbor—in regard to our own particular type of government, our culture and education, our freedom and our democracy and our security. Every nation appears to have its own idols, its concealments and its self-deceptions, its belief in its own supremacy and divine mission, and its innocent faith in its own mores. To overcome such narrowness and perversion without introducing worse faults is a difficult problem of education. In either direction there appear to be real dangers. A nation steeped in provincial ways, plunged as we are now into the midst of world politics, has difficulties lying before it compared to which contributing a decisive military power is small. There are dangers in standing aloof from other peoples. But if we surrender too readily our prejudices and homespun ways, and too rapidly absorb influences from without, we shall be no safer, for carried too far, that would mean to lose our mission and our vision. There appears to be, moreover, no safe and easy middle course which we can follow. Our only course seems to be clearly to understand ourselves, rise above our limitations and difficulties, turn our faults into virtues, and make ourselves secure by our own inner worth and power.
Plainly there are difficult problems ahead of the teachers of American history. They must not inculcate suspicion and fear, but they must not present our security in a false light. They must not inspire the war-like spirit and imperialistic ambitions, but they must do nothing to lessen our seriousness of purpose and enthusiasm for the future. They must not teach national vanity, but they must not on the other hand encourage a spirit which is in any way over-critical and cynical or supercilious. There must be political wisdom on the part of the people but not a sophisticated state of mind. These teachers must inspire a wholesome pride, without creating an inflamed sense of honor such as has caused so many wars. They must make clear the virtue and the individuality of our own national life, but in doing this they must not disparage the foreign and give rise to prejudice and antagonism. How to establish us still more firmly in our own essential traits and philosophy of life without making us conceited and closed to good influences from without; how to give us a strong sense of solidarity without the attendant sense of opposition to everything outside the group is a part of our educational work which, in a broad sense, falls to the teacher of history.
The central problem of the education of national consciousness, in our view, is to make desires more conscious and to subject them to discipline and the influence of the best ideals of American life. MacCurdy says that by making instincts conscious we take a great step in advance. That we should say is true, if we make them conscious in the right way, and do not try to substitute rational principles for them. But we need to go further; we must not only understand and control the impulses of aggression, jealousy, fear and the like that have played such a sinister part in history, but we must know more about those complex and subtile things we call moods, which are really the main forces in modern life. These moods are accumulations and repositories of interests and desires, and they must be appreciated by all who as educators, undertake to direct the forces in our national life. These desires must be made more definitely conscious everywhere, and be subjected to influence and education. It is not simply institutions, organizations and factions that must be watched and controlled, just because these are the more obvious and most easily affected expressions of tendencies and desires, but all the subtile feelings or moods which are the raw materials, so to speak, of future conduct, ideals, and institutions.
Here comes to view, of course, our whole problem of assimilation of heterogeneous elements. Favored by our geographical position, and by the fortunate success and the great suggestive power of the ideal of liberty with which our history began, America has had, as we all realize, thus far an unusual career. We have been able to assimilate foreign elements with great rapidity. We may not be so fortunate in the future. Distances which have severed our new peoples from their old ties have become strangely shortened by the war. Our problems of adjustment have become more subtile and complex. The necessity of succeeding in unifying our population is more urgent. Therefore our future development, as a nation, becomes to a greater extent a process of conscious direction; what we have done naïvely and by sheer force of our powers of growth, we must do now, it is likely, more deliberately and efficiently.
We have before us in America the highly important and by no means easy task of harmonizing, under new conditions, all sorts of forces and desires by directing them in ways and toward ends which cannot now be wholly determined. There is both a psychological and a pedagogical aspect of the situation. Psychology must perform for American life something very much like a psycho-analysis; we should expect to see as a result of the war a greatly increased interest, on the part of the American people, in themselves; self-understanding and self-interpretation, we should suppose, would be advanced; all the sciences of human nature we should think would be called upon to help us to make a new American history and to formulate the purposes of our national life.
On the pedagogical side we might expect reasonably to see a deepened sincerity on the part of all who in any way stand in the position of teachers. We are dependent upon leaders in a democratic country, and all leaders in whatever place in society would now, one might hope, feel a heightened sense of duty, both to understand and to influence American life, to represent in their own persons and teachings the highest ideals, and indeed to become truly creative forces in society. Boutroux says that Germany is a product of an external phenomenon—education. America, we should say, must become more and more a product of an internal phenomenon—education. That is, the forces that will continue to shape our country must be in the form of leadership growing out of the best impulses and the true meaning of our civilization. No forces will make of us something we are not by nature; our strength must continue to come from within, but it is the aristocratic spirit, the aristocracy of genius in the fields of intellect, morality and art that must of course have the fullest opportunity to influence all our institutions, even the school room.
So to organize our educational system that it shall be thrown wide open to all new and good influences; so to conduct the school that it shall be immediately responsive to these influences, is one of the most urgent needs of the internal life of the nation. This, rather than the introduction of any new content into the school is now our chief need. Some of these influences must be personal, belonging to the present. Some belong to the past. We must make American history, poetry, oratory, science, art and philosophy serve more completely than they do now the ideals and the right ambitions of the nation. This is the way we must both bring the past to fuller realization and also create new life which shall make amends for the deficiencies of the past.
III. Practical Interests
The foundation of internationalism, in our view, is the recognition of the legitimate desires and needs of peoples. The desires of peoples when educated should become interests in the performance of all normal functions of national life. The functions are practical; they take the form of many commonplace and daily activities. The recognition of the legitimacy of the desires of nations implies, or at least naturally leads to, coöperation in their accomplishment. It is very probable, therefore, and it appears to be required in any internationalism that is more than a name, that there shall be in the future wide coöperation in the performance of various activities by international organizations and agreements. If this is to be the order of the future, new educational efforts will be demanded, and there must be different methods and different points of view in several phases of our educational system, for now all education is devised with reference to an autonomous state of the nation.
If practical coöperation becomes a part of our plan of international organization in the future, we shall see many problems in applied economics and industry taken up for far more serious consideration than has been possible hitherto. Some of these problems, attacked even on a national scale, have seemed hopeless, but when viewed in their international aspects and with a prospect of international interest and effort they seem very different. There are many such problems toward the solution of which education must contribute a large part. We might mention the food problem of the world as typical, and point to the present world-wide interest and coöperation as an indication of what may come in the future in regard to all the problems of production and distribution of necessities, if we really mean anything by our internationalism. Apparently we hold within our hands the means of alleviating most, if not all, the destitution of the world. Organization and education in efficiency are the necessary and the sufficient weapons.
So we may conclude that an efficient method of educating peoples in the work of food production, and in the habit of conserving necessities would make a wide change in the economic condition of the world. Organization which shall include in some way the service of all children, will add still more to efficiency, and will contribute an educational factor of great importance. In such ways we may to an unlimited extent increase the available energies of the world, and make possible, if we will, the further increase and expansion of the human race. Such a possibility and such an ideal give a totally new meaning to much of the fundamental work of education. All our departments and accessories of the educational system that have anything to do with the elemental occupations acquire a new interest and importance from this point of view.
The whole field of industry offers now, indeed, a broader educational opportunity. Children's hands are ready to do many things that will increase the happiness and the powers of the children themselves and at the same time add to the world's prosperity. Children must, of course, not be exploited in tasks that belong to the adult, but there is a proper place for practical organization of children in the world's work, and a potential helpfulness in children in the larger affairs of society that has not yet been drawn upon, although surely we have seen, during the years of the war, what children might accomplish. It is above all in its relations to universal social feeling that such practical education and use of childhood are most significant. Out of the practical activities, moral results could hardly fail to come. It is not too much to expect that the children of the world may sometime be so organized that the power of childish enthusiasm, raised to we know not what degree by the suggestive force of such world-wide relations as are now possible, may quickly be turned to the accomplishment of great tasks,—doing its part in the service, the conservation, the self denial, that any serious interest in internationalism will in the future with but little doubt make necessary.
Education that shall take into account the principles of efficiency and economy as applied to universal problems will be a great advance upon any teaching hitherto done in the interest of internationalism. It is through practical activity and interest, suggesting and requiring restraint and coöperation, arousing imagination and the dramatic impulses, that fruitful and permanent social affiliations of nations with one another will be likely to be made. We may safely assume, in fact, that firm affiliations can be made only in some such way. Internationalism, from this point of view, is at bottom not a political problem, but an educational problem. The world will be united only through the mediation of its daily practical needs. The motives for such union are themselves commonplace. Moral intentions are represented also, and world crises make the conditions ripe for such coördination of interests, but they do not alone produce the definite organization without which the world will continue to be, as Dickinson calls Europe, a society in the state of anarchy.
CHAPTER III[ToC]
INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL (continued)
IV. The Higher Industry
It is in the higher forms of practical coöperative activity and in the intellectual processes, the interests and social feelings accompanying them that we should expect to see elaborated and made more ideal the internationalism that has first been put to work in the service of the world at a lower level. There is work to do that appeals to profound motives and feelings. The great engineering projects that await us, the work of exploring, colonizing and the like in which universal interest and coöperation are necessary fascinate the mind. These things satisfy the dramatic instinct, and they may prove to be in the future an actual substitute for war, as James hoped. The educational opportunities of this theme, at least, are great. Any nation that expects to play a great part in the world's politics must expect to do much in the world's service. These nations must be prepared in every possible way to contribute greatly to the material improvement of the earth. To this end technical education, all along the line, must be kept at a high point of efficiency. Inventive thought in all mechanical fields will certainly be a large factor in the culture values of peoples in the future. When we see what four years of war have accomplished in the way of giving us control over material forces, we may realize what, with the continuation of a powerful incentive, might be done in the arts of peace. These great practical needs have also, as we say, their power of appeal to all the profound motives of the social life. We must make use of this appeal. All the power of the strong story of the day's work must be turned upon this educational problem. All industry, indeed, must be made more dramatic, as it can be under the inspiration of the larger industrial life which the idea of internationalism opens up before us. Industry must be made more satisfying to the fundamental motives of the individual, while at the same time it is made more efficient, and more social. The new generation must be filled with the romance of the world's work. Only by presenting to young and plastic minds the ideal features of work shall we be able to harmonize the individual and the social will. Only so, perhaps, in an industrial age shall we be able to escape from being destroyed by industrialism. Anything that will introduce art and imagination into work, anything that will even brighten a little the dull moods of toil will help both to prepare the way for the wider world relations we talk about, and to prevent the most destructive elements and moods of industrialism gaining the upper hand.
V. The Democratic Spirit
We must eventually think of internationalism on its educational side as most fundamentally a question of developing in the world the international spirit. We might quite naturally think of this as the education of social feeling or of the social instinct. This is, however, not the most productive attitude toward the situation, in our view, simply because when we think of the education of the feelings we are likely to be satisfied with the principles of an old static philosophy of life and of the school. Moral and social feelings, we believe, grow best in a practical medium. We cannot expand social feeling at will, or produce a democratic spirit by some simple process of education. When we try to extend social feeling too far we make the moral life insincere. To try to expand social feeling and moral interest so as to make it include the foreign, to try to love our enemies in advance of all æsthetic and practical relations with the foreign seems futile. Distance must first be eliminated by imagination. Social and moral codes must be founded upon intimate relations. External and distant relations among peoples make for diplomatic forms and a hypocritical morality. These are substitutes for social feeling. These purely social relations of nations (like those of individuals) always hide enmity and jealousy. We cannot expect, therefore, to create a moral spirit in the relations of peoples to one another by teaching alone. We cannot hope to change individualism to altruism merely by exciting feeling. Our main effort must be directed toward establishing ethical relations, rather than to stimulating moral sentiments.
It seems useless to preach universal brotherhood either to the child who lacks entirely the content of experience to make such sentiments real, or to the working masses who now lack enthusiasm in all the social relations. At least to depend upon such teaching to create international spirit is futile. Love for mankind is too ideal and too remote, as yet, to arouse deep and sincere impulses and feelings. All teaching, therefore, whether in the school or elsewhere that is directed exclusively or especially to the moral aspects of peace, altruistic behavior and internationalism, seems to-day, to say the least, peculiarly inadequate. Our spirit in education must be broadly humanistic, and must indeed lay deep foundations for all moral and social relations, but in so far as it ends in being cultural and hortatory it can have no deep and lasting effect.
The teaching of international morality and universal interests, and the development of a world-consciousness depend fundamentally, we may suppose, upon experiences which are perhaps not specifically moral in form at all. It is rather even by the aesthetic experience than the moral that the social consciousness will best be expanded and made to encircle the world. If we can make the world seem vividly real to the child we shall have the intellectual content for the making of moral feelings. The unmoral nature of international relations and of the feelings of peoples for one another are due in great part precisely to the lack of power of imagination and of that concrete knowledge and experience which would make the foreign seem real. That which is remote from us and different in appearance seems shadowy and ghost-like. The internal meaning of that which is thus far away in space cannot be perceived. Everything that is foreign tends to belong in our categories merely to the world of objects. Moral feeling towards objects is manifestly impossible. International law fails to have moral force because nations are in general aware of one another only in these external ways. The world of foreign objects must be changed to a world of persons having history and internal meaning. When we can interpret and understand international law in terms of relations within human experience and as affecting individuals, it will begin perhaps to seem real and hence morally obligatory.
There is another aspect of the work of creating and directing the wider social consciousness and giving it ethical purpose and form, which is still more fundamental, and at the same time, to casual thought, perhaps still more remote from definite moral improvement in the world and from all the immediately practical problems of internationalism. It is the mood of our social life which we call the democratic spirit, and which, made universal, is the substratum of internationalism that most of all needs to be controlled and educated. At the same time this democratic spirit is least of all susceptible to definite and routine discipline, of all the factors of internationalism. This democratic spirit contains possibilities of the greatest good and of the greatest evil. Out of it may grow international order, or international anarchy and internal disruption. How to keep this democratic spirit progressive and constructive in its temper, broad in sympathy and full of enthusiasm, how to free it from infection by all the poisons that are prone to attack the popular consciousness is one of our great problems of education.
This democratic spirit is the real power behind internationalism. It is as the mood of the city, the whole spirit of the modern urban life, that it is most significant. The mood of the city contains on one side the possibility of an internationalism which is nothing more than a surrender of all patriotism, and is at heart only a mass interest in rights and needs. On the other hand all the interests and impulses that make internationalism necessary and possible seem to have their origin in the city. The city represents, with all its evil, the higher life and the line of progress. Progress passes through the city. The city is the symbol of creativeness and achievement. Industrialism, the essential spirit of the city, is the condition, normal and necessary we must conclude, out of which the necessity of international order arises. It is a phase of the process by which nations become dependent upon one another by being specialized and becoming densely populated. It is also a factor in the cause of wars without and revolutions within.
The mood of the city is thus in a sense the essence of life, but it is also the source of disease and death in the national life. It is the price that is paid for civilization that the city tends to become the hardened artery of national life. The control of the city moods by educational forces we may believe is one of the most fundamental of all the problems of conscious evolution. It is the control at the fountain-head of the forces out of which internationalism is to be made that we undertake when we try to educate the life of the city, with reference to its good and its evil. The too rapid urbanizing of the life of nations, the production, in the cities, of powers too great and too rapidly growing to be controlled by the civilizing forces in a country is the great danger in modern life. So great indeed are the dangers in the accelerated growth of industrialism in all the great countries and the increased specialization in the industrial life, that something radical must be done, in our view, to counterbalance this movement, and especially to control and to raise to higher levels the psychic factors of city life.
Our educational work is serious. We are trying to save democracy from itself—from being destroyed by forces which accumulate in the cities. We must keep life from becoming sophisticated before its time. We must prevent enthusiasm from degenerating into mob spirit, and from becoming attached to wholly material interests. There must be found, in some way, means of causing counter-currents to set in against the tide that flows so strongly from country to city. Germany's fate should teach us the dangers of this city life, and show us how the forces that gather in the great cities can be turned in the direction either of fanatical nationalism or toward the lowest of all forms of internationalism, in which all form of government is thrown down. It must teach us also how to catch the note of new "dominants" that are concealed in the roar of city life, and to make these prevail.
The control of the formation of the city moods, and the direction and utilization of the great energies contained in them, now require, if ever anything were demanded of conscious creative effort, more power on the part of all our educational factors. The school appears now to be at the parting of the ways, we say, when it must either settle down to its routine and limited occupation of preparing children for life, or become a far greater power in the world than it has as yet been. We must decide whether the school is to control, or to be controlled by, the political and industrial forces of the day. We must see whether the school is going to reflect the culture and the moods of the environment, or whether the school shall exert a creative influence upon its surroundings.
It is plain that nothing less than a radical change in the school can now greatly alter its position, and release it from its bondage to politics and from the overwhelming influences of its environment, and prevent the leveling downward and the stereotyping process that is taking place in the school, both as regards its intellectual and moral product and the training and selection of teachers. Nothing less than a movement which shall break up some of the deepest and most firmly rooted habits and conventions of the school and throw the school back, so to speak, upon more generic and primitive motives than those that now control it will be sufficient. The school needs more than anything else a change of scene—a change of venue, if a legal term be allowed. The school everywhere, but especially the school of the city, is surrounded by influences that prejudice it to fixed habits of thought and keep it true to a type which has long since ceased to be necessary. The school is causing an in-breeding of the city spirit in all the great industrial countries.
No single change in any institution, in our view, could strike closer to the roots of our whole educational problem of the future than the bodily transfer of the city school far out into the open country. Such a move seems wholly practicable, economic from every point of view, even the financial, and it would place the school in a position in which profound changes in its whole plan and organization could hardly fail to follow almost automatically. With our present facilities for transportation, the daily exodus of children from the surroundings in which are being produced the elements of our civilization that are hardest to control would be entirely possible. The effects upon the whole of education, and upon all the future life of countries like our own could hardly fail to be profound. The fundamental moods of childhood would be changed, and everything contained in child life would be more amenable to control. Schools would become more variable and more experimental, and new selective influences would be exerted upon teachers presumably in the direction of raising the social and intellectual average of the profession. A much larger field would be opened up for all those methods of work in education that may be designated as æsthetic—that is, that contain qualities of freedom, activity and creativeness.
VI. Idea of World Organization
Some form of organization of nations having definite representation, constitution, and laws, and with a certain degree of centralization and embodiment in visible institutions and locations will exist, we may suppose, for all future time in the world. The existence, even in idea, of such organization presents to us inevitable educational problems. Instruction in a general way and universally in world politics, familiarizing all with the meaning of these laws and political bodies, is but a part, although a necessary part, of the work. Our democratic principle demands that more and more interest and participation in all forms of government be acquired by the people, that peoples and not merely governments shall be the units which are brought together, that there be more organizations of the people performing group functions. If the loyalty of nations to one another is to be secured, as seems necessary, by establishing practical relations among them, the education of the coming generations in these relations and organizations and in all practical affairs seems unavoidable. The people must have a proper appreciation of common interests as implying common work, and not be encouraged to believe that rights of representation are their chief concern. All must know the power of organization. All must see that the international structures of our own day, however complete in form, are but a beginning and basis of function, and that there must be put behind these forms all the energies of the people, young and old, made effective through organization for practical efforts.
It is through participation in activities that are international in scope that, in our opinion, the best education in the idea of internationalism will be obtained. This is the way to the good will without which political ideas will be likely to remain nationalistic in fact whatever political coördinations may exist among nations. It is as a practical idea that internationalism needs now to be impressed upon the minds of all. An international organization must be looked upon as something useful, which will remain only if it performs functions in which all are interested and in which all can in some way take part. It is a sense of living in the world rather than of belonging exclusively to one locality that must be taught. It is the idea of a world of nations in organic unity rather than a world of nations attached to one another by political bonds that we need to convey.
It is active participation in the business of a world that must be regarded as the necessary basis for education in the idea of internationalism. World government must be conceived in terms of world functions. But we must also provide for the most dramatic possible representation of everything contained in the idea of internationalism and represented in its laws and forms. The most vivid possible presentation must be made of everything that is done internationally, if we wish to keep alive the spirit which now prevails in the world. We must lose no opportunity to make current history impressive; we must bring out all its dramatic features in order to fixate once for all the idea of the organic unity of the race, and its necessary coördination in tangible forms. International law must be made intelligible to very young minds, and now that we are to have an international seat of congresses and courts the utmost must be made of its existence to give reality to the idea of internationalism.
Those who plan for the future of the international idea will do well to take into account these pedagogical aspects of it. It is quite as important to make the international idea pedagogically persuasive as to make it politically sound. Such an idea must have a place and an embodiment if it is to seize hold upon the popular mind. An international city seems indispensable, and the further the thought of it can be removed from that of existing countries the more readily will it aid the young mind in making the abstractions necessary to conceive the true interests of all nations or all humanity as distinct from the interests of one nation. In this we are making beginnings to be realized perhaps in a far distant future. We want no unnatural and sentimental internationalism, but there is every reason now for wishing to plant the seed of a higher and more organic life than at the present time exists in the world.
The question of the possibility of an universal language arises again. The invention of a new language, if we may judge at all by the past, is not practicable. But the extension universally of some living language seems possible. This seems to be demanded in the interest of the international idea. It is desirable and quite possible to make all civilized peoples bilingual, for of course we should not expect anywhere to see a foreign language supplant the native tongue. It is not alone to facilitate intercourse and give a sense of solidarity that the possession of an universal language is to be desired. We think quite as much of the impetus thus given to the production of an universal literature, in which there will be expressed not only ideas about the world, but moods which will not be found expressed in national literatures at all. This literature might be the beginning of a solidarity in the world which is not now definitely conceivable. Such an extension of language, however, we should hardly expect to take place except in the course of development of practical relations which first stimulate the desire for such common language.
VII. The Philosophical Attitude
There is an element in the idea and mood of internationalism which we can call nothing else but philosophic. The ideality and universality of internationalism itself are expressions of the philosophic spirit. Internationalism, we might say, is a philosophic idea, although this might mean to some that we place it among the unrealizable and Utopian plans. But this is not the case. The philosophic spirit is, in our view, the most practical of moods, since it is the creative, liberal, and progressive attitude and the source of the most profoundly right judgments even in practical affairs. The philosophic spirit is a background, we may say, for all the more specific moods, thoughts and activities that enter into the idea of internationalism.
And yet, real and important as the philosophic spirit is, we cannot readily discuss it as a definite aspect of education. The reason is that it involves the educational foundations themselves. The spirit, the method and the content of the school are all involved in it. We can, however, find some concrete manifestations of this philosophic attitude. In the first place we might say that it is a religious mood in education. It is demanded of any school that hopes to play a large part in the affairs of the world that, in a broad sense, its whole spirit be religious. The school must be deeply touched by the sense of a spiritual world. The history of the world must be felt to be real—that is, as an unfoldment of purpose in the world. The values and the meaning of everything are to be appreciated and understood, according to this view, through a process of enrichment of the mind under the influence of the highest social ideals expressed in the most persuasive forms. Education thus centers in the work of developing the power to appreciate values in all experience. Anything, too, that sustains optimistic moods helps to create the philosophical spirit, and one function of this philosophic spirit is to forestall the cynical moods and the narrow and prejudiced ways of thinking which are among the most dangerous tendencies of the times. The tendency to form judgments upon insufficient evidence and to act according to narrow and one-sided principles is incompatible with the philosophic attitude.
It is of course by no means the actual teaching of philosophy to every one, or the spreading broadcast of any particular philosophical principle that one would advocate as a preventive culture or to cure existing evils. It is rather a mode of living and of thinking throughout society and in all the educational process that is wanted. What we need is a better quality of mental product, more capacity to penetrate into the heart and substance of experience, greater responsiveness to good influences, greater ability to judge values, and a more plastic and more freely flowing mental life. These are of course large demands and imply faith and an interest in a remote future. But a school which is religions through and through in its attitude toward life and is deeply touched by the influence of art in all its ways of dealing with the child will go a long way toward fulfilling the requirements of an education in the spirit of philosophy.
Such conclusions as these might at least serve, we should suppose, as a working hypothesis, upon the basis of which we may consider in detail a variety of questions of the day. New problems have arisen before the eyes of the teacher, and indeed obtrude themselves upon all who must take part in the practical life of others. Some of these problems are due to changed external relations of countries to one another. Some are problems of internal adjustment and reconstruction. At least they may so be classified for purposes of discussion. In reality all changes are too closely bound up with one another to allow us to treat them practically as independent. No nation any longer stands alone. Internationalism is an idea that penetrates all other practical ideas. And no internal problems of any nation can be wholly local. The world is in a peculiar but also an inspiring way at the present time a single field of labor for the educational thinker and indeed the teacher in every field of human life.
CHAPTER IV[ToC]
PEACE AND MILITARISM
Among the many pedagogical questions raised and given new significance by the war, is that of the teaching about war and about peace. This is a question of ideals, and of values and the teaching of history. There are practical and superficial questions to be considered. There are also more profound problems, since all our teaching of good and evil is implicated. Shall we continue, in one moment, to assume that war is the greatest glory in the world, and in the next to condemn it as the greatest of evils? Shall we as teachers take the standpoint of pacifism? Or shall we be still apostles of the heroic order? This is really no simple matter, and it is not one to be laid aside, directly it begins to disturb us, as unimportant. No one passing through the experiences of the past four years can have wholly escaped this dilemma, or can have kept himself entirely aloof from the doubts and perplexities that must always be attached to religious and philosophical problems of good and evil. These doubts and hesitations are necessarily increased when we try to become consistent teachers and wise counselors of the young.
