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INTERNATIONAL EDVGATION SERIES 
 
 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 KINDERGARTEN 
 
 BY 
 
 SUSAN E. BLOW 
 
 AUTHOR OP "SYMBOLIC EDUCATION," "MOTTOES AND COMMENTARIES 
 OF FROEBEL'S MOTHER PLAY,'' "LETTERS TO A MOTHER," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1908 
 
U8rtARYofOON6RES5 
 Vwo GODies Heteiyd« 
 
 JUL 25 ISJUd 
 
 k iHiviiiHiii ciitry 
 COPY d. 
 
 COPTRIGHT, 190S, BT 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Published July, 1908 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 Some readers of this book may be surprised to 
 see how conflicting world-views masquerade not only 
 in popular literature and in semi-philosophical writ- 
 ings, but also in methods of instruction in the 
 schools, and, above all, even in the programmes of 
 the kindergarten ! This certainly ought to encour- 
 age us to look again at the claims made for the 
 educational creed of Froebel, which lays so much 
 emphasis on the child's original self-activity. In 
 fact, this book should set in a new light Froebel's 
 place as the great educational reformer for the pe- 
 riod of infancy. 
 
 While self-activity itself is an inspiration to the 
 disciples of Froebel, it is a stone of stumbling to 
 many educators who have adopted with enthusiasm 
 the doctrine of evolution. They have understood 
 evolution as a blind impulse given by nature to de- 
 velop or unfold — an impulse given not only to plants 
 and animals, but also to chemical elements, planets 
 and suns, and even to comets and nebulae. 
 
 It is admitted, however, that the evolution below 
 the stage of life consists in fitting inorganic sub- 
 stances for the needs of organic life. Arrived at 
 life, the development assumes the form of self-activ- 
 ity, and students of evolution ought to look at and 
 
vi EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 recognize in all its shapes this new form of exist- 
 ence. Mechanic shapes are the effect of external col- 
 lisions or relations to outside bodies. But life is 
 the manifestation of a power to react on the environ- 
 ment and modify it for its own purposes. 
 
 Life can perform by its self-activity two kinds of 
 adjustments. It can adjust itself to its environment ; 
 it can modify its environment so as to adjust that 
 external condition to its own needs and purposes. 
 
 Evolution in nature, in fact, points toward the 
 assumption of a transcendental power of self-deter- 
 mination on the part of plants, animals, and men, 
 in so far as progress or development is due to efforts 
 of animals or plants or men to adapt themselves to 
 their environment, or, on the other hand, to adapt 
 the elements of their environment to their own needs. 
 
 Wherever life exists there is a transcendental power 
 of self-determination. Kant used this word tran- 
 scendental to describe freedom as something which 
 sets aside the links of causation in its environment 
 and sets up in their stead its own causal activity. 
 The plant overcomes inorganic matter and its caus- 
 ality and assimilates or digests it, making it into 
 vegetable cells having the same idiosyncrasy as itself 
 — the oak, for example, making the soil and nitric 
 acid, carbonic acid, and other elements, into the cells 
 of oak leaves and oak wood and acorns. The plant 
 thus sums itself up at the end of its process by be- 
 ginning (in its seeds) a series of new individuals of 
 the same species, each one capable of interrupting 
 the mechanical chain of causality in the external 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE vii 
 
 order of nature, and substituting for it its own 
 causality, possessing more or less individuality. 
 
 The animal has much more of this individuality 
 than the plant, for it possesses not only assimilation 
 (or digestion), but also feeling and locomotion. 
 
 The self-determining power of the animal goes on 
 to build for itself organs of tasting, smelling, hearing, 
 and seeing. This makes its evolution. 
 
 Even the plant seizes from its environment what is 
 suitable and makes it into tissue wherewith to form 
 its organs and its structure. The animal increases 
 its apparatus for seizing and appropriating its envi- 
 ronment, and constructs new organs or instruments 
 not only for assimilation or nourishment, but also 
 for locomotion and sensation. These are progressive 
 forms of self-activity — manifestations of a rudimen- 
 tary will-power building for itself a means of oper- 
 ating upon the external world. 
 
 Underneath all manifestations of life we perceive 
 action according to purpose or design. 
 
 If the living being is conscious of these purposes or 
 designs they become motives. 
 
 Motives are higher, and more complete manifesta- 
 tions of self-activity — in fact, they indicate the arrival 
 at freedom proper. 
 
 The motive contains in it a recognition of an ex- 
 ternal environment not in harmony with the self, and 
 also a recognition of a possible action of its own 
 which may modify that external existence and bring 
 it into harmony with the self. For example, I may 
 see an apple; as a mere existence it is not, and can- 
 
VIU EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 not as such be, food. I possess appetite, but only by 
 the action of devouring the apple may I convert the 
 apple into food. The motive is the concept of its use 
 to me, forced on the apple — ^the apple being destroyed 
 in the realization of my motive. I made the motive 
 by thinking away the reality of the apple and sub- 
 stituting for it the thought of the reality of my food. 
 Then I make this thought-motive a reality by a sec- 
 ond act of my will, by eating the apple. There is, 
 therefore, a twofold act of the self, first I form a 
 motive in my mind and secondly I realize that 
 motive. 
 
 Motives therefore unfold and make explicit my 
 freedom, and are not, as Victor Cousin taught, the 
 mediation which sets aside my freedom. He sup- 
 posed that an act could not be perfectly spontaneous 
 and free unless it were an act done before the mind 
 had time to formulate its motives. By this theory 
 he hoped to answer the fatalists who held that the 
 will must be necessitated by the strongest motive. 
 There can be " no freedom, but only a constraint 
 from motives — the strongest of the motives constrains 
 the will.'^ But all this mistake arose through in- 
 correct analysis — the fatalist supposed that the per- 
 ception of the external reality (the apple, for ex- 
 ample) was itself a motive, whereas it could not 
 become a motive until the mind had combined it 
 with another percept, namely, its hungry self; and 
 by this combination of its hunger with the object it 
 did not as yet think a motive- — it did not complete 
 the thought of a motive until it added the idea of 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE IX 
 
 the seizure and destruction performed on the apple 
 by the act of eating it. Take away the thought of 
 the annulment of the apple's reality, and you take 
 away the thought of using it as food. 
 
 The motive always has in it the thought of the 
 annulment of a reality or at least of some change 
 of a real condition. And, whereas the determinist 
 supposes himself to have an immediate reality in a 
 motive, his motive is only a thought relative to the 
 annulment of the objective reality (the apple, e.g.) 
 before him. 
 
 On the plane of human life the apparatus for 
 knowing nature is very much extended, and so is the 
 apparatus for moving and combining objects of na- 
 ture and transforming and adapting them for the 
 uses of man. But even the animal, even the plant 
 has self-activity. The animal has motives also, and 
 even if they are not of a high order, they manifest as 
 far as they go his ability to annul the chain of 
 external causality first in thought and secondly in act. 
 
 There is one great step which differences man from 
 the animals; to man objects are not seen as isolated 
 particulars, but are seen as individuals of species 
 and as existing in a causal relation to other objects 
 in the world. 
 
 This gives a greatly enlarged scope for the creation 
 of instruments for the use of the will in acting upon 
 nature. Man as a language-using animal, sees each 
 object as a specimen of a class of objects, and in seeing 
 it thus he sees, as it were, a halo of possibility or po- 
 tentiality about each object. Each object is as it is, 
 
X EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 but it might have been different in this or that respect 
 because of some external cause, or because of some 
 defect in the object's reaction if it is a living being. 
 
 Moreover, each object is looked at by the human 
 self as possessing the capacity of being so modified 
 by the action of man as to take it out of its natural 
 functions and impose upon it a function of service 
 for man. The water brook may be converted into a 
 pond and its force applied through a water wheel 
 and other machinery to aid man in the transformation 
 bi nature. 
 
 This activity of thought which sees the possible 
 in the real is the great self-activity which distin- 
 guishes humanity. 
 
 In philosophy, for instance, man can - see these 
 potentialities as presuppositions. Through presup- 
 positions man can see the evidence of a Divine Being, 
 even in brute, inanimate, matter. He can see the nec- 
 essary immortality of thinking beings like himself. 
 
 He can by presuppositions perceive the grand pur- 
 pose of all nature as an evolution — he can recognize 
 time and space as a cradle for the development of 
 individualities and their ascent into immortal be- 
 ings. 
 
 All philosophy, science, literature, and art, and es- 
 pecially religion, become possible to this human being, 
 who can discern not only what he is, but read in the 
 actual being of his environment all of its potentialities 
 —present, papt, and future. ^^, ^ Harris. 
 
 Washington, D. C, June 5, 1908. 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 Within the past thirty years all grades of edu- 
 cation from the kindergarten to the university have 
 been more or less influenced by the scientific doc- 
 trine of relativity as the controlling principle of 
 the universe; by the working hypothesis of physio- 
 logical psychology that " mental action may be uni- 
 formly and absolutely a function of brain action/' 
 and by the undue ascendancy of industrial aims 
 over the mind of the American people. 
 
 The primary object of this book is to trace the 
 results of these influences upon the kindergarten. 
 The hope with which it has been written is that 
 portrayal of their results within one small province 
 of education may help to direct attention to the 
 disasters they have caused and are causing in all 
 provinces of education. 
 
 The plan of the book is a very simple one. Each 
 of the above-mentioned modes of thought is con- 
 cretely presented in the t}^ical example of a kinder- 
 garten programme. Each programme is discussed 
 with the purpose of throwing its creative principle 
 into clear relief. Finally, some suggestion is given 
 of the influence of this principle in other spheres 
 of life and thought. 
 
xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 In addition to its general aim this book has a 
 secondary and more specific purpose. It endeavors 
 to set forth the theories of Froebel with regard to 
 the education of little children. 
 
 The educational creed of Froebel contains four 
 reciprocally dependent articles. The first is that 
 man is a self-creative being; the second, that in vir- 
 tue of this fact education shall encourage self- 
 expression; the third, that encouragement shall be 
 given only to those modes of self-expression which 
 are related to the values of human life; the fourth, 
 that all great human values are revelations of the 
 aboriginal self -determining energy which achieves 
 its own ideal form in self-consciousness. This final 
 article does not deny the influence of man's biologic 
 and historic heredity, nor does it deny the influence 
 of either his physical or his social environment. It 
 does, however, insist both upon the priority and the 
 primacy of self-determination. 
 
 The creators of concentric programmes either re- 
 ject or ignore all these articles of the Froebelian 
 creed. The creators of free-play programmes accept 
 the first and second, but either reject or ignore the 
 third and fourth. The creators of industrial pro- 
 grammes accept the first three, but deny or ignore 
 the fourth, and thereby are betrayed into practical 
 methods which violate the articles they theoretically 
 affirm. 
 
 It is due to readers of this book that I should 
 explain my reason for devoting its final chapter to 
 a discussion of different philosophic world-views. 
 
' AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii 
 
 The conflicting practice of kindergartners implies 
 divergent conceptions of education. These diver- 
 gent conceptions of education are not mere eddies 
 in the stream of thought, but correspond with dif- 
 ferent directions of its main current. In its jubi- 
 lant sense of conformity with nature, and in its 
 swift surrender to fatal impulse, the free-play kin- 
 dergarten repeats in its tiny circle the self-destruc- 
 tive sweep of naturalism. In its tendency to con- 
 ceive the child as shaped and fashioned by the 
 historic process; in its reaction from intellectualism 
 to an exaggerated voluntarism, and in its practical 
 emphasis upon functional values, the industrial 
 kindergarten betrays the influence of pragmatism. 
 In its conception of the child, its symbolism and 
 its freightage of free activity with ideal values, the 
 Froebelian kindergarten reveals a lineage from the 
 philosophy of idealism. A study of educational 
 issues in the kindergarten which should omit con- 
 sideration of these three world- views would there- 
 fore dismiss its subject without any final explana- 
 tion.^ 
 
 In the discussion of pragmatism I have restricted 
 myself to that form of the doctrine which has af- 
 fected the practice of the kindergarten. 
 
 In my presentation of the philosophy which un- 
 derlies the kindergarten I do not claim to have 
 repeated exactly the conscious thought of its founder. 
 
 1 The connection of the concentric programme with Her- 
 bart's "World View" is shown in chapter V. Herbart's 
 " World View " never obtained general currency. 
 
xiv AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 Froebel was a religious m3'stic. His power of in- 
 tuitive divination far exceeded his power of philo- 
 sophic statement. I believe that the philosophy of 
 idealism as presented in the final chapter of this 
 book is implied in Froebel's mystic conception of 
 the dogma of the Trinity and in his own conception 
 of man as Gliedganzes. Furthermore, I hold that 
 this is the only philosophy which adequately inter- 
 prets his educational procedure. 
 
 My grateful acknowledgments are due to Prof. 
 Charles Hubbard Judd, of Yale University, for his 
 kindness in explaining to me an important question 
 of genetic psychology, and to Prof. John Angus 
 MacVannel, of Columbia University, for help re- 
 ceived from his monograph on " The Educational 
 Theories of Herbart and Froebel,^' for his courtesy 
 in reading the proof of this book, and for valuable 
 advice. 
 
 Susan E. Blow. 
 
 Cazenovia, N. Y., June 13, 1908. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Concentric Programme 1-33 
 
 The kindergarten embodies great educational ideals 
 — Results of an inadequate grasp of these ideals — 
 Three departures from the Froebelian ideal — Aim 
 of the book, 1. A concentric programme, 2-7. Dis- 
 cussion of concentric programme — Four defects in- 
 herent in its principle: First, assumed priority of 
 conscious thought ; second, imposition of a thoug-ht- 
 mass; third, sacrifice of specific values; fourth, sub- 
 stitution of arbitrary connections for causal ties, 
 8-10. Results of concentric programmes in the 
 kindergarten, 10. Pedigree of concentric pro- 
 gramme, 1 1-13. Concentric programmes in the school, 
 13-19. The principle of concentration^ — Its defect 
 the assumption that mutually repellent subjects 
 may be fused — Contrast of scientific and humane 
 studies — Scientific studies should be so presented as 
 to lead to discovery of causes — Humane studies 
 should be so presented as to lead to a knowledge of 
 human nature — Special sciences and special groups 
 of the humane studies demand different methods — • 
 Values of mathematics, physics, botany, zoology, 
 literature, art, and history — Methods adapted to 
 awaken consciousness of these values, 19-29. Prin- 
 ciple of concentration rooted in doctrine of apper- 
 ception as explained by Herbart — Two defects in this 
 explanation: First, primacy of intellect over feeling 
 and will; second, doctrine that presentations are the 
 
 XV 
 
xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 elements of mental life — Educational atomism — Its 
 two forms: First, emphasis upon sensations as 
 original elements of mind; second, emphasis upon 
 associative processes — Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Her- 
 bart as atomic educators, 29-32. Froebel discards 
 both forms of educational atomism, 33. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Froebelian Antithesis or Contrast . . 33-75 
 
 Froebel's vortical education versus the concentric educa- 
 tion of some Herbartians — Thought - masses and 
 typical facts — Facts as relative and absolute syn- 
 theses — Definition of a typical fact — It must suggest 
 a creative energy, 33-35. Illustrations of the power 
 of typical facts, 35-37. Typical facts appeal to im- 
 agination — Through their use Froebel captures the 
 realm of phantasy, 37. Contrast between the psy- 
 chology of the concentric programme and the psy- 
 chology of the kindergarten: the former derives 
 interest, desire, volition, from conscious thought; the 
 latter begins with interest and desire w^hich express 
 and define themselves in deeds, 38. The point of 
 departure for kindergarten education, typical acts — 
 These typical acts include play with typical objects 
 and representation of typical characters, relations, 
 and processes, 39. Arguments against kindergarten 
 gifts — Discussion of these arguments, 39-42. Scien- 
 tific value of play with archetypal forms, that it 
 leads from effects to causes, 42, 43. Value of play 
 with archetypal forms as related to art : First, leads 
 to accurate seizure of concrete forms; second, leads 
 to appreciation of rhythm, measure, and proportion, 
 43-52. Typical processes — Value of dividing and 
 reconstructing wholes: value of sequences; value of 
 evolutionary exercises mediating given antitheses, 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xvil 
 
 PAGE 
 
 52-56. Relation of these values to Froebel's world- 
 view, 56-59. Froebel's belief that all values are 
 indigenous to the mind, 59-61. Kindergarten gifts 
 and occupations contrasted with kindergarten games: 
 the former relate to arts and sciences ; the latter pre- 
 pare for the humanities, 61, 62. What is meant by 
 the ideal — A cosmic community as both archetype 
 and goal of creation — Relationship of human institu- 
 tions to this goal — Educational function of the 
 several institutions, 63-66. Typical characters, 66- 
 68. Typical relationships, 68, 69. Mistaken criti- 
 cisms of the kindergarten, 69, 70. Typical processes, 
 70, 71. Value of types as concrete embodiments of 
 universal ideals, 72, 73. The concentric programme 
 and its Froebelian antithesis or contrast, 73-75. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Methodical Treatment of Literature . 76-92 
 
 Insistence upon value of classic stories the meritorious 
 deed of Herbartian educators — ^This deed undone by 
 using stories as cores of concentration and by sub- 
 jecting them to methodical treatment, 76. Meth- 
 odical treatment illustrated, 76-80. Criticism of 
 methodical treatment: First, it kills interest in story; 
 second, neutralizes influence of story; third, distracts 
 attention from story; fourth, antagonizes children 
 by calling for repetition of story; fifth, introduces 
 irrelevant information; sixth, makes false appeal 
 to moral sense, 80, 81. Three psychologic fallacies 
 involved in the methodical treatment of literature: 
 First, children should not define the feelings stirred 
 by presentation of typical characters, collisions, and 
 catastrophes; second, new facts do not seize upon 
 the mind with greater force when they readily fuse 
 with familiar ideas; third, children should not be 
 
XVlll TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 made aware of all that is going on in their minds, 
 81-85. The methodical treatment of literature an 
 outcome of Herbart's false analysis of mind — The 
 soul is not " a simple wherein nothing exists but ideas, 
 their relations and interactions" — Mind is an energy 
 one and indivisible; feeling, willing, and knowing 
 special modifications of this energy, 86. The method- 
 ical treatment of stories attacks the spirit of litera- 
 ture by interpreting its typical characters and 
 situations — Literature knows no moral imperatives 
 — Its appeal is not to understanding but to imagina- 
 tion, 87. Methodical treatment of literature in the 
 kindergarten, 88-90. Summary of criticisms on 
 concentric programme and methodical treatment of 
 literature, 91, 92. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Literature and Life 93-124 
 
