EDUCATION AND LIFE

EDUCATION AND LIFE
PAPERS AND ADDRESSES
BY
JAMES H. BAKER, M.A., LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, AND FORMERLY
PRINCIPAL OF THE DENVER HIGH SCHOOL; AUTHOR
OF “ELEMENTARY PSYCHOLOGY”
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1900

Copyright, 1900, by
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

All rights reserved
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York.

PREFACE.

The papers and addresses constituting this volume were prepared for various occasions. They naturally fall into two groups: papers on Education, and addresses that come under the broader title of Education and Life. The subjects of the first group are arranged in a somewhat logical order, namely: a general view of the field, especially as seen by Plato; secondary education and its relation to the elementary and higher; some principles and problems of the elementary and secondary periods; higher education; the practical bearing of all mental development.

Some of the leading views presented in this book may be expressed in the following propositions: While our educational purpose must remain ideal, all education must be brought in closer touch with the work and the problems of to-day. For the safety of democracy and the welfare of society, the social aim in the preparation for citizenship must be given more prominence. Although methods that make power are the great need of the schools, mental power without a content of knowledge means nothing; each field of knowledge has its own peculiar value, and, therefore, the choice of studies during the period of general training is not a matter of indifference. Studies belonging to a given period are also good preparation for higher grades of work—a view to be more fully considered by the colleges. In the readjustments of our educational system, the entire time between the first grade and college graduation must be shortened. Some common-sense concepts which have always dwelt in human consciousness, properly kept in view, would often prevent us from wandering in strange pedagogic bypaths. We have suffered from false interpretation of the doctrines of pleasure, pursuit of inclination, punishment by natural consequences, and following lines of least resistance. Evolution and modern psychology, in their latest interpretations, are reaching a safe philosophy for school and life. At the close of this century we have almost a new insight into the doctrine of happiness through work. The heroic, ethical, and æsthetic elements of character are of prime importance. We often find some of the best principles of teaching and rules of life in literature which does not rank as scientific, but contains half-conscious, incidental expression of deep insight into human nature, and in some of the writers referred to in the addresses we find, not only good pedagogics, but fresh hope for both romance and practical philosophy. For our view of life and for our theory of education, we are to interpret evolution and judge the purpose of creation, not by the first struggle of a protozoan for food, but by the last aspiration of man for Heaven.

CONTENTS.

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.

In this country to-day the student moves in the vanguard of progress; he is heir to all that is best in the past, and his heritage makes for him opportunities full of promise.

All the soul growth of our ancestors modifies the mechanism of our intellectual processes, and gives us minds that fall into rhythm with the march of ideas. We profit by all the past has done; the active factors in this age of freedom—intellectual, spiritual, and political—are multiplied by millions, and each profits by the efforts of all. Intellectual acquirement is a duty; to be ignorant is to be behind the spirit of the time. There are problems yet to be solved; there are duties to ourselves and the age. Every individual tendency, fitness, and inclination can be met by the diversity of occupations, of knowledge, and of fields of investigation. Men of moral stamina are still needed to stand for all that is best. New ideals are to be created that shall typify an age which yet lacks poetic expression. When we consider the evolution of man and of institutions, we see that we are very far from perfection, and that each period of history is a period of development. We read of the brutal traits of our ancestors, their ignorance, and their superstition, and we can still discover the same tendencies, only more refined and better controlled. Along the avenue of progress we march toward the high destiny of the race. Evolution is the law both of Spencer and of Hegel. Every struggle of an earnest soul gives impetus to the movement.

A Shakespeare, reared on the steppes of Central Asia, among the Tartar hordes of Genghis Khan, would have been a savage—a poetic savage, perhaps, but still a savage—bloodthirsty, restless, and wild. Born of a primitive race, in some sunny clime, he would have looked dreamily upon the world and life, somewhat as an animal of the forest; he would have fed on the spontaneous products of nature, and have reposed under the shadow of his palm tree. Shakespeare of England, by a long process of education, gained the ideas of his age and the culture of the great civilizations of the past. His education and the forceful ideas of a period of thought and reformation and investigation stimulated the distinctively human intelligence, and awakened subjective analysis and poetic fancy, and he made true pictures of human character, world types, in history, tragedy, and comedy. Education enables man to begin real life where the previous age left off. It is an inherited capital. Ideas, fancies, principles, laws, discoveries, experience from failures, which were the work of centuries, are furnished ready at hand as tools for the intellectual workman. The present is understood in the light of history; the methods of investigating nature are transmitted. The growth of the race is epitomized in the individual.

Let us look at the sphere of education. Here is the world of infinite variety, form, and color. The savage looks upon it with superstitious wonder, and, perhaps, with a kind of sensuous enjoyment. He knows not how to wield nature to practical ends. But the book of science is opened to him through education. He learns the secrets of nature’s laboratory and, as with magic wand, he marshals the atoms and causes new forms of matter to appear for his uses. He learns the manifestations and transmutations of nature’s forces, and he trains them to obey his will and do his work. He observes how, under the influence of a distinct order of forces, organic forms rise on the face of nature and develop into higher and higher classes, and, incidentally, he learns the uses of vegetable products. He knows the laws of number; commodities, structures, and forces are quantitatively estimated, and material progress becomes possible. He traces the history of nations and understands the problems of the present. He catches the inspiration of the geniuses of literature, and he rises to a level with the great minds of the earth; he becomes a creature of ideas, sentiments, aspirations, and ideals, instead of remaining a mere animal. He learns the languages of cultured peoples, and gets at their inner life; learns their concepts, the polish of their expression, and becomes more enlightened and refined. He studies the subjective side of man, that which is a mirror of all that is objective, and he understands his own powers and possibilities, and the laws of human growth. He studies philosophy, and he stands face to face with the ultimate conceptions of creation and gains a basis for his thought and conduct. This is a practical view, and pertains to the making of a useful and strong man—master over the forces of nature, able to use ideas for practical ends, and capable of continuous growth.

But knowledge as such, and its use for manhood and happiness, are often underestimated. To know the processes and history of inorganic nature, to trace the growth of worlds and know their movements, and number the starry hosts, to study the structure and development of all organic life, to know the infallible laws of mathematics, to live amid the deeds of men of all ages, to imbibe their richest thoughts, to stand in presence of the problems of the infinite, make a mere animal man almost a god, direct him toward the realization of the great possibilities of his being. Imagine a man born in a desert land, and shut in by the walls of a tent from the glories of nature. Imagine him to have matured in body with no thought or language other than pertaining to the needs of physical existence. Imagine him, since we may imagine the impossible, to have a fully developed power for intellectual grasp and emotional life. Then open up to him the beauty of the forest, the poetry of the sea, the grandeur of the mountains, and the sublimity of the starry heavens; let him read the secrets of nature; present to him the writings of men whose lives have been enriched by their own labor, and whose faces radiate an almost divine expression born of good thoughts; reveal to him the glowing concepts that find expression through the chisel or brush of the artist, and give him a view from the summit of philosophy. Would he not look upon nature as a marvellous temple of infinite proportions, adorned with priceless gems and frescoed with master hand? Would he not regard art and thought as divinely inspired? And this picture is hardly overdrawn; such a contrast, only less in degree, lies between the vicious, ignorant boor, given to animal pleasures, and the scholar. Learning draws aside the tent folds and reveals the wonders of the temple. Man must have enjoyment; if not intellectual, then it will be sensuous and degrading. Here is an enjoyment that does not pall, a stimulus that does not react, a gratification that ennobles.

Moreover, education trains the powers through knowledge. The power to observe accurately the world of beauty and wonder; the power to recombine and modify in infinite kaleidoscopic forms the percepts and images of the mind, making possible all progress; the power to elaborate, verify, and generalize; the power to feel the greatness of truth, the rhythms and harmonies of the world and the beauty of its forms; the power to perceive and feel the right; the power to guide one’s self in pursuit of the best—these are worth more than mere practical acquisitions and mere knowledge, for they make possible all acquisition and growth and enjoyment.

The thoughtless person who argues against education little knows how much he and all men are indebted to it. The demand for general intelligence is increasing, and the capabilities of the race for knowledge are greater with each educated generation. Earnest men are endeavoring to make a degree of culture almost universal, as is shown by the “Chautauqua Scheme” and the plan of “University Extension.” Education adheres less rigidly to the old lines, and men can gain a more purely English training, including scientific preparation for industrial and commercial pursuits. These schemes are useful because they tend to popularize education, and they reach a class which would not be reached by the usual courses of study.

But there is danger of departing from the ideal type of education—education for general training and knowledge and manhood. Not that traditional courses must be rigidly adhered to, for a new field of learning has been opened in which may be acquired a knowledge of material nature. But, in the zeal for the modern side of education, there is danger of neglecting the ancient, the classic side, the humanities. Language and literature, history and philosophy and art, since they train expression and cultivate ideals, and teach the motives of men and the nature and destiny of the human race, since they deal with the spiritual more than with the material, since they belong exclusively to man, since they stimulate the activity of divine powers and instincts, since they are peculiarly useful as mental gymnastics, since they are culturing and refining—they still have and always will have a high value in ideal education. The ancient side and the modern side should fairly share the honors in a college course.

The arguments for so-called practical education are fallacious, whenever the nature, time, and possibilities of the pupil will enable him to develop anything more than the bread-winning capabilities. When one knows the pure mathematics, his knowledge can be applied in the art of bookkeeping with a minimum effort. Bookkeeping is a mere incident in the line of mathematical work. A year in a school of general education, even to the prospective clerk or merchant, should be worth ten times as much as a year spent in the practice of mechanical processes. United States history is valuable to an American youth, but, while with one view America is in the forefront of progress, there is another view in which our century of history is only an incident in the march of events. The present can be understood only historically, and the elements of our civilization should be known in the light of the world’s history.

Not only should we adhere to our faith in university education, but we can find reasons for raising the standard of a part of university work. Even now, no student should receive a professional degree who has not previously obtained at least a complete high-school education; and the time may come when, in all institutions, at least two years of college life will be required as a basis for a doctor’s or a lawyer’s degree. Graduate courses have become a prominent feature of many American universities, and year by year larger numbers of students seek higher degrees. As the race advances, the preparation for active life will necessarily enlarge.

Many know but little of the forces that move the world. Material progress does not make the spirit of the age, but the spirit of the age makes material progress. The outward works of man are a result of the promptings of the inner spirit. It is the spirit of a nation that wins battles, the spirit of a nation that makes inventions. Take away ideals and the world would be inert. It is spirit that makes the difference between the American soldier fighting for his liberty and the Hessian hireling or the old Italian condottieri who played at war for the highest bidder. Here is the difference between a slave and a freeman, between the oppressed of old countries and the free American.

Ideas move the world. It is related that in the second Messenian war the Spartans, obeying the Delphic oracle, sent to Athens for a leader, and the Athenians in contempt sent them a lame schoolmaster. But the schoolmaster had within him the spirit of song, and he so inspired the Spartans that they finally gained the victory. In the contests with England, during the time of the Edwards, the national spirit of Wales was aroused and sustained by the songs of her bards. The Marseillaise Hymn helped to keep alive the fire on the altar of French liberty. It is only as man has hope, aspirations, courage, that he acts, and, in order to progress, he must act towards ideals. The mind imagines higher things to be attained, and endeavor follows.

Natural features of sea or forest or mountain or desert have something to do with the character and ideas of a people; so, also, the material wealth in lands and buildings. But to understand the great movements of history, we must look at the great psychical factors. Our heritage of ideas, our love of liberty, our Puritan standards, our hatred of tyranny, our independence of spirit, are strong characteristics that make us a distinctive and progressive people. It was an idea that gave England her Magna Charta; an idea that made us a free and independent nation; an idea that preserved our Union.

