Y.llYUOT. ATION EDWARD S. WILSON """■- "'.:•■■■' I m. msfm. m ■■'■•' MX '--■■'■'■ ,; --. ■' Wsmswa .<.■■■ ft / jf Class i 1/\/a Book _ : PRESENTED BY Keynotes of Education BEING A COLLECTION OF ADDRESSES ON THE MORAL PHASES OF THE SUBJECT BY EDWARD S. WILSON Editor of the Ironton (Ohio) Register, author of "An Oriental Outing" CINCINNATI CURTS & JENNINGS 1898 V30> pec s me PREFACE '"THIS book contains addresses I have made at va- rious places during the past few years. They are all educational in their character, and are intended to give some emphasis to the ethical side of life. I have thought that too much stress can not be made in impressing moral sentiment upon education, busi- ness, society, and individual experience, and upon that idea I have ventured to print these pages. They are written mainly in a style to meet the requirements of a platform effort ; and yet, I hope that whatever lack of gentle continuity may appear in them will not detract from the force of the truths which I have en- deavored to express. My purpose is to aid in under- mining the despotism of the material, and in advanc- ing the sway of the ideal and moral. I know in what narrow limits my little effort is confined, and yet I trust I will be justified in doing the best I can in a field that is calling for stronger workers. I may say, also, aside from my real intention in publishing these pages, I am not unmindful of the kind opinion of many who heard the addresses, expressed in urgent requests that I make a book of them. 3 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/keynotesofeducatOOwils CONTENTS PAGE. Moral Aspects of Education", 7 (Harcourt Place Commencement, Gambier, 0.) Tendencies, 28 (High School Commencement, Nelsonville, O.) POETEY OF THE SKIES, 53 (Opening of McMillin Observatory, Columbus, 0.) Culture on the Farm, 64 (Farmers' Institute, Haverhill, 0.) The Art of Life, 75 (S. E. Ohio Teachers' Association, Marietta, 0.) Higher Aims of Journalism, 99 (Ohio Editorial Association, Columbus, O.) 5 6 Contents. PAGE. Pateiotism, Ill (Ohio Conference Gamp-meeting, Lancaster, 0.) Peesonal Foece of the Teachee, . . . 133 (Teachers' Institute, Ironton, O.) Examinations, 149 (Ohio State Teachers' Association, Chautauqua.) Keynotes of Education. I MORAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION. MAKE my appeal, this afternoon, in behalf of higher ideals in Education. There are sentiment and desire enough if they were only rightly directed. We are education worshipers, "but bow at the wrong shrine. We enter the cathedral; we admire the grace- ful columns, the hues of the pictured windows, and the tremulous roll of the organ, but ignore the grand fact of all— the presence of God. Notwithstanding our hearty protest, materialism is enthroned in the educational field, and the duty of the day is to chal- lenge the authority of that splendid sovereign. Every philosophy that is worth the name means, in its final analysis, faith in God. Every science sees beyond the atom a force before which the micro- scope, the acid, the electric current recoil. Every fact has its moral supremacy. Knowledge is power; but the sort of power depends upon the kind of knowledge. Hence the importance of the standpoint, and the necessity of recognizing quality as well as quantity. This little orb, with its beautiful compan- ions, swings around the celestial throne; but the fall of a leaf is akin to it, and the thought of the heart alongside of that. Infinity itself is not so great that it can disdain 7 8 Keynotes of Education. the idlest fancy. We are so accustomed to listen to God's voice in the thunders of Sinai that we forget that the very interstices of the sunbeams are filled with his authority and love. We take this world as a great practical fact, into which God comes now and then, only to discipline and punish, and fail to see that every atom dances before him, and the very vacuums of space are loaded with his presence. My claim is, that Education must recognize the fact that this world is God's; that everything we study must be in the light of this great truth; that our mathematics and chemistry are as close to him as our political economy and our moral philosophy. There is no chasm between the infinite and the things about us. The bluebird's song chords with the angel'spiarp, over in heaven. We go about as if a little terres- trial morality borders our commonplace, and ravels out into soft hues and delicate fringes, and there ends. We make two worlds where there is one, and we place God over in the other, when he is wholly in ours. We think we can think a thought, say a word, or do a deed apart from and unrelated to eternity, and do not realize that each thought, word, or deed is taken up by God's great law of truth and justice, as the law of gravitation embraces the fluttering snow- flake or the dead sparrow, to carry everywhere and always the logic of its life. We look upon the Beatitudes as metaphors of ex- treme delicacy, or as tests of ultimate being, and yet they measure the axioms that we work our problems with; the principles of affinity that determine every Moral Aspects of Education. 9 chemical reaction in our laboratory; the laws of phys- ics whereby every star paints a rainbow on the canvas, and the soft rhythm of the poem that steals into the soul to kindle an inspiration or support a purpose. It is all divine. I have seen somewhere the difficult definition of ralue explained by a diagram, where the straight lines and direction impressed the truth stronger than language could. Several of the psychologies, and notably Herbart's, are developed by algebraical for- mulae — an equation the last resort for an expression of the power of the soul. The parables in the New Tes- tament are just as moral in their own form and sub- stance as in their application, and there is just as much of physical law, moral precept, and earthly duty taught in them as there is of heavenly hope. Take an axiom, a law of physics, a moral principle, and Christ's footsteps, and put them together, and they make one straight line. We must recognize this identity and relation in our educational systems. We can not split up truth into splinters. We can not proclaim that God reigns and Chance reigns also. Let us, then, as pupil and teacher, start out with this purpose pervading every fiber and nerve of our being, that, whatever else happens, we will hang our thought to God's thought, and make his truth our own. These are not misty phrases. They describe the ground occupied by advanced thinkers upon the sub- ject of education to-day. It is not so much a question of acquisition as it is of disposition. More important than what we have, is what we are doing with it; and that is determined by the value of the possession. 10 Keynotes of Education. Empty facts, empty lives; low knowledge, mean power. We get to the level of what we know, just as water seeks its own. The true value of a fact lies in the meaning God puts upon it. That abides; that is eternal. His thought is the altitude of education. In point of skill, regarding the mere concrete import of the act, baiting a hook and translating a line of Virgil occupy the same plane. But the outlook, the opportunity, the possibilities, are different. In the classics, one feels the sweet spirit of things that dwells amid infinite truth, and it sweeps through one's soul like the breath from a bank of flowers. Over on the other side of the line, beyond the syn- tax and the scanning, lie the infinite depths of feel- ing, where the angels of the intellect fly — the hopes, the loves, the fancies, the amenities, and the impulses that dare and do. The biographer of Calhoun says: "Calhoun led thought rather than men, and, lacking imagination, he led thought badly." Truth is not bounded by the concrete; it is not the expression of a cold syllogism, but the impulse, the yearning, the faith alongside, which our souls must grapple, or we lose it all. Materialism does not meet even half way the immortal spirit of love and duty. What is culture? The fluttering leaf, the sailing shadow, the dreaming landscape, the songs of the stars, the modesty of the lily, the strength of the hills, and all God's thought expressed in forms of grace and beauty; and these, with all their lessons of power, of wisdom, of mercy, of justice, of love, trans- lated into human thought, and hope, and conduct, and desire, constitute culture. And how do we attain Moral Aspects of Education. 11 it? By digging deep into our mathematics, by toiling long at our Latin composition, by working patiently in the laboratory, by constant mingling with the great men in the library, and all the time keeping the heart wide open to the divine influences that crowd about, and leaning out the soul, as Gerald Massey expresses it, to catch the song of every angel that flutters around. Study is to give us power, discernment, insight to know the truth, the reality, the divine quality of the thing we see or hear— not to load us down, but to lift us up — and whenever we suspect that the processes are winning our devotion, that we are studying the Latin for the Latin, or the geometry for the geom- etry, then we may be sure that we are drifting away from the shore of eternal truth. Did you ever, in reading a line of Horace or Homer, feel a kind word steal into your heart, or hear a trumpet-note of duty, or see a flower-fringed stream twining amid the woodlands, on whose banks you wove your fancies into purpose ? Did you ever strug- gle with a problem, like climbing a steep hill, strain- ing, pulling, almost despairing, a cruel wall before, a mean, dark world about you, till finally the problem is solved, the summit is reached, when your outlook stretches to the eaves of heaven, and a big, beautiful world is born of your toil and sacrifice ? Did you ever look down into a microscopic cell, and see God's hand shuttling a molecule with the same grandeur of achievement that he flings a constellation through the infinite spaces, without feeling that your own little life and energy were too sacred to be wasted? Such ideals deck every study. "Great knowledge 12 Keynotes of Education. stimulates great conjecture," says Emerson. The spirit accompanies true instruction. It is as necessary as the light to the leaf. Thus souls are built up, character is constructed, and society is made more beautiful. Education is in three parts— knowing, feeling, willing. Each is as necessary to the other as centrip- etal or centrifugal to the orbit. They are the knowl- edge, the wisdom, the understanding of the Bible. A trinity of fact, faith, and duty. This is God's psychology. Whoever bows to one of these basic ideas and ignores the others is false to heaven and earth. The wood, the water, the wind, and all things material, and the relation between them all, consti- tuting a unity of nature, bristling with a million tethers fastened to the Infinite, and ourself, stand- ing a brother creature amid them — this is the arena of education; and yet, surrounded by these radiant conditions, and equipped for the mastery of them, we go about picking up birdseed, and building cairns of pemmican for the cold day that never comes. 0, my friends, this is not education! You remem- ber the story of the artist who could paint such beau- tiful sunsets. He had a talent for melting the sun- beams in the translucent air, that threw' a dreamful haze over the horizon, and made one feel as if the sun was sinking with a sigh. No other painter could do it. The charm seemed confined to this one. A bro- ther artist asked the secret of it, and he was told it was in the combination of the paints, and the mixture was disclosed. That painter tried it, but failed; the colors seemed to congest into specks and blotches, Moral Aspects of Education. 13 and in his despair he went to the other and told him his perplexity, whereupon the successful painter said, "These blotches appear sometimes in my sunsets, too; but I change them into birds and set them flying." Does that trembling leaf tell of firewood only? Is that butterfly merely a glint of wings? Is the rainbow simply a sign that you can plow to-morrow? Does that gray cliff out yonder in the air, the brother of the firmament, tell you of building-stone? Is this line from Shakespeare only for parsing and analyzing and unraveling tangled modifiers? Does your friend next door come to you simply as a wearer of clothes and a repeater of trifles? Eemember that we rise no higher than we see things. Just as we look at them, they look at us. In our own minds we change the blotches into birds, or the birds into blotches. A famous astronomer told me, with some show of regret, not long ago, that familiarity, which tends to breed contempt unless watched, has brought him to regard the stars and planets as little more than clods and stones. Hamer- ton tells us, in his "Intellectual Life," of a graceful genius who left literature for geology, and before long the rich and generous style of writing, which made his art captivating, disappeared, and in its place came a stiff and dead-level style, like the strata where his heart had become imbedded. There is a story of a professor who, hearing the remark that there were great influence and power in woman's tears, declared that he could see nothing in them but a little muriate of soda and a solution of phosphate. It is an immense difference, the standpoint we 14 Keynotes of Education. take. In fact, truth depends upon the standpoint. If as materialists, as mere physicists, we look at things, the world shrivels up at our feet. The commercial spirit transforms beauty into traffic and turns ideality into merchandise; and the sad part is, there seems to be no measure for education except this utility, which regards eating, drinking, dressing, and talking as the chief end of life. Thus far I have been guilty, somewhat, of the very common and calamitous error of fault-finding, and now I must endeavor to make amends; for a fault- finder is not a useful member of society. Progress is positive. We advance by going ahead. We uphold the reign of Truth and Justice by being just and truthful. The devil is always ready for a fight, and he has good wind. Moralizing counts for little. The most potent agency for good in the world is a man or woman who has clear and positive convictions, and is faithful to them. He need not vaunt them, or make generous ac- claim of them on public occasions; he may never be heard; but in his walk, his intercourse, his genial good morning, the kindly welcome at his doorstep, the trend of talk at his table, his quiet, generous sup- port of all good men and good purposes, he shows that through his life a principle runs that harmonizes all into true manhood. To get at these definite ideas, these controlling moral forces, is the first duty. A very few first prin- ciples occupy the field, and constitute the forefront of educational processes. God runs the whole uni- verse on laws that you may count on your fingers. Moral Aspects of Education. 1 5 Every problem of human experience may be solved by a reference to three or four moral or physical laws. To know them and to obey them is the Alpha and Omega of education. They transcend far all matters of mere literary or scientific value. They reduce life to Doric simplicity and strength. The lack of knowl- edge or of recognition of these basic laws accounts for most of the indifferentism and selfishness in trade, society, education, politics, and religion. It is said before the Government strung its lights along the river, the pilots kept their craft in the channel by watching the crests of the hills that stood out against the sky. And so, we may guide our steps by keeping our eyes on the summits of eternal wisdom that point to the skies wherever we go. Nothing comes from nothing. Let one measure his idling, his waiting, his dreaming, his coveting, his cheating, his gambling, Ms stealing, by that axiom. A straight (or right) line is the shortest dis- tance between two points. There is your judgment against circumlocution, insincerity, indirection, pre- varication, and all forms of revolt against the frank and sturdy gospel of the yea and nay. Equals added to unequals make unequals — a principle that will stand when eternity grows old. You can not add har- mony to discord and produce harmony; you can not mix right with error and make right; you can not compromise; you can not justify the means by the end; you can not make your wickedness right by giv- ing to the preacher. Water seeks its own level; so does society, and politics, and thought, and religion. You can not think mean of your neighbor and good of 16 Keynotes of Education. God; one's prayers, even, seek the level of his life and purpose. Action and reaction are equal, or the effect is the measure of the cause. Sowing and reaping, thinking and doing, living here and hereafter, go to- gether. The cause and the consequence must balance. These are the eternal verities on which the uni- verse was built. Divine justice is predicated on them; the starry heavens hang from them, the sunbeam turns the smoke back into wood; the rose blooms, the girl blushes, and the atom changes its gait, in obedi- ence to these laws. We may think these decrees will slacken, and in- justice, cruelty, falsehood, indolence, selfishness carry banners of triumph along the world. But never. These laws endure, and not a jot or tittle will pass away till all be fulfilled. God's greatest law handles the mote, and the scale that weighs the fate of the universe tips with the word that you speak to a friend, or the thought that you think in the dark. "We are so apt to think that this world is a great, awk- ward, stumbling, crotchety thing, bobbing up unex- pectedly, jarring around, or tumbling about on a sea of shallows and breakers, everything on a spree of dis- order and confusion. But not so. This universe is so delicately poised that if a mote were moved out of its place, the old world would reel; or if a wave of a ray of light were shortened a millionth of an inch, the constellations would be shaken to fragments, and chaos would usurp the throne of the Infinite. What we need most is an ethics that is simple and pure, like a mother's love; that has a breath of divin- ity in it, exhaled from every fact and circumstance Moral Aspects of Education. 17 about us. It should go with the second reader, the home-life, the walk on the hills, the ride down the street, the writing of a letter, and the paying of a debt. In our universities moral philosophy is placed in the last year, as if it were more abstruse than the calculus and Greek verbs, and can only be seen from dizzy heights. Ethics is the real side of everything, from the cradle to immortality; it is the only study; it is what gives value to mathematics, to history, to science, to literature; and to plod through these studies without inquiry at every step what relation this instruction puts us into with the great, throbbing world about us, or God's purpose with reference to us, is trifling with education. How do these things affect one's sensibility? Do they increase one's faith, heighten one's aspirations, strengthen one's courage, broaden one's sympathies, extend one's amenities, and enlarge one's self-denial? Or is it, after all, only the surface reflection, the shine, the shimmer, to make one appear and dis- appear? It is the old story. There is a serpent lurking in the tree of knowledge. Shall we listen to it, and not hear God's warning? Aye, we are doing it more than we think. The idolatry of the material is so plain; it captures the senses so easily, that, ere we are aware, we are all turned pagans to sound, sight, and taste. The dust covers all. To restate the ideas more compactly, and perhaps less vaguely, Life is an art. Art is an expression of the soul. To make it true, the soul must be true. 2 18 Keynotes of Education. This means in imitation of God. And this comes by being near to God, by watching him, by thinking his thoughts, and knowing his wishes— following him from the springing of a blade of grass to the blooming of the Beatitudes, from the crawling of a snail to the sad cry on Calvary. This is not preaching. It is not a Sunday affair. I talk from a drygoods box. I am sitting in your office and speak these words. Learning of God in the million ways he comes to us every hour, from clover and cloud and Calvary, is the most practical and needful thing in the world. This is education, and all outside of it is a cheat and a sham. They make life earnest and serious, of course, but more beautiful and lovely because it is true. All truth is serious. Most of the gayety and laughter of this world comes from the grotesque and inconsistent; from looking at the fiat side of things. Let them be. But let them not crowd out the earnest and real. The flippant ad- miration of beauty is not artistic. Beauty itself is solemn, for it is evanescent and fading. You can see the Gate Beautiful from the weeds of Gethsemane. Every true artist paints beauty with a tinge of solemness. They have taken as the type of beauty the sad, sweet face -of the mother of the Crucified One. True art is ever reverent; so is every true life. Our conduct is our interpretation, through the spirit, of the fact of God's absence or presence in the world. The interpretation is important. That is why we are here to-day— to look into each other's faces and say to one another, "I will welcome as a message from on high every truth of my text-book, every fact from the laboratory, every word of inspiration and counsel Moral Aspects of Education. 19 sent to me to build up my soul, to give it strength, insight, feeling, faith, purpose, that I may the better, by word, deed, or silence, carry the thought and love of the good Allfather among my fellows, and do my best to make the world as he would have it, remem- bering, as Forsythe says, "It is a gifted imagination that best divines for us the moral earnestness and sol- emn hazard of common life." This material age puts God so far out into the uni- verse that he has little concern for this planet, and it is our privilege to share in his nonchalance; that each atom is invested with a potency Avhich evolves its own conceit, and there it forever ends; and our lives go with them — a little chemistry, a little passion, a little work, a little longing, and up comes the wave of eternity and washes them all away. Divinity is not so hedged. It throbs and sings and shines and smiles from everything. This is not Pan- theism. The rose is not God, it is his expression of beauty; the rainbow is not God, it is his expression of grace; the tornado is not God, it is his expression of force; the deep, starlit blue is not God, it is his ex- pression of infinitude. These are the lessons to learn, not the science merely, but the spirit, which is greater than the science. Here is where materialism stops — with the knowl- edge. Here is where education stands. But here is where duty and character begin — in the divine mean- ing of things, in the sweet and simple truth of things. We have been so badgered about the Bible in the schools that they have succeeded almost in driving out God himself, and all his beautiful angels, too. I care not how practical this age may be. Let the 20 Keynotes of Education. steam puff, the wheels whirr, and the dust fly; let the great factories dot the land, the railroads streak the continent, and the marts he filled with traffic; pile up splendid architecture, huild heautiful homes, crowd the libraries with hooks, cover the walls with pic- tures, fill the rooms with music; deck the thorough- fares with monuments to science, art, literature, and the good deeds of man; let the procession of intellect and inventive genius, hearing aloft the trophies of conquest, move on — it is all a part of humanity's on- ward march, but only a part. Moral progress has not kept abreast of it. Perhaps that is human; it is, but our planet has glowed less with joy because it has not been more divine. How about our wealth, our literature, our politics, our home-life, our fashion, our conversation, our religion? Have we advanced in our ideas of duty in all these fields of activity, upon which material progress has shed its warmest rays? How about our suffering pov- erty, our shallow and unwholesome books, our cor- rupt office-seeking, the careless and insipid family circles, the baleful fashions that tell of disease and murder, our vain and faithless words, our outward show of religion? These are the belongings of materialism. God's sweet spirit, with which he breathes beauty into the landscape, loveliness into the flower, grandeur into the stars, and a heartfelt benediction in the sincere and helpful deed — these are not here. Knowledge has not locked arms with understanding. I do not say much has not been done. Every landscape and stretch of water, and nook and corner of busy life, is warmer and fairer, Moral Aspects of Education. 21 In some things we have been faithful to spirit, but not in all, and not in the greater things. Our thought, our art, our education, our religion have been too pinched, too sordid, too sullen. The inspira- tion has sulked, and the imagination has swept low. But the renaissance of soul is dawning, when the lovely, lowly life of Christ among the lilies and the children, his prayer, and sermon on the mount, ap- peal to all men of thought and purpose as nearer to real life, because of the steam-engine and the dy- namo; for underneath every wheel and shaft and coupling: is the law of the snownake and sunbeam that dwelt in the Holy Spirit from the beginning, and filled the universe with a still, small voice before time began. My friends, we need a new Protestantism, a re- statement of faith, that recognizes the divine imma- nence and embodies a sweeter and deeper reverence for all things. The old Protestantism is somewhat worn. It has done its work. The defiance of hier- archical despotism has resulted in a liberty which we should now enjoy. Too many people believe that the Christian era began with Martin Luther. Hail, ever, to that great soul! But if there was ever a golden summit in history, it is now, when form and dogma are fading before love and service, and worship is not a ceremony merely, but a life. Is this painting a fancy? Go into the machinery and trading world, and you will find the reformation already stirring itself in the exaction of an identity between religion and life, between deed and duty. And this demand is not limited to operations of char- ity and sentimental visits among the slummies, but 22 Keynotes of Education. it extends to that larger life which is the Infinite's, where the heart absorbs the sweet and merciful es- sence of things as the mountain-top welcomes the sunrise. We must not blame the world too much. It follows quite as closely our religion and our educa- tion as we ought, possibly, to expect or desire. It is a personal question. Whose company will we seek? With whom will we walk and talk and think? With God or Mammon? There is where we command our evolution. We determine there our association and environment. It is the point, when Fate comes to each with the question, Whither will ye go, up- wards or downwards? This is the science of life. It is here where Darwinism meets the soul with the problem of destiny. It is a mighty question: Under what king? It is not met by hanging mottoes on the wall, by studying French, and playing the piano. It comes in a resolu- tion of the soul to meet God's Spirit, whose still, small voice is heard in everything, and whose greeting breaks into a thousand smiles wherever we turn. In psalm and droning beetle, in beatitude and waving grass, it is there; and "Bemember now thy Creator" is sung by every bird and repeated by every tinkling waterfall. The capacities of the soul to chord with the beauti- ful harmonies that hold all things to God's purpose is the special gift to man, and is the grand fact upon which true education is based. It is the rock of truth. And if we bow down to wood and stone; if we worship our Latin or oar Analysis; if we cloud our intuition with dialectics, we build on the sand, and our lives shift with it. Moral Aspects of Education. 23 My friends, I hope no one will think I am han- dling vapors; that I am simply decorating hard experi- ence with soft-hued sentiment. The thought I bring you to-day is as deep-set as the verities of the Eternal, and as practical as digging a garden. I exalt education to the heights of religion, and when you think about it — and I ask you to think about it — you will not discover by any test of logic, by any principle of criticism, even the width of a hair be- tween them. They are the same, and all educational effort, every educational institution, all study and all discipline that recognizes a difference, is faithless to humanity and God. I do not say this because I speak to-day under the auspices of a religious institution. I try to speak from the centrality of things without reference. We may need these thoughts here, and I dare say we do, as well as at Harvard, Vassar, or even Princeton. But these are the heights we must seek if we would be true men and women. We can not imagine our duty different in moral principle and practical life. There is somewhat of happy suggestion in the Pythagorean philosophy, where all things have a nu- merical relation, and the future is the third term of an equation. A gentle correspondence rules the uni- verse, and the sequences come as in cold and ice, wind and wave, desire and deed, love and duty, here and somewhere. God makes no half hinges, as Cook was so fond of repeating. There is something for every longing. The stars are the answers to the law of gravitation, the flashing rosebush to the burst of dawn, the thoughts of the heart to God's sweet truth. We may 24 Keynotes of Education. be faithless, we may be false; but we answer with our lives. For every necessity there is an energy of the soul waiting to build an altar. Shall we make it beautiful with courage, sacrifice, love, and truth, or shall we make it ugly with cowardice, selfishness, prejudice, and falsehood? That is a more practical question than we are apt to think. It is as practical as a counting-room prob- lem. It may be drowned by the din, the dust, the ceaseless palaver of factory and mart; but in the silence of the soul's deep thinking it comes like the voice of Fate. We can not escape the fulfillment. I once stood in the King's Chamber in the center of Cheops. The gloom was intense, and the light radiated hardly a foot from the taper held in the Arab's hand. I looked around and said to myself, "Where is the king?" He was gone, but I felt that his soul had been built into the black mass of adamant about me. So we build ourselves into conduct and work and word and thought. It is quite essential that we pro- ject into life the pure and true, and that we build from designs obtained from the Architect who planned the lily of the valley and sprung the dome of the skies. And what are these plans? The word fitly spoken, the act that needs a kindness, the duty that demands a sacrifice, the tired heart that weeps for comfort, the cause that needs assistance, and wherever a willing hand may wait on truth and virtue. And yet, life is not altogether altruism, or a nun- nery, or an errand of charity; and neither is it an an- Moral Aspects of Education. 