THE ETHICAL AND ÆSTHETIC ELEMENTS IN EDUCATION.
A historic sentiment is associated with the laurel tree, sacred to Apollo; with the laurel wreath which crowned the victor in the Pythian games, was the emblem of the poet, rested upon the heads of victorious generals, later indicated academic honors, and has become a figure of speech and a gem in poetic literature. The Baccalaureate Day—the day when victors in the endeavor to reach the graduate’s goal figuratively are crowned with the fruited laurel—we would preserve. We would preserve it for its history, its significance, its associations, its sentiments, its memories, its promise, and its religious suggestion. We would preserve it, not only to celebrate scholastic honors already won, but as a fitting occasion to consider some of those deeper lessons whose meaning will appear through experience in the School of Life.
Higher education ever enlarges the borders of science and leads forth into new fields. It transmutes superstition into knowledge. It is the spirit of civilization and the leader of progress. It stands at the summit of human development, represents the aggregate of human knowledge, is the goal for intellectual endeavor, and it points the way for the discovery and progress of the future.
There was a time when many scholars turned the pages of literature, in which were preserved the deeds, investigations, and thoughts of men, solely that they might develop and enjoy their own powers; when they devoted themselves to Truth for its own sake; when they stood isolated, as in a world of their own, considering naught but their own welfare and, perhaps, their relation to their Maker. Men dwelt in caves, in remote deserts, or within gloomy walls to dwarf the bodily and worldly impulses and to rise to a serene contemplation of God and His truths, disregarding the appeal of ignorant or suffering humanity and the duty of adding works to faith.
Our relations to our fellow-men give rise to nearly the entire Ethical Code. Society cares for us, educates us, develops us, and it has claims upon us, not on purely selfish or utilitarian grounds, but under a higher ethical idea, whose sanction is the perfection and will of God. The law of God requires effort for humanity, government enjoins it, charity demands it. The Associationist, the Utilitarian, and the Evolutionist teach it.
An honorable character and a useful life are full of influence. And there are hundreds of ways, in some of which, without burdensome effort, one may be a blessing to others. Ignorance may be awakened to its condition, vice may be shamed, sorrow may be assuaged, fear may be changed into hope, sloth may be aroused to action, doubt may be converted into faith.
Go forth and join in the labor you are fitted for. If you have a truth, utter it; if you have had superior privileges, impart to others; if you have an insight into principles of conduct, stand for them; if you have a trained eye and a deft hand, use your skill. Externalize the powers of your being; find outward expression for your inward thought.
Thank God for a courageous man, a true Anglo-Saxon man, a man whose convictions are deeply rooted, and who guards them as his very life. Heroes, philanthropists, and martyrs are his exemplars. He has a work to do, and he enters upon it as his fathers battled for the right. The sensualist, the dreamer, and the fatalist lie supine, are lulled by the summer breeze, and gaze upon the drifting panorama of clouds with playful imagination. The man of duty marches forth and takes the fixed stars for his guide.
The educated young man of to-day has every reason to thank the stars under which he was born. Behind him is the teaching of the civilized world—the poetry and art of Greece, the laws and institutions of Rome, the growth of Christianity, the Mediæval commingling of forces and evolution of rare products, the Renaissance, the religious and political emancipation, invention, science, art, poetry, and philosophy. Behind him is the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, its courage and deeds of valor, its profound earnestness, its stern ideals. Behind him is Puritan New England and liberty. Around him lies the new land of promise with its natural blessings of air, sun, mountains, and plains, with its mineral wealth and industrial possibility, with its people of pride, energy, intelligence, and high enthusiasm. Before him lie the development of a great and unique civilization, a wonder of material progress, a rare growth of poetic power and free spirit under new and fostering conditions. Before the youth of this State is the possibility of success in any pursuit, of rise to influence, of contributing to the formative period of a new commonwealth. There is every inducement to be a courageous, energetic, and ideal man. Those who have made our history, most of them, are still living, but their work is nearly accomplished, and you will take up the responsibility. May our great system of public instruction contribute to fill the State in coming decades with noble men and women who are not afraid of ideals.
Man may deceive others, but is shamed at the tribunal of his own better judgment. A celebrated lecturer describes what he calls the “Laughter of the Soul at Itself,” “a laughter that it rarely hears more than once without hearing it forever.” He says: “You would call me a partisan if I were to describe an internal burst of laughter of conscience at the soul. Therefore let Shakespeare, let Richter, let Victor Hugo, let cool secular history put before us the facts of human nature.” We may refer to one illustration: Jean Valjean, one of Hugo’s characters, an escaped and reformed convict, was about to see an innocent man condemned for his own act, through mistaken identity. He tried to make himself believe self-preservation was justifiable, and as the mental struggle between Self and Duty went on he seemed to hear a voice: “Make yourself a mask if you please; but, although man sees your mask, God will see your face; although your neighbors see your life, God will see your conscience.” And again came the internal burst of laughter. The author proceeds: “Valjean finally confessed his identity; and the court and audience, when he uttered the words, ‘I am Jean Valjean,’ ‘felt dazzled in their hearts, and that a great light was shining before them.’”