 Nursery rhymes portray elementary types of character 
 and situation — Illustrations, 93, 94. Value of typical 
 characters ; they begin the work of sorting humanity 
 into classes, 95. Traditional tales begin the revela- 
 tion of ideal humanity — National myths define this 
 ideal more clearly, 96. The ideal human being as 
 portrayed in Aryan myth has: First, a divine hered- 
 ity; second, a double selfhood; third, a besetting sin; 
 fourth, he inspires the hatred of lesser men; fifth, 
 explores and subdues the world and himself; sixth, 
 sacrifices himself for others ; seventh, realizes himself 
 through self-renunciation, 96-99. Differences be- 
 tween Greek, Roman, and Teutonic myths: Greece 
 reveals beautiful individuality; Rome, self -subordi- 
 nation; Teutonic myth destructive self-assertion, 
 100-1. Connection of Greek myth with Greek 
 history — Greece realized the ideal of freedom in the 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 form of beauty — Beauty is " the shining of self- 
 activity" — Greece made nature human; made man 
 divine; created beautiful bodies through disciplined 
 activity; revealed free activity in statues; created 
 all forms of literary art ; made language the material 
 of literary art; produced standard work of literary 
 criticism (Aristotle's Poetics); fought Asia in de- 
 fense of ideals of freedom — Defined freedom in her 
 philosophy, 101-3. Rome embodied freedom in 
 the form of law — Originated the idea of contract — 
 The combination of two wills suggests a common will 
 — The community which safeguards contract is a 
 higher revelation of common will — Recognition of 
 transcendental will calls forth purpose and patriot- 
 ism — Purpose recognized in nature — All lesser pur- 
 poses organized to accomplish the higher purpose 
 of the state — "Cosmic patriotism/' 103-5. The 
 Teutonic peoples clamor for satisfaction of immediate 
 impulse and recognition of their immediate personal- 
 ity — ^These are savage and self-destructive demands. 
 They assert the form of freedom but deny its sub- 
 stance — ^They portend a tragic destiny — This tragic 
 destiny is adumbrated in the great Teutonic myth 
 all of whose chief personages perish through fatal 
 deeds, 105-9. The Hebrew contribution to the 
 ideal of freedom — The objective validity of the moral 
 as point of departure for the Hebrew religion — The 
 inseparable correlate of morality is will — ^Therefore 
 if morality has objective validity there is a personal 
 God — Righteousness and loving-kindness are neces- 
 sary implications of personality — The Hebrews re- 
 vealed the true God — ^The nation lived by faith in 
 this God — The Covenant of Righteousness, 109-13. 
 Retreat of contemporary thought from morality 
 to expediency, 113-14. Historic ascent from the 
 concept of a Personal God whose necessary attri- 
 butes are justice and love to the doctrine of the Trin- 
 1 
 
XX TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ity, 114-15. Initial form of this doctrine, 115-16. 
 Double reaction of the Teutonic peoples to the 
 Christian ideal as illustrated in the legends of chivalry 
 and the legend of Faust, 116-18. Historic resolu- 
 tion of the contradiction which rends the soul of ger- 
 maine peoples — ^What is claimed for any one man 
 must be granted to all men — Gunpowder — Printing — 
 Luther — Transfiguration of the Faust myth by 
 Goethe — Adequate definition of freedom by Hegel, 
 118-19. Germany solves theoretic implications of 
 freedom — England and America discover the practical 
 instrumentalities by which freedom may be estab- 
 lished among men: First, Local self-government; 
 second. National government of, by, and for the 
 people; third, public schools; fourth, public libraries; 
 fifth, steamships, railways, telegraph wires, and news- 
 papers, 119-20. Runnymede and Shakespeare, 120- 
 21. Goal of history the federated union of the world 
 and the cosmopolitan individual — Mutual action and 
 reaction of literature and life, 121-23. Summary 
 and prophecy — Man creates himself in and through 
 communion with men — History and literature reveal 
 the stages of his self-realization in ever enlarging 
 communities — Both prophesy as their consumma- 
 tion the realization of freedom in and through a 
 cosmic community, 123-24. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Herbart and Froebel 125-49 
 
 Discrimination between Herbart and his more radical 
 disciples: First, they failed to give sufficient atten- 
 tion to his distinction between primordial and de- 
 rived presentations; second, they did not sufficiently 
 consider his plea that instruction should be divided 
 into two main lines, the one for understanding, the 
 other for sympathy, 125-28. Herbart recognizes 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 the need of alphabets of sense-perception and per- 
 ceives that the most important of these is a mathe- 
 matical alphabet — His analysis of geometric forms 
 into triangles, 128-29. Herbart's point of depar- 
 ture for humane studies — His admirable suggestions 
 with regard to stories, 130-31. Defect of Herbart's 
 plan an exclusive emphasis upon assimilative activ- 
 ity, 131-33. Defects in Herbart's explanation of 
 apperception: First, denies the spontaneous activity 
 and structural form of mind; second, ignores the in- 
 fluence of feeling and volition, 133-34. Herbart's 
 pedagogy self-contradictory because it insists upon 
 interest as both the result of thought-masses and the 
 agency through which they are created, 134. Dis- 
 cussion of Herbart's ontology and psychology, 135- 
 37. Connection between Herbart's own life and his 
 insistence upon assimilative processes — The great 
 age in which Herbart lived and his detachment from 
 it, 137-39. Froebel's enthusiastic response to the 
 spirit of his age — Froebel's two great insights: First, 
 the values of human life are concrete expressions of 
 the substance of freedom ; second, play is that activ- 
 ity of childhood which achieves the form of freedom, 
 140. Play and work, 141-142. The kindergarten 
 freights the form of play with the values of life, 142- 
 44. Froebel's psychology: the self is an aboriginal 
 energy whose ideal form is self-consciousness, 145. 
 Froebel's recognition of the implications of self-con- 
 sciousness, 146. Contribution of Froebel's psychology 
 to his pedagogics — His great achievements: First, 
 recognition of the priority of action; second, connec- 
 tion between plays of childhood and values of life; 
 third, accent upon imitative games, tj'pical objects, 
 acts, processes, and characters; fourth, use of natural 
 analogues; fifth, presentation of counterparts; sixth, 
 creation of three types of exercise; seventh, organiza- 
 tion of kindergarten instrumentalities, 147-48. 
 
XXU TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Free-Play Programme 150-89 
 
 Presentation of free-play ideal — Each child to do what 
 he pleases as he pleases, 150-53. Record of two days 
 in a free-play kindergarten, 153-56. Contrast be- 
 tween free-play and Froebelian ideal — The latter 
 grafts upon plays pointing toward human values the 
 higher realization of their own ideal, 156, 157. Con- 
 centric programme conceives child as a learning being 
 — Free-play programme conceives him as a reacting 
 organism — Froebelian programme conceives him as 
 possessing a generic selfhood, 157, 158. Test experi- 
 ments to determine children's reactions to kinder- 
 garten instrumentalities — Reasons why these tests 
 are misleading: First, jumble of materials predisposes 
 to imperative or vacillating choices; second, children 
 need initiation in order to choose; third, defects of 
 kindergartners create disturbing influences; fourth, 
 kindergartners' own judgments of value react upon 
 choices of children, 159-63. Thirty-five years of 
 experience proves priority of both interest and value 
 to belong to building gifts, cutting, drawing, coloring, 
 clay work, parquetry and sewing — Justification of 
 kindergarten material through experience of ages, 
 163. The mediatorial methods of the kindergarten: 
 First, transit from imitation toward originality; sec- 
 ond, suggested subject; third, free initiative with 
 expert reaction; fourth, the simple problem; fifth, 
 group work, 164, 165. Two fallacies of the free-play 
 kindergarten: First, the conception of the kinder- 
 garten as a substitute for childish play in its totality; 
 second, conception of the child as only a reacting or- 
 ganism — Result of this second fallacy undue emphasis 
 upon incitements, 165, 166. Contrast of Froebelian 
 and free-play kindergartens — The method of the 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 former assists children to integrate themselves; that 
 of the latter tends toward disintegration by betraying 
 children into vacillating or imperative choices, 166- 
 68. Collapse of free-play into reflex activity illus- 
 trated by plays of physical action — Dogma that play 
 should be directed by hereditary impulses — Incen- 
 tives to quicken these impulses — Dogma that funda- 
 mental muscles precede accessory muscles in the 
 order of development — Denial of this dogma — 
 Discussion of muscular coordination — Two points 
 established: First, fine muscles in full operation very 
 early in life; second, development takes place 
 through coordination of diffuse movements — Value 
 of the kindergarten as a preparation for the arts and 
 trades, 168-74. Representative plays — Blindness 
 of free-play kindergartners to meaning of imitation: 
 First, what a child imitates he tends to become; 
 second, what he imitates he will notice; third, what 
 he imitates he begins to understand, 174-77. Circle 
 games discarded — Free-play programme assumes 
 that education should never lead children to do any- 
 thing they might not have done of themselves — 
 Biologic and social "short cuts" — Education should 
 seek these — Froebelian games mediate between the 
 traditional games of the nursery and the playground, 
 177, 178. Restatement of Froebelian ideal — It 
 aims to abet generic modes of self-expression, 178, 
 179. The immediate interests of little children not a 
 reliable index of what is contributory to their develop- 
 ment, 179, 180. Methods of story-telling which 
 chain the mind to sense-perception — Wide preva- 
 lence of these methods, 180-83. Picture-writing — 
 Repudiation of design — Results of this repudia- 
 tion, 183, 184. Summary: First, the free-play pro- 
 gramme discourages self-activity; second, minimizes 
 exercise of hands and fingers; third, arrests intelli- 
 gence; fourth, interferes with development of will, 
 
xxiv TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 185-87. Influence of free-play ideal upon existing 
 kindergartens: First, undue increase of games of 
 mere physical movement; second, concentration of 
 interest upon animals; third, use of valueless toys; 
 fourth, elimination of valuable instrumentalities; 
 fifth, omission of exercises which organize experience ; 
 sixth, enslaving methods of story-telling; seventh, 
 repudiation of symbolism; eighth, repudiation oJ 
 design, 187, 188. Comparison of Froebelian, con- 
 centric, and free-play kindergartens — The first 
 recognizes both the values of life and the self-activity 
 of the child — The second denies self-activity but 
 recognizes values — The third denies self -activity and 
 ignores values, 188, 189. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 The Individual and the Race .... 190-225 
 Contemporary Rousseauism — It fails to adjust the rival 
 claims of biologic and historic recapitulation — It 
 puts an arresting emphasis upon feral and animal 
 activities — It gives scant attention to five important 
 questions: First, Are all the stages of the process 
 of development directly related as antecedents and 
 consequences? second. Do some race experiences 
 represent a wandering from the path of progress? 
 third, Must the individual recapitulate such wander- 
 ings? fourth, Have goodness and wisdom been 
 achieved by following nature or warring against 
 nature? fifth. If by war, whence came the ideals 
 which incited war? 189-93. Discussion of the pre- 
 cept, Give Nature her fling: First, among our native 
 instincts are many to which we must not give free 
 fling; second, history shows that virtue has been 
 achieved through self-restraint; third, psychology 
 insists upon inhibition — The method of laissez-alLr 
 arrests development at its point of departure, 193-97. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS Xav^ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Discussion of the precept, Make virtue pay: First, 
 it presupposes that the child is wholly selfish; second, 
 it appeals to selfishness by making good acts of 
 profit and bad acts of disadvantage; third, thereby 
 it substitutes expediency for virtue; fourth, its pre- 
 supposition is of more than doubtful validity, but its 
 method finds many parallels in history, 197-203. A 
 third method of moral education — Moral ideals uni- 
 versalize antecedent but limited affections — Love and 
 sympathy are native emotions — By enlarging their 
 range and increasing their strength we may ex- 
 pel baser emotions — "Expulsive power of higher 
 affections" — The activity of inhibition directed not 
 against terminal acts but initial emotions — In- 
 hibitory results produced by self -expressive methods 
 — The motive power which makes possible the exten- 
 sion of love and sympathy, faith in the fatherhood of 
 God and the brotherhood of man — Faith implied in 
 all forms of human society — Final premise of true 
 moral education faith in personality as supreme 
 principle of the universe and in the soul of man as 
 participating in this principle — Vindication of this 
 premise by history, philosophy, and psychology, 
 204-18. Froebel's statement that the feeling of com- 
 munity supplies the point of departure for moral 
 education, 219. Definition of different virtues as 
 modes of action called forth by right relationship 
 between individuals and social wholes — Conclusion 
 that good habits must be formed by good actions and 
 good actions performed through individual initiative, 
 220, 221. In intellectual education no less than in 
 moral lower interests must be inhibited by creating 
 higher ones — Attention the beginning of intellectual 
 culture — It is an activity of inhibition — Two forms 
 of attention: First, voluntary attention; second, 
 selective interest — Through acts of voluntary atten- 
 tion we become the determiners of our own selective 
 
xxvi TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 interest, 222, 223. Answers to questions: First, evo- 
 lution by antagonism; second, mankind has often 
 strayed from the path of progress: third, abortive 
 experiments should not be repeated ; fourth, progress 
 by war against nature ; fifth, ideals are universalized 
 affections, 223, 224. Contemporary Rousseauism 
 claims that the development of the individual 
 should repeat that of the race — In practice it repeats 
 a discarded terminus ah quo, 224, 225. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The New Return to Nature 226-38 
 
 The new return to nature presupposes that all things 
 may be explained by their process of becoming — 
 Reaction of this presupposition upon men's views 
 of customs, institutions, religion, art, and literature, 
 226-30. The history of the new return to nature is 
 the history of the free-play kindergarten writ large — 
 In every sphere it shows a rapid regress from false 
 freedom to fate, 230-32. Froebel's studies of child- 
 hood were influenced by the presupposition that 
 in the structure of consciousness must be sought 
 the key to nature, man, and education, 232-34. 
 The fundamental tenet of Neo-Rousseauism is 'Hhat 
 pedagogics must seek the ways and means of in- 
 vesting man's capital of native instincts," 234-36. 
 Froebel holds that man and the universe are evolving 
 in a discernible direction toward a definable goal — 
 This goal defined as an infinite community of souls 
 each of which fulfills itself through communion with 
 all others — The universe is psychical in its nature — 
 The nature of consciousness must determine both the 
 subject matter and the method of education, 236- 
 38. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS XXVll 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Industrial Programme 239-80 
 
 The industrial programme concentric in form — Its cores 
 of concentration primitive industries, 239, 240. An 
 industrial programme, 241-43. Loss of the crea- 
 tive idea that the form of play shall be freighted 
 with the values of life — Discussion of work and 
 play: Work is activity directed by a purpose; 
 its demand that the worker shall hold himself to 
 his task ; its value that it teaches the great lesson of 
 self-subordination — Play is activity for its own 
 sake; its value is that it creates the seK which later 
 shall learn to subordinate itself — Confusion of mind 
 shown in recent discussions of work and play — 
 Activities which offer scope for originality will tend 
 to assume the form of play, 244-49. Most important 
 arguments advanced for the introduction of house- 
 hold industries into the kindergarten — Historic re- 
 capitulation substituted for biologic recapitulation — 
 Primitive industrial activities said to explain the 
 instinctive reactions of children — These primitive 
 activities represented to-day by household industries 
 — Denial of this claim — Denial of the claim that the 
 psychical attitudes of childhood can be fully ex- 
 plained by heredity — Denial of the claim that even 
 instinctive reactions have been created solely by 
 racial activities of industrial type, 249-57. Discus- 
 sion of the argument that children should repeat 
 primitive industries in order to dissolve the "dream 
 of magic," 257-59. The method of the industrial 
 programme involves a persistent appeal to the under- 
 standing, 259-6 L Constructive work, 261-63. The 
 method of Froebel follows the order of psychologic 
 development and provides for an ascent of activity 
 from physical movement, through symbolic represen- 
 tation and experimental arrangement to free creation 
 
xxviii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 —This method illustrated, 263-68. One practical 
 issue between Froebelian and industrial kinder- 
 gartners is the relative stress which they respectively 
 place upon utility and beauty — Dangers threatening 
 the United States — A second issue relates to the 
 order of mental development — Froebelian kinder- 
 gartners hold that this order is play, art, work, 268-71. 
 Reaction of the industrial ideal upon kindergarten 
 games, 271, 272. Reaction of the same ideal upon 
 stories, 272-78. Work and play, understanding 
 and imagination contrast with and supplement each 
 other — Insistence upon priority of play over work 
 in the order of development, 278-80. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Socialization of the School .... 281-99 
 The industrial programme is related to the movement 
 known as the socialization of the school, 281. The 
 school shall become ''an embryonic yet typical com- 
 munity" — Industries shall be the articulating centers 
 of school life, 282-85. Relationship between the 
 articulating centers of the socialized school and the 
 Herbartian cores of concentration — Reasons given 
 for the substitution of primitive industries for prim- 
 itive culture products, 285-87. Attempt to solve 
 the problem of discipHne through participation 
 in productive activities, 287-89. Unification of 
 studies — Industries as articulating centers of his- 
 tory, science, literature, and art, 289-94. Industrial 
 activities as mediators between the native interests 
 of childhood and the studies of the school — Fourfold 
 interests of the child: First, interest in communica- 
 tion; second, in finding out about things; third, in 
 construction; fourth, in artistic expression, 295-97. 
 Summary: " The facts and truths that enter into the 
 child's present experience and those contained in the 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 subject matter of studies" can be connected because 
 "they are the initial and final terms of one reality," 
 297-99. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Living Issue 300-38 
 
 Agreements between the ideal of the kindergarten and 
 the aims of the socialized school — An anxious ques- 
 tion, 300, 30L Industries and literature. Discussion 
 of two questions : First, Are industries the progenitors 
 of culture-products ; second. Is the reflection of local 
 and temporal conditions the chief value of literature? 
 — Life and industry are not coextensive terms — • 
 The literature of an age cannot be explained by its 
 industries — The literature of each nation and each 
 age reflects all aspects of its life — The life reflected is 
 itself either an approximate embodiment of generic 
 ideals or a struggle of the generic spirit to define these 
 ideals more adequately — Illustrations — Discussion 
 of myth — Its value as a primordial revelation of 
 generic ideals, 302-13. Industries and art — Art 
 is not the child of industry — The true order of devel- 
 opment is play, art, work — The attempt to derive 
 art from industry implies a conception of art which 
 ignores its defining mark — Picture-writing is not art 
 — The principle of art is order — Art is play or spon- 
 taneous activity which imposes upon itself the 
 structural form of human consciousness — True 
 method of art teaching, 313-18. Industries and his- 
 tory — Discussion of the question: Is it through 
 occupations determined by natural environment that 
 mankind has made its political and historical prog- 
 ress? — Great value of that view of history which as- 
 cends from the idea of extraneous relations between 
 man and the world to the idea of a self-related total- 
 
XXX TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ity of historic experience — A non sequitur conclusion 
 from this conception of history — The final source of 
 human progress is free activity — Humanity ascends 
 to higher levels through activities which are their own 
 ends — Religion is the foundation of moral life and 
 the creator of civilization — Oriental and occidental 
 civilizations contrasted — The contrast explained by 
 their contrasting religions — The marvels of modern 
 industry a by-product of Christianity, 318-27. His- 
 tory is the progress of man into the consciousness of 
 freedom, 327, 328. Industries and science — The 
 method which makes industries the articulating 
 centers of science is open to two objections: First, 
 it demands syntheses children cannot make ; second, 
 it prevents a scientific evolution of the sciences, 329, 
 330. The merit of the socialized school is that it 
 attempts to guide the spontaneous activities of 
 childhood toward the corresponding values of life — 
 Its defect is that it makes industries articulating 
 centers for all other values — In defense of its pro- 
 cedure it invokes the principle of historic recapitula- 
 tion — In reality this principle condemns its procedure 
 — All great human values are aboriginal expressions 
 of the free human spirit — The final explanation of the 
 defect of the socialized school is the conviction that 
 the sole aim of the school is to prepare for social life 
 combined with a conception of social life which iden- 
 tifies it with industrial life — The socialized school 
 fails to make adequate provision ''for the things 
 fertile of distinctive individuality," 330-33. In- 
 dustrial activities and school discipline — The order 
 of the workshop substituted for the order of the 
 traditional school — Inconsistency of this procedure, 
 334-36. Contrast between the method of Froebel 
 and the method of the socialized school, 337, 338. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxxi 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Three World- Views 339-86 
 
