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.