25 gelic sweep of destiny, or the gathering of hosts for Armageddon. It is a plain, ordinary, every-day af- fair, in which toil is touched with pain, and purpose mingled with misgiving. It is a personal matter, which one must attend to, in store and field, and in shop and home. How one attends to it depends upon whether one is a clod, a phrase, an appetite, or a spirit. And this depends upon one's education or environ- ment, which is mostly in one's keeping. He can deck his life with the tawdry of the hour, or with jewels that shine more and more unto the perfect day. He can infuse into the commonplace of his every-day coming and going that graceful dignity, that sweet coiirtesy, that gentle speech, that helpful hand, that simple truth which God has put into the essence of all things pure and holy. Shall we catch this loving ideality which he intends for us? Shall our education be directed towards its achievement? Then we must get behind the matter, where God's thought lingers, and under its sway build our lives into heavenly mansions. Let us not be afraid of ideality. Let not the long word transcendentalism frighten us from the path of the spirit. I would rather live in a castle in Spain than in a mud hut. Let us grasp at all the golden chains let down from heaven, even if we do not seize them. The exercise is an uplift. The athlete whirling on the trapeze does not expect to repeat the exercise in the counting-room; but that exercise gives him poise and mastery in his quiet moments. And so this leaning out towards the In- 26 Keynotes of Education. finite, this inhaling the air of the beautiful beyond, generates those forces of spirit that make life mel- lifluent and floral. Kichard Kealf, John Brown's Secretary of State, of the Kepublic of Freedom that lay way out in the mirage, which has since dissolved, and unveiled a real land of freedom, thus sang: "Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer; Rare is the roseburst at dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer ; Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter ; And never was poem yet writ but the meaning out- mastered the meter. Never a daisy that grows but a mystery guideth the growing: Never a river that flows but a majesty scepters the flow- ing; Never a Shakespeare that soared but a stronger than he did enfold him ; Never a prophet foretells but a mightier seer hath fore- told him. Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and hidden ; Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is hidden ; Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling ; Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the revealing. Great are the symbols of being, but that which is sym- boled is greater ; Vast the create and behold, but vaster the inward creator ; Moral Aspects of Education. 27 Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving ; Back of the hand that receives, thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving. Space is as nothing to spirit, the deed is outdone by the doing ; The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing ; And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights where those shine, Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine." TENDENCIES. 'X 1 ENDENCY is the greatest fact in human experi- * ence. Whither is the key to what. It makes no difference what we seem, the direction we are go- ing determines what we are. The man who is low down, and is tending upward, is nearer God than the man who is high up and is tending downward. Standing still is going somewhere. God never made an idle moment for the human soul. There is no negation. Who is not for me is against me. This alternative is the zenith of every human life. We make our choice of something. One can not imagine anything that is not moving from here to there. There is nothing standing. The very ruins are fall- ing to pieces. The North Star came up from the south and is going back again. Old Heraclitus was right — change is the essence of all things. There is an incessant becoming. Not only are all the atoms dashing and plunging for new positions, but every star that gems the night is going somewhere. The very air has changed. The sunbeam has grown brighter. The vital force has added other cells. There is a new world every morning — new conditions, new opportunities, new risks. Old Troy is composed of ten strata. It ate, and slept, and loved, and died, in layers. Ages are sand- wiched in the debris of dynasties and civilizations. A spade full of clay, sprinkled with trinkets, contains the hopes, the joys, the sorrows of humanity only a 28 Tendencies. 29 few thousand years ago. Its dream has passed into dust. A little longing, a little yearning, a little gaz- ing upward, lingers yet in this beautiful gem, this graceful statuette, this fair embossment; all else has faded, as the sunset fades into the night. Must it needs be, then, that we are caught in the swirl of circumstances, and tossed about upon the tide, or washed ashore, like drift? Must we then be pup- pets of change, like the weather, and accept our places on the level of the dust? Shall we take our chances with the molecule, or with the eternal spirit? Let us to-night go back to primary facts. Let us comprehend the majesty of life. Let us confront the problem of the soul. There is no grander question than that which a young man or young woman can propose to themselves, whither am I bound? What may I do to justify my life when the soul rallies its memories in the dim eternities? Shall these loves, these sympathies, these ambitions, these longings, with which God has filled the soul, make life sacred and beautiful, or profane and ugly? This issue meets us at every step. It is the alternative to-night. Which way? Not, how much? 'T is not how much Latin, geometry, or chemistry you have, as what you are going to do with it. Does it kindle a purpose? Does it form a tendency? Or does it succumb to materialism, and waste itself on sordid ends down in the ruts and gullies of life? To begin with, we must think of the soul as a force. I believe in the divinely-anointed Ego; the imperial subjective that turns discords into har- monies, and drives chance away from the throne of 30 Keynotes of Education. divine authority. "We must condition our destiny upon the somethingness of ourselves. God never loses sight of the identity of a single soul. Poised delicately in a world of circumstance, it possesses the dignity of self-assertion, and bends its course to- ward the haven of its own desires. Still, I do not deny the sovereignty of circum- stance; but I do affirm that every man has the chance of being a hero before he is obliged to accept the fate of a victim. If we are the creatures of en- vironment, let us choose that environment which will keep us clean and pure. This is the summit of edu- cation — the choosing. If our books and recitations do not assist us to this choice, we have gathered darkness for our pains. If, in our straining after knowledge, we have not come close to the Infinite and His beauty and love; if we have not attuned ourselves to the harmonies which embrace all that is noble and true; if we have not caught our inspiration from every little event of God's loving purpose in home, in flower, in sacred song, in mother's love, in lofty sacrifice, we have re- fused the divinest equipment that can adorn the human soul, and surrendered our judgment over to the adventure of the moment. The first duty of education is to get us to start right — not to trust to the luck of to-morrow. And what is starting right? Eecognizing God, and duty, and honor, and temperance, and purity, and decency, and putting ourselves where these things are recog- nized. It is absolute folly and wickedness to stand around and practice our human sophistry on these Tendencies. 31 divine energies. We must look upon them as fixed facts, stern and relentless as a shore of rock to the beating waves. Waiting for environment to deter- mine one's tendency is risking all on the throw of a die. We should choose the environment now; or per- haps earlier in youth; when the dreams were fairer, the emotions truer, and we dwelt in the sweet faith of home. The tenderest influence in all this world is a moth- er's prayer, and the loftiest testimony any young man or woman can render to the memory of that loving soul, is to help God answer that prayer. Am- bition, fame, wealth, culture, are too unwieldy and rude, if they ever crowd out that splendid duty. Eight here is the place to start, where the mother's beautiful lips plead that her boy or girl may be true and pure, brave and self-denying. Kicher and diviner are those limping words than all the pages of Soc- rates, Aurelius, or Emerson. When we turn from them as the paroxysm of an idle faith, we abandon the simple truth of God and suppress the fairest ten- dency Heaven has sent us since the Transfiguration. I hope the summer mornings of boyhood will last; that the love of the johnny- jumpups and wild honey- suckles will never fail; that the birds will forever sing in the heart, as they did down in the happy valley of youth. We never get nearer to God than in those early days when our souls came fresh from his hands. The first and greatest duty is to stay there; but its very value makes it the more difficult. The whole world is arrayed against the simplicity of youth and duty. To-morrow, legions will confront 32 Keynotes -of Education. you with enticement, selfish purpose, and yellow opin- ion. Every true purpose that nerves your soul will have its special foe, and the grandeur of life will de- pend upon the battle then to take place: Which will win? The preparation for this conflict is the only educa- tion that is worth the name. If our classics, our mathematics, our sciences, have not strengthened us to overcome these foes, we might just as well have re- mained in ignorance. There is a moral side to every thought and fact, and the first duty of culture is to recognize this. Materialism minimizes or ignores this truth, and discerns in matter the potency of all knowledge. One may safely go through this life, if, like the man of science, he walks the cool ridges of investiga- tion, and pursues the fleeting atoms till they lose themselves in the glorious unseen; but for common mortals like ourselves, down on the plane of life, tempted on every side, beset by envy and malice, sur- rounded by sorrow and misfortune, linked to associa- tion that smiles and promises, and heated by desires that are always clamoring — to found one's destiny on a physical basis is treachery to the soul and a defiance of eternal doom. The finest prowess of youth is moral heroism. The lesson of the hour is to start right — start with God and faith and simple duty. Our broadest future is in the next step we make. Our noblest castles are built right here, out of the clay at our feet, and not in the mirage beyond. One thing to do is to start by recognizing our own identity, our own integrity, our Tendencies. 33 own inherent force; and that is absolutely impossible, unless we recognize the divine sovereignty. I speak as a man of the world upon the theme of success in life, and I say there can be no real success, no true triumph, unless God's hand is in the victory. We all acknowledge that God reigns. His loving benediction rests upon us in field and woodland these happy days of May. We see him in leaf and flower, in trickling brook and burning stars; we hear him in the songs of the birds and the tones of the church- bells; we discern his fingers tracing the stripes and planting the stars in "Old Glory;" we can see him, every step of the way, from a star-mist to a world full of human souls, and thence on to the gates of heaven; and yet we hesitate, and argue, and run away, when it comes to extending this authority over our little lives, to make them beautiful and lofty, too. Somehow we affect to think that the divine sov- ereignty, which unfolds the spirals of a nebula beyond the stars, and peoples a grain of musk with a thousand lives, will leave our souls out of the account, to reel amid the order of things, to trample at will upon the "Thou shalts," and then take part in that divine har- mony which is the exhalation of Infinite Love. Tins matter is not merely a theological or ethical problem, but a practical one, too. It is very easy to formulate it into a faith — really, an intelligent man can hardly help doing that little — but to project it into one's life, and make it regnant in one's office, or store, or shop, and to guide one in society, or politics, or church; and to stand loyally to that endowment of the soul, upon which the good 3 34 Keynotes of Education. Allfather has impressed somewhat of his own strength and dignity, is the highest heroism of human nature. Our methods of education incline too much to regard man as an intellect to be furnished with knowl- edge — a jar to he packed with facts to he taken out as they are needed. They almost ignore the other powers of the soul — to feel and to will — imperial faculties that determine the man. Think what little knowing is. If one had all knowledge, it would be little worth if one had no emotions and no purpose. It would be like a great machine-shop, filled with en- gines, tools, iron, patterns, and no fire under the boil- ers and the engineer gone. What is needed is the living force; the Spirit of God breathed on the knowledge. The doctrine of the correlation of forces is not limited to the field of physics; it belongs to the mental and moral realm as well. There is a relation between knowledge, mental- ity, ethics, and charity; a relation so close that one passes into the other. It is the highest correlation that illustrates the unity of truth, as light, heat, and electricity illustrate the unity of force. What a little world this would be if we could pen heat in a crucible as a little unrelated power, separat- ing the oxygen and carbon, like the grains fall away from the soft sand rock! Or that lamp yonder is sim- ply the union of two elements making a third, and that is the end of it. Or that yon streak of lightning is only a little subtle fluid ripping around in the skies, and leaving only a burst of thunder! That little flame is linked to the winds, that lamplight sings with Te7idencies . 35 every shining orb, and upon that flash of lightning the universe is built. Into the sanctuary of these great facts, true educa- tion bids us enter; and not only to recognize these physical relations, but the moral relations which go with them, and which is the fairer and truer side of them; for as the heat, light, and electricity are the varying vibrations of God's power, so are courage, courtesy, justice, and purity the varying pulsations of his love. A choice must be made. We can not depend upon our conjugations and cube-roots to carry us through. An old Greek philosopher said, "Much learning teaches not wisdom." The bare facts of materialism never raised a soul above the soil. There is some one back of gravitation, expansion, and chemical affinity, of whom these are but the finger traces. "What is this inscription written on every leaf, dewdrop, snownake, wisp of cloud, and track of meteor? That nothing lives for itself alone, or will forever disappear, or might not have been. The violet that blooms in your garden is as great in God's sight as splendid Orion. They came together in the morning of the world, and will go out when time closes. Amid all things, and through all centuries, runs this infinite purpose, which constitutes the ethics of life, and which it is your prerogative and mine to serve or impede. I do not want to hide my meaning in the glow of sentimental phrases. Let us be thoroughly frank. Here is an object, whose center of gravity is beyond its base. It falls; we say that it is its weight that brings it down. Yes; but the whole earth has been pulling 36 Keynotes of Education. at it; and a sky full of stars has seized it and dragged it down; every comet that sails the depths of night, and every nebula that floats along the horizons of heaven, clamor for its downfall. Dip a piece of blue litmus into an acid, and if the paper does not turn red, the universe will dissolve, for in that simple reac- tion, we behold one of the foundations that held up the beauty, order, and grandeur of the world since the creation. We need not look for some golden chain connect- ing the physical and the moral law; they are as close together as a mother's lips and a mother's love; they are the same, both moral. The logic is as beautiful as a strand of pearls. The gentle May opens the buds; then come the flowers, and after a while the fruit which brings life, where duty enters, and then God smiles bush and tree into bloom again. Not more surely is the physical law fixed in the relations of all things and all time than is the divine purpose that determines the moral law. Every thought, act, dream, and intent of our lives must be brought to the straight edge of truth and justice, and by that be judged. We may think the law will be suspended on our account, and for a while we may reap better than we sow; that we may gather grapes of thorns, and that action and reaction are not equal. We may think God will dally with error; that he will abdicate his throne to temporize with mere pretense and youthful folly. But it can never be. When the less contains the greater, when two and two make five, then, and not till then, will the moral law lose its force or forget its judgments. Tendencies. 37 This is a fact above all the facts of the text-book. It stands at the front of all knowledge. It is the basic idea of human life. Whoever breaks the har- mony of God's republic must suffer the penalty. Blasphemy, drunkenness, lying, cheating, false swear- ing, gambling, every impure thought and deed, is each of itself an overt act of treason against the Al- mighty. If one of these should triumph; if the re- sultant of any of these would be success and joy, the universe will shrivel into a cinder. The decree of the Infinite must be enforced. It may not be to-day, or even to-morrow; but some day, sooner or later, the relentless executioner comes along. You can see his footsteps in a thousand blighted lives. Every jail, penitentiary, infirmary, and asylum is a monument to his unforgetting vengeance. He fills society with disordered homes, rebellious children, fashionable novels, and empty gossip. He unnerves the conscience and weakens the judg- ment, by diluting the brain with alcohol, opiates, and narcotics. And the beautiful intellect, sufficient to the contemplation of truth and innocence, is stained by impurity, prejudice, envy, and hatred. There is no one here who does not feel in some way or some degree, in some fit of mind or lapse of nerve or muscle, the cold hand of the executioner upon him to-night. And there is not a penalty that we may not trace back to something that we might do to-morrow. terrible is this logic of life! But it is a lesson that we must learn, we must understand, we must utilize, if we would be true men and women. This is the thought I bring you to-night. All time and eternity, all the universe, from the mote riding the sunbeam to 38 Keynotes of Education. the galaxy spanning the heavens, is on the side of the man who does the right; and they are against the man who is in the wrong. Their judgments may be de- layed. They may not come to-day; but to-morrow, or next day, the dreadful ergo will be drawn against us. The highest purpose of education is not so much to know, to think, or to argue, as it is to travel the right road. It is a matter of no consequence for a man to speak correctly, if he does not speak the truth. Math- ematics has done a poor service in training one to think, if it has not made him thoughtful, also. The annals of history litter the memory if they do not in- spire one to emulate the virtue, the devotion, the courage of those who make them resplendent. Eead- ing is no better than loitering if we do not learn to read, over the feast of luxury and licentiousness, the handwriting on the wall. Our classical culture de- scends to profligacy and hypocrisy unless truth and virtue fill every fond dream. You will find the habit of life against this view. Materialism occupies the markets, the avenues, the offices, the politics, the schools, and, I might say, too often the churches. It comes wherever we turn, in- viting us to indolence and pleasure, to superficial sights and empty sounds. It sets up every moment to selfish joy. Materialism, with its jeweled hand, seeks to beckon us ever to a carnival. The tree of knowledge grows in every Eden of life, and we eat its fruit with a relish. Science and inventive genius have gilded the material with beauty and glory. Art, architecture, and litera- ture touch the soul with passions of delight. Our Tendencies. 39 music sets us whirling in a maze of mystic fancies. The spirit of the age is toward materialism and sen- sualism. Things, facts, objects, and how they can minister to sense, selfishness, and the joy of to-day, is the trend of modern life. The end no one can see. There are lurid flashes in the mists ahead. Dark clouds are rolling across the brow of to-morrow. Behind all the dazzle and shim- mer of these days of advance, God's judgment is yet to be. What will he think? The answer to that question, as it comes to our own souls, presents a life purpose for every one of us, and opens to the future the beautiful gates of hope. My friends, never in the history of the world have Duty and Sacrifice offered to Heroism such splendid opportunities as they do to-day. It is not a conflict of cannon and physical endurance. There is no triumphal procession, no waving of banners, or cele- bration of military glory. The struggle is silent, persistent, every day, everywhere. The battle-field is here in this hall, and spreads forth to wherever you may go. The foe is whoever comes to tear down our ideals of duty, or to challenge the authority of God over us. Every influence that brings lack of faith, weakness of purpose, longing for indolence, or insincerity of speech, is an enemy. Every lie, deceit, injustice, pro- fane word, impure story, or disrespect of sacred things, is an adversary. One finds an infinite antago- nism in bad books, bad papers, bad shows, bad com- panions. Then, too, society surrounds one with its fashions, 40 Keynotes of Education. its games, its gossips, its insipid froth and nervous fuss, and decoys one away from the true conflict. Every indulgence that poisons the blood or mangles the nerves, so that the soul loses its energy to think or will, attacks the citadel of manhood. Wherever one turns in this changeful world, some friend of the wrong appears, to lure or drag one into the haunts of madness and mockery. Every man has his private Apollyon, says Miss Mulock; and he has his confeder- ates wherever one goes — in society, in trade, in poli- tics, in church. It is the duty of education to encounter these hos- tilities with a clear head and a strong heart. Do not think it is the special province of religion to combat wrong, or that it is no part of the scholars duty to contend for righteousness. Eeligion and education go together. They are one. They are both the un- folding of the divine energy with which the soul is endowed. Science, literature, philosophy, without God, is like the heavens without the sun. Even math- ematics is based on a truth got direct from the throne of the Infinite. I am not speaking in a theological sense, though I might as well, but from that deep reverence for truth which is the Eternal's, and which is as grand in your own little life as it is in an archangel's. If in every rock, blossom, raindrop, floating cloud, flashing me- teor, and dreamy bend of river, we do not see some- thing more than the dry bones of fact; if we do not feel a link of harmony breaking into a chorus of love and duty; if we do not discern among them, those touches of the infinite truth, that sweet relation of Tendencies. 41 things which clings to us as we go about among our fellows, unfolding our destiny in deeds and words, then our education has been scanty, stale, and starving. A man is no scholar who thinks that moral duty is taught by Moses or St. Paul only. Sometimes we hear men ask why God has not written across the skies, in letters of light, the message of the dove, that all men might read. He has — across the skies with blazing suns; along the horizon with mountain sum- mits; on every rainbow, tinted with promise by the fingers of the sunbeam. There is a moral side to everything. God teaches a lesson in the dead grass, the chill wind, the stagnant pool, as well as in the Psalms or the Beatitudes. All knowledge is divine. It makes life serious and sacred. Take morality out of trade, art, politics, education, or society, and there is nothing left but ashes. Consider trade, for instance, without moral principles. It would go to wreck in a year. Politics is not worth the bother of a moment, apart from righteous duty. Look at our art and literature, without an ethical purpose, filling the hearts and minds of the people with dirt and meanness. And our education, with its tricks at words and figures, and its earthly informa- tion, beguiling the beautiful souls of the youth into superficial and selfish lives. The way we look at things unfolds our destiny. You remember the old Hebrew saying, I think it was, "God delights in adverbs." How the action word is getting along is the main thing. The noun is abject, it makes no difference how many fine adjectives clus- 42 Keynotes of Education. ter about it, if it is not doing well. The quality of the doing figures in the divine syntax. We can not make the action fine out of mean modifiers. We build mud huts of mud. It takes meanness to do mean things. Strike a false note, and the harmony of all things turns into discord. Whoever tries to build a good life out of the dead bark, the green scum, or the livid putrescence of things, will fail utterly. We must go beneath, to the inner meaning. We must ask what God wants of this ear of corn, this blooming rose- bush, this sweet whistle of the meadow-lark, this lovely drapery of the evening, this lustrous vigil of Jupiter in the zenith to-night. Is there nothing in them, nothing back of them, that makes life purer and nobler, that inclines you to turn to your friend, and say, "Let us keep our lives in harmony with all this joy and grace; let every step touch the trend along which God's will runs?" A true life is a plain matter — as simple as the Lord's Prayer, or the growing of a lily, or the sparkle of a diamond. It is straight and clean — no fuss or fury, or the raising of dust. We get our ideas of life often from pictures in books, where an orator is bran- dishing a harangue before an excited crowd, or a man on a prancing steed, in the gale of battle, is waving a sword over a scene of blood and groans. This is no more of life than a hanging or going up in a balloon. It exists only in spots. One's life is a quiet, uneventful, impatient sort of thing, known only to a few neighbors, and, possibly, a few others over in the next town. It mostly con- cerns one's self; not in a selfish point of view, for it Tendencies. 43 is only best when it blesses others. God has a law for every act and deed, as he has for every leaf and drop of water. He has told something about it in the Sermon on the Mount, where every triumph is gained by pure, modest, peaceable, honest, straightforward lives. Self- ishness, ambition, wealth, nowhere breaks through the lines with the promise of a joy. Even the vicissi- tude that demands courage and daring brings with it, if real, the modesty of a simple faith. "Lead, Kindly Light," is not only the sweetest song, but the grandest prayer of humanity. Not what the papers think, or the public, or society; but, What does God think? is the question for every heroic soul. I would not soften the matter by a single line of sentiment. I make the issue as bold and blunt as An- glo-Saxon can present it — if a man ignores God and moral duty, his lif e will be a failure. He may acquire wealth, he may direct great interests, he may go to Congress, he may preside over courts, the crowd may follow him with loud hurrahs; but unless he recog- nizes Infinite truth and justice in all things, his suc- cess is a sham, filled with disaster and regret. If he bases his destiny upon the idea that a lie may win, that selfishness may succeed, that impurity may exalt, that injustice may endure, that indolence and craftiness may flaunt banners of victory along the way, he might as well expect a prism to turn light into black, that action and reaction will be unequal, or that a rock will soar like a wisp of cloud. It is absolutely absurd, and to true scholarship it 44 Keynotes of Education. is positively wicked, to hold that natural law is regu- lar and persistent, but that moral law staggers around at haphazard through a masquerade of virtues and vices, not knowing and not caring which it chooses. Through all knowledge, art, classics, philosophies; through all text-books, experiments, and plans, breaks this alternative — which side? To no one does the issue come with more force than to the boy and girl stepping from the schoolroom to project their learn- ing into conduct. The trouble will not be the lack of knowledge, so much as the lack of that divine volition which trans- forms knowledge into life. Society and business will seek by every flattery, enticement, and subterfuge to neutralize the volition and bring that boy or girl into the wild and empty chase of fashion and folly, of luxury and ease. It will be a thousand to one against him. He will find soon that he can depend upon no one but himself and the good Allfather. Success in this world is not achieved by idlers or puppets, or those who drift along in the shallows; but by men and women of heart, of insight, of defi- ance, who see the inside of things, the essence of things, where God's purpose is written and his love is manifest, and stand faithfully by the duty com- mitted to their hands. This is education. This is true scholarship. This is the corner-stone of the auton- omy of manhood. It is sad to realize how many temptations encircle the boy and girl when they leave the schoolroom. To- morrow, perhaps, the genial, loving, beautiful home- Tendencies. 