Education and the Higher Life

by John Lancaster Spalding

And to add to his misfortune, he is blind to his own weakness and ignorance. A sneer or a jest is his reply to the voice of wisdom, as with a light heart he walks in the road to ruin; and thus it happens that for one who becomes a true and noble man, a hundred go astray or sink into an unintelligent and vulgar kind of life. This fact is concealed from the eyes of the young, from the eyes of the multitude, indeed. As we hide the dead in the earth that we may quickly forget our loss, so society buries from sight and thought those who fail. Their number is so great that the oblivion which soon overwhelms them is needful to save even the brave from discouragement. Of a hundred college boys the lives of twenty-five will be ruined by dissipation, by sensual indulgence; twenty-five others will be wrecked by unhappy marriages, foolish financial schemes, dishonesty and indolence; of the remaining fifty, forty, let us say, will manage to get on without loss of respectability, while the ten (who are still left) will win a sort of notoriety by getting rich or by getting elected to office. Of the hundred will one become a saint, a philosopher, a poet, a statesman, or even a man of superior ability in natural knowledge or literature? And if this estimate is rightly made they all fail; and the emergence of a high and noble mind is so improbable that it may almost be looked upon, like the birth of a genius, as an accident, so impossible is it, with our limited view, to bring such cases within the domain of law. These hundred college boys have been taken from a thousand youths. The nine hundred have remained outside the doors which open into the halls of culture, away from the special influences which thought and ingenuity have created to develop and perfect man's endowments. As they are less favored, we demand less of them, and are content to have them reinforce the unenlightened army of laborers and money-getters. But when we come among those to whom leisure and opportunity are given that they may learn to think truly and to act nobly, and find that they fail in this, as nearly all of them do fail, we are disappointed and saddened. The thoughtless imagine that those who provide food and shelter do the most important work; but such work is the most important only where there is no intellectual, moral, or religious life. That is most necessary which nourishes the highest faculty, and wherever civilization exists, enlightened minds and great characters are indispensable. The animal and the savage, without much difficulty, find what satisfies appetite; but God appoints that only living souls shall provide what keeps souls alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above every other kind of earthly existence. It is our distinctive attribute, the godlike side of our being, which, under penalty of sinking to lower worlds, we must bring out and cultivate. The plant is alive. By its own energy it springs from darkness, it grows, it waves its green leaves beneath the blue heavens; but it is blind, deaf and dumb, senseless, dead to the world of sight and sound, of taste and smell. The animal too is alive, and in a higher way: for all the glories of Nature are painted upon its eye; all sounds strike upon its ear; it moves about and has all the sensations of physical pleasure of which man is capable; but it is without thought, without sense of right and wrong, without imagination, without hope and faith. It is plain then that human life, in its highest sense, is life of the soul,—a life of thought and love, of faith and hope, of imagination and desire; and men are high or low as they partake more or less of this true life. By this standard, and by no other, reason requires that we form an estimate of human worth. To be a king, to have money, to live in splendor, to meet with approval from few or many,—is accidental, is something which may happen to an ignorant, a heartless, a depraved, a vulgar man. The most vicious and brutal of men have, again and again, held the most exalted positions, and as a rule cringing and lying, trickery and robbery, or speculation and gambling, have been and are the means by which great fortunes are acquired. Position, then, and money are distinguishable from worth; and they may be and often are found where the life of thought and love, of faith and hope, of imagination and desire, is almost wholly wanting. Now, it is this life—the only true human life—which education should bring forth and strengthen; and the failure to lead this life, of those who pass through our institutions of learning, is a subject of deep concern for all who observe and reflect; for among them we look for the leaders who shall cause wisdom and goodness to prevail over ignorance and appetite. If those who receive the best nurture and care remain on the low plains of a hardly more than animal existence, what hope is there that the multitude shall rise to nobler ways of living?