A man makes a labor-saving invention, and the ease and luxury of physical living are increased, and men bless the inventor and proclaim that the practical man alone is of use to the world. Another gives to the world a thought—a great work of art, a song, or a philosophy—and it takes possession of men and becomes an incentive to noble living, and the race has truly progressed. Let the spirit that possesses our people die out and all material prosperity would perish.

In primitive times, when men lived in caves, and, as Charles Lamb humorously says, went to bed early because they had nothing else to do, and grumbled at each other, and, in the absence of candles, were obliged to feel of their comrades’ faces to catch the smile of appreciation at their jokes—then, if a great man had a thought, he related it to his neighbor, and his neighbor told it to a friend, and it did good. Later, a great man had a thought, and he wrought it out laboriously on a parchment and loaned it to his neighbor, and he sent it to a friend, and many came, sometimes from far, to read it, and it did more good. In our age a great man had a thought and he printed it in a book, and thousands read it, and it was translated into many tongues, and his words became household words, and the race had taken a step forward. The world advances more rapidly to-day because ideas spread with such facility.

What is called contemptuously “book learning,” the education of young men in the schools, helps to preserve, increase, make useful, and transmit all the discoveries and the best thoughts of past generations. The student is likely to be a man of ideas, of ideals, and hence he is the great power of the world.

The man of affairs says to the ideal man: There is nothing of value but railroads, houses, inventions, and creature comforts. Of what use are your history, poetry, philosophy, and stuff? The scholar replies: Every man contributes something to the common good. I am improved by your practical view and skill, and you are unconsciously benefited by my ideas. You live, without knowing it, in an atmosphere of ideas, and the practical men of to-day breathe it in and are inspired and stimulated by it. Without the atmosphere of ideas, your inventions and material progress would not be.

The culture of the ancients directly encourages ideal standards. It was a happy thought of the Greek that personified principles and ideas, that created muses to preside over the forms of literature. Let us deify our best ideals and set up altars for their worship.

Men laugh at the nonsense of poetry and ideal standards, but thoughtful men pity them. I remember listening some years since to a prominent lecturer in a large town. He began with a prelude, in which with masterly strokes he pictured the admirable location of the city, its relation to the environing regions, the whole country, and the world, its probable growth, its material promise, and its opportunity for social, intellectual, and moral development, and he pointed to the picture as an inspiration for young men. Then he entered upon his main theme, “Proofs of Immortality.” As with dramatic distinctness he made one point after another, he held his vast audience breathless and spellbound. The next morning I took up my paper at the breakfast table and noted the glaring headlines and details of robberies, murders, and domestic scandals, while, in an obscure corner, expressed in a contemptuous manner, were a dozen lines upon the magnificent oratory and supreme themes of the evening before. Is there not room for the scholar with his ideals?

Rudyard Kipling, that Englishman in a strange oriental garb, visited one of the great and prosperous cities of our country. He was met by a committee of citizens and shown the glory of the town. They gave him the height of their blocks, the cost of their palace hotels, and the extent of their stockyards, expecting him to express wonder and admiration. He surprised them by exclaiming, “Gentlemen, are these things so? Then, indeed, I am sorry for you;” and he called them barbarians, savages, because they gloried in their material possessions, and said nothing of the morals of the city, nothing of her great men, nothing of her government, her charities, and her art. He called them barbarians because they valued their adornments, not for the art in them, but for their cost in dollars. A lecturer not long ago said derisively that of all the Athenians who listened with rapt attention to the orations of Demosthenes, probably not one had a pin or a button for his cloak. It would be a curious problem to weigh a few orations of Demosthenes against pins and buttons. It is said of men of olden time that they conspired to build themselves up into heaven by using materials of earth, and began to erect a lofty tower, but the Almighty, seeing the futility of their endeavor, thwarted their attempt at its inception, and thus showed that men could never ascend to the heavens by any material means. It is a wonderful invention, but no flying machine will ever give wings to the spirit. There is a material and a spiritual side to the world, and the spiritual can never be enhanced by the material. The lower animals, through their instincts, perform material feats often surpassing the skill of man. For his purpose the beaver can build a better dam than man; no skill of man can make honey for the bee. That which distinguishes man is his manhood, his thought, his ideals, his spirituality.

There is a glory of the present and a glory of the past. The glory of the past was its literature, its art, its examples of greatness. Let us retain the glory of the ancient civilization and add to it the marvellous scientific and practical spirit of the present. Then shall we have a civilization surpassing any previous one. Let us not only tunnel our mountains for outlets to our great transcontinental railway systems, but let us also find among our mountain ranges, and domes, and cañons, some sacred grottoes. Let us not only explore our peaks for gold and silver, but find some Parnassus, sacred to the Muses, whom we shall learn to invoke not in vain.

Shall we venture to characterize the American student of the near future? He will hardly be a recluse, nor will he wholly neglect the body for the culture of the mind. He will be a man of the world, a man of business; on the one hand, not disregarding the uses of wealth, and, on the other, not finding material possessions and sensuous enjoyment the better part of life. He will be an influence in politics and in the solution of all social problems. His ideals will be viewed somewhat in the light of their practicality. He will know the laws of mental growth in order to use them, and will find the avenues of approach to men’s motives. His religion will add more of work to faith. He will secure a high growth of self by regarding the welfare of others, instead of worshipping exclusively at the shrine of his own development. The scientific knowledge of nature’s materials and forces, and the skill to use them, will invite a large class of minds. In brief, the coming student will take on more of the traits of the ideal man of affairs.

But, while we may not expect a revival of the almost romantic life of the early literary clubs of London, there will be many a group devoted to the enjoyment of thought and beauty in literature. If no Socrates shall walk the streets proclaiming his wisdom on the corners, at imminent risk from cable cars and policemen, there will be a philosophy, disseminated through the press of the coming century, which will still strive to reach beyond the processes of nature to the unknown cause, will reëxamine those conceptions of the Absolute, which are thought to stand the test when applied to explain the problems of human life. If no Diogenes shall be found with his lantern at noontide, seeking, as it were, in a microscopic way, the honest man which the brilliant luminary failed to reveal, many a one, living courageously his principles and convictions, will endeavor by precept and example to make an age of honest men who will find the golden rule in the necessities of human intercourse, as well as in the concepts of ethics and the teaching of religion.

The student owes much to the world. The ideal scholar is too intelligent to be prejudiced, one-sided, or superstitious. He should avoid the path of the political demagogue. He should know the force of ideas and the value of ideals; he should be too wise to fall into the slough of pure materialism.

The literature of the future will not try the bold, metaphorical flights of Shakespeare, but there will be a literature that will show the poetry of the new ideas. Whatever philosophy finally becomes the prevalent one, there are certain transcendental conceptions, from which the human mind cannot escape, that will still inspire poetry. There must always be men who will open their eyes to the wonders of the world and of human existence—who must know that any, the commonest, substance is a mystery, the key to which would unlock the secrets of the universe. The beauty of the starry heavens will ever be transcendent; every natural scene and object remains a surpassing work of art; life is filled with tragedy and comedy, and the possibilities of human existence are as sublime as the eternal heights and depths. Such conceptions beget a poetry which rises to a faith above reason; that instinctively looks upon the fact of creation and of existence as sublime and full of promise, and clings to a belief, however vague, in the ultimate grand outcome for the individual. The right view of the world is essentially poetic, and the truest poetry includes faith and reverence. It is the privilege of the earnest and profound scholar to know that literature refines, that philosophy ennobles, that religion purifies, that ideals inspire, and that the world can be explained in its highest meaning only by the conception of a personal God.

Notwithstanding its practical tendencies, this century is not wanting in the highest literary power. It has given us the universal insight and sympathy of Goethe, whose writings Carlyle describes as “A Thousand-voiced Melody of Wisdom.” He thus continues, “So did Goethe catch the Music of the Universe, and unfold it into clearness, and, in authentic celestial tones, bring it home to the hearts of men.”

This century has revealed the grandeur of metaphysical thought through Hegel, and found a wonderful expounder of science in Spencer. Each an exponent of a great philosophy, both giants in mental grasp, they greatly influence the thought of the age, and become co-workers in the investigation of many-sided truth.

Next stands Carlyle, in the midst of this mechanical and seemingly unpoetic age, and proclaims it an age of romance; in inspired words teaches the beauty of the genuine, the sublimity of creation, the grandeur of human life. Wordsworth, Nature’s priest, interprets her forms and moods with finest insight, and finds them expressive of divine thought. He looks quite through material forms and feels

“A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.”

Our own Emerson to this generation quaintly says, “Hitch your wagon to a star,” and thousands strive to rise superior to occupation, rank, and habit into the dignity of manhood—to rise above the clouds of sorrow and disappointment, and bathe in the pure sunlight. The spiritual beauty of his face, the calm dignity of his life will live in the memory of men and add to the force of his writings.

Longfellow has said,

“Look, then, into thine heart, and write.”

Every aspiration, every care and sorrow, every mood and sentiment, finds in him a true sympathy; he stands foremost, not as a genius of the intellect, but as a genius of the heart. How often he enters our homes, sits at our firesides, touches the sweetest, tenderest chords of the lyre, awakens the purest aspirations of our being.

Then comes Dickens, and tells us that fiction may have a high and noble mission; that it may teach love, benevolence, and charity; that it may promote cheerfulness and contentment; that it may expose injustice and defend truth and right.

All these, each a master in his field, are powerful in their influence; but beyond this fact is the more significant one that they index some of the better tendencies of the century. Never before were so many fields of thought represented; never did any possess masters of greater skill. We may hope that, even in the midst of this period of material prosperity, invention, and scientific research, the spiritual side of man’s nature will ultimately gain new strength, and thought a deeper insight.

With our exact thought and practical energy, is there not danger of losing all the romance which clothes human existence with beauty and hope? The gods are banished from Olympus; Helicon is no longer sacred to the Muses; Egeria has dissolved into a fountain of tears; the Dryads have fled from the sacred oaks; the elves no longer flit in the sunbeams; Odin lies buried beneath the ruins of Walhalla; “Pan is dead.” That wealth of imagination which characterized the Greek, enabled him to personify the powers that rolled in the flood or sighed in the breeze, has passed away. We would turn Parnassus into a stone quarry and hew the homes of the Dryads into merchantable lumber. The spear of chivalry is broken in the lists by the implements of the mechanic, the tourney is converted into a fair. Romance is for a time clouded by the smoke of manufactories.

But a seer has arisen, who finds in remotest places and in humblest life the essence of romance. Carlyle is our true poet and we do well to comprehend his meaning. To his mind we have but to paint the meanest object in its actual truth and the picture is a poem. Romance exists in reality. “The thing that is, what can be so wonderful?” “In our own poor Nineteenth Century ... he has witnessed overhead the infinite deep, with lesser and greater lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by the hand of God; around him and under his feet the wonderfullest earth, with her winter snow storms and summer spice airs, and (unaccountablest of all) himself standing there. He stood in the lapse of Time; he saw eternity behind him and before him.” I cannot lead you to the end of that wonderful passage, but it is worth the devotion of solitude.

We have left the superstitions of the past, but the beauty of mythology is transmuted into the glory of truth. In the valley of Chamounix, Coleridge sang for us a grander hymn than any ancient epic, Wordsworth has read the promise of immortality in a humble flower, science reveals to us the sublimity of creation. Romance has not passed away; if we will but look nature becomes transparent and we see through to Nature’s God.

Many good men fear the results of independent thought and scientific research, but such fear is the outgrowth of narrow views. Every pioneer in an unexplored field should be welcomed. The Darwins and the Spencers are doing a grand work. Only the widest investigation can possibly affirm the truth of any belief. Let men doubt their instincts and go forth to seek a foundation for truth. Let them trace the evolution of organized being from the simplest elements. Let them resolve the sun and planets and all the wonderful manifestations of force into nebulæ and heat. Let investigation seek every nook and corner penetrable by human knowledge. All this will but show the processes and the wonders of creation without revealing the cause or end.