45 life ends. There, solicitude, watchfulness, and sweet expectation hover about one always; but real life be- gins now, and they melt into tender memories, and in their places come — 0! so slow — the fair opportu- nities and bright missions that hope had spread out over the fields of the future. Soon one finds that his algebra, his Latin, his pars- ing, his composition, are not equal to the task of reducing his bright anticipations to beautiful experi- ence. A link of the golden chain seems to be gone. Ah, then is the most stupendous moment of a boy's life! In his anxiety and impatience, he looks around, and, to escape despair, he seeks the crowd on the corner. That is the first step in the wrong direction. By and by these enticing influences gather closer about him, and he begins to think that, after all, life is only a matter of clothes, of pastimes, of games, of dances, of cigarettes, of gossip in parlor and store, and the blinking effervescence of daily ado. Soon the sacred purpose is gone, the happy im- pulse of youth weakens, the better tendencies of home and school slip by, and the boy floats in the drift down the river of life, soon to be soaked with the follies and falsehoods of the age, and to sink out of sight forever. 0! there is a truer way. There is a manlier ten- dency, where the boy declares his independence and self-respect; defends his identity before God; and along the years that follow, if need be, fights his way through crusts, patched clothes, cold neglect, and self-denial, past rifle-pits and barbed-wire jungles, up 46 Keynotes of Education. the slope to the summit, to take from the hand of the Infinite the laurels of victory. True success does not coalesce with the selfish spirit of this age. Heroic tendency crosses at every angle the whims and aspirations of society. We must make up our minds to this fact. We must say whether we purpose to lose ourself or save ourself. The problem is as plain as the forks of a road. Mind you, I do not proclaim an asceticism. We have too much cloistered religion in this world. The man who sees and talks to God only in the closet is a coward and a hypocrite. It is on the street, in the midst of affairs, where men gather, that one must carry his moral purpose. It is in business, in politics, in society, that true scholarship must stand up and be counted. Divine graces never fit one better than in the field of duty. We somehow catch an idea, that when moral pur- pose is most needed it may be most neglected. We want to chase it back to the flowers, the birds, the brooks, the crimson sunsets, the purple crests of the hills, the love-glances of the evening star, or to the Beatitudes, anywhere from the realm of real life and the dealings with our brother. The highest achievement of education is to weld the link that connects the divine purpose with hu- man conduct. That is what the orthography, the arithmetic, the geology are for— not to make us shrewder, or to fill us with knowledge, but to make us wise, discerning, faithful, that we may the better be able to deck every deed with a virtue and adorn every tendency with a grace. Tendencies. 47 I am talking of this world, of the things that con- cern us in the struggle for bread and butter. The conditions of life are arranged for our good. Success is just as definite, determined, as the sowing of wheat determines the grinding of flour. Excellence is a product of character as well as of skill. You get a fine buggy made — the best than can be; the first ride out, a felly breaks and the rim caves in. 'T is not the fault of the material or the work; the flaw was in the character of the man who made it. He was dis- honest or negligent. But he made ten dollars by his fault. Did he? And was he so lucky as to cheat God, too, and gather figs from thistles? "Was the whole melody of the universe thrown into discord for his comfort and delight? Not a bit of it. Every cent carried with it a penalty. It brought him ashes, and poison, and pain. It even touched with regret and grief the sweet innocence of his children and the loving sacrifice of his wife. We can not see all these lines of action and reaction that cross and recross human experience; we can not trace to its beginning this sorrow, this misfortune, this pain; we can not follow up the cause of this intemperance, this impurity, this indolence, this sac- rilege — they are all so hidden in the maze of life; but we know what they are. This rotten speck in the apple was made by the worm at the root. It had a hard struggle of it, coming up through the heart of the tree, and fighting away the dews and the sun- shine ; but it won, and spoiled the fruit. But positive teaching is what we want. It is a poor life that is ever defending itself against error. 48 Keynotes of Education. As a matter of practical common sense, the safest, surest thing in this world is the right thing. It may- require patience, courage, long suffering, and tempo- rary loss, but at last it comes. We can not hurry God. We can only have faith in the promises that he has made to Virtue, Patience, Self-denial, Integrity, Industry. Even his blessings are not adventitious. They do not drop down on personal account. They come as the flowers bloom and the birds sing. They come because they have to come, out of faith, sacrifice, courage, toil. It is a mistake to reserve right thinking and right acting for heaven only. They are as necessary to earth as to heaven. A righteous life is the foremost utility. Progress, enterprise, industry, success, de- pend upon the exercise of the highest functions of the soul. An earnest life articulates with great achieve- ments. Success in life is a matter of the plainest logic; it is as direct as the play of a sunbeam on the laughing bud. A boy goes forth from school, inspired with a purpose to be something and do something. He looks upon life as an opportunity for manhood and duty. He is equipped with integrity, sincerity, purity, temperance, enthusiasm, and the tireless energy of hand and heart. He turns away from the idlers, the gossipers, the seekers after pleasure, the frivolous devotees of society, and glorifies his mission with self-reliance, courage, and sacrifice. He may not wear the plumes of prosperity; he may be even un- noticed and discarded; but that is nothing. He keeps right on with his work; he learns to love it, to sanctify Tendencies. 49 it with every tender memory of home and school, and to bedew it with the wisdom he has gathered from his books. Day by day he unfolds his purpose. It may be now only the plowing of a furrow or the pushing of a plane; but he is planting a righteous effort. He is sowing the seed of self-reliance and high endeavor. He is putting a value on the hours as they go by. He is bowing at the altar of beautiful necessity, and, with a faith in God, expects an answer by and by. There can be but one answer. The stars are on his side. For him, the rain falls, the rivers run, and the forest waves a million banners. Some day he emerges from his toil and sacrifice. He brings with him strong muscles, a clean brain, a pure heart, and a ready hand. His self-reliance and his self-respect have equipped him with talent for service. He does not ask for favor; he does not seek patronage; he does not follow some great capitalist around and beg for work. He has risen to the dignity of a necessity himself. He has become a condition in the development of things about him; and now men come to him because they need him. True worth has a wide-open field in this world. In the dynamics of life, no force is wasted that is employed in the right direction. One of the finest and most suggestive lines in the Scriptures is that spoken by Christ: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" It is a reso- lution fitting human lips as well as divine. God haa as much business in this world as he has over in heaven. Heaven can take care of itself. The earth 4 50 Keynotes of Education. can not. It would go to sticks, if God's hand was not holding it in, through the sonls of true, brave, virtuous men and women, who make God's business their business. I speak reverently, but plainly, because I talk from the standpoint of practical life. I am here to pro- claim the doctrine of applied scholarship; to urge that true, pure, active, earnest, self-denying lives is the completest expression of God's will on earth, and the only surety of final joy and success. The major pre- mise of this argument is an axiom that holds up the skies. We can not imagine that God runs this beautiful world on the idea that indolence, insin- cerity, falsehood, drunkenness, sacrilege, will bring a blessing to the human heart. It makes no difference if these faults appear in the channels of business; they condemn the business, and it must bear the penalty. If the conduct of a railroad, or law-office, or blacksmith-shop, bristles with pro- fanity, intemperance, deceit, and impurity, that rail- road, that law-office, that blacksmith-shop, will have to pay for its faults in dollars or stock, or something they will buy, sometime soon. There is no exemption. The law belongs to the very essence of being, and it never forgets to exact the penalty. Strange, passing strange, that scholarship does not behold this imperial fact mightier and grander than gravitation, that ethics permeates all things; that it stands with bruised heart at the open grave, and follows the footsteps and fancies every- where. Which side? What is your tendency? Answer Tejidencies. 51 this question before enthusiasm has taken wings, or before hope has been burdened by the vanities of life. To-morrow, to-morrow, and to-morrow may de- termine all. Two or three things reveal a tendency. An astronomer sees a little speck in the skies. What is it? He can only tell by finding out where it is going. The next night it seems to have moved only a minute or two. The third night another al- most imperceptible change of place. These three points of occupation, so close together that they al- most blend, establish direction and destiny; and the astronomer marks out the track of a comet among the stars, until it recedes into the depthless azure of the skies. "True worth is in being, not seeming; In doing, each day that goes by, Some little good — not in dreaming Of great things to do by and by. For whatever men say, in their blindness, And spite of the fancies of youth, There 's nothing so kindly as kindness, And nothing so royal as truth. We get back our mete as we measure — We can not do wrong, and feel right ; Nor can we give pain and feel pleasure, For justice avenges each slight. The air for the wing of the sparrow, The bush for the robin and wren, But always the path that is narrow And straight, for the children of men. 'T is not in the pages of story, The heart of its ills to beguile, Though he who makes courtships to glory Gives all that he hath for a smile ; 52 Keynotes of Education. For when from her heights he has won her, Alas ! it is only to prove There 's nothing so royal as honor, And nothing so loyal as love. We can not make bargains for blisses, Nor catch them like fishes in nets, And sometimes the thing our life misses Helps more than the things which it gets ; For good lieth not in pursuing, Nor gaining of great or of small ; But just in the doing, and doing As we would be done by, is all." POETRY OF THE SKIES. LADIES and Gentlemen, — Another observatory! ■" Another outlook to the skies! Another dome through which to gaze at the infinite dome beyond! And for what good? There is a utilitarian view that shuts out the skies; that will not see star, planet, or nebula; that will not fill the deep ethereal spaces with a single vision. Yonder is no concern of ours; there is nothing in the stars that adds a single pound of food or a yard of raiment to the common stock. Once I talked with a distinguished astronomer — a gentle- man whose investigations had made him famous — who deplored the fact that he had not directed his destiny into the field of chemistry, whose fruits com- prise so many of the choice realities of life. Well, I did not share his regrets; and the radiance of his labors among the stars so suffuses my reveries that bolder figures in practical science blend with the dust of progress. We need the chemist, the physicist, the geologist, the botanist — the earth is broad, and every nook and corner are filled with the wisdom of God and the promise of a loftier life. But yonder, where night unto night showeth knowledge, and infinity unfolds truth in an arch of shining suns, the human heart bows for an inspiration and a benediction that it can not find anywhere in the paths of life. Yes; let us build altars to Utility; let us resolve not to raise a pillar or trim a stone that will not serve humanity; that will not lift it up and invest it with 53 54 Keynotes of Education. loftier desires and fairer ideals. Does not beauty belong to Utility? Does not grandeur? Does not sublimity? Does not every lustrous toucli of the divine hand? Are not these investments of the soul in the last analysis of courage, of duty, of labor? God's own grace of achievement, smiling in flower or beaming in star, wins the heart and directs the hand. I do not like Emerson's idea that a star expresses solitude. It is a multitude of brightest visions. There it goes through space, with a chorus of happy worlds singing around it. The thoughts mingle with rarest company as they go from orb to orb, and people them with celestial races linked to the vicissitudes of life. It may not be the solid truth we venture upon. It may be a dream; it may be a fancy; but dreams and fancies break in upon us when we are not aware, and help to build reality and adorn life. In no place abide influences that evoke nobler dreams of the eternity we are all bound for, and the duties that lie between, than in the company of the stars. A star grows on you. At first, it seems indifferent and cold. But never mind; visit it again; cultivate it; give it your heart, and soon it will become com- panionable and kindly. Some dark night, when the clouds part and let it shine on you for a while, you will love it and feel it is the one friend you have in all the universe. The impression may be entirely subjective. Very good; the Divine reaching out to- ward serenest mystery, and investing it with the beau- tiful ideals that wait on Hope and Love. This lifting up from the clod and the weed — what can do it better than a star? But the subjective must be exercised. It is the most inviting domain of education. Poetry of the Skies. 55 I think it is a fair service to mankind to remove the horizon of thought and life from the hilltops to the zenith. Every effort to popularize astronomy- makes the world truer and happier. It is good to look up. It is good to let the fancy run to other worlds than ours; to watch them rolling on their end- less courses; and io feel the presence of the Infinite in their eternal luster. There are two kinds of astronomers — the mathe- matical and sentimental. The first exists for the sec- ond. He measures and weighs with terrestrial stand- ards. He unfolds truth from columns of logarithms. He changes the face of heaven into a maze of cosines and trajectories. It is all right. It is for us, us sen- timentals, who gauge the heavens with whorls and spirals and the Book of Job. He changes the ever- lasting blue into a celestial common, where the hu- man heart may liberate its grandest longings. Thank Heaven, we have an observatory at last that a man may enter without knowing Newton's Prin- cipia by heart; a place where the flaming youth and the son and daughter of toil may come "to take a peep at the stars," and anoint their souls with glimpses of the jeweled vistas of this beautiful universe. Let the man of science do his noble work; let him calcu- late his quantities and guard his limitations; let him build high and strong his altars of truth; but for every fact, let him know, he adds a greater fancy, and the triumph of his science, at last, is the creation of a fair and noble sentiment. Astronomy will not permit a man to leave the Di- vine. This beneficence is the influence of all true science; but the objects of astronomical study lie so 56 Keynotes of Education. close to divinity that one is quick to suggest the other to the common mind. There is no lesson of infinity, eternity, omniscience, omnipresence, anywhere, as one can read it in the stars. The lesson may not come to us in sounding words of definite phrases. It is not necessary. Somewhere, Goethe says: "It is not need- ful that truth have a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about like a spirit, producing harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly." Such are the gentle influences that play about the lover of the stars, and if he be- comes ecstatic over what he sees and feels, it is his good fortune as well as his privilege. I make my plea for the amateur, for the disciple of Mitchel, of Proctor, of Serviss. I want an observa- tory that exists for the glory of the heavens, where the common people may come and behold in the glittering constellations the grandest visions of God's infinitude and power. And to see it through the tele- scope — not on a chart, or a photograph, or a rain- bowed spectrum — but through the glass where the great worlds shine right on them! They want to see the deep, dark space that the suns roll in. In these days, Science looks for a solar system like it searches for a bacillus — with a microscope, where the glory is faded and infinity shrivels to a black speck. Splendid are the achievements in this field. A ray of light is a messenger bringing wonderful tidings from the far- away worlds. It comes with a greeting of fellowship from the beautiful cosmos. For more than a century it has shot through space to carry us the news of the possibilities and potencies of the world it left. The Poetry of the Skies. 57 observatory has dissected a sunbeam, and turned over to the laboratory the first intelligence of a new ter- restrial element, thus strengthening and rehabilitat- ing the nebular hypothesis. The astronomer will look upon the iridescent bar and tell whence comes the light, as he would recognize the voice of a friend; and from the melting of the tints, whether it comes or goes. 0, spiritual light, that writes in a rainbow alphabet the language of the stars! Some day, some day, we will catch the songs they sing. All these generous victories of the astronomers, and more, the amateur appropriates and turns over to his imagination, where God intended they should go. I have always liked that phase of Cartesian psychol- ogy which fancied the mission of an angel between the sensation and the concept. It may not be the accepted metaphysics in these stately halls, but it explains the fact that the mind gets more than the dry details of an object; yes, more than can be seen; so faithful is this little ambassador in carrying the divine meaning of things to the soul that will receive it. And herein is the potency of all knowledge — the lesson of the supremacy of love and the majesty of truth, that comes to the soul on every wave of light. Dare I take a peep through that handsome object- ive, and let my thoughts run riot over the brilliant scenes so familiar to the learned astronomers about me? My good friend who gave it, said I might. It belongs to our college, whose progress warms the people's pride and whose destiny is bound up in their love. I want to penetrate the wilderness of sublimity to see with my eyes the influence of the Pleiades — 58 Keynotes oj Education. the Seven Sisters swayed in sweet harmony by a veil of star-mist, or as Tennyson describes them, "A swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid," all journeying southward to the never-ending whither. Or away yonder in Aquarius, to behold the spinning of a solar system out of the white nebula, and see the center breaking away from the circling mist into a burning sun. Or over there in Hercules, where a chalky spot bursts into a cluster of thousands of diamonds, each gem a sun, perhaps with rolling orbs around it; here and there a little blur of congested ether, fashioned into quaint forms by the gentle in- fluences that fill all space, into the slow becoming of suns that are to deck the concave, millions of aeons hence; those splashes of diamonds in the Northern Crown or Berenice's Hair, that dazzle the eye with the very chaos of splendor; that band of soft haze thrown across the skies, from pole to pole, and each mote a sun and the center of the universe; splendid Sirius, dragging a dead sun in undulating flight to a never-nearing goal; the brilliant cluster in Perseus, and near by Algol, whose changing luster tells of a great orb circling about the Demon. And there is Orion, the grandest pageantry of the skies, with its processions of suns, its banners of star-mist, its bright and varied colors, its matchless leaders, and its legend of prowess; fiery Arcturus, a thousand times larger than our sun, coming hither at the rate of fifty miles a second, and will for a hundred years, and then veer off into space; or, coming to our home circle, gor- geous Saturn, with his brilliant rings and many Poetry of the Skies. 59 moons, floating in refulgent ether, where there is no night, and where God's great fiat came in fullest re- splendence and power, — every star of a different hue, declaring its age and condition, some in the vigor of youth, some in the decline, and many that have shone through millions of ages, cold and dead and unseen. The houndless spaces are filled with flying orbs. Many of them have long ago burnt out, and yet keep up the flight on which they first started in the morn- ing of the world. A few years ago a star burst forth as splendid as Eigel, in the constellation of Auriga. It was a beautiful wonder. In a few weeks its bright- ness began to decline. Slowly it dwindled from a star of the first magnitude to the sixth, and then it faded away forever. What an epic — the burning of a world! No Milton or Wagner ever rose to the height of such a theme. Away yonder sails a solar system — too far distant to send its light to us. Thither speeds a burnt- out sun. It crashes in upon the congeries of worlds, and smites with flame each circling planet, and leaves it a cinder. Let the imagination range all the possi- bilities of being, and build up its strangest fancies, but it will never match this thrilling reality of the skies. It is a romance of the Infinite. So the amateur skims along the skies and feeds his soul on these inspiring wonders. He may not be able to calculate the distance of 61 Cygni, or meas- ure the diameter of Vega, or estimate the speed of the racer in the Hunting Dogs; but the unapproachable majesty of the facts touches him with awe and rever- ence just the same. They are verities to the soul; and the contemplation of them is a wholesome expe- 60 Keynotes of Education. rience that uplifts life; it is an educational process full of treasure. We talk of the influence of art and nature on the thoughts of men. It is real and reg- nant. But what shall we say of God's art, that covers the rotunda of the universe? The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Here let us learn a duty. Let us bind more closely to our education for this life the lesson and inspiration that come from the skies. So much have I spoken out of my delight for the generosity of an old friend. He comes to this noble institution with his munificence. It is well directed. Here where the youth of the State gather to learn the arts of peace and acquire skill for the performance of the duties of life, will be felt the sway of a new and happy purpose. There is no knowledge more practical than that which is pure and inspiring. As- tronomy builds as well as adorns. It harmonizes with every science. It refreshes all streams of knowledge. Every purpose is helped when hitched to a star. Ad astra per aspera, is the motto of civilization. I stood once in a little chapel of the church of St. Maria, in Eome, where Galileo was condemned by the con- sistory, and the scene returned in all its vivid reality — the old man at bay, pressed by superstition, fighting and falling for liberty of thought and the truth of the stars. Galileo went down, and Astronomy, the first- born of science, was forced into the shadows where Art and Eeligion had been driven before. But the word was out, the battle-cry of Freedom had been sung, and Absolutism trembled and staggered before Astronomy. And to-day, when we behold "Old Poetry of the Skies. 61 Glory" adorning the sunlight, let us not look upon the stars as a cluster of beauty only, but as teachers of that lesson of liberty which first challenged the divinity of kings. What could be more happily conceived than that here, in these beautiful grounds, in the gladsome light of science, where the youth come to equip them- selves with high purpose and grace their lives with the skill of performance, to erect that white dome that will stand forever as a monument to liberty and a shrine of learning? Education is not more of knowl- edge than of spirit, and in true citizenship, courage- ous habit and high ideals dwell in unity. Yon ob- servatory brings the stars into our lives, the heralds of freedom which never vary a hairVbreadth from God's law. This is the thought for the education of to-day. This is the lesson that bears yonder beautiful gift to the State University and the youth of Ohio. If I may seem so warm in my words over the gift, how can I temper my phrases when I speak of the giver? I have known him almost from the days of boyhood. I have seen him lay down the saber, with which he fought for his country, to take up the shovel and work for his living. From the very start, his industry, his temperance, his integrity, his clear head, his strong heart, his gentle manners, won his way to higher and higher responsibilities. His career is a gleam of hope to every American boy who is thrown on his own resources. I was with him much on the threshold of life, and bright is the memory to-day, how, to true purpose and honest worth, he added a tireless hand and a busy brain. His will went along 62 Keynotes of Education. with his intellect, and he made his life a pattern to every brave youth who wants to make his own life a success. It does me good to know these things, and be able to say that the giver honors the gift. There is a great deal in that to those who have faith in the logic of events. True, generous, high-resolving Em- erson McMillin, we send you our gratitude and love to-day, and join with your hope that this gift may prove an inspiration and a joy to every youth who seeks these halls of learning, and to every man and woman who comes here to commune with the good Allfather in the silence of the stars. When Professor Lord did me the honor to ask me to say a word on this occasion, as a friend of the man whose kindness we celebrate to-day, I confess, at first, I was somewhat disinclined; not because words were lacking or the spirit was reticent, but because I knew how well Mr. McMillin would prefer to let the gentle influences of this benefaction tell their own story in the years to come. So I wrote and informed him of the handsome duty that had been handed over to me, and asked him to write something that I might read, hoping thus to relieve you from the burden of my own words. His answer disclosed a modesty that was charming as a virtue, but as a service to me, for this occasion, rather unsatisfactory. He said in substance: If there is any appreciation of my little effort to advance the instruction and comfort of the university, say I value it most sin- cerely; and if there is anything of perseverance, in- dustry, or true purpose in my life to inspire one boy to work out his destiny with faith and courage, that Poetry of the Skies. 