There is question here of the most vital interests; and if we discover the causes of the evil, a remedy may be found. These causes of failure lie partly in our environment and partly within ourselves. In the home, in which we receive the first and the most enduring impressions, true views and noble aims are frequently wanting; and thus false and low estimates of life are formed at a time when what we learn sinks into the very substance of the mind, and colors and shapes all our future seeing and loving. This primal experience accompanies us, and hangs about us like a mist to shut out the view of fairer worlds. Enthusiasm for intellectual and moral excellence is never roused, because our young souls were not made magnetic by the words and deeds of those whom we looked up to as gods. Fortunate is he who bears with him into the life-struggle pure memories of a happy home. When I think of the bees I have seen coming back to the hive, honey-laden, in the golden light of setting suns, when I was a boy at home, a feeling comes over me as though I had lived in paradise and been driven forth into a bleak world. When one is young, and one's father and mother are full of health and joy; when the roses are blooming and the brooks are laughing to themselves from simple gladness, and the floating clouds and the silent stars seem to have human thoughts,—what more could we ask of God but to know that all this is eternal, and is from him?

In such a mood, how easy it is to turn the childlike soul to the world of spiritual and immortal things. With what efficacy then a mother's soft voice teaches us that we were born upon this earth for no other purpose than to know truth, to love goodness, to do right, that so, having made ourselves godlike, we may forever be with God. And if these high lessons blend in our thought with memories which make home a type of heaven, how shall they not through life be a spur to noble endeavor to accomplish the task thus set us? When great-hearted, high-souled boys go forth to college from homes of intelligence and love, then is there well-founded hope that they shall grow to be wise and helpful men, who know and teach truth, who see and create beauty, who do and make others do what becomes a man. Of hardly less importance is the neighborhood in which our early years are passed, and next to the companionship of the home fireside, a boy's best neighbor is Nature. Well for him shall it be, if, like colts and calves, and all happy young things, he is permitted to breath the wholesome air of woods and fields, to drink from flowing streams, to lie in the shade of trees on the green sward, or to stand alone beneath the silent starlit heavens until the thought and feeling of the infinite and eternal sink deep into his soul, and make it impossible that he should ever look upon the universe of time and space, or the universe of duty's law within his breast, in a shallow or irreverent spirit. Little shall be said to him, and little shall he speak, and to the unobservant he shall seem dull; but he is Nature's nursling, and she paints her colors on his brain and infuses her strength into his heart. She hardens him and teaches him patience; she shows him real things, fills him with the love of truth, and makes him understand that sham is shame.

His progress may be slow; but he will persevere, he will have faith in the power of labor and of time, and when in after years we shall look about for a man with some Diogenes' lantern, there are a thousand chances to one that when we find him we shall find him country-born, not city-bred. Too soon is the town-boy made self-conscious; he is precocious; all the tricks and devices of civilization are known to him; all artifices and contrivances he sees in shop-windows; the street, the theatre, the newspaper are the rivals of the home, and they quickly teach him irreverence and disobedience. He loses innocence, experience of evil gives him flippant views. He becomes wise in his own conceit; having eyes only for the surfaces of things, he easily persuades himself that he knows all. Of such a youth how shall any college make an enlightened, a noble, and a reverent man? But the home and the neighborhood are not our whole environment. As we are immersed in an atmospheric ocean, so do we swim in the current of our national life. To praise this life is easy. We all see and feel how vigorous it is, how confident, how eager. Here is a world of busy men and women, active in many directions. They found States, they build cities, they create wealth, they discuss all problems, they try all experiments, they hurry on to new tasks, and think they have done nothing while aught remains to do.