The intellect of man, for a time divorced from the warm instincts of his being, sent forth into chill and rayless regions of discovery, having performed its mission, will return and speak to the human soul in startling, welcome accents: Far and wide I have sought a basis for truth and found it not. Any philosophy that recognizes no God is false. Search your inner consciousness. You are yourself God’s highest expression of truth. You see beauty in the flower, glory in the heavens. You have human love and sympathy, divine aspirations. Life to you is nothing without aim and hope. Trust your higher instincts.

The ancient Romans read omens in the flight of birds, and ordered great events by these supposed revelations of the deities. In our day, a Bryant has watched by fountain and grove for the revelations of God, and has read in the flight of a “Waterfowl” a deeper augury than any ancient priest, for it relates not to political events, but to an eternal truth, implanted in the breast and confirming the hope of man.

“There is a power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast—

The desert and illimitable air—

Lone wandering but not lost.

“Thou’rt gone, the abyss of Heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart

Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

“He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.”

The student is asked to take a view from the height to which he has already attained, and catch a glimpse here and there of the world, of history, and of the meaning of human life. The fuller significance of what appears in the fair field of learning will come with maturer years. It is not enough for the student to enjoy selfishly his knowledge and power; he should be a mediator between his capabilities and his opportunities. It is one thing to have power, another to use it. The mighty engine may have within it the potency of great work, but it may stand idle forever unless the proper means are employed to utilize it. Let the student convert his power into active energy, and study the best ways of making it tell for the highest usefulness. Education but prepares to enter the great school of life, and that school should be a means of continuous development towards greater power and higher character, and knowledge and usefulness. Progress is the condition of life; to stand still is to decay. One with a progressive spirit gains a little day by day and year by year, and in the sum of years there will be a large aggregate. Employ well the differentials of time, then integrate, and what is the result?

An old and honored college instructor was accustomed to say, “Education is valuable, but good character is indispensable,” and the force of this truth grows upon me with every year of experience. I well remember a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher upon the theme “Upbuilding,” in which he spent two hours in an earnest and eloquent appeal, especially to the young, to thrust down the lower nature and cultivate the nobler instincts, and thus evolve to higher planes.

Happy is he who can keep the buoyancy and freshness and hope of early years. The “vision splendid,” which appears to the eye of youth, too often may “fade into the light of common day.” Too often Wordsworth’s lines become a prophecy, but let them be a warning:

“Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.”

Age should be the time of rich fruition. Not long since the Rev. William R. Alger, on his visit to Denver, after an absence of a dozen years, addressed a congregation of his old friends, and among other things he spoke of his impressions when he first approached these grand mountains. It was at set of sun, and, as he looked away over the plains, he beheld on an elevation a thousand cattle, and in the glory of the departing day they seemed to him like “golden cattle pasturing in the azure and feeding on the blue.” Upon his last visit he again approached these scenes at the close of day, and his impressions were as vivid as in earlier years; his enjoyment in life was deeper, his faith was stronger, and his hope brighter. There is no need to grow old in spirit; it is only the dead soul that wholly loses the hope and the joy of youth.

There are three grand categories, not always understood by those who carelessly name them—the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. May the thoughts and deeds which give character to life be such as to fall within this trinity of perfect ideals.

PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION AND LIFE.

It is the calm judgment of history that, in artistic, literary, and philosophical development, the world shows, relatively, nothing comparable to the Golden Age of Greece. Attica was the Shakespeare of the Ancient World. As the Bard of Avon gathered the material of legend, romance, and history, and crowned the intellectual activity of the Elizabethan Age with results of enduring value, so the leading city of Greece centred in herself many influences of the Orient, and, in a period of great intellectual awakening under favorable conditions, became the genius that produced results of surpassing power and beauty. The Greeks created when European civilization was young, and as yet there was little of the ideal that, in the Attic Period, blossomed into the conceptions of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

In any other period never has so great a master as Socrates found so great a pupil as Plato; never has so great a master as Plato encountered so great a pupil as Aristotle. Each pupil grasped and enlarged upon the mighty work of his instructor.

The world still wonders how any age could become so suddenly and highly creative. Like the century plant, the Greek race seemed to have been accumulating, through a long period, power for a quick and startling development. The thoughtful historian enumerates many favoring conditions. The Greeks as a race were active, eager for knowledge, and had a capacity for healthy ideal conceptions. The beneficent climate brought them in contact with nature, and the peculiar charm of their sky, air, mountains, and sea filled them with a sense of wonder and a sense of beauty. We may also mention the stimulus of their intercourse with their own colonies and with other peoples; their religion, which contained the germs of ethical and philosophical thought, and was favorable to freedom of view; the respect for law that sought for the rules of the state and for individual conduct a foundation in permanent principles.

Socrates is a more favorite theme than Plato, partly because he is the first of the three heroic figures that mark the beginning of philosophy. Then his name is surrounded with a halo that was constituted by the events of Athens’ greatest period of fame. He lived just after the glory of victory over the Persian invaders had stimulated the Greek pride and every activity that is born of pride and hope. He lived in the period of Athenian supremacy and was contemporary with Phidias, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Pericles.

Plato, on the contrary, beheld the beginning of the misfortunes of Attica and of the decay of Greece. It was the period of the Peloponnesian Wars, of the Spartan and the Theban Supremacy. It was the time of the Thirty Tyrants and of the restored Democracy. But while the time of Plato was not that of the greatest national glory, it permitted the free development of philosophical thought which later culminated in Aristotle.

Socrates, with earnestness of soul, with contempt for the extreme democratic spirit of his time and the growing disregard of divine and human law, with contempt for the Sophists, whose teachings were no higher than prudential preparation for practical life and cultivation of the morals and manners of a Lord Chesterfield, devoted himself to exposing the ignorance and false reasoning of the day and to the search for truth, setting up for his ideal the Supreme Good which included the True and the Beautiful. He, however, was practical in that he taught that all good was good for something; whatever was ideal was to be applied in real life, and he was a notable example of closely following ideals with practical action. “Know thyself” was his maxim, and, in knowing thyself, know the good and follow it.

Socrates is the practical man, Plato the idealist and literary man, Aristotle the scientific man. Socrates left us no writings, and, while Plato in his works uses Socrates as his chief interlocutor, the dialogues are to be regarded as expressing Socrates’ philosophy as changed and enlarged by the views of Plato. Xenophon’s “Memorabilia” is the source of more nearly accurate views of the life and teachings of Socrates.

Plato uses Socrates’ method of induction and exact definition to reach the truth aimed at. Many of the scenes are like plays, some of which would take on a stage setting, with characters that are very much alive and very human. Although in pursuit of the most serious subjects, a dramatic tone runs through the discussions. In the first book of the “Republic,” Thrasymachus in argument gets angry, grows red in the face, and fairly roars his views at Socrates, who pretends to be panic-stricken at his looks. Later Thrasymachus asks, “I want to know, Socrates, whether you have a nurse.” To Socrates’ look of astonished inquiry he more than intimates that the philosopher is too childish to go about unattended. Many of the dialogues are in part historical facts. The characters are the neighbors and friends or intellectual antagonists of the philosopher. The doctrines he combats are doctrines of the day, the scenes are real and in or about Athens. The tyranny he hates and the extreme democracy he satirizes are forms of government whose evils he has observed, and from which he has suffered. You read the dialogues, follow their thought, get into their spirit, and you are brought in touch with the great, throbbing life of the Athenian commonwealth. A few dialogues, carefully read, are worth a hundred volumes of the commentators.

It is related that at a certain time Socrates dreamed he saw a young swan perched on his knee. Soon it gained strength of wing and flew away, singing a sweet song. The next day Plato appeared and became the intimate pupil of Socrates. This is one of many myths, later invented to enlarge the halo of a great name. It was said that Plato was the son of Apollo and that the bees of Hymettus fed him with honey, giving him the power of sweet speech. Myths aside, the chance that made Plato the intimate friend and disciple of Socrates became of vast significance to the future history of philosophy. Plato was of aristocratic parentage; he showed in his youth a poetic temperament, which was later displayed in the dramatic art of his writings. After the death of Socrates in 399 B. C., he travelled and resided at various courts. At the age of forty he returned to Athens and opened his school in the Gymnasium of the Academy, where with one or two intervals he taught for a period of forty years. Aristotle was for twenty years his pupil, and there are many interesting accounts of the relation between pupil and master.

Plato had in him somewhat of the Puritan, while Aristotle was more a man of the world, and we may suppose that he often maintained his opinions with his customary sarcastic smile. He offended the more austere tastes of his master by nicety of dress, care of his shoes, display of finger rings, and a dudish cut of his hair. Contemporaries speak of Plato with admiration for his intellect and reverence for the beauty of his character, which was “elevated in Olympian cheerfulness above the world of change and decay.”

In our purpose to touch upon some points of Plato’s doctrines, we are treating of a transcendent genius whose work has profoundly affected the thought of the world. Platonism reappears as Neo-Platonism in the second and third centuries of our era; is largely adopted in its new form a century later by St. Augustine, the great expounder of Christianity and teacher of the Middle Ages; arises again in the seventeenth century proclaiming that moral law is written in fixed characters in every rational mind; culminates in the grand idealism of Schelling and Hegel; is transmitted to-day in the magnificent idealistic ethics of such men as Caird, Green, and Bradley; gives the cardinal virtues to Christianity; furnishes a broad and inspiring ethical code for the present; speaks with an inspiration that largely meets the approval of the Christian world; inspired the Utopia and the New Atlantis and all ideal schemes of government and society; was, following Socrates, the father of the inductive method; became the starting point for the scientific study of nature and psychology in the eleventh century; was a large element in the humanistic movement, which at the close of the middle ages created modern natural science; created conceptions which, developing down through the centuries in two diverging lines, indirectly found highest expression in the idealism of Hegel and the evolution of Spencer, and is likely to furnish in broad outlines, especially as presented by Aristotle, ground for the reconciliation of the opposite poles of philosophy in a spiritual evolution.

What was Plato’s central idea? It was the existence of fixed principles in the universe, principles realized in the consciousness of man, through pursuit of knowledge. Socrates aimed at a permanent ground for ethical wisdom in a time when the old foundations of conduct and of divine and human law were shaken. He was the progenitor of the inductive method, in that he sought in numerous instances and opinions the essential common ground or principle, and aimed at exact definition. The class concept, general notion, universal truth, was the object of his search. And we find him, for instance, in Plato, tracing through the ten books of the “Republic” the essential character of justice. Plato, following Socrates, sought a foundation for ethical conceptions in a metaphysical theory, the Doctrine of Ideas, a magnificent illustration of the truth that speculative philosophy grows out of man’s earnest desire to know why he is here, and what is the meaning of his moral nature.

It will help much any view in the field of philosophy to keep uppermost the thought of distinct classes, types, or kinds of things in nature; the thought of the corresponding class concepts, general notions or universals in the human mind; and the thought of original ideas in the mind of God, as constituting principles or laws or modes of action in nature. This is not a world of chaotic chance, it is a world of rational and progressive order, and we are compelled to seek for the architecture an architect and a plan embodying rational ideas. Plato’s ideas are eternal entities existing neither in nature nor in the mind of God, but nevertheless the archetypes, forms, or patterns after which every kind of things to which may be applied a common name was fashioned. Plato here held in an imperfect way the mighty truth of all philosophy, and the “Ideas” have reappeared in many guises,—as the forms or essences of Aristotle, existing only as realized in nature, as ideas in the mind of God, as the self-evolving categories of Hegel, as the perfecting principle and the fashioning laws in the doctrine of evolution.