It would be of psychological interest at least to collect all the arguments and opinions that have been put forth about the good and evil of war. There is a tendency for moralists to go to extremes. The writers on war are likely to be either ardent pacifists or strong militarists. They do not try to strike a balance between good and evil, but war is either a great blessing upon mankind or the greatest curse of the ages. In general they do not seek to base their conclusions upon ultimate philosophical principles, but rather upon moral or biological principles, or, again, upon preferences for the activities of war or the arts of peace. How very different the good and evil of war and peace may seem from different points of view is well shown by the following excerpt from a daily newspaper:
The praise of war takes many forms, and invokes many fundamental principles—ethical, æsthetic, biological, sociological. From Leibnitz' saying that perpetual peace is a motto fit only for a graveyard to Moltke's that peace is only a dream and not even a beautiful dream, there is a long list of defenses of war. This philosophy of war is by no means peculiarly German, although German writers seem to have been the most ardent apologists of war in recent times. Treitschke, Schmitz (29), Scheler (77), Nusbaum (86), Arndt, Steinmetz, Lasson, Engelbrecht, Schoonmaker, all sing the praises of war as the most glorious work of man, or as performing for civilization some noble good. Even Hegel said that wars invigorate humanity just as the storm preserves the sea from putrescence.
But this praise of war, we say, is by no means exclusively German. Thucydides thought war a noble school of heroism, the exercise ground of the nations. To Mohammed and his Arabs war seemed not only in itself a heroism, we are told, but a divine act. This belief in war as divine is an idea that is very wide-spread among primitive peoples. Cramb, the English writer, says that it is very easy to demonstrate that the glory of battle is an illusion, but by the same argument you may demonstrate that all glory and life itself is an illusion and a mockery. Redier says that the war has brought us all the noble joys so necessary to stimulate mankind, and one no longer finds happiness, therefore, in sleeping comfortably, but only in living bravely.
There is no lack, indeed, of recognition of the heroic motive in war. Sometimes the argument appeals to religion, sometimes to art, sometimes to morality. Sometimes the advocates of war are thinking of war as the great adventure. War and the thought of war induce an ecstasy, a glow of the feelings. War is thought of as an expression of normal, healthy life, as making life more abundant and more beautiful. War brings out fundamental virtues in the individual; it also destroys the weaker and the meaner race and leaves the strong and the virtuous. Struggle, they say, is the method of civilization. Again, it is urged that war is always just in its issues. Like the old ordeal which always registered the decrees of heaven, war is the just arbiter of fate. The saving of the world through bloodshed, the uniting of the world through war, war as the great teacher of mankind, war as the creator of great personalities—all these are persistent themes in the literature of war. There is no place for the pacifist in the minds of these apologists of the heroic order. The crises of war are historic necessities; they come when it is time to release people from the bondage of the past and to bring individualistic generations back to the sense of duty and of loyalty to great causes. This is the belief of many, even now.
On the other side we find the great variety of pacifistic minds. War to the pacifists is wrong, unholy, morally sinful, biologically and economically and in every other way evil. The conscientious objector's point of view is very simple. War antagonizes some principle which is religiously or morally supreme for him. Therefore there can be no justification of war whatever, and it ought to be abolished at any price. When you ask the objector to go to war, you invite him to commit a flagrant sin. The English literature of pacifism is full of this moral and religious protestation against war which in the minds of the objectors becomes a finality beyond which it is futile to ask them to go.
The psychological and the biological pacifists are hardly less emphatic in their condemnation of war. The biological thinker undertakes to refute the theory that war is selective. He counts the cost of war in terms of human life and of racial vitality, and produces a condemning document. That war indeed selects but selects unfavorably and in an adverse direction is the conclusion of many, among them Savorgnan in his book "La Guerra e la Populazione," in which he calls war dysgenic. The psychologist tends to see in war a reversion, a lapse to barbarism. War is a product of the original savage in man, whom civilization has never tamed, as Freud would say. War lingers because of man's love of old institutions. We cling to old habits and customs, which take on a semblance of the æsthetic, because of their antiquity and old associations. This is the explanation by Nicolai. Russell thinks men fight because they are still ignorant and despotic. Patrick thinks of war as a slip in the psychic machinery. MacCurdy (37) and others think of war as a mental or a social disease.
Upon the hardships of war, its economic futility and its sheer senselessness, when looked at from the standpoint of any rational desire, many base their conclusion that war is evil. The working man and all the masses are likely to concur in this opinion. When they examine war they see that they themselves as they think are used in the interest of the few, that they shed their blood for a glory in which they do not share. They say, all men are brothers, and so why should they kill one another. Men seem more real to them than do boundaries of countries which they never see, and the interests of wealth that is also invisible.
Such thought as this has behind it some of the most powerful minds, as we know. It is Tolstoi's philosophy, and it is the argument of such men as Novicow. The professional economist and the student of history add their protests. They say that military peoples fade away, while the peaceful live and prosper, that "the country whose military power is irresistible is doomed." These are the words of Roberts. Some try to demonstrate that nothing is gained economically by war; that all the work of war is destructive, to every one engaged in it. It is argued that the nation that is suited to live will prevail without wars; and that without this inner superiority, war will avail nothing. War is bad business, in the opinion of these economic thinkers. War is like setting the dog on the customer at the door, the practical man in England complained at the beginning of the present war. As to war being associated with intelligence and with virtue in nations, or as to its ever producing either intellectual or moral qualities, many would flatly deny that war ever has such a result. The opposite would seem nearer the truth to them. Military nations are unintelligent nations, and militarism is always brutalizing.
Such pacifism and the dream of universal peace are no new ideas in the world. Like the philosophy of war pacifism has a long history. There have been pacifists everywhere and presumably at all times, since pacifism is quite as much a temperament as it is an idea or a philosophy. Cramb tells us that all recent centuries have had their doctrines of pacifism, each century having its own characteristic variety. In the time of the Marlborough wars, there appeared the book of Abbé de St. Pierre denouncing all wars. In the middle of the nineteenth century there is the doctrine of the Manchester school, maintaining that the peace of Europe must be secured not by religion, but by the coöperation of the industrial forces of the continent. Finally, says Cramb, we see the characteristic thought of the twentieth century in the position that war is bad because it is contrary to social well-being and is economically profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to government as a function of the favored classes.
This is certainly not the place to try to put order into this conflicting mass of opinion about war and peace by working out the principles of a philosophy of good and evil, since this would mean to attack one of the most fundamental of all problems of philosophy. It seems to be plain, however, that neither upon biological grounds nor by ethical principles, nor by finding any consensus in the desires and opinions of thinkers can we reach any hard and fast conclusions about the good and evil of war. It is rather by a broad interpretation of the world and of history and the nature of national consciousness, by some genetic view of national life, that we are most likely to see our way toward a practical view of the present good and evil of war. War is a phase of the whole process of social development of nations. We think of nations as living and growing, and of a world which is gradually maturing. War obtains a natural explanation on sociological and psychological principles, not as a disease, but as a natural consequence and condition of the formation of nations, or of any type of horde or group. In the course of the development of nations we see psychological factors coming more and more to the front. Desires which are more or less consciously avowed become the motives of history. It is in the play of these desires: their fixation, their generalization, and transformation, the manner in which they become attached to specific objects, that we seek the explanation of wars and of the especial psychology of nations. Nations have lived secluded and guarded lives, because of the nature of the desires which were most fundamental in their lives, and the objects upon which these desires have become directed. Now nations show some signs of emerging from their seclusion, of abandoning their ambitions of empire, and leading a more complex and more practical life.
In this progress we see the possibility of the final disappearance of war. But we have no right to pervert either history or education in the effort to eliminate war, or even to pass judgments upon war prematurely or upon the basis of personal preferences, or the moods of any moment. The whole world might, conceivably, be brought together and be made to declare solemnly that there should be no more war. Nations would thereby voluntarily relinquish their aggressive thoughts, put aside the love they have for the heroic and take justice and peace as their watchwords. And all this would seem ideal. But if the elimination of war should mean that we have no longer anything for which men are willing to die, if merely to escape from war we voluntarily sacrifice good that more than counterbalances the evil we overcome, we should say that peace had been bought at too high a price. Terrible as war is, it cannot be judged by itself alone. We have a right to look forward to a time when there shall be no more war, just as everywhere it seems to be instinctive for us to try to gain good without its attendant trouble and evil. In the meantime the world had best busy itself, mainly, in our view, with creating those things that are best, rather than in destroying those things that are worst. Nations, like individuals, must lead bravely hazardous lives, without too much thought of dangers. Peace as a sole program for the making of history appears to be too narrow, and especially too unproductive. Internationalism that is merely a combination of peoples to prevent war is not very inspiring, especially since it is doubtful whether it even leads to peace. A broad historical view that will enable us just now to make good come out of the evil of war will be a better organ of conscious evolution than a philosophy of peace can possibly be.
Such views as these give us at least some clews to the educational and pedagogical problems of war and peace. We can distinguish between an education which deals specifically with such problems, endeavoring to treat them sharply and with finality, making clear moral decisions, and an education which by enriching the mind and by educating all the selective faculties leads to an appreciation of all great practical and moral questions as aspects of the whole of history and of life.
Let us see what the specific teaching of peace may and may not include. First of all we cannot, for educational purposes, judge everything in the lives of nations by moral principles. The ideal of universal brotherhood and coöperation, of sacrifice and altruism, cannot be realized in the present stage of history. On the other hand, the stern picture of justice is one that fits into the present mood of the world. Justice is the natural link between individualism and altruism. A world determined upon seeing justice done, a world which, without setting absolute values upon peace and war, does distinguish between just and unjust wars, between the demands and the needs of peoples, leans toward the moral life. It has little to say about duties as yet, or comparatively little, but it has a strong conception of rights. A deep enough interest in justice, by its own momentum, introduces duties into the practical life. In time the world will perhaps not be satisfied with seeing and recognizing justice, and ensuring it in great crises; it will make justice as a matter of course.
This idea of justice seems, on the whole, to be the best basis for the teaching now of international morality. The teaching of pacifism, enlarging upon the biological waste of war, trying to present the realism of war in its worst light in order to overcome the warlike spirit and to assist the doctrines of internationalism to take effect upon the mind seems to be the wrong way of teaching peace. We seem to be obligated to teach war as it is. We cannot conceal its heroic side for fear of perpetuating war, and we must not conceal the brutality of war for fear of destroying morale and the fighting spirit. And it is to be much doubted whether it is ever necessary to teach history unfairly and one-sidedly in times either of war or of peace. We depend upon larger effects and deeper judgments than can be produced by selecting and distorting the facts. Nothing is meaner in national life than dishonest history.
Education in the ideal of peace, which we may hope to be the state of the world in the future, will be an adjustment of the mind to new and practical modes of life rather than the establishing of a principle. The educated attitude of mind which will best safeguard the peace of the world must include an intelligent knowledge of all the agencies proposed to aid in establishing this state of harmony toward which we look forward. We must all know about arbitration, leagues of nations, courts of honor, understand diplomacy better and the arguments for disarmament, understand the economic and the industrial situation, the possibilities of coöperation, reduction of the rights and privileges of classes, democratic movements. The inculcation of such knowledge is an education for peace. There is little that is abstruse in any of these ideas, and the very young child is not too young to know something of these wider aspects of the social life. All these may be presented in a concrete form as a part of the work of conveying a knowledge of current history.
We may think of various cures for war, and various efforts that might be made educationally to prevent war. Peace might effectually be cultivated by an educational propaganda. But after all it is not such cures of war as this that we are most concerned about in the work of education. We might even tend to establish in this way a peace which would be detrimental to the higher interests of civilization. A true educational philosophy, at any rate, is not to be dislodged from its purpose of keeping education constructive rather than inhibitory. This institution of education must not be too much influenced by the temporary moods of the day, by the present gloomy evidences of the devastation of war. We must teach and prepare for an abundant life in which there is glory and wide opportunity, and in which the motives of power may be satisfied. Then peace can take care of itself. But this abundant life must be a life of activity, not of mere patriotism and subjective glorification and nationalistic interest. Vanity, the low order of enthusiasms, the glory of display, can no longer have a place in this national life.
There appears to be a pedagogical lesson in the contrast between the heroic and the moral view of teaching war and peace illustrated by the German philosophy of war and the ideal of the Boy Scout organization. Deducting something for literary exaggeration, we may say that education cannot afford to neglect either of these attitudes, but must indeed in some way combine them. The exaggeration consists on one side in praising the specific act of war; but on the other side there is plainly lacking something of the dramatic appeal which any ideal life for the young must have. War is an evil, but the spirit that makes war is by no means an evil. The philosophy of war proves its failure by ignoring the moral ideal altogether, or regarding morality as something solely national, but the other, it may be, puts the moral ideal in a pedagogically impossible position. Both the content and the form must be taken into account in any educational plan that hopes to exert power or to be influential in any important way now, and it is the form which, more than anything else, is still lacking in our whole procedure of education.
Preparedness and Military Training
Military training has now of course become a practical question with us and with every nation. It is the military use of military education that must first of all be considered. For that reason it must primarily be a problem upon which political authorities and military experts must decide. These experts must be competent to tell us what military equipment is necessary at any time to meet the requirements of our political situation, and they must be able to advise about the amount and kind of actual military training necessary to make this physical equipment most effective. All this, plainly, must be provided whether it be good or bad from a general educational standpoint. But preparedness and national defense mean, of course, more than the possession of guns and more than military training as such. And there can be no hard and fast line between military preparedness and the wider technical preparedness in which all the equipment and skill of scientific and mechanical activities of the country are always ready to be mobilized in the defense of it; or between these and the still more general preparedness through the organization and control of the human factor in ways that are not specifically military or mechanically technical at all.
If preparation for defense is by no means exhausted by military training, on the other hand not all military training is intended for defense. Decision about the actual amount and kind of military training, we say, may be left to the expert, but it is for the psychologist and the educator to decide whether we need a mere minimum of such training or a general military training for educational purposes. After all, however, this is perhaps more a matter of taste in educational practices than of learning. There is plenty of opinion at least on both sides. Some maintain that military discipline is of very great benefit to the man and to society. From the German point of view it is the equivalent of hygiene for the individual. It is a national regimen for physical and mental health. It is also the symbol and the expression of social solidarity. Many believe that the discipline of soldiering would be especially good for all American boys. But there is no dearth of evidence on the other side—that military training in so far as it is really conducted in the military manner is brutalizing.
After all, we say this may be a matter of preference. Some like military discipline in the schools and everywhere; some do not. The present writer for one will confess that he does not. It is not the danger of making a people warlike that one sees in it, so much as the certainty of introducing into all the daily life a spirit that is inconsistent with our stage of civilization and with the most wholesome spirit of education. It savors of the unprogressive. It means, in our opinion, the introduction into the school, in a far too easy and simple way, and consequently at far too low a level, something that ought to be put into education in a different manner. The sense of solidarity and the idealism which the German has found in his military discipline we must express in some other way. It is especially the unproductiveness of military life, and the constant suggestion of that which is archaic without either the practical setting or the ornamental life to which such things belong, that are especially to be charged against militarism.
We ought to ask, rather, how peace morale, and the essentials of the warlike spirit may be maintained without military training. Is it not rather by way of the more general and untechnical processes of education which make for physical expertness, by fundamental social education, by giving attention to our foundations of religious education, that we shall be able to create and sustain the most efficient morale? The best foundation for all necessary military activities of a free people appears to be a by-product, so to speak, of peaceful life sustained at a high point of efficiency and enthusiasm. Military training disconnected from its immediate use and application in war must appear to some and indeed to many as a misfit in modern civilized life. This is not an argument for pacifism, however. The war has taught us that militarism and military capacity in high degree may spring up from very peaceful soil, and also that military training, however perfect, is no substitute for the generic virtues out of which courage and patriotism grow. In the long run will it not be the country that can do without military training that will have the advantage? Or the country in which military preparedness is so merged in everything else as to be indistinguishable from the rest of life? Is there not, in a word, a preparedness that will make a country superior and safe both in war and in peace?
CHAPTER V[ToC]
THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM
It would be hard to find a word (unless it be democracy) about which so many questions gather as now cling to the word "patriotism." Patriotism is praised as the highest virtue; it is also cursed as the cause of war. Some think of it as the sole cause of war. Some would like to see it disappear for the reason that they believe it at best an old and out-lived social virtue, now having become merely ornamental and an obstacle to the true socialization of the world. Some think patriotism still the center of the moral and the social life.
This is not the place to attempt a psychological analysis of patriotism, but we may at least try to enumerate the principal factors in it, and say what we think patriotism as a virtue—or a vice—is. Patriotism in our view is normally loyalty to country as a functioning unit in a world of nations. It is devotion to all the aspects and functions of a country as an historical entity. We must think of these historical entities, moreover, as leading lives in which, although their own ambitions for honor and greatness are legitimate, there must be a practical recognition of the legitimacy of similar interests on the part of all other nations, and in which the recognition of the common interests of nations is also freely made. Since nations perform no one single function and have no single motive of life in their normal state, patriotism can be no devotion to a single purpose or cause. Such patriotism as this, we may say, does not antagonize internationalism. Loyalty to country is loyalty to the functions and interests that properly belong to country. The individual, the family, the country and all intervening groups and entities are natural formations. To each of these entities there is due a loyalty precisely measured by the character of the functions which these entities perform.
This view of patriotism is plainly, both in its theoretical aspect and its practical consequences, widely different from those that end in pure internationalism. Its essential feature is that it recognizes the validity of all entities and groups about which deep feeling has grown up. This means, of course, that as criteria of social values these feelings are placed ahead of certain logical or scientific considerations. Pure internationalism of the intellectual type recognizes the validity only of the whole world group. Nicolai, for example, says that there is a morality and there are rights pertaining to the individual and to the whole of humanity, but all intervening groups are temporary and artificial. That, certainly, we should not agree with. The coming greater coördination of the world we may suppose will deepen and intensify patriotism, rather than diminish it. The homogeneity toward which the biologists tell us we are tending and ought to approach is one in which, it is likely, still sharper national outlines may well appear. The ambitions, the functions, and the culture of nations ought to be made clearer rather than be lost in the coming internationalism. We shall still in the Hegelian sense find our reality in and through the state. An aroused sense of the function and worth of country will be the basis of patriotism. Advancement toward internationalism will be made by a generalized patriotism rather than by outgrowing patriotism. That is, it is by passing from a deepened loyalty to country through a sense of the validity and right of the patriotism of all peoples that international social consciousness will be developed.
So all those very numerous views of patriotism which assert that it is only through a decline of patriotism that a rational international order can ever be established, appear to be wrong. A fundamental question is at issue here. It concerns in part the criteria of valuation in the field of the social life. The kind of cosmopolitanism and internationalism that demands the final abrogation of the sentiment of patriotism is, as we have intimated, a rationalistic doctrine. It is an attempt to extend objective principles into the realm of social values. Reason tells us, they say, that we ought to organize universally and obliterate national lines. Reason tells us we should make no distinction between ourselves and strangers, between enemies and allies. But by the same rationalism we may break up any loyalty. Patriotism is an inner, a spiritual force, and it has its roots in moods and forms of appreciation which have a certain finality about them, for the reason that they are deposits from the whole course of human history. Veblen says it is a matter of habit to what particular nationality a man will become attached on arriving at years of discretion. That is true, and it is of course the whole secret of loyalty. But it is not a matter of unimportance whether a man shall become attached to any country. It is the dynamic power of loyalty that is in question, if we consider its practical value. Loyalty grows because it has a use, which is related to the most basic feelings. It is not a product of reason, and cannot justly be judged on purely rational grounds.
Any political ideal, or any plan for a world order, that would minimize patriotism is unnatural. The forms of socialism that do this and the laissez faire tendencies appear to have left out of the reckoning some of the modes of evaluating experience which are most basic. We may recognize all the excess of provincialism in the native patriotism of the peasant, and all the egoistic motives in the patriotism of the aristocrat and the militarist, but still we see no place in the world for the man without a country. It is not yet the workmen of the cities, who say that all men are brothers, who can lead us to a better social order. Patriotism must be educated, modernized, made more productive, but certainly its work is not yet done. It cannot be cast aside as something archaic and only a part of the ornamental and useless encumbrances of life. It is not by weakening loyalty to country, but by strengthening it, that internationalism will be made secure. If patriotism fits into modern life like sand in the machinery, as Veblen says, we must see how patriotism may be made to do better service.
Some views about patriotism which thus disparage it seem to be based upon a biological conception of it. Not a few writers apparently think of patriotism as a fixed trait of the human organism, even as a kind of mendelian character unrelated to other social qualities. This trait antagonizes social progress, but it is preserved because of secondary values which it represents, such as moral or æsthetic values. According to these views patriotism may be complex, but it acts like a unitary character. It is subject, theoretically, to selection, but as a matter of fact it remains a strong factor in the temperament of nearly all races.
But in our view patriotism is something less precise than all this would imply. It is a form in which the most fundamental and general of desires are expressed, in becoming fixated upon their most natural and necessary objects. It is an aspect of the whole process of development of the affective life. Leaving out patriotism (if such a thing were possible) would mean a break in the continuity of the social life. It would leave one group of functions without their natural support in desire. Economists sometimes seem to leave out of account the profound emotional forces and the irresistible tendencies which make social groups. They want organizations without the moods and impulses by which alone social bodies are formed or sustained; and they expect to see organization broken up or interest in it lost while all the conditions that keep alive the passion for it are intact. Patriotism and the existence of nations seem, however, to be the opposite sides of the same fact. And we may assume that so long as nations exist, at any rate, patriotism will exist, and one of the most necessary functions of public education will be the regulation of the motives and feelings which are contained in this sentiment.
Patriotism is first of all to be considered, then, as a phase of the social life as a whole, rather than as an unique emotion or a special variety of loyalty. It is a way in which the sum of tendencies that enter into the social life become fixated upon certain qualities of the environment, or upon certain objects. Patriotism will best be understood in a practical way by observing its objects. Patriotism is a total mood; country is a total object. But the mood of patriotism expresses varied desires, and the object of patriotism is a highly complex and variable object. In being loyal to or devoted to country in the sense which we usually mean when we say one is patriotic, we are devoted to at least the following objects: 1) physical country as home; 2) the ways, customs, standards and beliefs of the country; 3) the group of people constituting the nation; and here race, social solidarity, ideal constructions of an united people having common purposes and possessions enter; 4) leaders; 5) country as an historical entity having rights and interests—a living being having experiences, ideals and characteristics. The educational problem is of course the regulation of the attachment of the individuals of a nation to these objects. In one sense this educational problem of patriotism is nothing less than that of developing social consciousness itself. It is precisely the task of fostering or creating in the child the basis of all loyalty. Given a loyal mind in the child and a normal environment, we need to be concerned but little about the causes and the groups upon which that loyalty will expend itself, for the conditions are all present for forming an attachment to every natural group. Considered generically and psychologically there is no patriotism, we say, marked off from everything else, and there is no one object that excites patriotic loyalty. All educational influences that strengthen attachment to home, all social feeling, devotion to the ways of any group and obedience to its standards, respect for all law and authority, all appreciation of historic relations, help to develop patriotism, merely because country, in these aspects, is an omnipresent object to which the feelings thus engendered will automatically become to some extent attached.
The first task in the teaching of patriotism (first at least as regards the obviousness of the need) is to give all children a vivid sense of country as physical object, and a deep aesthetic appreciation of this object—although of course this idea of physical country cannot be detached from everything else. Each country has its different problem. Ours is to create a total country, in the imagination of the young. A German writer not long ago predicted that the future of America lay in the direction of breaking up into a little England, a little Ireland, and a little of the other nationalities here represented. That particular danger may seem remote enough, but in another way we do continue to be lacking in unity. Our patriotism has been too local, and America, even after the great war, is to some extent still a collection of geographical regions. New England, the South, the Coast are more real to many than country as a whole. Our great distances, and the impossibility of clearly imagining them have necessarily presented obstacles thus far to a unified image of country. The time may come, and perhaps soon, when such a divided consciousness of country will be a grave flaw in our national life.
It must be a serious function of some kind of geography to give reality to the idea of country, although of course we cannot separate entirely geographical from historical idea of country. The teaching of the geography of the native land must be different from other geography. Native land must have a warmth and home feeling about it that other countries do not have, but as yet the psychological conditions for this have apparently not been worked out. With our present facilities in pictorial art, the geographical element in the idea of country seems controllable. The minds of children are exceedingly impressionable in this direction. Intensity of feeling and vividness of imagination are at the disposal of the educator. The love of color, especially, must be used to make lasting impressions upon the mind. We need to notice also that the idea of physical country that enters most into patriotic feeling is not an idea of city streets but of the open country. It is the country that inspires the strongest home feeling, and it is the country that is the basis of the sense of changelessness and eternity of native land, that is a strong element in patriotic sentiment. This element of patriotism, it is plain, is something aesthetic. It is not so much a moral loyalty to country that is inspired by the everlasting hills, as an aesthetic love of it as the home land. This aesthetic love of the home land is a response to such stimuli as the beautiful arouses everywhere. It is susceptible, therefore, to all the influences of art—of music, picture, symbol; these must all be employed in teaching patriotism. The theme of home is especially sensitive to the effects of music. It is this idea of home, enlarged and enriched by pictorial representation of country, deeply impressed and influenced by music, and unified and imbued with the feeling of personal possession by the story of country that is the core of patriotic feeling. It is the function of art, especially of music, to help to make the home feeling of the child normal and enthusiastic—to raise it above the stage of being an "anxiety of animal life," as Nicolai terms the primitive love of home. Art must help to remove the fears and depressions that may lurk in the idea of home, which are great obstacles to the development of the higher devotions. It is the lack of normal love of home in the city, we should say, that makes socialism and all forms of internationalism that breed so rapidly there such dangerous moods in a democracy. Without true home love, we may conclude, the wider loyalties can never be quite wholesome, although they may be intense and fanatical.