 Generative idea of Goethe's Faust — This idea a key to 
 the issue in men's souls to-day — Man is conscious — 
 If there be no eternal consciousness to which his con- 
 sciousness corresponds he is an outcast of the uni- 
 verse, 339-41. Naturalism explains the world-order 
 as a chance process with a tragic outcome, 341-43. 
 Reaction against this explanation as shown in litera- 
 ture, science, and psychology — Literature portrays 
 purposes as opposed to instincts — Science suspects 
 that natural selection cannot fully explain evolution 
 and recognizes the influence of intelligence — Psychol- 
 ogy discovers that "a belief in free will is still open to 
 us" — Force the correlate of will — Characteristic fea- 
 ture of contemporary thought the transfer of atten- 
 tion from instinct to will, from human passions to 
 human purposes — No agreement as to what these 
 purposes should be — The end of man is assumed to 
 be action — But action itself needs a final end — This 
 final end hidden from many contemporary thinkers 
 — Conventional morality replaced by adaptive in- 
 genuity — Repudiation of "absolute standards and 
 eternal values," 343-51. Philosophy is conscious- 
 ness exploring, inventorying, organizing, and explain- 
 ing its own content — Pragmatism is the philosophy 
 which most nearly explains the content of much 
 contemporary thought — Pragmatism was first a 
 method of philosophic procedure — The pragmatic 
 method tests ideas by their consequences — It lacks 
 a criterion by which to test these consequences them- 
 selves — Solution of this dilemma attempted by the 
 extension of pragmatism from a method of philo- 
 sophic procedure to a theory of truth — As a method 
 pragmatism asks what will work — As a theory of 
 
xxxii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 truth it is "the conviction that ideas become true in 
 so far as they accompHsh the work of uniting new- 
 experience with old " — The outcome of the pragmatic 
 doctrine is "that the true is only the expedient in the 
 way of our thinking just as the right is only the 
 expedient in the way of our behaving — Accord of 
 pragmatism with the spirit of contemporary literature 
 — Both deny the conception of truth as correspond- 
 ence with eternal reality — With emergence of this 
 denial into clear consciousness pragmatism becomes 
 not only a method for testing the validity of ideas 
 and a genetic theory of truth but also a hypothesis 
 with regard to the structure of the universe — This 
 hypothesis is that the universe is in process of mak- 
 ing; that it has alternative possibilities and that its 
 future is not assured — The universe has no will of its 
 own — As we substitute truths in the plural for 
 *' Truth with a big T and in the singular," so we 
 must substitute wills in the plural for one eternal 
 and absolute will — " Pragmatism postpones dogmatic 
 answer with regard to the subject of religion," but 
 the sympathies of pragmatists are with "the view 
 that the universe is ultimately a joint-stock affair — 
 Salvation is uncertain and partial, 351-60. Kinship 
 between the philosophy of naturalism and the re- 
 ligious creed of farther Asia — Three tenets of the 
 Oriental creed, one unity; indifference to moral 
 distinctions — Extinction — Revival of these tenets, 
 360-64. Kinship between pragmatism and Zoro- 
 astrianism — Characteristic feature of Zoroastrianism 
 the renunciation of unity and the setting up of dis- 
 tinction — Great deed of this religion the determina- 
 tion to fight evil — •Pragmatism has arisen out of a 
 resolute grapple with the enigma of evil — Belief of 
 pragmatists that idealism holds an immoral doctrine 
 of evil, 364-70. The philosophy of absolute idealism 
 — Its presupposition is that the final explanation of 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxxill 
 
 PAGE 
 
 the universe must be sought in a completely realized 
 self-consciousness — Denial of this presupposition 
 underlies every practical issue discussed in this book, 
 370-72. Many interpreters of idealism have aided 
 to bring their fundamental postulate into disrepute 
 by assuming that the perfect self-consciousness in- 
 cludes all individual selves — This assumption makes 
 God the author of evil — The human soul is not a part 
 of God — Each human soul is a duplicate of the self- 
 determining form of the divine self-consciousness, 
 372, 373. The distinctive characteristic of self-con- 
 sciousness is subject-objectivity — The self makes 
 itself its own object and recognizes itself in its 
 object — In this self-objectifying act intellect and 
 will are conjoined — The object of a perfect self -con- 
 sciousness must be another consciousness in every 
 respect its equal — The eternal logos, 373-76. The 
 fact that all idealists have not reached this conclusion 
 does not militate against its logical necessity, but 
 suggests that the implications of the idealistic pre- 
 supposition have not been adequately apprehended — 
 The results of this inadequate apprehension are the 
 philosophies of monism and pluralism: Monism loses 
 human freedom, responsibility, and immortality — 
 Pluralism loses noetic unity and is confronted with 
 the problem how eternal souls can be in a process of 
 becoming — The conception of an eternal self-con- 
 sciousness objectifying and recognizing itself in a 
 second self-consciousness, which is in every respect 
 its equal but differs from it in the fact that it is gener- 
 ated in infinite past times through this self -objectify- 
 ing act, solves the problems which are insoluble by 
 monism and pluralism, 376-78. Words, first and 
 second persons, substituted for first and second self- 
 consciousness — Difference between the first and 
 second persons — The self -objectifying consciousness 
 of the first is that of an aboriginal generator; the 
 
xxxiv TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 consciousness of the second is that of a generator who 
 has been eternally generated — His knowledge of his 
 perfect personality is objectified as a third perfect 
 person — His knowledge of himself as generated in 
 infinite past time is objectified as a process ascending 
 from nothingness to identification with the first 
 perfect person — A process completed in infinite past 
 time — This objectified process is the evolutionary 
 ascent of nature and man — Its consummation is the 
 cosmic community which collects power from each 
 of its members and endows each with the power of all 
 — This cosmic community has existed from all eter- 
 nity, 378-82. The enigma of the world is the exist- 
 ence of evil — The insight that creation arises through 
 the contemplation by the second person of his own 
 derivation solves this enigma, 383. Goodness and 
 justice as necessary attributes of God — Goodness is 
 altruism or love which gives itself — Justice or the 
 return of the deed upon the doer is recognition of the 
 real freedom conferred by divine altruism — Perfect 
 justice can only be exercised toward a perfect being — 
 To exercise it toward imperfect beings would make 
 an evolutionary world-order impossible — Since this 
 evolutionary world-order is necessarily presupposed 
 by the self -objectifying act through which the second 
 person makes actual his own timeless derivation, 
 altruism must be recognized as the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the divine character and justice be given 
 validity only in so far as it does not make against 
 altruism, 384-86. 
 
 PAGE 
 
EDUCATIONAL ISSUES IN THE 
 KINDERGARTEN 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 
 
 The kindergarten is the attempted embodiment 
 of a few great educational ideas. The imperfect 
 apprehension of any one of these ideas enfeebles 
 its practice; the false apprehension of any one of 
 these ideas distorts its practice. Moreover, the in- 
 adequately or falsely apprehended idea is betrayed 
 into strange alliances, and thereby undergoes a 
 radical change which is reflected in every detail 
 of practical work. Hence, during the past twenty- 
 five years there have arisen three great departures 
 from the principles and methods of the historic 
 kindergarten. The practical outcome of the first 
 departure was the concentric programme; that of 
 the second the free play programme; that of the 
 third the industrial programme. To illustrate and 
 discuss these several programmes, elicit the ideas 
 which created them, and present the contrasting 
 principles and practice of Froebel will be the effort 
 of this book. 
 
 2 1 
 
2 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The characteristic feature of the concentric pro- 
 gramme is the connection of all exercises with a 
 concentration center, and the consequent subordi- 
 nation of gifts, occupations, and games to the pur- 
 pose of illustrating a chosen theme. As example 
 is better than description, I present a concentric 
 programme which received the prize of fifty dol- 
 lars offered by the Patria Club of New York for 
 a kindergarten exercise adapted to training chil- 
 dren in patriotism, and which, in a preface pre- 
 pared by a special committee of the club, is de- 
 clared to be '^ the best among many admirable ex- 
 ercises sent by skilled kindergartners from various 
 parts of the United States." The theme of this 
 programme is the life and character of Abraham 
 Lincoln, and the exercises are planned for the four 
 school days preceding his birthday. 
 
 FIRST DAY 
 
 Morning Talk. — The early home of Lincoln in Ken- 
 tucky. Lincoln's mother. The removal to Indiana. 
 The " half -face camp." Little Abe's bed of leaves. 
 His kind stepmother. His school days. Hospitality 
 and self-respect of his father, in spite of poverty. 
 How Abraham "did his sums." How he learned to 
 write. His first earnings. His flatboat. 
 
 Gift. — A sequence. 1. " The half -face camp." 2. 
 The fire shovel and Abraham's four favorite books. 
 3. His flatboat. 4. The fireplace by which he worked. 
 5. The table at which he wrote letters for the neigh- 
 bors. 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 3 
 
 Occupation. — Cutting and pasting*. Cut out shovel 
 and paste on card. Speak of Lincoln's faithfulness in 
 doing difficult tasks, and encourage the children to 
 emulate it. 
 
 SECOND DAY 
 
 Morning Talk. — The youth of Abraham Lincoln. 
 He is trusted on a long journey down the Ohio and 
 Mississippi rivers. Removal to Illinois. Helps his 
 father build the log-cabin. Hires out to split rails, 
 being paid in cloth for his clothes — four hundred rails 
 for one yard of homespun. Carrying the hogs to 
 New Orleans in flatboat. His honesty when a clerk, 
 walking several miles to return six cents which he had 
 unwittingly overcharged a customer. 
 
 Gift. — Tablets, squares, and half squares. Arrange 
 to represent flatboat. May be loaded with second 
 gift cylinder beads as barrels of produce, or with 
 paper objects, pigs or other stock, known to have been 
 carried by Lincoln. 
 
 Occupation. — Sand-table. Ohio and Mississippi 
 rivers, from Hlinois to Gulf; make flatboat of four 
 square tablets or folded paper. Do not enter into 
 minute detail as to the topography; rather offer a 
 description that may give an idea of the mighty rivers 
 and the time necessary to float down them, their as- 
 pect both day and night, the change in the climate 
 and population observable as the boat drifted south, 
 etc. 
 
 THIRD DAY 
 
 Morning Talk. — Lincoln as " captain," storekeeper, 
 postmaster, surveyor. Walked one hundred miles in 
 his homespun clothes to help make the laws in the 
 
4 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Legislature. Kindness and honesty as a lawyer. Lin- 
 coln and the pig. Lincoln's belief concerning slavery. 
 
 Gift, — Sticks ; measuring and counting - lesson. 
 Connect with Lincoln's surveying experiences, giving 
 names of different farms, and making as graphic as 
 possible. 
 
 Occupation. — Fold beauty forms in red, white, and 
 blue paper, by dictation, to make a frame for Lin- 
 coln's picture. 
 
 FOURTH DAY 
 
 Morning Talk, — Lincoln as member of Congress 
 and President. Causes of the Civil War, given im- 
 partially, and not too much in detail. The Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation. Joy at the close of the war. A 
 little of the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin may be help- 
 ful in making the children feel admiration and sym- 
 pathy for the slaves, and the necessity of their being 
 set free. 
 
 Gift. — Peas-laying. Form of beauty. — Connect 
 with the Capitol by copying some detail in architect- 
 ure, pavement or carving which may be shown in a 
 picture of the exterior or interior of the building. 
 
 Occupation. — Paste chains with which to decorate 
 Lincoln's picture — symbolic of the chains which he 
 removed from his fellow man. 
 
 Games. — It is very inspiring to the children to 
 dramatize the life of Lincoln in the simpler phases of 
 his career. Generally these are the principal games 
 during the four days allotted to the study of his life. 
 The children come to have a genuine love for him, 
 and to feel that to be worthy of their country they 
 must be like him in character. (Show portrait of Lin- 
 coln during the morning talk.) 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 5 
 
 In order that we may realize how widely this 
 programme deviates from Froebelian aims and 
 methods, let us imagine that a pioneer of the 
 kindergarten movement, withdrawn by untoward 
 causes from knowledge of passing events in the 
 educational world, is making her first visit to a 
 kindergarten after an absence of many years. 
 With a shock of surprise she becomes aAvare that 
 nearly the whole of the first brisk morning hour 
 is given up to story and talk. She recalls the 
 missionary zeal with which she hurled at ancient 
 school methods her revolutionary insight that 
 '^ play is the point of departure for education be- 
 cause it is self-active representation of the inner 
 life from inner necessity and impulse." She re- 
 members the changes rung upon this insistent 
 theme; the fine scorn with which kindergartners 
 inveighed against " pouring into the child " ; their 
 fervent confessions of that prime article of faith, 
 " the doer is the ancestor of the learner " ; their 
 triumphant proclamations of the truth that " man, 
 made in the image of his Creator, must from the 
 beginning of life be conceived and treated as a cre- 
 ative being." Yet here are sixty children sitting 
 around a circle doing nothing, and one grown-up 
 person pouring out herself and pouring into them. 
 What has been happening during those years of 
 her enforced seclusion? Is the kindergarten tot- 
 tering and are its very foundations giving way? 
 
6 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 At last the morning talk is over, and the chil- 
 dren, seated at tables, are ready to begin building. 
 The pioneer's heart beats with fresh hope. Mem- 
 ories of the delight of her own little ones in their 
 freely created forms revive in her mind, and she 
 waits with eagerness for the moment when each 
 child before her shall give sign through his prod- 
 uct of what is passing within him. But the spirit 
 of Seventy-six is dead in the kindergarten of 
 Ninety-six, and twenty children mechanically fol- 
 low the directions for making a ^' half -face camp," 
 Abraham's four favorite books, his flatboat, the 
 fireplace by which he worked, and the table at 
 which he wrote letters. The exercise drags through 
 its weary length to its end, and it is time to march 
 to the circle. The delight of old-time ball games 
 and jolly races stirs in our pioneer's veins; pic- 
 tures of children who seemed really transformed 
 into birds and butterflies crowd the canvas of 
 memory ; busy farmers, millers, carpenters, wheel- 
 wrights pass in gay panorama before the eye of 
 imagination. But all these images of the past 
 vanish as she turns her attention forcibly to the 
 actual circle upon which little victims of the con- 
 centric programme are dramatizing the life of 
 Lincoln. By the time the dreary drama is over, 
 our veteran is prepared for the worst, watches 
 almost Avithout inner protest the cutting and past- 
 ing of shovels, and listens with chastened and sub- 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 7 
 
 dued amazement to the still outpouring director 
 who, intent upon filling children's minds with a 
 " thought mass," and pointing its moral, dilates 
 upon '^ Lincoln's faithfulness in doing difficult 
 tasks, and encourages her little pupils to emulate 
 his example." 
 
 Our pioneer kindergartner must make a heroic 
 wrestle with " many thoughts of many men " be- 
 fore she can appreciate the conspiring influences 
 whose outcome she has beheld in the revolutionized 
 kindergarten. For the moment we dismiss her to 
 a struggle which we, too, shall make in sequent 
 chapters of this book. Our immediate purpose 
 is to form some fair judgment of the concentric 
 programme, and this involves an effort to discrim- 
 inate between defects due to its constructive prin- 
 ciple, defects incident to the perversion of educa- 
 tional ideals in themselves correct, and defects due 
 to lack of individual wisdom with regard to sub- 
 jects which may be profitably presented to the 
 minds of little children. E'o theory of education 
 may be blamed for the attempt to suggest to chil- 
 dren between the ages of four and six the causes 
 of our Civil War; and not the concentric ideal, 
 but the bad judgment of the kindergartner is re- 
 sponsible for the effort to thrill infant hearts with 
 the Emancipation Proclamation. The Froebelian 
 doctrine of symbolism is not impugned by its piti- 
 ful perversion in the exercise ^^ of pasting chains 
 
8 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 with which to decorate Lincoln's picture — sym- 
 bolic of the chains which he removed from his 
 fellow man." On the other hand, the programme 
 cited has four marked defects arising from its 
 constructive principle and common to all pro- 
 grammes of its type. The first of these defects 
 is the assumed priority of conscious thought over 
 impulse and activity ; the second is the imposition 
 of an externally unified whole of thought; the 
 third is the sacrifice of specific values in exercises 
 with the gifts and occupations, and the fourth is 
 the substitution of arbitrary connections for those 
 causal ties which it is one great aim of all sound 
 education to reveal. 
 
 What becomes of that cardinal principle of pro- 
 gressive pedagogy that " in the beginning is the 
 act," if children may not act until their minds 
 have been filled by the kindergartner with a 
 thought content? What becomes of originality 
 when every detail of every exercise is planned and 
 prescribed ? How shall each gift be so used as to 
 throw into relief its own specific quality if all 
 exercises must illustrate some chosen theme? 
 Finally, what are we doing for a human mind 
 when we respond to its yearning for the dis- 
 covery of causal ties by such pitiful exercises as 
 " an effort to connect with the capital through 
 copying some detail in architecture, paving, or 
 carving ? " 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 9 
 
 The progi'amme cited is one of the earlier em- 
 bodiments of the concentric ideal. It is the hybrid 
 product of a mixed marriage between Froebelian 
 instrumentalities and non-Froebelian aims and 
 methods. Its author is, however, serenely un- 
 aw^are of the antagonistic ideas arming for war 
 " below the threshold of her consciousness." To 
 us, on the contrary, it should now be evident that 
 the aim of this programme is instruction and its 
 method an attempted unification of many distinct 
 exercises through their connection with a concen- 
 tration center. Later and more conscious efforts 
 to realize this aim and carry out this method have 
 resulted in a protracted struggle of varying for- 
 tunes. Instinct with their own creative purpose, 
 the Froebelian gifts, games, and occupations have 
 proved recalcitrant to the yoke of foreign and 
 tyrannical ideas. Hence, wherever traditional 
 school aims and concentric methods have prevailed 
 it has been found necessary to eliminate many 
 of Froebel's gifts and occupations, exclude num- 
 bers of his games, and discard some of his most 
 characteristic types of exercise. The result of 
 such eliminations, exclusions, and rejections is that 
 the kindergarten loses its distinctive merit and the 
 Froebelian instrumentalities cease to be an or- 
 ganic whole through the active use of whose related 
 elements the child organizes his own thought, feel- 
 ing, and will. 
 