63 too may be said, but no more. Let the simple deed stand alone. So it goes! Kindness unto kindness, thoughtful- ness for others, ever since that Ohio boy reached the summit of prosperity. What a grand thing it is for humanity that such men win their way! Their success is the people's good fortune. There he is to-day, at the commercial metropolis of the Nation, plunged in the midst of great affairs of trade and enterprise, achiev- ing victories in the world's field of conflict, to lay the fruits of those triumphs at the feet of the people, to be used in the building of beautiful ideals and de- voted lives. CULTURE ON THE FARM. 1AM a utilitarian. I believe that the usefulness of a thing is the test of its value. And so the main question with a man is, not what he wants, but what he needs. I believe, to draw man away from this issue, the devil got into the Garden of Eden and filled Farmer Adam's head with a specific sort of nonsense that has been disturbing the world ever since. But first, as to utility. Well, it is something more than cornbread and pickled pork; more than blue jeans and linsey-woolsey. Much depends upon one's standpoint. If that is high, utility embraces a great deal. It takes in, not only what feeds and clothes the body, but what feeds and clothes the soul. The more a man knows, the more he sees; and the more he sees, the greater the utilities multiply, and the needs in- crease with the understanding. Thus life becomes an arena of promises unfulfilled; or, if realized, to be- come so through much straining and contention. But let us tackle the subject directly. A farmer proposes to send his son to college. By hard dint and self-denial, doing without many home comforts, and limiting everybody else to the hardest necessities, sufficient money is saved and the boy is off. Life on the farm has been kept down to the penitentiary basis of sleep and toil and hard fare, the only blessing coming in the form of a sweet dream that some day, in the forward years, the boy would return, wearing a silken mustache and quoting Latin to the bewil- 64 Culture on the Farm. 65 derment of the neighboring farmers. It is a great change the boy finds at college. No more grubbing, no more mauling rails, no oiling the old breeching. Life is on an entirely different plane. He has got out of the old springless cart, bouncing over the rocks or stalling in the mud of the country road, and now he sails so serenely in a white-winged yacht around the purple headlands. It is an institute of towers and steeples. The young company he finds coming from the regime of office-desks and Brussels carpets give a peculiar twang to existence. But he is not misled by these. He knows his duty and dives into his algebra with courage and fidelity. He begins to build up equations from the unknown, and to make hypothesis a servant of truth. He wrestles like a hero with his physics and chemistry, and beholds with unerring vision how atoms combine to create character and force, and how the molecules that make the odor of the rose cleave to each other by a law as majestic as that which holds Jupiter to the sun. He devotes energy to his Latin, and ascends from his grammar to Virgil and Ovid, and perceives those gentle shades of thought, that sweet fragrance of language, that delicate intuition of grace that is a part of classical culture, and grows in the appreciation of fine and beautiful things. He studies philosophy, and works into his life a faith that pertains to duties to himself, to society, and to God; discerns fully which precedes the other and which is last, and grades with sure judgment his own relations to every phase of life. He talks with his professor on companionable grounds, and they discuss authors and artists, theories 5 66 Keynotes of Education. and inventions. He has advanced beyond the chromo state, and knows the points of a good picture. He has a relish for Carlyle and Wordsworth. He has begun to discern threads of harmony in the strains of Mozart and Wagner. He has several times bor- rowed the North American Review from the president for a little Sunday recreation. And so, toiling, advancing, growing, our hero graduates. He has done his duty. He comes forth a young man of good habits, wide knowledge, strong ambition, and wholesome faith. There is nothing apparently lacking. Education, as education goes, has done its best for him. And now he goes home — back to the old farm — with a fund of rich talents through which to work out the mystery of life. He meets with a hearty welcome. The folks are proud of him. The neighbors come in to admire him. For a few days he enjoys the novelty — whiles away the leisure bravely — and then undertakes to give the cornfield a plowing, or throw back the straw when the wheat-threshing occurs. All this is strange to him. Eeally, it makes him tired, very tired. It does not harmonize with his nature; and so one day he is missed, and turns up in an office or a store. Ah, do culture and learning unfit one for the farm? If the farm is good to support the college, is the college too good to exalt the farm? Social questions like this are the leading themes. More thinking is done over them now than ever. Electricity, steam, and science only emphasize them. In the great social machine, with its myriad depend- encies and relations, there is much arising from the Culture on the jFarm. 67 false notions of things that will be amended by and by. Aye, it is rounding in that direction to-day. The seers, prophets, and philosophers are seeking with renewed energy to establish an equilibrium be- tween duty and need, and point out the requirements that meet the highest life. The exactions of society constitute a false standard; its measure is in dollars and cents. Here is a man with a home of plenty, whose sons and daughters have books and music, and who are taught to use them, and to grace life with intelligent thoughts and deeds. How absurd the question, What is he worth? as if his worth could be measured in tons of pig-iron, or yards of silk, or stock in railroads! It knows no standard of this kind. And so the best life is to get away from these measures, base no calculations on them, erect altars to the beau- tiful necessity, as Emerson calls it, and let the soul develop along the line of the divine potencies — put on what God intended the soul should wear, not what the selfishness of trade or politics ordains. The farm is the place for this. New theory, you say. Yes, to be sure, it is a theory; but progress is built on dreams. Imagination is the forerunner of invention. What is all this tumult to-day, this clangor of opinion and discussion upon questions as, Is crime increasing? Is education a failure? Is the world growing worse? Is the Church losing ground? Is capital sinful? Is poverty a disease? Is insanity gaining? It is because of our false standards of life, warped and crooked by the demands of society. It was tins false standard that inspired "The Republic," "Eutopia," "Looking Backward/' and other books in 68 Keynotes of Education. which were constructed forms of government whereby worth, and not wealth, was the grace of citizenship, and where the happiness and purity of the home was the mark of individual success. That boy should have stayed on the farm. He would have soon adjusted his talents to its demands. He would have been able to adorn its independence with culture, and make of the two an agency that the country seriously needs. We have lots of culture in the land, and lots of independence, but they are so disjoined that they play against each other. If money was the object, probably the city was the place for a chance at least. There he could speculate, corner, win, break up and set up again, and, may be, make a great deal of money, wear a diamond pin, and attract friends by giving costly dinners; but he is absolutely insignificant in the swirl of trade. He loses his significance as an individual. He is a mere straw in the flying wind. But on the farm, if he has a speck of heroism and his culture is what it should be, he would be an indi- vidual force for miles around. I know the antago- nism between muscle and brain; how one is apt to make weary the other. But a due exercise of both is in line with the best development. The well-known division of the day — eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for rest and study — is suf- ficient for a worthy and honorable livelihood. But I do not suppose there are many farmers who average eight hours a day of work, even including the usual pottering around to fix a gate or tie a calf. Eight hours, then, for reading, investigating, experimenting, Culture on the Farm. 69 contriving, social duties — why, an educational equip- ment as complete as Gladstone's can be maintained in that allotment of time. There is no vocation that has as much leisure that can be used for mental and moral endowment. It is the very place for a lover of study. But there is a salutary change going on. The sta- tistics show that the sizes of farms are decreasing in this country, that the average yield per acre grows greater, that the value per acre is rising. Machinery is taking a great portion of the hard toil off of the shoul- ders of the farmers, and driving certain crops to large areas, where every job of work is done by a man who sits in a spring seat and drives. Agriculture is fast being classified into two kinds — machine farming and brain farming. The latter applies to small farms. It requires thought in the preparation of soil and the arrangement of crops to meet the market at the time of the best prices. It requires a species of handiwork in the propagation of new varieties, the maintenance of hot-houses, the trial of improved methods. No educated man need find himself lonely in the midst of such aptitudes as a fifty or hundred acre farm possesses. The appetite of society will not be satisfied with half the specialties that his genius can suggest. But farming is not my theme. I hold to the adequacy of farm-life to sustain the best promise of education. There is too much nonsense afloat as to the proper arena of manhood. Some place it in the rattle-de-bang of railroad operation; some in the dreary contentions in courts; some in the putrid fens of politics; or out in the turmoil of trade, the dull 70 Keynotes of Education. monotony of banks, or the lazy uncertainty of the public service. The idea that life is a battle where every fellow has to fight somebody or other has done a power of evil in the land. It has distorted the visions of many noble youths, and twisted their careers out of shape. Away with such notions! True life is a quiet, constant force, directed to the accom- plishment of things that are needful and helpful. It seeks higher inspiration than the temporary triumphs of the streets. It is not a mad rush for money. Did you ever think to whom the alchemists of old offered allegiance when they sought to transmute iron into gold? It was Satan himself. To him they offered sacrifices, and promised the performance of evil deeds. The basis of the story of old Bluebeard is true history, when he murdered, at various times, a hundred chil- dren to seek the favor of the' devil in his efforts to change some baser metal to gold. Losing sight of the real needs, in order to meet the artificial wants, is akin to this, and it has ruined the lives of many a man's children. No vocation offers the opportunity to rise above the base clamors of the world for money, office, favor, as that of the farmer. A decent living is at least secured. He is not tangled in the social meshes. He is his own arbiter. The non-farming world is often twitted for the poetic idea it entertains of farm-life, and the farmer, no doubt, often grows weary of the sweet drivel of sentiment bestowed upon his vocation by those who could not be hired to plow an acre of clay soil if they could be assured of fifty bushels of wheat from it. It is very romantic in the distance, say they, with its Culture on the Farm. 71 songs of birds, its odor of blossoms, its noble inde- pendence and fresh eggs; but as one approaches the elysian, with its actual conditions — its hard work, its fathomless appetite of pigs and cattle, its scant dol- lars, and growing, roughly-clad children, and hard- working wife — he returns with renewed affections to the gentle measures of the yardstick and the reliable routine of wages. Must this distant view, which lends enchantment, resolve itself into a hard and cruel reality as one ap- proaches the scene? Is there no solvent that will bring into sweet union the poetry and the fact? Could the boy who graduated take hold in no way that could minister unto his inclinations and make him feel that the wisdom of his books and the energy of his mental equipment had reached a field for their genial exercise and application? "Well, what do you say? No? Why, then? Because farming does not result in fortunes, bank-stock, money, fashionable living, and social excitement. That is the logic that the world goes by. It rules, no doubt. I do not believe in it, altogether. We need men to build railroads, exchange goods, manufacture machin- ery, preach the gospel, etc.; but we want men, far more, who preserve their individuality by a closer contact with God and a less dependence upon man. We need men who live lives, not as pieces of machin- ery, cogged and keyed and pinioned to other pieces, and running by somebody else's steam, darting through grooves and whirling on cranks. In this machine-life the best of a man is lost — lost to himself, to his family, to the world. His opinions gyrate with 72 Keynotes of Education. him, and his education is squeezed down to fit the hole he occupies. His culture runs into form and his wisdom into repartee. So it was with our hero. He should have stayed on the farm. He should have consulted his needs and not his wants, and accepted the opportunity to expand his soul under the inspiration of the culture which his father's sweat had secured for him. He would have found a place for his science there, in what form his tastes inclined to. His are the hills, the fields, the rocks, the trees — just what true culture loves. The whole concave of the skies bends over him. The world is wide to him, and it challenges him at every step. His nights are his. No simpering parties, no committees, no clamoring societies to drag him from wife and children. A man immersed in the activities of city life half neglects his children. But on a farm there is the opportunity of actual companionship. Now, if culture presides, and the right sort of books are provided (and there need not be many of these), that companionship will be a golden charm, healthful and elevating to all within its influence. Yes, everything is on tiptoe to answer the signals of the princely soul. There is botany, zoology, chem- istry, mineralogy, meteorology, natural philosophy, and all the glowing curriculum of his college spread in ample pages before him and illustrated by the Divine Artist himself, all ready to be transposed into life and character — ready to be utilized for changing the acute angles of thought and aspiration into up- ward spirals that have no ending, because it is asso- ciating with the divine nature of things. Ctdture on the Farm. 73 But the pork and potatoes — where are they to come from? The question belongs to the problem. Culture is frequently hungry. But I have been as- suming that there was something else needed besides pork and potatoes — that our love and devotion should not be wholly spent on stomachs and cold feet. If there is no other question, then indeed have I been threshing straw? But I look upon the farmer as occupying a different relation to the world — not only that of feeder, but its best thinker, its surest and safest citizen. What he may lose in money he will gain in manhood. He may have no particular charac- ter at the bank; but that which holds at home will do the community higher service, and will bestow upon his children nobler patrimonies. But, mind you, I do not admit that impecuniosity is the result of education in this case, or that it comes to him who, rising from a serfdom to corn and hogs, spends happy leisures in avenues of culture. Why, it is the very purpose of education to invest men with resources, to give them power, to make them their own masters; and it would lift agriculture out of the swamp it is in — the three-dollars an acre profit that hangs to it like a millstone in the well-known rotation of cereals — to the higher planes of economy, which, an author as old Xenophon says, is not saving, but only management. And here is the great appetite of society, divided up into infinitesimal and innocent desires, each reaching out for its own. Which will you serve? Find the right one, and it will treat you tenderly. It will moderate your toil and sweeten your life. 'T is 74 Keynotes of Education. the province of brains to get ont of the ruts; to discover something for which a special demand exists, and supply it. It pays better, and lightens labor. The corn-crop of this year was so big that it did n't pay the expense of raising; so with oats, and nearly so with wheat; yet I read in the papers of a farmer in another State who is making $1,500 from nine acres by selling dried raspberries; and I have no doubt he sits in the shade at noonday reading Virgil or inspect- ing, with a thousand-power microscope, the jawbone of a weevil. And so my deliberate judgment is, that the young man should have stayed upon the farm and bestowed the gifts of the college upon the noblest of vocations. With a brave heart and a high purpose he would have soon found that the exactions of the soil were tem- pered to the highest needs of his nature, and that the blessings of God, all about him, if truly recognized, would add to the dignity and luster of the mind. As I said, the popular standards of success would have to be modified, but that is the highest office of cul- ture. 'T is the duty of learning to pull down idols. And so, when a boy, fresh from his literature and science, looks in the soil for a response to his highest longings, he will be sure to find it; for God has placed there whatever Virtue and Honor require. THE ART OF LIFE. AET is the expression of the soul. It may speak •**• in form, as in sculpture ; in color, as in painting ; in tone, as in music; in phrase, as in poetry; but there is something that is greater than any of these, or rather a combination of all of them; something that embodies the grace of form, the beauty of tint, the harmony of tone, and the rhythm of phrase, and this is the art of doing or living. For this the soul is not restricted to the chisel, the brush, the tongue, or the pen; it is held to no tool or implement; it is the universe speaking in boundless wealth, in grandeur, in truth, in love, in humility; it is the heavens bending over the soul, the stars gathering to sing it anthems, the thunder salut- ing it with praise, the woods waving a million banners in its honor; the rolling seasons, the throbbing ocean, the sinking sun, the purple peaks, all crowding about to touch the soul with majesty and power, and trans- mute these into deeds of duty and grace. The ex- tent of this reaction, in the soul, of the Divine Spirit projected in all that is about us, marks the height of our education and determines the quality of the art of life. In his essay on Inspiration, Emerson speaks of the metamorphosis of natural into spiritual facts, but my purpose to-night is to carry the thought farther, and to include the change of the spiritual fact back to the natural again. Goethe somewhere says, "Art 75 76 Keynotes of Education. rests upon a kind of religious sense." And here it is — God's meaning borne within, by sense retouched and remodeled into some form of grace or beauty. And this is the Alpha and Omega of culture. Art is education in action, and it is the only view of education that is worth the pressure of anxiety. If we absorb God's thoughts, that come to us through divine example and the glorious pages of nature, in intuition and inspiration, and fail to let them loose again in some form of deed or service, then we may prepare ourselves for the doom of the unfaithful steward who, accepting the talent, kept it wrapped up in a napkin. The concretion of the truth and ideality into experience is the summit of education; it is that for which education itself is. It is the very logic of wisdom. We have been so satisfied with the science of life, which is knowledge, that we have quite neglected the art of life, which is conduct. When we acquire knowledge and understanding, and permit them to lie in the mind like a sweet incense, or something to fondle and dally in our dreams, but neglect to see that they break forth into sacrifice, courtesy, candor, justice, work, and purpose, we rob our education of nine-tenths of its value, especially if, as Matthew Arnold says, conduct is nine-tenths of a man's life. We can not ignore God's purpose in education. Truth has a mission greater than a mere solace. It is vitalized with divine decree, as the ray of light which the leaf transforms into the glowing hearth and the joy of home. Where is this link that unites learning with life; that makes the scholar a champion; that The Art of Life. 77 adorns the street, the home, the church, the legisla- ture, with the sacrifices and heroisms of truth; that writes over every school-door, as over every church altar, "Faith without works is dead?" The fault of our education is the failure to suit the action to the word. As Plutarch said of the Athenian youth, we know better than we do. The blossom dwindles in the fruit. The fact is left with- out a deed; the idea without a purpose; the inspira- tion without a flight. Education is the evolution of knowledge into experience. The quality of this evo- lution depends upon the amount of God's Spirit we take in with the fact. All true knowledge is aglow with divine energy. In the earth, in the skies, and amid all human experiences, God has written lessons of truth, and every line shines with the Eternal Spirit. The very essence of creation is in the food which the body changes into fiber and strength, and the infinite spirit of love and truth is in the knowledge that the soul transforms into praise, sacrifice, and work. Every bush is a burning bush, and every star hangs over Bethlehem. We look upon the work of some master, and feel the divine impulse that changed the stone and canvas into a vision of grace, of splendor, of power. What delicate touch of fancy did Praxiteles put into the Faun! When one gazes on the statue of Moses he is awakened by Angelo's massive genius, and not by the presence of the Law- giver. You see the Transfiguration, and you know, in the sweet face of Christ, KaphaePs beautiful soul is transfigured, and not Christ himself. Stand in the 78 Keynotes of Education. columned splendor of the Parthenon, and yon feel the shade of Phidias filling the silence of the nohle ruin. Back of the gift stands the giver. Arching the deed is the doer. If the soul is touched by the triumphs of human genius; if it is turned skyward by one loving hand in the service of truth and reverence, why may it not walk, inspired and ecstatic, through the gallery of God's art, that extends beyond the stars and outlies the dimmest horizon, and is packed everywhere with grace and loveliness, with majesty and power, where chaos is order, and ruin is resurrection? Once I heard a sermon within a stone's-throw of Calvary, on the text, "What think ye of Christ?" It was as deep and tender as a mother's voice when the world has turned against one. It was very, very near. As I came out of the Damascus gate, and looked up at the stars, and away out yonder at the Judean summits, and heard the soft voice of the night sweep by, I felt that the Infinite Presence was as near as ever, and that love, beauty, and power pressed about as be- seechingly as on the day of the great sacrifice. Ah, our glaring misfortune is, we do not see God in the world! I fear we are all steeped deeper in atheism than we think. When the Allfather hangs a leaf, or paints a flower, or spreads a cloud, or lights a star, or inspires a noble deed, or tempts a sacrifice, we turn our backs and say, "0, that's nothing!" We would not treat Phidias, Titian, Canova, or Sir Christopher Wren that way. We would catch the spirit of their great victories and try to make it ani- mate our own lives. We accept their construction of The Art of Life. 79 the inner meaning of truth, and seek to assimilate it into faith and purpose. And herein are the dynamics of education — the spiritual force back of and running through knowledge, and converting it into tendency, character, work. We are so apt to gaze at the atom, and lose ourselves in the mystery of electric, chemic, and kinetic forces, that we lose sight of the Eternal Wisdom that compresses a universe into a grain of sand and scatters the dust of worlds across the skies; that holds in harmony the beating of a cell and the whorl of a nebula. This material age clings close to the calculus, the Greek verb, and the mere nomenclature. It puts the intellect to work upon every potency and possibility of matter. Men run to and fro and knowledge is increased. 0, this majestic age of intelligence! It has carried its banners of triumph through the natural world to the giddy point where the divisible atom seems to merge into spirit, and where the last potency of matter melts into the breath of the Infinite. In- tellect has been brave and tireless, and challenges the very angels in the fulfillment of duty. It has brought us up to the very limit of thinking, to the edge where induction ceases, where the syllogism loses its premise, to the line toward Avhieh hope, faith, imagination, and the inmost longing of the soul beckon us onward. Ah, if the lens, the crucible, the acid, in their pursuit of matter, find in its utmost force and dimension the eternal harmonies as clear and sweet as the song of the angels in the morning of the world, must we then stop and shut our ears and our hearts to the divine melodies that break just be- 80 Keynotes of Education. yond? "Wo unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Be- hold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it." My thought is, that the spiritual force of knowl- edge, as well as the material force, should inspire the mind, should build beautiful ideals there, and direct life and conduct into God's purpose as shown in the beauty, the grace, the grandeur, the harmony of the world. The mere physical fact in chemical affinity, in spectrum analysis, in the laminations of a rock, in the song of a locust, is not important. Only in their harmony, in their delicate pose and balance, their nice adaptations, their agency in some great end, and the deep mystery of their energies, where God's thought dwells, their value lies. Back of the driving of a nail, the making of a fire, the laying of a brick, spirit thrills and purpose runs. Is it any the less in the swinging of an atom, the soaring of a comet, the white flash of a snowflake, or the sunset glowing on a maple-leaf? The object in directing the intellect toward the divine meaning in all things is the reflex influence it will have upon life and conduct. There is surely an influence in all God's ideals — in all his expressions of love, of beauty, of sublimity — that will bless and ennoble life. The eternal verities that are stored in the soul break into deed by the contemplation of God's habit of thought and method of work. Here is the basis of all ethics, of all art, of all education. It is not the things, but how we see them, that affect us. If we see only the matter, the effect is ma- The Art of Life. 81 terial; if we discern the spirit, the effect is spiritual. At the outset we must dream and idealize and im- agine, and let the faith of the soul reach out for beauty and wisdom. The heart should go with the intellect, so that when one sees beauty, the other may love it; when one discerns good, the other may absorb it. So knowledge and wisdom go hand in hand, and thus to know is to be. Art and religion keep together, and the purer the religion the nobler the art. True art is the projec- tion of divine ideals. It is the discernment of the spiritual transformed into color and form, into phrase and tone. It is not reproduction, it is interpretation. It is seeing a cliff, a winding stream, a bed of lilies, a flash of a meteor, a cup of water, with that large, sweet sense which discerns a wise and loving meaning, and embodying that meaning in art. Suppose, instead of working it out of the marble, or spreading it on a canvas, or setting it afloat in an anthem, we convert it into conduct and form our lives from it. Is it not possible that one may be so impressed by the eternal wisdom which dwells in all things, that he will idealize life into a harmony where only courage, candor, cour- tesy, duty, and kindness can abide? These are the fruits of the spirit. The virtues and amenities of life are the expression of nature's laws applied to human conduct. Every phase of the physical world affects our thought and purpose. This we know is true in a large sense, for the racial and national differences are thus accounted for; but the fact is true in a personal sense. That beautiful tree you sit under, that spring you 6 82 Keynotes of Education. visit, that hillside you climb, that bush of red berries, that big white cloud, that sparkling constellation ris- ing yonder, each has a tint, or tone, or gleam that plays with your moods, and tempts your fancies, until you come out of your down-street life and your club and your politics, touched by the jocund op- timism of nature, and swayed by a deeper and diviner conception of life. Virtuous action, as Sir Philip Sidney remarked, is the end of all earthly learning. But that learning will miss its achievement if it has not a moral bias to give it direction. And whence comes this moral bias? From the Bible? 