The second element in patriotism we identify as the love of, or loyalty to, the sum of the customs, beliefs, and standards that make up the mores of a people. A peculiarly perplexing educational problem arises, since there are two opposite evils to be avoided We may too readily cultivate a spirit which either takes the form of a narcissistic love of one's own ways, or which, extraverted, so to speak, becomes a fanatical ambition to impose one's own culture upon the world; or, on the other hand we might become too self-critical, too cosmopolitan, and too receptive toward all foreign culture. National conceit, complacency and destinism face us in one direction, the danger of losing our identity and our individuality and our mission in the other. These problems of course confront all nations; they are especially urgent in America, because of the composite nature of our national life and the rapid changes that take place in it, and also because of the ideal nature of the bond that holds us together. We are still a somewhat inchoate and flowing mass of social elements, imperfectly coördinated, manifestly, yet deeply united by ideals which appeal to very deep emotions. Our work is to maintain social solidarity, preserve and educate certain fundamental qualities of our national life which are our real claims to individuality as a people. These essential traits, perhaps because of our newness as a form of civilization, appear to be less clearly defined, less definitely represented in institutions, and to be more abstract than the qualities that make up the essential character of other peoples.
Our educational problem is, naturally, different from all others. We are committed to an idea of liberty. We make this principle of freedom the dominant in all our national life. We have not tried, and cannot consistently attempt to centralize our educational institutions very much, or even allow our culture to become crystallized into a definite type, for this would be almost as bad as denying our principle of religious freedom. But we cannot, in the other direction, become too diversified intellectually, and still less in regard to more fundamental aspects of life, for this would break up our unity altogether, or determine it more and more in the direction of political coercion. Thus far, it appears, it has been our great virtue as a people that we have remained united by emotional forces, or by the suggestive power of an idea. Sooner or later we shall need to see whither our present tendencies lead, and education must in all probability be put to work to control and regulate the elements that make for unity and for disruption in our life. Our work as educators will be to maintain a working harmony in the affective and instinctive life of the people. We need now, and we shall need more and more, religious, moral and aesthetic unity in our life as a nation—not a forced and superficial agreement, but a deep harmony of ideals and moods. This purpose must never be lost sight of by the educator. It must be made to pervade all our educational philosophy and all our plans for the school. This educational problem exists of course everywhere in some degree, and in regard to all manner of social groups. But American life as a whole is peculiarly a growth in which diverse and even divergent elements must continue to be brought together and held together through the power of ideas which are subject to many influences. Diversity and differentiation are added as fast as the process of assimilation can be carried on. There can be no closing up of differences in a final perfection and security.
Must we not, then, make the education of instincts and feelings, and the control of the basic moods, rather than the development and stimulation of specialization and differentiation our first and chief concern? Must we not do this even at a loss of efficiency in some directions, if necessary? Certainly we must not go too fast nor too far towards industrialism. To control any tendency to over differentiation and industrialism that is now likely to occur we must have a broad humanitarianism and a humanistic ideal of culture (by which we do not mean classicism). The sharing of all experiences that represent our spirit and purpose and American ideas, and equal opportunity to realize them, must be our thought in planning our educational work. The future of America may well depend upon our power, or upon the power of our original idea, to hold people together by the essential moods in which our American ideas are represented. The production, out of these elemental moods, of common interests on a high level will be, we take it, the only preventive in the end of the growth of common interests on a low level, which is always threatened in democracies, and is the way democracies tend to destroy themselves by their democracy. Education in the fundamentals of industrial life, in social relations, in play and in art, in religion, is what we most need—the latter, we may conclude, most of all. We must have in some way a greater religious unity and more religion, not by attempting an impossible amalgamation of creeds as was promulgated by some of the founders of the New Japan, but by an education that includes and brings forth all that is common in religion. That at least is the only kind of unity that offers hope finally of making a world safe with democracy in it. This is not a plea for a back-to-nature movement, for the simple life, for a life which tends away from industrialism. Industrialism will go on, if for no other reason, because pastoral or agricultural peoples would soon be at a disadvantage in an industrial world as it is organized now, for want of rapid increase in population. But it is implied that industry itself must be made suitable for the democratic life. It means that we must go back of the identities of language and obedience to common laws, and take as our educational foundations that which American life is in truth based upon: physical power and motor freedom, the sense of liberty, the colonial spirit of comradeship and devotion to common cause, the ideal of an abundant and enthusiastic life. Merely becoming conscious of these and observing their meaning and their place in our national life is in itself a large contribution to the sources out of which patriotism may be drawn. When our patriotism is sincere enough so that we shall be milling to sacrifice for country our religious intolerance and bigotry, our social antipathies, and our industrial advantages, we shall have a morale which for peace or for war will be wholly sufficient.
Must our ambition be to teach American children that American ways are the best, and that these ways ought to be established in the world? There is both an evil and a good, both an absurdity and a sublime loyalty in the view which all nations have, that their own culture and life are the best. This conceit is in part a product of isolation, and is pure provincialism. But it is also of the very essence of the reality feeling and the sense of solidarity of peoples and of their loyalty to country. It must not be dealt with too ruthlessly. There is a primitive stratum of it that must remain in all peoples. Nations, however benighted, will not be dispossessed of this idea, but experience and education will make nations more discriminating so that they can at least see what is essential and what is superficial in their own characteristics. Certainly whatever is ethical in our foundations we, and all other peoples, will be expected to hold to. We feel it a duty to spread our moral truth abroad and our mores are necessarily right for us, and this idea of rightness of mores must imply a desire to make them prevail in the world. We may recognize, abstractly, other standards of conduct, but there is something in moral belief which, of course, cannot voluntarily be changed, and which must stand for the ultimately real in consciousness so long as it is held to be so by the mass of the people. This must extend also to æsthetic standards, and to all final judgments of values to some extent.
For these reasons we must suppose that the spirit of competition among nations, certainly so far as it concerns the ambition for empires of the spirit, must remain. Belief on the part of a people in the superiority of their own culture cannot and should not be eliminated. By this spirit the good, we may be sure, will prevail, but prevail only through opposition and competition. There can be no real compromise in the field of these moral possessions and appreciations. We must be Americans, and react with American ideas. True nationalists everywhere appear to recognize and to be guided by this truth. We cannot voluntarily lay aside our own beliefs nor help believing they are right, although we may see that were we differently situated we might change them.
There are three things at least, as regards our mores that cannot be accomplished. For this we may take our evidence and our warning from Germany. Culture cannot be spread by force, since force does not conquer spirit. Devotion to the basic principles of one's civilization cannot rationally nor safely be extended to include all customs and manners, so that we may assume that there is a right way in everything which is ours and a wrong way which is foreign. The mores of a people cannot be changed or manipulated by education and propaganda without uprooting the moral structures of society. When we begin to practice a Social-politik we enter upon dangerous ground.
Are we not, then, to take the attitude in education that our culture is an experimental culture and represents an experimental civilization? Although for us our ways and beliefs are final criteria of values in conduct, and we cannot hope or wish to free ourselves from them or to be guided by objective data, still we put them forward in the spirit of the enquirer, rather than as eternal principles. If this be right, we are not to guard our civilization jealously, hedge it about with national jealousy and bigotry but rather send our culture abroad on a mission. We are to understand and to teach the culture of every other nation sympathetically, trusting to our own foundations to hold firm. We must be so fortified in our own virtue that we shall not be afraid to send our spirit abroad to compete with whatever it shall meet in the old world or the new. This impulse to extend one's culture and philosophy is a deep one, and we believe it to be well-grounded. It has been said that the deepest impulse of British imperialism has been to extend English ways of thought throughout the world. There is truth in this. We may conclude also that unless a nation can feel sincerely that it is founded upon something that ought to endure and at least to have an opportunity to become universal, it lacks a growth principle and its civilization is not very secure. Certainly it lacks a great pedagogical advantage in all the internal work of education.
The work of the intellectual leaders of a people is to uncover this kernel of sincere belief and worth, and strip nationalism at the same time of its encrustations of vanity and deception. There are, we may suppose, at the bottom of every nation's consciousness such sincere principles which are entitled to a fair field in the competition of the civilizations and the cultures of the world. We may be sure that there is Americanism that needs to be taught both for the sake of the world and for our own sake; something which constitutes our best contribution to an experimental world in which the over-emphasis of all sincere principles can ultimately do no harm. Americanism, with all the errors it may contain, and all the limitations it may have as a universal principle is better for us and for all, we may believe, than any dispassionate and well considered intellectualism, or a cosmopolitanism that is based upon a fear of provincialism. Let us be prepared, therefore, to go forth not to conquer but to participate in the life of the world.
As regards materials by means of which we are to teach a patriotism that shall be a strong devotion to the mores of the nation, there appear to be three important elements. We have, first, a literature which contains in part at least the spirit of our national life, although it does so only in part. Secondly, we have a beginning at least of an interpretation of American life through an American history that is to be something more than a history of political events, and shall be a true history of the American people. This history must include the history of our ideas and our ideals, our literature, institutions, art, and be indeed a true social history. This history must be the main source book for teaching what our country has meant to those who have lived in it, and what these people have really been and done. This is national character study. Character study, a truly psychological and interpretative history, should teach us what we are likely to do and what we ought to do in all typical situations with which we are likely to be confronted. How far we are as yet from such a general knowledge in regard to ourselves needs hardly to be suggested. The third element in this aspect of the teaching of patriotism is something more tangible and more immediately practical. Our ideals have to some extent at least been crystallized in our institutions, where they will still further be elaborated. The participation on the part of all in some way in these institutions is a part of our required training for good American life. A book knowledge of institutions is, of course, better than none at all, but there is no reason why knowledge should end there. All people, especially those now being educated, ought to have more direct and more intimate part in all the representative institutions of our country, even in the political institutions, and perhaps in them most of all. Americanism, whatever else it may be, must be a practical Americanism. It must have ideals and clear visions, it goes without saying, but it is the making and shaping of institutions by living in and through them that must be the main feature of our social life and of our education. When the individual and the social form are molded and developed together, patriotism will be a natural phase of mental growth.
CHAPTER VI[ToC]
THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM (continued)
Patriotism we thought to be, in the third place, devotion to the group. Here the problem of the teaching of patriotism becomes specifically a question of social education. The question arises as to precisely what the objects of the devotion we call loyalty to the group are, and what factors in group-consciousness need most to be emphasized or educated as patriotism. Is it race or manners or the pure fact of propinquity or herd contact or all together that are the objects of social desire and the feeling of solidarity?
Race has been emphasized as the prime interest in group loyalty, but there seems to be doubt about this. At least there are difficulties in isolating anything we can call love of race. We can never separate race from propinquity, for example, or from mores, or from the bonds due to common possession of causes. Race loyalty appears to be a primitive feeling. When races were pure, groups small and possession common, all the elements of loyalty to group were present at once and coextensive. As civilization progressed the bond of pure race lessened. All races have now become mixed, we are told, and kinship in a group has ceased to be a fact. Nicolai maintains that race patriotism has grown out of family instinct, as something quite separate from herd instinct, but it seems likely that common interests, organization under necessity, or the social attraction resulting from any common cause must have been stronger than any consciousness of kinship, or any herd instinct as such—which may indeed not have existed at all.
It is this more conscious bond of function and propinquity at least that must be taken into account in the education of patriotism—certainly American patriotism. We in America can hardly emphasize race patriotism, without producing internal disruption. It is common function that is the distinguishing mark of the individuals of a group, rather than common origin. Common function, especially subsumption under one ordered government, particularly if the purpose be that of securing common protection, can plainly overcome all loyalty to race. Common religion antagonizes race consciousness, and we see therefore within nations races splitting up along lines of religious difference. We see within races also greater antagonism and greater lack of common interest between classes than between the same classes as found in different races. Aristocrats everywhere, for example, appear to have greater mutual sympathy and sense of nearness than do the upper and lower classes of the same race.
One of our own urgent educational problems is that of overcoming race differences and of utilizing racial bonds for practical ends. We try to put loyalty to group first, and we assume that race patriotism can be supreme only among those who have no country worth being loyal to. Loyalty to race, however, has a pedagogical use. We see it being employed to extend social feeling beyond the point to which propinquity and common cause can carry it. It was used, we know, in the propaganda and educational campaign by which German statesmen and historians hoped to develop a wider German consciousness. The racial object in this case is apparently purely fictitious. We see the same concept being used now to create or expand social feeling throughout the Anglo-Saxon race. What we mean mainly by Anglo-Saxon race is really English speaking peoples, having common or similar mores and ideals. It is, of course, by emphasizing and participating in common functions that loyalty either to an Anglo-Saxon union or to the total group in our own nation will be developed. Our own type of patriotism, in which there can be little or no racial loyalty as such, must be built upon more ideal and abstract conceptions than that of race. It is loyalty to group having a common idea, we say, which must be the basis of American group loyalty. This we must regard as higher than any race patriotism. All nations are now, as Boutroux remarks, to a greater or less extent psychological races. The factors that have produced them are the factors that have caused men to become functioning units.
This gives us a clew at least to a practical principle for the education of social loyalty. We must secure participation on the part of the individual in every function that belongs to each group to which the individual himself is attached. Thus all degrees and kinds of loyalty may be made to exist in the same mind without conflict or confusion, precisely because the loyalty desired is loyalty to people as groups or organizations having causes, not to collections of individuals as such.
The teaching of loyalty to any cause appears to be a lesson in patriotism. So far as teaching of patriotism is centered directly upon the production of loyalty to the whole group which constitutes the nation, the first object must be to create a sense of reality of the group in the mind of the individual. We may expect to do this in part by the teaching of geography and history in an adequate way, but we must also instill such patriotism by inducing individuals to participate in nation-wide organizations, which are capable of realizing dramatic effects. The experiences of the war have taught us to see this. It is organization or coöperation for practical ends, under conditions in which deep feeling is aroused, that most quickly and effectually creates the sense of solidarity in great groups of individuals. We must study the psychological side of this matter, and see how the power and momentum that are so readily gained in time of need can be better controlled for all the routine purposes of education and the practical daily life. The organization of national activities by means of voluntary associations will be likely to be one of the main educational methods of the future. If we are far-seeing we shall try to utilize the powers of organization, coöperation and communication to overcome many antagonisms now existing in society. War temporarily suspends class distinctions and many other forms of social dualism. The reaction after the war may be in the direction of increasing all the former antagonisms. To attain a strong morale and unity in times less dramatic than those of war is an educational problem, in a wide sense, but it is also a problem of the practical organization of all the social life.
All nation-wide affiliations of children which in any way cross-section classes or antagonistic interests of any kind tend to create materials out of which patriotic sentiment is made. The school itself has tended to produce social unity, but it has also tended to level downward, and also to mediate associations which do not touch upon the activities and interests and differences of society. Our schools are democratic by default of social interest in them, so to speak. We need organizations that shall level upward and to a greater extent involve the home. Then we shall see how democratic and how unified our social life really is. These organizations must be both democratic and practical. They must engage the interests of all classes. We know little as yet about the potential power, both for practical accomplishment and for the building of a higher type of loyalty and patriotism, there may be in wide organization. Here we can best combine the initiative and spirit that usually come from the upper classes with the great powers of achieving aggregate results inherent in the people as a whole. If we are to have a nation which shall be a unit, the people as a whole must have practical interests that require daily exertion and attention. They must be not merely united in spirit as a people, but united in common tasks that are definite and real. Devotion to the functions of the people is loyalty to the nation. This we should say is but an elaboration of the old colonial spirit of coöperation, when merely living in a community meant a certain daily service to all the community. We must continue to do now more consciously and with more technique, so to speak, what was once done more spontaneously and in a more primitive way. It is thus that the idea of neighbor might extend throughout the country as a whole. All the materials are at hand for an unlimited development of the practical life. The sense of solidarity and the comradeship and helpfulness that grow naturally in a small community, where conditions are hard and dangers imminent, we must still maintain in a great nation by organization. This is at heart an educational problem. It is a work of national character building. It is training in patriotism.
In this, as in all other phases of education now, we must consider how the great energies hidden in the æsthetic experiences can be put to use. The æsthetic, especially in its dramatic form, is a power to be reckoned with. Interest, organization, moral obligation do not control or release all the energies contained in the social life. We need the high moods of dramatic situations to reach the most fundamental motives. The teacher must not only present ideas; he must generate power. And this is true of all efforts to employ for any end the interests of the people, old or young. The social life, if it is to be effective, must constantly be brought under the influence of dramatic stimuli. Dillon, a political writer, earnestly pleads for an extension and deepening of the sympathies of children, and says that patriotic sentiment must be engrafted upon the sensitive soul of the child. No one could refuse to admit this. The question, however, is of ways and means. In our view it is mainly through play, or better, art, that the soul of the child is thus made sensitive. A dramatic social life must be the main condition upon which we depend for thus extending and deepening the sympathies of the child.
Among these dramatic social effects we seek, the use of national holidays, all methods of symbolizing events, causes, or functions which are nationally significant are of course not to be ignored, but after all it is through practical activity made social and raised to dramatic expression or feeling, either by its own inherent idea and suggestive power, or by the addition of æsthetic elements, that loyalty to the greater group and its functions will best be educated. It is precisely the lack of these dramatic elements and these mass effects in the social life that now leaves the social sense in its national aspects weak, and allows the various dividing lines throughout society to make even the most necessary activities to a greater or less degree ineffectual.
The educational problem itself is plain. Unity of public interests, which can apparently now be obtained only under threat to national existence, must be maintained, not artificially, but voluntarily. We want the morale of war and the social solidarity of war in the times and activities of peace—in those activities that represent service to country and also those which consist of the service of country in the performance of its broader functions as a member of a family or society of nations.
A fourth factor in patriotism we recognize as loyalty to government, to state, or to leader. The place of such loyalty in a truly democratic country as contrasted with an autocratically governed country seems plain. It is not only sovereignty but statesmanship as well that must reside in the people. The people must not only have the power but the wisdom to rule. Even the ideals of the country must come out of the common life, or there at least be abundantly nourished. The German writers protest that the purely native ideals of the people do not represent the meaning and purpose of the State. The natural feelings of the people lack purpose and definiteness. The State is something very different from the sum of the people and the representation of their will. The native sense of solidarity is not at all like the organization that comes through the State. But this abstract conception of the State as a being different from the people is precisely, in the view of such writers as Dickinson, the cause of wars. Upon this point Dickinson sees now a wide parting of the ways. We must have either one kind of world or the other. We must continue our warlike habits, and make the God-state the object of our religion, or abandon all this for a thorough-going democracy. It is the special interest that is assumed to inhere in the God-state that is the menace to peace everywhere. The abstract theory of State inspires far-seeing policies, democracy lives more by its natural instincts and feelings. The theory of necessary expansion, the right to grow and to intrude, is a natural deduction from the conception of the God-state; loyalty to the State demands ever increasing lands and population in order to have more military power.
The democracy, of course, can harbor no such conception of State. Loyalty, in the democracy, must be to state and to statesmen rather as leaders of the people. The first and most necessary factor in patriotism as loyalty to authority is that authority must represent interests of country and people and must for that reason deserve loyalty. Educationally, the problem is quite the reverse of the educational problem of the autocracy. The people are not to be trained in obedience and subservience to the state, but we have mainly to create in the minds of all people the capacity to recognize true leaders. It is not loyalty to authority as such, we say, that is wanted, but loyalty to leader who has no power at all except the power of the good and its forceful presentation. A democracy is a society in which the aristocrats rule by persuasion, although we must think of this aristocracy as an aristocracy of intellect and morality rather than of birth and wealth. The ideal, we suppose, toward which our definition of democracy leads is a state in which authority as represented in the institutions of government, and leadership represented in natural superiority coincide. It is a State in which the good and the great shall govern. But in general, parliaments cannot now be the sources of moral and intellectual leadership of the people. They are subjected to too many conflicting interests. The time may come, we say, when authority and superiority will coincide, when laws will be made and executed by those who ought to do these things rather than by those who merely have the power to gain opportunity to do so. At any time and place we may, of course, behold great leadership combined with great authority. A true democracy is a state in which such coincidence will be inevitable.
The minds of men are now full of these themes. They ask how nations may become unified without injustice and autocracy. Trotter says that national unity is what is wanted most of all things now in England. England must become conscious of itself, he says, and infuse into public affairs a spirit that will carry leaders far beyond their own personal interests. England has survived until now in spite of a strong handicap of discord. He speaks of the imperfect morale of England, shown in the war, which arose from the preceding social discord, and shows that the only perfect morale is that which is based upon social unity in the nation. All this is true also of ourselves. We also have our problem of creating loyalty to government and a national unity upon which a perfect morale both for peace and for war may be assured, by inspiring an ideal of honor, honesty, and efficiency in all public service, and also by arousing an intense interest in public service and deep appreciation of what public service and leadership mean, on the part of all the people. This is plainly not merely a work of cleaning politics. It is a work of public education. The attitude of a people toward authority and leadership is something more than a susceptibility to leadership and influence. There is a desire for the experience of ecstatic social moods, the craving to be active and to be led. We make a great mistake if we think all that democracy means is an instinct of individual independence, a desire to take part in the government as an individual. It is also a social craving that is involved. The presence of the great leader, even in times of peace, stimulates social feeling, and raises it to a productive level. This social feeling, we say, is not a mere reaction. It is the expression of a desire and readiness on the part of the people to participate in social activities, and to attach themselves to worthy leaders, or to those now who appeal to the most dominant selective faculties.
It is precisely at this point that the educational problem comes into view. We are likely to think of the public education required in a democracy as too exclusively political education, education that will enable the individual to assert himself—to know, to criticize, to vote, to take an active part in politics. This spirit is especially prominent in English life. It is all very good in itself and necessary. But we need to educate ourselves also so that we may have a capacity to be led, in the right direction. To increase sensitiveness to leadership, but also to make that sensitiveness selective of true values, is one of the great educational problems of a democracy.
It seems to be a part of the work of education to create popular heroes, to do upon a higher level what the public press does in its own way, but mainly partisanly and too often from wholly unworthy motives—make reputations. We must do more in the teaching of history and biography than to glorify the lives of dead heroes. We need to be quite as much concerned about coming heroes. We must excite the imagination of the young and prejudice the public mind through educational channels, in favor of sincere and true leaders. The opportunity of the story teller is large, in this work, and we need also to develop to a very high degree of excellence the educational newspaper. One of our great needs in education in this country is a daily newspaper for all schools—one that shall be both informing and influential, appealing by every art to the selective faculties, governed absolutely by ethical, or at least not by political and partisan motives. The power of such a press might be very great indeed. As an unifying influence and a ready means of communication, and an instrument of use in the organization of all children, the function of this press would be a highly important one.
All means of creating political ideals from within, of forging the links between leader and people in the plastic minds of children and youths, will be an education in one of the fundamental elements of patriotism. Such an education would be very different, however, from the state planned and authorized education that has been carried on under autocratic regimes. The difference is one of spirit and result, rather than of method. In one case the State becomes a kind of Nirvana, in the thought of which personality and individuality are negated. Patriotism produced in the minds of the young under the influence of a democratic spirit tends to become a creative force rather than a blind devotion to an accepted order. Institutions are made and advanced rather than merely obeyed and defended in this educational process. The widest scope and the freest opportunity are allowed for superior qualities of leaders and for right principles to have an effect upon society (and the result we invite indeed is a profound hero worship on the part of the young), but the conditions would be such that no other kind of authority would be able to exert a wide influence. To secure these conditions is, of course, one of the chief tasks of all the administrative branches of our educational service.
The final factor of patriotism, according to our analysis, is loyalty to country as an historical object. The ideas and the feelings centering about the conception of country as personal, as living, as having rights and experience, duties and individuality are likely to be vivid and intense. They are the inspirers of supreme devotion to country, and also at times, of morbid national pride and fanatical country-worship. The education of this idea of country we should suppose would be one of the fundamental problems of the development of patriotism. Presumably we are not to try to destroy this idea of country that all people seem to have, or to show it as one of the illusions of personification. Country is, of course, different from the mere sum of the people. It has continuity and it performs functions and it is an historic entity. Modernize and reform this idea, we must, but we cannot do away with it as something archaic and superstitious. Country is real, the concepts of honor and right belong to it, and country is something to which the mind must do homage.
Boutroux says that a nation is a person, and has a right to live and to have its personality recognized as its own. Granting this to be true, and that we must think of country as personal and active, the question arises whether this concept of country is something that requires in any definite way educational interference. We should say that if countries are essentially living historic entities having as such a high degree of reality, this reality-sense will be an important element in the practical life of peoples. There can be no thought in our historical era of breaking up these entities we call nations. It is a day of intensified rather than of diminished nationalism. The sense of reality of nations must, we might think, be made more intense; pride of country must remain; we may find some place even for the idea of the divine nature of country, which is an element in the patriotic spirit everywhere. That this conception of country is a very necessary element in the morale of a country in war seems clear; that the morale of peace must be founded upon the same personal and religious sentiments we can hardly doubt.