10 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Scores of concentric programmes have been cre- 
 ated by kindergartners, and their themes have 
 been as varied as the mental proclivities of their 
 creators. The exercises of different kindergart- 
 ners have circled and whirled around Hiawatha; 
 around the Seven Little Sisters ; • around selected 
 Mother Plays; around Mother Goose rhymes; 
 around pine trees, water, and potatoes, and finally 
 incited by the suggestion of Dr. Hall that " in 
 the nearness of children to animals there is a rich 
 but undiscovered silo of educational possibilities," 
 they have been set to gyrating around our furred 
 and feathered brethren of forest and field. What- 
 ever the subject chosen as core of concentration 
 the results of the method have been the same. 
 The specific value of each form of material has 
 been destroyed; the sane and healthy balance of 
 the games has been lost ; gifts have been hopelessly 
 mixed or recklessly discarded; forms of knowl- 
 edge have been eliminated ; forms of beauty min- 
 imized to a vanishing point; fortuitous connec- 
 tions have taken the place of causal ties; sym- 
 bolism has been scouted and flouted; originality 
 has been sapped and the apperceptive mass of the 
 kindergartner ruthlessly imposed upon the minds 
 of her pupils. Surely this procedure does what 
 education should not do and leaves undone what 
 it should do. 
 
 It may be said that as it exists in the kinder- 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 11 
 
 garten the concentric programme is not the out- 
 come of a conscious attempt to apply the prin- 
 ciples of any plan of education, but is simply a 
 method of procedure spread by contagion from 
 higher grades of school work. It may also be 
 urged that any fair attack upon the concentric 
 method should be directed against its theoretic 
 presentation and practical illustration by the edu- 
 cators who are responsible for its existence and 
 extension. Admitting the force of this chal- 
 lenge, I 'shall endeavor to meet it as directly as 
 possible. 
 
 It is matter of familiar knowledge that the 
 pedigree of programmes of the type I have been 
 describing traces back to the Ziller-Rein school of 
 Herbartian educators. It is also quite generally 
 recognized that the theoretic basis of such pro- 
 grammes is that principle of concentration which 
 demands the connection of every exercise with a 
 Gesinnungs-Stoff or matter appealing to sentiment 
 and imagination. This unifying core is selected 
 from culture products belonging to successive 
 periods of race development which it is claimed 
 repeat themselves in the development of each indi- 
 vidual, and it must possess an ethical value whose 
 extraction and application is the goal of concen- 
 tric exercises. Obviously the crucial question is 
 that of concentration, for if the principle of con- 
 centration be proved untenable, it is superfluous 
 
12 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 to consider any criterion for the selection of con- 
 centration material.^ 
 
 The following general programme, which Dr. 
 De Garmo quotes from Dr. Rein, will illustrate 
 the application of the principle of concentration 
 to the first year of school work.^ 
 
 !1. Core of Concentration \ Drawing, Singing, Num- 
 >• ber, Reading, and 
 2. Nature-Study ) Writing. 
 
 1. Ethical Core of Concentration (Gesinnungs- 
 Stoff) ; Grimm's Fairy Tales. These form the center, 
 or core, of instruction. The other branches are con- 
 centrated about them; and by them the remaining 
 topics are largely determined. 
 
 2. Nature-Study. — All the subjects that are sug- 
 gested by the Fairy Tales, receiving a special illumi- 
 nation from them and thereby awakening an intensi- 
 fied interest, are first chosen for treatment. School 
 life and individual experience furnish much supple- 
 mentary matter. (See list of object lessons below.) 
 
 3. Drawing. — For this purpose the objects men- 
 tioned in the Fairy Tales and in the nature-study are 
 used. 
 
 > For discussions of this subject, see Introduction to Her- 
 bart's Science and Practice of Education, by Henry M. and 
 Emmie Felkin, pp. 121-154, D. C. Heath & Co.— Ufer's 
 Pedagogy of Herbart, pp. 54-104, D. C. Heath & Co.— Ap- 
 perception, Lange, pp. 109-151, D. C. Heath & Co. — Herbart 
 and the Herbartians, De Garmo, pp. 101-165, Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons. 
 
 ' Herbart and the Herbartians, De Garmo, pp. 143-144. 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 13 
 
 4. Singing. — The choice of songs is determined by 
 the moods developed by instruction and by school life. 
 The various songs must express emotion at fitting 
 times. 
 
 5. Number Work. — This is connected closely with 
 the things that are considered in the various culture 
 and nature subjects. 
 
 6. Reading and Writing. — The material is chosen 
 from the topics treated during instruction in Fairy 
 Tales and Nature-Study. 
 
 It is admitted by candid Herbartians that the 
 most formidable difficulty confronting the concen- 
 tric programme is the fusion of subjects which 
 have no natural affinity in a single apperceptive 
 mass. Experience would seem to indicate that 
 this difficulty is not only formidable but insur- 
 mountable. As an example of what I am forced 
 to call the absurdities into which the concentric 
 methods betrays its votaries, I quote an illustra- 
 tive lesson on the Treatment of the IN'umber Three 
 by Dr. Karl Just Altenburg, in which the ven- 
 turesome attempt is made to seek in a fairy tale 
 an appealing point of departure for an arithmetic 
 lesson. 
 
 AIM 
 
 How many persons were in the home of the little 
 girl of Sternthal (first fairy tale) when her father 
 and mother were yet alive? 
 
 Clearness (analysis and synthesis). — There was first 
 
14 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 her father (1) then her mother (1 + 1) and then 
 the good little girl (2 + 1). Together there were 
 therefore three. 
 
 But now her father died (3 — 1) and there were 
 left mother and daughter; then her mother died, too 
 (2 — 1) and the little girl was left alone. At last the 
 little girl went away (1 — 1) and there was nobody 
 left in the house.* 
 
 It is self-evident that no child will learn any- 
 thing from this exercise which he did not already 
 know. Waiving, however, the question of its 
 futility and forbearing all comment upon its 
 method, which blindly assumes that because num- 
 bers are small, complicated analyses and syntheses 
 are easy, I will only ask whether any person can 
 believe for a moment that a fairy tale will seize 
 more strongly upon imagination or that its ethical 
 import will be more readily distilled because of 
 the attempt to make it a medium for teaching 
 arithmetic, and, conversely, whether the number 
 three will appeal more sympathetically to the 
 heart of childhood because of its lugubrious asso- 
 ciation with the death of a father and mother and 
 the wandering of a forlorn orphan. 
 
 That arithmetic is not the only study which 
 refuses to blend in a pleasing penumbra around a 
 
 * Pedagogy of Herbart, Ufer, p. 121. I have cited only 
 that portion of the lesson which connects the number three 
 with the fairy tale. 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 15 
 
 literary core of consciousness will be apparent to 
 any reader who will study carefully the following 
 concentric programme for children of the first 
 grade. ^ 
 
 FIKST GKADE 
 
 Literature. — The Fir Tree, Andersen. 
 
 Science. — (a) White Pine as a type of evergreens, 
 since it is more common here than any other ever- 
 green tree. 
 
 (b) Austrian Pine. 
 
 (c) Scotch Pine. 
 
 (d) Norway Spruce. 
 
 (e) Balsam Fir. 
 
 Reading. — " A Pine Twig " and " Story of a Pine 
 Tree," in Nature Stories for Young Readers. Also 
 sentences on the board taken from the Science and 
 Literature work, like those immediately following: 
 
 Written Language: Sentences based on Literature, 
 thus: 
 
 The fir tree lived in the forest. 
 
 It was not happy. 
 
 It wished to be tall. 
 
 A little rabbit sometimes jumped over the tree. 
 
 This made the tree ashamed. 
 
 Or based on Science, thus: 
 
 The fir tree is green all winter. 
 
 Sometimes the snow covers it. 
 
 Then it is a white tree. 
 
 The snow does not break the limbs. They bend 
 down. 
 
 1 Cited from Dr. Frank McMurray in Herbart and the 
 Herbartians, De Garmo, p. 123. 
 
16 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 See how they are fastened into the trunk. 
 
 I cannot break off the twigs. 
 
 Writing. — (All the small letters this year.) 
 
 If the children are ready to study r, take the words 
 fir, rahhity green, tree. 
 
 If some other letter should be studied, similar 
 groups of words bearing on the study of the fir will 
 suggest themselves to the teacher. 
 
 Drawing. — (a) Drawing of pines and firs, with col- 
 ored chalk or crayon. 
 
 (&) Drawing, and sewing in perforated board, of 
 evergreen trees, of cones, and of rabbit. 
 
 (c) Moulding — trunk of evergreen, tub in which it 
 was placed, toys that adorned it. 
 
 (d) Drawing of different scenes in the story, as of 
 woodcutters hauling the trees from the forest, etc. 
 
 (a, ft, c, are from Science, d is from Literature.) 
 
 Numher. — Number of needles in a bundle of White, 
 Scotch, or Austrian pine; in two bundles of White 
 pine; in two, four, five of Scotch or Austrian pine. 
 
 Number of wings on two, three, etc., seeds. 
 
 Number of pairs of legs on rabbit. 
 
 Number of wheels on wagon that hauled the tree 
 away. 
 
 How many span of horses? 
 
 Music. — " High in the Top of an old Pine Tree." 
 
 Poems. — " Pine Needles." 
 
 " The Little Fir Trees." 
 
 " The Pine Tree's Secret." 
 
 The most interesting feature of this programme 
 is its attempt to derive science lessons and con- 
 structive work from a story. That the attempt 
 results in fortuitous connections is manifest, and 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 17 
 
 were the programme to fall into the hands of an 
 intelligent person unfamiliar with the theory of 
 concentration it would doubtless inspire a ques- 
 tion why any external or arbitrary association of 
 ideas should be thrust upon or insinuated into the 
 minds of pupils by teachers. To this question two 
 answers might suggest themselves. The first is 
 that some natural distaste of children for con- 
 structive work, drawing, modeling, counting, the 
 observation of natural objects and other kinder- 
 garten and school exercises needs to be overcome, 
 while the second may hold that the native interest 
 of children in these specific forms of activity 
 should be utilized to make selected themes pre- 
 potent as determiners of the neural associations 
 through which a preferred apperceptive mass may 
 be created and a desired type of character formed. 
 ^o intelligent person would halt long over the 
 first answer, for it is impossible to believe in the 
 implied absence or weakness of the constructive 
 and classifying instincts, or admit the lack of 
 that eager curiosity to test objects by the five 
 senses, which is the bud of the higher intellectual 
 powers. Professor James tells us " that up to 
 the eighth or ninth year of childhood one may 
 say the child does hardly anything else than han- 
 dle objects, explore things with his hands, doing 
 and undoing, setting up and knocking down, put- 
 ting together and pulling apart," and that ^' con- 
 3 
 
18 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 struction and destruction are really two names for 
 one activity, for both signify the production of 
 change and the working of effects in outward 
 things." The child's delight in drawing, model- 
 ing, and cutting is an expression of this inborn 
 constructive instinct, which being itself a stimu- 
 lus does not need stimulating. The desire to 
 count springs spontaneously out of the impulse 
 to classify, or, as Froebel puts it, " In the devel- 
 opment of number ideas we have an illustration 
 in what manner and by what laws the child 
 ascends from the perception of individual things 
 to the more general and the most general con- 
 cepts." Finally, it cannot be too strongly insisted 
 upon that children are curious about the qualities 
 of objects in and for themselves, loving the shapes, 
 groupings, colors, and odors of external things, 
 just as they love " the softness of mud, the wet- 
 ness of water, and the magnificent soapiness of 
 soap." It would seem, therefore, an act of 
 supererogation to set a child's thoughts gyrating 
 around the story of the fir tree in order to 
 beguile him into counting its needles, sewing its 
 cones, modeling the tub in which it is placed, 
 or drawing the rabbit who occasionally jumps 
 over it. 
 
 Forced to reject the first horn of our dilemma, 
 let us examine the second, and ask ourselves 
 whether, granting the native and absorbing in- 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 19 
 
 terest of children in material qualities, in group- 
 ing and counting things, in making and breaking 
 things, we may and should utilize these interests 
 to give certain ethical ideals concretely embodied 
 in stories sovereignty over the imagination. In 
 other words, if we do not need the story of the 
 fir tree to induce children to count, cut, sew, draw, 
 model, and curiously observe, do we need count- 
 ing, drawing, modeling, sewing, and observation 
 exercises to create around the story a retinue of 
 attendant ideas which, adding to its pomp and 
 dignity, will intensify its appeal to imagination? 
 
 It is only necessary to put this question clearly 
 to realize that any effort of the kind described 
 must be an abortive one for the simple reason 
 that nothing so sets a mind against any subject 
 as perpetually harping upon it. The healthy 
 subjection of every normal child to the power 
 of contrary suggestion would make the little vic- 
 tim who was bidden to draw the fir tree, sew 
 its cones, count its needles, model its tub, and 
 study the letter r in fir, rabbit, green, and 
 tree, hate the persistent evergreen with all his 
 heart and soul and might, and refuse to be recon- 
 ciled to it even when decked in its Christmas 
 glory. 
 
 From practical programmes based on the prin- 
 ciple of concentration we must now hasten to con- 
 sider defects inherent in the principle itself. Its 
 
20 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 most obvious error, as has been already suggested, 
 is the assumption that mutually repellent subjects 
 may be fused in a single apperceptive mass. The 
 educators who are responsible for enthroning this 
 principle would seem not to have laid sufficiently 
 to heart Herbart's division of instruction " into 
 two main lines, the one for understanding, the 
 other for feeling and imagination." In this 
 division he clearly recognizes an important differ- 
 ence between scientific and humane studies. De- 
 fining this difference more closely we become aware 
 of a momentous contrast between physical nature 
 and human nature, and realize that science and the 
 humanities must differ in their aim and method, 
 in the forms of mental activity to which they 
 appeal, in the convictions to which they give 
 birth, in the practical solutions of social problems 
 which they suggest, and in the " emotional under- 
 tones " which they create. 
 
 It is a suggestive remark of Professor Huxley 
 that the one act of faith in the convert to science 
 is ^' the confession of the universality of order 
 and of the absolute validity at all times and under 
 all circumstances of the law of causation." The 
 discovery of causes and the reduction of these 
 causes to an interrelated system is the confessed 
 aim of science. Hence the distinctive method of 
 science is experimental ; the form of mental activ- 
 ity to which it makes preponderant appeal is the 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 21 
 
 understanding; the conviction to which it gives 
 birth is that all particular facts are explainable 
 through the totality of existent and precedent 
 conditions; the plans which it suggests for the 
 betterment of human nature are based upon the 
 improvement of conditions, and the emotional 
 undertone which it creates is one which inclines 
 toward fatalism and pessimism. Studies relating 
 to human nature, on the contrary, presuppose not 
 the law of causation, but the principle of freedom ; 
 the method for which they call is that of in- 
 trospection in its ascending degrees; the forms 
 of mental activity to which they appeal are 
 imagination, conscience, reason, and rational 
 will ; the goal toward which they point is not the 
 conception of a fated universe, but of an infinite 
 community of free beings who have learned so 
 to think and act that self-activity never defeats 
 its own divine nature; the plans for uplifting 
 humanity which they inspire are plans whose 
 accent is upon education, and the emotional 
 undertone which they create is one of energetic 
 optimism. 
 
 'No thoughtful person will deny that human- 
 istic and scientific studies complement each other, 
 and that both are necessary to insure sanity of 
 intellect, poise of feeling, and rationality of act. 
 On the other hand, it would seem self-evident 
 that between studies that cannot realize their 
 
22 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 own aim, cannot follow their own method, and 
 cannot reach their own goal without abso- 
 lutely contradicting each other, the chasm is too 
 great to be bridged by any plan of concentric 
 education. 
 
 In his Talks to Teachers, Professor James re- 
 marks that " the best possible sort of system into 
 which to weave an object mentally is a rational 
 system or science.'' " Place the thing," he con- 
 tinues, ^' in a classificatory series ; explain it log- 
 ically by its causes, and deduce from it its neces- 
 sary effects ; find out of what natural law it is an 
 instance, and you then know it in the best of all 
 possible ways." ^^ If you know a law," he adds, 
 *^ you may discharge your memory of masses of 
 particular instances, for the law will reproduce 
 them for you whenever you require them," and 
 he concludes that a '^ philosophic system in which 
 all things were connected together as causes and 
 effects would be the perfect mnemonic system in 
 which the greatest economy of means would bring 
 about the greatest richness of results." This state- 
 ment is an illuminating exposition of that phase 
 of education which relates to the teaching of all 
 branches of science. Scientific subjects should 
 from the beginning of education be presented 
 with constant reference to the discovery of causal 
 processes. On the other hand, all the studies 
 which, like literature, art, and history, are expres- 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 23 
 
 sions of the free human spirit, should be so pre- 
 sented as to quicken that appreciative power to 
 which and through which alone their value is re- 
 vealed. As the pupil matures he should retrace 
 ascending and widening circles of causal activity 
 and should create in himself ascending and in- 
 creasing circles of intellectual and emotional ap- 
 preciation. The reader who understands this 
 statement knows the difference between concentric 
 and vortical education and holds the clew to one 
 great contrast between the principles and practice 
 of Froebel and that of the educators who are re- 
 sponsible for the promulgation and application of 
 the principle of concentration. 
 
 Not only are the distinctive values of science 
 and the humanities lost through efforts to relate 
 them to a common center, but special sciences and 
 special groups of the humane studies require to 
 be differently presented in order that their prin- 
 ciple may be grasped, their revelation understood, 
 their gift of power appropriated, and the par- 
 ticular form of mental energy to which they 
 appeal called into exercise. These truths are so 
 important and so little understood that I may 
 not shun the effort to throw upon them some 
 little light. 
 
 [N'atiTre studies fall into two groups, one of 
 which includes mathematics and physics, the other 
 botany and zoology. Physics and mathematics 
 
24 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 are related as body and soiilj or, in other words, 
 mathematics is the animating principle of phys- 
 ics. The revelation of this group of studies is 
 a universe of quantitatively related forces; the 
 mathematical gift of power is theoretical and 
 practical mastery of inorganic nature, for whether 
 man digs a cellar, builds a house, invents a ma- 
 chine, computes the motions of bodies, or meas- 
 ures relations of force he must use mathematics 
 as his instrument. Finally, mathematics calls 
 forth and disciplines that form of mental activity 
 which, abstracting from the differences of objects, 
 learns to think a world of magnitude. It is there- 
 fore one step of withdrawal from sense perception 
 and one step of that mastery of thought through 
 which mind ascends to higher knowledge of the 
 world. 
 
 Passing from the first to the second group of 
 nature-studies we discard the principle of mathe- 
 matics in favor of the principle of life. Life is 
 a formative activity related to an environment 
 which it modifies and to which it adapts itself. 
 The revelation of the biologic sciences is an or- 
 ganically related universe and an evolutionary 
 ascent of being; their gift of power to man is 
 ability to improve plants, animals, and his own 
 physical structure; and, finally, by training the 
 understanding to think relations of reciprocal de- 
 pendence they hasten the ascent of mind from the 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 25 
 
 conception of phenomenal to that of noumenal 
 being. ^ 
 
 When we turn from nature studies to humane 
 studies we leave behind us a realm of fate and 
 enter a realm of freedom. The last word of the 
 physical sciences is that each thing is made what 
 it is through the totality of existent and precedent 
 conditions. The first word of literature, art, and 
 history is that man is a free being, able ^' to set 
 aside internally and externally the stream of 
 causation in which he finds himself." Potential 
 freedom becomes actual freedom through social 
 combination. The subject matter of history, lit- 
 erature, and art is the relationship of human 
 freedom to human solidarity. History reveals 
 the growth of freedom in the state. It records 
 an advance from governments in whi^h only the 
 ruler is free, '^ and even he has only the semblance 
 of freedom," through oligarchies wherein the few 
 
 > In the elementary course of the school the introduction 
 to both physics and biology is made through geography. 
 Says Dr. Harris: "Through the geographical window of the 
 soul the survey extends to organic and inorganic nature. 
 The surface of the earth, its concrete relations to man as his 
 habitat and as the producer of his food, clothing, and shelter, 
 and the means of intercommunication which unite the de- 
 tached fragments of humanity into one grand man, all these 
 important matters are introduced to the pupil through the 
 study of geography and spread out as a panorama before the 
 second window of the soul." — Psychologic Foundations of 
 Education, p. 322. 
 