0, there are never-failing fountains indeed! But men get their knowledge from the world, by study, by observa- tion, by experience in shop, in market, in field, where material tendencies, almost resistless, rush and toss and wrangle, and carry humanity away from God. And must it be so? Is God to be driven to the Bible, to the splendor of the sunrise, and the freighted silence of the forest? Bight there is the fault of our civilization. We see God's glory in the heavens, his power in the storm, his love in the flowers and the children; and yet right there in the market-place is his justice enthroned, and we go heedless by. There is not a contract to which he is not the third party. There is not a house built but the architect consults him. There is not a product turned out but he gives it shape, and size, and weight. There is not a pound or yard sold but he sees to the measure. There is not word spoken but he notes the last vibration of it. There is not a deed done that he does not watch the result in the next year or the next century. The Art of Life. 83 This is not Transcendentalism, not a particle more than the Beatitudes are. It is life's sternest axiom. Action and reaction are equal, or water seeks its own level, is not more manifest. The divine law that gathers the star-dust into solar systems, or marshals the infusoria in a drop of water, pervades every nook and crevice of human action. And the law is en- forced ever, ever; for back of it is the Omnipotent Executive. This is not theology or religion. It is education. The value of truth lies in its ethical basis. True art rests there also. Their composite is conduct, which is the end of education. It is prac- tical atheism to ignore the doctrine; and that it is ignored is the explanation of this materialistic and pessimistic age. It is a sad comment on our schools and colleges that the poisonous drama, the prurient novels, the licentious pictures, the empty gabble of society, the mad hunger for vain entertainment, should, to so sad an extent, constitute the inclination and purpose of mankind. To combat that tendency, which is darker than I dare describe, the educational agencies must teach the art of life, inspired by a conception of the spir- itual side of truth. The duty of measuring every deed by a moral principle must be taught more persistently than the definitions, the processes, the theorems of the text-books. That is the road to safety, to pu- rit} T , to noble endeavor, and to a true and graceful life. I know the conditions of the problem, how weak human nature hankers for the material, and how animalism parades its luxuries to the senses; but this very fact makes the duty of marking a new path more commanding. Happily the task grows lighter as it 84: Keynotes of Education. develops, for the true light comes like a benediction to strengthen and bless the soul. There is something wrong with our education that creates a taste for the sort of reading that prevails, for the kind of entertainment we seek, for the effort at mere material pleasure that we make, for the glib and insincere conversation, for our crude and angular manners, for our listless and wayward thinking, and for our persistent and incoherent humor. We are so inclined to make life a phantom, fringed with yellow, dancing and beckoning along the poison- ous vines of a morass. But life is serious, solemn; born of a hope that truth alone supports, and des- tined for an immortality formed by the harmony of a soul with the divine energies of the universe. Who- ever is out of tune with these is uneducated. Whoever is not impressed by a sense of the wisdom, the justice, the beauty of all that is about him is un- educated. One can not think of that pervading In- telligence as discordant, insincere, impure, deceitful, cowardly, or unkind. There is somewhat in every flower, every bowered hillside, every roaring cascade, every stately cliff, every snowy landscape, every generous deed and silent sacrifice — somewhat, I say, if we inquire within — to deck the heart with an impulse to reproduce, in life, the secret of their loveliness and power. Let a teacher go from the street-corner or loaf- ing-place down-town, with the odor of gutter and street upon him, and the miasma of the usual gabble of society, politics, and personal experience tinctur- ing his soul, and make his personal presence before The Art of Life. 85 his pupils an expression of these influences, as he must needs do, how surely, though unseen, the poison of scandal, envy, impurity, injustice, and unkind- ness works its way into the young blood of the school! He is molding conduct with a master hand, but a conduct that has little trace of God in it. He is developing low ideas and low purposes to figure in future trade, society, and politics. How that schools drags; how it ought to drag! But let a teacher go to the school from some fair headland, amid Avhich God's love abounds in bird, in bush, in trickling brook, in sailing shadow, in grand old trees and green meadows stretching far away; let him take deep inspirations of the Divine Spirit which touches everything with love and grace; and then, with a mind full of ideals of duty, of pur- pose, of work, of conduct, go into the presence of that school. The horizons widen, the blue sides bend down, and that room is brightened by visions of heroic duty and high endeavor. It is a great difference what finger strikes the chord. I like, sometimes, to think of the physics of theosophy, which illustrate, if they do not explain, the mode of psychical force. The all-pervading spirit incumbering the soul, sets afloat the vibrations of thought and feeling, winch fill the ether with an influence, good or bad, according to the will and ten- dency of the person. Then thought breaks into its appropriate form, and emotion takes on some mode of energy. So marked are these vibrations, so visibly do they disturb the ether, that the faint tracery of their ac- 86 Keynotes of Education. tion affects the delicate chemistry of the photog- rapher's plate, and they express themselves in veri- table pictures of thought and sentiment. If a sudden fit of anger is photographed, it shows itself as a bomb bursting with fiery smoke and flame; love is revealed as a climbing vine, whose tendrils reach out into the sweet air and break into bloom; hate is a long, gleaming blade, thrust out from the soul against the heart of humanity; the song of Home, Sweet Home sets forth a flood of vibrations that arrange themselves into the form of a cozy cot- tage, with a porch of vines, and beds of flowers, and trees about. If these phenomena are not sufficiently substan- tial in fact to find a place in our books of knowledge, still they are not stranger than every-day facts of experience, where the tints, the moods, the tenor of our thoughts and fancies make their appropriate ex- pression, not in pictures merely, that fade and are forgotten, but in deeds and conduct, which will live in the lives of others when oblivion has gathered to itself all memories of our own. Should you ask me what form of education I would prescribe, to convert God's meaning in tree, and ax- iom, and sacrifice, into purpose and conduct, I would answer Froebelism from the cradle to the grave, from the child with his first strips of colored paper to the senior with his philosophical disquisition, on to the bacteriologist seeking new forms of life, to the as- tronomer sweeping the skies for new worlds, made and unmade. It is a blending of the thoughts, the emotions, The Art of Life. 87 and the forces of the muscles on their errands of the will. We should know that imagination, ideality, fancy, inspiration, are just as important facts as England, oxygen, money, or the Eevolutionary War. They are the pioneers of progress. Imagination has made nearly all the inventions and discoveries. Ideality has painted the great pictures and chiseled the great statues. These sentiments transform knowledge into achievement, and, finally, into character. Down deep in the soul of the child lie the beauty and harmony of the universe, like unborn forests in an acorn-cup, and these are evolved by the influence of proper association upon the three powers of the soul; and doing, acting, working along with that evolution, is what finally unfolds that beauty and harmony into conduct. How high I place the teacher! He works with God; he is an agent of divine purpose. Here is a little seed, so big. It is put in the ground, tended and cared for, and after a while is a flaming orchard, and wagon-loads of comfort and gladness are hauled home. Who folded all that happiness in that little wrapper? It was simply an atom of divine energy placed in a brown husk. God's touch makes a universe of potency. But it is a creature, after all, and comes with a condition — that it will not be thrown to the wayside, or on the rock, or where thorns choke, or the fowls feast, but in that gentle harmony of things amid which God's will works. In the apple-seed was the brooding silence of Ins loving purpose. 88 Keynotes of Education. And so the unfolding of the divine potency, re- posed in the soul of the child, presents the real problem of education. It is fatal to forget the sub- lime beginning. A florist takes up a little slip or twig of a rose; scrutinizes it closely before he plants it. Why? To see if God's purpose yet resides in it. He puts it in the soft, sweet ground. To-morrow there is a garden of bloom, and an air full of fra- grance. Let us ever and ever go back to the divine origin and purpose, and ask ourselves if the treat- ment of the child's soul is God's way of unfolding, and if the universal spirit, which gives its grace and strength to flower and leaf and singing brook, to courtesy and sacrifice and courageous deed, is invited to inspire and uplift duty, and shed a radiance on the paths of life. The potency of the rose for color, or the bird for song, or the water for motion, is not greater than the human soul for love, purity, sacrifice, justice. If humanity were near as faithful as the flower, the rock, or the rainbow in expressing God's idea, the millennium would be here now. We suppress this potency because of fashion, or fear, or sweet com- placency, which is a mixture of ignorance and cowardice. We permit society, with its various phases of party, of dance, of cards, of novel-reading, of cheap talk, to neutralize the gladsome influence of cliff, of lily, of oriole, and of sunrise. We some- how seem to feel that the commonplace of life is no place for divine reality. We turn traitors to our children by making imperial the fads and flurries of the moment, and driving their little thoughts and purposes into the channels of emptiness and vanity. The Art of Life. 89 My friends, I know the obstacles of the problem; how difficult it is to turn this little taste, this desire, this volition, out of the drift of circumstances, away from materialistic domination, to seek at some modest altar of truth and purity a benediction of Infinite Love. It is quite impossible for restricted visions to see any connection between this humble sacrifice and life's clamoring utilities. The kindergarten is a device to establish this connection, not by process of induction or deduction, or any form of didactics, but by that genial training into habit which recog- nizes the sway of a divine force in all things beau- tiful, pure, just, and lovely. It is taking purity from the lily, grace from the rainbow, work from the bee, friendship from even- tide, purpose from the dawn, and developing from them and all their relations of form, color, and use, the habits of candor, courtesy, kindness, self-denial, and high endeavor, and thus raising life to the plane of God's good will. It is not knowledge or doctrine that is sought, but character and tendency. It is taking the child at the most tender and impression- able age, when the nerve, the muscle, and the brain begin to project their energies into conduct, and di- rect this evolution, not according to the whims, the frailties, and the errors of a perverse and selfish society. Every home should be a kindergarten, and every mother a teacher. It is not necessary that she should know the metaphysics of Schelling or the occupa- tions of Froebel; but she should hold to the spirit of that holy philosophy which regards a true life as a part of the harmony which marks God's sway 90 Keynotes of Education. on earth; and every little act, word, and thought, as a part of that harmony, or of the discord that breaks in upon it. Truth is conformity to the divine sway, and the benign and loving acceptance of the duty it evokes. It is looking at things as they go by with calm eyes and a trustful heart, knowing that the sun will rise and set, the waters run, the flowers bloom, love en- dures, self-denial exalts, and faith gilds with hope every summit of the soul. Poverty, sickness, failure, are small things to think about, if we live in harmony with the simple laws of life, the very laws that evolved creation, that knit the green leaf with the needles of the sunbeam, and wove the blue skies with stars. It is this mastery over the material and its vicis- situdes of impatience, bitterness, disappointment, ill- will, passion, and hasty thought and word, that is the first equipment of the true mother teacher, and every subservience to the opposing influence is treach- ery to the child and to God. The wretehedest fault of ignorance is ignoring little things. Atoms make the world, and the way one looks at an atom makes life. Not more surely does this molecule braid the galaxy across the skies than this little act, this little word, fills the chapters of human history. The teacher who knows this greatest of all facts in education, can alone be trusted. If he thinks an- ger, prejudice, injustice, deceit, unkindness, or any vice of hand or mind will run itself out, or that the contingencies of to-morrow will bury it under the The Art of Life. 91 green sod of God's pity and forgetfulness, he is not fit to be trusted with the lovely soul of a child. Every falsehood hurts the mind. Every deceit blights the judgment. Every sneer hardens the heart. Every wild threat lowers the purpose. It is an awful thing to trifle with the tender suscepti- bilities of a child. And yet, how readily we go at it! We handle the delicate energy as if it were a clod. "We jostle the trembling equilibrium of innocence and frailty until it crumbles into grief and dread. We plant our own ill-natures, our own foibles, our own petulance, our own faithlessness, our own meanness, in the heart of every child we fail to reach with love and thoughtful duty. We forget these things. We think we can sow rank seeds and grow flowers of beauty and fragrance. God never did as much. Ever}* 1 hateful threat, every abusive taunt, every low fact, every insincere word, every make-believe piety, every scandal at table, every ill-natured domestic, every miserable show and book of tarnished fiction, taints the white soul of the child, and drags it toward the lower levels of life. Ah, my friends, training a child is no whimsical duty! It is not the function of mean spirits. We can not fill all our ideals with realization. This earth was not built for angels. But it was made for true, honest, sincere, God-fearing men and women, whose loftiest mission is to do the best they can by living brave, calm, sincere, thoughtful, self-respect- ing lives themselves, to establish the divine pur- pose. In God's name, the child demands the best life 92 Keynotes of Education. we can give it, and the bravest defense we can throw aronnd it; and parent or teacher who knuckles to the world, and consents that the whims ajid follies of the age shall drive hirn from his loving authority is a traitor to the child and a reprobate before God. Education is the creation of tendencies. It gives the soul direction and purpose. Whither is more important than what? A man's head may be full of learning as an egg is of meat, and yet he be as cold, fixed, and inert as the statue of Cato. He lacks a trend. A boy toils through school, and comes out with an ability to read Horace, demonstrate a prob- lem in geometry, or conduct a chemical analysis. If that is all, it is a poor reward for so much labor; no greater than harnessing a horse, grafting a bud, or making a loaf of bread. If these studies do not arouse enthusiasm, widen endeavor, build up pur- pose, and excite self-reliance, they have been per- verted and abused. When a boy steps from the school-room into life, and stands and waits until Eockafellar or Carnegie comes along to offer him a job, he has missed the essential part of an education. The soul elements have been overlooked. Duty, faith, courage, originality, inspiration, ambition, have been ignored, and the boy is made to grope his way amid the chances of the world, which has little need for parsing, algebra, or Latin. What the world needs is manhood and womanhood; sturdy, aggres- sive, high-resolving manhood and womanhood, that sutler the hunger and thirst of the moment for the triumph that God gives by and by. Are these things in the text-books? yes, just The Art of Life. 93 as much as religion is in the Bible. It depends upon how Ave look at it. If we look at anything with an eye of flesh, and refuse to give scope to the spiritual vision, on the plane of sense we live and eat and die. There is enough in every text-book to make an arch- angel, if we read between the lines, where God's meaning dwells. It seems almost that education was trying to keep the soul from working over into prayer, inspiration, and resolve, the percepts that come up through the senses. Many teachers attempt to construct character as they would make soap, by a simple combination of trifling substances. There is a slight endeavor to link learning with destiny and duty, and yet for these education exists. Right here comes the practical point. We know the gap, but how to fill it is the problem. We can not lay the moral duty on the home or the Church. Truth is not divided up into bins like a grocery. It is all one, and the teacher is its prophet; and if he is not furnished with schedules and methods and prescribed lines of effort, he must make his own; he must write his own ritual with which to develop God's plan. The pupil sees the world through the teacher's eyes; he hears it with the teacher's ears; he hopes and desires and yearns through the teacher's spirit. Ah, if the teacher fails to see the heavenly visions; if he does not catch the celestial melodies; if his soul fails to build beautiful mansions in which love and duty may dwell, over the child's fate a shadow falls. We can not trust the home. Education occupies higher altitudes to-day, because social, civic, and re- 94 Keynotes of Education. ligious duty demands a loftier and purer service. We can not escape responsibility by finding fault. Really, the fault complained of is one of the strong reasons for the existence of the school. We want to make the future home of the unclean, stupid, in- solent boy who comes to school, better than the home he was raised in. This is the main object of the com- mon school. Some day we may have a curriculum that will strike closer to his nature, and transform his life into aims that call forth the exercise of his divine energies, and thus we build fairer homes. You may call this dreaming. Well, every great achievement is born of a dream. What discovery or invention that was not first painted by the fancy? Was not America the dream of Columbus? Was not Neptune the dream of Leverrier? Was not the tele- graph the dream of Morse? Thought outruns deed. It is the arbiter of new conditions. What the young and poetic youth dreams to-day, said Phillips, is to- morrow public opinion, and the next day the char- ter of nations. To think that education is a little arithmetic to sell potatoes with, a little spelling to write a letter with, a little grammar to talk to the preacher with — all the mere tackle of a fisherman — is utterly false to the conception of the soul's march to duty, to reality, to God. We miss the real utility of things by narrow- ing life to hand-to-mouth drudgery, as if to adorn and uplift the soul with fancies, ideals, and the inner meaning of things were less useful in Heaven's great purpose than sowing turnips and making out bills. True life is not so cribbed. It is angelic. It looks upon everything that is beautiful, pure, and good — The Art of Life. 95 every gentle influence in the field of nature and the life of man; every habit of the Infinite Hand in blossom, cliff, sunset, and whirling star — as of the highest utility, because they kindle love, duty, and high purpose. In that direction our educational ef- fort should run, and our hearts should pioneer the way, even before the road is built. Pardon me if I seem overzealous in pressing the idea, over and over again, that true education is get- ting nearer to God's thought, and acting in harmony with it. We may not reach it; we may not come very near it; but everv minute of school life should be a struggle toward it All truth is divine, and the highest end of study is to show the relation of the bare fact to something higher. The difference be- tween a man and a brute is the ability to discern this relation; and that, too, is the measure of duty. The arithmetic, the grammar, the geography, glow with ideals and beautiful missions, if we rise high enough on the headlands to get a view of the king- dom. The mathematical equation, the etymology of a sentence, the climatic conditions of a place, the purity of a thought, the courtesy of personal contact, are all the same, and constitute an eternal verity as sweetly and lovingly as a Beatitude. You bring the magnetic wires closer and closer together, until finally there is a spark and a shout, the circuit is joined, and the earth is warmed. So we bring the little fact, the little knowledge, closer and closer to the divine energy, until, finally, there is an inspira- tion and a song of triumph, and your hand is on the great white throne itself. The aim, then, of education is to fill the mind 96 Keynotes of Education. with beautiful ideals, and convert them into conduct. Education is not an intellectual conception; it is a practical fact. It is transforming God's meaning into experience. That rosebush is the efflorescence of a principle that is as rare and delicate as the memory of a dream. That grand old tree is the unfolding of an idea, so tender and so true, that heaven itself is built upon it. That heroic soul which stood like a rock against a brutal error, caught its courage from the song of a bird or the flight of a snowflake. That gentle spirit which went down into the caverns of gloom, and placed her soft hand upon the brow of pain, was taught her mission of mercy by the sweet influ- ence of the Pleiades. There is no glimpse of heaven that finds not a response in life, if our education moves itself aright. In the material world we are mighty in transfor- mation. We change plants into bread, rags into books, a patch of wood into homes, ugly clods into a train of cars, and Niagara into the light of a city and a thousand whirling wheels. Such are some of the fruits of education. Ah, if it could have kept even pace in the spiritual world, and as nobly transposed God's love into kindness, his justice into candor, his beauty into courtesy, his strength into courage, his truth into inspiration, and all the divine attributes into a loving service of humanity! Education is positive, not negative. The man who sits in his library and luxuriates amid his classics and philosophies, and does not carry their gladsome and vitalizing influence into the street, the church, The Art of Life. 97 society, and politics, is not an educated man; he is an intellectual miser. He gathers knowledge like a miser does gold, from a base worship of it. Gold is not riches; and an encyclopedia is not an education. It is a store of facts, like Pompeii, the Catacombs of Eome, and the tomb of Ptah; still to be transmuted into life, under appropriate environment, as the wheat in the hands of the mum- mies was turned into bread. An educated man is he who absorbs the meaning and spiritual energy of God's expression in the uni- verse, and, like an honest man, paying him back again in sincere and dutiful service to humanity. That is the art of life. It is exemplifying the truth by conduct, and thereby making life more beautiful, and bringing hope, happiness, and assistance to sad and struggling men. There is a right way of doing everything, — to say, "Good morning," as if it were a good morning; to pay a debt as if it were a duty and not a favor; to talk at table as if it were still a part of the grace that was said; to return a book as if the Tenth Commandment were yet unrepealed; to say a prayer as if the good Allfather were still mindful of us; to make a trade as if the defect we hide will fester somewhere in our life afterward; to speak a word as if we alone were responsible for its final consequence; in fine, to illustrate the truth in conduct, sweetly, sincerely, bravely, constantly. This is the divine mission of art. It is God's message to the world to be obeyed in all things. Says Euskin, "Doing is the great thing; for if, reso- 7 98 Keynotes of Education. lutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing it." And in the words of another, whose name my memory misses, "Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct he wishes to he valued." So it was with Plato, with Antoninus, with Michael xingelo, with Milton, with Abraham Lincoln. So it is with us. If we prize rightly the privilege of liv- ing, we will put our estimate in an expression of deed and kindly service; we will fill the soul with beautiful ideals, and measure our lives up to them. Herein is the imperial problem of civilization, to the solution of which I invoke all your learning, your courage, your devotion. And if, in my shambling words toward this end, I have warmed a single thought or revealed a responsibility not recognized before, I am thankful for this occasion and this hour. HIGHER AIMS OF JOURNALISM. r "F HEEE is no trouble about the progress of the *■ newspaper so far as machinery and methods of business are concerned. It has kept abreast with the genius of the age. The rapidity of execution and the beauty of product fill the breast with joy and pride. A great printing-press, in the majesty of its motion and the delicate equilibrium of its thunder- ing forces, is the brain of the universe, that does its thinking, forms its opinions, projects its enterprises, and fixes its character. There is an average of ten million newspapers printed every day in the United States. They carry into all classes intelligence that forms the lives and directs the destiny of men. What is derived from the press does more to turn us hither and thither than our education or our religion, and, really, it gives most men what they have of these. "Great is journalism/' said Carlyle; "for is not every editor a ruler of the world, being a persuader of it?" In the beginning, the Government established and con- trolled the press; now the press establishes and con- trols the Government. From the Fourth Estate it has ascended to the First. I believe, if by some sort of psychical camera, a composite editorial from six or eight prominent newspapers could be obtained, and capped with a "Be it enacted" — there would be no further use for Congress or Legislature. The ress provides the breath of Life for the Constitu- 99 100 Keynotes of Education. tion, and as rigid as that instrument is supposed to be, it bends and bows under the stroke of the pen. And even the august justices of the upper benches, who, in popular estimation, are as serene and im- perturbable as the Mahatmas perched on the icy crests of the Himalayas — even they listen to the still small Vox Populi, as it stirs in the columns of the news- paper, and gather unction and wisdom from the bright brevier of the editorial page, which green scum, or fly-specks, or the sacred habiliments of precedent never invade. And why not? The world rolls freedom's radiant way. Science, education, law, and religion are all going in that direction too. The standards of former years are yielding to higher ones. New conditions are fastening new phases to our delights and dis- tempers. The surges of nervous force have made new shores of life, and they are peopled with a new race, over which bends a new heaven, and around which science, invention, commerce, education, and other good angels, sing songs of triumph, hang cornucopias, and unfold beautiful dreams. There is a new everything. All the old ergos have taken new departures, because the facts that created them have changed front. Doctrines have gone with the draperies. The caverns of the earth are begin- ning to eclipse the morning stars, and the faces of things to shine, at last, with the greetings of creation. In this resplendent genesis, the press, like Alpine peaks, catches the first rays of the dawn. It heralds the first song, the first grand fact, the first mission of progress, and pulpit, senate, and court feel the Higher Aims of Journalism. 101 divine energy, and turn it into law and gospel. Standing at the head of mechanical invention, repre- senting an organization that occupies the ends of the earth, and appropriating to itself the gladsome beams of all knowledge, it is the prince of opinion and the autocrat of purpose. But there are shadows on the wall. The man of opportunity is the man of responsibility, and that man is the one who commands the columns of a newspaper. A belief that common intelligence is a sort of alembic, capable of fusing and transmuting into wholesome ideas every poisonous fact put into it, is as great an error in psychology as it is in physi- olog}'. A simply poisoned fact will no more assim- ilate with true knowledge than strychnine with pure blood. They are branded as human enemies, and it is treason to human hopes to treat with them. Thank heaven, this fact is being recognized every day. In the sanctum, where the genial beams of civilization first make themselves felt, is where the demand arises that an editor must be a gentleman as well as a scholar; an educator as well as a news-dealer; a man of conviction as well as a political gladiator; and this demand is being supported by the public con- science and the hope of a loftier citizenship. It will not be long when that portion of the press, inoculated with the poison of indifferentism, as Gladstone calls it, will recede into the back lanes and shadows of society, to be despised of men. For a still higher journalism I make my plea to-day. In the conflict between right and wrong, between virtue and vice, between truth and preju- 102 Keynotes of Education. dice, the newspaper should sound no languid note. It should not drag after the dark tendencies of the times, hut stand against them, and turn them toward brighter altitudes. Poor human nature needs all the assistance it can get, to enable it to hope and aspire. The grandest aspect of the newspaper is its moral agency, and there is no escape from the responsibil- ity which this condition imposes. Journalists should be held to the highest conception of those duties, which these opportunities require. Their great power should be the measure of their responsibility. It lies with them to promote the virtue and intelli- gence upon which the safety of the Kepublic depends. They act the coward if they refuse the trust. It is treason to society and the nation to tamper with or make light of it. The most resplendent exercise of the power of the press to-day would be to bring itself under the dominion of lofty thought and moral pur- pose. The editor should be an educated man, a man of learning, of high ideals, of moral convictions, of patriotic emotions. He may not have passed through college halls, or caught the gentle flavor of classic recitation; but he should have read enough and heard enough from the histories, the philos- ophies, the sciences, the arts, the politics of the world, to have caught the spirit of prog- ress and qualified him to know the truth when he sees it, or to find it when he wants it. Journal- ism is as much a mission as it is a business. The two can not be separated. The editor deals with the people's tastes, emotions, desires; he furnishes Higher Aims of Journalism. 