Ambition for country is a normal result of the acceptance of the idea of country as personal, and ambition for country appears to be the very essence of any patriotic sentiment that is sincere. Still ambition for country has been, in some of its forms, a cause of wars. What other conclusion can we come to, then, than that ambition for country must be subjected to radical educational influences? This is the reverse side of political progress. Ambition must be given new content and new direction. All the power and the sentiment of the old imperialistic motive must remain, but all peoples must now be educated to see that the maintenance of its position in the world on the part of any nation is now a far more difficult and far more complex task than ever before. The building of empire must be shown to have been far easier and far less heroic, and much less a test of the superiority of a nation than we have supposed. We can show that military virtues are much more nearly universal than has often been assumed, and that nations that are inherently superior must abandon voluntarily their ambitions of aggression, if they wish to remain superior and to have a place of honor in the world.
This implies no teaching of pure internationalism. We still recognize as fundamental the whole spirit of nationalism. Country must remain first after all. All must indeed learn to take in some way the statesman's point of view in regard to country—with its sense of the future, of wide relations and long periods of time, and its practical vision. It is futile to think of this future as one wholly without struggle and competition. We must teach history also far more with the forward view. History has dealt too exclusively even in America with the past. National ambition that has as its aim to realize, with independence and power, all the good that an enlightened nation contains, but at the same time to act with justice and with the thought of the nation as a part of a coördinated world must take this point of view.
It is a median course between merely naïve and day by day living, such as Lehmann (15) complains about as the natural tendency of uneducated patriotism, and the kind of program making that takes into account only the purposes of a single nation that we must follow in teaching this forward view of national history. There is a danger in either extreme. We may remain a nature people, without a true historic sense, and be conscious only of a dramatic past which appeals to sentiment and a still more ambiguously glorious future; or, on the other hand we may become too definitely ambitious and too conscious of some special mission in the world. A nation with a program, a nation that does not recognize the experimental nature of history, is a dangerous element in the society of nations, even though its ambitions be not purely selfish. Excessive rationalism in national consciousness is itself a menace. We must live by our historic sense, by some ideal of a future for our nation; the people must have some vision of a glorious future, and not be expected to see only an unending vista of problems and labors, but this history must be understood and taught intimately and appreciatively and not merely objectively and logically. We must take an interest in the careers of all nations, and understand history psychologically and be willing to judge it ethically. So far we have had the opposite view in most of our teaching and writing of history. We must take a fair and tolerant view of the power motive that exists in all nations, and try to understand what it means to be of another nationality and to have ambitions like our own. Without such an attitude, we should argue, no one can be truly patriotic, if patriotism means having at heart the true interests of one's own country.
It is not only possible and fair, therefore, but necessary that patriotism be enlightened. It is possible to be devoted each one first of all to his own country, to have few illusions about its values, and at the same time to have tolerance for all other nations. What other spirit is there, in fact, in which our history can now be taught? It seems absurd to say that such a spirit is weak. It implies consciousness of strength, of being able to hold one's own in a fair field, to have the dignity and sense of maturity that come from contact with a real world. With such a spirit it would not be necessary to accept as inevitable the brutality of all national development, to use the words of Mach, a recent writer. We need no longer believe that war is the only thing that can prevent national disintegration, as many maintain. National consciousness certainly makes progress even without such dramatic and tragic events as have recently taken place. Boutroux says that in France, after the Dreyfus affair, although strong nationalistic feeling was stirred, there was also a new vision of the destiny of the French people as not only defenders of their own country but as champions of the rights of all nationalities. German writers have not failed to notice this, and have been inclined to regard this spirit of France as a sign of degeneration and decay of the national life. We see now that generosity and justice are far from being evidences of weakness, and also that in the larger logic of history these weaknesses generate strength; at least they bring powerful friends in time of need.
Once Germany herself was affected by such ideals of history. In the time of Goethe, Cramb reminds us, mankind, culture and humanity were the great words. But upon this love of humanity and culture and love of the homeland a political spirit was engrafted, and this new spirit of Germany has manifestly now led to her downfall. No! there is no threat to national existence and no disloyalty to country in the form of internationalism that now is before us. As social consciousness widens and social relations become more intricate and more practical, national lines are not lost, but indeed become clearer. These national boundaries are not temporary or artificial or imaginary lines, for they represent and define activities and interests that engage the most fundamental and the most persistent of human motives.
It is in this spirit that loyalty to country as historic object should, we believe, be taught. This idea we teach of course through history, in part, but history alone in any ordinary sense, as we might think of it as a subject in the curriculum of a school, is not enough. These ideas must be made persuasive and dynamic. For this as we see over and over again, art is the true method. The object to be presented and which must inspire devotion is an ideal object. It is complex and it performs practical functions, but it is through and through such an object as appeals most deeply to the æsthetic feelings. The image of this object must be made impressive. Since the ideal of our country is more abstract than that of most countries, as an object still less vivid and less personal, since it lacks some of the means of appeal to the feelings that imperialistic countries have, there is all the more need of art to make the figure of ideal country stand out sharply before us. As we pass beyond the patriotism which is only a love of home, or a devotion to a political unit, to a patriotism that is a loyalty to a more abstract and more intangible idea, the art by which the idea of country is conveyed would, we should suppose, also become more abstract. Hocking says that it is through symbols that the mind best gropes its way to the realization of ideas. Feeling and imagery, we know, are very susceptible to the influences of the symbol, and also to the phrase which is a lower order of symbol. Dramatic representation, all pageantry, pictorial art, music, even the art of the poster artist and the cartoonist have a place in the work of portraying country as an ideal object, and inspiring devotion to it and its causes. A far-seeking educational policy will scorn none of these in its effort to crystallize the concept of country and give it power and reality.
Finally this idea of country must be put to work in every mind and in every life. Otherwise all education of patriotism will tend toward inevitable jingoism, and arouse all the violent and introverted feelings that have made history a long story of wars without end. This idea of country has been too aristocratic. It must now become accustomed to a life of daily toil, and not merely expend itself in enthusiasm and in self-sacrifice in crises such as war. Country as an idol of the aristocratic patriotism has always been too far removed from practical affairs. This patriotism has been too personal and too exclusive. Glory, honor and fame have played too large a part in it. On the other hand, the common idea of country needs to be made more vivid and more glorious. This spirit is accustomed to toil but not to have enthusiasm. It certainly needs more of art in its patriotism as well as in its daily life. We all need historical perspective. We must have through education what tradition has failed to give us. It is just by lacking the patriotism that a vivid sense of country as historic personage gives, by lacking imagination and the ability to detach themselves from the reality and the surroundings of the daily life that the working classes are so likely to be affected by influences that tend to break down all patriotism.
We shall have a true patriotism, we should say, only when country is an idea that is worked for by all classes; when it is an idea that is woven into the daily lives of the people; when it makes the daily toil lighter and touches it with glory, and when it enters into all the enthusiasm of the more favored classes and inspires it with the spirit of daily service.
CHAPTER VII[ToC]
POLITICAL EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY
One of the results of the war has been to raise in the minds of all peoples, to an extraordinary degree, the most earnest questions about the nature and validity of government. The political sense of all peoples has been stimulated. We see on every hand new conceptions of government and demands for more and better government, but also the most radical criticism and the denial of all government. The determination in very fundamental ways of what government is, and must be, what ideas must prevail, what must be suppressed, what an ideal government is, if such an ideal can be formed, the question of evils inherent in the idea of government itself (if such evils there be), the laws of development of government in all their practical aspects—all these questions now come up for examination, and will not be repressed. If we do not take them at one level we must upon another. Naively or scientifically, philosophically or radically, the nature of government must be dealt with.
Government is now being examined, we all see, from points of view not hitherto taken. The conscientious objector raises the question of the ultimate basis of the right of the many to control the lives of individuals, and he asks especially whether there is any ground for the assumption that in this sphere, more than in any other, might makes right. Conscription, in fact, has driven us to consider the meaning of liberty and the foundations upon which the right to it rests. This stern fact of conscription, the realization that in a moment the most democratic governments in the world are capable of bringing to bear, quite constitutionally, absolute control over the most basic possessions of the individual, has led many to ask seriously whether government is after all a good in itself, or is merely a necessity having many attendant evils. They wish to know whether there is in the principle of government something that takes precedence over all the assumed rights of the individual. Does government, they inquire, have a right to the individual; or is it only in serving the individual that it is entitled to exercise authority that limits the individual?
These are questions, manifestly, that involve the whole foundation of sociology, but we need not be unduly dismayed at that. This is a time when naïve thinking and exact science must make compromises with one another. For better or for worse we must find some working hypothesis upon which a fair adjustment may be made in the practical life of the present moment. This working hypothesis must also serve—and perhaps that is after all its main function—as something to guide us, something having solidity upon which we can stand, in performing our work as educators.
What we need, what we believe all feel now the need of, is a conception of government satisfying to the multitude of common people. We wish to know whether we live for the state, we say, or whether the state lives for us. We wish to understand what the basic rights and duties of the individual are. As average individuals, willing to give service in any cause that seems good, we do not ask so much to have determined for us precisely what type of government best satisfies the requirements of science or philosophy, but what the best working basis for harmonious adjustment in the social life of the future is to be. These enquiring moods on the part of the people are a part of the temperament that has issued from the war. We shall make a mistake if we regard it as a mere passing effect, however; it means a deep stirring of the political consciousness of people throughout the world.
Significant differences may be observed in the general attitude toward government among the people in the great nations of the world. Each nation appears to have its own political temperament, and this quite apart from the views represented especially by political parties and the like, and quite independently of the scientific and philosophical conceptions of government and its functions of which there are a great number, and among them certainly no agreement upon the main issues and values.
Taking public opinion as a whole, Germany, England, France and America seem to represent distinctly different attitudes toward government. The State in the German philosophy of life, as every one is now aware, is all; the individual derives his reality and his value, so to speak, from the idea of the supreme state. Individuality and freedom in this philosophy of life do not refer to political individuality and freedom at all. In England, and perhaps to some extent in all democratic countries, the prevailing thought seems to be that the government that governs the least is, on the whole, the best government. The English government is supposed to be the servant of the people, and the individual has been in the habit of looking to the government for many services. The individual, free and self-determined, is the unit of value and of society, and the regulation of his conduct by government is at best a necessary evil. It came as a surprise to the Englishman when he realized that the state could command the most personal service and the most complete surrender of the property rights of the individual.
Le Bon says that the Frenchman, too, thinks of the state as something to be kept at a minimum and to a certain extent to be opposed. Opposition to the government is a part of the Frenchman's plan of life. Boutroux says the same—that in France the habit of thinking of the government and of society as two rivals has not been overcome.
Our own idea of government is certainly somewhat different from these. We are watchful of individual right, but we do not tend to think of government either as opponent or as servant. We do not ask the government to take care of us as individuals, and we do not feel in the public attitude the resistance to government that the French writers observe in France. The American expects on the whole to look out for his own interests and he has never felt the pressure and over-powering force of government—until perhaps now. Mabie says that the American has conceived of his government as existing to keep the house in order while the family lived its life freely, every individual following the bent of his own genius.
These temperamental attitudes toward government, we said, seem quite apart from scientific and philosophic conceptions of state. We see, however, something of the temperament reflected in the philosophies. Philosophers do not wholly detach themselves from the mores of their race. The monarchy of Germany, Munsterberg says, appeals to the moral personality and the æsthetic imagination. Its main function, however, is to safeguard the German people. Its faults are the faults of its virtues. Other German writers praise the German government especially for its efficiency, for its incomparable body of officials—indeed for its very clock-work perfection that Bergson hates in Prussian life. Lehmann goes so far as to say that the German state had reached the perfect balance between individualism and communism. These writers see plenty of self-realization in German society, and quite enough of participation, on the part of the individual, in the government. Schmoller (51) denies that Germany ever lacked the spirit of free institutions, and even compares Germany with ancient Attica, which he thinks was great not because of the rule of the demos, but because the people followed their aristocratic leaders. Troeltsch tries to show that the German idea of freedom is different from, and indeed superior to, that of all other peoples. The French, he says, rest their idea of freedom upon the doctrine of the equality of all citizens, but in reality lawyers and plutocrats prevail. The English idea of freedom comes from Puritanic ideas; the individual's independence of the state is based upon the idea of natural rights, and upon the theory of the creation of the state by the individual. But German freedom is something entirely different. Here freedom is in education, and in the spiritual content of individuality. German freedom is the freedom that comes from the spontaneous recognition of rights and duties. Parliaments are good in their place, but after all they are not the essence of freedom.
Totally different conceptions of state are easily found. Consider, for example, the views of Russell. Through every page of his book there shines the determined belief in the inalienable rights of the individual. Self-expression of the individual through creative activity is the basic value, or at least the fundamental means of realizing values. Russell sees nothing sacred or final in any form of existing government. He would like to see government expanded in some directions and contracted in others, for the functions of government cannot all be vested in one body or organization. For defense the nation is not large enough. For all civic government the nation is too large. In its internal control it treats the individual too ruthlessly. Wasteful and in large part even unnecessary, it antagonizes the free development of the individual. Government should cease its oppression, it should no longer support unnatural property rights, or interfere with the personal affairs of individuals. At the present time, however, we should not expect a radical cure for all the evils of government. If only we can find the right direction in which to make advance, we should be satisfied with something less perfect than an ideal.
The state in Russell's view, instead of being an ideal institution, is even harmful in many ways and terribly destructive. It promotes war. It makes the individual helpless, and crushes him with a sense of his unimportance. It abets the injustice of capitalism. It excludes citizens from any participation in foreign affairs. We must indeed not let this incubus of state overwhelm us. We must keep it in its proper place, even in performing its necessary functions, such as preserving public health. It is better to take some risk, even in such matters, than to override too much the individual's personal rights. All the functions of the state must be made to center more about the welfare of the individual, and in doing this the state must plainly regard as fundamental the right of the individual to free growth and the development of all his powers. We must learn to think more in terms of individual welfare and less in terms of national pride.
In syndicalism in some form Russell sees the most promise for reform of government. Some type of government at least which does not make the geographical unit the basis of everything must be the government of the future. This would lead in the end to a higher state than that based primarily upon law, for it would be a government in which free organization would be the first principle.
Plainly we are to-day in a time of flux in which ideas and institutions are unsettled, and there is a great variety of political theories of all kinds. We can hope to find no agreement among theorists and certainly no common ground for the reconciliation of conflicting parties. Still, even for the most practical daily life we must find some guiding principles. We must look for some means of bringing order out of the present diversity and conflict. Some valuation of government, some idea of the ultimate purpose of government ought to be agreed upon, if for no other reason that we may have some principle which will give us continuity in our educational work.
Consider the varieties of political creed now offered us, and there can be little doubt both of the difficulty and the necessity of finding guiding principles for the practical life and to preserve sanity of mind. The monarchical idea still lingers; there is a variety of conceptions of democracy, differing widely; there are socialists—state socialists, Marxian socialists of the old line, Bolshevists, regionalists, syndicalists, and others—and anarchists of pure blood. Of internal and party differences, policies, and plans there is no end. Through all these we have to thread our way, and reach what conclusions we can.
No American can of course be expected to see the question of government otherwise than through American eyes. He is to some extent prejudiced and bound to the ideas of liberty, individualism, and democracy, whatever his variety of party politics be. Democracy he may regard as an assumption, but it will seem now even more than ever a necessary assumption upon which to build a working conception of government.
We have to look somewhere in actual life for the elements and principles of government. Why should we not look for them in American life, where government has grown up comparatively free from traditions and prejudices and where it has been by all the ordinary tests successful? There has been something both ideal and generic in American life. Whatever personal equation may be involved in saying this, the point of view has some objective justification. It is a genetic method, at least. In early American life society was simple, and life was earnest, and we see government and the individual in their essential relations to one another.
In this primitive and yet modern society we see the individual as a collection of functions, so to speak, existing in a group. The individual also has various desires, which do not appear to be wholly in agreement with his social functions. Some of these desires of individuals are strongly antagonistic to society. In this society, government is plainly the means of protecting the individual or the group, by the suggestion or the exertion of lawful force, from the threat of lawless force. Law is a means of enabling and also compelling the individual to perform the various functions which belong to him as an individual or as a member of the group. To some extent the law also aids the individual in performing his functions. But this simple social order already shows certain basic disharmonies. It is an experimental regulation of the individual. Every restriction the individual helps to put upon other individuals by participating in or acquiescing in the establishment of government and law reacts to limit his own freedom, in ways which he cannot wholly predict. Freedom of the individual, even in the simplest social order, becomes greatly limited, if not necessarily, at least naturally—and indeed necessarily, since the only choice appears to be between lawful and lawless limitation of freedom. From the beginning, therefore, there can be no perfect satisfaction of individual desires or of either general or individual needs, in the ordered social life. Society as a whole regulates the conduct of the individual both by aiding and by inhibiting his activities, and must do so. In doing this, it is plain, it promotes all or most of the functions of the individual. Ordered society widens the total sphere of action of the individual. The individual left to himself tends to become an end-in-himself. Law makes him to a greater extent a means. In doing this it serves him and it also uses him, and there can never be any guarantee, in any individual case, of what the sum of these services and restraints shall be. Society uses the individual in part, but not exclusively, in his own service. The good and the evil, the necessity and the dilemma of all government are outgrowths of this primitive service of the social organization and this original disharmony among the wills of individuals and the will of the group to serve the individual and also at the same time certain general purposes which may not in any given case coincide with either the desire or the need of the individual. For this reason we conclude that there can be no perfect government. All government is experimental and exists by compromise.
What, then, in the most general way, can we say is the legitimate function or purpose of government? Hocking says that government is the means of assuring the individual that his achievements will be permanent. To this end it puts order into the structure of society. In our view something similar, but not identical with this, is true. We can say that in its complex forms it is in principle only what we found it to be in its primitive or simple forms. Government is ideally a means of aiding all the functions of every individual. Functions, let us observe and not primarily desires are served. These functions are such functions as the individual has as a member of every group to which he naturally belongs. Government, then, so to speak, has no standing of its own. Its proper function is to facilitate all other functions. Neither individuals nor governments have any rights as abstracted from the sum of functions which they essentially are.
If this be true, we can certainly define no one best and eternal type of government, any more than a fixed and perfect plan of life for an individual can be defined. Government might be supposed properly to change according to the functions which from time to time were most important for the society in question. Social life, under government, differs from a free and unorganized social life mainly in that a certain objectivity is acquired in regard to the functions of the individual. The individual becomes a creature of functions rather than of desires and needs. Common interests, or the interests of the group are served, we say; in doing this the individual is made to serve his own interests, perhaps, but the most outstanding fact is that in this organized life the immediate desires of the individual are likely to be thwarted. Regularity is put into conduct, and conduct is made to serve multiple and distant ends. The functions of the individual, left to the desire of the individual, will seldom be harmoniously performed. They will lack precisely objective consideration. But in the organized social life there will also be no perfect order and harmony, no final balance of functions. Everything is still relative and experimental. Government is a system in which any one individual at any moment may gain or may lose. But on the whole, under the good government, both more freedom for the individual and better conditions and better life for the individual will presumably be obtained than in any possible disordered or unorganized society. But government will really add nothing that does not already belong to the functions that naturally develop in any social group.
The actual functions of governments are, therefore, highly complex, because it is in some way involved in all the functions of the individuals themselves. Governments will be judged good or bad in two particulars: according to the completeness with which they include all the social functions, and as regards their efficiency in facilitating these functions. We must not make the mistake of judging a government merely by its form. Under the same constitution and holding the same ideals, there is room for widely different forms of activity on the part of the government, and great differences in efficiency and in the functions performed. The same functions may be performed and the same degree of efficiency reached apparently with different organizations. Cleveland shows, for example, how our own government might become much more efficient and make radical changes in the mechanism of the legislative and executive functions without sacrificing any principle we hold to, and perhaps without any change in our constitution.
It is this idea of the proper functions of government and the relative adequacy of existing governments to perform them that seems to be deeply questioned. Life has suddenly grown more complex. The individual is brought face to face with new demands upon him. He becomes, it may be, a member of new groups, having new functions. Government also, and correspondingly, expands. The question is not now of the efficiency of government in doing what it has hitherto undertaken; we wish to feel sure that government is adequate to meet the requirements of a rapidly changing social order. That just now is indeed a very vital question. Governments, we say, may be obliged to adapt themselves to entirely new tasks. Society assumes new external relations, and therefore we should expect that new organs would be needed for performing these new functions.
In all this we have been making objective valuations of government. An ideal or a definition of government in terms of its functions and the degree of efficiency in the performance of them might still, we ought to observe, leave a wide scope for preference in regard to forms, and other subjective valuations. Even between aristocratic and democratic forms, there may be still room for valid appreciations on æsthetic or moral grounds. Our objective valuations of government must in fact in various ways impinge upon fundamental questions in which no purely scientific considerations will be wholly decisive.
We can certainly find no precise way of valuing in detail or in their totality existing or proposed forms of government. Our most valid method, however, appears to be to refer at every step the functions of government back to the functions of the individuals who make up society. Every phase of legitimate government must thus go back to the individual, and his desires and functions. If we do this we shall see again why in national life we have the same kind of experimental problem that we have in the life of the individual. There can be no perfect adjustment among the acts of an individual, and no final valuation of them. There is no perfect balance between present use and future good, between individual and social values, between desires or needs and functions. The reason for this, we say, is that life is so complicated and made up of so many functions and of so many conflicting desires that it cannot be conducted according to any single principle or combination of principles. If we think of government as only a phase of the widest social living, and so as being through and through of the nature of the life of the individual, we ought to have the right point of view for all practical consideration of it. We must not expect consistency or perfection in government, and we can have no hope of passing absolute and final judgments upon it. Radical politics, in our present situation, must be regarded as one of our greatest dangers.
Democracy has become the "great idea of the age." It is our own fundamental principle, so we of all people ought to be able to understand and to defend it—and to define it. Yet many writers complain and more imply that the idea of democracy has never been very clear, and perhaps not even very sincere. Sumner says that democracy is one of the many words of ambiguous meaning that have played such a large part in politics. Democracy, he says, is not used as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, and the like, but is invoked as a power from some outside origin which brings into human affairs a peculiar inspiration and an energy of its own.
Democracy has apparently meant quite different things to different people. To some it is essentially a form of government in which control is represented as in the hands of the majority of the people. Some seem to have no further interest in democracy, if only they see that the democratic form in government is preserved and jealously guarded and the majority by its ballot rules. To some it is the aspect of democracy as individualism that has appealed most—freedom of the individual even from the restraint of law and custom—or again equality of opportunity. These perhaps think of freedom as a supreme value in itself. Some think of democracy more in terms of its internal conditions or its results. They think of freedom as a means of accomplishing good, not as merely being a good. They believe that the good of the individual is not necessarily represented by the satisfaction of his desires, and so perhaps think of the law and order of the democratic community, the control and regulation of the individual in his daily life by the will of all, as the essential feature of a democracy.
Here in America, taking our history and our life as a whole, it seems certain that the dominating mood has been the love of individual freedom. Our democracy is founded upon the idea of the rights of the man. But these rights and privileges of the man can be secured only by social organization that immediately takes away some of them. So our national life, just because of the strong individualism with which it began, also began with a firm principle of law and order modifying the idea of freedom. Some would say it began thus in a paradox or a delusion. Even to be morally free was not allowed. The group, in the Puritan society at least, exercised strict supervision over the moral life of the individual. Giddings says, in fact, that this experiment in moral control on the part of the people over all individuals is one of the chief characteristics of American life.
Our history is the story of an experiment in freedom, in which according to some we have more and more suppressed the individual. Grabo says that the history of democracy here is the story of a dream rather than an accomplishment. Such views, however, do not appear to be true representations of the case. They assume that the independence of the individual is more real or more realizable than it can be in any society. Is it not rather true that our apparent relinquishment of the idea of freedom is the reverse side, so to speak, of the persistence throughout our history of an impossible ideal of independence of the individual? It is individualism, rather than control, that has increased. The original freedom was a freedom such as comes from the willing participation of the individual in an order in which the control was immediate and vested in the whole. Control has become more definite and precise as the individual has become further removed from the direct influence of the social environment. We have developed relatively too much our original idea of independence, and from time to time elements have been added to our national life that represent an ideal of radical individualism, as for example Jacksonian democracy. Willingness to participate freely in the functions of society, and desire on the part of the individual to perform all his functions, have been relatively too slight. Even in politics it is not so much by the desire to participate in government that we have shown our democratic spirit as by the desire not to be individually governed. The old colonial spirit of coöperation and neighborliness with which we started has been (speaking relatively again) neglected. We have developed toward individualism and control rather than toward free association under leadership. We have lacked ability as individuals to see ourselves from the standpoint of the whole of society. Now, therefore, we are faced by the apparent still further decline of our principle of freedom, because we see that we may have efficiency only by increasing authority.
The question may fairly be asked whether we are not at a parting of the ways, when our democratic idea must be more clearly defined, and we must decide whether we shall change toward autocracy; or now, at the end of our stage of primitive democracy, enter upon a plane of higher democracy. Sumner says that always in a democracy it is a question what class shall rule, that the control in a democracy always tends to remain either in the hands of the upper class or the lower class, and that the great middle class, the seat of vast powers, is never organized to rule. Such conditions show, again, the effects of the individualism that prevails—national unity and the capacity for free organization without individual or special motives are wanting.