Science does away with superstition and many an error, it makes known the laws of nature, it applies them to practical ends, it is the handmaid of civilization, it emphasizes the welfare of humanity, it shows the working of the mechanism within the field of demonstrative knowledge, the finite, knowable land of the real. Science exceeds its purpose only whenever it proclaims that there is no field of spiritual knowledge, glimpses of which may be seen by souls that dwell upon the heights. Some would measure the earth with a carpenter’s rule, forgetting Him “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out Heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.”
Carlyle says: “Religion in most countries is no longer what it was, and should be—a thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of man to the invisible Father, the fountain of all goodness, beauty, truth, and revealed in every revelation of these; but for the most part a wise, prudential feeling, grounded on mere calculation, a matter, as all others now are, of expediency and utility; whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a larger quantum of celestial enjoyment.” But again and more truly he says: “Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky, but the stars are there and will reappear.”
Once a pupil asked to be excused from exercises in which choice extracts from the Bible were sometimes read, simply because they were from the Bible; but he listened with pleasure to good thoughts from other books, though these books contained many a palpable error. Aside from the view which makes the Bible the Sacred Book of the Christian believer, he had not thought of its value to a large portion of the human race. He had not regarded it in the light of history and philosophy. The ideals for which the Hebrew race has stood, the wonderful prophecies of great and far-seeing men, the grand poems of faith and promise, the words of condensed wisdom, the maxims for right living, the Beatitudes, the teaching of the Parables, the spirit of adoration, the moral code, the allegorical wisdom never had been contemplated apart from the religious view, against which he had imbibed a prejudice.
Permit me to speak from the standpoint of history and philosophy. The Christian religion is a chief source of our peculiar civilization, of the character of our institutions, of the growth of altruism, of the equality of man, of the supreme worth of the inner motive, of charity, of liberty. It has given the world the highest examples of pure and devoted lives.
I have a friend who is struck with the tale of how Buddha, wearing a Brahman’s form, when “drought withered all the land,” encountered a starving tigress with her cubs, and, in the unbounded pity of his heart, offered himself a sacrifice to their hunger. He says: “Here is a beautiful religion for me.” And yet he is not touched by the story of a Saviour who carried the burden of the pains and sorrows of many and died that they might live.
Disregard no good, wherever found. The human race must have its ideals. Thousands have felt what a famous man has expressed, that, were there no religion, men would of necessity invent it and worship a false idea. The religion of Mohammed is better than the idolatry of the Arab; the idolatry of the Arab was better than nothing. The races—each at its own stage—have been improved by their religions. The Scandinavian conception of Walhalla; the Ancient Oracle at Dodona, where the priests in gloomy groves caught the responses of Zeus from the whisperings of the sacred oaks; the ancestor worship of the Chinese, the system of symbolism in Egypt—all represented the struggle toward ideal life and the notion of retributive justice. With bowed head and reverential heart I would stand in the presence of any sincere devotion, the uplifting of the soul in prayer to the God of its faith; how much more in the presence of that worship which the best intelligence of the best races has accepted. And how often one misinterprets the real meaning of an alien religion. The “Light of Asia” gives a meaning to Nirvana never heard from the pulpit:
“Foregoing self, the Universe grows ‘I’;
If any teach Nirvana is to cease,
Say unto such they lie.”
Let young men learn as a common-sense proposition that, though creeds may change, though there may be frequent readjustments of theological beliefs, the religious sentiment is an essential fact of our nature, and has a meaning the depth of which they have not sounded.
The love of Art is necessary to the complete man. Whatever may be said of the cold, intellectual spirit, one attains a high standard of humanity only when he possesses a heart warmed and ennobled by a vivid conception of the Beautiful found in the rainbow, the color of the leaf, and the sparkle of the rill, works framed in nature and hung in God’s great art gallery—the universe. Man sees the real spirit shining through material forms, and architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry follow. Noble thought and action, right and truth, all perfect things partake of the essence of Beauty. Art adds to nature; it casts a halo:
“The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the Poet’s dream.”
I have often dwelt upon the lines of Wordsworth:
“To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
I have often wished to hear a sermon arguing from this thought the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The peculiar nature of the soul, that transmutes sensation into divine emotion—a sweetness, longing, and reverence that are not of earth—is it not suggestive of all that is claimed by religious faith? Wordsworth rightly ascribed a dwarfed nature to him who sees only meaningless form and dull color in the flower:
“A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”
That education is inadequate which ignores the value of man’s æsthetic nature and neglects its growth.