Achievements of trained minds.—In order to know life in the large, the mind must be able to leap from the multiplication table to the stars; must become intimate with the movements of the tides, the glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the latest proclamation; and must sit in the councils of the poets, the statesmen, the orators, the artists, the scientists, and the historians of all time. A mind thus trained can enter into the very heart of life and know it by experience.

Things of the spirit.—But education is a spiritual process, as we have been told; and, therefore, education is without value unless it touches the spirit. Indeed, it is only by the spirit that we may test the quality of education. It is spirit that sets metes and bounds and points the way to the fine things of life. A man may live in the back alley of life or on the boulevard, according to the dictates of the spirit. If his spirit cannot react to the finer things, his way will lie among the coarse and bizarre. If he cannot appreciate the glory that is revealed upon the mountain, he will gravitate to the lower levels. If his spirit is not attuned to majestic harmonies, he will drift down to association with his own kind. If he cannot thrill with pleasure at the beauty and fragrance of the lily of the valley, he will seek out the gaudy sunflower. If his spirit cannot rise to the plane of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, he will roam into fields that are less fruitful. The spirit that is rightly attuned lifts him away from the sordid into the realms of the chaste and the glorified; away from the coarse and ugly into the realm of things that are fine and beautiful; and away from the things that are mean and petty into the zone of the big, the true, the noble, and the good. And so with body, mind, and spirit thus doing their perfect work, he can, at least, look over into the promised land of complete living.

Altruism.—We are commanded to let our light shine, and this command is a noble and an inspiring one. A man who by such training as has been depicted approximates complete living is prepared to let his light shine primarily because he has light, and in the next place because his training has made him generous in spirit and altruistic; and his greatest joy comes from letting his light so shine that others may catch his spirit and move up to higher planes of living.

Questions and Exercises

  1. Why is education not satisfactorily defined by saying that it is a preparation for complete living? Who first stated this definition?
  2. What is the relation of the school to complete living?
  3. What further training should the school give in better living than to teach the pupils what it is?
  4. Give an idea of what is meant by incomplete living so far as the body is concerned.
  5. Show that soundness of body is necessary to realize one’s best.
  6. What are some reasons for the scarcity of physically perfect men and women?
  7. Have we been able to eliminate physical defects and develop physical merits in people to the same extent that we have in domestic animals?
  8. What are some of the things that have been done to improve physical man? Which of these have to do primarily with heredity and which with rearing or training?
  9. Why is the possession of healthy bodies a matter of national concern?
  10. Wherein does physical training seem to have failed to attain its ends?
  11. What are the arguments, from the standpoint of the physically efficient life, for the regulation or prohibition by the government of the sale of injurious products?
  12. What are the benefits of such a type of training as military training?
  13. Show how the lack of proper training of the mind may result in a less efficient body.
  14. In our present civilization what conditions may give rise to mental thralldom? Upon what is mental freedom conditioned?
  15. How can the trained mind get the most out of life and contribute the most to it?
  16. Explain how the spirit is the dominant element in complete living.
  17. Why is one who is living the complete life sure to be altruistic?

CHAPTER XII

THE TIME ELEMENT

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The question stated.—There are many, doubtless, who will deny, if not actually resent, the statement that some do more real teaching in ten minutes than others do in thirty minutes. But, in spite of denials, the statement can be verified by the testimony of a host of expert observers and supervisors. Indeed, stenographic reports have been made of many class exercises by way of testing the truth of this statement, and these reports are a matter of record. Assuming the validity of the statement, therefore, it is pertinent to inquire into the causes that underlie the disparity in the teaching ability of the ten-minute teacher and the thirty-minute teacher. The efficiency expert would be quick to seize upon this disparity in the rate of progress as the starting point in his critical examination. In a factory a like disparity would lead to unpleasant consequences. The workman who consumes thirty minutes in accomplishing a piece of work that another does in ten minutes would be admonished to accelerate his progress or else give way to a more efficient man. If we had instruments of sufficient delicacy to test the results of teaching, we should probably discover that the output of the ten-minute teacher is superior in quality to that of the thirty-minute teacher. For we must all have observed in our own experience that the clarity of our thinking depends upon its intensity.