26 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 are free and the many slaves, to governments 
 v^hich increasingly aim to make all men free by 
 guaranteeing to each man participation in the 
 governing powder and qualifying him through edu- 
 cation for the responsibility with which this par- 
 ticipation invests him. Literature and art search 
 out all the actions which reenforce man's power 
 to participate with his fellows and all the actions 
 which, on the contrary, destroy or minimize this 
 power, and by presenting both types of action in 
 the form of concrete examples illuminate imagi- 
 nation with ethical ideals. In brief epitome, the 
 principle of history, literature, and art is rational 
 freedom, and their revelation is liberty realized in 
 and through social combination. But while at one 
 in their principle and their revelation, they differ 
 in their gift of power and in the form of mental 
 energy to which they make preponderant appeal. 
 Literature and art allure imagination by a con- 
 crete presentation of the beautiful in conduct and 
 in life, and confer as their gift of power a sensi- 
 tively discriminating taste. History challenges 
 the individual to moral choices through concrete 
 definition of the form of will as realized in cor- 
 porate action, and confers as its guerdon the gift 
 of a self -directing conscience.^ 
 
 1 Readers familiar with Psychologic Foundations of Educa- 
 tion will recognize that in the past few pages I have closely 
 followed its statements. Readers not familiar with this book 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 27 
 
 The gist of the argument presented against the 
 theory of concentration is that in so far as this 
 theory prevails it attacks both the objective and 
 subjective value of every branch of study. In its 
 practical application it forces the substitution of 
 arbitrary and contingent connections for causal 
 relations and attacks literary appreciation by 
 using stories as '^ cores of concentration " for all 
 sorts of exercises. 
 
 During Alice's sojourn in Wonderland she ven- 
 tured to remark that *' the earth takes twenty- 
 four hours to revolve on its axis." '^ Talking of 
 axes," rejoined the Duchess, '^ chop off her head." 
 This experience is a somewhat startling example 
 of the dangers incident to the merely accidental 
 or external association of ideas. To such fortui- 
 tous association we are all by nature prone. To 
 deliver us from this sin of unregenerate intellect 
 is one chief duty of education. By substituting 
 causal for contingent connections science discloses 
 to intellect the unity of the world and increases 
 the possibility of communion between man and 
 man. By deflecting intellect from the search for 
 causes, and creating more or less contingent ap- 
 
 and interested in the question of educational values should 
 study carefully Chapter XXXIV Psychology of the Course 
 of Study in Schools, Elementary, Secondary, and Higher. I 
 have omitted all reference to grammar and the studies allied 
 to it because they have no direct bearing upon the activities 
 of the kindergarten. 
 
28 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 perceptive masses, concentric instruction, could it 
 succeed, would create a bias of mind unfavorable 
 to the grasp of the universe as a related whole 
 and would defeat the struggle of men toward a 
 unitary humanity. 
 
 By substituting sympathetic appreciation of 
 rational ideals for native prejudices literature 
 contributes even more largely than science toward 
 that creation of mankind out of men which is the 
 inner spring of all human striving. Nothing so 
 isolates one man from another or one race from 
 another as different prejudices. These alienating 
 and antagonizing prejudices are aborigines of our 
 minds. They are opinions formed in the under- 
 w^orld of instinct. Some are products of heredity, 
 some of environment, and some of individual ex- 
 perience. All of them are tinged and many of 
 them deeply dyed with emotion. They are defiant 
 of coercion and invincible by logic. They are 
 tyrants of the mind, and their tyranny can be 
 overthrown only as rational ideals, marching in 
 the valiant and beautiful forms of literature, cap- 
 ture and forever after hold the citadel of phan- 
 tasy. When children all over the world listen to 
 those nursery rhymes and fairy stories in which 
 the elementary traits of the race mind are re- 
 vealed; when boyhood all over the world yields 
 itself in glad surrender to classic myth and 
 Bible story; and when the spirit of youth every- 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 29 
 
 where receives the baptismal regeneration of the 
 great world poets, then indeed shall the individ- 
 ual soul be enfranchised and all antagonistic 
 nations be fused in one jubilant and victorious 
 humanity. 
 
 The principle of concentration claims to be 
 rooted in the doctrine of apperception as explained 
 by Herbart. This explanation has two psycho- 
 logic defects, of which the first is the assumed 
 primacy of conscious intellect over feeling and 
 volition. " With Herbart," says Lange, " apper- 
 ception was confined chiefly to such cases in which 
 the acquisition of the new is preceded by excita- 
 tion of the circle of thought, that is, a contem- 
 plative lingering observation, an arching and 
 pointing of concepts." ^ Herbart himself affirms 
 that " the circle of thought contains the store of 
 that which by degrees can mount by the steps of 
 interest to desire, then by means of action to voli- 
 tion." - This attempt " to derive all psychical 
 processes, especially the subjective feelings, im- 
 pulses, and desires, from ideas and intellectual 
 processes " ^ is repudiated by later psychologists 
 and educators, and it is now quite generally ad- 
 mitted that ^' the forces which in the act of apper- 
 
 1 Apperception, Lange (Eng. tr.), p. 267. 
 
 2 Science of Education, Herbart. Translation by Henry M. 
 and Emmie Felkin, p. 213. 
 
 » Outlines of Psychology, Wundt, p. 13. 
 
30 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 ceiving awaken and guide the masses of ideas are 
 the secret powers of the emotional soul " (Ge- 
 mlith).^ With this decision contemporary psy- 
 chology reaffirms the insight of Froebel ^' that the 
 center, the real foundation, the starting point of 
 human development, and thus of the child^s de- 
 velopment, is the heart." - In this insight is 
 rooted the educational method of Froebel, which 
 proceeds from the assumption that in typical facts 
 presented originally as typical acts resides the 
 apperceiving energy which unifies experience and 
 forms character. Goethe tells us that flour can- 
 not be sow^n and seed corn ought not to be ground. 
 The defect of concentric education is that it 
 attempts to sow flour. The merit of the kinder- 
 garten, as I hope to show^ hereafter, is that it 
 evolves all the values of thought and life from 
 the seed corn of the typical deed. 
 
 The second psychologic fallacy embalmed in 
 the method of the concentric programme is the 
 proposition that ^^ ^ presentations ' (Vorstellungen) 
 are the elements of mental life, and their combi- 
 nations, permutations, and interactions cause all 
 
 1 Apperception, Lange, p. 268. 
 
 2 Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, p. 42. The German 
 original is clearer in its statement "dasz der Mittelpunkt, die 
 eigentliche Grundlage, der Ausgangspunkt der Menschlichen 
 und so der Kindesbildung das Gemiith mid die Gemiithliche 
 sei." — Pddagogik des Kindergartens, p. 33. See Symbolic 
 Education, p. 247. 
 
THE CONCENTRIC PROGRAMME 31 
 
 the rest of the manifold forms of consciousness." ^ 
 Concentric instruction is really a form of educa- 
 tional atomism. Scientific atomism may emphasize 
 either the independence of each atom in the atomic 
 infinitude or the processes of composition and de- 
 composition through which it essays to explain 
 the actual world. In like manner educational 
 atomism may put its stress either upon sensations 
 as the original elements of mind or upon the asso- 
 ciative processes through which sensations are 
 supposed to be combined into percepts and per- 
 cepts blended in those composite mental photo- 
 graphs which are all that psychologic atomism 
 discerns in concepts or general ideas. Rousseau 
 and Pestalozzi are atomic psychologists and edu- 
 cators of the former type.^ Herbart and his dis- 
 ciples are atomic psychologists and educators of 
 the latter type. '^ The object of synthetical in- 
 struction," writes Herbart, " is twofold ; it must 
 supply the elements and prepare their combina- 
 tion." ^ The idea of relativity is apperceivingly 
 active in his mind, whereas it had not attained 
 threshold value in the minds of his predecessors. 
 Froebel discards psychologic and educational at- 
 omism in both its earlier and its later form. He 
 
 » The Science of Education, Herbart, Translated by 
 Henry M. and Emmie Felkin. Translators' Preface, p. 33. 
 2 See Symbolic Education, Chapter I. 
 ' Felkin's Translation, as above, p. 159. 
 
32 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 conceives of mind as an aboriginal energy seeking 
 expression in deeds, and through deeds interpret- 
 ing both itself and the world. In the structure 
 of mind he discovers the key to education, and he 
 must always be revered as the originator of that 
 higher pedagogy whose initial insight is the deep 
 meaning which lies hid in childish play, and 
 whose triumphant achievement is a path which, 
 issuing from play, makes swift and joyous ascent 
 toward a true world view and a conforming life. 
 
CHAPTEK II 
 
 THE FEOEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 
 
 The Froebelian antithesis to concentric educa- 
 tion is vortical education. The point of departure 
 for vortical education is the typical fact. What 
 thought masses are to the Herbartian, typical 
 facts are to the Froebelian, and without clear 
 comprehension of what is meant by a typical fact 
 it is impossible to understand the practice of the 
 historic kindergarten. 
 
 (1.) Let us approach the meaning of a typical 
 fact by asking ourselves what we mean by any 
 fact. Do we mean a single point of experience 
 taken in detachment from the line it begins or 
 ends ? If so, we are thinking of something that 
 does not exist. Each thing is what it is because 
 of its relations to all other things. Therefore, to 
 know any object or event apart from its relations 
 is not to know it at all. To know" it in some of its 
 relations is to grasp it as a relative synthesis. To 
 set it in the totality of its relations is to convert 
 this partial synthesis into an absolute synthesis. 
 We may see a mere point of fact ; we may see an 
 4 33 
 
34 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 arc of fact; we may see a semicircuinference, a 
 circle, or a spiral of fact; we may see a vortical 
 ascent and expansion of fact; or, finally, we may 
 see a spherical totality of fact. 
 
 Thus far we have only discussed ascending defi- 
 nitions of a fact, and from our present point of 
 view should relegate all adequate apprehension of 
 facts to the period of maturity, leaving for child- 
 hood those detached unrealities which we know 
 as sense objects and isolated events. We should 
 hold that children must live in an atomic world 
 and should deride the idea of quickening in infant 
 minds any prescient sense of the ties by which 
 objects are related and events bound together. 
 But what if among the objects of sense-perception 
 there are some which provoke surmises of rela- 
 tions and principles? What if life and literature 
 offer types of character which reveal not mere 
 points but arcs on the circle of rationality? 
 What if the heart of childhood thrills with pro- 
 phetic intimations of all master truths? What, 
 above all, if the human mind ascends to insight, 
 not through fusing many single sensations into 
 those apperceptive masses we call sense objects, 
 and forming from images of these objects the 
 composite pictures we call general ideas, but by 
 a series of efiluxes of the mind itself and the im- 
 position of its native forms upon the objective 
 data of experience? 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 35 
 
 Dwelling in thought upon these possible alter- 
 natives, a new pedagogy begins to define itself, 
 and the questions emerge whether the most uni- 
 versal truths have not always been first discerned 
 under the disguise of concrete examples, and 
 whether the one great object of early education 
 should not be to select and present those visible 
 embodiments of creative principles which may be 
 approximately classified as typical facts, objects, 
 actions, characters, relations, and processes. At 
 the heart of each valid synthesis of facts works 
 the force which, raying out in all directions, gen- 
 erates the spherical whole. A typical fact is one 
 which stirs in the prescient imagination at least 
 a vague awareness of this generative force. 
 
 (2.) It was through the spur of a typical fact 
 that the mind of Darwin was incited to ask the 
 question which he answered in his theory of evo- 
 lution. The animals of the Galapagos islands 
 resemble species found in South America. They 
 have been modified through a process of adapta- 
 tion to insular conditions. No continental species 
 are represented save those which could by some 
 means have crossed the intervening sea. Such 
 similarities under different conditions, such modi- 
 fications and such exclusions constitute in their 
 totality a typical fact illustrating very completely 
 the general thesis that different species of plants 
 and animals have been produced through modifica- 
 
36 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tions of a common ancestral stock by adaptation 
 to differing environments. This typical fact was 
 the lighted match which, falling into a combustible 
 mind, produced that great conflagration of intel- 
 lect in which the doctrine of a special creation of 
 plants and animals was burned to ashes. It also 
 kindled that brighter light which made possible 
 the vision of nature as an evolutionary ascent of 
 being. ^ 
 
 The course of history suggests that the initial 
 point of every line of human progress has been 
 some typical fact. It was a typical presentation 
 of the three great mysteries of life — illness, old 
 age, and death — that drove Sakya Muni to those 
 years of contemplation whose outcome was the 
 great religion of the Orient. It was through a 
 typical fact, the Cross of Calvary, that occidental 
 humanity received the revelation of a self-sacri- 
 ficing God. The falling apple was the immediate 
 provocative of Newton's theory of gravitation 
 whose issue is a related as opposed to an atomic 
 universe, and, as we have seen, the fauna of a 
 group of small islands spurred the mind of Dar- 
 win to that formidable wrestle with nature, whose 
 outcome has been the greatest revolution ever 
 wrought in human conceptions of God, man and 
 
 1 Origin of Species, D. Appleton & Co., 1871, p. 362. See 
 also Darwin and After Darwin, Romanes, Open Court Pub- 
 lishing Co., Chicago, p. 237. 
 
 I 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 37 
 
 the world. Such typical facts are thought- 
 points as opposed to thought masses. They bear 
 no resemblance, however, to the mathematical ab- 
 straction, but are like the germinating point in 
 which a vital force begins its process of self -organ- 
 izing activity. 
 
 (3.) Typical facts appeal to imagination, and 
 through imagination to feeling and will. Froe- 
 bel's insistence upon them declares his recognition 
 of imagination as the predominant form of men- 
 tal activity between the ages of four and six. His 
 genius, however, also divined a deeper truth, and 
 he perceived that, in view of the young child's 
 primary and persistent need for a self-expressive 
 activity, typical facts must be presented in the 
 guise of typical acts. Seizing, therefore, upon 
 instinctive games, he charged them with ideal 
 values, and by getting children to play with typ- 
 ical objects and represent typical characters, rela- 
 tions, and processes, he made the first complete 
 educational conquest of that realm of phantasy in 
 which all young souls dwell. His creative thought 
 may be summed up in a very few sentences. Since 
 children spend their lives in a waking dream, edu- 
 cation must so influence them that their dreams 
 shall be prophecies of truth. Since their waking 
 dream is an active drama, the form through which 
 prevenient imagination must seize upon truth is 
 the typical deed. What a child does he tends to 
 
38 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 behold. What he plays he is, he tends to become. 
 Through creating in play an ideal world he will 
 be prepared for an ideal interpretation of the 
 actual world. Representing in play an ideal self, 
 he will be incited to that self-surrender and self- 
 conquest whose goal is self-fulfillment. 
 
 As its name implies and its practice suggests, 
 the concentric programme is intent upon forming 
 in the mind a circle of thought. In discussing 
 this programme I pointed out that the psychology 
 it presupposes makes interest, desire, and volition 
 derivative from conscious thought. The psychol- 
 ogy implied in the traditional procedure of the 
 kindergarten traces the pedigree of conscious 
 thought back to interest and desire, expressing 
 themselves in act and becoming aware of them- 
 selves through seeing their image in deeds. Froe- 
 beFs insistent plea is that within typical deeds 
 resides the apperceiving energy which will direct 
 and unify thought. His only core of unity is the 
 child himself conceived as self-creative, and there- 
 fore as possessing germinal tendencies toward all 
 the values of adult life which are in reality ap- 
 proximate definitions of self-activity. The method 
 of the kindergarten which is rooted in this con- 
 ception of the child may be most briefly described 
 as an attempt to aid these native tendencies to find 
 their outlet in ascending spirals of expression, 
 which upon each successively attained plane of de- 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 39 
 
 velopment merge in a larger spherical unity of 
 thought, feeling, and will. 
 
 (4.) The typical facts, or, as I may now amend 
 my statement, the typical acts of the kindergarten, 
 include varied play with typical objects and varied 
 representation of typical characters, relationships, 
 and processes. The greater number of criticisms 
 made against the kindergarten have been leveled 
 at the gifts or typical objects and have owed their 
 sting to two popular misconceptions. It has been 
 supposed that the gifts were intended to supply 
 material for object lessons, and it has been tacitly 
 or explicitly assumed that the purpose of these 
 object lessons was to assist children to arrive at 
 certain general concepts of form through the 
 processes of comparison, abstraction, and general- 
 ization. 
 
 Most of the arguments urged against the gifts 
 before the advent of the free-play heresy may be 
 condensed into the statement that being geomet- 
 ric solids and planes they divert the tendency of 
 the mind to compare concrete things with each 
 other, and prompt rather the comparison of type 
 forms with individuals, which is unnatural. It 
 is said, for example, that a child should compare 
 a plum and an apple, or an apple and an orange, 
 and not either of these fruits with a perfect sphere. 
 The rejoinder is apt, that since the orange and 
 apple resemble each other because both resemble 
 
40 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 a sphere, the very first comparison between them 
 must either elicit the typical form or float in the 
 vague. But all conscious comparison between an 
 orange and an apple or between either fruit and 
 a sphere is foreign to children four and five years 
 old^ and the kindergarten has no mandate to call 
 into premature exercise any form of mental ac- 
 tivity. The spheres of the kindergarten are balls 
 which children roll, bounce, toss, catch, whirl, and 
 spin ; the cubes are blocks with which they build ; 
 the squares, triangles, sticks, and rings are not 
 geometric polygons and lines, but materials for 
 making pictures. In a word all these type forms 
 are primarily playthings, and Froebel's simple 
 contention is that playing with them concentrates 
 attention on them and thereby makes them pre- 
 potent in the selection and organization of ex- 
 perience. The selective interest of a baby brought 
 up by hand singles out bottles from among all 
 the objects of nature and art and devotes to them 
 his absorbed attention. This is because bottles 
 are intimately connected with his most appealing 
 and engrossing experience. For precisely the 
 same reason the kindergarten child whose balls 
 and blocks are connected with plays which have 
 given him keen enjoyment singles out of the con- 
 fusion of sense presentation objects allied to these 
 typical forms. And since, unlike bottles, geomet- 
 ric archetypes are really the keys to all form, the 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 41 
 
 direction of attention to them means a valid clas- 
 sification of primary elements of experience. 
 
