But why this overcrowding? Because the atmosphere of the professional institution fills the student with prejudice against physical labor. It is menial. His education has fitted him for something nobler than to toil in the field or in the work-shop. Institutional rivalry also does its share, sending out alluring advertisements and thus filling the college classes with recruits from the farms and from the homes of labor with candidates for positions in life of greater respectability than their parents were able to enjoy. The seeds of prejudice against rural life and manual labor are often scattered in the country schools by teachers innocently imbued with the "ideal condition." The fascinations and allurements of the city readily impress themselves upon the youthful mind, and the fact that facilities for liberal education were not offered for the relief of the toiling millions, unless to transform them into a different social element, naturally turned the eyes of those who were able to obtain a liberal education toward the cities.
It remained for the federal government to attempt to turn the tide that was setting too strongly toward urban life. The government's remedy is not prohibitive legislation, but what should have been afforded without direct government interference—a liberal education with a direct bearing upon agriculture and the mechanic arts for those who naturally desire to fit themselves for such pursuits; to place the farmer and the artisan upon an intellectual and social plane that will attract rather than repel those who would develop the country's resources. At the same time no effort should be made, for the sake of patronage or for institutional advantage to influence a student from the calling his heart honestly indicates as the one for which natural taste and native ability, quickened by educational training, fits him. The thing to be avoided, rather, is the inculcation of prejudice against useful vocations and desirable pursuits as being undignified and consequently beneath the notice or ambition of a gentleman.
Do scientific inquiry and scientific knowledge generally diffused augment human greed? Do they tend to promote avarice? Most certainly they do not. The man of science can see so much beyond—so much of beauty and design that even the drudgery of toil is forgotten in contemplation of the forces which he aids or controls.
No thoughts can arise above the thoughts of God as written in the growing plant or painted upon the bow that arches the sky. To the man of science, even the raw material which he reconstructs into useful commodities contains a revelation in every grain and fiber. The swelling bud, the opening flower, the growing plant, the greeting shower, each is a chapter from Nature's open book, full of inspiration. Beyond them and above them he sees the hand and hears the voice of God. And since he lives and works thus close to Nature's throbbing heart and in close communion with forces that link the finite to the Infinite, who dares to spurn the dignity of his toil or characterize his associations as menial.
To live is man's first duty; to live well his privilege. But the world has its severe as well as delightful aspects. The divine law which commands man to subdue and replenish the earth is not less mandatory than that other law which commands him to "lay up treasure in heaven." And just as material wants antedate the soul's awakening or reason's dawning, so throughout all life, physical well-being precedes and contributes to the growth of the higher life.
But, in the language of Herbert Spencer: "That increasing acquaintance with the laws of phenomenon which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate Nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common laborer comforts which a few centuries ago, kings could not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge—that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners; while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else but dead formulas."
But we may hope for better things. We may, some of us, live even to see liberal education divest herself of exclusive restrictions and eighteenth century idealism and walk hand in hand with twentieth century progress; this will be when the "overwhelming influence of established routine" shall give way to practical knowledge and love for the ornamental in education shall no longer override the useful.
E. P. Powel, in The Arena for April, most beautifully and expressively contemplates the schools which are to be. He says: "I will picture what I believe to be the common school of the twentieth century. There will be handsome schoolhouses in abundance, placed in the center of large gardens. The children will study books half a day, and things the other half. The brain will not get any more training than the hands. Manual culture which is already a part of the school life of a few towns, will be a part of school life everywhere. The school will have its shops and its gardens—and to use tools will be the chief end of culture. Man got away from the monkey by his power to make and use tools. He goes back to the ape when his hands have to be cased in gloves and his brain is ashamed of decent labor. In these school-gardens botany will be applied to horticulture. In the shops our boys and girls will learn to create things. The trouble with education now is that it divorces knowledge from work—the brains from the hands. In the twentieth century the glory of American education will also be a thorough knowledge of economics, civics and history, applied to good citizenship. Colleges will surely be a part of the common school system, and just as full of modern life. I believe we shall see the day when boys and girls who are in the common school together; without damage, can be co-educated in all other grades of school life. The farmer will then not have a separate and specific college for agriculture, while the rest have one for 'mental culture;' nor will college boys in those days be ashamed to look ahead to farming as a profession. There is no occupation that requires so much wit and educated tact, and so much positive knowledge as farming. When we get the schools, we shall get a style of farming that will be as keenly intellectual as our present style is wasteful and unintelligent."
And yet, strange as it may appear, the mission and purpose of an agricultural college must be constantly defended in a state almost wholly devoted to agriculture.
In conclusion I quote from Herbert Spencer again: "How to live?—that is the essential question for us. Not how to live in the material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem which comprehends every special problem is—the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to realize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies—how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage to ourselves and others—how to live completely. And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the great thing which education has to teach. To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge; and the only rational mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in what degree it discharges such functions."