They live in the midst of the excitement of ever-recurring elections, of speculation, of financial schemes and commercial enterprises. It is an unrestful, feverish, practical life, in which all the strong natures are thinking of doing something, of gaining something,—a life in the market-place, where high thought and noble conduct are all but impossible, where the effort to make one's self a man, instead of striving to get so many thousands of money, would seem ridiculous. It is a life of inventions and manufactures, of getting and spending, in which we bring forth and consume in a single century what it has taken Nature many thousand years to hoard. Our aim is to have more rather than to be more; our ideal is that of material progress; our praise is given to those who invent and discover the means of augmenting wealth. Liberty is opportunity to get rich; education is the development of the money-getting faculty. Our national life may, of course, be looked at from many sides, but the general drift of opinion and effort is in the direction here pointed out. Nine tenths of our thought and energy are given to material interests, and these interests represent nine tenths of our achievements. This may be true of men in general, it may be true also that material progress is a condition of moral and intellectual growth; but none the less is it true that right human life is a life of thought and love, of hope and faith, of imagination and desire. Consequently in a well-ordered society, the chief aim—nine tenths of all effort, let us say—will have for its object the creation of enlightened and loving men and women, whom faith and hope shall make strong, whom imagination shall refresh, and the desire of perfection shall keep active. The aims which the ideals of democracy suggest are not wholly or chiefly material. We strive, indeed, to create a social condition in which comfort and plenty shall be within the reach of all; but the better among us understand that this is but an inferior part of our work, and they take no delight whatever in our great fortunes and great cities. If democracy is the best government, it follows that it is the kind of government which is most favorable to virtue, intelligence, and religion. It is faint praise to say that in America there is more enterprise, more wealth, than elsewhere. What we should strive to make ourselves able to say, is, that there is here a more truly human life, more public and private honesty, purity, sympathy, and helpfulness; more love of knowledge, more perfect openness to light, greater desire to learn, and greater willingness to accept truth than is to be found elsewhere. It should be our endeavor to create a world of which it may be said, there life is more pleasant, beauty more highly prized, goodness held in greater reverence, the sense of honor finer, the recognition of talent and worth completer than elsewhere.

Wealth and population should be considered merely as means, which, if we ourselves do not sink beneath our fortune, we shall use to help us to develop on a vast scale, a nobler, freer, and fairer life than hitherto has ever existed. We Americans have a great capacity for seeing things as they are. A thousand shams and glittering vanities have gone down before our straight-looking eyes; and because such things fail to impress us, we seem to be irreverent. We must look more steadfastly, deeper still, until we clearly perceive and understand that to live for money is to lead a false and vulgar life, to rest with complacency in mere numbers is to have a superficial and unreal mind. To form a right judgment of a people, as of individuals, we must consider what they are; not what they have, except in so far as their possessions are the result of work which at once forms and reveals character. And we must know that work is good only in as much as it helps to make life human,—that is, intelligent, moral and religious. And what we have the right to demand of those to whom we give a higher education is, that they shall body forth these principles in their lives and become leaders in the task of spreading them among the multitude. We demand, first of all, that they become men whose hearts are pure and loving, whose minds are open and enlightened, whose motives are benevolent and generous, whose purposes are high and religious; and if they are such men, it shall matter little to what special pursuits they turn, for whatever their occupation, honor, truth, and intelligence shall go with them, bearing, like mercy, a blessing for those who give and a blessing for those who receive. The spirit in which they work shall be more than what they do, as they themselves shall be more than what they accomplish.

A right spirit transforms the whole man, and the first and highest aim of the educator should be to impart a new heart, a new purpose, which shall bring into play forces that may oppose and overcome those faults of the young of which I have spoken, and which, if not corrected, lead to failure.

And here we come to the causes of ill success which lie within ourselves. We have our individual qualities and defects, and we have also the qualities and defects of the people whence we are sprung, and of the time-spirit into which we are born. It is the aim of education, as it is the aim of religion, to lift us above the spirit of the age; but in attempting to do this, they who lose sight of what is true and beneficent in that spirit, commit a serious blunder. A national spirit, too, is a narrow, and often a harsh and selfish spirit; but when culture and religion strive to make us citizens of the world and universally benevolent, a care must be had that we retain what is strong and noble in the character we inherit from our ancestors.