 It is a superficial grasp of Froebel's purpose in 
 making " the archetypes of nature the playthings 
 of the child " to suppose that what he expected 
 from their use was merely that children should see 
 all around them spheres, cubes, cylinders, pyra- 
 mids, and prisms. This would be analogous to the 
 supposition that we learn the alphabet in order to 
 reduce all the sentences and words of books to 
 their component letters. The truth is that pre- 
 cisely as w^e learn the phonetic alphabet, in order 
 to get at the sense of what is written in books, so 
 we learn the alphabet of form, in order to get at 
 the sense of what is written in the great book of 
 nature, and in order to write correctly, and if it 
 may be with beauty, the language of the graphic 
 pictorial and plastic arts. 
 
 (5.) It is a well-known fact that the first search 
 for an alphabet of sense-perception was made by 
 Pestalozzi, and that its outcome was his famous 
 doctrine of form, number, and language. Froebel 
 perceived that the alphabet offered by Pestalozzi 
 would not enable children to spell out all the words 
 in sense-perception, and he has provided in the 
 kindergarten gifts, occupations and games more 
 or less satisfactory alphabets of savor, odor, mus- 
 cular movement, color, and musical sound. Rec- 
 ognizing, however, that only through form can 
 
42 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 we adequately classify different kinds of objects, 
 and adequately distinguish between objects of the 
 same kind, he placed the accent of the kinder- 
 garten gifts upon an alphabet of form which is 
 likewise an alphabet of size and number. " Spe- 
 cific life,'' he writes, ^^ shows itself in specific 
 structures conditioned by form and size. Form 
 again, manifests its nature in the systematic ar- 
 rangement or articulation of its component parts ; 
 size shows itself in its divisions. Both size and 
 form have multiplicity and divisibility, hence 
 both imply and depend upon number." ^ 
 
 The archetypes of form have meanings of their 
 own which we must learn to translate if we would 
 understand what nature is trying to say to us. 
 And as we learn to understand a foreign language 
 through practice in speaking it, so we learn to 
 translate the language of form through its experi- 
 mental and creative use. Will not children who 
 have rolled balls and cylinders on level and in- 
 clined planes, who have tipped cubes and made 
 them slide, and who have whirled and spun 
 spheres, cubes, cylinders, and cones be prepared 
 for appreciation of those relations between form 
 and motion which are fundamental facts of 
 physics ? Will not the axial divisions of spheres, 
 cubes, cylinders, and cones made familiar through 
 the building gifts, peas-work, and modeling, pre- 
 
 Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, p. 199, 
 
THE FROEBELIAx\ ANTITHESIS 43 
 
 pare for a more intelligent grasp of crystalline 
 forms ? Will not the kindergarten child enter 
 more sympathetically than other children into 
 nature's reason for giving flowers cylindrical 
 stems and animals cylindrical legs? Will he 
 not better appreciate " the appropriateness of 
 cylindric forms for carriers of food and work- 
 ing supplies, for roots of trees and veins of ani- 
 mals, for drinking and breathing tubes through 
 out the animal and vegetable Avorld ? " ^ Will not 
 the varied exercises throwing into relief the free- 
 dom of the sphere from bristling edges and prick- 
 ing corners, lead nascent thought to seal with intel- 
 ligent approval nature's choice of spheroidal forms 
 for the heads of men and animals, and for fruits, 
 vegetables, flowers, and seed ? Will not the twirl- 
 ing plays wherein all forms lose their angles and 
 approximate to spheres give some clew to the ac- 
 tivities through which pebbles are rounded and 
 worlds shaped ? In short, will not wisely directed 
 play with archetypal forms gently lead little 
 neophytes of thought out of the realm of na- 
 ture's effects into the realm of her causative 
 processes ? 
 
 (6.) Passing from the scientific to the aesthetic 
 interpretation of the world, let us remind our- 
 selves that ideal art is never an external copy of 
 
 » The Study of Type Forms and Its Value in Education, 
 John S. Clark, Prang Educational Co, 
 
44 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 nature, but a reaction of the mind against nature. 
 It is an attempt to seize nature's living energies 
 rather than their dead results, and its advance is 
 marked by increasing ability to express generic 
 ideals. It has been said that " the superiority 
 of Japanese paintings of flowers is due to a per- 
 fect memory of certain flower shapes instantane- 
 ously flung upon paper and showing not the rec- 
 ollection of any individual blossom, but the perfect 
 realization of a general law of form expression, 
 perfectly mastered with all its moods, tenses, 
 and inflections." ^ The Japanese artist has en- 
 tered into nature's creative act, and through 
 knowledge of and sympathy with certain generic 
 forms of expression he produces individual ex- 
 amples of a common type superior to the individu- 
 al examples of nature herself. Astir within him 
 is the ideal toward which the Iris or Chrysanthe- 
 mum or Lotus energy in nature aims, and there- 
 fore he is able to fling freely upon paper original 
 images of this ideal. In like manner the eye of 
 ancient Greece was fixed not upon the imperfect 
 achievements, but upon the ideal striving of the 
 man-making energy, and through her interior 
 vision she was able to reveal to dwarfed and dis- 
 torted humanity the grandeur and beauty to 
 which it might dare aspire. Sublime Zeus and 
 gracious Aphrodite, statues of heroic Ares and 
 
 » Out of the East, Lafcadio Hearn, p. 119. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 45 
 
 chaste Artemis defined great arcs on the circle of 
 the ideal human and made men aware how divine 
 is that spirit which is forever seeking incarnation 
 in human form. In brief, the ideal reproduction 
 of nature implies assimilation of various forms 
 of creative energy. 
 
 Refusing to copy nature's products the artist 
 seeks communion with her spirit and participa- 
 tion in her generative processes. Like the scien- 
 tist he withdraws from the visible realm of effects 
 into the invisible realm of causes. He will not 
 be fettered by nature's defective embodiment of 
 her ideals, but recreating these ideals in his own 
 soul he gains powder to recreate them in the world, 
 and thus makes himself nature's highest instru- 
 ment and her most complete interpreter. He 
 turns from visible light to behold " the light that 
 never was on sea or shore." He looks away from 
 the rose ^' which his eye externally doth see," to 
 the archetypal rose which from all eternity ^' has 
 blossomed in the mind of God," and declining 
 to recognize in men as they are the ideal of 
 manhood, he defines that ideal itself by the in- 
 clusion in a single form of many scattered excel- 
 lences, and by accentuating the excellences sep- 
 arately discerned. 
 
 (7.) Manifestly, the selection of scattered ex- 
 cellences implies a criterion of taste. All peoples 
 have some standard in accordance with which 
 
46 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 they choose types of beauty, and if the art of 
 Greece surpasses that of other nations, it must 
 be because of the superior truth of her selective 
 idea. Greece conceived both gods and men as free 
 beings, or original sources of self-activity. To 
 her mind self-activity was alike the final cause 
 and ultimate goal of life, and therefore the visible 
 expression of freedom, whether in the resilient 
 poise of sitting figures, in the unhasting and un- 
 impeded energy of moving figures, or in that 
 serenity of expression which is the outward sign 
 of inner collectedness, and self-mastery w^as to her 
 consciousness beautiful. Defining truth as self- 
 activity she beheld " in the shining of self -activ- 
 ity '' the ^' splendor of the true." Insight into 
 the heart of Greece inspires the words which 
 Swinburne, speaking in her name, addresses to 
 Mother Nature in his Litany of the Nations: 
 
 I am she that made thee lovely with my beauty 
 
 From north to south, 
 Mine the fairest lips took first the fire of duty 
 
 From thine own mouth. 
 Mine the fairest eyes sought first thy laws and knew 
 them 
 
 Truths undefiled; 
 Mine the fairest hands took freedom first into them 
 
 A weanling child. 
 
 The " subordination of reality to the ideal " is 
 characteristic of all high expression of the human 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 47 
 
 spirit. Literature and art ^^ translate the inner 
 meanings of nature and human life." Literature 
 translates these meanings through words; art 
 translates them through forms. Literature must 
 seize upon the word and art upon the form or line 
 that expresses each shade of meaning with the 
 greatest clarity, precision, comprehensiveness, 
 and sympathetic appeal. Understanding that the 
 distinctive feature of ideal art is the adequate 
 representation of generic types, we are able to de- 
 fine another value of play with type forms. It 
 has long been admitted that since the more specific 
 forms of nature are all allied to geometric arche- 
 types, their characteristic marks will be more 
 readily seized when these archetypes are known. 
 As Mr. Clark puts it in his valuable monograph 
 on The Study of Type Forms, '^ In sketching 
 from nature unaided by a study of the types, 
 there is almost invariably an obliviousness to the 
 proportion of surfaces and lines and an insensi- 
 bility to differences in the essential character of 
 circular, elliptical, or oval curves. Therefore, con- 
 crete objects are falsely represented." When to 
 such defect of observation we add defect of feel- 
 ing or failure to appreciate the appeal of forms to 
 sensibility the ideal interpretation of nature be- 
 comes impossible, and art reduces itself to mere 
 mechanical copy of her external aspect. Speak- 
 ing of emotional analogies in relation to form 
 
48 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Wolfflin says : " A line composed of short, deli- 
 cate curves is commonly called tremulous, while 
 one with wider and shallower vibrations indicates 
 dull humming or buzzing. A zigzag rustles and 
 splashes like falling water, and when very pointed 
 sounds shrill like a whistle. The straight line is 
 quite still ; in architecture it suggests the " quiet 
 simplicity of the antique.'' ^ All kinds of forms, 
 the rectangular, the spherical, the cylindrical, the 
 ovoidal — all kinds of lines, vertical, horizontal, 
 oblique, circular, elliptical, spiral, vortical — are 
 instinct with purpose and charged with emotion. 
 The artist must enter into their purpose and re- 
 spond to their emotional suggestion if he aspires 
 to interpret nature's energies instead of being 
 fettered and bound by nature's products. With- 
 out knowledge of archetypal forms he cannot see 
 nature correctly. Without feeling for archetypal 
 forms he cannot interpret nature sympathetically. 
 Without using archetypal forms and lines crea- 
 tively he cannot attain to true knowledge or sym- 
 pathetic appreciation of them, for man knows 
 only what he does, and feels only what he ex- 
 presses. It would seem, therefore, indisputable 
 that free sport with archetypal forms and lines 
 must be the terminus ah quo of that ideal repro- 
 duction of nature which " plays with convention- 
 alized form and subordinates reality to it." 
 » Cited by Karl Groos in Play of Man, p. 65. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 49 
 
 (8.) With this insight we return once more to 
 the procreant idea of the kindergarten. The child 
 can penetrate the purpose and respond to the emo- 
 tional suggestion of forms only as he uses them 
 creatively. His play stirs within him some dim 
 prescience of the repose of the straight line, the 
 self-fulfillment of the circular curve, the aspira- 
 tion of the spiral, the exhilaration of vortical as- 
 cent and expansion. Again, through these special 
 forms of creative activity his attention will he di- 
 rected to the expression of analogous activities in 
 nature and some suspicion of their purpose will 
 be quickened within him. In brief, what a child 
 does has a determining reaction upon what he 
 thinks and feels. What he thinks and feels de- 
 termines his selective interest, and his selective 
 interest determines which among the many in- 
 fluences streaming toward him shall be welcomed 
 by his mind and become the materials out of 
 which he builds his world. 
 
 To assimilate the generic energies of nature 
 and give them more perfect expression is a 
 transcendent achievement. By itself, however, 
 this achievement is not art. The distinctive 
 principle of art is order, and under this general 
 idea are included " rhythm, measure, proportion, 
 and all those modes of arrangement used by artists 
 which may be summarized as composition." ^ 
 
 1 The Fine Arts, G. Baldwin Brown, p. 10. 
 5 
 
50 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 This principle of order is man's free gift, the ad- 
 dition of something in himself to what he receives 
 from nature. '' Animals run and caper ; man 
 regulates the run and caper by the principle of 
 order and creates the dance. Birds ' utter suc- 
 cessive notes pleasing to the ear/ man adds the 
 element of ordered time and creates music. 
 Apes delight in imitative gesture, man rises from 
 mere imitation to the mimic dance and thence to 
 the drama. Many animals ^ delight in color and 
 glitter and enjoy bright and tinted objects.' Man 
 alone spaces objects at intervals and thus creates 
 decorative art. Animals show constructive abil- 
 ity and build not only for purposes of utility 
 but from motives of pleasure and display. Man 
 seeks to embody in his constructions the prin- 
 ciples of proportion, and thus creates architectural 
 beauty." ^ If to-day 
 
 Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 
 As the best gem upon her zone, 
 
 it is because man has been able to create a beauty 
 for which nature furnishes no original. It is true 
 that Mr. Herbert Spencer believes animal shapes 
 may have suggested the general form of Greek 
 temples. The suggestion seems forced, but even 
 
 » These illustrations are condensed from the book already 
 referred to, The Fine Arts, G. Baldwin Brown. See pp. 1-18. 
 I put the whole passage in quotations because the idea is 
 borrowed even where the words are changed. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 51 
 
 granting it validity, it is a far cry from the 
 poodle to the Parthenon. Whatever indeed may 
 have been the original suggestion of nature, it had 
 been long outgrown when the Acropolis was 
 crowned with this miracle of architectural gran- 
 deur and loveliness. The artist who conceived 
 this perfect temple was no copyist of nature, but 
 a higher incarnation of natura naturans, and 
 the consummate beauty which he called into being 
 was the outcome '' of a long historic striving after 
 proportion, after a satisfactory division of a whole 
 into parts, after a rhythmical interchange of form 
 and void.'' ^ 
 
 (9.) In order to appreciate great works of art, 
 as well as in order to become in any degree an 
 artist himself, the individual must not only know 
 theoretically the principles governing composi- 
 tion, but must have that spontaneous emotional 
 accord with them which we call good taste. Such 
 spontaneity of sympathetic comprehension is best 
 achieved by practice in composing. Children 
 should therefore be led to create beauty of pro- 
 portion and since proportion inheres in and is 
 most simply created with geometric elements, 
 practice in the gTouping and spacing of different 
 kinds of lines and in the symmetric cutting of dif- 
 ferent polygons would seem to be the true meth- 
 od of initiation into the arts of space. 
 » The Fine Arts, p. 16. 
 
52 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 If this conclusion be accepted it will become 
 evident that play with type forms has a second ar- 
 tistic value. It not only aids the mind to dis- 
 cern those generic energies whose more perfect 
 expression creates the substance of art, but it also 
 hastens the discovery of those principles of 
 rhythm, measure, and proportion which create the 
 form of art, and which, proceeding as they do 
 from the spirit of man, reveal the structure of in- 
 telligence.^ 
 
 (10.) Thus far we have considered the kinder- 
 garten gifts only in their more obvious aspect as 
 a series of typical objects through whose creative 
 use the child learns to spell out the primary mean- 
 ings of form and to appreciate the elements of 
 artistic order. That Froebel expected other re- 
 sults from the plays he suggests with these typi- 
 cal objects is evident from his own insistent and 
 reiterated statements of his aims and purposes. 
 The following passages suggest a point of view 
 which the perusal of his books will abundantly 
 confirm : 
 
 I have not only forms for the child's eyes which 
 are to make him acquainted with the outward world 
 
 » See Psychologic Foundations of Education, pp. 352-59. 
 I have omitted all reference to the value of play with tj^e 
 forms as related to Manual Training and Constructive In- 
 dustry because this value has been so often pointed out. See 
 the monograph already referred to, The Study of Type Forms 
 and Its Value in Education, pp. 21-23. 
 
 J 
 
 I 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 53 
 
 which surrounds him; I have symbols which unlock 
 his soul for the thought or spirit which is innate in 
 everything that has come out of God's creative mind. 
 If the ripened mind is to know this thought, its em- 
 bodied image must make an impression on the yet un- 
 conscious soul of the child and leave behind it forms 
 which can serve as analogies to the intellectual order- 
 ing of things/ . . . 
 
 We must render perceptible to the child the unity of 
 the world, absolute existence, the world within, and these 
 in an earthly childlike fashion. . . . Such things we 
 have to give to children through the system of ordered 
 games and occupations which I have ^reated.^ . . . 
 
 God clothed His own image in a mass of clay and 
 was not ashamed of His creation; neither will I be 
 ashamed to set forth in little blocks of wood my ideas 
 upon the nature of man.' 
 
 The kindergartner who has achieved intimacy 
 with Froebel's thought is constantly surprised that 
 his critics so rarely attack him in what is either 
 his most indefensible or his most impregnable 
 point. This point of danger is defiantly exposed 
 in the sentences quoted. What must any sane 
 person think of an effort to render perceptible not 
 only the unity of the world, but absolute exist- 
 ence? And is not any educator clearly daft who 
 attempts to set forth in little blocks of wood his 
 ideas upon the nature of man? 
 
 > Reminiscences of Froebel, pp. 210-11. 
 2 Froebel's Letters, Michaelis-Moore , p. 57, 
 a Ibid., p. 142. 
 
54 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Waiving the question of Froebel's possible in- 
 sanity, let us give our attention to the typical ex- 
 ercises through which he tries to realize the aim 
 so boldly declared. These exercises are of three 
 kinds. In the first kind given wholes are resolved 
 into their component parts and from these com- 
 ponent parts is reconstructed the original whole. 
 The second kind of exercise is know^n in the kin- 
 dergarten as a sequence. In sequences each sep- 
 arate figure is developed from its immediate pred- 
 ecessor and from it in turn is evolved its imme- 
 diate successor, so that the series, when complete, 
 shows a linkage of related forms. In the third 
 kind of exercise there is not only a serial evolu- 
 tion, but an evolution which arises from a con- 
 scious attempt to mediate given extremes. These 
 three types of exercise are carried out in every 
 Froebelian kindergarten, and their merit is ap- 
 proved by sixty years of experience. Their pri- 
 mary object is to overcome gently the fragmen- 
 tariness and discontinuity of childish thought. 
 The child who takes apart and puts together must 
 give his attention to w^hat he is doing, and for the 
 few minutes in which he is thus busily engaged 
 he ceases to be the victim of chance incitement. 
 The child w^ho develops one form from another is 
 beginning to live in little arcs of thought, instead 
 of mere detached points of thought. The child 
 who connects antitheses through a mediatorial 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 55 
 
 series is beginning to work for and with a con- 
 scious purpose. In short, through organizing 
 evolutionary and mediatorial activities self-active 
 intelligence begins to organize, evolve, and me- 
 diate itself. 
 
 By themselves alone the values indicated justi- 
 fy the exercises of which they are the result. 
 These exercises have, however, a second value, 
 which, while logically derivative from, is psycho- 
 logically equal to those already considered. 
 Through actively resolving wholes into parts and 
 parts into wholes, the child creates in himself a 
 selective interest which causes him to respond with 
 quickened attention to the relations of parts and 
 wholes in the external world. In like manner in- 
 terest in evolutionary processes is aroused by 
 creating sequences, and the canceling of antithe- 
 ses through mediatorial forms leads to the sin- 
 gling out of analogous processes in the complex 
 of experience, and induces a bias of mind favor- 
 able to the interpretation of all presented antith- 
 eses as mere termini of, or poles of, relations. 
 There is no mystery in the method by which these 
 results are reached. He who connects becomes 
 connected and looks for connections. He who de- 
 velops becomes developing and looks for develop- 
 ments. He who transforms apparently excluding 
 antitheses into the relative termini of an including 
 process becomes in so far a bridge builder, and 
 
56 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 thereby a discerner of the truth that there are 
 no bridgeless chasms. Evidently we have simply 
 arrived once more at the generative thought so 
 often expressed in this chapter. What we do we 
 become. What we become we continue to do, 
 and through what we do and become we interpret 
 the powers not ourselves with which we come in 
 contact. 
 