Man in his preëxistent state dwelt in the region of immaterial ideas and gazed on the fulness of their truth. At his human birth he was made oblivious of his past existence, and growth in wisdom was a gradual realization in the consciousness of the eternal verities formerly known. As in Wordsworth, man’s birth was but a “sleep and a forgetting;” growth in knowledge was a remembering. “Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.” The truth in this metaphor of philosophy, we may believe, is that man is of divine origin, and hence may know the divine revelations in his own being and in the material world. Here was foreshadowed in rough outlines the spiritual idealism which in its fresh form appears to be gaining new ground to-day. God writes the book of nature; man is the son of God and reads and vaguely understands the meaning of the mighty volume.

Sensations are not knowledge, but the signs of knowledge, as words are the signs of thought, and the mind is innately active and rational, else there could be no interpretation of those signs. This appears to be the true explanation of the fact that we are educated by contact with nature. Without the signs, no communication of knowledge; without the native power of the reader, no reception of knowledge.

Plato held that the ideas were manifest in nature and were also innate in the mind; hence by self-examination and comparison with the copies of the ideas in nature, man arrived at essential truth which was the work of philosophy.

Plato identified the Idea of Ideas with Cause, Mind, the Good or God. God was a personality and supreme above the gods. He was named by his chief attribute, the Good, and of this the True and the Beautiful were qualities. Cousin says, “The True, the Beautiful, and the Good are only revelations of the same Being; that which reveals them to us is reason.” “If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess beauty in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of its ravishing harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, he is the principle of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore without knowing it, under the name of the ideal, when our imagination, borne on from beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty in which it may find repose.” This passage is thoroughly Platonic in spirit and throws much light on the meaning of these absolute ideas of Plato. With change of terms the same passage would apply to Truth and Goodness. We trace them as they appear in the conscious reason and disposition, as they are manifested in the relations of society or are suggested by the reality and beneficence of the world, and we are led to the conception of the perfect ideals whose truth exists in God.

Plato has four principles whose interrelation and process of the active elements determine the world, as the laws of modern evolution are conceived to work out the results discovered by science: (1) unlimited, unformed, or chaotic nature; (2) law, imposing limits and forms upon nature; (3) the resulting, definite types and ideas of a rational world; (4) the Cause which effects these results.

The Good is that which imparts truth to the object and knowledge to the perceiving subject, and is the cause of science and truth; hence, to know the Good is the ethical aim, for to know the Good is to act in harmony with it, and knowledge is virtue.

Plato was fully aware that the philosopher, then as to-day, was regarded by the many as a useless star-gazer, and in the celebrated Allegory of the Cave he shows the relation of true insight to the common view of life and the world. He imagines dwellers in a cave so placed that they see only the shadows of passing objects and hear only the echoes of sounds from the outer world. If released and brought to the full light of the sun they are dazzled and pained, and think they are in a world of false appearance, and believe the realities are the familiar shadows in the cave. After a while they become accustomed to the day and the real objects, and see their truth and beauty. And if they return to the cave, they are half blind and appear ridiculous to the dwellers there. He concludes, “Whether I am right or not, God only knows; but, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and lord of light in this world, and the source of truth and reason in the other: this is the first great cause which he, who would act rationally either in public or private life, must behold.”

To the Sophist, who follows the opinion of the many instead of regarding fixed principles of truth, he pays his respects with the searching satire of a Carlyle.

His theology, which is a part of his philosophy, has many striking features that have commanded the astonishment of the Christian world. “God the Creator changes not; He deceives not.” It is wrong to do good to friends and injure enemies, for the injury of another can be in no case just. If you have a quarrel with any one, become reconciled before you sleep. In heaven is the pattern of the perfect city. All things will work together for good to the just. He advocates the severest abstract piety that, as in the conduct of the sternest Roman or the severest Puritan, swerves not from duty. The myth of Er, the Armenian, reminds us in many points of the judgment day; and his exhortation to pursue the heavenly way that it may be well with us here and hereafter, may be our salvation if we are obedient, is one of the most striking in the history of religious belief.

In the fifth book of the “Laws” is an exhortation to right living that partakes of the spirit of the Christian philosophy. Every man is to honor his own soul with an honor that regards divine good, to value principle higher than life, to place virtue above all gold, to glory in following the better course, to count reverence in children a greater heritage than riches, to regard a contract as a holy thing, to avoid excess of self-love and to adhere to the truth as the beginning of every good. We need no further illustration of the fact that Platonism was naturally welcomed by the early Christian Church.

The ethical ideals of Plato are the most valuable phase of his writings. In the First Book of the “Republic,” Thrasymachus, in a dialogue with Socrates, defines justice to be Sublime Simplicity, and argues that the unjust are discreet and wise, as some may argue to-day that shrewd dishonesty is commendable. The ethics of Plato is the opposite pole of this philosophy, and as such stands for the rational and moral order of the world. His system is not hedonistic, but ideal. It aims at a good, but the good is attained by a life of virtue.

In a famous passage of the “Republic,” the transcendently just man is described. He is to be clothed in justice only. Being the best of men, he is to be esteemed the worst, and so continue to the hour of his death. He is to be bound, scourged, and suffer every kind of evil, and even be crucified; still he is to be just for righteousness’ sake. No wonder some Christian fathers believed this referred to Him who was to come, as described in the celebrated chapter of Isaiah. The best man is also the happiest, whether seen or unseen by gods and men. In the “Crito” Socrates will not escape from prison if it is not right, though he suffer death or any other calamity. “Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul.” He is a fool who laughs at aught but folly and vice. The possession of the whole world is of no value without the good. No pleasure except that of the wise is quite true and pure. “Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man?” “How would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst?” “The Holy is loved of God because it is Holy.” Not pleasure, but wisdom and knowledge and right opinions and true reasonings are better, both now and forever. The good ruler considers not his own interest, but that of the state. The governing class are to be told that gold and silver they have from God; the divine metal is in them.

Any one who finds in these views a doctrine of pleasure must seek with a prejudiced eye. Plato, as usual, anticipates later ethical discussions, and points to the fact that there is a quality in pleasure; and quality in conduct is the very contention of absolute moralists. He speaks of the soul whose dye of good quality is washed out by pleasure. The attainment of genuine well-being, the development of divine qualities within men, was the aim, and the consciousness of this priceless possession of rational manhood was the incidental reward. His doctrine places before men abstract ideals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, which invite the better nature by their supreme excellence.

Plato enumerates four virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice. Professor Green interprets them in modern form, and maintains their fixed standard of excellence and universal application. Any modern analysis of the principles of conduct which contribute to health of soul and are favorable to success in life, would confirm the enumeration of the Greek virtues. Professor Green says: The Good Will is the will (1) to know what is true and to make what is beautiful; (2) to endure pain and fear; (3) to resist the allurements of pleasure; (4) to take for one’s self and to give to others, not what one is inclined to, but what is due. Not only does he enjoin the spirit of justice, but the cultivation of moral courage, and, as contrasted with lazy ignorance, the growth in wisdom which is realization of virtue.

Wisdom played a peculiar and important part in the Greek ethics. Vice was ignorance, because the wise man could but live according to his best knowledge. And the Greeks, properly interpreted, were right. Did we see virtue in all its truth and beauty, and vice in all its deformity, we could but choose the best. Growth in wisdom was a gradual realization in the soul of the heavenly ideas that were the true heritage of man, and in this development the soul was gradually perfected. This beautiful and satisfying philosophy reappears to-day in some of the most ennobling systems of ethics the world has produced. It makes individual and race progress an increase in consciousness of the knowledge of truth and virtue, a revelation of the divine within us.

The Jewish and the Christian conception of divine law as binding man to the performance of his moral obligations was not strongly characteristic of the Greek mind. But responsibility, without which conduct can have no ethical significance, was by no means foreign to Plato’s system. In the myth of Er the soul has its choice of the lot of life, and its condition at the end of the earthly career is a requital for the deeds done in the body. Throughout Plato’s writings the implications of personal merit or guilt are prominent.

It is a doctrine of virtue rather than of duty. He who sees the right and does not do it is a fool, but that is his matter. He is not bound by any moral law to be wise. If he is virtuous it is well; if not, so much the worse for him. Love of God is the essential of the Christian ethics; knowledge of the Good, of the Greek. To pursue the Good was virtue, and virtue he sets forth in world-wide contrast with vice. Plato’s conception of justice, or right, was so exalted that some have thought he attained in later years an insight into the nature of conscience, or the Moral Faculty.

The Greek idea of beauty must be touched in passing. The wise life was a beautiful life. The Beautiful was an attribute of the Deity. They had the love of Beauty which Goethe possessed when he had become fascinated with the study of Greek art, and exclaimed, “The Beautiful is greater than the Good, for it includes the Good, and adds something to it.” Plato calls the Beautiful the splendor of the True. The youth should learn to love beautiful forms, first a single form, then all beautiful forms and beauty wherever found; then he will turn to beauty of mind, of institutions and laws, and sciences, and he will gradually draw toward the great sea of beauty, and create and contemplate many fair thoughts, and he will become conscious of absolute beauty, and come near to God, who is transcendent beauty and goodness.

Plato’s philosophy makes education a process of developing the power and knowledge latent in the mind, rather than a process of teaching. The Socratic method of drawing out is one of time-honored use among pedagogues. Plato defines a good education as “That which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” The ideal aim is the harmonious or symmetrical development of the physical, mental, and moral powers. Physical training is for the health of the soul, as well as for the strength and grace of the body. The training of the reason is of first importance. The æsthetic emotions are to be cultivated as a means of moral and religious education. Memory is little emphasized.

The artisans and laborers were simply to learn a trade; the warrior class were to be trained in gymnastics and music. The complete education of the highest class, or the magistrates, was to include music and literature, gymnastics, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and finally philosophy. All this was to be supplemented by practical acquaintance with the details of civil and military functions.

Education is the foundation of the state, and in the “Laws” he would make it compulsory. The women are to receive the same training as the men. Children are to be taught to honor their parents and respect their elders. The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. In early childhood education is to be made attractive, although to unduly honor the likings of children is to spoil them. The tales which children are permitted to hear must be models of virtuous thought. Harmful tales concerning the gods and heroes are prohibited, but noble traits and deeds of endurance are to be emphasized. Youth should imitate no baseness, but what is temperate, holy, free, and courageous; for “imitations, beginning in early youth, at last sink into the constitution and become a second nature.” Children must not be frightened with ghost stories and reference to the infernal world.

Excessive athletics makes men stupid and subject to disease. The kinds of music employed in education must inspire courage, reverence, freedom, and temperance. Art should present true beauty and grace, to draw the soul of childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason. “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated.” Good language and music and grace and rhythm depend on simplicity.

Arithmetic cultivates quickness, and teaches abstract number and necessary truth. Geometry deals with axiomatic knowledge and will draw the soul toward truth. Astronomy compels the mind to look upward. It is to be studied not so much for practical use, as in navigation, but because the mind is purified and illumined thereby. In this connection Plato maintains his position against those who carp at the so-called useless studies.

Plato’s ideal state offends the thought of conservative men more than all else in his writings, but it was conceived in view of the highest ideas of virtue and justice. It was simply bad psychology. He enumerates and describes five kinds of states and the corresponding five types of individual character. Indeed he studies justice first in the ideal state, and then in the individual. The three impulses of the soul are compared with the three classes of citizens in the state, and to each he ascribes its excellence, thus forming his list of virtues. But we cannot dwell upon this phase of Plato’s teachings. We may, however, refer to his caricature of extreme democracy; it has a useful modern application.

In this state the father descends to his son and fears him, and the son is on a level with his father and does not fear him. The alien is equal to the citizen, and the slave to the master. The master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters. The young man is on a level with the old, and old men, for fear of seeming morose and authoritative, condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gayety. Even the animals in the democracy show the spirit of equality, and the horses and asses march along the streets with all the rights and dignities of freemen, and will run at you if you do not get out of their way, and everything is just ready to burst with liberty. The citizens become sensitive and chafe at authority, and cease to care for the laws. Surely the statesman can turn to Plato for wisdom, for out of this condition grows tyranny.