The lover of intellectual excellence, however, is little inclined to dwell with complacency either upon his own qualities, or upon the greatness of his country or his age. The untaught optimism which leads the crowd to exaggerate the worth of whatever they in any way identify with themselves, he looks upon with suspicion, if not with aversion. Self-complacency is pleasant; but truth alone is good, and they who think least are best content with themselves and with their world. He who seeks to improve his mind, neither boasts of his age and country, nor rails at them; but tries to understand them as he tries to know himself. The important knowledge here is of obstacles and defects; for when these are removed, to advance is easy. The first lesson which we must learn is that in the work of mental culture, time and patience are necessary elements. The young, who are eager and restless, find it difficult to work with patience and perseverance, especially when the reward of labor is remote, and in the excitement and hurry of American life, such work often seems to be impossible. But by this kind of work alone can true culture be acquired. It is this Buffoon means when he calls genius a great capacity for taking pains. When Albert Dürer said, "Sir, it cannot be better done;" he simply meant that he had bestowed infinite pains upon his work. Now, they who are in a hurry cannot take pains; and they who work for money will take pains only in so far as it is profitable to do so. We must live in our work and love it for its own sake. To do work we love makes us happy, makes us free, and according to its kind educates us; and whatever its kind, it will at least teach us the sovereign virtue of patience, and give us something of the spirit of the old masters who in dingy shops ceased not from labor, and kept their cheerful serenity to the end, though the outcome was only the most perfect fiddle, or a deathless head. But they themselves had the souls of artists, and were honest men, who in their work found joy and freedom, and therefore what they did remains as a source of delight and inspiration. If we find it impossible to put our hearts into our work and consequently impossible to take infinite pains with it, then this is work for which we were not born. The impatient cannot love the labor by which the mind is cultivated, because impatience implies a sense of restraint, a lack of freedom. They are restless, easily grow weary or despondent, find fault with themselves and their task, and either throw off the yoke or bear it in a spirit of disappointment and bitterness. As they fail to make themselves strong and serene, their work bears the marks of haste and feebleness, for work reveals character; it is the likeness of the doer, as style shows the man. Then the young are blinded by the glitter and glare of life, by the splendors of position and wealth; they are drawn to what is external; they would be here and there; they love the unchartered liberty of chance desires, and are easily brought to look upon the task of self-improvement as a slavish work. They would have done with study that they may be free, may enter into what they suppose to be a fair and rich heritage. They cannot understand that so long as they are narrow, sensual, and unenlightened, the possession of a world could not make them high or happy. They do not know that to have liberty, without the power of using it for worthy ends, is a curse not a blessing. They imagine that experience of the world's ways and wickedness will make them wise, whereas it will make them depraved.

How can they realize that the good of life consists in being, and not in having? that we are worth what our knowledge, love, admiration, hope, faith, and desire make us worth? They will not perceive that happiness and unhappiness are conditions of soul, and consequently that the wise, the loving, and the strong, whatever their outward fortune, are happy, while the ignorant, the heartless, and the weak are miserable. To know ourselves, we should seek to discover the kind of life our influence tends to create. Consider the kind of world college boys make for themselves, the things they admire, the companions they find pleasant, the subjects in which they take interest, the books that delight them,—and one great cause of the failure of education will be made plain; for though they are sent to school to be taught by professors, their influence upon one another is paramount. Instead of helping one another to see that their real business is to educate themselves, they persuade one another that life is given for common ends and vulgar pleasures. Hence they look with envy upon their companions who are the sons of rich men, as they have not lived long enough to learn that the fate of four fifths of the sons of rich men in this country, is moral and physical ruin. If such is the public opinion of the world in which they live; and if even strong men are feeble in the presence of public opinion,—how shall we find fault with them for not being attracted by the ideals of intellectual and moral excellence. For the trained mind even to think is difficult, and for them independent thought is almost impossible. They do not know the little less than creative power of right education, or that as we are changed by action, we are transformed by thought. What patient labor may do to exalt and refine the mental faculties, until we become capable of entering into the life of every age and every people, has not been shown to them; and hence they are not inspired by the high hope of dwelling, in very truth, with all the noble and heroic souls who have passed through this world and left record of themselves. We bid the youth learn many things which he cannot but find both useless and uninteresting. And yet unless we discover the secret of winning him to the love of study, the educational value of what he learns is lost; for what leaves him unmoved, leaves him unimproved. His information and accomplishments are comparatively unimportant. What he himself is, and what his real self gives us grounds for hoping he shall become, is the true concern. To be able to translate Æschylus or Plato is not a great thing; but it is a great thing to have the Greek's sense of what is fair, noble and intellectual. To be able to solve a complex mathematical problem may be unimportant; but to have the mental habit of accurate, close, patient thinking is important. It is easy to forget one's Greek or the higher mathematics; but an intellectual or a moral habit is not easily lost.