Means and Ends of Education

by John Lancaster Spalding

Active participation in political life is not a refining, an ennobling, a purifying influence. Is it desirable that the half of the people to which the interests of the home, of the heart, of the religious and moral education of the young are especially committed, should be hurled into the maelstrom of selfish passion and coarse excitement?

The smartness and self-assertiveness of American women are already excessive; they lack repose, serenity, and self-restraint. If they rush into the arena of noisy and vulgar strife, will not the evil be increased? Will not the political woman lose something of the sacred power of the wife and mother? Are not the primal virtues, those which make life good and fair and which are a woman's glory,—are they not humble and quiet and unobtrusive? The suffrage has not emancipated the masses of men, who are still held captive in the chains of poverty and dehumanizing toil.

Do women themselves, those, at least, in whom the woman soul, which draws us on and upward, is most itself, desire that the vote be given them?

But whatever our opinions on the subject may be, let us not lose composure. "If a great change is to be made," says Edmund Burke, "the minds of men will be fitted to it, the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing the mighty current will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate."

Whether or not woman shall become a politician, there is no doubt that she is becoming a worker in a constantly widening field. The elementary education of the country is already intrusted to her. She is taking her position in the higher institutions of learning. She has gained admission to professional life. In the business world, her competition with man is more and more felt. In literature, in our country at least, her appreciativeness is greater than man's, and her performance not inferior to his. There is a larger number of serious students among women than among men. In the divinely imposed task of self-education, they are fast becoming the chief workers. They are the great readers of books, especially of poetry. The muse was the first school-mistress, and the love of genuine poetry is still the finest educational influence. The vulgar passions and coarse appetites which rob young men of faith in the higher life and of the power to labor perseveringly for ideal ends, have little hold upon the soul of woman. Her betrayers are frivolity and vanity, and a too confiding heart; and the more she is educated the less will she take delight in what is merely external, and the greater will become her ability to bring sentiment under the control of reason and conscience.

There are not two educations, then, one for man, and another for woman, but both alike we bid contend to the uttermost for completeness of life; bid both trust in human educableness, which makes possible the hope of attaining all divine things. True faith in education is ever associated with genuine humility. Only they strive infinitely who feel that their lack is infinite.

The power of education is as many sided and as manifold as life. There is no finest seed or flower or fruit, no most serviceable animal, which has not been brought to perfection by human thought and labor, or which, were this help withdrawn, would not degenerate; and if the highest thought and the most intelligent labor were made to bear ceaselessly upon the improvement of the race of man, we should have a new world.

When we consider all the beauty, knowledge, and love which are within man's reach, how is it possible not to believe that infinitely more and higher lie beyond? Call to mind whatever quality of life, physical, intellectual, or moral, and you will have little difficulty in seeing that it is a result of education. We are born, indeed, with unequal endowments; but strength of limb, ease and swiftness of motion, grace and fluency of speech, modulation of voice, distinctness of articulation, correctness of pronunciation, power of attention, fineness of ear, clearness of vision, control of hand and certainty of touch in drawing, writing, painting, playing upon instruments and operating with the knife, truth and vividness of imagination, force of will, refinement of manner, perfection of taste, skill in argument, purity of desire, rectitude of purpose, power of sympathy and love, together with whatever else goes to the making of a perfect man or woman, are all acquired through educational processes.

Education is the training of a human being with a view to make him all he may become; and hence it is possible to educate one's self in many ways and on many sides.

Refinement, grace, and cleanliness are aims and ends, as truly as are vigor and suppleness of mind and strength and purity of heart. Like sunshine and flowers and the songs of birds, they help to make life pleasant and beautiful. Even the fishes are not clean, but the only clean animal is here and there a man or a woman who has forsworn dirt visible and invisible. We can educate ourselves in every direction, to sleep well even, and neither physicians nor poets have told half the good there is in sleep. The bare thought of it always brings to me the memory of lulling showers, and grazing sheep, and murmuring streams, and bees at work, and the breath of flowers and cooing doves and children lying on the sward, and lazy clouds slumbering in azure skies. It is pleasant as the approach of evening, fresh and fair as the rising sun which sets all the world singing, sacred and pure as babes smiling in their dreams on the breasts of gentle mothers. If thou canst not see the divine worth in nature and in works of genius, it is because thou art what thou art. Can the worm at thy feet recognize thy superiority? The blind and the heedless see nothing, O foolish maid.