And, correspondingly, the democratical young man, a kind of fin de siècle type, is described. Insolence he terms breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage.

No wonder Plato saw that his ideal state would not be realized until kings became philosophers, that is to say—never. Modern dreamers might profit by his wise predictions.

Plato’s doctrine is one of ideas and idealism as contrasted with sensations and sensationalism. It is spiritualism as contrasted with materialism. The higher produces the lower, instead of the lower the higher. It is the doctrine that recognizes the rational order of the world, the transcendent nature of conscious man, and his ethical aim. It places ideals before man, in the attaining of which he comes to realization of his true being. It is a doctrine of rational explanation of man’s existence. As such it has always strongly invited the adherence of philosophers and Christians. The founders of the church regarded Plato as directly inspired or as having derived inspiration from the Hebrew scriptures.

The doctrine of Universals may be taken with allowance, but we may believe that it represents the right side of philosophical thought. It matters not much whether we hold to the view of Plato’s ideas or native truths of the mind developed by experience or the creative activity of the mind in knowing the outer world or the doctrine of participation in the divine nature and divine thought or the power to generalize from the facts of subjective and objective nature, a power above, and not of, material nature—all these views imply man’s spiritual and ideal character. Behind man and behind nature is the same reality. In some sense (not the pantheistic, as commonly understood) both are manifestations of that reality. Hence the power of man to know the world, because it is a rational world, and manifestation answers to manifestation, thought to thought. He who claims that all knowledge is founded in sensation is partly right; for to know the outer realm is to realize the inner and to know, in part, the truth of the Universe.

Subjective ideas, in some form, must be retained in philosophy. Our world, as a world of evolution, is orderly and has a progressive plan; hence, according to all human conception, is the product of ideas worked out through what are called the laws of nature.

Men have always asked what is the use of philosophy, and to-day they repeat the question with emphasis. We appreciate the state of mind that rejoices in consciousness of standing on the solid earth, the courageous patience that works out with guarded induction scientific truth, the honesty that will not substitute hasty conjecture for fact, and the faith that works toward results to be fully realized only in the distant future. But many scientific men are coming to regard biological and psychological sciences as great laboratories for philosophy. We may believe the coming problems will be solved by the coöperation of philosophy and science. Science studies the objective side and philosophy the subjective side of the same reality.

Philosophy has a use as an attempt to satisfy the imperative need of men to ask the meaning of their being. It has a use as forming a rational hypothesis concerning a First Cause, and a Final Aim. It is a ground of belief in ideals. All speculative philosophy has been inspired more or less by Platonism, and has given the world the noblest, most hopeful, useful, and influential systems of ethics. Philosophical training gives the power to view comprehensively, connectedly, and logically any group of facts. It contains the presuppositions of science and of our very existence. The investigator in the forest learns many valuable details; if he ascends the mountains, he views the landscape as a whole, and, as it were, finds himself. Finally philosophy represents the supreme, the spiritual, interests of man and aims at essential truth.

Will it be relegated to the shelves of archæology? The signs of to-day appear to answer no. In the whole history of philosophy, the mind has never been able to rest permanently in any extreme or one-sided position or in any position that is inadequate to explain essential facts of existence. Hence it cannot rest permanently in materialism. A recent writer speaks of the history of philosophy as “preëminently a record of remarkable returns of the human intellect to ancient follies and dreams, long since outgrown and supposed to have been consigned to oblivion.” Well! It is strange indeed if nature has evolved a product whose needs, instincts, and native beliefs are a lie, a product without aim or rational ground for existence. If it is so, then pessimism is our philosophy and annihilation our best solution of the problem of conscious life. Most men are too respectful believers in evolution to ascribe to nature any such satanic irony.

At any rate one likes to take an excursion in this field; he feels benefited by the trip. Men still like to seek the great fountain head of philosophy, and take a dip in the Castalian spring—a mental bath of this sort is a good and useful thing. They like to sit in the shady groves of the Academy and listen to Plato or walk with Aristotle in the environs of the Gymnasium. The mighty minds of the past have marked out the broad outlines of truth; it is our work to fill in, to correct. The ethical conceptions were furnished by the ancients. The modern world has merely made them richer in content and broader in application. The deeper meaning of any philosophy or science is learned by the historic method, which gives us the trend of events.

The closing words of the “Republic” are an appropriate ending to the discussion of Plato: “And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and may be our salvation, if we are obedient to the spoken word; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live, dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been reciting.”

“Plato, thou reasonest well!—

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,

This longing after immortality?

’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;

’Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,

And intimates eternity to man.”

SECONDARY EDUCATION: A REVIEW.[1]

The manner of investigation of the Committee of Ten took a somewhat different turn from what was anticipated when the original report which led to the undertaking was made, but no one now doubts the wisdom of the plan finally adopted. It would be difficult to find groups of men in America better fitted than the members of the conferences appointed by the Committee to discuss the specific subjects assigned them; and their recommendations as to choice of matter for secondary schools, the time element, place of studies in the curriculum, and the best methods constitute a most valuable contribution to the educational literature of the period. In the main, they represent the best thought of practical educators.

We shall not enter into a discussion of the details of these conference reports; each report and, in many instances, each section of a report is in itself a large theme. The summary of results and the recommendations of the Committee of Ten will occupy the time allotted.

It was expected that the report as a whole would excite much discussion and invite extensive criticism; and if no other result is attained than the sharpening of wits in controversy, the existence of the report has sufficient warrant.

It is impossible to say of any opinions that they are final, and of any methods that they are the best. Some hold that the eternal verities are to be discovered in the consciousness of the few geniuses, and that obtaining a consensus of opinion is not the way to reach wise conclusions. If we are Hegelian in our philosophy of history, we shall hold to the law of development, shall believe that each stage of thought is a necessary one, that the best light is obtained by the historic method, and that the highest evolution of thought is to be found in the belief and practice of the advanced representatives of any line of investigation. The work of the conferences was to correlate the parts of each subject by the method of applying reason to history; it was the work of the committee proper to correlate these results by the same method. Whether the committee was large and varied enough to represent all sides is to be decided by the discussions of those best fitted to form opinions.

After a careful review of the work of our committee, I venture to make a formal list of opinions presented, most of which, I think, should be heartily indorsed, reserving till later the discussion of a few of them:

1. That work in many secondary-school studies should be begun earlier.

2. That each subject should be made to help every other, as, for example, history should contribute to the study of English, and natural history should be correlated with language, drawing, literature, and geography.

3. That every subject should be taught in the same way, whether in preparation for college or as part of a finishing course.

4. That more highly trained teachers are needed, especially for subjects that are receiving increased attention, as the various sciences and history.

5. That in all scientific subjects, laboratory work should be extended and improved.

6. That for some studies special instructors should be employed to guide the work of teachers in elementary and secondary schools.

7. That all pupils should pursue a given subject in the same way, and to the same extent, as long as they study it at all.

8. That every study should be made a serious subject of instruction, and should cultivate the pupil’s powers of observation, memory, expression, and reasoning.

9. That the choice between the classical course and the Latin-scientific course should be postponed as long as possible, until the taste and power of the pupil have been tested, and he has been able to determine his future aim.

10. That twenty periods per week should be adopted as the standard, providing that five of these periods be given to unprepared work.

11. That parallel programmes should be identical in as many of their parts as possible.

12. That drawing should be largely employed in connection with most of the studies.

13. The omission of industrial and commercial subjects. This is mentioned without comment.

14. That more field work should be required for certain sciences.

15. The desirability of uniformity. Not definitely recommended in the report.

16. That the function of the high schools should be to prepare for the duties of life as well as to fit for college.

17. That colleges and scientific schools should accept any one of the courses of study as preparation for admission.

18. That a good course in English should be required of all pupils entering college.

19. That many teachers should employ various means for better preparation, such as summer schools, special courses of instruction given by college professors, and instruction of school superintendents, principals of high schools, or specially equipped teachers.

20. That the colleges should take a larger interest in secondary and elementary schools.

21. That technological and professional schools should require for admission a complete secondary-school education.

22. That each study pursued should be given continuous time adequate to securing from it good results.

The points of the report which I should question are as follows:

1. That Latin should be begun much earlier than now. (This is a conference recommendation.)

2. That English should be given as much time as Latin. (Conference recommendation.)

3. The large number of science subjects recommended, with loss of adequate time for each.

4. The omission of a careful analysis of the value of each subject, absolute and relative, preparatory to tabulating courses.

5. The apparent implication that the multiplying of courses is advisable.

6. The implications that the choice of subjects by the pupils may be a matter of comparative indifference—the doctrine of equivalence of studies.

7. Some parts of the model programmes made by the committee.

An examination of tabulated results of the investigations of the conferences will show that in their opinion the following studies should be begun below the high school:

English literature.

German or French.

Elementary algebra and concrete geometry.

Natural phenomena.

Natural history.

Biography and mythology, civil government, and Greek and Roman history.

Physical geography.

There has been much discussion within a few years as to improvements in elementary courses of study, with a growing tendency toward important modifications. Rigid and mechanical methods and an exaggerated notion of thoroughness in every detail have often become a hindrance to the progress of the pupils in elementary schools. The mind of the child is susceptible of a more mature development at the age of fourteen than is usually attained. There are numerous examples of pupils in graded schools, who, with very limited school terms, prepare for the high school at the age of fourteen. Under the guidance of painstaking and intelligent parents or private tutors, children cover, in a very brief time, the studies of the grammar school. All have noted, under favoring conditions, a surprising development, at an early age, in understanding of history, literature, and common phenomena, a growth far beyond that reached at the same age in the schools. These facts simply show the possibilities of the period of elementary education. We understand that ultimately those best prepared to judge must determine the modifications, if any are needed, of the elementary courses. Some say the courses are already overcrowded, it is impossible to add anything. Is it not true, however, that by placing less stress upon a few things, by arousing mental activity through the stimulus of the scientific method, and by improving the skill of the teachers, the work suggested by these conferences may be easily accomplished? All these experiments are already old in many schools in the country.

Consider the logical order of studies. Each child, almost from the dawn of consciousness, recognizes relations of number and space, observes phenomena and draws crude inferences, records in his mind the daily deeds of his associates, and employs language to express his thought, often with large use of imagination. Already has begun the spontaneous development in mathematics, science, history, and literature. Nature points the way and we should follow the direction. These subjects in their various forms should be pursued from the first. Hill’s “True Order of Studies” shows that there are some five parallel, upward-running lines representing the divisions of knowledge, and that development may be compared to the encircling, onward movement of a spiral, which, at each turn, cuts off a portion of all the lines. If we accept this view, we must grant that geometry on its concrete side belongs to the earliest period of education; that the observation of natural phenomena with simple inferences will be a most attractive study to the child; that the importance of observation of objects of natural history is foreshadowed by the spontaneous interest taken in them before the school period; that tales of ancient heroes, and the pleasing myths of antiquity, together with the striking characters and incidents of Greek and Roman history, belong to the early period of historic knowledge; that the whole world of substance and phenomena that constitutes our environment should be the subject of study under the head of physiography or physical geography; that the thoughts of literature, ethical and imaginative, appeal readily to the child’s mind. We may add that the taste of children may be early cultivated, and that the glory which the child discovers in nature makes possible the art idea and the religious sentiment. The reason for beginning a foreign language early is somewhat independent, but all agree that early study of a living language is desirable.

Should we not reconsider our analysis of the elementary courses? Superintendents and teachers will find the necessary changes not impossible but easy. The sum of all that is recommended for the elementary schools by the conferences is not so formidable as at first appears.