Cramb has stated a fundamental truth, from our point of view, in saying that hitherto democracy has been more interested in its rights than in its duties. It is very true that the subjective state of freedom has been the real attraction and appeal in our social life. It has brought to our shores vast numbers of people who would otherwise never have crossed the seas. Perhaps it has brought us too many, and those with too keen a love of freedom. At any rate, the question is now whether as a people we shall be able to take a more advanced view of the individual, a more functional view, so to speak, a new and enlarged conception of the meaning and place of the individual man in society. Democracy, in a word, must henceforth, certainly if it is to be a world state or order and not a condition of world-wide anarchy, go beyond the negative idea of freedom, justice and equality, to a more positive idea of service, in which we think of individuals as having more complex, more free and more internal relations among themselves.
In this idea of democracy, freedom is seen to mean first of all freedom to perform all the functions which belong to an individual as a part of a highly organized society. It does not include, however, freedom not to perform these functions. It is freedom to lead a normal life, in a word, not freedom to lead an abnormal life. Whether, in this democracy, the performance of these functions will be more or less under compulsion, whether the individual will voluntarily surrender certain rights assumed to be inherent in the principle of freedom, or whether these rights will be taken away by the show of force on the part of authority, seems to depend now mainly upon two things: whether in this society superior leadership will have an opportunity and be strong enough to exert deep influence upon the people; and whether, in general, such an educational program can be carried on as will make men susceptible to such leadership, capable of judging its values and able also to organize freely for the accomplishment of the purpose and functions of the social life. In such a democratic society as this, it is plain, the evils of individualism and also the evils of control will tend to disappear. Perfect identity of individual and social will we should not expect to be attained anywhere.
The evils of our present democratic society—the individualism, party politics and class rule—appear in sharp relief when we compare existing institutions and the present spirit with what is required in a true democracy. The old idea that the will of the majority must prevail is seen to be inadequate, if we mean by will of the majority the average or the sum of the desires and opinions of the majority. These do not necessarily represent the good, and indeed under existing conditions, they cannot. We want the will of the superior man to prevail, but to prevail not by force, but by the power of influence. The politicians talk about the soundness of the instincts of the people Something more than instinct is wanted in a democracy. Instincts are not progressive. Individualism, the pleasure of the moment, and mediocrity are represented too much by instincts and in every expression of the mere will of the majority. People in the mass are governed too much by impulse. Conduct and purpose are too discontinuous and fragmentary; or perhaps we had better say that the stimuli of the moment are too likely to control conduct. Whereas social life under the influence of the highest type of leadership is governed by more complex states of consciousness, by moods, which are more original and creative, and in which desires and impulses are no longer the controlling factors in conduct.
This view of democracy shows that democracy is something still to come. It is not an achieved social order or a well-founded doctrine that must merely be exploited and spread abroad over the world. Democracy is experimental civilization. We do not know whether it represents the ultimate good in government and society or not, and whether it is destined to continue and to prevail. That will depend, we suppose, upon what we make it. We have our evidences of history, but after all democracy is still based upon assumptions. It is an experimental order, we say, in which we try to realize many desires and to harmonize many functions. The final justification of democracy must be in the far future. It must be judged then by its fruits, rather than by rationally testing the validity of its principle. Thus far it is a working hypothesis.
The precise form which government in a democracy ought to take is, from our present point of view, of secondary importance. Democracy is a spirit, an idea, a social quality, first of all. A monarchial government, though it might be otherwise out of date, might be entirely democratic in spirit; and republics, we know, may be anything but democratic. Where control is in the hands of the people and not of a class, but of the people subject to the best leadership—a leadership that is based upon influence rather than upon any excess of authority or show of force, there is democracy, and of this, of course, the ballot itself is by no means the only test. But where thus far shall we find any democratic society that is so sound that it can offer itself as a model to the rest of the world?
Most of the political questions of the day appear to be relative and conditioned questions. The question of governmental control of industry is an example. This seems to be a question of expediency, and to be conditional upon local needs and the status of particular governments. It is certainly no fundamental question of the social order. Those who make socialism a supreme and universal principle also appear to be too radical. Sellars says that socialism is a democratic movement, the purpose of which is to secure an economic organization of society that will give a maximum of justice, liberty and efficiency. Drake, in "Democracy Made Safe," says that socialism implies equality everywhere; more than that, it means social, political, economic and legal equality throughout the earth. One cannot but feel that these enthusiastic writers are making the mistake of undertaking to do by political mutation, so to speak, that which can be accomplished, we may suppose, only by a slow process of experimentation in government, and the still slower but more certain method of education, in which all people are trained in fundamental social relations. Radical and venturesome change in so great and complex an organism as a great nation is now dangerous, because only a part of the conditions can be taken into account, and the result, therefore, must be conjectural.
Radical socialism that threatens to throw political power into the hands of a political class, or of any social or economic class, bolshevism which Dillon (speaking of Russia especially) says is doomed to failure because of its sheer economic impossibility, any plan which tends to concentrate authority in any class is threatening to our future. The democratic spirit must hold fast against the rising tide from the lower classes, just as it has been obliged to contend against autocracy. Democracy has on one side to assimilate aristocracy, and not overturn it. So it resists the rise of the proletariat, not to turn this force back, even if this were possible, but to control it. It is precisely because of the deep movement of the people—the world revelation and the world revolution, as Weyl calls it—that we must make all political institutions flexible and adjustible, and also throw into the balance all the powers of education and thus save democracy from itself.
These dangers to democracy are not to be taken too lightly. Democracy indeed faces two dangers. Hobson in "Democracy After the War" has stated one of them. He says that the war will result in no easy victory for democracy, for the system of caste and bureaucracy is very likely to become fixed. Democracy therefore must be worked for, and to that end there must be a union of all types of reformers. We must play off the special interests against one another, says Hobson, work for industrial democracy, educate the people. On the other hand there is that danger from the rising of the masses which Weyl heralds. This war underneath and after the war is as Weyl sees it, the war of the poor and exploited against all the exploiters. These elements are at heart antagonistic to government. Democracy, if all this be true, is neither well defined as an idea nor well established in the world. An unjust and privileged class above and an unwise and uneducated class beneath threaten it. But the case seems by no means hopeless. Indeed the remedies and the way of escape seem in a general way plain. Political changes on one side and political education on the other must become, we should suppose, the order of the day.
Of the actual political changes impending and those that ought to be advocated this is not the place to speak, except to say that they must by their nature be tentative and experimental. The radical mind is to-day one of the most dangerous elements in society, just because all the world over men are very ready to be influenced and are eager for change and are uncritical. Cleveland in an essay entitled Can Democracy be Efficient? exhibits a type of thinking about political questions that ought to appeal to all practical thinkers. It is his method rather than, in this connection, his conclusions that one should notice. Cleveland would study all countries with reference to the efficiency of their governments in fulfilling what seem to him to be the proper and essential functions of a government, working under our present conditions. Germany, France, England and America, he observes, have all adopted different ways of conducting the work of government. These essentials of government he reduces to five: 1) Strong executive leadership; 2) a well disciplined line organization; 3) a highly specialized staff organization; 4) adequate facilities for inquiry, criticism, and publicity by a responsible personnel independent of the executive; 5) means of effective control in the hands of the people and their representatives. Of these principles, Germany used only the first three, England left out the second and the third, France used all (but was late in seeing the need), America has left out all of them.
This is the type of thought, we suggest, that seems best adapted to meet present requirements for a practical theory of government. Analysis of the functions of government, critical examination of the needs of the present time, and a plan of modifying what already exists, rather than of making revolutionary changes, seem to be the right direction of progress.
If the source of power in the future is to be vested in the people, the education of the people with reference to their function as rulers will naturally be one of the most vital and permanent of the requirements of the social life. Dickinson says that the time has gone by for entrusting the destinies of nations to the wisdom of experts. If this be true, and popular opinion is to supersede the wisdom of the experts, if the people are really to have power, and be competent critics of good government, or merely to become good material in the hands of constructive statesmanship, education must include or be essentially political education. The people must be educated for democracy, but also made competent to create democracy.
Of course everything we do in the school, the intention of the school to represent what is best in civilization, and to be a center in which creative forces come together has some reference to education for the democratic life, but there are also more definite and more specifically political things to be taught. And yet, if what we have said before has any truth in it, it seems certain that no educational policy at the present time can include the teaching of specific political doctrines, or try to prejudice the minds of children or the people to any political creed. We are in a position in regard to political teaching very similar to that in which we stand about religion: we must not teach creed, but we may and must teach natural religion. We cannot teach politics as such, but we must teach natural democracy, or at least the fundamental social habits and functions.
There are two essential educational problems of democracy that have especial reference to the political aspects of it. The first is to teach universally in as practical a manner as possible the materials out of which political wisdom may be derived. We maintain that the lack of political education and experience is one of the most serious defects of the German people. These people are at first submissive to an extraordinary degree and then they become dangerously revolutionary. The lack of political competence is shown in both cases. We wish, of course, neither of these excesses in our own country. And yet we do have to cope at the present time with both a tendency to fanaticism, radicalism and intense partisanship, and with indifference and ignorance of the nature and purpose of our institutions and government. Both the indifference and the partisanship play into the hands of party politics, and no advantages gained by the balance of parties in opposition to one another can compensate for the loss of energy and the encouragement of inefficient service the system fosters.
To help offset these tendencies it must be possible to give to all youths, and of course we mean both sexes, through our educational system and otherwise an education in politics, and besides this some practical experience in public service in institutions and in organizations. This is a vital spot in education in a democracy; we have tried too much to reform or make progress in government from within the political system itself, and too little by going back to the ultimate sources of social life and educating the people as a whole with reference to playing their part in political life.
The work of education in the field of politics is not merely to give information, but to establish what we may best call morale. We need an attitude and spirit throughout the public life of the nation in which there shall be constantly displayed the same qualities which we see so quickly coming to light in time of war. Enthusiasm, seriousness of purpose, devotion of the individual to common purpose are the essential elements of this war spirit. To produce and sustain this in the activities of peace is an educational problem. The first task is presumably to establish the causes and the organizations through which they may be served, but political education itself consists largely in the production of public spirit. The correction of evils in the political system is of course but a small part of the work of political reform. Dowd says that it is the low personal idealism of mankind that creates our multitudinous social problems and strews the path of history with wreck and ruin. That is of course true. Raising the quality of the personal idealism of the people is the real work of political education. Political thought which is most concerned as it is now with securing advantage for party, class and individual must be superseded by a wider interest in government as a means of aiding the performance of the functions of the individual and the group. It is the purpose to be accomplished by government, not its form, and certainly not the interest of the few or of any class that must be emphasized, until partisan politics no longer dominates our political life. To accomplish this change means, we say, raising the quality of the personal idealism of the people. This may seem an ideal and impossible task, but we have some of our experiences of the war at least to give us encouragement.
If we wish to consider details, we may notice that in an educational process having such ends as we have suggested, the teaching of civics, for example, becomes more functional, the teaching of what an individual in a community and what all governments do, rather than analyzing the structure of government. Such civics teaches the meaning of individuals as having functions which are represented and fulfilled in the institutions and organizations of society, including every department of government. It is not the intention to enter here into the special problems in regard to the content and method of teaching civics in the schools, although it is evident that this subject must have an increased place in the future. We already see advances both in the purpose and the plan of civics teaching and in the literature prepared for the schools. Dunn, for example, makes fundamental in all the teaching of civics the question, What are the common interests which people in communities are seeking? Tufts also tries to deal with the fundamental ideas upon which government is based.
Presentation of facts is surely a necessary part of all education, for it is an indispensable means of giving the content of experience upon which wisdom as a selective appreciation of experience is based. But erudition is only a part of education. We must hold firmly now to the principle which is indeed an aspect of the democratic ideal itself, that participation is also a necessary part of education. Institutions become real to the child through the child's association with them in some active way. We shall probably see the idea of free organization carried far, and in every organization and every institution, private and public, there must, we believe, be some place for the services and the interest of all. Let us take the position that there is nothing in government, in any of its branches, that is outside the sphere of the practical life of the individual and we shall have the right point of view even for the work of the school room. Government, in a word, is not a specialization of function in which the few are involved, but it is a generic function, the means, we assert, of carrying to completion all the projects of individuals in all their social relations. Therefore all, not merely those who just now are included among voters, but all women and children, must have a part in the general education for democracy and also have a part in some way in the institutions of government. From first to last government must be thought of and understood in terms of what it does, as a phase of the total social life of the nation, not as something outside the social order. Government is a collective activity. It is as an aspect of the day's work of the nation, that government must be impressed upon all—both legal citizens and citizens in the making.
The second phase of the educational problem in regard to government is perhaps after all only the first in another form. If we hope to have a democratic civilization in any real sense anywhere, we must secure efficiency and superiority both in individual and in social conduct, not mainly by the exertion of authority (except as a temporary make-shift) but by making all the people of a nation susceptible to the influences of the best life and thought the nation contains. This means the voluntary and intentional development of leadership. This we have spoken of as a general need; it is also a phase of political education. The genius, the leader, must of course himself be produced in part by education. We must have such conditions as shall allow natural leadership to come to the surface, and every spark of genius must be carefully nourished. But there must be also opportunity for what the genius produces to work its effect upon all, as a stimulating and directing force, in turn arousing the creative activities of the people. Democracy seems to be wholly dependent upon what seems now the accident of genius for raising it above the mediocrity of the average, or even preventing a decline in its civilization. It is this idea of the relation of the best to the average that James evidently thought to be the fundamental point in education. Education consists in his view in the development of ability to recognize the good in every department of life, the ability to recognize all sham and inferiority and the habit of responding to and choosing the best. Applied to the problems of government, this means such a method of educating the young as will make all susceptible to and appreciative of the superior qualities of mind and character that may be exhibited in public life. Such responsiveness being itself creative and a powerful factor in producing and bringing to the front the superior man, it must be regarded as one of the most necessary and fundamental qualities of a democracy.
We might single out the teaching of history and biography as the best means of educating the appreciative powers in regard to values in human life, and the best means of facilitating the emergence of the best individuals and the best principles, and of making their influence powerful, but after all it is something more than any or all teaching that is required. Most fundamentally, no one can refuse to admit it is such an organization of the whole educational situation as will allow, or rather cause and encourage, precisely the total of the good and progressive life of the world to play upon the mood and the spirit of the school. Assuredly the school is not to-day so fortunately situated. It is too much removed from some influences and far too closely joined to others. Much of the good of society is walled out from the school by barriers that arise in politics, City ways, all the bad life of the streets, the trivial interests of the day, affect the school too much. We are greatly at fault in all this, because we do not take education as yet seriously enough. There must be now a decision. Either the school must be content to remain what it is now, a local institution performing a very limited service, or it must arise to quite new heights, and mean far more as a civilizing and creative force than it has thus far. The school must occupy more hours of the day and more days in the year. It must claim the child more completely. It must extend its influences further, and draw its life from a deeper soil. We certainly shall never allow the school to become a great evil in society, but it is almost as bad morally to leave it but a feeble good. Let no one speak any longer of good schools. Our schools were good for yesterday, perhaps. But of to-morrow's needs they are not yet even fully aware. The school has yet to learn with certainty to lay hold upon the fundamental things in the nature of the child, and to appreciate the child's real and greatest needs. Continuity and creativeness are still for the most part beyond the powers of the school.
But perhaps after all we are asking the impossible. Perhaps the forces needed cannot be brought to bear upon the child. Perhaps conditions are too unfavorable, and an educational situation cannot be devised that will be greatly superior to what we have already. Perhaps the time is too short. Perhaps worst of all the nature of the child himself is too trivial and unpromising. But if we believe this, we certainly at the same time conclude that democracy is a failure and is not in any true sense possible at all. Democracy cannot be created by forces from without, for this would be indeed a negation of its nature. Democracy is self-creative. It grows from within. But how can it grow from within unless the new life which enters into it be creative; and how can this life be creative and progressive unless it be so lived that it shall absorb all the good the old life has in it, and also be inspired to go beyond it in every possible way? Unless democracy is merely a product and natural direction of growth in society, democracy and education are not unrelated to one another. If democracy is a good that can be obtained only by conscious effort, we may suppose that one of the greatest factors in producing it will be education.
CHAPTER VIII[ToC]
INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION
We have as yet no deep philosophy of industry. For better or for worse work came into the world as a result of desire. Men did not desire work, but they desired that which could be obtained only by work. These desires multiplied and the modern industrial world is the result. When material objects alone were desired, the motive of work was relatively simple; but as we pass from the desire for goods to the desire for wealth, and to the desire for wealth as a means of gaining power and prestige, the industrial movement becomes more complex. We go on and on, producing ever greater wealth and generating more and more power, and we do this we say with no deep purpose and with no philosophy of life. For the justification of it all, if it be under our control at all, we can only say that through industry we realize an abundant and enriched life.
The good and evil of work put upon us some of the most perplexing of our problems. Industry, we say, is the way to the rich and the abundant life. It makes life more complex. The relations of life are multiplied by it. It represents and it achieves man's conquest over nature. It puts force into his hands. It has its ideal side and its romance. It gives scope to pure motives of creativeness. But the industrial life has also its dark side. It has created the city with all its good and its evil. It has created great nations, but see what the added populations consist of. It brings on the old age of nations. It stands for struggle that is often fruitless and unproductive. It engenders moods and arouses interests and powers that lead to wars and revolutions. It fosters sordid interests, and has made almost universal the necessity of an excess of toil in order barely to live. The great majority of workers do not live in their work, because they produce nothing that is in itself satisfying. The spirit remains outside their daily life. Life is divided into a period of toil without deep interest and motive, and play which may be only a narcotic to kill the sense of monotony and fatigue. Individuals have specialized at the expense of a whole life. Men have been exploited and used like material things. Bergson says that by industry man has increased his physical capacities, but now it is likely that his soul will become mechanized rather than that his soul will become great like his new body. Industry, worst of all, has become an end in itself, rather than a means to higher ends. To live, on the one hand, to gain wealth on the other, men give all there is in them to toil.
We saw all this before the war, but one important result of the war has been that we now see that this industrial life which has so rapidly created new institutions, and which grips the world almost like a physical law, is not in all its ways so fixed and inevitable as we had perhaps thought. In regard to the industrial life, more than in any other department of life, we see new and radical thought, and the possibility of conscious effects, although it must be admitted that some of the proposed changes may well cause apprehension.
We had hoped, even before the war, to see industry and art become gradually more closely related, and to see industry become more socialized. Its physical hardships were to some extent already being ameliorated. We hoped to separate the great industrial interests from politics, and to curb the powers industry has that make it a trouble producer in the world. But now, after the war, we see possibilities of more fundamental changes in the industrial order than these improvements implied. Our thoughts now touch upon the whole theory of the industrial life. We see that by a coördinated effort and common understanding which it is no longer chimerical to hope for, the conditions of the industrial life might be very different. In the first place we are convinced that the world could produce vastly more and could use its products with far greater economy than now. We see that much greater return for less labor could be gained. Even the desires themselves upon which many of the evils of industrialism are based have shown themselves to be controllable. It is no longer idle to believe that the restraint and coöperation necessary to eliminate most of the poverty from the world are possible to be attained. The isolation of the individual worker, which has made his struggle so hard, seems about to be relieved to some extent at least. We even hope for permanently better relations between the capitalist and the laborer, and to see some of the evils of competition, even the industrial competition among nations, lessened.
Although the interest here is in the relations of industry to education, rather than in the practical changes pending in the industrial world, we must think of the two as related. Changes that take place in political and industrial conditions will be likely to be temporary and ineffectual unless they are supported by changes in the field of education. The reformer and the educator must work together.
Noyes says that the most fundamental change that has occurred during the war has been the world-wide assertion of public control of industry by the government. Perkins says that centralization is the order of the day, and that the government now properly takes on many functions that once belonged to the states, and that this process of centralization naturally extends to international relations. Smith speaks of the growing interdependence of government and industry which will especially give security to investment in productive enterprises. Hesse says that there must be national team work in all industries, and that in a democracy everything that autocracy can accomplish must be repeated, but upon a basis of voluntary coöperation. In France it has been proposed by Alfassa that there shall be established a department of national economy, to bring about a closer coöperation than there has been in the past among private interests, and to centralize industry. Wehle thinks that in America, even before the war, industrial concentration was leading to political concentration and that the states were losing their relative political importance. The grappling of states individually with large industrial problems is now, he says, at an end. Dillon has expressed the view that England ought to adopt industrial compulsion. Clementel, the French minister of commerce, thinks France ought to substitute for liberty without restraint in the industrial field, liberty organized and restricted.
There can be no doubt that the world is thoroughly awake to the need of more effectual coöperation in industry, and it is natural that the first thoughts should turn to government control as the simplest and readiest method of securing it. When we examine these suggestions about the coördination and centralization of industries it becomes evident that most writers have been strongly influenced by Germany's remarkable success, both in peace and war, under the system of governmental control of industries. The manner in which the German government turned all the country into one great industrial plant has appealed to the imagination, and many writers see in centralization under the control of government the means of curing most of the evils of industrialism. There are many proposals, all the way from the plan to introduce cabinet ministers with limited power to have oversight over industry to the total abolishment of the capitalistic system and all the rights of property. Many of course, while still believing in concentration and coöperation, cling to the system of private and individual ownership, and believe that the best results will be obtained in the end without any radical change in the relations between government and industry, and without resorting to any socialistic reform.
Another phase of the problem of industry in which we may expect to see great changes in the future concerns the status of labor and its relation to capital. The rising of the laboring class is certainly the greatest internal result of the war. Here again the question is whether the changes will take place by coöperation or by compulsion—either on the part of government or of some organized class. Will labor and capital continue to be antagonistic, or will they find common interest; or will the only solution be again some radical change involving change of government or abrogation entirely of our present system of ownership? That the position of labor has become stronger as a result of the war no one can doubt. Perkins says we are just entering upon a period of copartnership, when the tool-user will be part tool-owner, and capital and labor will share more equally in the profits. Increase in wages will not be the remedy, but only profit sharing. Others think the same; they see that the laborer's discontent is not all a protest against his hard physical conditions. He wants more social equality, more equality of status in the industrial world. He objects not so much to what the capitalist has as to what he is.
There has no more illuminating document come out of the war than the report on reconstruction made by a subcommittee of the British Labor Party. This report calls for a universal minimum wage; complete state insurance of the workers against unemployment; democratic control of industries; thorough participation by the workers in such control on the basis of common ownership of the means of production; equitable sharing of the proceeds by all who engage in production; state ownership of the nation's land; immediate nationalization of railroads, mines, electric power, canals, harbors, roads and telegraph; continued governmental control of shipping, woolen, leather, clothing, boots and shoes, milling, baking, butchering, and other industries; a system of taxation on incomes to pay off the national debt, without affecting the living of those who labor.
Although such a document as this could hardly up to the present time have been produced by American workmen, since here political doctrines of socialism have never obtained a strong hold upon the laboring classes, in England these radical demands are nothing surprising. They have the support at many points of so keen a thinker as Russell. Russell does not, it is true, believe that Marxian socialism is the solution of the problem of capital and labor, but he does believe in the state ownership of all land, that the state therefore should be the primary recipient of all rents, that a trade or industry must be recognized as a unity for the purposes of government, with some kind of home rule such as syndicalism aims at securing. Industrial democracy, as planned in the coöperative movement, or some form of syndicalism, appears to him to be the most promising line of advance.
That such demands and proposals as these are significant signs of the times can hardly be doubted. That from now the status of the workman will be changed and changed in directions more satisfactory to the workman we may accept as one of the chief results of the war. Politically the laborer is prepared to assert his independence. Both his social and his industrial status are likely to be improved. He will be better safeguarded against unemployment. Wages in the old form and the old tradition that the worker has no contract with his employer will, in all probability, be less generally acceptable. Work, if these new conditions are realized, will mean more to the worker. His own interests and the purposes of his work will be more harmoniously related. The individual made more secure in his work, protected more by law and participating more in the affairs of business and government, will have a sense of playing a more dignified part in the social economy. Conceal as we may the inferiority of the laborer's position under the pretenses of democracy and liberty and equality, this inferiority of position exists and the inequality that prevails in democratic society is certainly one of the fertile sources of evil in the world to-day. We have still to see to what extent the workman, his lot ameliorated in many ways, and his position changed, will himself become a new and different man, and thus make the world itself a different place in which to live. All that is thus suggested we have a right at least to hope for now. If it is also worked for with intelligence and good will, why should it not come to pass?
The third idea which is beginning to make great changes in the whole field of the industrial life and throughout all the practical life is the idea of economy. This means that in many ways questions of the values, the purposes, and the ways and means of what is done in the world are being sharply examined. Labor has been uncritical of its purposes, and lavish and wasteful of its energies, however watchful it may have been of its rights. Production has been governed too much by desire, too little by careful consideration of need. Distribution has been carelessly conducted, allowing large losses of time and material. Consumption has been quite as careless as the rest, and has been thoroughly selfish as well. The war has changed many of our ideas. Thrift has become a word with a new meaning. We see what industry at its worst might do in the world, and on the other hand what wise control of all the motives and processes that enter into labor and all the economic life might accomplish.
Some of these changes are coming from readjustment in the coördination of industrial processes themselves. We hear much of standardization and stabilization. An economic technique and the control of fluctuating conditions might do much to increase the efficiency of industry in every way. This idea of the application of scientific procedure to life we see extending to the control of the energies of the human factor. We have already spoken of guarantees that affect the spirit and the morale of labor. We hear of the prevention of unemployment, the removal of the bugbear of "losing the job." Most advance of all is being made in the application of the principles of mental and physical hygiene and of scientific management to the actual details of movement and the whole process of expenditure of energy, counting costs in terms of time and energy, in much the same way as all the items of value that enter into production are estimated. Some writers, for example Gilbreth, see in this movement a great advance. It is a way of giving equal opportunity to all. Economy becomes a factor in freedom, since it helps to eliminate the drudgery and depression of toil.
