Means and Ends of Education

by John Lancaster Spalding

Thou thinkest to serve God with lies,
Thou devil-worshipper and fool!

The moral value of the study of science lies in the love of truth it inspires and inculcates. He who knows science knows that liars are imbeciles. From the educator's point of view, truthfulness is the essential thing. His aim and end is to teach truth, and the love of truth, which leavens the whole mass and makes it life-giving. But the liar has no proper virtue of any kind.

The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient, and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt there may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds. But the scepticism of sciolists lacks the depth and genuineness of truth. To be frivolous where there is question of all that gives life meaning and value is want of sense. The sciolist is one who has a superficial knowledge of various things, which for lack of deep views and coherent thought, for lack of the understanding of the principles of knowledge itself, he is unable to bring into organic unity. The things he knows are confused and intermingled, and thus fail either to enlighten his mind or to impel him to healthful activity. He forms opinions lightly and pronounces judgment rashly. Knowing nothing thoroughly, he has no suspicion of the infinite complexity of the world of life and thought. The evil effects of this semi-culture are most disagreeable and most harmful in those whose being has been developed only on its temporal and earthly side. Their spiritual and moral nature has no centre about which it may move, and they wander on the surface of things in self-satisfied conceit, proclaiming that what is beyond the senses is beyond the reach of the mind, as though our innermost consciousness were not of what is intangible and invisible.

All divine things are within and about us, here and now; but we are too gross to see the celestial light, or to catch the whisperings of the heavenly voices. God is here; but we, like plants and mollusks, live in worlds of which we do not dream, upheld and nourished and borne onward by a Power of whom we are but dimly conscious,—nay, of whom, for the most part, we are unconscious.

There is a truth above the reach of logic, an impulse of the mind and heart which urges beyond the realms of sense, beyond the ken of the dialectician, to the Infinite and Eternal, before whom the material universe is but a force at whose finest touch souls awaken to the thrill of thought and love.

When we are made conscious of the fact that the Divine Word is the light of men, we readily understand that our every true thought, our every good deed, our every deeper view of nature and of life, comes from God, who is always urging us into the glorious liberty of His children, until we become a heavenly republic in which righteousness, peace, and joy shall reign. "The restless desire of every man to improve his position in the world is the motive power of all social development, of all progress," says Scherr, unable to perceive that the mightiest impulses to nobler and wider life have been given by those who were not thinking at all of improving their position, but were wholly bent upon improving themselves. Make choice, O youth! between having and being. If having is thy aim, consent to be inferior; if being is thy aim, be content with having little. Real students, cultivators of themselves, are not inspired by the love of fame or wealth or position, but they are driven by an inner impulse to which they cannot but yield. Their enthusiasm is not a fire that blazes for an hour and then dies out; it is a heat from central depths of life, self-fed and inextinguishable.

The impulse to nobler and freer life springs, never from masses of men, but always from single luminous minds and glowing hearts. The lightning of great thoughts shows the way to heroic deeds. It is better to know than to be known, to love than to be loved, to help than to be helped; for since life is action, it is better to act than to be acted upon. Whosoever makes himself purer, worthier, wiser, works for his country, works for God. The belief that the might of truth is so great that it must prevail in spite of whatever opposition, needs, to say the least, interpretation; for it has often happened that truth has been overcome for whole generations and races; and the important consideration is not whether it shall finally prevail, but whether it shall prevail for us, for our own age and people. It is of the nature of spiritual gifts to work in every direction; they enrich the individual and the nation; they develop, purify, and refine the intellectual, moral, and physical worlds in which men live and strive. The State and the Church are organisms; the body, the social and religious soul, under the guidance of God, creates for itself. And not only should there be no conflict between them, but there should be none between them and the free and full development of the individual. A peasant whose mental state is what it might have been a thousand years ago is for us, however moral and religious, an altogether unsatisfactory kind of man. All knowledge is pure, and all speech is so if it spring from the simple desire to utter what is seen and recognized as truth. The love of liberty is rare. It is not found in those whose life-aim is money, pleasure, and place, which enslave; but in those who love truth, which is the only liberating power. Knowledge is the correlative of being, and only a high and loving soul can know what truth is or understand what Christ meant when He said: "Ye shall know truth, and truth shall make you free." High thinking and right loving may make enemies of those around us, but they make us Godlike. How seldom in our daily experience of men do we find one who wishes to be enlightened, reformed, and made virtuous! How easy it is to find those who wish to be pleased and flattered!

At no period in history has civilization been so widespread or so complex as to-day. Never have the organs of the social body been so perfect. Never has it been possible for so many to co-operate intelligently in the work of progress. You, gentlemen, have youth and faith and the elements of intellectual and moral culture. In the freshness and vigor of early manhood, you stand upon the threshold of the new century. You speak Shakspeare's and Milton's tongue; in your veins is the blood which in other lands and centuries has nourished the spirit which makes martyrs, heroes, and saints. Your religion strikes its roots into the historic past of man's noblest achievements, and looks to the future with the serene confidence with which it looks to God. Your country, if not old, is not without glory. Its soil is as fertile, its climate as salubrious as its domain is vast. It is peopled by that Aryan race, which, from most ancient days, has been the creator and invincible defender of art and science and philosophy and liberty; and with all this the divine spirit and doctrine of the Son of Man have been interfused.

We are here in America constituted on the wide basis of universal freedom, universal opportunity, universal intelligence, universal good-will. Our government is the rule of all for the welfare of all; it has stood the test of civil war, and in many ways proved itself both beneficent and strong. Already we have subdued this continent to the service of man. Within a hundred years we have grown to be one of the most populous and wealthy and also one of the most civilized and progressive nations of the earth. Your opportunities are equal to the fullest measure of human worth and genius. In the midst of a high and noble environment it were doubly a disgrace to be low and base. In intellectual and moral processes and results the important consideration is not how much, but what and how. How much, for instance, one has read or written gives us little insight into his worth and character; but when we know what and how he has read and written, we know something of his life. When I am told that America has more schools, churches, and newspapers than any other land, I think of their kind, and am tempted to doubt whether it were not better if we had fewer.

The more general and the higher the average education of the people, the more urgent is the need of thoroughly cultivated and enlightened minds to lead them wisely. The standard of our intellectual and professional education is still low; and neither from the press nor the pulpit nor legislative halls do we hear highest wisdom rightly uttered. To be an intellectual force in this age one must know—must know much and know thoroughly; for now in many places there are a few, at least, who are acquainted with the whole history of thought and discovery, who are familiar with the best thinking of the noblest minds that have ever lived; and to imagine that a sciolist, a half-educated person, can have anything new or important to impart is to delude one's self.