10 Q facts and ideas that affect their lives; he provides them with tendencies and habits; he impresses their social and moral nature, and makes them what they are. Shall ignorance and moral unconcern be in- vested with this sacred trust? Shall enterprise, hust- ling after dollars and cents, neglect the mission of truth, or stain its deeds with the lesson of vice? All professions, except journalism, prescribe tests, that all must meet who pass their portals. But any- body may become an editor. Anybody may become a teacher of the people, and bring to the task he assumes whatever ignorance, carelessness, prejudice, looseness of ideas, or depravity of character he may possess. With this investment of forces, he seeks the individual conscience and intelligence, and inflicts upon them his own temper or tenor. If he is a drunkard, a rake, a reviler, an illiterate, the public education feels the sallow sway of these faults quite as much as it would the gentler influence of his better traits. This is the logic of life. It accounts for much of the lubricity of the age. We say things and do things as if we thought that truth and right were fleeting incidents having no relation to God and eternity. But lacking authoritative tests, we should, as journalists, act up to and declare higher standards, and in our own teaching and practice, recognize the fact that journalism is a profession honored only by intellectual and moral worth. The conditions are our own, and our progress must be evolved. There should be a constant pressure toward high ideals, and ft constant censure of those that are low and 104 Keynotes of Education. depraving. This is not mere Sunday-school talk — it wouldn't he had if it were — hut it is more: it is the most practical topic that can engage the attention of practical men; more than making pig-iron or huilding bridges. What sort of a citizen a man is, is the greatest question of the day. On his character rests the Eepublic. The newspaper is in the life of almost every person, for good or ill. What does it carry to him? Poison, prejudice, hope- lessness, error, selfish appeals, stories of vice, tales of inhumanity, falsehood, crime and blood, a com- posite of life that blurs every beauty and chills every hope? Or does it come to him in a spirit of candor, with a message of cheer, of wholesome tidings, of opening duties, of inspiring and informing state- ments, making him feel that, after all, the air is full of truth and honor? Or perhaps wavering between the two influences, between candor and prejudice, sacrifice and selfishness, hope and despair, he looks about, dazed and bewildered by headlines and illus- trations and sentences reeking with sorrow and blood, and wonders whether God or the devil rules the world, and thinks, perhaps, it is the devil. It depends largely upon who edits the paper — whether he is a man of education, of courage, of moral purpose, of love for humanity and the country. Men have gathered figs of figs and thistles of thistles since the world began, and ever will. It is the primal law whose supremacy invests every mote, every sun- beam, every emotion of the heart. We can not print an error, we can not stain our columns with a preju- dice, we can not blot white paper with an unjust Higher Aims of Journalism. 105 word, we can not draw into ravels the sad story of stricken virtue, but that somewhere, some heart has been made darker and heavier. I am not saying this is the universal situation. I am not painting a picture of pessimism on the canvas of to-day. My tenet is optimism; but there are dis- colorations that gloom the scene, and to some of these I refer: 1. The news. There is a wild-eyed enterprise that sweeps the mountain, plain, and putrid fen, gathering everything and winnowing nothing, and pouring out all, wheat, cheat, and poison-vine, as news. It is a mess that the ordinary mind can not separate, can not assimilate; but each element goes into thought, con- structs opinion, and builds character. It is said that this is what the people want — all the news — and they should have what they want. This is a dark heresy in journalism, and the papers which adopt it, and there are some so-called great, are foes to human progress. True civilization modifies, purines, and uplifts the wants of the people. Its end is to create a taste for better things. This is not promoted by the recital of the minutise of recreant loves, of ab- horrent crimes, of vile and inhuman deeds. Perhaps people should not be hurt by low and vicious news, but they are. There are few characters so fixed that they are not changed by what is often read and told. The effect of indiscriminate news is seen by any care- ful observer in the insincerity of opinion, the dissi- pation of mental energy, the belittling of serious thought, the taunting of religion, and other sad re- sults that afflict all classes of society. It is an assault 106 Keynotes of Education. on true manhood and womanhood. Yet the news must be given, and is given by some papers of self- respect and considerate judgment, without leaving a mire in the mind for base and prurient thought to revel in. But they do not push the filth, double- leaded, sub-headed, and three-pica headlined, to the front, where it submerges real, honest, instructive news. They make it take a back seat. It is not ex- alted. Its proportions are contracted as its mean- ness expands. The horror of the Fort Thomas mur- der can never be fully told until the effects of flaunt- ing newspaper narratives on the human souls that greedily absorbed them, are measured in the eter- nities. It is not the news, but the emphasis, the significance, the influence given to the vile and vicious details, that is the guilt of journalism. Every murder, suicide, infidelity, prize-fight, or hanging could be crowded into six inches of space, and hu- manity is cheated if it is given more. This view may not be in accordance with the cribbed morals of the nineteenth century, but it belongs to the essence of truth, as I think. A just and vigorous discrimination of the news will and must be a feature of the higher journalism in the days to come. 2. The usual newspaper controversy is not the road to truth. It is often paved with sharp stones, bordered with thorns, and terminating in a wild waste. Therein is more error confirmed than truth taught. And then, it is apt to hasten into personality and be- come the arena of discourtesy, vituperation, and belit- tling meanness. Personal controversy is one of the rankest weeds that grow in the garden of journalism. It is best that an opinion be clearly and stoutly stated, Higher Aims of Journalism. 107 and that it be left to stand for the truth there is in it, whoever doubts or denies. There are times when discussion may be profitable; but this is only when dignity and candor prevail, and the supreme purpose is to get at the basic principle, evolved by the removal of all rubbish of partisan prejudice. The nearer men get together is the condition in which one or the other side is convinced; but the usual newspaper contro- versy gets them further apart, and their respective readers likewise. The higher journalism may not eschew controversy altogether; but when it engages in it, courtesy and candor will have full sway. 3. No man should be allowed to attack another, public or private, over an anonymous signature. It is not just. It is not a fair and square fight. A dis- reputable sneak has as much influence over a nom de plume as a brave and honorable man has. And his hiding-place excites him to extravagance and mean- ness that he would not dare exhibit in the open field. Very often who writes gives all the importance to what is written. If a man considers it his duty to at- tack another, let him come out over own his signature like a man, but never give a sneak the opportunity to throw mud. In the discussion of public affairs, a correspondent may consistently enjoy the freedom of a nom de plume, but when he tips his dart with poison to throw at another, let him come out from under cover. The newspaper is an educator, and its col- umns should illustrate fairness and justice in all dealings between man and man. There is no manly trait that the higher journalism will fail to back and establish by its own conduct. 4. The advertising columns should be edited as 108 Keynotes of Education. well as the news and editorial columns. Some papers are made absolutely loathsome by their advertise- ments of catchpenny frauds and filthy nostrums. A healthy conscience is always circumspect, and here is a wide field for the exercise of this quality. An editor can not always indorse what may be said in his ad- vertisements, but the least he can do is to examine them and say, "I see no wrong in them," before he gives them space; but when he publishes a fraud which he knows to be a fraud, or caters to diseased desires with lying promises which he knows to be lies — points upon which it is his duty to be posted — he joins the advertiser in despoiling the ignorant and innocent, and tainting the public taste with disgust- ing statements. A mean advertisement is the com- mon people's hidden foe; and if there is anything a journalist ought to be-, it is a true friend of the com- mon people; and such a friend would just as soon lie to them and drag down his thoughts in the editorial as in the advertising column. In the higher journal- ism the editor will see to it that the advertising col- umns are kept pure, honest, and decent. Tampering with unholy things for money is what creates so much indifferentism in the sanctum; the same spirit that ignores the difference between a news item of char- acter and one of moral disintegration. 5. Euskin makes art one of the instrumentalities for the education and elevation of the people. A man's taste and desire go much together. The usual newspaper illustration is not in hearty co-operation with this work. In many cases it is uncalled for and untrue. Often it is a beastly prevarication, and spoils Higher Aims of Journalism. 109 the white paper it occupies. There is a lack of con- science in this matter of illustration — any old thing will do. All sorts of contortions are used for por- traits. If an Ashantee shakes his bamboo javelin at his European patron, the next day half the papers in America will have his picture, no two of the pictures alike, and not one of them true. So it is with three- fourths of the other pictures — they are misrepresenta- tions. Now, this seems to be a trifling matter, but a pictured he has its sad influence as well as a written he. It does its share to destroy the faith and force of the newspapers. But when art is used to emphasize what is entitled to no elaboration, evil is directly done. A paper that smears its pages with cuts of half-naked actresses to help low plays along, and dignifies the drama of ribaldry and immodesty by serious and lengthy descriptions, is an oracle of depraved taste and a purveyor of malevolent knowledge. The higher journalism will seek the aid of art, more and more, but it will be art that improves the taste and tells the truth. These suggestions are offered, from others that might be made, to indicate the line along which the evolution toward a higher journalism might proceed. The objection is raised that the world is not ready for the occupancy of those bright altitudes. This is the cry of despair; for it will never be ready, unless the editors themselves make it so. It is a question of inherent force. "Grant me to see, and Ajax asks no more." Heroism does not wait for a triumph, but helps win it. Holding the most effective implement for constructing opinion and establishing principle, 110 Keynotes of Education. journalism must accept bravely the trust which that power imposes. Humanity in its sorrow and disaster pleads for the press to take a high stand. "We must turn away from the examples of mere financial success, builded on indifferentism, and answer these appeals with true hearts and ready hands. Moral progress must parallel material progress, or humanity sinks. The press holds the balance of power. It can build up or tear down. It can exalt and beautify the lives of men by adding to the graces of mind and heart; or it can disfigure and degrade by throwing about them the influence of mean opinions and base facts. Under the pressure of this alternative, I pray and believe journalism is about to take a positive stand, observing nicely the distinctions between the right and the wrong, the pure and the dissolute, the honest and the false, and on this shining summit say its say, in de- cisive phrase, at all times, in behalf of the true and the good; when the morning paper, like the rising sun in his glory, brings joy and promise; and the evening paper, like the evening sun in his beauty sinking, sheds a blessing and a benediction on all the land. PATRIOTISM. HT HE patriotism of history is the patriotism of war. * The climax is where a man lays down his life for his country. It is a sublime thing to exchange one's hopes and aims for the awful risk of battle; to go from the beauty of home to the carnage of war; to turn from mother or wife to the blazing cannon. It is no idle sentiment, this change from facing Life to facing death. It is the most tremendous logic of duty. The outlook from the headlands of youth is beau- tiful. It is filled with visions of joy, of home, of happy children. It is rich in opportunities and high endeavors, and adorned with fame and wealth and the smiles of friends. His hopes are the blue skies that bend to the sea of life in unclouded horizons far away. the golden vision of youth! It is why he lives at all. The fairest radiance of life is the bloom of many to-morrows. A call to war scatters it all. The dread alternative shatters the beautiful dream of life. It is an issue of unselfish duty, of dark fate, of heroic sacrifice. Why should the boy accept this reality? What call is there for him to tempt the iron hail? What right has the flag to his young life and all its possibilities? Why should he surrender his destiny to benefit the undefined, forgetting mass of humanity? These murmuring questions touch the foundations of ethics. It is more than a problem of altruism. Ill 112 Keynotes of Education. There is somewhat of concrete and appreciable glory" in dying for another; but to make one's self a bare and nameless unit to be obliterated in behalf of national destiny or human hope, is quite another thing; and yet it adorns heroism with a humility and a faith that constitutes the truest, bravest sacrifices. That is the patriotism of the boy who shoulders the musket and follows the flag. And why is he willing to die for that? It is a beautiful emblem; it is a vision of grace; it is the souvenir of heroism; but it is more: it is the pennon of hope, the pledge of truth. It was evolved out of the ages, from the struggle of humanity toward liberty, and has gathered its stripes of blood and stars of hope from every conflict where, in de- feat or victory, human thought and moral purpose have advanced their standards. It is the product of every battle from Thermopylae to Santiago — every struggle that was a protest against absolutism, or where the divine right of man was opposed to the divine right of kings. That old flag stands for the yearning of all time. It is a badge this nation wears for gallant services in the struggle of human rights. It is a pledge committed for safe-keeping to the Amer- ican Eepublic, whose life and honor are incarnate in its ample folds. It is a position, too. It marks the advance of civilization's onward march. Think what it would mean if that flag were blotted from the skies; if its long battle were at last undone, and the arena of human will and human action were narrowed to the convenience of a king, and all the proud achievements of liberty shriveled to a relic. Civilization would have to begin again. The long Patriotism. 113 years of suffering and struggle would again stretch themselves across the centuries, and absolutism would streak with blood the aspirations of the human soul. It was for more than national identity that we fought in 1861. The defense of a mere form of government was only a phase of the conflict. This Nation was charged by every tear, by every drop of blood, by every groan, imprisonment or death, with the sacred duty of defending every position gained for human rights in the long centuries of struggle; and every home and hope and fair ambition of youth were pledged to the performance of that obligation. This Eepublic occupied the summit of all history, toward which human purpose and aspiration had been climb- ing ever since society began to exist. It was like a battalion, to whose valor had been committed the key of battle that had been won by the sacrifice of brave and noble hearts. My friends, it was a glorious fortune, to have be- longed to that mighty struggle to protect the last fruits of sacrifice offered wherever freedom needed heroism and suffering. It was a magnificent duty to defy the leaden hail, to dash at the blazing cannon, and to court death for an idea. It marks the truest worth of a life to lay it down for truth. It is ignoble to live when one is quaking in the presence of error and injustice. Life is sacred only when it is cour- ageous. In the span of a moment, a man's life seems of supremest importance, but in the sweep of ages, when cause and consequence burst from the same calyx, and God makes up his grand ergoes from the roll of centuries, there will be no greater potencies 8 114 Keynotes of Education. than hearts that have been crushed in the daring of duty. It is the lesson of Christ's mission on the earth. The way to save a life is to give it for the truth. The Beatitudes are beautiful, but Calvary stands high above them like the fair brow of a mountain over the lilies of the valley. To die for the right is the key- stone of Christianity. It is the truest token of civ- ilisation. There is a sign of the times that is most refulgent. We are told that truth will make us free. The corol- lary is that freedom will make us true. There is no cowardice in real scholarship. Truth makes one true, not in that narrow sense that made the Spartan youth true to Leonidas, but in that broad sense that makes the American youth true to God. In the evolution of free insitutions there is a tendency toward that nobler education which develops those moral and spir- itual forces that adorn life and strengthen manhood. But it is more than an inspiration; it is an application of thought to deed. It is not only striking a wrong, but it is aiming the stroke truly. It is not merely discerning the truth or defending the right, but it is contriving the best implement to do the work. The higher the thought the better the weapon. My friends, it is a very simple problem when we see the dread alternative, and there is nothing to do but fight. When the musket is to be shouldered, there is no lack of patriotism. the glorious boys of America, how faithful they are! When the issue of right or death comes to them, they never cower or slink away. If some great wrong demand, as the price of its subversion, a thousand, a hundred thou- Patriotism. 1 1 ."> sand lives, a million bright-browed youth step out of home or school or farm, and say, "Here am I — take me." It is no personal allegiance or mere national pride that summons this mighty legion — it is the voice of duty, the command of truth. 0, when it comes to the ordeal of blood, this Eepublic is safe and invincible! The greater the need the greater the sacrifice that is ready. It is not, however, in war that our deepest concern lies, but in peace. We are not yet as mighty in peace as we are in war. The sword is not the only token of chivalry and courage. The true word and manly deed are surer signs. We are so apt to look upon the issues of peace as subsidiary and unrelated — to be lost sight of in the logic of events. The highest aspect of patriotism is a matter of every-day life. The na- tional character is made up of individual experience. When a man is false, selfish, impure, blasphemous, he lowers the national character so far as his influence goes. A man owes to the Eepublic Ms best thought, his best work, his truest manhood in time of peace as he owes to his country his best blood in time of war. The righteousness that exalteth a nation is provided by righteous men. Whoever helps to make up tins sum of righteousness is a patriot; whoever, by un- righteousness, helps to pull down the Eepublic, is a traitor. A man need not shoot at the flag or tear it down to dishonor it. He need not give aid and comfort to the enemy to be guilty of treason. In God's court, where the essence of men's deeds are weighed, and the real import of men's lives tips the scales, it is not a question of what the Constitution 116 Keynotes of Education. defines as overt acts. Every deed that belittles and undermines moral purpose is an assault upon the national integrity. The patriotism that tells through every fiber of national existence is the patriotism that honors the home, the shop, the farm. If we could comprehend our duty to the Eepublic in the quiet service of peace with that large vision that inspires us in time of war, this Nation would be as happy and glorious as it is strong and hopeful. Patriotism consists of a great many things that belong to us as persons. Bonfires and skyrockets are only the tawdry of it. They are the effervescence that blinks and vanishes. At a banquet of Americans in Paris, not long ago, a man offered a grandiloquent toast to America. Holding up his glass, he said: "America, bounded on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by the precession of equinoxes, on the east by primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment." Of course, the toast was drunk with exhilaration and clamor. It sounds very patriotic and fills the boundless propor- tion of the common ideal. But the trouble is, that people are apt to consider such extravagancies as the real expression of patriotism, and that anything mod- est or simple, it matters not how true and useful it is, does not reach the proportions of patriotism. Something that is superlative or inaccessible to every-day purpose is, in the common mind, the patriotic ideal; and it is usual for people to express their love of country only in rampageous rhetoric, not for a moment supposing that the highest patriotism is in being a true, brave, upright citizen, doing every Patriotism. 117 day the duties that lie close about, in kindness, in faith, in fulness, and so make the country better and stronger. This is loving one's country, as much as one's life can, into a higher purpose and truer strength. The glory of our country is in its citizen- ship, and that is an individual matter for every man and woman, and not an affair of aurora borealises or primeval chaoses at all. There is a certain sort of patriotism, says Tolstoi, that is a positive evil. It is this reckless, braggadocio kind that does not think, that does not care, that makes no difference if a thing be right or wrong, so our side is for it. It becomes only a question of material force, a matter of clubs, fists, knives, and pistols. It is that boastful, brandishing, brutal sort of patriotism whose love of country is a base passion, to be linked with any sort of hurrah, where the old flag may be lugged in. This a decrepit and wicked whim. Patriotism is a life. It is being honest, can- did, just, brave. It is founding and conducting a beautiful home. It is being in the community an exponent of the plain and simple truth. It is being- loyal to God at all cost, in everything we do, and there is nothing worth doing that does not concern him. You remember the American admiral in the Indian seas who invited the King of Siam to dine with him. When they sat down to dinner the ad- miral bowed his head and said grace before meat. The king looked at him a moment, curiously, and then said, "Missionaries pray." "Well," answered the admiral, "I am a missionary." So is every man of truth and courage. He is a 118 Keynotes of Education. missionary with his cannon, his jack-plane, his law- hook, his yardstick, his "ballot. One need not go with his Bible, his tract, or his white necktie on a mission of good. One can find in one's every-day path, and the avenues of one's every-day business, a field of humanity as wide as China, and as varied as the islands of the sea; not a religious task merely, or a Church work, or a theme of heaven; but a strong, deep, sincere, urgent need of true and manly citizen- ship — the devotion and courage of the battle-field to the true and noble in trade, society, politics, and talk. The greatest heroisms are those of peace. Patriotism is home-made. A popular government is based on the Pauline principle that we are every one members of one an- other. We can not taint and disgrace ourselves with- out tainting and disgracing all the people. The re- sponsibility of citizenship is thoroughly personal. The logic is plain. God's concern in this Nation is as sure as it is in a forest or a stretch of sky. In one, the law of chemical affinity and gravitation holds sway; in the other, the law of love, of mercy, of justice. "We must recognize the law in either case. We can not play fast and loose. If one fails to catch the in- fluence of this law in all the interstices of life, wher- ever one goes or in whatever one does, he reaps a penalty in which all suffer. Every injustice, even to a worm; every profanity, even in a bar-room; every mean word, even to a tramp; every lie, even in poli- tics; every obscene word, even in an anecdote; every impurity, even in a novel; every vile scandal told un- der the breath, brings retribution and sorrow upon the whole Nation. Patriotism. 119 It is certain to have that effect; for every offense weakens true manhood, and takes from the offender the inclination and power to say the right thing and do the right thing, when the right word or right thing is needed. One can not brush these faults away, like the dust from his coat, and that is all. They permeate national life. They help to swell the foul current of misdoing that breaks and dashes and roars through all channels of public life. That big steal up in the capitol, that scandalized home, the election of that corrupt boss, that swearing crowd on the corner, that vile novel, that yellow journal, and every variety of blotch and sore, have their origin in the great mass of profanity, scandal, dishonesty, self- ishness, and forgetting of God's law, contributed by the thoughtless, careless, selfish, unpatriotic citizen in his own individual life, and there are very few of us that do not in some way help make up that awful mass of unpatriotic material. I once heard a great concert in the city of Eome. There was a choir of two hundred trained voices. Grandly they sang. The waves of harmony broke like a storm over the heart or lulled it with a whisper, out of which rose a melody that twined and curled about the fancy like a reminiscence of love. Beautiful, I thought; but when the song had ended, there was a din of hisses. Surprised, I turned to a friend, and asked, "What does this mean ?" He answered some one in the choir had missed or slurred a note, or failed to keep correct time, and this spoiled the whole piece for those who knew music, and even the little ragamuffins on the streets are critics of that art. Thus a false note in the anthem of progress breaks the harmony 120 Keynotes of Education. of others who adhere to the truth. This personal responsibility rests upon a man in all things. He is harmful to himself and public alike. There is no separation of consequences. A drunkard, a gambler, a liar, a demagogue, a debauchee, are just as harmful and infamous to the people as they are to themselves. Who disgraces himself, drags down the public. This Nation is run by politics. Politics makes our statutes and decrees our national purpose. Parties are the methods. They are probably necessary to a re- public. How they are used depends upon the stand- ard of citizenship. To raise and strengthen that standard is the first duty of patriotism. The only way to do that is for each to do it for himself. Cour- age, candor, truth, and morality are the investiture of this standard. In the wide activities of American life these virtues are as much needed as guns or can- non in war. Dense is the gloom of indifference upon these points. Conviction upon moral obligation is vague. We are getting our ideas too much from novels and newspaper headlines. Our reading is wretched. State some problem of civic or social life which could be settled promptly by some primal truth or axiom, which, however, is not thought of, but in its place comes up a brood of whims, conventional- ities, and temporal conditions that blind the judgment and extract a conclusion that is false and wicked. Whichever way we turn, an ought confronts us which we are apt to crush with a slur or neutralize with the vagaries of the passing moment. There is a hesita- tion, a refusal to inquire further than the temporary effect; how it fits in with the social and political sur- Patriotism. 121 roundings, and if we can flank the crisis without peril or regret. I am speaking of patriotism; not of ethics from a polemic standpoint, hut of personal duty in society, in business, in politics, in church, wherever men meet to construct by deeds a citizenship worthy of the flag. Our materialistic progress has been so great; our inventive genius has secured so many triumphs; our wealth has so mightily increased; our national glory has blazed with such effulgence in all the arts and sciences, that we are more or less blinded and see no further than the achievements themselves. Our tendency is to put faith in the material and ignore the basis of all great and enduring success, which is moral truth. It is a dark fate for a human soul to range along the materialistic stratum and not behold the spiritual force that haloes every fact and deed that have come to bless mankind. If this was as much a Christian Nation in fact as it is in theory; if our professions would bloom aright in home and market-place, the glory of the Nation, as bright as it is to-day, would be as a spot on the sun, compared with the effulgence that would be then. Our country can not be at its best on materialistic lines. It can only serve itself truly by serving God, not only in dynamo, in steam-engine, in spectrum analysis, and Semitic translation, but in trading, in going some- where, in meeting a friend, in reading a paper, in talking politics, in doing nothing. Suppose we could rid this country of profanity, drunkenness, obscenity, scandalous gossip in conver- sation and newspaper, refusal to pay debt, corrupt voting and office-seeking, the cowardly demagogism 122 Keynotes of Education. of Legislatures — could any one imagine the height of its glory or the horizon of its happiness? Every pro- fane word is treason against the flag, because it is treason against God. Profanity lowers manhood, citizenship, and country. It is a sign of moral reck- lessness. Think of a public opinion that is smeared all over with insults to God. Every insult to God is an insult to the country's flag. Look at it that way, too. It is a pleasure to note that profanity is de- creasing; that it is banished from the society of gen- tlemen; it is restricted to bad boys, mad men, and the saloon. General Grant did a great patriotic service to his country when he said to the man who swore in his presence, "I never take the name of God in vain." That declaration adds splendor to Vicksburg and Appomattox. Drunkenness, too, is arousing the disgust of all decent men. It is a sin against the country, because it lowers the standard of citizenship, and breeds a hundred vices that menace the Eepublic and blacken its fame. Saloons are the schools of treason, and true patriots do not support them now. Whisky is the visi- ble presence of the devil, and whisky politics darkens every hope of the Eepublic. Whatever it touches it pollutes. Patriotism hates it as it hates disunion or Spanish cruelty. And so with scandal and obscenity, which de- grade the soul and undermine manly purpose. There is loss of power in groveling among the things that are gross and vile. How can we practice indecency and revere the old flag sincerely? How can we be barbarians and true American citizens at the same Patriotism. 