Plainly, then, economy or thrift has a much wider meaning than mere saving. It is many-sided, and the study of economy in the use of essentials is but a part of it. The war has, of course, emphasized this, and this idea of saving has served the purpose of awakening an interest in the whole theory and purpose of work. There is a better understanding of values, and of the difference between the essential and the unessential, and we see that not all labor that commands pay is useful labor. Many things that the public knew but little about before are becoming better understood. Industry, finance, business, taxes, transportation, have all to some extent become popular subjects. The present high cost of living raises questions in the theory of the economic aspect of life that have compelled the attention of the public. The theory of money, interest, savings, foreign investments, the place of gold in the world's economy is carried a step further and is popularly more extended. We hear all sorts of proposals about the production, the distribution and the consumption of goods, which are intended to make living easier and less expensive. Increased production of staples and more direct route from producer to consumer are urged upon all, and the economists have many suggestions for increasing our prosperity: while financiers try to direct to the best purpose our investments at home and abroad. Fisher attacks the whole theory of costs at what he believes its root, suggesting a plan of "stabilizing the dollar itself" by using the index numbers of standard articles as units of value, and regulating the weight of gold in the dollar according to the fluctuations of these. All these plans, hasty and narrowly conceived as many of them seem to be, are of interest and have value, for they indicate a serious determination to solve the fundamental problems of the practical life.
Any educational theory that could hope to deal adequately with the needs and the impending changes in the industrial situation of to-day must take into consideration the basic facts both of the individual and the social life. Teaching of industry and all attempts to teach vocation must be seen by all now to be but a small part of education with reference to the industrial life. We must do much more fundamental things than these. We must plan far ahead and seek to lay a firm foundation for the idea of coöperation which appears to be the leading thought of industrialism to-day. Every individual, we should say, ought to be educated in the fundamentals of labor, so that he may understand for himself what labor means. Finally the idea of thrift in all its implications must be made a part of the educational program. All this may seem too ideal and impracticable to think of in connection with industrial education, but if we consider industry and industrialism as the center of our whole civilization, as it appears to be now, what less ideal educational foundation will be sufficient as preparation for and control of the industrial life? No teaching of trades, we assert, will be enough. We shall need to apply, in industrial education or in an educational plan that takes industry into account, all the methods of teaching: those that employ industry itself, but also art, erudition, and play.
It is first with industrialism as a world condition that education is concerned. Industrialism has been, as all must recognize, too individualistic. It has motives and moods and products, and it grows in social conditions, that are full of danger for society. Industrialism lacks a soul, as Bergson would say. Yet it is a movement that sweeps on with almost irresistible force. Its most characteristic product is not what it turns out in shops, but city life itself. Many would agree with Russell in saying that all the great cities are centers of deterioration in the life of their nations. Education, then, must undertake to control industrialism. This does not mean, necessarily, that it must try to check it, but that the motives in individual and social life that produce industrialism must in some way be under the control of educational forces.
First of all it seems certain that no political arrangement, and no change taking place entirely within the industrial system itself, and no simple and direct educational procedure will give us control over the forces of industrialism. It is mainly by preventing the city spirit or mood from developing too fast and thus engulfing the children of the nation that we can introduce a conscious factor strong enough to hold industrial development within bounds. This means, we must earnestly demand, turning back the flow of life from country to city by educating all children in the environment of the country. This would have a double effect upon the industrialism of the day. It would break up the present inevitable inheritance by the city child of all the ideals and moods of the city, and it would give opportunity for training in the activities that are basic to all industry, which alone, in our view, can give to industry a solid and normal foundation. By such effects, in such a general way, upon the children of an industrial nation, we might reasonably hope to prevent the evil effects upon our national life from the fatigue, the routine, and the deadening of the spirit which even under improved conditions cannot be overcome in an industrial life that is left to its monotonous grind and its morbid excitements and exaggerations.
Another work that education must in the end do for the industrial life is to infuse into it an ideal and a purpose. Industry is too individualistic, we say. It works for a living, for power, from necessity. It lacks through and through as yet the spirit of free and intelligent coöperation for common and remote ends. Coöperation in the industrial world, we have seen reason to believe, is likely to be the great word of the future. It is precisely the work of education to make the future of industry an expression of free activity, to make it democratic, and to such an extent, we might hope, that socialism, whether as a governmental interference or as a class system, would not be necessary—or possible. In trying to give industrialism an ideal, we must presumably go back to elemental mental processes. We must, in the beginning, present the world's work dramatically to the child. We must give work interest, and it is certainly one of the chief purposes of that nondescript subject we call geography thus to give the child a deep appreciation of the world as a world of men and women engaged in work. We must show industry as a world-wide purpose, not as something essentially individual and competitive. We must show it as an adventure on the part of man in which he goes forth to seek conquest over the physical world; we must think of it as a means to an end, of fulfilling purposes not all of which perhaps can as yet be foreseen, but which certainly can be no mere satisfaction of the individual's desires of the day. This is what we mean by putting a soul into industry. Soul means purpose—purpose which includes more than the desires of the individual, and in which the interests of the world as a whole are involved. Industry that has thus a purpose, and that is imbued with a spirit of freedom takes its place among the psychic forces and becomes a part of the mechanism of mental evolution. It is this idealism of industry, toward the production of which we must turn every educational resource, that must offset its materialism. This is, in part, the work of the æsthetic experiences, the dramatic presentation of the day's work to the child; but art can of course work only upon the soil of experience; the child must see the world teeming with human activity, but he must observe it in a detached way, rather than as a participant in its realism and its dull and its unwholesome moods. Then we shall have a content upon which the æsthetic motives can work. In this idealized industrial experience, we try to make visible the real motives which in the future must dominate the world's work.
All this may seem too general and too ideal, but if we do not begin with broad plans, and if we do not take a far look ahead, we shall fail now at a vital point of the social development of man. The result at which we aim is the socialisation of the motives of industry. We make work voluntary by bringing into it persuasively and insidiously deep motives and interests which represent social purposes and ideals. Given these motives and the beginning of a change from the relatively more individualistic to the relatively more social spirit in industry, the actual means of coöperation would not be far to seek. Work would become by its own inner development under such conditions, something different from an unwilling service of the individual, a compulsory service to family or state. Everything we can do to give to children and to all workers an intelligent appreciation of the social meaning and purpose of work is both industrial training and an education in basic social relations. This socialization of the moods of work and the founding of them upon the necessary experiences, is as important as anything education is at the present time called upon to do. Given this foundation, precisely the form industrial education, in the ordinary sense, shall take, seems to be of secondary importance.
Turning now to another phase of the industrial problem on its educational side, one cannot escape the conviction that the rising tide of the powers of labor presents urgent problems to the educator. The common man, as we call him, is to take a greater part in the affairs of business and state, and the education of the common man with reference to the especial capacity, as worker, in which he seeks this new position, becomes highly important. This education of the people with specific reference to work is of course something more than teaching vocation. Education, indeed, with any explicit attention to labor itself, whether in its industrial or its political implications, is but a part of the educational problem. All education for the democratic life is involved in it. The whole problem of specialization comes up, and indeed all questions of social education in one form or another.
Specialization, in particular, can no longer be treated with the indifference that has so far characterized our industrial education. The ideal of fitting the boy for work is as naïve in one way as that of our generalized education is in another. If the war has taught us anything beyond a doubt, it is that specialization must never be such a differentiation as shall infringe upon the common ground of human nature. We must take this into consideration in all our vocational training. We must preserve an identity in all the fundamental experiences. In a democracy this appears to be wholly necessary, and to outweigh all considerations of efficiency. The individual must be kept whole and generic, so that each individual is an epitome, so to speak, of the virtues and the ideals of the nation. The humanity of the man must be first, and his special function secondary. This does not imply that we must not give to all children individual and vocational training. All must be directed towards life work. We may even carry vocational training further than it has been extended anywhere as yet, but we must see that industry occupies the right place in the school, and in all educational processes. It is neither the whole method and purpose of the school, nor something simply added to the curriculum. It is a phase of the life of the school, both in its active and its receptive states. The child must live in an atmosphere in which both present and future usefulness are assumed and provided for. The idea of a life of work must be made early an accepted plan of the child, and it must be one of the entirely general tasks of the school to see that the tendency of the child in the school is toward occupation. Occupation must in fact be made to grow naturally out of the life the child leads in the school.
All those disharmonies in our industrial countries such as the prevalent discord between working and capitalistic classes seem, we have said, to be social rather than economic in nature. Social education, then, is the main cure for them, if we wish to attack them at their root. The motives of pride and the sense of inferiority have to be dealt with in a practical manner. We sometimes quite overlook the importance of habitual moods or states of feeling in society and in the school. These moods are powers which motivate conduct. Any form of education in which the poorer and less favored are given an opportunity to acquire the experiences, and through these the moods, that especially distinguish the more favored class, strikes at the general disparity in society which takes form in such antagonisms as that between capital and labor. It is not difference in degree but difference in kind of experience that appears to separate the classes from one another. The difference seems to lie in those parts of life which are sometimes believed to be the unessentials and which indeed our whole educational policy assumes apparently to be trivial. The fundamental differences between the poor and the rich, the favored and the common people, is in the sphere of the æsthetic. Distinction of manner and an environment rich in æsthetic qualities are the main advantages of the few, as compared with the many. Social experience is what is most needed by the many, but of course this experience can never be gained by making the educational institutions merely democratic, and especially social experience cannot be gained in a school in which all situations are studiously avoided in which really significant social relations are likely to be experienced. We gain no social experience in the naïve and the highly special activities of the school which for the most part is arranged in such a way as to exclude organized social relations. This is a process in which such leveling as there is tends to be downward, whereas what we need is for all the truly aristocratic elements in our national life to have an opportunity to propagate themselves and to extend to the many. Leaving aside the need of a differently organized social life in the school, we might say that there is hardly a greater need in democratic countries now than that of recruiting the rank and file of teachers from a socially superior class. These socially favored individuals have given themselves loyally to the service of country in a time of war, for two if no more of their deepest motives have been appealed to—the dramatic interest and the spirit of noblesse oblige. There are duties in times of peace which are quite as important, but which as yet appeal to no strong motive, and have not even been presented in the form of obligation. Once these common tasks were made to appear a part of the fulfillment of duty to country, the way to finding deep satisfaction in them might be opened. Social and dramatic elements would be introduced as a matter of course.
Another need throughout our whole effort to educate all in and for a life of work, one which has appealed to many writers in recent years, is the need of making all the experience of work more creative or more free and animated or joyous in mood. This means, again, that in all industrial education the mood must be social and the form æsthetic or dramatic. Social values must be felt through social activity, and the sense of worth in labor and of value of the product which is felt in the social mood must be enhanced by the dramatic form of the activity and the artistic quality of the product. This is also the condition for creative activity. Some writers apparently now see in this need of making the activity of all those who work more creative, more free and more joyous the crucial problem of education and of social adjustment. This is Russell's constant theme. Helen Marot in "Creative Industry" says that our problem is to develop an industrial system that shall stimulate and satisfy the native impulse for creative production. It is difficult to see how, by any other educational process than one which is essentially æsthetic and social, we can make much headway toward changing the conception of work from the now prevalent one of a means of making a living, more or less under compulsion, to that of a voluntary social act done both for its utility from the standpoint of the individual and also because of its social value, and performed to some extent, however humble the work, in the spirit of the creative artist.
For the adult generation that now works (and for how many generations to come we do not know), we cannot hope to make ideal conditions. Work will still be work, with its evil implications, as toil without complete inner satisfaction, and without sufficiently free motives. But the direction in which practical changes should be made seems clear. There must still be a lessening of the hours of routine labor, until there are perhaps no longer more than six or five devoted to vocation. The remainder of life is not for idleness but must be in part productive or the lessened hours of routine will not be possible. There must be possibility of both practical and recreational activities outside the regular day's work, as well as for educational work, all of these in part at least publicly provided for. This activity may serve many purposes and accomplish a variety of results. As educational it ought to open up new opportunities; it must fulfill the desire for creative activity; it must be a socializing power; it must lead to an appreciation of the nature and value of skill and efficiency; it must introduce all to the higher world of art and the intellectual life. Above all it must impress deeply the truth that growth in the normal life is never ended.
The third phase of industrial education which is to be emphasized now is the teaching of what we have called thrift. This idea of thrift, for pedagogical purposes, is equivalent to the broad principle that purposes in this world are achieved by the expenditure of force—by the control of energies which are not unlimited in amount as now controlled and which are subject to definite laws. Since objects which are to be secured by the expenditure of energy differ in value it is a part of this education in thrift, indeed an important and necessary part, to give to all such knowledge and powers of appreciation as will enable them to recognize that which is essential, and to give the essential and the unessential their proper places in the whole economy of life.
It will never be right of course to inspire a parsimonious spirit in regard either to goods or to energies. Life itself and all its energies must be given freely; material goods must not be evaluated too minutely. The miserly life is not what we wish to teach. Still there is a wise attitude toward all material things and toward all values which recognizes goods as means to ends, which places true values high and demands economy in the use of all things that must be conserved in order to attain them.
It must be a part of the work of physiology, which thus branches out into psychology, to teach to all the efficient use of human energies. These energies are the precious things in the world; they must be valued and respected as the source of all efficiency. The idea of economy of movement, from this standpoint, has an important place in all motor or industrial or manual training. Processes must be regarded as definite series of acts in which we may approach perfection. Technique in motor operations is not to be regarded lightly as a mere finish applied to useful acts. It is the expression of an ideal of efficiency and economy. Children recognize the value of technique in games; its wider and more practical application needs to be impressed.
In the same way knowledge of the precise values and uses of material things ought to be imparted. The war has had the effect of showing all of us the values of materials and the relations of materials to one another. It has given us a sense of the great powers of natural wealth, and also of its limitations and the weak points that exist now in our economy. The war has proved to us how closely related the things we use lavishly and wastefully may be to the most ideal possessions. It has shown that the production, the distribution and the use of wealth of all kinds are parts of the accomplishment of the main purposes of life and that all these things belong to the sphere of duty; and that no individual can escape obligations in regard to economy.
Education, therefore, must lay foundations both for an understanding of economy and for the practice of it. First of all, every individual, we may assume, ought to have some experience in the production of the elementary forms of material goods, and in the conversion of them into higher values and in their conservation. We looked carefully to some of these activities as a war measure. It is hardly less necessary in times of peace. We should teach these things, not simply because the practice of them is educational, but because the practice of them is useful, and is a necessary service, on the part of every individual, to the world. Adding to the world's store of goods and consciousness of the need of doing this directly or indirectly should be regarded as a fundamental duty and habit. To establish both the habit and the sense of duty, we may suppose, a stage is necessary in which the individual's contribution shall be direct and tangible. Hence the value of those educational activities that deal with foods and their conservation.
On a little higher plane, and in a little different way we can apply the same thoughts to the whole cycle of material things. The distribution of wealth is of course in part a technical and a theoretical problem. It is also a practical and a general one. All at least ought to be judges of the waste that now goes on in the industrial life because the "middleman" has occupied such a place of vantage in the economic order. In teaching occupation and in all preparation for vocation ought we not to take this into consideration? Occupations that are purely distributive and which involve a great waste of human energies and of materials have been unduly emphasized, at least by default of more positive preparation, by the school. Because they are easy and untechnical and have a little elegance about them, in some cases, they fit in very well with the generality and bookishness and detachment from real life that the school sometimes represents.
The occupations that are more creative, both in the field of material things and of ideas, have, relatively speaking, been neglected. Inventiveness especially seems to be a quality that we have supposed to be a gift of the gods, and we have given but little attention to producing it, or even giving it an opportunity to display itself. Have we not gained from the war new impressions both about the powers of the human mind in producing new thoughts and in controlling both material and psychic forces, and also about the necessity for developing originality and independence? Is it too much to expect now that greater ingenuity be displayed in education itself to the end of producing more originality? This is a hackneyed request to make of the school, but it seems certain that we do not succeed in obtaining through our educational processes the highest possible degree of productiveness of mind, as regards either quantity or quality. It is because indeed we seem to be very far from our limit in these respects, and because better results might perhaps so easily be gained that it seems necessary to make this plea so often. More activity, more art, greater enrichment of the mind, ought to have the desired result, especially if the environment of the school could be so changed that its moods would be more joyous and intense. These changes are at any rate demanded for so many other reasons that if they fail to make the intellect more productive, they will not be completely a failure.
Education in the use of wealth must now be regarded as a part of moral education. In America we have ignored the necessity of thrift, and the idea of thrift has certainly had no part in education. The proper use of everything we produce or own is a fundamental part of conduct, and it ought to be a persistent theme in education. We have now the interest and incentive that have come from the war, we say, for we have felt, if only remotely, what poverty means, and we have seen that no amount of natural wealth and no degree of civilization can wholly insure us against famine and disaster. We need throughout our national life now, again, something like the old New England conscience in the uses of things, applied in a different way, of course, and now made more effectual by our broader science. The encouragement of this spirit will perhaps make the difference in the end between having a world seriously engaged in progressive tasks with its material forces well in hand, and a world which in all its practical affairs, large and small, is operated according to the principle or the lack of principle of a laissez faire attitude throughout life. Saving in a good cause, and with a clear conscience and determined purpose, is one of the elements of the higher life and is far removed from miserliness. It is a principle of adaptation of means to ends, and that any school which trains this power is reaching fundamental principles of the practical life needs hardly to be said.
The higher uses and appreciation of wealth which we are wont to call plain living and high thinking, the moral idea of philanthropy, the æsthetic values and hygienic implications of the right kind of simplicity must not be omitted from the educational idea of thrift. To impart something of the spirit of restraint and generosity, and to make the child feel what living simply, and with definite purpose, and making means serve one's real ends in life imply, to teach the joys of the higher uses of common things, is no mean achievement. But can we indeed do these things which after all have their main virtue in being general and social, and a part of a program? All we can say is that if we are to have a better order, and if we think education has any place in it, economy in its broadest sense, but economy also as applied to the details of daily life must also have a place in it. It is both fatuous and insincere to talk about good things to come, and not be willing to pay the price in labor and in sacrifice necessary to obtain them honestly. Especially when the price of these things is in itself no demand for the sacrificing of any real good, but quite to the contrary is a summons to a more joyous life, we should be glad to pay it.
CHAPTER IX[ToC]
NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS
The social problems of education that have arisen because of our new world relations and new internal conditions in our own country are of course only special phases of social education as a whole, and social education cannot indeed be separated sharply from other educational questions. There are, however, new demands and new evidences, and new points of view from which we see social education (or better, education in its social aspects), in a somewhat new and different light, as compared with our ideas of the school in the days before the war. We have discussed some of these social problems. Now we must consider them both in their general significance, and also in their more specifically pedagogical aspects.
There appear to be two things that social education needs especially to do now: create and sustain a firmer unity at home—a wider and deeper loyalty on the part of the individual to all the causes and to all the groups to which he is attached; and to make our world-consciousness a more productive state of mind. It is perhaps because such educational proposals as these are generally left in the form of ideals and things hoped for in a distant future, and are not examined to see whether they may be made definite programs, and are legitimate demands to be made now, that we are likely to regard all suggestions of this nature as impracticable. And yet the production of morale at home and a social consciousness adequate for our new relations abroad seems to be a proper demand to make even upon the school. In part, of course, and perhaps largely, the need is first of all for practical relations, but we must consider educationally also the fundamental and creative factors of the psychic process itself which must in the end sustain the relations that we have established at such cost and shall now begin to elaborate as practical functions.
The greatest work of social education to-day is to infuse into all the social relations a new and more ardent spirit. It is the elevation of the social moods to a more productive level, we might say, that is wanted. Æsthetic elements, imagination, and the harmonizing of individual and social motives are needed. War has shown us the possibilities of exalted social moods; what we ought to do now is to consider how we may make our morale of peace equal in efficiency and in power to our war morale. This is in great part a problem of social education.
Every nation has its own especial social problems which must become educational problems, and be dealt with in some way according to the methods available in schools. In England the social questions seem to be more in mind and to be better understood than here. They are more conscious there of social disharmony and of living a socially divided life than we are. They have seen at close range the dangers of class interests and individual interests. Individualism, class distinction and party politics and the independence of labor came near proving the ruin of England. The Bishop of Oxford has expressed himself as believing that the blank stupid conservatism of his country, as he calls it, is really broken and that a new sense of service is actually dawning in all directions. Trotter says (and he too is thinking of England) that a very small amount of conscious and authoritative direction, a little sacrifice of privilege, a slight relaxation in the vast inhumanity of the social machine might at the right moment have made a profound effect in the national spirit. Generalizing, and now thinking of social phenomena in terms of the psychology of the herd, he says that the trouble in modern society is that capacity for individual reaction—that is for making different reactions to the same stimulus—has far outstripped the capacity for intercommunication. Society has grown in complexity and strength, but it has also grown in disorder.
Such disharmony of the social life of course exists also in America. We have not the sharp division of classes and interests and the demonstrative and protesting individualism that are to be found in England (our individual rights are taken more for granted perhaps) but for that very reason, it may well be, our disharmonies are all the more dangerous and difficult to overcome. The tension of the individual and the social will (using MacCurdy's expression) is great. We are highly individualistic in our mode of life, as is shown both in domestic and in public affairs. Specialization and an intense interest in occupations that bring individual distinction and large financial returns have certainly taken precedence over the more fundamental and common activities and interests.
It is these fundamental and common activities and interests and sympathies that ought to be the chief concern of social education, or perhaps we had better say that all our educational processes ought so to be socialized as to broaden sympathies and make activities common. Education must constantly strive to make the common background of our national life more firm and strong. More important to-day than any further education in the direction of specialization of life in America is the securing of a strong cohesion throughout society by means of common interests and moods. It is true that specialization carried out in some ideal way may provide just the conditions needed for the best social order, but this can be only in so far as individuals become specialized within the whole of society, so to speak, in which individuals continue to have a common life. Individuals as wholes must not be differentiated and left to find their own means of coördination and association, or be brought together artificially by law or convention. Specialization must be made the reverse side, as it were, of a social process in which at every point coördination is also provided for. At the present time, it is the latter rather than the former that is of most importance to us.
Social education in a democratic country must always be a matter of the greatest concern. In autocratic societies the cohesive force exists in traditions or can at any moment be generated executively. The autocratic country can be held together in spite of social antagonism. In a democracy this cannot be. We voluntarily accept some degree of incoördination and confusion for the sake of our ideals of freedom. We do not wish cohesion based upon any form of pessimism or fear—fear of enemies without or of powers within. To secure unity in our own national life we must work for it incessantly, and we ought to be willing to, for unity means so much to us. It is not cohesion at any price that we want, but voluntary and natural union, and to secure that we should not hesitate to make our educational institutions broad enough to include the education of the most fundamental relations of the individual to society. We want neither a "healthy egoism" nor a morbid self-denying spirit that is only a step removed from slavery—neither instinctive independence nor an artificial and enforced social organization. We must not be deceived either by a vague and false idea of liberty or by the equally vicious ideal of militarism with its superficiality of social relations and its pedagogical simplicity. Both these ideas represent social life on a low plane. Healthy individualism, even with its strong sense of tolerance and comradeship and its respect for law and order, is not the kind of social ideal that we should now cultivate, for it is too primitive a state to fit into our already complex social life, or to be a basis for the firm solidarity we need for the future. As for militarism, it may become a mere shell, giving the appearance of social unity when its bonds are mere shreds and the last drop of moral vitality has gone out of it.
Our need and problem are plain enough. We wish to develop social cohesion and unity upon a natural and permanent basis of social feeling expressed in, and in turn produced by, social organization, voluntarily entered into for practical and for ideal purposes. Such solidarity can neither be made nor unmade by external forces. We must form and sustain it by creating internal bonds. We live, in any great society, always over smoldering fires, however highly civilized the society, and we are always threatened with the eruption of volcanic forces. It is fatuous to ignore this, and to make a fool's paradise of our democracy. Our problem is to produce such a social life as shall keep us safe through all dangers—dangers from enemies without, and within, and underneath. A democracy, or indeed any society after all and at its best, contains the makings of the crowd and the mob. Organized as it is, it is always an order made of material units which may enter into disorder. Society is based upon social consciousness, upon the consciousness of kind, but it also has collective force. The crowd and the collective force are always contained in society. However far human nature is removed from its primitive form, the social order is always fragile. Mental operations that are not intelligent and are not emotional in the ordinary sense, but which consist, so to speak, of common factors among primitive feelings, may gain and for a time hold the ascendancy. Eruptions in the social consciousness are of the nature of morbid phenomena, and are rare and exceptional expressions of the collective life, but we are never free entirely from the menace of them. Social order, we say, is always fragile. We must not overlook that fact. It is this characteristic of the social life, the potentiality of mob spirit and the forces of primitive anger and fear, that lead some writers to think, wrongly we believe, that this is the psychological basis of wars in general. War comes out of the order of society. The higher ecstatic states and the ideals of man enter into them. These things we speak of are of the nature of disorder, or are only the order of pure momentum. But whatever the truth may be about the relation of instinct to war and however remote the dangers to ourselves from the forces which in society make for disorder, it is the work of social education to control, transform and utilize all social and collective forces, the primitive emotions and instincts, the moods of intoxication and all the higher ecstasies of the social life, and it is only, we suppose, by thus consciously and with premeditation controlling these forces that in any real sense we can "make democracy safe for the world."