In the conference reports to the Committee of Ten are some views that have a bearing upon the subject of the high-school period. The Latin Conference hopes for a modification of the grammar-school courses, that the high-school course may be begun earlier. The Greek Conference voted that the average age at which pupils enter college should be lowered. The Conference on English was of the opinion that English work during the last two years of the grammar-school course should be in the hands of a special teacher or teachers. The Conference on Modern Languages holds that whenever competent teachers can be secured the grammar school should have an elective course in French or German. The Physics Conference recommended that “Whenever it is possible, special science teachers or superintendents should be appointed to instruct teachers of elementary schools in the methods of teaching natural phenomena.” The History Conference thought it desirable that in all schools history should be taught by teachers who have a fondness for historical studies and have paid special attention to effective methods of imparting instruction. One member of the conference was almost ready to advise omitting history from school programmes because of so much rote, text-book teaching.

These opinions are additional evidence of need of modifications in grammar-school work, and some think that ultimately the best solution will be found in extending the high-school period downward to include part of the elementary period.

It was agreed in the Committee of Ten that their task would be less difficult did the high-school period begin, say two years earlier; and the reason why the recommendation of the conferences, that certain studies be introduced below the high school, was viewed with suspicion was the impossibility, with the present organization of the schools, of securing good instruction in these studies.

The following view of the high-school period is expressed by a prominent high-school principal: “My opinion is that it would be much better for our boys and girls to begin their preparation for college at least two years earlier than they now do. If our high schools could receive the pupils at eleven or twelve, instead of fourteen, preparation for college would be completed at sixteen instead of eighteen, as is now generally the case.”

The custom in European countries supports the view that high-school methods should reach down into the grades. In Prussia only three years of elementary work precede the gymnasium, and the pupil can enter the gymnasium at the age of nine. The gymnasium itself covers a period of nine years, extending five years below the period of our high schools. Examining the course of the Prussian gymnasium, we find in the first five years, or before the age of fourteen, Latin, Greek, French, history, geometry, natural history; and it is conceded by many educators that more is attained by the age of eighteen in Germany than in this country; that at the age of fourteen in Germany the development of the pupil is more mature, and that in essential features of education he has made more desirable progress.

If our high schools should be made equivalent in length and rank to the Prussian gymnasium, the change would involve the entire reconstruction of our school system, from the primary school to the end of the university. The high schools would become colleges, and the colleges would become high schools, and the graduates from them would enter the university prepared to take up professional or other special university work. That there are many leading educators who advocate these changes for the universities is well known, and there are some strong tendencies toward the German system. On the other hand, many deplore the possibility of losing the American college, which is an institution somewhat peculiar to this country. They think that its broad, general education and superior culture are worth retaining, and that specialization should begin at a late period.

One significant fact stares us in the face, namely, that the average American boy no longer will spend four years beyond the high school in general education, and then pass four years more at the professional school or three years in the graduate course. Somewhere the work must be shortened, in either the elementary school, the high school, or the college.

The whole subject is of great interest and importance, but at the present stage of inquiry no definite conclusions can be reached.

The relation of the mind to a study is determined by the nature of the mind and the nature of the study, and there seems to be no reason in psychology why a college-preparatory subject should be taught differently to one fitting for the duties of life. Besides, it is economy to make identical the work of different courses, as far as possible. There was perfect unanimity in the opinion that the same studies should be pursued by all in the same way, as far as taken.

Every one knows that many teachers are unskilled to present in the elementary schools the beginnings of geometry, science, history, or literature, and that the failures in this work are due to the mechanical efforts of those who have had no higher or special training. The demands of present methods are imperative for improved power in instruction. Science is not well taught in all schools. There is a school which teaches biology from a manual without specimen, microscope, or illustrations. It was a humiliating confession of the committee that the classical course is superior, for the reason that it is difficult to find enough instructors competent to teach modern subjects by modern methods.

A very important point, recognized by the committee, is the advantage of postponing as long as possible the necessity of making a final choice of courses. In this country we have no fixed conditions of rank, and the poor man’s son has the same privileges as the sons of position and wealth. Hence, the station in life is not determined by the differentiation in courses at an early period. Very few parents decide upon the final character of the child’s instruction much before the beginning of the college period.

For these reasons many would not agree with the conference recommendation to begin Latin at an earlier period. It would not be economy; there is enough else that belongs to the elementary stage of education, and no plan is feasible that is founded upon the foreign view of caste and fixed condition in life.

Uniformity in requirements for admission to college was the subject of the report that finally led to this investigation. Although uniformity is not prominently urged in the report of the Committee of Ten, doubtless the logical outcome of the latter report will be a tendency toward some kind of uniformity. There is a vigorous conflict of opinion to-day as to nationalism and individualism, with a strong tendency, especially in education, toward individualism. In the opinion of many there exists a harmful slavery of the high and preparatory schools to the erratic and varied demands of different colleges, and also a slavery to ignorance and caprice in some schools themselves, which would be removed by a general agreement to uniformity. Men are not enslaved, but are emancipated, by organization, and freedom of the individual is found in the good order of society and government. In a facetious criticism of the committee’s report, arguing for extreme individualism in choice of studies, appears the following query: “Please tell us if you and your colleagues on the conference considered any methods for the encouragement of cranks?” No; for the encouragement neither of cranks, nor of crankiness, but for the encouragement of the best kind of rational education. While there are a few wise, independent investigators who need no enforced uniformity, and will not be bound by the recommendations of others, many of the schools are largely imitators, or, worse, are working independently with limited insight, and these schools would be vastly improved by adopting courses and methods growing from a consensus of the best opinions of the country. The lowest would thereby tend to rise to the highest, and from that plane a new advance could be made. Meantime the original thinkers would be free to push forward toward higher results, to be generally adopted later. Through contact of various ideas some principles are settled, and the world is free to move on toward fresh discovery.

The selection of studies is to be determined largely by the nature of the mind and by the universal character of natural and civil environments, and this fact points toward the possibility of uniformity. The period of secondary education is not the period for specializing, and even if it were, there should be some uniformity in differentiation. In the United States there is, broadly speaking, uniformity of tradition, of government, of civilization, and the educated youth of San Francisco bears about the same relation to the world as the educated youth of Boston; hence, so far as elementary and secondary education is pursued, there is no reason why it should not be substantially the same in various schools—not in details belonging to the individual teacher, but in paper requirements and important features of methods.

Nothing in the whole report is more important than the proposed closer connection between high schools and colleges, and this is clearly and forcibly urged. Whatever course of study properly belongs to a secondary school is also a good preparation for higher education, else either secondary or higher education is seriously in error. Whenever a youth decides to take a college course, he should find himself on the road toward it. No one can doubt that in the coming years pupils having pursued properly arranged high-school courses must be admitted to corresponding courses in higher education. The divorcement between higher education and all lower grade work, except the classical, has been a fatal defect in the past. The entire course of education should be a practical interest of college professors, and there should be a hearty coöperation between them and school superintendents and principals in considering all educational problems.

It is a fact of significance that a committee, on which some leading institutions are represented, urges the professional schools of the country to place their standard of admission as high as that of the colleges; and we hope that aid will thus be given the institutions endeavoring to raise the requirements of law, medical, and divinity schools.

The reports of most of the conferences asked for continuous and adequate work for each subject, that it might become a source of discipline and of valuable insight. No doubt part of the work in high schools is too brief and fragmentary to gain from it the best results.

The aim should be to reduce the number of subjects taken by any pupil, and the number of topics under a subject. It is not necessary that the entire landscape be studied in all its parts and details, if a thorough knowledge of the most prominent features is gained.

In one important point I was constrained to differ from the reading of the report, as finally submitted, although the expressions to which exceptions were taken were due rather to the standpoint of the writer of the report than the resolutions of the committee. I refer to those paragraphs in which it is implied that the choice of studies in secondary schools may be a matter of comparative indifference, provided good training is obtained from the subjects chosen. This view makes education formal, without giving due regard to the content. Here are the world of nature and the world of mind. Nature, when its meaning is realized, has the same meaning for all, and in its various phases affects all in substantially the same way. The history of mankind, in its various kinds and degrees of development, has the same content for all. The nature of mind in generic characteristics, and the universal truths that belong to the spiritual world, are the same for all. Mind has the same powers in all human beings. We all know, feel, and will; all persons acquire through attention, retain in memory under the same conditions, obey the same laws of association, reason, so far as rightly, from the same principles, act from motives. Men may be classed crudely according to the motives that will appeal to them. While there are infinite variations in details of men’s natures, in power of insight, degree of development, methods of acquisition, predominant motives, in interests and tendencies, all persons in their growth obey the laws of human nature. Hence, we may argue that a science of education is possible; that it is possible to select studies with a view to their universal use in the primary development of the powers, and with the assurance of superior value as revealing to man his entire environment and the nature of his being.

Mere form, mere power, without content, mean nothing. Power is power through knowledge. The very world in which we are to use our power is the world which we must first understand in order to use it. The present is understood, not by the power to read history, but by what history contains. The laws of nature and deductions therefrom are not made available by mere power, but by the power which comes from the knowledge of them. Hence, the education which does not include something of all views of the world, and of the thinking subject, is lacking in data for the wise and effective use of power.

In view of this position, the committee might well analyze carefully the nature and importance of each leading subject, representing a part of the field of knowledge, to the end that a wise correlation of the work of the conferences might be made. The study of number in its concrete form and in its abstract relations, the study of space relations, as founded upon axiomatic truths, are necessary as a basis of many kinds of knowledge, as representing an essential view of the world, as a foundation for the possibilities of commerce and structures, and as furnishing important training in exact reasoning. Science includes many things; but chemistry and physics, which explain the manifestations of force in the material world, biology which reveals important laws of plant and animal life, and physiography, which acquaints us with our entire environment as to location, phenomena, and partial explanation—these are connected with the practical side of civilization and the welfare of humanity, and are a guard against superstition and error; they are indispensable for practice in induction, and they should be well represented in a course of study. History, in which man discovers the meaning of the present and gains wisdom for the future, which is a potent source of ethical thought, must not be omitted. English language, as the means of accurate, vigorous, and beautiful expression, and English literature, which is the treasury of much of the world’s best thought, are not subjects to leave to the election of the pupil.

In addition to the training in observation, memory, expression, and inductive reasoning which most studies offer, we must consider the development of imagination, right emotion, and right will. In other words, æsthetic and ethical training is most essential. Secondary schools need not employ formal courses of study to this end, but various means may be employed incidentally. There are a hundred ways in which taste may be cultivated, and literature is one of the best means for developing the art idea. Moral character is developed by right habit, by the right use of the powers in the process of education, by growth in knowledge of ethical principles, by growth of the spirit of reverence, and by the ethical code of religion. All of these means, except the formal use of the last, may be employed by the schools. And the ethical element is inherent in the very nature of right education. To educate rightly is to educate ethically. History, biography, and literature make direct contributions to ethical knowledge.

We now reach the study of foreign classical tongues. If there is nothing more than formal training, for instance, in Latin, the sooner we abandon its study the better. But we find in it also a valuable content. In the process of development some phases of human possibility seem to have been almost fully realized, while the world has continued to develop along other lines. In such cases we must go back and fill our minds with the concepts that belong to the remote period. The Greek and Latin classics give us an insight into the character of ancient peoples and their institutions, give us the concepts of their civilizations, the beauty of their literatures, and make a practical contribution to the knowledge of our own language. From the foreign modern tongues, German may be chosen because of its valuable literature, its contributions to science, its dignity, and its relation to the Anglo-Saxon element of our own language.

We have endeavored to show that the choice of studies is not a matter of indifference, that mathematics, science, history, language and literature, and art and ethics all belong to the period of secondary education; and we have tried to suggest the inference that all should be employed. The relative importance of each cannot be exactly measured, but experience and reason must guide us.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In a report on requirements for admission to college, made to the National Council of Education in 1891, the following recommendation appeared:

“That a committee be appointed by this Council to select a dozen universities and colleges and a dozen high and preparatory schools, to be represented in a convention to consider the problems of secondary and higher education.”