1 2 ■ ' time? One compromises himself with a vile story, told even in jest. The plane of thought is sure to descend if one illustrate it with impurity. It is the devil's own fact that is upheld by a scandal or a wanton imbroglio. Mind, I am not speaking of ethics in a personal sense, or touching the obligation of man to God, but of those relations in the State which affect the character of the Nation and make up the sum of wrongful conduct that drags it down. There is another insinuating and destructive evil, so personal that it might be considered isolated or unrelated, and that is the growing lack of conscience in the matter of paying debts. No one can estimate the virulence of the poison put into American blood by the prevalence of broken promises. It is one of the worst pests of civic righteousness. The indif- ference to personal obligation gives one a status that involves much more than he is aware of. Can a man be faithful to his country and false to his friend? Can he defend the rights of his country and trample upon those of his neighbor? A man owes you a dollar, but spends it for tobacco, the theater, or luxury of any kind, may not seem to rise to the dignity of a patriotic problem; but a thou- sand such cases unsteady public sentiment, and a hundred thousand wipe out the lines of moral distinc- tion in the common affairs of life. Like a clear pool that a drop of carmine will not affect, a hundred will make it blush, a thousand will make it rage. The accumulated force of ignored obligations goes far to explain the jobs, grabs, and legal steals in public life. A public sentiment formed of a persistent and uni- 124 Keynotes of Education. versal habit of standing by private credit would save this Kepublic from all issues involving the mainte- nance of its own faith ; and not only in finance, but it would waken and uplift all the higher and holier instincts of national life. Again, the complacency so universal regarding our educational system and practice is an attitude of public thought that is retarding the deeper and nobler progress of our Nation. We are charmed by a name. A school is a school; a book is a book; but everything depends upon what the school is and what the book is. You can not feed the soul on matter and make it grow. You can not make men out of things. The simple fact must be winged by the spirit, lest it sink to earth and catch low taints. Education, to be real, must be more than secular; it must be sacred and divine. On the moral side of knowledge is real truth. The new education is patriotic. It is the second gos- pel to mankind, because it teaches the beautiful har- mony of light, life, love, and truth in the evolution of the child who, in the future, is to carry the old flag with its message of freedom and justice, not only to the nations of the world, but to his own community and his own home. The sacred cause of education should not be committed to rude hands and empty minds. It belongs to men of intelligence, of true character, and high ideals, and such only should be elected to school boards. Developing a child's soul to prepare it for the duties of life and to give it cour- age, faith, and purpose, is a serious and sacred task, that is to a great extent ill-performed. There is still another arena of duty to enter, and Patriotism. 1 •_' ."> that is the field of politics. Every patriot should be a politician — not a parasitic, sycophantic, office-seeking collar- wearer, but a clear-headed, stout-hearted, and clean-handed man, who is willing to starve or die for the truth. It is treason to stand on the outside and mourn because politics are foul, and do nothing to purify them. It is disloyalty to permit the shriek of despair to drown the call to duty. What else is it, if one flinches, when one sees corruption and venality filling the avenues of political control, and retires to the summit of purification and self-holiness, declar- ing that politics is too mean and dirty a conflict for him to risk his innocence in, and cowardly permits whisky and boodle to win ? True heroism measures the duty by the need. Politics runs the country, and if bad men run the politics, drive them off. That is the only thing to do. If the decent, self-respecting members of the Eepublican, Democratic, or any other party, would combine and fight the minions of polit- ical depravity hand to hand, the flag would float more grandly yet. A man will say, my party is too corrupt, I will leave it. Where will you go? Garfield has said, "You can't run a government without party." Parties represent average ideas of great bodies of men. They may not tally with my convictions at all points; but I stand a better chance of putting those convic- tions into political decree inside of a party than I will by striking the air on the outside. I claim it is quite as much a man's duty to go to the primary as to the prayer-meeting. That is the foundation of political power. it is tainted with whisky, boodle, and bossism, say you. Well, that is 126 Keynotes of Edtication. the reason you should go there. We can not escape a duty by urging a repugnance to the situation where the duty lies. In the providence of God, an unpleas- ant duty raises one nearer heaven than a pleasant duty does. There is more cross in it. Beautiful deeds are the stairs to heaven, reaching there round by round; but sacrifice is the chariot of fire that flashes at once on the great white throne. Heroism does n't go minc- ing around after zephyrous duties. It goes straight to where it is needed. Political infamy can not be reduced by growling. It must be met by argument and man to man. What this country needs is manly politics, and the only way to get such is for manly men to go into the conflict. They must recognize the party fact. Ee- member that party is not primarily an organization to declare a definite form of political opinion. That is supplemental. Party is inherent in society. It has existed on the same lines through all ages and civiliza- tions. It relates to the function and power of society. The duty is determined by the power. The function prescribes the policy. God put every political issue in the organic constitution of society, as he put the planets in the nebulaa before the morning of the world. Politics began with Eden. The first question ever asked was, "Where art thou?" And to the first- born came the issue that has divided all human thought ever since, "Where is thy brother?" That question seems to have struck at the very operations of the human intellect and divided the very processes of reason, from Paradise to the Millennium. rTot only in politics and sociology does the dividing Patriotism. 127 line lay across the centuries and through all races; hut in philosophy, in ethics, in religion as well. Back of the mists and fogs of self-seeking, of bossism, and personal controversy; back of the clouds of passion, prejudice and nasty demagogism ; up in the blue sky where Constantine's sign hung, is emblazoned in let- ters of light the answer which is the question of hu- man duty in all time, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Whoever says no to that mighty question is in politics up to his neck. Whoever says yes, ought to be. Be- cause shrewd, selfish men go into politics to pervert the function of society to ignoble ends, is the reason true men should follow — to drive them off. Of all the traitors to the flag, that ring, banded to despoil the country in the name of party, is the meanest. The boss is the Benedict Arnold of American politics. His highest joy is to stifle independence and smite sin- cerity. Wherever he is on Ms chosen field, within his own party lines, he should be fought to the finish. If he wins, stick and try him again. In the very logic of politics, there is nothing else to do. Do not run off into the caverns of gloom to weep, or up on the sum- mits of independence to hurl defiance. That is just what the boss wants. If a preacher does n't go among his people to help organize against him, he doesn't care how much he is denounced in the pulpit. Politics is not painting lilies. Patriotism is not writing poetry. Both are the most practical things — they do, they dare, they suffer, they die. The widest open field to-day for patriotic duty is the political party. Ifc is the opportunity no manly spirit can re- fuse to embrace; for the purification and elevation of 128 Keynotes of Patriotism. party is the directest method for purifying and ele- vating the country. I wish I might pursue this rela- tion of private life to patriotic duty in other aspects — in the matter of parental control of children, in one's attitude toward religion, in the practical use of can- dor, in the ways one lives at home, the temper of busi- ness and social intercourse, the tendencies and influ- ences of leisure moments, the awful effects of narcot- ics, and the ill-use of medicine — matters that deter- mine the standard of our citizenship, because they fix the character of our every-day lives. What we are is the imperial fact. A few days ago, hurrying past the amphitheater at Chautauqua, I caught this sentence from the preacher conducting devotional service: "Your life gives to prayer its value. " That is true, and so it is true as to patriotism. It is absurd for a man to lie and cheat and think and say mean things, and placate the devil day after day, and then suppose he can get even with God by prayer at night. A man who, through the day, swears and gets drunk, treats his neighbor dishonestly, be- fouls his own thoughts, acts a coward in public life — he drags down the old flag, notwithstanding he builds bonfires and sings "The Star-Spangled Banner" every night. What a man is, determines whether he is a patriot or a traitor. Thank God, that is the gospel of my country. It is the orthodoxy of patriotism. It is the golden land of hope. My friends, we can never learn the lesson too well that moral worth is the doctrine of the Stars and Stripes. All that we have attained thus far has been achieved upon that idea. What strength it gave us when humanity stretched out its arm for protection! Patriotism. 129 We had no navy, we had no army; hut never did truth, though navyless and armyless, gain a grander or swifter triumph. I hope this country will never rely wholly on a resplendent navy or a great standing army. God is on the side of the heaviest artillery is a Napoleonic lie. He is on the side of truth, of virtue, and of moral worth; and that is the basic idea of this Republic. If we turn from that and put our trust in glittering bayonets, the blaze of epaulets, or canis- ters of glycerine, we exchange the faith of the people for the prayer of monarchy. We never want to substi- tute the armored cruiser for God Almighty; rather, we must depend upon him for it, by living true, hon- est, faithful lives in times of peace; then he will stand by us. He will steady our hand and clear our vision for better aim. While pointing out the foes of the old flag, I have supreme trust that they will yet weaken as the days go by, and that faith in God will become a grand reality right down among the common duties of life, where it is needed more than anywhere else. Science, education, religion, and thoughtful common sense are seeing every clay, more and more, that the harmony between truth and triumph is as sure as between gravitation and the fall of a stone; and to push the dominancy of this fact everywhere into experience is as grand a duty as to stand on the bridge of a ship and direct a fleet in the lightning and thunder of battle. A young man, a college graduate, an athlete, a son of a millionaire, asked what is the humblest, hardest, most dangerous duty he could perform for his country in the late war. He was informed, in the hold of a 130 Keynotes of Education. ship of war, feeding the hungry boilers with fuel. Thither he went, and in the fiery tomb, buried out of the world, he shoveled coal, to supply life to the big cruiser. Shut up in the midst of battle, where the flames hissed and roared, and the air was stifling and burning hot, where comrade after comrade sank ex- hausted and dying, and where a big shot from the enemy might at any moment send them all to the bottom of the sea, that boy worked at his awful task. No honor for him. His duty wore no emblem. The world knew him not. He obeyed the head fireman; the head fireman obeyed the stoker ; the stoker, the engineer; the engineer, the captain; the captain, the commodore — how far upward winds the path of glory! — the commodore, the admiral; the admiral, the Secretary of the Navy; the Secretary of the Navy, the President; the President, the people; the people, God. So complicated and ceremonious is the machinery of authority and honor that we fail to see through its gorgeous glamour; but God does not. First of all, he sees down there in that furnace of sacrifice the boy who has forsaken wealth, hope, fame, and all this world's gifts, for an unseen, unromantic, forgotten death in the black, blazing hold of the cruiser. God never sees an office. He does n't know any generals, commodores, ministers of war, doctors of divinity, professors, or such terrestrial tawdry. He sees the man only — the soul that does a humble duty bravely, with- out asking if there is a string to it. I love our old generals and colonels, and my fairest memories min- gle with their fame; but the boy who stood by my side and shot his musket dwells in my heart deeper and surer than any other man. The Government can not Patriotism. \:\\ honor him by title or resolution; it can give no prefer- ence that can exalt the fireman of the cruiser a point higher than his self-sacrifice has won for him. There is only one way to honor the memory of that grand boy, and that is to devote our lives to the country for which he died — to render to his heroic memory the tribute of a pure, honest, upright, unselfish, cour- ageous life, by every one of us. My friends, I seek to uplift and exhilarate the per- sonal impulse. A Texas professor who volunteered as a private wrote to a friend from the trenches of El Caney: "Here, in the ranks, I have lost my Ego completely.*'" 1 "Well, in the selfish light of this world's scramble, he has; but in God's sight he stands forth like Altair among the star-dust. There is not a Beati - tude but panoplies him. "When one of God's angels comes down and touches a man's heart with the in- spiration of duty, it leaves there two forces to accom- plish the mission — courage and humility; if he add a purpose of his own, the consequences will belong to the drift of next week, or next year. We people who believe that God reigns, spend nine-tenths of our time on the theory that he does n't. If we obeyed God's moral laws as faithfully as the lily, the brook, the star, obeys his natural laws, our lives would be jusl as beautiful. God is fully as beneficent in his laws to the human soul as he is to the rose or the sunset. But what has all this to do with patriotism? Just as much as the petals have to do with the flower, or the constellations have to do with the sides. The love of country depends upon how lovable it is. That is not a matter of mountains or streams or natural resoun China, Turkey, and the Philippines have all th( 132 Keynotes of Education. It is a matter of citizenship, which in turn is a matter of individual character; and the purer, truer, braver, more unselfish the man is, the more he adds to the love of country. I do not make this analysis for argument's sake, hut for sentiment's sake. The mission of this address is to help create a public sentiment that true patriot- ism is a matter of individual life and aim, and the best, the most effective, the only way, is to add to American citizenship as many of the graces of faith in God as our own little lives can bring to it. ISTo other sort of patriotism is worth talking about, ISTo other sort of patriotism will keep the old flag flying up in the blue sky of God's benediction. We may perform feats of daring; we may win victories; so did Alexander, Attila, and Napoleon. But the glory of a victory consists of the truth and justice there are in it. And these elements lie in the lives of men back of the cause. If they are sordid, selfish, base, so is the victory; if they are profane, impure, drunken, so is the victory. War has no special privilege in moral dynamics. It is thorn bearing thorn, or fig bearing fig, all the way. I do not want to seem to carry in my words the slightest blaze of pyrotechnics. I want to keep on solid ground, and deal with real things; and I say that a man is a patriot only to the extent that his life is made up of pure thoughts, honest words, helpful deeds, and the championship of moral truth; and whoever does not add to that righteousness which exalteth a nation is a recreant citizen and false to the flag. This is the very law of action and reaction. It is as plain as two and two make four. PERSONAL FORCE OF THE TEACHER. r ~piIERE is a portion of the colloquy between Ben * Hur and his mother on the housetop of their Jerusalem home that possesses much educational value. You remember Ben Hur's question to his mother, after that talk with Messala, in the market- place, and how the mother, doubtful of her ability to answer, said: "What you propose, my Judah, is not a subject for treatment by a woman. Let me put its considera- tion off till to-morrow, and I will have the wise Simeon — " "Do not send me to the rector," he said, abruptly. "I will have him come to us." "No, I seek more than information; while he might give that better than you, my mother, you can do better by giving me what he can not — the resolution that is the soul of a man's soul." I think the lesson is, that true knowledge involves inspiration, faith, duty; and the maintenance of this divine unity depends upon the teacher. Now, at the start, I do not want any one to think I minify instruction or discount knowledge. I exalt them rather. I defend the text-book. I praise the fact and the process. But they are means to an end; and if they do not establish relations that break into tendrils which take hold on life; if they do not warm one up to an embrace of purpose and duty, their end may be good or bad. 133 134 Keynotes of Education. I think, therefore, the duty of the hour is the de- velopment of the teacher, and the establishment of those tendencies that arouse and exercise inspiration, faith, hope, love, and resolution, which is the soul of a man's soul. This development is threefold: First — Physically. A teacher should be a well man or woman. His personality is incomplete without it. Here blood tells. Distempers assert themselves. A case of headache, dyspepsia, backache, rheumatism, will debilitate a whole school. What sort of enthu- siasm can one arouse in a recitation if the backache has seized one with its iron clampers-? How much faith can one evolve from an incessant cold? What amount of love and sympathy radiates from a case of indigestion? What is there in rheumatism to awaken a lofty purpose? These malign conditions must have their influence. They oppress and imprison the teacher; they make his world small and gloomy; they rob his horizons of sunsets and golden dreams. Now, the schoolroom is the place to begin life aright. It demands every advantage. It demands pure blood, sound muscles, decent stomachs, and backbones with a spring to them. How else can we cultivate the amenities of life, the courtesies, the sympathies, the inspirations, the duties, and those attributes that min- ister to the progress and elevation of society? Think of a poor, wayward boy, from a home of ignorance and scolding, for some transgression of the rules, brought up for trial before a case of dyspepsia. Think of a class in problems or parsing, looking, longing for the effulgence of nervous debility to light it out of its jungles. Personal Force of the Teacher. 135 I insist that a sound body is an ingredient of peda- gogical equipment. There are needed thrilling mus- cles, tingling blood, the joy of health in organ and limb to blend duty and endeavor with life, and gild the old world with deeds of beauty and love. Such he should have who undertakes to lead, counsel, and inspire the young. The school years of a child s lite is a pivot on which eternity whirls. There he needs the rightly-set currents, the sweet harmonies of na- ture, the heart's gentlest devotion, to hold him toward the truth. A mere ideality will not do it. The voice of cherubim and seraphim will not do it. The shades of Thomas Harvey and Joseph Kay will not do it. What he must have is a warm-hearted, clear-eyed, hio-h-thoughted precept in tire concrete, standing in the shining path ahead, and beckoning him-jnst , as the world had its divinity. Therein is the force of the teacher. It is the greatest demand of the hour Second-Intellectually. The teacher must not be a pedant. He must not lose himself in the dry and arbitrary details of a problem or a rule of parsing, he should know how, but he should know also why. The mind is easily pressed and twisted ou of shape. It yields to the potency of some fact or idea, and is occupied by it as the seal occupies the wax. M md yo u I do not refer to that fine frenzy of the sou that "breaks forth anon in the heat of some &**£% I mean the personal whim, the text-book «»M»£f end of information, that squeezes the mind into insig- nificant proportions and perverts it to the cold formal itv of knowledge. I knew a teacher who passed through the various phases of a decimal tectum a Latin root, a trilobite, and an acute angle, as he trav 136 Keynotes of Education. ersed these topics. Each thing in turn he was. The big, throbbing, beautiful world of duty was contracted to a pen, fenced by his narrow views, and in these he attempted to drive all his pupils. They would n't go. They scattered. Their souls hankered for better tilings than dead vocables and grammatical cinders, as Carlisle calls this instruction. They clamored for common sense, spirituality, love, and inspiration. These are the true motors of mental progress. The best part of a teaching intellect is intuition— the di- vine grace within recognizing the divine hand with- out. This is not mere sentiment; it is the fact on which we must bottom, as John Locke expresses it. We have no right to tether ourselves to a post, and then worship the post. We must seek the altitudes where the air is pure and the skies spread wide— there with poets, seers, thinkers, and reformers to mingle. A man is known by the company he keeps. I have in my mind a few questions, better than any ten ques- tions ever asked at an examination, to discover the merits of a teacher. Who is your favorite poet ? What books have you read in the past year? What maga- zine do you read? What is the latest scientific discov- ery? Give some doctrine of a modern educational re- former. How do you regard it? Such questions deter- mine mental trend and scope — whether a man is a trilobite or kindred spirit. This incoming and out- going of classes— this shuttle of education! What is it weaving for you, my teacher? Is it the fabric of a true life, strong in texture, warm in color, beautiful in design, and useful in form? Whatever it is, remem- ber, it is the projection of your own intellect. Make it strong, make it beautiful, make it useful. Personal Force of the Teacher. 137 I had an idea to say somewhat more of the urgent need of common sense, in all things, respecting the training of youth, hut this is involved in what I have said. It is the universal wisdom. It is that poise which gives one the command of things. He does not have to know all; but there is a harmony in the rela- tions between what he does not know and what he does know. There is a knowledge that is always stick- ing out and is always in somebody's way. It protrudes only to warn. Education is a tendency toward unity. There is not a stray ray of light in the universe, but it beams from some sun and kisses some flower. The sun would rock if an atom of musk were annihilated. It is the broad view that exalts individualism, for it re- veals the divine relations, which is the essence of life. Such should be the scope of the teaching intellect, to mingle with the idealities and find a grace in the utmost meaning of things. Let us have teachers who symbolize the sweet, serious truth of the universe as the flowers symbolize God's love of the beautiful. Third — As to Moral Character. Schoolteaching is the most sacred of occupations. It deals with the most delicate and divine things. In other callings, faults and vices may not leave their traces so visibly upon their work; but in the schoolroom there is no escape. The whole man stands there, with whatever he is endowed — his defects and weaknesses asserting themselves with all their strength, whatever may be the force of his virtues and amenities. He can not hide himself. He is to every pupil just what he is. The glamour of manner may obscure reality for a moment, but only for a moment. The child need not watch for blemishes; he may not even see them, or be 138 Keynotes of Education. conscious of them, but all the time their influence is felt. Were we able to analyze that wonderful com- posite called character, after the manner of the chem- ists, separating it into its essential parts, and tracing back each result to its constituent elements, we would find their origin in association and example. Life is an induction. It is made up of little things, done or undone; trifles, perchance as light as air, at first, but oft repeated, harden into habit and construct character. Deed is added unto deed, dream unto dream, folly unto folly, by all the processes of envi- ronment, each ingredient getting a special quality as the process is better or worse, and so, generalizing little bits of experience into a form of conduct that rules the life and projects destiny. In all this process, the moral maxim plays little or no part. It may evolve one, but it is not controlled by one. The de- duction comes when the work is done. First, the process, then the rule. You must do His will, if you would know of the doctrine. So our lives are thoroughly, awfully concrete. Everything counts. Every deed is a king. It is des- potic within its domain. The schoolroom is the teacher's realm. Whatever he says or does, how he says it and how he does it, and what he omits to do, materialize at once into a dictator. The child is a loyal subject. His nature is a matrix that catches impressions so readily that every line, every scratch, every blur, leaves its mark. There is no escape. Courtesy begets courtesy, candor begets candor, gen- tleness begets gentleness, patience begets patience, in- dolence begets indolence, carelessness begets careless- Personal Force of the Teacher. L39 ness, spite begets spite, selfishness begets selfishness, untidiness begets untidiness, tattle begets tattle, slang begets slang, sham begets sham — and so the despotic induction moves along to the relentless ergo. There is no maxim so often quoted at teachers' examinations as, "As the teacher is, so is the school.'" It seems to be universally acknowledged. It has be- come so common a saying that we fear it has lost the best part of its force. The common belief remits it to schoolroom application, but the proposition makes no such restriction — as the teacher is, at home, on the street, in the store, on the steamboat. What has edu- cation done for him, even so will he do for education. How does he bear himself in the current of affairs, among his fellows, where the demand for worth, for fidelity, for integrity, for earnest work and true think- ing is ever urgent — how does he bear himself? This is the test. This shows what the teacher is. He may try to appear something else in the school, but it will not work. The bitter fruit will come from the bitter tree — 't is God's law that allows no exception. If the teacher is a loafer anywhere, he is a loafer in the schoolroom. What he is on Saturdays and Sundays and after school, so he is in the schoolhouse. If he invades the grocer's counter and engages in the friv- olous babble of worthless people, he will carry that babble into the schoolroom. If he exchanges slang on the street corners, or tilts back in the hotels and dips an oar in the muddy gossip, he will carry that mud and slang into the school. He can't help it. You can't gather figs from thistles. As the teacher is, so is the school. 