It is the idea of society coördinated by intelligence and by common interests and moods that we must always hold before us. Trotter says that civilization has never brought a well-coördinated society, and that a gregarious unit consciously directed would be a new type of biological organism. If this be so, the time seems peculiarly ripe to make advance toward this better social solidarity. Both the promise and the need seem greatest in the great English speaking countries now. There is waiting, we may truly think, a larger sphere of life for all democratic countries. If it be conscious direction alone that can bring about the change, education has a long and a hard task before it, to make the democratic peoples capable of such conscious direction. This must come in part by the development of the idea of leadership, and by the production of all the conditions that make leadership possible. In part it must come by the clear perception of definite tasks to be performed by nations and by all organizations within nations—tasks which have all grown out of the relations existing within society. In part it means cultivating intelligent appreciation of social values, and developing in every possible way all the social powers.
What we appear to need most in our social education just now is a conception of what the individual is and what the social life is in terms of the desires and the functions they embody. These are the raw materials with which we work. We should then treat all our social problems in a somewhat different way from that in which they are mainly dealt with now. We should try especially to make harmony in society not by maneuvering so that we might have peace and good feeling for their own sakes, but by coordinating the functions which are expressed in the life of the individual and in all social relations. That is precisely what is not being done now, in our present stage of society, either in the life of the individual, or in the wider life of society. People live without deep continuity in their lives, and we are not conscious enough of the ideal relationships individuals should have with one another, in order to make the social life productive. In a word we do not sufficiently take account of the purposes to be achieved, but are too conscious of states of feeling. We do not yet appear to see all the possibilities contained in the social life, what voluntary unions are necessary, and what kind of community life must be developed before we can have a really democratic order.
We must not be content, certainly, with a merely superficial and external solidarity or the purely practical gregariousness of the shops or the artificial forms of the conventional social life. Society must more and more accomplish results by the social life. Coordination in the performance of a few obvious functions, and enthusiasm for a few partisan causes, will not be enough. Nor will such order as militarism represents suffice. Is it not plain, indeed, that democracy must rest upon deeper and far more complex coördinations than we have now, and that social feelings or moods must be made more creative? It is the desire to accomplish ends through social organization, rather than the desire to possess and enjoy, that must be made to dominate it. To effect such changes in the social life must be in great part the work of education.
Social education in our present time and conditions might very well be considered in terms of the antinomies which exist in society. These antinomies represent the obstacles to national unity. They stand for inhibitions which are expressed in feelings that are wholly unproductive. Each one of them is a measure of so much waste, so much failure and lack of momentum, so much disorder and disorganization. A program of social education, we say, might be based upon a consideration of these antinomies. It would consider mainly how the waste and obstruction of these conflicting purposes of the social life might be overcome by giving desires more harmonious and more positive direction. A complete account of social education from this standpoint would need to take notice of many disharmonies now very evident in our life as a nation. Among them would be found sectional antagonisms, party opposition, frictions of social classes and industrial classes, religious differences, disharmony between the sexes, racial antipathies. Some of these we have already touched upon briefly. Some others seem to require further mention in the present connection.
The lack of understanding and sympathy between lower and upper classes in society plays a larger part in democratic America than we are usually inclined to admit. There are divided interests, divergent mores, lack of unity and coördination in some of the most urgent duties because of the antagonism of classes and the lack of understanding, on the part of one, of the ways of another. Especially in civic life the unproductiveness of the situation is very apparent. What money and advantage on one side combined with willing hands on the other might do is left undone.
In part this antagonism of classes is merely the result of difference in manners. There are manners and forms that constitute a common bond among the members of a class everywhere. Ought we not to take advantage of this example and use the suggestion it offers for bridging over the differences that we complain of? We have seen during the war, also, how well common tasks can unite all classes. Does not our educational institution afford us opportunity to continue this advantage, and make common service lead more directly to understanding and appreciation, not for the sake of the sympathy alone, but because of all the practical consequences and the opportunities for the future that are thus opened up? We assume that social feeling may be created through social organization. Mabie says that America is distinguished by its capacities for forming helpful organizations. We must make the most of this habit, which presumably is derived from the neighborliness and comradeship of our original colonial life. We need many group causes, not artificially planned as trellises upon which to grow social feelings, but, first of all certainly, in order to accomplish those things that can be done effectively only socially.
The secret of harmony among classes is presumably not to allow any class to have vital interests which are exclusively its own, since to have an exclusive vital interest means of course to live defensively or to carry on offensive strategy. The chief interest of the great working class at the present time is plainly to secure a living, and it is the sense of isolation in this struggle which in part at least is the cause of many unfavorable conditions in our present social order. Ought not education to prepare the way for a different attitude in which all should become vitally interested in the economic problems of all? This does not mean an education directed toward enlarging the spirit of philanthropy; it means mainly organization to serve common purposes.
These social problems are very numerous. They are both national and local. Any city which will undertake to solve in its civic relations this problem of securing greater social unity in social causes will provide an object lesson which will be of the greatest value. It is in these local groups perhaps that some of the best experimental social work may be done. Here the educational and the political modes of attack can best be coördinated, results can be made most tangible, and the primitive and simple forms of solidarity most nearly realized. It is indeed by going back to these simpler forms of social life and seeking means of coordinating the group in fundamental activities that the greatest headway will be made in the solution of wider social problems.
Another of the disharmonies which social education must from now on undertake to control is the disharmony and the inequality of the sexes, not so much as this appears in the domestic life as in the broader relations of the social life. Brinton says that the ethnic psychologist has no sounder maxim than that uttered by Steinthal, that the position of women is the cardinal point of all social relations. Every one, of course, now recognizes the fact that the position of women is to-day in a transitional and experimental stage. Conflicting motives are at work, and on the part of neither sex do the highest motives seem to prevail, nor is there a full realization anywhere of the values that are at stake. Men are thinking of the question of the position of women too much from the standpoint of expediency, and are scrutinizing too closely the immediate future. Women perhaps are thinking too much just now of their rights. There is a decadent form of chivalry or at least a sexuality that perpetuates conventions and interests that on the whole seem to interfere with progress. Jealousy and in general the tense emotional relations between the sexes obscure larger issues. Thus misunderstanding or antagonism, or at least disharmony, prevails in relations in which there should be perfect harmony of ideals and purposes, and productive activities of the highest nature. The education of women, whether for the domestic life or for the life outside the home is plainly but a part of the educational problem. The sexes have different desires, and it is precisely the work of harmonizing these desires, and regulating and coordinating activities and functions, that is the most important part of social education in regard to the sexes.
It is not at all difficult to see what the basic need is. It is not so easy to find practical means of applying the remedy in the form of education, because the whole system of living of the sexes must in some way be affected. The generalized principle on the practical side seems clear. All classes or groups in society must learn to think and to act not in terms of and with reference to the desires of their class alone, but with regard to wider tasks and values that are not fully realized by the most natural and the conventional activities of the class. The question is not one of making a moral change—converting individuals or classes from a spirit of selfishness to that of altruism. What we need is an educational process and a social life in which the nature of the individual and of the class is revealed as social, as best represented and satisfied in situations in which both the individual and the wider social idea work together.
Practically, we should say, the problem of education of the sexes with reference to one another and to a wider social life consists first of all in actually educating them together not merely in juxtaposition but in relations of a practical character. The relations of the sexes have evidently been mainly domestic and emotional, or in cases where they are practical the position of women has been little better than servitude. Of social coördination there has been little. Education of the sexes through situations in which the special abilities of each sex are brought into action, doing for the wider social life what the natural and instinctive differentiation of activities has accomplished in its way for the domestic life seems to be the main principle now to be employed in the education of the sexes. Women must be made to see that the ideal of independence which is uppermost at the present time is only the mark of a transitional stage, and that coördination in which of course competition of various kinds cannot be entirely eliminated will be the final adjustment. We should have no fear of placing the sexes, in their educational situations, in positions where competition is necessary, since through competition fundamental desires may be brought to the surface and regulated. Provided we admit at all that a new social adjustment is needed between the sexes, we can hardly fail to see that it is primarily in a practical life lived together that both education for the new order will best be conducted and the new order itself realized.
The details of method of what we have called social education for democracy we can only suggest here and of course in a very imperfect and tentative way. All aspects of education and every department of the school are involved; and every available method employed in education must in some way be turned to the purpose of developing social relations. In a very general way we think of these specific processes of the school as methods of learning, methods of art, and methods of activity, although of course in reality there can be no such sharp separation of them as this might imply.
There must be some place in the school now for a subject which in a general way might be designated as social history. We must teach the whole story of the social life of our country in such a way as to reveal the motives of classes, parties, sections, and of all organizations, institutions and principles. Such teaching should have the effect of bringing to light the causes of the disharmonies of society, and it should also be a means of conveying the feelings and moods as well as the ideas that govern the conduct of all groups that make up our national life. We must teach sympathetically what the desires and intentions of all are, on the assumption that behind all conduct there are natural causes and essentially sound instincts. By showing the desires of groups in their relation to one another, their disharmony and their possible harmony, we indicate what society as a functioning whole may be, and we may say that it is the chief end to be gained by the intellectual treatment of the social life to make clear what the ideal of social unity for practical life is, and what the main obstacles are that now stand in the way of it. By this social history we do not mean, moreover, something abstruse and academic suited for the college alone. Wherever the social antagonism is experienced, at whatever age, there is the opportunity to begin to set the mind at work about it, and to prevent the formation of prejudice and resentment. These states of mind begin very early indeed, and they are hard to eradicate.
A very large part in the work of social education is played by methods of education that we may call æsthetic. This must mean not only the inclusion of the methods of art in presenting facts, but we must bring to bear all kinds of æsthetic influences upon the social life. Social life in which there is introduced the dramatic moment is one of the main objectives of all education. It is in the recreational life that some of the best conditions for the realization of social moods in dramatic or æsthetic form are obtained. In the recreational experience the social states must be made productive of social harmony, as they themselves tend to be. In these experiences the conflicting motives of the individual and society, and of individual with individual, and the opposing desires of the individual are harmonized by means of ideal experiences in which the desires are exploited. Since we here touch upon the whole theory of the æsthetic in its practical application, we cannot be very explicit and clear, but the main service of the æsthetic social life experienced typically in the form of recreational activities, ought to be plain. Recreation is a means of giving the common experience so much needed in democratic countries like our own—common feelings, common activities and interests. This store of common life, containing exalted social feelings, expressed in play and art—languages which all nationalities can understand—must constantly be increased. All institutions that control the leisure hours of the people must be made educational as means of raising the social life to a higher level and making it more harmonious and productive of common interests. It is indeed one of the functions of the recreational activities and institutions to create and sustain public morale.
In the recreational experiences under control of the school we have the opportunity to educate the deepest and most powerful of motives. Play and art we should suppose, therefore, ought to have a greater part and more serious recognition in the school. We cannot of course accomplish much merely by crowding more arts and plays and games into the curriculum. It is something larger and more transforming that is wanted. We need to make the school take a greater place in the life of the child; it must reach a deeper level of human nature, in which the motives of play and art lie, and there must be a broader exposure of all young life to those influences of the social life everywhere which contain our highest social ideals. The place of art and to some extent of play as the methods and the spirit of the school is to convey persuasively to the child this larger and better life in which we expect him to take part.
Neither erudition nor art nor both together can, of course, fulfill all the requirements for a social education suited to our present needs. It is presumably in the social life itself, in the form of a practical activity, that social education will in great part be gained. This educational social life, which is also practical, will, however, be one in which every opportunity is taken to show the social life in its historical perspective, and to make clear its purposes and meaning; and in which sympathetic moods and intense social states are realized by conducting this social life, so far as possible, so that it will be subjected to the influences of what we may call in a broad way art.
CHAPTER X[ToC]
RELIGION AND EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR
The war, which has left no field of human interest untouched, has raised many questions about religion that must be dealt with in new ways—about its validity, its power, its future. The impression the whole experience of the war seems to convey is that religion has failed to be either a great creative force or a great restraining power, although to express this as a failure of religion may imply more than we have a right to expect of it. Religion did not cause the war, but it certainly did not prevent it. It had no power to make peace. Yet we see that now religion is needed more than ever, and that if the social life be not deeply infused with the religious spirit, and if we do not live as a world more in the religious spirit, something fundamental and necessary will be wanting which may be the most essential factor of progress and civilization. The war leaves us with the feeling, perhaps, that until now the world has had far too many religions and too little religion. There has been too much of creed and too little of deep and sustaining religious moods. Perhaps, as Russell says, we are to be convinced that religion has been too professional; there has been too much paid service, and too little voluntary service.
Such conclusions of course have in them all the reservation that personal reactions must have, but it is easy to believe that in the life of such a nation as our own, and indeed in the world, no practical unity will ever be permanently reached unless there be a firm basis in a common religious foundation. This we might say is made probable by the truth that religion is the most fundamental thing in life, and if there be no unity and common understanding in that sphere, there can be none in reality anywhere in life. Differences in creed mean little, except in so far as they conceal basic agreement and make artificial barriers; differences in the way of understanding and valuing the world mean everything. We want a common religious faith—common in the possession at least of the moods which make a harmonious social life possible, and of the spirit in which the world's work can, we may believe, alone be done.
Upon such grounds one might maintain that a very important part of the work of education everywhere is to teach now more natural religion, or rather perhaps that the school must be everywhere conducted to a greater extent in the spirit of religion. Then we might hope to see religion becoming actually a power in the social life, helping to transform the crude forces and purposes of the day into higher ones. With such a religious basis we might begin to see the working of God in history and in the world as a whole, and we should feel in the history of the world and in the world that is before us the presence of reality. Then we should have a common ground for the sympathy and understanding without which not even the most practical affairs can be conducted efficiently. That ideal in education, often expressed by the educator, which holds that the purpose of all teaching is to convey the meaning of the world to the child, to make the world live in epitome, so to speak, in the soul of every child, is religious and nothing else, and quite satisfies the demands of our present day.
If such a standpoint be the right one, certainly the ambition of any nation (or indeed of any group) to have a religion peculiar to itself and an outgrowth of its own culture is unfortunate, and indeed comes from the very essence of morbid nationalism. In such desires there is thinly veiled the hope that through religion the old claim of nations to the right to temporal supremacy may be vindicated. Lagarde, in about 1874, was probably the first to say that Germany must have a national religion, but during the war this hope has been expressed again and again—Germany must have a new religion, befitting a great independent people, and must no longer be dependent for its religion upon an old and inferior race. Whether this longing for a new religion has not been in reality a longing to be upheld again by the old pagan faith, which was a fitting cult for the nationalistic temper, with its ideal of force, may justly be asked. It is interesting to remember that in Japan also, in recent times, there has been a demand for a national religion that should unite all the creeds in one. That this idea of a national religion, as contrasted with an universal religion, is opposed to the spirit of Christianity is plain, and the claim that Germany has not been able to understand the key-note of Christianity, as it is revealed in humanity and justice, may therefore be said to have some foundation in truth.
Can we say that the work of education, in the religious life, is that of inculcating and extending Christianity? It might indeed so be interpreted, and with a liberal enough understanding of Christianity we should say that this is true. But after all, it is Christianity as the vehicle of certain fundamental religious moods and ideals that, from an educational point of view at least, is of the greatest concern. It is the optimistic mood, the ideal of justice and humanity, the recognition of the worth of the soul of the individual, the ideal of service—it is these qualities of Christianity rather than its specific doctrines that we must now emphasize in our wider social life, and such religion is natural religion, or philosophy or Christianity as we may choose to call it. Any experience, indeed, that fosters such moods and ideals has a place in religious education. Who can doubt that such religion must henceforth have a large place in the world? It will be the test in the end of the possibility of sincere internationalism. Unless we can have common religious moods we can have no universal morality that is founded upon secure feeling and principles, and unless we can include the whole world in our religion, we shall certainly not be able to include it in any sincere way in our politics.
No religion, finally, will be profound enough and have great enough power to be thus a support of a future world-consciousness unless it be a religion of feeling rather than primarily of ideas—a religion in fact capable of inspiring ecstatic moods. And this ecstasy of feeling can never in our modern world be a prevailing quality of the religious life unless religion be something that extends over all life and draws its power from all the energies and capacities of the psychic life. The religion of our new era, we may be sure, if it be in any real sense a religion of the world, will not be something apart from and above other experiences. It will be a secular religion and a democratic religion, a quality and spirit of life as a whole. Experience referred to what we believe is real and universal, and subjected sincerely to all the capacities and criteria of appreciation that we possess is religious experience. Religion, educationally considered, is a means of giving to life a sense of reality and of value. That spirit should pervade and inspire all we do in the work of education.
CHAPTER XI[ToC]
HUMANISM
There has much been said during the war to the effect that the great struggle was essentially a conflict between the spirit of humanism and some principle or other which was conceived to be the opposite of humanism. Humanism is said to be opposed to rationalism, or to nationalism, or specialization, or paganism, or Germanism as a whole, humanism often being thought of as the spirit of Greek or Christian thought and philosophy.
There is truth, we should say, in these views. Humanism in a broad sense emerged from all the purposes of the war as the principle of the greater part of the world, as opposed to the idea of Germanism. This spirit of humanism, however, is no single motive or feeling. It is a complex mood, so to speak, and it is not to be regarded as strange that it has been felt and described in various ways, and that it is not yet clearly understood. Humanism appears to be most deeply felt as the appreciation of the common and fundamental things in human nature. It inclines toward the employment of feeling, or at least to subjective rather than to purely objective principles in the determination of fundamental values in life. Humanism includes an interest in personality, which is of course the most basic of the common possessions of man, and it is therefore interested in justice and in freedom. Humanism as thus an appreciation of fundamental values in life by feeling rather than by principle, belongs to the deeper currents of life, those that flow in the subconscious—it is close to instinct, to moods, and the religious and the aesthetic experiences.
The later German philosophy of life we might mention as a denial of much that humanism asserts. Here we see a doctrine of force, an ideal of life based upon the elevation of conscious will to its first principle. If we seek concrete contrasts to this anti-humanism we might mention our own national life, governed by an idea of free living, which has made possible the assimilation of many stocks, in a life in which common human nature is regarded as the supreme value. Extreme specialization, rational principles, objective standards are watchwords of the plan of life that is most opposed to humanism. In this life instincts and values determined by feelings are brought out into the clear light of consciousness and are there judged with reference to their fitness to serve ends determined by reason. It is all noon-day glare in this rational consciousness. Collectivism is based upon coercion and upon calculation of the value of order in serving practical purposes, themselves determined by a theory of society, instead of upon social feeling or upon a natural process of assimilation of the different and the individual into a common life. Specialization also, in this philosophy, is a result of calculation rather than of a belief in the value of the individual, and is gained by the sacrifice of those experiences which, if we hold to the humanistic ideal, we regard as essential to the life of the individual and to society. This calculus of values extends, of course, into the field of international life. Here too conduct is based upon estimation of effects, freedom is relative to and subordinate to economic values. A theory of the state takes precedence over all subjective ethical principles, and there must be a disavowal of all native sentiments and judgments as regards justice which issue from an appreciation of the worth of personality and other fundamental human values and possessions; and all common human sentiments which would stand in the way of carrying out the decisions of reason and state-theory or any political policy must of course also be denied.
This contrast, however inadequate our analysis of the spirit of humanism and its opposite may be, will at least show that the idea of justice, which in the humanistic ideal grows directly out of the appreciation of the value of personality is the central practical principle of humanism, and it is exactly as an opponent of the idea of justice on the ground of its alleged weakness, that the rationalistic or the nationalistic philosophy is best conceived.
It is upon this question of justice that we must take our stand for or against humanism. If we are humanists we believe in the rights of individuals, whether men or nations, to their own life and independence, which they are entitled to preserve through all forms of social processes. Justice means recognition of the right of individuals to perform all their functions as individuals, and humanism is precisely an appreciation of the values of the individual as such a functioning whole. If we are humanists we believe that this principle of justice, and this feeling of justice ought to be cultivated and made world-wide. This is the ideal of equal rights to all human values. Hence it is the mortal enemy of all philosophies of life which place any principle above that of justice and its moral implications, Whether in the narrower or the wider social life. This is humanism.
There are various ways of interpreting humanism as a practical philosophy or principle of education. Burnet says, perhaps not very completely expressing what he means, that the humanistic ideal of education, as contrasted with the merely formal, is that the pupils should above all be led to feel the meaning and worth of what they are studying. We should say that the meaning of humanism in education is that the child should understand and appreciate the meaning and worth of all human life. This requires that education should so be conducted that the child may learn to see—rather to feel and appreciate—the inner rather than the merely external nature of all life that is presented to him, and in which he participates. Not language, but thought; not history, but experience, is his field. Justice depends wholly upon an ability to come upon reality in the realm of human nature. This implies not only intellectual penetration, but a form of sympathy which consists of putting oneself as completely as possible into the life of that which is studied.
All this means, it is plain, a power in the educational process, a spirit and a mood in all education which we have not yet in any very large measure attained. What is required is indeed that children should live more intimately with reality, so to speak, and that we should not be satisfied when they have merely learned about it. We shall not be content, however, with an educational process which, in fulfilling these requirements for more life, becomes merely active. Life must also be dramatic and intense and abundant. All the mental processes—the feelings, the intellectual functions and not the will alone must participate in this active life.
We shall soon see, no doubt, and in fact we are beginning already to see a renewed interest in all the arguments for and against a humanistic as opposed to a scientific culture and curriculum for our schools. It is the humanistic side from which, it is likely, we shall now hear the most pleas, for the war has ended, they say, in victory for humanity and for humanism—hence for the humanities. It is the Christian and the Græco-Roman civilization that has prevailed. Victorious France, whose culture is founded upon that of the Greek and the Roman, has vindicated the supreme value of that culture. On the other hand we hear that our present age has become an age of science. If science has been a factor in causing the war, science has also won it. If industrialism involved the world in disaster, the world will be saved by more and better work, more practical living, wider organization for the production of goods and of wealth. Therefore our curriculum must become more practical. We must have more of business and industry, more vocational training, more training that sharpens the intelligence.
There is a truth which cannot be overlooked in the claim of the humanists, but the acceptance of it as it stands as a philosophy of education is not without its serious dangers. What we may well apprehend is a reactionary philosophy of education, and of all culture. We begin to hear very strong pleas, for example, for a school in which language, literature, and perhaps history become the center. West[1] asks for a wider recognition of the humanities after the war. Moore[2] says that the war is a victory of the civilization finally established by the Romans on the basis of law, over the barbaric ideas of power. Seeing this he is led to plead for a closer union now between Latin and modern studies, binding civilization of to-day with the thought and feeling of old Rome. Butler[3] says that we are surely coming back to the classical languages and literature.
Such conclusions as these raise many questions and perhaps doubts and apprehension. The ideal they express of penetrating the heart of civilization and experiencing in the educational process the inner life rather than the outer form of life, must indeed appeal to all, and we should all as humanists agree that this ideal expresses what humanism means and is the center of a true philosophy of education—but whether this ideal can be realized by any school that clings to the old classical learning, even in spirit, is quite another matter. To-day, if ever, we need to go forward in education. Our spirit must be that of the searcher for new truth, and for a better life. The old will not satisfy us either as a model and ideal or as a method. No already accumulated culture material will be adequate for our new school.
Our schools of to-morrow, we should conclude, must still be inspired by the scientific spirit, but what we need is science humanised, and science in the service of moral principles. One may well ask whether it is not now the most opportune time to leave our classical learning behind, and try to find a more adequate culture in which to convey the spirit of our new humanism. If we have won a victory for humanity, as we think, and have kept alive the Christian spirit by means of a meager culture, we need not still cling to that culture if we can find something better. Even if modern Germany has misused science and brought it to reproach, we need not be prejudiced against science. We need more science but we need to bring science into closer relation to the whole of human life. We need more of all the psychological sciences as an aid to our appreciation of history as the story and a revelation of the meaning of spirit in the world—and it is this way rather than through language that we must undertake to know and to explain life. On the other hand, it is for the business of practical, social living that the material sciences should have most significance in education. There is no science, not even mathematics, that cannot be taught as a phase of the adventure of spirit in the world, and none that cannot in some way be made to aid spirit in finding and keeping its true course in the future. Such use of all culture is what we mean by humanism. The secret of the difference in the educational ideals of those whom we may call the old humanists and the new is that to one education means predominantly learning, and to the other it means mainly living. Living, for the child, means growing into the life of the world by participating in spirit and in body, according to the child's needs and capacities, in the activities of the world. To gain a consciousness of the meaning of those activities through a knowledge of their history and by an appreciation of their purpose is indeed the main purpose of learning.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Educational Review, February, 1919.
[2] Educational Review, February, 1919.
[3] Teachers College Record, January, 1919.
CHAPTER XII[ToC]
AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION
Throughout this study we have again and again been led to consider the relations of the aesthetic experiences to the practical life. It is as the repository of deep desires and as the appreciation of values that the aesthetic may be most readily seen to be practical, but it performs other functions. As ecstatic experience it is the source of power in the conscious life, and it was indeed the belief in art as a means of attaining power that has given art its place in the world. The aesthetic experience is the form also in which desires are brought into relation to one another, harmonized and transformed, or transferred to new objects. So the aesthetic is the type of adaptation in the inner life.