 (11.) I anticipate a question. Granting that 
 acts of organizing will direct attention to organic 
 wholes; that evolutionary exercises will awaken 
 interest in evolutionary processes; and that the 
 active mediation of antitheses will create a ten- 
 dency to single out of the complex of experience 
 mediatorial activities, what is the value of arous- 
 ing these special forms of selective interest? The 
 answer to this question admits us to the citadel 
 of Froebel's thought. The goal of education is 
 a true world-view and a conforming life. The 
 key to a true world-view is the nature of mind. 
 Mind is a generic and, therefore, self-creating 
 energy. It is what it does, it does what it is, 
 and it is aware of that active doing which is its 
 being. Thought, feeling, and will are not inde- 
 pendent faculties but related aspects of its in- 
 divisible energy. A completely realized mind 
 must have completely objectified itself, and com- 
 pletely realized itself in this self -objectifying act. 
 Every thought that mind can think must have 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 57 
 
 uttered itself in a creative deed ; the relations and 
 processes of thought, no less than its detached 
 distinctions must have been objectified; finally, 
 the aboriginal self-determining energy must have 
 duplicated itself as well as objectified its distinc- 
 tions, relations, and processes. This completely 
 self -objectified and self-duplicated mind is God. 
 The cosmos is the boundless volume of His objecti- 
 fied ideas. The relations and processes of nature 
 correspond to the relations and processes of eter- 
 nal intellect. The evolutionary ascent of nature 
 is the revealed path of an eternally realized ascent 
 of mind. Man is the crown of nature, because 
 in him is incarnate not God's thought, but 
 His thinking, not God's deeds, but His doing or 
 willing, not divine self-determinations, but divine 
 self-determining. In virtue of this self-determin- 
 ing energy man is a free being; in virtue of the 
 fact that self-determining energy is generic en- 
 ergy, he is intrinsically a social being, and must 
 make himself actually what he is ideally through 
 the corporate progress of history, and through 
 those ascending forms of social organization 
 which we know as the hierarchy of human insti- 
 tutions. In brief, nature is the becoming of 
 mind; man is self-realizing mind; God is eter- 
 nally self-realized mind. Hence, to know the 
 structure of mind would be to know God, nature, 
 and man, and to live in conscious and free con- 
 
58 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 formity with the structure of mind would be to 
 fulfil with joy the most compelling demands of 
 the categorical imperative. 
 
 The path of history is a devious and toilsome 
 one, because on their march toward a hidden 
 summit men are forever losing their way. The 
 path of education, as broken by Froebel, is one 
 of rapid and joyous ascent, because it issues from 
 the deepest impulses of the human spirit and aims 
 consciously at their realization. In his own mind 
 the little child carries the key to nature, man, and 
 God. Because mind is analytic, synthetic, evolu- 
 tionary, self-antithetic, and self-duplicating it 
 rejoices to do the smallest deeds which are cast 
 into these forms. Through doing such deeds se- 
 lective interest is awakened in the correspondent 
 deeds of nature, and imagination illumined with 
 a foregleam of their meaning. Through the half- 
 blind tendencies it discerns within itself, emer- 
 gent intellect, interprets the wholly blind tenden- 
 cies of nature and glances toward an absolute 
 mind in whom all these blind tendencies exist as 
 completely realized ideals. The logic of Christ 
 which, from the imperfect love of man, argued 
 the perfect love of God, and beheld adumbrations 
 of this love in the phenomena of nature is ampli- 
 fied in a method of education which from every 
 typical activity of the human spirit argues an 
 analogous but transcendent activity in the Divine 
 
 i 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 59 
 
 First Principle, and beholds in nature its obscure 
 oracle and adumbration. 
 
 (12.) The prime article of Froebel's educa- 
 tional creed is that the seeds of every thought it 
 will ever be worth while to think, every deed it 
 will ever be worth while to do, and every sentiment 
 it will ever be worth while to feel are indigenous 
 to the soil of the mind, and that the chief duty 
 of early education is to abet their native tendency 
 toward development, by inciting typical acts 
 which will issue in typical mental attitudes. 
 This is his theory of vortical as opposed to con- 
 centric education, and the final reason for his 
 emphasis upon typical acts as contrasted with 
 thought-masses. His educational aim is stated 
 by himself with admirable clarity in the follow- 
 ing letter to an intimate friend: 
 
 Often and often, so you say, passages which I 
 read in the Sunday Journal* evoke from the depths 
 of my inner consciousness like thoughts which I have 
 originated for myself, and like experiences which I 
 have gone through in my own life until I grow quite 
 astonished and puzzled. What you thus confide to me 
 relates to one part of the sweetest, best, and purest 
 fruit of my life, one part, namely, of what I mean to 
 do or have already accomplished (through my chil- 
 dren's games and occupations) toward clearing a 
 pathway through the tangles of human life. I am en- 
 deavoring to bring man through the knowledge of his 
 
 > Froebel's Educational Organ. 
 
60 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 own inner feeling^s and the experiences of his own 
 life to a forefeeling, a perception, and, finally, to a 
 clear consciousness of this great fact, that for all the 
 deepest conceptions which govern life there exist uni- 
 versally active life experiences which are found to be 
 repeated in the case of every man who examines the 
 development of his own career with careful scrutiny 
 and endeavors to bring himself to a consciousness of 
 its meaning/ 
 
 Some years ago in an attempted contrast be- 
 tween traditional methods and the method of 
 Froebel I made the following statement : " Our 
 too common defect is that we try to pour into 
 the child knowledge he is not prepared to receive, 
 and in which he feels no interest. Hence our 
 teaching floats in the air unattached by cords of 
 experience to the life of the child, ^ow Froebel 
 is the evolutionist among educators. He will 
 plant no full-grown oak of thought. He will not 
 even plant a sapling. He insists upon the acorn, 
 and even this shall be planted only in a soil pre- 
 pared for its reception by fertilizing experiences." 
 I repeat this statement in order to comment upon 
 its insufiiciency, for as I have been trying to 
 make clear, the final truth is that Froebel will 
 not plant at all, but that his aim is to nourish 
 self-germinating seeds of thought, feeling, and 
 
 » Froebel's Letters as above cited, pp. 96-97. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 61 
 
 will through abetting the child's native impulse 
 toward varied forms of creative activity. 
 
 Let us learn a new lesson from the lily of the 
 field. Hidden deep in the earth is the bulb where 
 life sleeps. Warmed by the sunshine, fed by 
 spring showers this life stirs, swells, mounts, and 
 blossoms into a beauty greater than that of the 
 king in his glory. Life was in the bulb. What 
 it needed was heat, moisture, and light. When 
 the inner impulse to grow was awakened this life 
 reached out eagerly for all the food it could ap- 
 propriate from earth and air, to build into a body 
 the ideal stirring within it. So is it with the 
 mind. Latent in it are creative energies. It 
 wants to create itself. It wants to recreate the 
 world. Quicken these energies and mind itself 
 will reach out for knowledge as the material 
 through which alone it can realize its own deepest 
 impulses. 
 
 Broadly speaking, the Froebelian gifts and oc- 
 cupations relate to the theoretic and practical mas- 
 tery of nature, and play wath them admits chil- 
 dren to the outer courts of the two great temples 
 of science and art. Passing from the gifts and 
 occupations to the dramatic songs and games, we 
 enter a new realm, and play takes on a character 
 which prepares for the humanities, as contradis- 
 tinguished from the sciences and arts, by begin- 
 ning the revelation of social or ideal selfhood. 
 
62 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 From time immemorial attempts have been made 
 to capture the imagination of childhood through 
 stories wherein the great ideals of human life 
 were presented in the form of concrete examples. 
 For many ages the same ideals have been illus- 
 trated in pictures. It remained for Froebel to 
 induce the child to present these ideals to him- 
 self, and he accomplished this signal achievement 
 through that unerring intuition of genius which 
 enabled him to divine the relation between the 
 strongest impulses of childhood and the supreme 
 values of human life. 
 
 In their native play children are forever seek- 
 ing to interpret human deeds, characters, and 
 relationships by reproducing them. Since, how- 
 ever, much of the environing life which they re- 
 produce is not truly human, and since they have 
 no touchstone by which to test the alloy of experi- 
 ence, imitative play misses its aim and darkens 
 instead of illuminating imagination. In the kin- 
 dergarten games, on the contrary, children hold 
 up before themselves the image of an ideal world 
 and an ideal self, and thus make themselves aware 
 of the difference between what is and what ought 
 to be. Through this discovery of the ideal, con- 
 science is generated, and a short cut is made to 
 that higher plane of consciousness upon which 
 the mind becomes capable of self-direction, self- 
 development, and self-conquest. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 63 
 
 (13.) In order to avoid possible misconception, 
 it is necessary to define what is meant by an ideal 
 self and an ideal world. The ideal is the histor- 
 ically unrealized, but it is never the unreal. 
 Rather is it the one great reality through whose 
 power the unreal is forever overcome. Since the 
 dawn of history the march of man has been in 
 a definite direction. The path along which hu- 
 manity moves goes somewhere. Doubtless it is 
 one of those winding paths through which alone, 
 as Goethe reminds us, steep summits can be ap- 
 proached, but it has a summit which through all 
 its twists and turns it is forever nearing. Sur- 
 veying this path from its beginning to its present 
 end we become aware of its direction and its goal. 
 That goal is what is really meant by the ideal. 
 !N^ever completely realized in any single human 
 life, nor in any mundane sphere, it is, neverthe- 
 less, the incentive of all individual and collective 
 endeavor. Its approximate realization in indi- 
 viduals creates heroes and saints. Its self-ap- 
 proximating energy working through corporate 
 humanity creates higher civilizations. Mr. Fiske 
 has said ^' that a community of intelligent beings 
 living in free obedience to a perfect moral law 
 is the goal toward which ever since our solar sys- 
 tem was a patch of nebulous vapor the cosmic 
 process has aimed." Completing his statement 
 with the afiirmation that this blessed community 
 
64 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 is not only the goal of evolution but its archetype, 
 we may define the ideal as the throb of eternal 
 reality in the heart of all that is vanishing and 
 unreal. 
 
 With the conception of a community of perfect 
 beings as both archetype and goal of the cosmic 
 process, we begin to understand that human in- 
 stitutions are the agencies through which man- 
 kind is created out of men. Between mere natural 
 man and the object of his brutal lust the ideal 
 of the family intervenes with the amenities of 
 courtship and betrothal, the solemnity of marriage 
 vows, and the cumulative moral sense of freely 
 assume'd responsibility. Between man and the 
 animal greed which snatches at food and beats 
 and slays all rival snatchers, civil society inter- 
 venes with the complementary ideals of specific 
 vocation and reciprocal service. Between the 
 spirit of man and bestial revenge the state inter- 
 venes with the majesty of law and the panoply of 
 justice. Between man and the pitiful cowardice 
 born of immemorial struggle with wild beasts 
 and wilder elements the church intervenes with 
 authoritative declaration that since God is on the 
 side of His creatures, the least and lowest has no 
 cause to tremble. Thus redeeming man from 
 lust, greed, revenge, and fear, human institutions 
 transform the victim of instinct into the freeman 
 of the Spirit. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 65 
 
 In so far as civilization prevails over savagism, 
 spiritual humanity receives into its encircling 
 arms the immature, the feeble, nay, even the bru- 
 tal individual, and begins the work of his deliv- 
 erance. Come unto me, whispers the family, and 
 learn to trust and to love. Come unto me, calls 
 civil society, and learn to serve and be served. 
 Come unto me, commands the state, and learn 
 the beauty of law and the glory of organized lib- 
 erty. Come unto me, sings the church, and learn 
 how to hasten the glad time, the brave time, the 
 free time when neither shall any man fear him- 
 self nor cause another to fear. And now in these 
 latter days the school, youngest of great institu- 
 tions, adds its urgent and touching appeal. Come 
 Unto me, all ye who are ignorant, and be enlight- 
 ened. Come unto me, all who are feeble, and wax 
 in strength. Come, learn of the labors wrought 
 and the agony endured for your sake by that great 
 toiler and sufferer, humanity, as he bore the yoke 
 and wrestled with the riddle of the centuries. 
 Kot for the few he fought and bled and conquered. 
 For all was his strength spent and his blood 
 poured. Come learn to see with his far-piercing 
 eyes; learn to labor with his disciplined strength. 
 Then shall you, too, join the victorious march of 
 man toward the promised land of freedom and 
 of love — then shall you become even now a mem- 
 ber of that blessed commimity which religion por- 
 
66 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 trays mystically in her New Jerusalem; which 
 St. Augustine lifts before the eyes of a despair- 
 ing and vanishing world in his City of God; 
 which Dante celebrates as the consummate blos- 
 som of creation in his great white rose of Para- 
 dise; of whose animating spirit, Goethe sings in 
 his mystic chorus, and which enlightened science 
 increasingly recognizes as the goal toward which 
 from the beginning the cosmic process has aimed. 
 
 Those who have ^^ among least things an under 
 sense of greatest/' will not sneer at Froebel because 
 he dares to break a path which, issuing from the 
 plays of childhood, mounts toward the Holy City. 
 It is no disgrace to gravitation that while swing- 
 ing the planets it rules the apple's fall, and Eter- 
 nal Love is not less sublime because while throned 
 in the majesty of universal dominion it stoops 
 in the lowly form of matter to be the servant of 
 all. If these things be true, must we not approve 
 rroebeFs effort to get little children to play the 
 ideals of life, in order that they may the more 
 inwardly appreciate them and applaud him for 
 straightening and thereby shortening the path of 
 history ? 
 
 (14.) The merit of the kindergarten games will 
 be more clearly discerned if we pause to define 
 accurately the meaning of typical characters. A 
 typical character is the concrete embodiment of 
 some generic or creative aspect of human nature or 
 
 J 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 67 
 
 of some native passion which collides with generic 
 selfhood. Typical characters may be of all degrees 
 of complexity. The three men of Gotham who 
 went to sea in a bowl are typical characters of an 
 elementary kind, because they illustrate that all 
 too common rashness w^hich must bring disaster. 
 Hamlet is a complex typical character exemplify- 
 ing the collapse of purpose under a strain dispro- 
 portionate to native strength. The characters rep- 
 resented in kindergarten games must have three 
 marks. They must be typical, elementary, and 
 ideal. Children should not waste time dramatiz-. 
 ing the merely capricious. They should not rep- 
 resent elementary types of evil. They should 
 not represent complex types of either good or 
 evil. 
 
 The duties of life arise out of its relationships, 
 and the doing of duty creates ideal types of char- 
 acter. The good man is an affectionate son, a 
 kind brother, a faithful husband, a protecting and 
 tender father, a stanch friend, and a genial com- 
 rade. He is also an industrious member of the 
 economic organization and a grateful recipient of 
 its lavish bounty. He is a patriot ready to re- 
 spond to the call of his country. He feels the 
 appeal of a common humanity and is prompt 
 to help the needy and succor the weak. He 
 lives in sympathetic touch with the invisible 
 source of life, and through the two great acts 
 
68 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 of religion, worship, and sacrifice, perpetually 
 renews the tie which binds him to the heavenly 
 powers. 
 
 In view of this close connection between rela- 
 tionships, duties, and character, it is evident that 
 if we desire to reveal the ideal to children, or 
 better, if we wish to help them discover it for 
 themselves, we should incite them to play that 
 they are kind fathers, tender mothers, obedient 
 sons and daughters, affectionate brothers and sis- 
 ters, busy members of the working world, sol- 
 diers marching in defense of flag and fatherland, 
 and worshipers old and young answering the call 
 of the solemn bell and wending their way to the 
 mysterious building whose spire, like a great fin- 
 ger, points to the sky. So obvious, indeed, is this 
 method of revealing the ideal that it was instinc- 
 tively adopted by unlearned peasant mothers in 
 ages beyond the reach of our chronology. The 
 kindergarten simply does with more conscious in- 
 tent and clearer vision what maternal love has 
 always tried to do. 
 
 (15.) In dramatizing elementary types of char- 
 acter children necessarily portray primal rela- 
 tions, but in addition to such incidental sugges- 
 tion of social wholes the kindergarten offers a 
 number of games into which the portrayal of char- 
 acter does not enter, and whose exclusive accent 
 is placed upon the tie of fellowship. To this class 
 
 j 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 69 
 
 of plays belong all the games calling for reciproc- 
 ity between the child in the center of the circle 
 and those forming the ring; the breaking up of 
 larger into smaller rings; the wreath and star 
 games; the wandering and marching games; the 
 family games; the games which throw into relief 
 the dependence of the family upon organized in- 
 dustry and those which suggest the bond between 
 different branches of industry. 
 
 It is impossible to make brief reference to these 
 social plays without running the risk of exposing 
 the kindergarten to ridicule, and the danger is 
 the greater because the majority of those who will 
 read this book have " apperceptive masses " with 
 which its suggestions cannot " fuse " without un- 
 dergoing a radical change. For thirty years ex- 
 ponents of the kindergarten have denied that they 
 were making an absurd effort to define institu- 
 tional ideals to children between the ages of four 
 and six. For thirty years they have insisted that 
 what they were really trying to do was to lead chil- 
 dren ^^ to love what they ought to love and hate 
 what they ought to hate.'' Nevertheless, the cir- 
 cle games have been repeatedly derided as assumed 
 attempts to make children prematurely aware of 
 institutional ideals, precisely as plays with balls, 
 blocks, tablets, sticks, and rings have been at- 
 tacked on the ground that object lessons in geom- 
 etry were not suitable to children of such tender 
 
70 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 years. Within the past few years, however, the 
 despair of protesting Froebelians has been miti- 
 gated by two great discoveries. Modern child 
 study has discovered the superior merit of Catho- 
 lic over Protestant methods of developing the re- 
 ligious sense, and modern psychology has discov- 
 ered the priority of action over conscious thought 
 and tirelessly repeats that what we do we attend 
 to ; what we attend to becomes prepotent in deter- 
 mining our associations ; and our associated ideas 
 constitute the apperceiving mass through which 
 we interpret experience. These discoveries are 
 themselves great apperceiving ideas to which 
 Froebelians may hopefully appeal. For what the 
 kindergarten does is simply to quicken domestic, 
 economic and patriotic impulses through the same 
 appeal to imagination by which the Catholic 
 Church quickens religious impulse, and it makes 
 the appeal to imagination more potent by enlist- 
 ing the child's own activity in the revelation of 
 the ideal. 
 
