EDUCATION.
EDUCATION.
HERITAGE OF THE SCHOLAR.
For a thousand years before the Teuton appeared on the scene of civilization, the sages had been teaching in the agora of Athens and in the groves and gardens of its environs. There profound subjective philosophies were imparted to eager seekers for truth, and in the schools geometry, rhetoric, music, and gymnastics gave to the Attic youth a culture more refined than was ever possessed by any other people. The Athenians were familiar with a literature which, for purity and elegance of style, was never surpassed. The Greeks believed with Plato, that “rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements, and making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated.” There temples rose with stately column and sculptured frieze, and art fashioned marble in the images of the gods with a transcendent skill that gave an enduring name to many of its devotees.
Meantime our ancestors were wandering westward through the forests of Europe, or were dwelling for a time in thatched huts on some fertile plain, or in some inviting glade or grove. But these children of the forest, almost savages, possessed the genius of progress, a power that turned to its own uses the civilization of the past, and almost wholly determined the character of modern history. They highly esteemed independence and honor. In their estimate of woman they stood above the people of antiquity, and the home was held sacred. They possessed a practical and earnest spirit, an inborn dislike for mere formalism, and a regard for essentials that later developed in scientific discovery and independence of thought. The Teuton had a nature in which ideas took a firm root, and he had a profoundly religious spirit, impressible by great religious truths. He listened to the rustle of the oak leaves in his sacred groves, as did the Greeks at Dodona, and they whispered to him of mysterious powers that manifested themselves through nature. The scalds, the old Teutonic poets, sang in weird runic rhymes of the valorous deeds of their ancestors.
How the Teutons hurled themselves against the barriers of the Roman Empire, how they overran the fields of Italy, how they absorbed and assimilated to their own nature what was best in the civilization of the ancients, how they formed the nuclei of the modern nations, how the renaissance of the ancient literature and art in Italy spread over Western Europe and reached England, and later an offshoot was transplanted to American soil—these and similar themes constitute some of the most interesting portions of history. Not least important is the fact that the Roman world gave the Teutons the religion of Christ, that highest development of faith in things not seen, which, to the mind of many a searcher in rational theology, is a necessary part of a complete plan, to a belief in which we are led by a profoundly contemplative view of nature and human life. We study the past to know the present. Man finds himself only by a broad view of the world and of history, together with a deep insight into his own being. Our present institutions are understood better when viewed historically; in the light of history our present opportunities and obligations assume fuller significance.
By the mingling of two streams, one flowing from the sacred founts of Greece and Rome, the other springing from among the rocks and pines of the German forests, a current of civilization was formed which swept onward and broadened into a placid and powerful river. Let us view the character of the present period, and learn to value what has come down to us from the past—our heritage of institutions and ideas, a heritage derived from the two sources, Greco-Roman and Teutonic.
The independent, practical, investigating energy of the Teutonic character has made this an age of scientific discovery and material progress. The forces of nature are turned to man’s uses. Science discovers and proclaims the laws of nature’s processes, and evolution admits that, in view of every phenomenon, we are in the presence of an inscrutable energy that orders and sustains all nature’s manifestations. The ideas of the Christian religion, universally received by the new peoples, in the course of centuries have forced themselves in their full meaning upon the minds of men, and they determine more than all else the altruistic spirit of the age. Altruism is the soul of Christianity; it has become a forceful and practical idea, and it promises greater changes in political and social conditions than the world has ever seen. The religious revolt of the sixteenth century is a Teutonic inheritance—a revolt which transmitted some evils, but which abjured formalism and based merit upon the essential, conscious attitude of man. If the impulse that grew into the revolution of the eighteenth century and led to political emancipation was not of Teutonic origin, it was received and cherished everywhere by Teutonic peoples, and was carried by them to permanent conclusions. The modern Teuton is found in his highest development in the intelligent American of to-day. The ancient Teuton caught up the torch of civilization, and in the fourteen centuries since has carried it far. It is, perhaps, a return kindly made by fate that the light of that torch was for many years a beacon to benighted Italy. The modern Teuton extends to her the hand of enlightened sympathy, and remembers in gratitude the great gift received from her in the early centuries.
And we inherit from the ancients, those master minds that were the authors of great conceptions when the world was young. Greece was the Shakespeare of the ancient world. It transmuted all that it had received from the nations of the Orient into forms of surpassing genius, even as the great master of the Elizabethan period of our era turned all that he touched into precious metal. When the world was crude, and there were no great originals to imitate, it meant much to create, and create so perfectly that many of the results have ever since been ideals for all peoples. Phidias and Apelles, Pericles and Demosthenes, Homer and Euripides, Herodotus and Xenophon, Aristides, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle—artists, statesmen, orators, poets, historians, men great and just, philosophers! Can we wonder that the glory of their names increases with time? They were men whom no truly independent worker ever surpassed. No wonder the soil of Greece is sacred, and that men of to-day go back in imagination across the chasm of ages and visit it with reverential spirit. No wonder we still go to the original sources for culture and inspiration. No wonder the great and noble men of Greece are still among the best examples for the instruction of youth. The pass at Thermopylæ, where perished the three hundred, the Parthenon, are hallowed by sacred memories. The Greeks had a marvellous love for nature. They saw it instinct with life, and in fancy beheld some personal power moving in the zephyr, or flowing with the river, or dwelling in the growing tree. Their mythology has become the handmaid of literature. Parnassus, Apollo and the Sacred Nine command almost a belief with our reverence. If the seats on the sacred mount are already filled with the great men of the past, at least we can sit at their feet. The study of the humanities has a peculiar value, because it develops distinctively human possibilities. Thought and language are mysteriously connected. One of the most noted philologists of the age claims that thought without language is impossible. The use of language helps to develop concepts. Fine literature, with its thoughts, its beauty of expression, constructs, as it were, the best channels for original expression. Art strives for perfection, cultivates ideals, refines and ennobles. It creates an understanding of all the ideals that may be included in the categories of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; hence the interpretation of the aphorism of Goethe, “The beautiful is greater than the good, for it includes the good and adds something to it.” Art gives strength to the aspirations, and lends wings to the spirit. The study of the humanities is a grand means of real development.
The present offers the student two sides of education—the modern and the classic, the sciences and the humanities. Ever since the Baconian method was given to the world the interest in science has steadily increased, until now there is danger of neglecting the classic side. Each side of education has its value; either alone makes a one-sided man; let neither be neglected.