The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches

by David Starr Jordan

Hutten was buried where he died, on the little island of Ufnau, in the Lake of Zürich, at the foot of the mighty Alps. And some of his old associates put over his grave a commemorative stone. Afterwards, the monks of the abbey of Einsiedein, in Schwytz came to the island and removed the stone, and obliterated all traces of the grave.

It was well that they did so; for now the whole green island of Ufnau is his alone, and it is his worthy sepulcher.

[1] For many of the details of the life of Hutten, and for most of the quotations from Hutten's writings given in this paper, the writer is indebted to the excellent memoir by David Friedrich Strauss, entitled "Ulrich von Hutten." (Fourth Edition: Bonn, 1878.) No attempt has been made to give here an account of Hutten's writings, only a few of the more noteworthy being mentioned.

[2] "Sehet ihr nicht dasz die Luft der Freiheit weht?"

NATURE-STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE.[1]

In pleading for nature-study as a means of moral culture, I do not wish to make an overstatement, nor to claim for such study any occult or exclusive power. It is not for us to say, so much nature in the schools, so much virtue in the scholars. The character of the teacher is a factor which must always be counted in. But the best teacher is the one that comes nearest to nature, the one who is most effective in developing individual wisdom.

To seek knowledge is better than to have knowledge. Precepts of virtue are useless unless they are built into life. At birth, or before, "the gate of gifts is closed." It is the art of life, out of variant and contradictory materials passed down to us from our ancestors, to build up a coherent and effective individual character.

The essence of character-building lies in action. The chief value of nature-study in character-building is that, like life itself, it deals with realities. The experience of living is of itself a form of nature-study. One must in life make his own observations, frame his own inductions, and apply them in action as he goes along. The habit of finding out the best thing to do next, and then doing it, is the basis of character. A strong character is built up by doing, not by imitation, nor by feeling, nor by suggestion. Nature-study, if it be genuine, is essentially doing. This is the basis of its effectiveness as a moral agent. To deal with truth is necessary, if we are to know truth when we see it in action. To know truth precedes all sound morality. There is a great impulse to virtue in knowing something well. To know it well, is to come into direct contact with its facts or laws, to feel that its qualities and forces are inevitable. To do this is the essence of nature-study in all its forms.

The claim has been made that history treats of the actions of men, and that it therefore gives the student the basis of right conduct. But neither of these propositions is true. History treats of the records of the acts of men and nations. But it does not involve the action of the student himself. The men and women who act in history are not the boys and girls we are training. Their lives are developed through their own efforts, not by contemplation of the efforts of others. They work out their problem of action more surely by dissecting frogs or hatching butterflies than by what we tell them of Lycurgus or Joan of Arc. Their reason for virtuous action must lie in their own knowledge of what is right, not in the fact that Lincoln, or Washington, or William Tell, or some other half-mythical personage would have done so and so under like conditions.