In accordance with the recommendation, the committee making the report, of which the writer was chairman, was authorized to call a meeting of representatives of leading educational institutions, at Saratoga in 1892. Invitations were issued and some thirty delegates responded. After a three days’ session a plan was formulated, which was adopted by the National Council. The Committee of Ten, thus appointed and charged with the duty of conducting an investigation of secondary-school studies, held its first meeting in New York City in November, 1892, with President Eliot of Harvard University as chairman. The committee arranged for nine subcommittees or conferences, each to consider a principal subject of high-school courses, and submitted to them definite inquiries. Each conference was composed of prominent instructors in the particular subject assigned. The inquiries covered such points as place of beginning the study, time to be given, selection of topics, advisability of difference in treatment for pupils going to college and for those who finish with the high school, methods, etc. The reports of these conferences in printed form, together with a summary of the recommendations, were in the hands of the Committee of Ten at their second meeting in New York, November, 1893. The report of the Committee of Ten, including the conference reports, through the good offices of the Commissioner of Education, was published by the Government.

As a member of the Committee of Ten, the author was invited to review the Report before the Council of Education, at a meeting held in Asbury Park, July, 1894.

EDUCATIONAL VALUES.

We estimate a man’s worth by his intellectual grasp, his æsthetic and ethical insight, and his power for action toward right and useful ends. If these characteristics make the ideal man, they should be the ideal aim of education, and a study is to be valued as it best contributes toward developing them. The same test of efficiency is to be applied to the whole curriculum of a school period.

There is a correlation between the field of knowledge and the knowing being. The objective world, with its varied content, answers to the mind with its varied powers. It is through the objective world of nature and of man that the subject comes to a consciousness of himself. Each important phase of the objective world makes a distinct contribution in extent or kind of knowledge to that consciousness. We do not live in a world where cucumbers grow on trees, or where human beings fail in their ever-recurring characteristics; and we believe it possible to discover the kind of value which each source of knowledge may furnish toward the education of the child, with the expectation that we shall not find the choice of studies to be a matter of indifference.

Without laying claim to a best analysis, we may use a customary division of the field of knowledge: (1) mathematical relations, (2) natural phenomena, (3) human action, (4) human thought, (5) æsthetic and ethical qualities. The studies corresponding are (1) mathematics, (2) natural science, (3) history, (4) language and literature, (5) art and ethics. Mathematics treats of quantitative knowledge, furnishes a peculiar intellectual training, and makes possible all commerce, all great structures, and the higher developments of physical science. Natural science acquaints us with the field of physical phenomena and of plant and animal life, is the best training in induction, and is largely the basis of our material civilization. History reveals the individual and our present civilization in the light of all human action, is a source of ethical training, and has high practical value for the problems of government and society. Literature reveals the ideal thought and the speculations of men, gives æsthetic and ethical culture, and in a practical way applies poetry to life. Art and ethics deal with distinct types of knowledge, cultivate the higher emotional powers, and, like ideal literature, set up standards of perfection in execution and in conduct of life.

The world in which we live is the world we are to know in order to adapt ourselves to it in thought, the world we are to know in order to gain power to work therein with success, the world we are to know as representing the thought of the Creator and the correlated nature of man, the world we are to know to gain the soul’s highest realization, and, for these ends, to know in its various phases. Each department of study makes its own peculiar contribution to knowledge, each has its peculiar fitness for developing some given power of the mind, each makes its own contribution in preparing the individual for the practical world. In three distinct ways does each subject have a peculiar value—for knowledge, for power, for practical life.

While a classification of studies without cross divisions is impossible, we may say that the first four groups give us the power of knowledge for action; the fifth, the feeling for perfection of action and rightness of action; and these, in their exercise and their tendency, create the right kind of power in action.

Can the exact absolute and relative value of each line of study be determined? No; but we may make approximate estimates through philosophical study of the relation of the mind to the world, through the history of education and the experience of practical teachers. Every position is tentative and subject to constant readjustment, with a closer approach to truth. A reinvestigation of many problems through careful observation of children will doubtless make an important contribution to knowledge of values, if the experiments are conducted with a wisdom that takes them out of the realm of fads, and if the greatest thinkers are not given a seat too far back. Important as this kind of investigation is, extreme advocates may undervalue the store of educational philosophy that has become common property. From Cain and Abel down, the child has always been the observed of all observers; the adult man recognizes the nature of the child in his own nature, and has recollections of many of his first conscious experiences. From the time of the early philosophers, the data have been sufficient to discover universal truths. Child study serves, not so much to establish principles, as to bring the teacher’s mind in close sympathy with the life of the child, in order to observe carefully facts for the application of principles.

In an ideal course of general training, can there be, in any exact meaning, an equivalence of studies? As well ask whether one sense can do the work of another sense in revealing the world to the mind. To be sure, the fundamental conceptions of the material world can be obtained through the sense of touch alone; but we also attach importance to the revelations of sight and hearing, and these revelations have a different quality. He who lacks these other senses is defective in sources of soul development. So he who neglects important fields of knowledge lacks something that is peculiar to them. Each study helps every other, and before special training begins each is to be used, up to the time when the student becomes conscious of its meaning. By contact with nature and society, the child, before the school period, gets an all-around education. He distinguishes numerically, observes natural phenomena, notes the deeds of his fellows, gains the thoughts of others, and begins to perceive the qualities of beauty and right. The kindergarten promotes all lines of growth; the primary school continues them. Shall the secondary school be open to broad election? At a time when some educators of strong influence are proclaiming the formal theory of education, that power, without reference to content, is the aim of study, and some universities encourage a wide choice of equivalents in preparation for admission, and the homes yield to the solicitation of pupils to omit difficult subjects, it is important to answer the question in the light of the previous analysis. And we say no, for the simple reasons that not until the secondary period can the meaning of the various departments of knowledge be brought within the conscious understanding, not until then are the various powers developed to a considerable degree of conscious strength, not until then has the natural bent of the student been fairly tested. In this period one would hardly advocate the exclusive study, for instance, of history to the entire neglect of mathematics and physics; nor would he advocate the choice of mathematics to the entire neglect of history and literature.

The question of college electives is to an extent an open one. But it is clear that when general education ends, special education should begin, and that indiscriminate choice of studies without purpose is no substitute, either for a fixed curriculum or for group election in a special line. We may fully approve the freedom of modern university education, but not its license. Its freedom gives the opportunity to choose special and fitting lines of work for a definite purpose; its license leads to evasion and dilettanteism. We hear of a senior who took for his electives Spanish, French, and lectures in music and art, not because they were strong courses in the line of his tastes and tendencies, but because they were the lines of least resistance. There appears to be a reactionary tendency toward a more careful guarding of college electives, together with a shortening of the college course, in order that genuine university work may begin sooner. If this tendency prevails, it will become possible to build all professional and other university courses upon a substantial foundation, and we shall no longer see law and medical students entering for a degree upon the basis of a grammar-school preparation.

The opportunity to specialize, which is the real value of college election, is necessary even for general education. To know all subjects one must know one subject. The deepening of one kind of knowledge deepens all knowledge. The strengthening of power in one direction strengthens the whole man. An education is not complete until one is fairly master of some one subject, which he may employ for enjoyment, for instruction, and for use in the world of practical activity. Here we reach the ultimate consideration on the intellectual side in estimating educational values.

We who are sometimes called conservative know that we have before us new problems or a reconsideration of old problems. We believe the trend of educational thought is right, however some may for a time wander in strange paths. We know that mental capacity, health, time, money, home obligations, proposed occupation, and even deviation from the normal type are all to be considered in planning the education of a pupil. But the deviations from ideal courses and standards should be made with ideals in view, a different proposition from denying the existence or possibility of ideals. We know that the mind is a unit-being and a self-activity, that it develops as a whole, that there are no entities called faculties. But suppose the various psychical activities had never been classified, as they now are, in accordance with the facts of consciousness, the usage of language and literature, and the convenience of psychology, what a herald of fresh progress would he be who would first present mental science in clear groupings! We may call the world one, but it has many phases; the mind is one, but it has many phases; these are more or less correlated, and our theory of educational values stands. We know that interest is the sine qua non of success in education, and nothing is more beneficent than the emphasis given this fact to-day. We also know that pleasure is not the only, not even the most valuable, interest; and that the disagreeable character of a study is not always a criterion for its rejection. The pleasure theory will hardly overcome the importance of a symmetrical education.

In regard to some things, however, some of us must be permitted to move slowly. We must use the principle of “apperception,” and interpret the new in the light of that which has for a long time been familiar—attach it to the “apperception mass”; we must be indulged in our right to use the “culture-epoch” theory and advance by degrees from the barbaric stage to that of deeper insight; we must “concentrate” (concentre) with established doctrines other doctrines that present large claims, and learn their “correlations” and “coördinations.”

A new object or idea must be related to and explained by the knowledge already in mind; it must be so placed and known, or it is not an idea for us. If “apperception” means the act of explaining a new idea by the whole conscious content of the child’s mind, then it is the recognized process of all mental growth. In a given study, topics must be arranged in logical order, facts must be so organized as to constitute a consistent whole; important relations with other studies must be noted, and one subject must be made to help another as opportunity arises. If “correlation” means to unite and make clear parts of subjects and subjects by discovery of valuable mutual relations, then it is a vital principle of all good teaching. Studies, while preserving their integrity, must be adjusted to each other in time and sequence so that a harmonious result may be produced. If “coördination” means the harmonious adjustment of the independent functions of departments of study, we recognize it as an old acquaintance.

If the theory of “culture-epochs” finds a parallel, in order of development, between race and individual, and throws light upon the selection of material for each stage of the child’s growth, then let the theory be used for all it is worth. Its place, however, will be a subordinate one. Here are the world and the present civilization by means of which the child is to be educated, to which he is to be adjusted. Select subjects with reference to nature as known by modern science, with reference to modern civilization, and the hereditary accumulation of power in the child to acquire modern conceptions.

If “concentration” means subordinating all other subjects of learning to a primary subject, as history or literature, which is to be used as a centre throughout the elementary period, we refuse to give it a place as an important method in education. Intrinsically there is no such thing as a primary centre except the child himself. He possesses native impulses that reach out toward the field of knowledge, and in every direction. It is difficult to imagine a child to be without varied interests. Did you ever see a boy who failed to enumerate his possessions, investigate the interior of his automatic toy, delight in imaginative tales, applaud mock-heroic deeds, and appreciate beautiful objects and right action? If the child lacks normal development and has not the apperceiving mind for the various departments of knowledge, create new centres of apperception and interest, cultivate the neglected and stunted powers. The various distinct aspects of the objective world suggest the selection of studies; the nature of the mind suggests the manner in which the elements of knowledge are to be organized. The parts of a subject must be distinctly known before they are correlated; subjects must be distinctly known before they are viewed in a system of philosophy. Knowledge is not organized by artificial associations, but by observing the well-known laws of classification and reasoning. Moreover, all laws of thought demand that a subject be developed in a definite and continuous way, and that side illustration be employed only for the purpose of clearness. In practice the method of concentration can but violate this principle.

We may ask whether apperception, correlation, coördination, and concentration are anything but a recognition of the laws of association. The laws of association in memory are nothing but the law of acquisition of knowledge, as all good psychology points out. These laws include relations of time, place, likeness, analogy, difference, and cause. Add to these laws logical sequence in the development of a subject, and you have all the principles of the methods named. Have these investigations an important value? Yes. They explain and emphasize pedagogical truths that have been neglected. Having performed their mission and having added to the progress of educational theory, they will give way to new investigations. This is the history of all progress.