We have asserted that all life, and certainly the educational process, must have its dramatic moments, since the dramatic experience, as ecstasy of the social life, is the expression of social feeling in its highest form. The aesthetic experience is the central point of experience, so to speak, at which social ideals impinge upon and influence and mold pure nature. Art is the form in which play, representing biological forces, is carried to a higher stage, and made a factor in conscious evolution. The aesthetic experience is a practical attitude in another way. It is by our aesthetic appreciation, more than we commonly understand, that we judge life as a totality, that we estimate the fitness of its parts to belong to the whole, and that indeed we guide life when we judge it not according to principles which so often are seen to be inadequate, but when we try to bring to bear our utmost of powers of appreciation and to find ultimate values.
Such a recognition of the relation of art or the aesthetic to life we see often expressed in the literature of the day. It is a sign of the times—of an effort to attain higher powers, to take more comprehensive views of life, and to gain deeper insight into it. It is a phase of the seriousness of purpose which the war has aroused in us. Dide speaks of a deep but obscure need that drives all human beings to put themselves in harmony with the universal, and says that this is the end and purpose of the aesthetic tendencies. This phase of the place of the aesthetic is seen and expressed in various ways. Some think of it as a significant change in the attitude of life which is to bring about an era of peace. Clutton-Brook, an English writer, says that unless we attain to some kind of beauty and art, we shall have no lasting peace. We shall never have freedom from war until we have a peace that is worth living. Some see in the humanistic spirit an essentially aesthetic principle. The fairness and justice of the French, the spirit of the English that expresses itself in their ideal of sportsmanship, some attribute to the aesthetic spirit.
All this is in keeping with our new experiences of life in all its dynamic expressions. It becomes easier for us to see the truth about the nature of the aesthetic and of all other powers of consciousness, since consciousness has revealed itself to us as itself so great a power. The aesthetic experience may no longer appear to be only a joy, something subjective, but, indeed, as a practical force in the world. The aesthetic is a feeling of power, but it is also an experience in which mental power is generated, and it must be employed to such an end. The aesthetic mood is a mood of happiness, but it is also a mood of persuasion, in which something is being done to the will, and in which desires are being turned continually toward new objects, and composite feelings are being formed which will direct the course of future experience. So art and the aesthetic experience are not things apart from life, but may even be thought of as the method and the quality of life in some of its most dynamic forms. They are not added to life as an ornament or a luxury, but are the spirit in which life is lived when it is indeed most productive.
When we make specific analyses of aesthetic experience we find represented in it all the deep motives and tendencies, of life. This gives us our clew to the practical application of the aesthetic in the business of life. All it contains, all the art and the play of the world must be put to work, although this is a conclusion that might readily be misunderstood. We do not expect to harness the powers of childhood to the world's tasks, or expect industry to become fine art, but we do expect art and play to be something more than passive and unproductive states. We expect them to sustain and to create the energies by which the world's work is to be carried on. We would utilize them to give more power to life at every point, and to make all activities of the practical life more free and creative. And was there ever a time when power was more greatly needed—in industry, in political life and in every phase of life both of the individual and of society?
But it is not only in creating and doing that the world needs art to-day, in the sense in which we mean to define it. An aroused world is called upon to feel to the depths of reality, and to draw from these depths new and more profound valuations. We stand at a point where many things in life must be tested and judged anew, where the danger of perverting and misjudging many things is great. It is by the powers of appreciation gained in dynamic states of consciousness, we may believe, rather than by discoveries and an accumulation of data that we shall be most certain of finding true values, and the way of extrication from our present grave doubts.
Can one hesitate to conclude, then, that in all our educational experiences, we must try not only to train these powers that we call aesthetic, but to give opportunity at every point for the exercise of them as selective functions, and as a means of creating and expressing power in the mental life?
CHAPTER XIII[ToC]
MOODS AND EDUCATION: A REVIEW
In the philosophy of education it is with moods that in our view, we have most of all to deal. Man, we have a right to say, is a creature of feeling, not of instinct or of reason. It is not the instinct as a definite reaction to stimulus or as an inner necessity, nor emotion as a subjective response to this stimulus that is the driving force of conduct, but rather the more lasting and deeper and more complex states or processes that we can call by no other name than moods. Since it is in the moods that the most profound longing or tendency or desire is represented, we say that moods are the object of chief concern in a practical philosophy of life. These moods are the repositories, so to speak, of instinct, impulse, tendency, desire, and it is therefore by the control and education of moods that the individual in all his social and in all his personal aspects will be most fundamentally educable if he is educable at all.
It is as the seat of the will to power, we might say, that the moods which are the main sources of human energy are to be conceived. The craving for power, as a generalization of more primitive desires, comes to take the position of the main motive in life. The craving for power is a desire, as we see when we analyze it, that expresses itself as a longing for ecstatic or intense states of consciousness, and an abundant life. It is a craving to be possessed by strong desire and also for the satisfaction of many desires—often vicariously, since the objects desired may be confused and general. So this motive of power and the ecstatic states in which it is expressed or realized is no instinct and no pure emotion. It is an outgrowth and culmination of instincts, a fusion of them into a new product.
It would be going too far afield to try to summarize here the psychology of moods or of the motive of power in the individual and in society, but the main fact needed for the moment seems plain. In this motive and its expression in feeling and conduct there is a very general tendency which is the source of many forms of interest and enthusiasm, of ambition, of the spirit of war, of various kinds of excitement, and to some extent of morbid and criminal tendencies. The spirit of war we think of as a summation of the same forces as those which in other ways appear as the energies behind various enterprises having quite different objectives. War is an anachronism, we may believe, a wrong direction taken by the forces of the social life, an archaic expression now, let us say, of the will to power which might and ought to have different objectives. In the life and the mood of the great city we see a very varied expression of the motive of power. The city life is still a crude life. It satisfies deep desires, but in it desires for we know not what are aroused. It is indeed as the seat of eager, unsatisfied desire that the city is best of all characterized. These desires readily take shape in the city as the spirit of war and as a craving for excitement of various kinds.
These same forces re-directed or finding different objects and working under different conditions appear in moral, religious, or aesthetic forms. In these higher experiences and more progressive moments in history or in the life of the individual, the forces which at other levels emerge in different forms and in search of different objects we may think of as transformed, or given new direction; but to suppose them annihilated or suppressed is to misunderstand, according to our view, the whole process of the development of spirit. Life is not a process in which instincts are balanced, or in which good motives stand in sharp contrast to bad motives, or in which an original selfishness is opposed and gradually overcome by an altruistic motive. We think rather of very complex processes in which many desires, gathered into moods, find many forms of expression. There are prevailing moods—of war and of peace—and these moods are deep forces, containing both the desires and the sources of energy, so to speak, out of which our future will be made. The ecstatic states of the social life, the moods of war and the enthusiasm of the periods of rapid change are conditions in which energies and purposes are deeply stirred. These are the moods of intoxication, if we wish to describe them by pointing out one of their chief common characteristics. Peace is a reverie, we may say, in which the purposes and the results expressed and attained in the more dramatic moments are elaborated and fulfilled, and in which new impulse is gathered of which the dramatic moment is itself the expression. But throughout the whole course of history and through all the life of the individual, the same motives are at work. Life in its fundamental movements and motives, we should argue, is both simple and continuous. It is fragmentary and complex only on its surface.
The whole problem of the nature of education of course resolves itself, from this point of view, into the question whether progress is something inherent in nature, or is something controlled by man. Or if we cannot make so sharp a contrast between nature and will, shall we say that progress is in the main and in all essential ways one or the other? Does conscious effort, the having of ideals, exert any profound effect upon the history of spirit? Does it accelerate, give direction, provide energy? Is the course of history inevitable or is the making of it in our hands? We can see what, in a general way, so far as regards the transformation of the fundamental motives of life, the order of development has been—how the original and basic desires or instincts have become merged and confused in the more general desires and moods, how the motive of power has emerged, finding so varied expression as we see in the whole movement of art and play in the world, how out of these motives of art and play more controlled enthusiasms have arisen. But the part in this movement played by conscious direction does not thus far appear to have been great. A movement of and within consciousness it has been, and no mere biological or physical development, but when we speak of conscious will or any ideals controlling the course of spirit in essential ways, we find as yet only a beginning. And yet, this does not indicate that in the future conscious direction may not be even the greatest factor in evolution. It is difficult to see how we can know with certainty that we have such powers; but to refrain from acting as though we had is also difficult, and indeed impossible.
As a working hypothesis, at least, we seem to be allowed to assume that much will depend, in the future, upon the extent to which conscious factors are brought to bear upon the world's progress as a whole, upon the form in which the world-idea shapes itself, and the power which is put behind that world idea by the educational forces of the world. The world appears now to stand balanced at a critical moment, its future depending upon whether old ideals and primitive emotions shall prevail, or whether a new spirit which is perhaps after all but a sense of direction growing out of the old order shall become the dominating influences. Whether the consciousness of nations shall be creative and progressive seems to depend now upon the extent to which the whole life of feeling is influenced by ideas which, although they are products, as we say, of the primitive biological processes that underlie history, are also outside these processes, as definite purposes, desires, visions, ideals. At least we seem to depend now upon these superior influences for many things that we regard as good—for the rate at which we shall make progress, and for the certainty of making progress at all. Upon these conscious factors directing and shaping the plastic forces represented in the moods of our time, we shall assume, the course of history will depend.
We are no longer to be satisfied with natural progress. We have gone too far and too long, let us say, upon a rising tide of biological forces, and we have not yet realized what conscious evolution might mean. We have been too well satisfied with the physical resources and the psychic energies that seemed sufficient for the need of the day. A world in which democracy is going to prevail can no longer live in this way. It will not grow of itself in a state of nature. Its principle, on the other hand, forbids program-making after the manner of autocratic societies. Democracy, as the form in which the youthful and exuberant spirit of the world now makes ready for creating the next stage of civilization, will advance, we may suppose, neither by nature nor by force. It is the main work of our day to find for ourselves a new and better mode of shaping history, by bringing to bear upon all the social motives of the day the best and strongest influences. Our whole situation is from this point of view an educational problem. Probably there was never a greater need than that the democratic forces of the world now have great leadership. It is a practical world, a world of politics and of business, but it is also a world exceedingly sensitive to many influences, good and bad, a world in which, we may think, nothing great and permanent can be accomplished unless moral, religious and æsthetic influences prevail and give to our civilization its new dominant.
It will depend upon these conscious forces—upon our efforts to make progress and upon the clarity of our vision—it must depend upon these—whether in the future our great war shall be looked back upon as after all an upheaval of primitive forces and a debauch of instincts, or as the beginning of a new life. It is for us to create out of the war the foundation of a better order. We cannot go back to the old régime. Our enthusiasms will either be directed to better things, or the emotions aroused by the war will run riot and finally settle into habits on a low plane, and destroy, it may be, all that civilization has thus far gained. All things seem possible, in this critical time.
Stated in the broadest possible way, the educational problem of our times seems plain. We must lay hold upon and set to work for a higher civilization the motives and purposes that in the past have worked obstructively, and now destructively. A great work of our day is to understand these motives and forces that were the main factors in the cause of the war, and make them count for progress. That they are powerful forces we can have no doubt. They are not for that reason hard to direct, at least not necessarily so. We see that, whether in war or in peace, we need greater power in the social life. Life must be made to satisfy the longing for intensity and abundance of experience. But this abundant life that we now seek cannot be something merely subjective and emotional. To see this is indeed the crucial test. This subjective life cannot remain an ideal in a world determined to become democratic, to make progress, to be a practical and well-coördinated world. Abundant life must now be sought in the performance of functions which express themselves in practical aims and consequences. The prevailing mood and form of this life may still be dramatic, and indeed it must be dramatic. The possession of this quality is the test of its power.
Such views, of course, imply that our practical educational problem is something very different from that of finding an outlet for emotions. For example, to search for a substitute for war now is a superficial way of looking at the problem of the control and education of the social consciousness. We think of the motives that have caused the war, according to these older views, as bad instincts or evil emotions, as we are usually asked to think of the motives behind intemperance, and the habits of gambling and the like. By some form of katharsis we hope to drain off these emotions (unless we undertake merely to suppress them). This we say is a narrow view of the problem, merely because the motives that underlie the conduct we deplore are not bad instincts, or indeed instincts as such at all, but rather feelings or moods which are variable in their expression, complex, and educable. They have no definite object of which they are in search, so that we may think the only way to thwart them is to find some object closely resembling theirs which may surreptitiously be substituted for them. These motives are indeed broad and general. We must do with them what education must do all along the line, find the fundamental desires they contain and utilize the energies expressed in these desires in the performance of functions—these functions being the purposes most fundamentally at work in the social life or representing our social ideals.
Such an ideal of education invites us to work beneath the political and all formal, institutional and merely practical affairs and to lay our foundations in the depths of human nature. There we shall begin to establish or to lay hold upon continuity, and there bring together the fragments of purpose which we find in the life we seek to direct. This which one can so easily say in a sentence is, of course, the whole problem of education. These things are what we must work for in establishing and sustaining our democracy, for we must, to this end, make forces work together, instead of separately and antagonistically as they themselves tend to do. It is the same problem, at heart, in the education of the individual—to harmonize desires, and to create a higher synthesis of energies than nature itself will yield. And in the new and wider field of international life that opens up before us, the problem is still educational. The educational forces of the world must begin now the gigantic task of national character building. The spirit of the nations, the divergent motives of power, of glory, of comfort and pleasure-seeking that are said to dominate nations, the justice, and loyalty, and steadfastness and truth which at least they put upon their banners and into their songs must be made to work together in a practical and progressive world, or to make such a world possible.
The Germans like to interpret the tricolor of their flag as signifying Durch Nacht und Blut zur Licht. But plainly the night and bloodshed do not always lead to light, and of themselves they cannot. Nor, must we think, need the world continue always to seek its way toward light only through the blackness and guilt of wars and revolutions. In some distant day, let us think, justice and morality will have been bred into all the social life, and life will be lived more in the spirit of art and religion. Then they will see that, under the influence of these forces we call now educational, an old order will have given way to a new by imperceptible degrees, and it will be no longer through darkness and bloodshed that the world must make its way to light, but need only go through light to greater light.
BIBLIOGRAPHY[ToC]
The following list contains the titles of a few books and articles that have contributed data or suggestions to this study. It is neither complete nor systematic. Numbers in the text refer to this list.
1. A.W. Small, General Sociology.
2. C. Andler, Frightfulness in Theory and Practice.
3. W.E. Walling, The Sociologists and the War.
4. H. Hauser, Germany's Commercial Grip of the World.
5. J.F. O'Ryan and W.D.A. Anderson, The Modern Army in Action.
6. R. Dunn, Five Fronts.
7. Mrs. Henry Hobhouse, I Appeal Unto Cæsar.
8. F.H. Giddings, The Western Hemisphere in the World of To-morrow.
9. O.H. Kahn, Prussianized Germany.
10. C. Mitchell, Evolution, and the War.
11. A. Wehrmann, Deutsche Aufsaetze Ueber den Weltkrieg, etc.
12. J.P. Bang, Hurrah and Hallelujah.
13. E. Boutroux, Philosophy and the War.
14. M.A. Morrison, Sidelights on Germany.
15. R. Lehmann, Was Ist Deutsch? (In Vom kommenden Frieden.)
16. Durkheim, Germany Over All.
17. H. Bergson, The Meaning of the War.
18. J. Burnet, Higher Education and the War.
19. C.L. Drawbridge, The War and Religious Ideals.
20. M. Dide, Les Emotions et la Guerre.
21. D.G. Brinton, The Basis of Social Relations.
22. Ernesta R. Bullitt, An Uncensored Diary from the Central Empires.
23. Hundert Briefe Aus dem Felde.
24. Mrs. Denis O'Sullivan, Harry Butters "An American Citizen."
25. W. Irwin, Men, Women and War.
26. G. Roethe, Von Deutscher Art and Kultur.
27. J.W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany.
28. W.R. Roberts, Patriotic Poetry: Greek and English.
29. Schmitz, Das Wirkliche Deutschland.
30. Redier, Comrades in Courage.
31. Igglesden, Out There.
32. Madame Lucy Hoesch-Ernst, Patriotismus und Patriotitis.
33. W.E. Ritter, War, Science and Civilization.
34. Hobhouse, The World in Conflict.
35. G.S. Fullerton, Germany of To-day.
36. A. Pinchot, War and the King Trust.
37. J.T. MacCurdy, The Psychology of War.
38. E.L. Fox, Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany.
39. J. Chapman, Deutschland Ueber Alles.
40. G. Blondel, Les Embarras de l'Allemagne.
41. P. Bigelow, The German Emperor and His Eastern Neighbors.
42. G. Le Bon, The Psychology of the Great War.
43. T.A. Cook, Kultur and Catastrophe.
44. Cheradame, The German Plot Unmasked.
45. J.B. Booth, The Gentle Cultured German.
46. J. Claes, The German Mole.
47. T.F.A. Smith, The Soul of Germany.
48. W.N. Willis, What Germany Wants.
49. Hintze, The Meaning of the War. (Modern Germany.)
50. Zitelmann, The War and International Law. (Modern Germany.)
51. Schmoller, Origin and Nature of German Institutions. (Modern Germany.)
52. Hintze, Germany and the World Powers. (Modern Germany.)
53. F. Meinecke, Kultur Policy of Power and Militarism. (Modern Germany.)
54. O.G. Villard, Germany Embattled.
55. E.J. Dillon, Ourselves and Germany.
56. R. MacFall, Germany at Bay.
57. C. Tower, Changing Germany.
58. W.R. Thayer, Germany vs. Civilization.
59. Lamprecht, What Is History?
60. B.T. Curtin, The Land of Deepening Shadows.
61. P. Bigelow, Prussian Memories.
62. E. Troeltsch, The Spirit of German Kultur. (Modern Germany.)
63. A. Guilland, Modern Germany and Her Historians.
64. T.F.A. Smith, What Germany Thinks.
65. Von Bülow, Imperial Germany.
66. J.A. Cramb, Germany and England.
67. G. Bourdon, The German Enigma.
68. P. Collier, Germany and Germans.
69. H.B. Swope, Inside the German Empire.
70. Sumner, Folkways.
71. J. Novicow, Les Luttes Entre Sociétes Humaines en Leur Phases Successives.
72. H. Gibson, A Journal from Our Legation in Belgium.
73. A.M. Pooley, Japan at the Cross-Roads.
74. F.J. Adkins, The War.
75. H.E. Powers, The Things Men Fight For.
76. J. M'Cabe, The Soul of Europe.
77. Scheler, Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg.
78. S. Freud, Reflections on War and Death.
79. Nicolai, Die Biologie des Krieges.
80. P. Gibbs, The Soul of the War.
81. T. Roosevelt, America and the World War.
82. W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.
83. J. Novicow, Der Krieg und Seine Angeblichen Wohltaten.
84. G.R.S. Taylor, The Psychology of the Great War.
85. W. Wundt, Die Nationen und Ihre Philosophie.
86. Nusbaum, Der Krieg im Lichte der Biologie.
87. Edith Wharton, Fighting France.
88. Crile, A Mechanistic View of War and Peace.
89. Eleanor M. Sidgwick, The Morality of Strife in Relation to the War. (The International Crisis.)
90. G. Murray, Herd Instinct and the War. (The International Crisis.)
91. Bosanquet, Patriotism in the Perfect State. (The International Crisis.)
92. A.G. Bradley, International Morality. (The International Crisis.)
93. L.P. Jacks, The Changing Mind of a Nation at War. (The International Crisis.)
94. G.F. Stout, War and Hatred. (The International Crisis.)
95. E. Mach, What Germany Wants.
96. F. Peil, Der Weltkrieg.
97. T. Veblen, The Nature of Peace.
98. Hirschfeld, Kriegsbiologisches.
99. H.A. Gibbons, The New Map of Europe.
100. F.C. Howe, Why War?
INDEX[ToC]
- Æsthetic, elements in war, [70-77];
- Aggressive instinct, [40-45]
- American life, [248];
- mores, [221]
- Anger, [14]
- Autocracy and democracy, [104]
- Bergson, [36], [101], [110]
- Biological principles, [3 ff.]
- Bourdon, [90], [129]
- Boutroux, [55], [101], [236]
- Boy Scouts, [198]
- British Labor Party, [273]
- Burnet, [311]
- Cannibalism, [13-14]
- Causes in war, [97-109]
- Chapman, [52]
- Christianity, [307]
- City, moods, [188], [278];
- school, [190]
- Civics, [264]
- Claes, [129]
- Cleveland, [260]
- Cobden, [137]
- Collier, [90]
- Colonies, [129]
- Combat, instinct of, [53-58]
- Conscientious objectors, [200]
- Consciousness of kind, [8]
- Cramb, [75], [256]
- Creative activity, [283]
- Darwin, [111]
- Death, [71]
- Democracy, [232], [253 ff.];
- spirit of, [185-191]
- Dickinson, [261]
- Dide, [52]
- Dillon, [102], [272]
- Display, [74]
- Dominant, [35]
- Drawbridge, [102]
- Duelling, [93]
- Durkheim, [115]
- Economic factors, [128-141]
- Economy, [275]
- Ecstasy, [23], [64]
- Educational problems, [161-167]
- Empire, [148]
- England, [123], [244]
- Fear, [14], [41]
- Ferrero, [52]
- Feudalism, [35]
- Finance, [134]
- French, The, [24], [55], [244]
- Freudians, [20]
- Future, The, [viii]
- Germany, [34], [43], [50], [55], [89], [98], [106], [115], [124], [126], [198], [239], [245]
- Gibbs, [54]
- Government, [242 ff.];
- functions of, [251]
- functions of, [251]
- Hatred, [46-52]
- Herd, The, [4], [10], [18], [57], [62]
- Heroes, [234]
- Hintze, [99]
- Hirschfeld, [23]
- Historical causes in war, [149]
- History, teaching of, [173], [266]
- Hobhouse, [101]
- Hobson, [260]
- Hocking, [167]
- Home-love, [81], [216]
- Homogeneity of species, [60]
- Howe, [135], [136]
- Hullquist, [137]
- Humanism, [309], [314]
- Humanities, [312]
- Industrialism, [33], [134], [220]
- Industry, and education, [269-289];
- the higher, [184]
- Instincts, [4-5], [28], [38-69]
- Institutional factors in war, [125]
- International law, [192]
- Internationalism, [168-196]
- Intoxication motive, [31]
- James, [266]
- Japanese, [90], [119]
- Jones, [21]
- Justice, [205], [311]
- Lamprecht, [34]
- Land hunger, [131]
- Leadership, [84], [142], [176]
- Le Bon, [3], [18], [102], [111], [119], [129], [135], [244]
- Lehmann, [237]
- Loyalty, [228];
- to leaders, [231]
- M'Cabe, [9]
- MacCurdy, [48], [56], [58], [201]
- Mach, [135]
- Marot, [284]
- Militarism, [197 ff.]
- Military training, [208-210]
- Mitchell, [9]
- Moods, in education, [319]
- Moral influences in war, [117-127]
- Murray, [18]
- Mysticism, [120]
- Napoleon, [113]
- National, character study, [224];
- and internationalism, [105]
- Nationalism, [79-96];
- Nicolai, [3], [19], [56], [70], [78], [129], [217]
- Nietzsche, [110]
- Novicow, [19], [137]
- Noyes, [271]
- Nusbaum, [45]
- Nutritional motive, [38]
- Objectives, [140], [143]
- O'Ryan and Anderson, [45]
- Ostwald, [98]
- Pacifists, [200]
- Patriotism, [79-96], [211-241];
- Patten, [115]
- Peace, [197 ff.];
- Pessimism, [43]
- Pfister, [45]
- influences in war, [110-116]
- Philosophical, attitude, [194];
- Political, education, [242-268];
- Power, motive of, [29], [130]
- Powers, [130]
- Practical interests, [180-183]
- Praise of war, [199]
- Preparedness, [208-210]
- President of the United States, [102]
- Pressure of population, [129]
- Preventive wars, [44]
- Primitive tendencies, [38]
- Progress, [v], [321]
- Property, [138]
- Prophets, [viii-ix]
- Psycho-analysis, [179]
- Race patriotism, [226]
- Rationalism and humanism, [107]
- Recreational life, [303]
- Redier, [85]
- Religion and education, [305-308]
- Religious influences in war, [117-127]
- Reproductive motive, [38], [66], [73], [76]
- Reuter, Frau, [51]
- Reversion theories of war, [17-23]
- Russell, [17], [167], [246], [305]
- Savorgnan, [201]
- Scheler, [7], [47]
- Sciences, [314]
- Scientific movement, [112]
- Selection, [5 ff.]
- Sexes, [299]
- Smith, [51]
- Social, education, [282 ff.] [290-304];
- Socialism, [259]
- Specialization, [281]
- Stevens, [138]
- Sumner, [121], [132]
- Synthesis of causes, [153-157]
- Thayer, [56]
- Thrift, [285]
- Tower, [98]
- Tragedy, [71]
- Trotter, [9], [18], [58], [233], [291], [295]
- Unconscious motives, [17 ff.]
- Universal language, [193]
- Veblen, [46], [78], [137]
- Venezelos, [151]
- Von Bülow, [115]
- War, as dramatic story, [22];
- organization, [191]
- World, idea, [170];
- Wundt, [90]
Typographical errors corrected in text:
The author's inconsistent spelling of 'aesthetic' (70) versus 'æsthetic' (39) has been retained.