140 Keynotes of Education. He may thunder apothegms of moral excellence all day long; he may decorate the wall with yirtuous. mottoes in gilded text; he may even lecture on the grandeur of truth and justice, and exalt the good and tender, with loving eloquence — but all in vain. Edu- cation does not grow that way. It grows by the accretion of living truths — deeds beating with pur- pose that reach out for things aldn — like the tissue grows: throbbing cell to throbbing cell, tendency to tendency, like to like. Alas, if there be no environment to provide the needed sustenance! In this world of beauty, of power, of progress; where the very clods and stones are full of speech and music; where the heavens are bending with stars; where the hills uplift their forms to unfold the pages of ages gone; where the plains stretch with verdure, and flowers, and singing waters, out to the golden sunsets; where men and women adorn life with glorious achievements of genius and thought — there is enough to inspire every teacher with that devotion and sympathy which will go forward to meet the cravings of the child's soul, and add to it sweetness, strength, and purpose. One can not avail himself of these heavenly resources without shedding their be- nign influences by one's very presence. 'T is said that Emerson once refused to address an audience when some one cried out, "Get on the plat- form and let us see you think." We all can not be Emersons, or Pestalozzis, or Froebels; but to the ex- tent of our opportunities, which are always greater than we embrace; and to the extent of our capacities, which are always greater than we employ, we should Personal Force of the Teacher. 1 4 1 gather the godlike forces that play around us every- where, and make them, in every act and word, min- ister unto the child. And then, great fact it is too, the more one be- comes animated by the spirit of true knowledge, the fuller and deeper the essence of things pervades him and he catches the unseen current in which dwells the divine meaning of things, the simpler and sweeter Ms own thought; so that he comes gracefully to the level of the child, just as the Great Teacher himself did. As the teacher is. His walk, his talk, his silence, his manner, his associations, the books he reads, his aims in life, his favorite haunts, his conduct at ho i his habits of every hue — all contribute to the force of example, which is the only text provided in the public school for the moral and social development of the child. Whatever this text lacks, or whatever of ill instruction it provides, can not be remedied 1 » y a rigid devotion to arithmetic and grammar. We can not interpose tricks at figures and syntax between the influence of our example and the destiny of the child. The concrete will have its way, and mere mental discipline will mold itself about it. If it be our purpose to throw responsibility, and push depend- ence to the matter of mental discipline merely, we might, quite as well, substitute "Pigs in Clover" or "Pole on Whist" for much of the statutory curricu- lum. 0! this text-book atonement is tiresome beyond expression! Somehow or other the fatality is abroad, and has grown to the august supremacy of a religious dogma, that all education lies within the lids of an arithmetic, like unborn forests in an acorn-cup. Some time ago, at one of our quarterly institutes. 142 Keynotes of Education. one of our lady teachers read a paper on "Hints," the chief thought of which was to excite the youth to an observation of, and investigation into, the common objects about him. This is well. All in the insti- tute fervidly acquiesced; but the want of time seemed to appeal to every teacher, so there was a division of opinion between devoting the general exercise or the reading lesson to some thoughts of the matter. No one ever thought for a moment of desecrating the sacred precincts of parsing and ciphering. Over the gates of this paradise two flaming swords whirled and whirled. Across the jangle of the phonics, not a bird-note must be allowed to sing its way. The color of the rose, the glint of the butterfly's wing, the velvet vestment of the cliff, the divine geometry of the snow- flake — all these must be pushed aside, to give room at the shrine of the child's love for the least common multiple and the mountains of Kini Baloo. Well, we must get out of this jungle. If there is no way, we must do as the noble Roman did — make one. We must get out to where manhood and wom- anhood stand some chance. So the argument is, as the personality of the teacher impresses the school, his traits, habits, ten- dencies, and personal forces must be of a character to develop and uplift the child; and then he must make room for the play of these influences, not only through the force of example, hut through observa- tion and knowledge in harmony with the nature of the child; and to find time for it, let him reduce other branches to twice or thrice a week, as the case may require. It is high time that the pounding and lathe- Persoiial Force of the Teacher. 1 ! :; ing to make intellectual gimlets out of children's souls were stopped. The problem of the hour then is, to organize on a practical basis the processes for incul- cating the new ideas. Finally, the teacher should be progressive. Edu- cation means progress. A stand-still teacher is a dull tool that botches work. Imagine a teacher, with the stale knowledge of days long gone, inspiring the youth on whose brow the dawn of the twentieth century rests! Still, there are those who are trying to do this. What we need is a spirit of advancement. The good teacher will know what the thinkers are thinking, what the earth is evolving, what the heavens are tell- ing. He will read good books. He will read the Forum, the North American Beview, the Popular Science Monthly; or, if not these, for economy's sake, the cheaper ones — Munsey's, McClure's, or Cosmo- politan. It is an indication that he is on the altitude of the best thought, the progressive purpose, the liv- ing enlightenment of the age. Many teachers mope through life with no other horizons than the adjacent hilltops of their own native domain. There may be virtue, and worth, and honest purpose, but how much of the light of God's teeming world is excluded! Now, the teacher needs this light, or as much as he can get. It is necessary to health, growth, life, and enjoyment. It makes one's work fairer; it makes the children dearer; it makes knowledge sweeter. There is positively nothing in the text-book but depression; it rests with the teacher to raise that; but can he do it, if he be a serf himself? He must first break hie chains. "'Who would be free, himself must strike 144 Keynotes of Education. the blow," says Byron. Do not wait for institutes to pull you out, or the Board of Examiners to freeze you out; hut simply get out of the ruts. When a bal- loonist wants to make a journey, he cuts his ropes and rises; he keeps throwing out the dead weights of sand, and rises, up and up, till he reaches the altitude where blows the current toward his destination, and thither he sails through the mild blue air, on an ocean of light, to the haven of his yearning. So we should cast off our weights and clogs, and rise to the standard of excellence, and move off on a higher plane and in the trend of the best thought, the highest purpose, and the broadest intelligence of the times. Our schools need this; our citizenship needs it; our coun- try demands it. But in one thing, particularly, should the pro- gressive spirit be shown, and that is the science of education. There are new ideas and methods born of these days of advance. Who could expect otherwise? Every physical fact, arising in these days of discovery and invention, proclaims a theory that sways in the educational world. There is not a physical law but has its moral and mental counterpart, and to- gether they march to triumphs that open to humanity a fairer and brighter world. These influences reach to the schoolroom, and the teacher should be able to subject the child to them, and thereby rescue him from the bondage of the past. The regime, of the pedagogue with his club, and his eternal a, b, abs, and villainous sums, has ended. The autocratic Gradgrind has gone with the leeching doctor and the hellfire preacher. True growth is mild and sweet. Pulling the tendril does not make it Personal Force of the Teacher. 145 increase. From a star-mist to a solar system, silence ruled. It simply became. The conditions of be- coming are the teacher's affair. He furnishes the sunshine and the shower, the tilling, the mulching, and the fertilizing; he removes the dead weights and drives off the birds of prey. To do these things well, he must be equipped with the achievements of the nineteenth century — he must know its knowledge, its philosophy, its invention. From him must radiate the blessings God has bestowed upon the age. There is abroad a stolid indifference to these bright aims and resources. Some seem to think that they must dwell in the front part of the nineteenth cen- tury and ignore the triumphs of the profession they adopt. This is treason — treason to the profession and to the child. 0, teacher, let us look up! Let us bare our brows to the gladsome light of knowledge; to the beneficent radiance of the age; and let us, as heirs of all the ages, accept the birthright, heartily and resolutely. And this does not mean wandering through bowers, and plucking jessamines and honeysuckles to deck our- selves for festal days, recurring ever. It means work, continuous work, but not repulsive work. God does not make growth painful. He makes it gentle and happy; and so may we, if we escape the cribbed treadmill of the past and get out into the fields of love and beauty. Now, to recapitulate, the teacher should be a healthy person; he should possess common sense and intelligence; he should have a strong moral purpose and habit; he should be progressive. And then, as the school is organized and supported 146 Keynotes on Education. to promote good citizenship, it follows that the teacher must be a model citizen. I have hinted at the. make-up of the teacher; how does it meet the require- ments of the model citizen? I will treat the proposition in a roundabout way, on the circuit of adaptation. To ascertain what true citizenship is, we must understand the sort of govern- ment to which it belongs. We are apt to regard the Eepublic as beginning with the Declaration of Inde- pendence; at which time the doctrine of human equality flashed across the century, and was caught by Jefferson's pen for the purpose of building a nation upon it. Well, now, the chrysanthemum on the lapel of your coat is just as much the origin of the plant, as the glittering theory of equal rights was the occasion of our Republic. Eo nation was ever founded on a theory. France tried it, and her Eepub- lic floated away on a sea of blood. England tried it, but the crown returned in the same generation. The little company that braved the Atlantic and built their homes in the wilderness, began this Eepublic. They brought with them certain forms of life, of conduct and worship, which were expressions of duty merely, and affected not only their personal aims, but their social relations. They were simple, true- hearted men and women, of flesh and blood, appetites and consciences, who established trade and organized towns on the models of their own simple, serious characters; idealizing nothing, but putting in form and fact their instincts of right and duty. Thus the Eepublic grew apace, generalizing individual charac- ter into common purpose, and developing forms of personal conduct into forces of government and law. Personal Force of the Teacher. 147 There was none of the abstract in it all — no Gr< models, no luxuriating rhetoric — only simple, indus- trious, earnest, devoted lives. The unit of the ap- proaching Nation was manhood. You could not. if you tried, imagine the colonial builder of this Repub- lic as a whimsical, idealistic, atheistic, lazy, theoret- ical fellow, who went about setting up the divinity of isms as the condition of national existence. Defiance of royalty was a growth. It was an expression of character. If it had not been; if it had been simply an effusion of rhetoric, or the fulmination of a the- ory decked in gorgeous phraseology, the War of the Eevolution would not have lasted six months. But back of the challenge to the divinity of kings was over a century of development, wherein the people, gathering about the soil, the shop, the church, and the school, put into conduct and habit their sincere, lofty, and heroic ideas of life. As it took this sort of citizenship to create a na- tion, it will require just this kind to preserve it. If this Government is the expression of a form of con- duct, it can not live if character fails. Thus there is implied a model citizen. In Turkey or Persia it makes no difference, so far as the Government is con- cerned, what kind of a citizen any one is. But here it is different. When the average of citizenship falls below a certain level, down goes the Republic. But the true teacher aims at excellence, not at average; so his inquiry shall be, "What is the model citizen?" And having obtained a definite idea of one. which it is his duty to have, his next step is to teach the model, and therefore act it. And so the life and honor of the State rests on 148 Keynotes of Education. the character of the teacher. As a citizen, I bow my head in profound respect to the teacher, when I make that remark. I stand in awe of the responsibility, when I consider the towering influence of association and the mysterious force of silence and negation. In times like these, when one is so apt to forget the virtue of simple, earnest manners and useful deeds, and lose one's self in the clamor and dust of social, industrial, and political life, it is absolutely neces- sary, and especially for schoolroom achievement, to entertain exact, clear-cut, positive convictions, ex- pressed not in words, but in forms of conduct. Habit is the strongest anchor. It has saved the old ship of state through many storms, when theories and creeds would have driven it on the rocks. Let us ever re- member, it was upon the meek, not meekness; upon the merciful, not mercy; upon the pure in heart, not purity — on which fell the benedictions of the Sermon on the Mount. Thus, friends, teachers, I have tried to portray those traits and potencies of the teacher which touch the child-life at every point, and direct it upward or downward, or on the dead level, as they themselves are bent. EXAMINATION OF TEACHERS. T^HE law very properly prescribes tests which they * must meet who would teach school. It is highly important that only they should teach who have the ability. Does the law's test meet this requirement? Knowledge and moral character do not make up the full equipment of a teacher. They are necessary, but are not sufficient. A person may hold an hon- estly-earned and highly-graded certificate, and yet be an incompetent teacher. A person may not be able to reach the required grades, and yet be a good teacher. It is to this necessary but undefined increment of the teachers' equipment that I desire to direct this discussion. The tests expressed in the statutes in- volve simple problems that may be solved by proper knowledge and a good, honest purpose. They require no treatment in this presence; but in another direc- tion we are confronted by a condition which must be met and disposed of. How far may an examiner pro- ceed beyond the prescribed text-book tests, into the region of temperament, disposition, aspiration, habit, tendency, environment of the applicant? Can he go there at all, and if so, by what route? This is the important question. We know that sympathy in a teacher is greater than an ability to parse; that enthusiasm is more im- portant than a knowledge of square root; that a pro- gressive spirit is better than a recollection of all the 149 150 Keynotes of Education. bays and capes in the corners of the earth. Is there a method by which the presence of these qualities in the applicant can be determined? The difficulty of this question must not relegate it to the junk-shop. I know there are wastes of sentimentality sur- rounding this inquiry; but I want nothing of it, ex- cept exact ideas. Knowledge does not make a teacher any more than a kit of tools makes a carpenter. It has happened that we have certain lines of in- struction along which exercise and development are carried. These lines are denominated geography, arithmetic, grammar, etc. They might have been something else, being the media and not the ends. They have been something else, will change again, are changing now. Great benefits are gathered along the way; but the end is power. So in applying tests to a teacher, a leading purpose is to find out whether he knows how, as well as what — that he radiates as well as absorbs. I plead for a wider exercise of discretion by the examiners — a discretion that says to an applicant, "Though you reach the text-book standard, you lack thoughtfulness, you lack energy, you lack ambition, you lack sympathy, you do n't read, you do n't asso- ciate with live people, you have no mission; in fact, you are negative as to many or most of those qualities of head and heart that impress, and rally, and lead, and develop children. Knowledge alone does not suffice; there must be wisdom, too; there must be that love of the teacher's duty which touches the child- nature — which inspires the youth to effort and pursuit. Examination of Teachers. 151 Here are two young ladies applying for a certiii- eate. A school is awaiting the result of the examina- tion. One is stiff, angular, cross-looking, dowdy, snappish, suspicious, resentful; the other graceful, genial, neat, June roses in her cheeks, and their fra- grance in her heart. It requires 70 for a certificate. The first's grade is 75; the second's, 65. To which will you give that school? Again, looking from a different standpoint, our common schools are instituted to develop good citi- zenship. As the teacher, so is the school — so are the pupils. Therefore, he must be a good citizen, not a pedant, not a grammatical cinder, as Carlisle ex- presses it, hut an intelligent, useful, industrious, moral, high-minded man or woman — one who invests life with duties and who pursues lofty ideals and pur- poses. Such a one the examiners should try to place in the schoolroom. Now, this discretion must he wisely used, and, consequently, should he based on as wide range of in- formation as it is possible to obtain. We can i catechise upon these points as we can in school branches, and so the facts we want come to us ob- liquely, glancing from surrounding circumstances, which it should be our care to create. In other won I - . we must organize the discretion that must serve this matter. It must not be the sway of misty notions. Discretion should be to text-book tests what equit] to law. Unregulated discretion is unbounded des- potism, and defeats reform from the start. Hence, when the office of judgment is exalted, the considera- tions that rule should be understood and approved. 152 Keynotes of Education. Then a broader examination will be a success. But to particularize : 1. In the first place, we should make use of the examination itself to study the style, the disposition, the spirit, the general make-up of the teacher. There should be a few common-sense rules printed for the government of the examination. Note how the appli- cant observes them. Otherwise there should be rea- sonable latitude. How does he comport himself? Does he watch you, or does he want to get his back to you? Is he disorderly, slovenly, discourteous? How does he fold his manuscript? Is he snarly, suspicious, spiteful? Does he get himself into temptation, and look upon another's manuscript? In short, examina- tion-day should be made of good use in determining the personal characteristics of the applicant, and whether they are good or bad for the schoolroom. Strict or liberal grading may be resorted to, to give effect to the intelligence thus acquired; or, if one may be a little conscientious upon this point, merit or demerit marks may be used to affect the aggregate of grades. But I want to say here, that a little neat- ness, gentleness, sprightliness in a manuscript, even if it takes the wrong shoot on two or three questions, predicts better things for a class recitation than a full manuscript, scrawled and scrambled over by the lethargy of knowledge. 2. Theory and Practice is the strategic point in an examination. It commands the field. Ten questions in this branch alone may constitute a thorough and telling test. It not only relates to the laws control- ling mental and moral development, and their appli- Examination of Teachers. 153 cation to text-book instruction, but it reaches to the creation of sentiment and taste, and to the sources of courage and duty. Pedagogy is the science of man- hood, of womanhood. In its beautiful comprehension it asks you, not only what you know, but what you feel, what you dare. "We stop too soon in our psychology, and fail to reach those influences, suggestions, and forces that put value into life. I press this point, that if our examinations included this phase of psychology, with some emphasis, they would serve to discover, though not finally, whether the applicant had a re- gard or thought of those amenities and purposes that adorn a true life. Let us take a grand view of peda- gogy. Science is coming into our homes; commerce is arousing our sympathies; religion is reaching sun- nier summits; art is touching life with grace and beauty; but education is the sum of them all, and the teacher must get into harmony with these advanc- ing ideas. The catechism of yesterday needs revision. The pages of current literature are gleaming with live thoughts on the teacher's mission. They carry us forward, each with his own individual purpose and inspiration. To these heights of pedagogy must we ascend in our examinations, if we would make our work the worthiest; and so our questions must be arranged to embrace this broad scope, to see if the teacher is lagging or in the lead. 3. Questions in general information should be added. These should relate to current events, gen- eral literature, simple science, and those lines of sub- stantial knowledge which ordinary folk ought to know. A teacher who knows nothing outside the 154 Keynotes of Education. text-books is an ignoramus, and should not be toler- ated in the schoolroom. General knowledge gives breadth, resource, power. It enables a teacher to illustrate, awaken curiosity, furnish the spice of va- riety, and answer many questions that ought to be answered. A person who can't tell you a character in the "Merchant of Venice," the name of England's greatest statesman, or the size of the moon, and kin- dred facts, is qiute too narrow to explain intelligently an analysis in arithmetic or grammar. Wide views tend to make one reasonable and sympathetic; con- tracted views are apt to make one exacting and in- tolerant. Our screens should be so gauged as to catch the former and let the latter drop. 4. There should be a premium on the progressive spirit. Continuous one-year certificates should be discouraged, if not abolished. At the same time there should be a constant stimulant furnished to enable the teacher to leave the ruts of text-book exercise, and to ascend to the higher planes of knowledge — alti- tudes that provide generous views of men and events, and flood the heart with the gladsome light of wide- stretching horizons. To accomplish this, exempt the teacher from re-examination in any common branch, when he has reached a high grade therein, provided he submits to an examination in a correlative higher branch? For instance, in my county (Lawrence), if a teacher has over 80 in a branch, he can, if he de- sire, continue that grade in his new certificate, pro- vided he takes an examination in the higher branch associated with the one in which his grade is carried forward. If he should have 85 in arithmetic, he may Examination of Teachers. 1 :. 5 have that grade renewed if he submits to an examina- tion in mechanics. If, in the advanced examination. he gets below 50, he is given no credit in thai ad- vanced branch; if he gets over 50, that branch is added to the certificate to strengthen its character. In the process the teacher runs no risk. It is devised solely for his benefit and the school. If his grade is high in United States history, he may take general history as the correlative branch; for grammar we take rhetoric; for reading, literature; pedagogy, civil government; geography, simple science; physiology and hygiene, moral philosophy; penmanship, art. Now, this kind of an examination is not only educa- tional, but it soon reveals to the examiner who are the ambitious, progressive, wide-awake teachers of his bailiwick — something he should know, and know- ing, act accordingly. 5. There should be a gradual elevation of the standard. The tests of to-day should be stronger than those of yesterday, because in the face of the accumu- lating demand for certificates, severer tests can be en- forced. That is reason enough. It so happens that the interests of education and the teacher himself are closely interwoven here. I have not time for t lie steps of the argument, but you see through it all — to the ergo, which is that low wages is a sign of educa- tional dry rot. It is one of the things that a Board of Examiners can largely control — that a fifty-dollar man may not be pushed aside by a twenty-five-dollar man, because a twenty-five-dollar man is not placed there to do the miserable work. This is one way of cleaning and purifying the murky stream, of which 156 Keynotes of Education. Professor Gordy spoke yesterday, and will answer the purpose well, until his more scientific processes are fully elaborated. 6. There should he at least one member on the Board of Examiners who is not a schoolteacher. There should be a link between the great, throbbing, bustling business world, and the system of instruction which prepares youth for practical affairs. The nearer we get our teaching to real life, the better. Book men are apt to become bookish. Education should not be permitted to incur the risks of pedantry. Beality and ideality blend in the higher criticism, but in common, every-day affairs, they are too lightly re- lated. You have probably seen the lover in the com- edy, courting his idol according to rules, which he slyly catches from a book in his hand. Well, no less awkward will you feel going into a bank with a school arithmetic as a guide. Not that the rules or principles are deficient, but because the problems are wholly different from what were expected. The profession of teaching is not to make teach- ers but citizens, and no affectation of learning will be able to solve the problems of the day which involve as much of willing and doing as of thinking and knowing; and which come to us, not down from cool, serene summits, but up from the dusty valleys where the crowds are. The hope of American life is in staying with it. Common-school education rests in the confidence of the taxpayer. But apart from these generalizations, there are some direct reasons why a Board of Examiners should Examination of Teachers. 1 5 7 not be monopolized by teachers. I do not wond that teachers are a mutual admiration society. I fol- low the procession and do a great deal of shouti myself. But when this mutual admiration breaks up into county areas and municipal coteries, quite im- pervious to excellence from without: when it stifles the competition of worth and supplies the schools from a sort of system of inbreeding of teachers, it is time for reform. There is as much human nature in a teacher as in anybody else; and the lofty and exact- ing criticism that is expended on the able and aggres- sive teacher who proposes to cross over from the next county to be a candidate for one of the highest-prici 'I schools, contrasts astonishingly with, the generous and effusive treatment of that smart boy or girl just out of "our" school, whose certificate is to be a testimonial of "our" success and ability as a teacher. A well- informed, thoughtful citizen should be placed on the Board to watch this. Upon considerations of this na- ture a law has been passed prohibiting examiners teaching normal schools or classes to train teachers. It is a wise law, and its violation should not be toler- ated for a moment. A Board of Examiners must keep away from these complications, and be subject only to just and exalting influences. And now, after all has been said, after theorizing has been exhausted, we must admit thai an examina- tion of teachers at its best is not a perfect process. There is a feeling of insufficiency connected with it. But a Board of Examiners is not only a testing ma- chine, — it is a great educational iniluence; and if 158 Keynotes of Education. made the most of, can do more public good than any other official organization in our Government. In his masterly address before the superintendents' section of the National Educational Association, at Philadel- phia, Mr. George William Curtis declared that the Board of Examiners is the basis of our common- school system, and that the first requisite of an ex- aminer is a sincere interest in the cause of education. It is with him to make the aim high or low; he fixes the character of the development. And so he must be a man of intelligence, of high character, of pure purpose, of tireless energy. It is with him to keep every teacher of the county on the strain towards something better and higher. He may prescribe a test; he can do something greater — he can set up a goal. He must be a man of advanced ideas. He must be up with the science, the invention, the achieve- ments of the day. He must be a reader of the North American Review, the Forum, the Atlantic, the Cen- tury, and similar publications, where the progress and genius of the times sparkle in gems of thought. He must look ahead rather than behind. No man living does so much to fix the standard of life as the school examiner. The preacher and editor fall behind in this. As is the examiner, so is the teacher. He ar- ranges the sweep of the trajectory, whether it reaches the stars or the mud. This educational influence sup- plements the weakness of the tests with responsibili- ties that can not be shifted. If pedantry, or charla- tanry, or shallowness, is the existing habit, it is for him to interpose the conditions in which these blights Examination of Teachers. L59 can not thrive. Low bents and false notions must be met by an inspiration that leads one upon broader and higher paths, from which life is seen, full of duties and possibilities that invest the soul with a brighter and better purpose, which is the very essence of education. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, mm oo 9 811 00(LQ, lilf ;; " : -;- - : - '■'-■• : ■••;■■< •'•'•-•; "■-■■'•■ SHE TS8IkL» si '*v ^HH