The subject of interest deserves a further thought. It goes without saying that all a man thinks, feels, and does centres around his own personality, and, in that sense, is a self-interest. But we are not to infer that, therefore, interest must be pleasure. We are born with native impulses to action, impulses that reach out in benevolence and compassion for the good of others, impulses that reach out toward the truth and beauty and goodness of the world, without regard to pleasure or reward. These impulses tend toward the perfection of our being, and the reward lies in that perfection, the possession of a strong and noble intellectual, æsthetic, and ethical character. The work of the teacher is to invite these better tendencies by presenting to them the proper objects for their exercise in the world of truth, beauty, and right. Interest and action will follow, and, later, the satisfaction that attends right development. Whenever this spontaneous interest does not appear and cannot be invited, the child should face the fact that some things must be, because they are required, and are for his good. When a course of action is obviously the best, and inclination does not lead the way, duty must come to the rescue.

We are not touching this matter as an old ethical controversy, but because it is a vital practical problem of to-day in education, because the pleasure theory is bad philosophy, bad psychology, bad ethics, bad pedagogy, a caricature of man, contrary to our consciousness of the motives of even our ordinary useful acts, a theory that will make a generation of weaklings. Evolution does not claim to show that pleasure is always a criterion of useful action. Herbert Spencer in his “Ethics” says: “In many cases pleasures are not connected with actions which must be performed nor pains with actions which must be avoided, but contrariwise.” He postpones the complete coincidence of pleasure with ideal action to the era of perfect moralization. We await the evolutionist’s millennium. Much harm as well as much good has been done in the name of Spencer by well-meaning teachers, and much harm has been done in the name of physiological psychologists; we would avoid a misuse of their noble contributions to educational insight. Listen to a view of physiological psychology with reference to the law of habit: “Do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it. The man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things, will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.” The fact is, it is impossible to create character, energy, and success without effort that is often painful. This view is an essential part of our theory of educational values.

POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE.

Try to imagine a material world without force—no cohesion, no resistance, no gravitation, no sound, no light, no sign from the outward world, no active mind to receive a sign. Now try to imagine knowledge without power, a mind that is but a photographic sheet—no active perception, no imagination, no reflection upon ideas, no impulses ending in action. On the other hand, mental power without knowledge is inconceivable. One without knowledge is in the condition of the newly born infant.

As difficult to understand as the relation between matter and force, between spirit and body, between thought and its sign, is the relation between knowledge and power. In a way we may attempt to separate and distinguish between them, by a process of emphasizing the one or the other. Knowledge, in the sense of information, means an acquaintance with nature in its infinite variety of kind, form, and color, and with man in history and literature; mental power is the ability to gain knowledge, and the motive to use it for growth and for valuable ends. Mere knowledge serenely contemplates nature and history as a panorama, without serious reflection or effort. Power is able to reflect upon knowledge, and to find motives for progress and useful action. Knowledge is the product of the information method; power, of the method of self-activity.

As we cannot divorce matter and force, so it appears we cannot clearly separate knowledge and mental power; the distinction is artificial and almost fanciful. The one cannot exist without the other; they are the opposite sides of the shield. Through knowledge comes power. Knowledge is the material for reflection and action. Knowledge, as it were, creates the mind, and is both the source of power and the occasion for its use.

We recall the familiar caricature of the Chinese lack of original power. A merchant negotiated with a Chinaman for the manufacture of a few thousand plates of a certain pattern, and furnished a sample that by chance was cracked. The plates arrived in due season, admirably imitating the original—and every one was cracked. No need in this instance to employ the mandate given by a choleric superintendent to an employee, who on one occasion thought for himself—“I have told you repeatedly you have no business to think!” The Chinese character may be expressed by a parody on a familiar stanza:

For they are the same their fathers have been;

They see the same sights their fathers have seen,

They drink the same stream and view the same sun,

And run the same course their fathers have run.

A timorous cow gazing wistfully over the garden gate at the forbidden succulent vegetables, and nervously rubbing her nose by accident against the latch, may open the gate and gain an entrance, and afterward repeat the process. A new and peculiar fastening will prevent any further depredations. An ingenious boy will find the means to undo any kind of unique fastening to the gate that bars him from the watermelon patch. Charles Lamb humorously describes how the Chinese learned to eat roast pig. A house burned and the family pig perished in the flames; a disconsolate group of people stood around viewing the ruins, when by accident one touched the pig and, burning his finger, thrust it in his mouth to cool it; the taste was good, and he repeated the process. Soon there were marvellously frequent conflagrations—all the neighbors burned their houses to roast their pigs, that being the only method they had learned.

From these somewhat trivial illustrations, we may readily draw a few inferences: First, ingenuity of mind for novel conditions distinguishes man from the brutes; second, the Chinese method of education emphasizes too much the information side—it is not good; third, the human mind is ingenious when it is rightly educated and has a strong motive; fourth, ingenuity is the power that should grow from education. In this idea—ingenuity of mind—is the very essence of what we mean when we emphasize the power side of the soul.

The problem of education is to make men think. Tradition, authority, formalism have not the place in education which they formerly occupied. May it not be that we have so analyzed and formulated the work of the schools that formalism and method have somewhat taken the place of genuine work, full of the life and spirit that make power? We may discover that the criticisms from certain high sources have an element of truth in them. A certain routine may easily become a sacred code, a law of the tables, and any variation therefrom an impiety.

A person possesses power when his conception ploughs through the unfurrowed tissue of his brain to seek its proper affinity, and unites with it to form a correct judgment. A person who is merely instructed does not construct new lines of thought to bring ideas into novel relations; he does not originate or progress. An original thinker masses all congruous ideas around a dimly conceived notion and there is a new birth of an idea, a genuine child of the brain. His ingenuity will open a gate or construct a philosophical system.

Every student remembers well the stages in his education when there was a new awakening by methods that invited thought, when a power was gained to conceive and do something not stated in the books or imparted by the teacher. In the schools, even of to-day, teachers are not always found who can impart elementary science in the spirit of science, who can successfully invite speculation as to causes, who can teach accurate perception, who can interpret events in history, train pupils in the use of reference books, or invite original thought in mathematics. There is no high school which does not yearly receive pupils not trained in original power, no college which does not annually winnow out freshmen, because they have not gained the power to grapple with virile methods. The defect is sometimes innate, but it is oftener due to false methods of instruction. Our great problem is to make scholars who are not hopeless and helpless in the presence of what they have not learned.

The plant must have good soil, water and air and sun, care and pruning, in order to grow, but it grows of itself, gains strength by proper nourishment. The aggregation of material about the plant does not constitute its growth. The plant must assimilate; the juices of life must flow through it.

The teacher does his best work when he makes all conditions favorable for the self-activity of the pupil. Such conditions create a lively interest in the objects and forces of nature, invite examination of facts and discovery of relations, arouse the imagination to conceive results, awaken query and reflection, stimulate the emotional life toward worthy and energetic action, and make the pupil ever progressive.

An article in one of our magazines strongly emphasizes the methods that make power. It considers the kind of training that finally makes accurate thinkers, that makes original, progressive men, men of power, and safe and wise citizens. The author shows that clear observation, accurate recording of facts, just inference, and strong, choice expression are most important ends to be attained by the work of the schools, and that these ends become the means for correcting all sorts of unjust, illogical conclusions as to politics and morals.

There is much profound thought in the view maintained. Unjust inferences, fallacies, are nearly the sum of the world’s social and political evils. False ideas are held as true concerning all sorts of current problems—notions that take possession of men’s minds without logical reflection. The fallacy of confounding sequence with cause is almost universal. All kinds of subjective and objective duties suffer from illogical minds.

To correct many errors and evils, to make thinking, useful men, we must emphasize the processes recommended: (1) observation, (2) faithful recording, (3) just inference, (4) satisfactory expression.

The author shows wherein the work of the grades fails to give the desired results. He holds that arithmetic, so emphasized, contributes nothing because it employs necessary reasoning, and does not give practice in inference from observation and experience, a process which develops scientific judgment. Inductive reasoning alone can give scientific power. Reading, writing, spelling, geography as usually taught, contribute but little; grammar does not add much.

For invention, for correct estimates of the problems of society, government, and morals, the original power of inference from observed facts is necessary. It is asked: Do our schools give this power to a satisfactory and attainable degree? It is claimed in the article that the high schools and colleges fail more or less, because so much time is given to memory work and formulated results. In the high schools the work to be most emphasized is not chosen with discrimination. The courses include too many studies, not well done. There should be fewer studies so pursued as to give power.

May it not be well to make the inquiry in all grades as to what proportion of the work contributes toward the final result of accurate reflection upon the world of facts. Let us again repeat the author’s list in logical order: (1) observation, (2) recording, as in noting experiments, (3) inference, (4) expression.

President Eliot’s paper here referred to admirably emphasizes the methods that make power. Perhaps the author gives too little importance to knowledge as the basis of power, and fails to emphasize the æsthetic power and the value of ideals. It is true that poetry implies accurate observation, fine discrimination, discovery of just relations, and true insight, but it is equally true that science study does not make poets.

The times have changed. The old idea of the scholar was of one who, in the serene contemplation of truth, beauty, and goodness, found a never-failing source of delight for himself, and felt little obligation to the world that sustained him, or the social environment that nurtured and humanized him. The devotion to truth for its own sake, the love of nature in repose, the admiration of great deeds, fine sentiments and noble thoughts, were for him sufficient, as if he were isolated in a world of his own. We do not depreciate such interest, for life is worth nothing without it. But there is a demand for action, a call to externalize the power of one’s being. Each man is a part of the all, from eternity destined to be a factor in the progress of all. The thoughts and impulses that evaporate and accomplish nothing are not of much more value to the individual than to his neighbor. “Do something” is the command alike of religion and of the nature of our physical being. Every sentiment and idea that leads to action forms a habit in the mysterious inner chambers of our nervous system for action, and we gain in power, grow in mental stature, day by day.

Power comes through knowledge. There may be too great a tendency to emphasize power to the loss of that knowledge necessary to marshal in one field of view the necessary facts. Imagine a judge trying to reach a decision without the points in evidence before his mind; a statesman that would interpret current events without a knowledge of history; an investigator in science who had not before him the results of the investigations of others.

Ideally, knowledge should be varied and comprehensive; it should cover, at least in an elementary way, the entire field of nature and of man. Then only is the student best prepared for his life work, if he would make the most of it. A man lost in a forest directs not his steps wisely; when thoroughly acquainted with his surroundings, he moves forward with confidence. One who has trained all the muscles of his body delivers a blow with vigor. One who has trained all the powers of his mind summons to his aid the energy of all, when he acts in a given direction. His knowledge is the light thrown on his endeavor.

This view is opposed to the extreme doctrine that knowledge is of little value. Knowledge is necessary to power; the abuse lies in not making it the basis of power.

This theory also militates strongly against the position that a student should specialize at too early a period, before he has traversed in an elementary way the circle of studies and gained a harmonized general development.

The discussion of a growing fallacy naturally appears in this place, that it makes no difference what knowledge is used provided it gives power. It does make a difference whether one gains power in deciphering an ancient inscription in hieroglyphics, or gains it by studying a language which contains the generic concepts of our native tongue, or in pursuing a scientific study which acquaints him with the laws of nature’s forces. In the one case, while the power is great, the knowledge is small; in the other, an essential view of the thought of mankind or of the nature of the world in which we live is gained, and the knowledge is broadly useful for various exercise of power.

Another fallacy is the doctrine that actual execution in practical ways alone gives power. It may give ready specific power of a limited kind, but it may leave the man childlike and helpless in the presence of anything but his specialty.

Here we find an argument for higher education, for an accumulation of knowledge and power that comes through prolonged labor in the field of learning, under wise guidance and through self-effort. Many a youth, through limited capacity, limited time and means, must begin special education before he has laid a broad foundation, but this is not the ideal method. The true teacher will always hold the highest ideals before the pupils, will guide them in the path of general education, until that education becomes what is called liberal. The broad-minded men who conduct schools for special education are strong advocates of the highest degree of general training as a foundation.