 (16.) In addition to the impersonation of typi- 
 cal characters, and the portrayal of typical rela- 
 tions, Froebel suggests the representation of typi- 
 cal processes, such as the series of activities 
 through which we get milk and bread ; the process 
 of house-building, and the making of a wheel. 
 Games of this kind are so planned that they not 
 only hint the dependence of the individual, but 
 
 I 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 71 
 
 the interdependence of different industries. The 
 baker depends upon the miller and farmer; the 
 carpenter upon the woodman ; and without the 
 wheel the whole industrial world would fall to 
 pieces. From the moral point of view it is not a 
 matter of small moment whether children take 
 food, shelter, clothing, and transportation as nat- 
 ural and inalienable rights, or whether they real- 
 ize in some measure the conspiring activities 
 which make possible these gifts of life. From the 
 intellectual point of view it makes a wide differ- 
 ence whether children form the habit of seeing 
 mere points of fact or whether they are led to 
 discover increasing arcs of fact. Whoever lives 
 in broken pieces of himself must see a piecemeal 
 world. He who attains continuity of thought and 
 purpose will look away from those fragments of 
 activity we call things to the energies that in- 
 clude them. Hence, taken in connection with the 
 sequences created in gift exercises, the games rep- 
 resenting processes give the mind a bias which, 
 with increasing years and enlarging experience, 
 will predispose toward an evolutionary view of 
 nature, of individual life and human history.^ 
 
 * While the accent of the Froebelian games is placed upon 
 human character and relationships, physical nature is not 
 ignored and in a number of plays are represented typical 
 phenomena of the inorganic world, typical aspects of plant 
 and animal life and typical attitudes of man toward these 
 
72 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 " The universal," says Emerson, " never inter- 
 ests us until it is housed in an individual." Con- 
 versely, what interests us in the individual is the 
 universal. Since we are so made that we will not 
 refrain from seeking the universal, it is evident 
 that a child's mind may be permanently warped 
 by the coercion of fictitious or contingent apper- 
 ceiving ideas. Education, therefore, must fur- 
 nish imagination with valid types; geometric 
 types as the first means of reducing to relative 
 unity, ' " the chaos of sense-experience " ; typical 
 plants and animals to illustrate the great classes 
 into which the vegetable and animal worlds are 
 divided ; the immortal types of the human form 
 bequeathed to us by the genius of Greece, to teach 
 us how divine it may become ; typical human char- 
 acters as portrayed in history and made trans- 
 parent in literature, in order that we may un- 
 derstand the brotherhood of man, and that each 
 one of us may not be shut up with a heart 
 which knoweth only its own bitterness, or bounded 
 by a joy with which no stranger can intermeddle. 
 Can we speak of friendship without thinking of 
 
 three spheres of being. See Froebel's Commentaries on the 
 Weathervane and Light Songs, The Flower Song, The Garden 
 Gate, The Little Gardener, Beckoning the Chickens and 
 Pigeons, The Fish in the Brook, The Shadow Songs, The 
 Farm Yard Gate. See also in Letters to a Mother, the follow- 
 ing chapters: From Wind to Spirit, The Soul of the Flower, 
 The Discovery of Life. 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 73 
 
 David and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus, Py- 
 lades and Orestes ? Can we think of patriotism 
 without recalling Curtius and Regulus, William 
 the Silent or our own Washington ? Can we dream 
 of ideal motherhood without an immediate vision 
 of some great picture of the Madonna and Child ? 
 Finally, what is the beating heart of our Christian 
 religion if not the recognition of one typical life 
 as the standard by which we measure both the 
 human and the divine ? When adult humanity 
 gets rid of types it will be time enough to ask 
 how we may do without their indispensable as- 
 sistance in the education of the young child. 
 Until that impossible moment let us use with- 
 out misgiving types of form, types of char- 
 acter and situation, types of relation and process, 
 being sure in our own minds that a type is the 
 concrete embodiment of a universal standard, 
 the picture form in which all great ideals must 
 be first revealed to the eye, the heart, and the 
 imagination. 
 
 (17.) The concentric programme and its Froe- 
 belian antithesis embody mutually exclusive ideals 
 of education. In the former, the core of unity is a 
 subject selected by the teacher; in the latter, the 
 core of unity is the child at play. The concentric 
 programme clusters about its selected subject a 
 number of more or less arbitrarily related ideas; 
 its Froebelian antithesis follows and guides self- 
 
74 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 evolving energies as they ascend in widening 
 spirals toward ever greater spherical totalities of 
 thought, feeling, and will. The method of the 
 concentric programme is a method of the under- 
 standing. It aims to create a circle of conscious 
 thought and appeals through the discriminating 
 intellect to feeling and volition. The method of 
 the kindergarten is the method of literature and 
 art, and its primary appeal is to imagination. 
 Remembering that " truth embodied in a tale shall 
 enter in at lowly doors," it pictures universal 
 truths through concrete examples. Anticipating 
 that great dictum of contemporary psychology, the 
 priority of the deed, it presents these concrete ex- 
 amples in the form of productive processes and 
 dramatic representations. It abets the native ef- 
 fort of childhood to create a miniature world 
 which shall interpret the actual world. In this 
 miniature world human characters and relation- 
 ships assume elementary but ideal forms; the 
 archetypes of nature interpret her products, sug- 
 gest her causal processes, and declare her aesthetic 
 ideals; evolutionary doing reacts to produce evo- 
 lutionary seeing, and the constant resolution of 
 antitheses quickens a hopeful presentiment of the 
 truth that there are no obstacles which mind may 
 not vanquish, no contradictions the free spirit 
 may not annul. By playing all the ideals which 
 interpret nature and human life the kindergarten 
 
THE FROEBELIAN ANTITHESIS 75 
 
 flings its rainbow bridge between the heart of 
 childhood and the vision of manhood, and through 
 the allurement of the beautiful impels intellect 
 to the wrestle for truth, and persuades will to a 
 prevailing struggle for goodness. 
 
CHAPTEK III 
 
 THE METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 
 
 The most meritorious deed of the educators 
 who originated the concentric programme is 
 their insistence upon the value of classic stories. 
 It is unfortunate that they should have undone 
 this righteous deed by using such stories as cores 
 of concentration for all sorts of exercises, and 
 by subjecting them to what is called a methodical 
 treatment. The disastrous results of the first mis- 
 take have been already considered. In illustra- 
 tion of the second I quote the story of The Won- 
 derful Kettle ^' treated '' for the benefit of chil- 
 dren in the first school year. 
 
 THE WONDEKFUL KETTLE' 
 
 Once there was a very poor little girl, who lived 
 with her mother near a great wood. They had noth- 
 
 1 I quote from Herbart and the Herbartians, pp. 145-47. 
 The story as there told is translated from Das Erste und 
 Zweite Schuljahr and we are assured by Dr. De Garmo that 
 it gives a good idea of the general method of treatment. 
 
 76 
 
 i 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 77 
 
 ing to eat, and grew very hungry. Then the little 
 girl went out into the woods. Here an old woman, 
 who knew already that the little girl was hungry, met 
 her. So the old woman gave the little girl a kettle, 
 and said to her, " If you say to the kettle, ' Kettle, 
 cook,' it will cook you good, sweet rice. But if you 
 say, * Kettle, stop,' it will stop cooking." Then the 
 little girl took the kettle home to her mother, and 
 told her all about it. After this they did not need to 
 go hungry, for as often as they pleased they ate good, 
 sweet rice. 
 
 One day the mother went away from home, and left 
 the little girl all alone. Soon she became hungry, and 
 said to the kettle, " Kettle, cook " ; but she had for- 
 gotten all about saying, " Kettle, stop." The kettle 
 kept on cooking more rice, until it ran over. Then 
 the kitchen became full of boiled rice, then the whole 
 house, then the street, and at last all the houses. No- 
 body knew what to do. 
 
 At last the mother came home, and called out, 
 " Kettle, stop." It stopped cooking at once ; but who- 
 ever wanted to get into that town had to eat his way 
 in through the rice. 
 
 METHODICAL TREATMENT 
 
 A. (1) I have told you about a little girl. Who had 
 died? Could they give her food any longer? The 
 poor girl must have often suffered hunger, why? 
 What must she have had, not to be hungry any 
 more? Children name many kinds of food. There 
 are warm foods and cold ones. How are warm foods 
 
78 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 prepared? (Kitchen, stove, fire.) How long must rice 
 cook? May it cook forever? What would happen? 
 
 I will tell you of a little girl who often had to go 
 hungry. 
 
 (2) Story to " as often as they pleased, they ate 
 good, sweet rice." 
 
 B. (1) What did the old woman give the girl? 
 What was she to say to it? Could the mother say 
 this, also? How did she know about it? What would 
 the kettle do ? How long would it cook ? Do you sup- 
 pose the girl had thought of this? If she had not, 
 what would happen? 
 
 (2) Story to " and nobody knew what to do." 
 
 C. (1) How long will the kettle go on cooking? 
 Who could stop it? Where is the mother? 
 
 (2) Story to the close. Repetition by children. 
 Uniting of the three sections. Questions on the 
 whole. Several pupils tell the whole story. 
 
 (3) The child had not remembered what the old 
 woman had said. Who had? Has anyone ever told 
 you anything that you ought to notice and remember? 
 (The teacher, parents, brothers, and sisters, etc. Chil- 
 dren give examples.) Who had not forgotten what the 
 old woman said? What could the mother do when the 
 rice ran over? Who had forgotten it? Who did not 
 know what to do? If you have forgotten something, 
 what can you not do? But if you have remem- 
 bered, what can you do? What does the teacher 
 (papa, mamma) say when you have forgotten 
 something? What should you not do? What should 
 you do? 
 
 (4) " We must not forget what we are told to do." 
 
 (5) Application : e. g. What should you do when 
 you meet the teacher? (Greet him.) When you meet 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 79 
 
 people on the street? When your mother goes away 
 and tells you something, what must you do? etc/ 
 
 The treatment of a story illustrated in the 
 above example is an attempt to carry out in 
 the teaching of literature what Herbartians call 
 the five formal steps of instruction. The follow- 
 ing tabular presentation of these several steps is 
 given by Dr. De Garmo. 
 
 1. Preparation — Analysis ) . x- i? 
 
 2. Presentation-Synthesis [Apperception of percepts. 
 
 3. Association ) Thought. The derivation of and ar- 
 
 4. Systematization ) rangement of rule, principle, class. 
 
 5. Application — From knowing to doing — use of motor 
 
 powers. 1 
 
 It will be observed that the ^ve steps of instruc- 
 tion fall into three divisions, the first and second 
 divisions containing each two steps, and the final 
 division but a single step. The first step prepares 
 for a new subject by calling into consciousness 
 the apperceiving ideas through which it may be 
 related to the existent store of experience, while 
 the second step attempts a vivid presentation of 
 the subject thus prepared for. Through the third 
 and fourth steps the general principle concretely 
 illustrated in the particular example is elicited, 
 while in the final step a practical application of 
 
 1 Herbart's Outlines of Educational Doctrine, Lange and 
 De Garmo, p. 59. 
 
80 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 this principle is made to the life of the pupil. 
 In the methodical treatment of the story of The 
 Wonderful Kettle all these steps are conscien- 
 tiously traversed. In sections A (1), B (1), 
 and C (1) we are shown how the mind is prepared 
 for each new lesson. In sections A (2), B (2), 
 and C (2) we are called on to traverse the second 
 step of vivid presentation. In section 3, begin- 
 ning with the sentence, " The child had not re- 
 membered what the old woman had said/^ we ad- 
 vance to the third step whose aim is to compare 
 and combine new and old ideas, in order that 
 connection and harmony be established between 
 them and that a general principle may be ex- 
 tracted from them. In section 4 the extracted 
 principle " that we must not forget what we are 
 told to do,'' is stated in the form of a categorical 
 imperative, while in the final section this general 
 mandate is applied to the particular instances of 
 the child's duty to greet his teacher or other per- 
 sons whom he may happen to meet on the street, 
 and his obligation to remember everything his 
 mother may bid him do. 
 
 Is it too much to say that such methodical 
 treatment of a story must kill any interest chil- 
 dren might otherwise have felt in it, and neutral- 
 ize any influence it might have exerted upon 
 them? Constant interruptions break the contin- 
 uity of the narrative and distract the attention of 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 81 
 
 the little listeners. The reiterated demands for 
 repetition of the story up to a certain point must 
 antagonize minds eager to hasten toward its cli- 
 max. In the struggle to drag above the threshold 
 of consciousness all that children may know about 
 different foods, and the manner of preparing 
 them, the minimum of interest which has survived 
 interruptions, distractions, and forced repetitions 
 must be effectually strangled. Finally, the anti- 
 climax. " Do you always remember to greet the 
 teacher ? " can appeal only to the moral sense of 
 little prigs who lack all sense of humor. 
 
 Several false psychologic assumptions are in- 
 volved in the methodical treatment of literature. 
 It is a grave mistake to suppose that children 
 should precipitate in the form of conscious and 
 compelling principles the feelings stirred within 
 them by the presentation of typical characters, 
 collisions, and catastrophes. On this subject Her- 
 bart himself has written wisely, and it seems 
 strange that his disciples should have departed 
 so far from the counsel of their master. " Inter- 
 rupt a narrative,'' he says, " with moral precepts 
 and children will find you a wearisome narrator. 
 . . . But give to them an interesting story, rich 
 in incidents, relationships, characters, strictly in 
 accordance with psychological truth, and not be- 
 yond the feelings and ideas of children; make no 
 effort to depict the worst or the best, only let a 
 7 
 
82 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 faint, half-unconscious moral tact secure that the 
 interest of the story tends away from the bad 
 toward the good, the just, the right; then you will 
 see how the child's attention is fixed upon it; how 
 it seeks to discover the truth and think over all 
 sides of the matter; how the many-sided material 
 calls forth a many-sided judgment, how the charm 
 of change ends in preference for the best/' ^ 
 Fidelity to these suggestions would do away with 
 four of the ^ve steps of method, and call upon 
 the narrator only for the one feat of vivid presen- 
 tation. 
 
 The ascent of mind is from the particular fact, 
 through the symbol to the concept or general idea. 
 By the word symbol, as here used, is meant that 
 change which takes place in a mental image when 
 ceasing to be a mere copy of some external person, 
 action, or event, it begins to translate the inner 
 meanings of nature and of human life. In this 
 sense the personages and collisions of literature 
 are symbolic, because they present general types 
 of character and experience under the revealing 
 disguise of concrete examples. A good story must 
 call forth in the mind of those who listen to it 
 a series of vivid mental images, and the total 
 series of images must converge toward the goal of 
 some general idea. To picture the deeds of 
 
 1 Science of Education, Herbart. Felkin's translation, pp. 
 
 88, 89. 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 83 
 
 David, Achilles, Curtius, is not merely to run 
 through the mind a train of images, but to speed 
 the train toward a terminus in the definition of 
 heroism. On the other hand no mistake can be 
 greater than to forestall the arrival of mind at 
 the terminus of a general idea by either forcing 
 upon it an external definition or dragging such 
 definition prematurely from its ovm reluctant 
 subconscious depths. A concept has been defined 
 as a rule for the formation of images.-^ The im- 
 ages created by genius conform to true rules, and 
 therefore assist the mind to grasp true rules. Any 
 general type of character will be more or less ade- 
 quately apprehended, as it calls up in memory 
 a larger or smaller number of illustrative images. 
 Such images hovering around the general idea 
 are like the separate child angels whose faces in 
 many old pictures blend in the halo which sur- 
 rounds the head of some devout saint. The se- 
 verest criticism to be made upon the methodical 
 treatment of literature is that it refuses to nas- 
 cent thought that lingering contemplation of 
 truths incarnate through which alone ^t can mount 
 securely toward truth universal. 
 
 A second psychologic assumption no less prac- 
 tically misleading than that just considered is 
 that new facts seize upon the mind with greater 
 
 » Psychologic Foundations of Education, W. T. Harris, 
 p. 38. 
 
84 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 force when they readily fuse with familiar ideas. 
 Let us boldly announce the converse of this as- 
 sumption and declare that new facts seize upon 
 the mind with greater power when they antago- 
 nize familiar experience. We recall Plato's af- 
 firmation that knowledge begins with wonder, and 
 we know that wonder arises when some new ob- 
 ject or event refuses to blend with previous knowl- 
 edge. The Wonderful Kettle is a good story, 
 because it startles the mind with a kitchen uten- 
 sil which can cook at command, thrills the free 
 soul with a glad sense of free power, and hints 
 that freedom implies obedience to law. It is 
 pathologically treated when attention is diverted 
 from its inspiring idea by tedious rehearsal of the 
 manner of preparing different foods and by the 
 hammering of such minor moralities as greeting 
 acquaintances met on the street. There is more 
 apperceiving energy in the feeling of astonish- 
 ment than in any existent store of consciously 
 related ideas. It may possibly be open to debate 
 whether Herbart really held that ^' apperception 
 conforms ex^^lusively to older concepts which are 
 superior in strength to the new," ^ but there can 
 be no doubt of the fact that his disciples place un- 
 due emphasis upon that form of apperception 
 which assimilates a new experience to the older 
 content of consciousness, and are somewhat ob- 
 
 » Apperception, Lange, p. 260. 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 85 
 
 livious of the constitutional necessity of mind to 
 make itself foreign to itself, in order that it may 
 come to itself. Hence, their practical exercises 
 tend perpetually toward repetition of the familiar 
 and elaboration of the obvious. 
 
 A third psychologic fallacy lurking in the 
 methodical treatment of literature is that it is 
 either possible or desirable for young children to 
 be made aware of all that may be going on within 
 their own minds. Ignoring the vast difference 
 between knowing, and the knowing of knowing, 
 this treatment calls for acts of " second inten- 
 tion,'' possible only to the attained introspective 
 power of mature intellects. One of the characters 
 in Wilhelm Meister remarks " that it is the na- 
 ture of the Germans that they bear heavily on 
 everything, and that everything bears heavily on 
 them." The educators responsible for the me- 
 thodical treatment of literature paid the penalty of 
 being Germans. So did Grube, when he expected 
 of little children exhaustive and exhausting analy- 
 ses of numbers up to ten. Germany is the deep- 
 est thinking nation in the world, and through her 
 heroes of contemplation leads mankind. But her 
 lesser sons sometimes have to bear the defect of 
 her surpassing merit. 
 
 Shall I defy the coward fear which shakes my 
 soul, and risk the horror of relegation to that 
 limbo of outgrown absurdities wherein wander 
 
86 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the ghosts of faculty psychologists, by avowing 
 my conviction that the motive of the appeal which 
 the methodical treatment of literature makes to 
 that form of mental activity commonly called the 
 understanding is directly traceable to the Her- 
 bartian dictum that the " soul is a simple wherein 
 nothing exists but ideas, their relations and in- 
 teractions.'' Such an analysis of mind predis- 
 poses pedagogy toward undue accent upon the 
 relations between conscious ideas, and undue neg- 
 lect both of the feelings which hold ideas in 
 solution and of the deeds through which they are 
 precipitated in crystal forms of thought. * Mind is 
 an energy, one and indivisible; feeling, willing, 
 and knowing are special modifications of this en- 
 ergy; sense-perception, memory, imagination, un- 
 derstanding, reason are special modifications of 
 that form of mental activity which we call know- 
 ing ; all the forms of mental energy interpenetrate, 
 and at no given moment is the mind exclusively 
 determined as any one form. Nevertheless, it re- 
 mains true that in different stages of development, 
 and at different moments in all stages of develop- 
 ment different forms of mental activity are pre- 
 dominant over others, and that in childhood the 
 predominating form is not understanding which 
 laboriously seeks the relations between conscious 
 concepts, but imagination joyously transmuting 
 sense-images into general ideas. Childhood is 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 87 
 
 not the age of prose, but the age of poetry, and 
 it is a caricature of education to attempt to make 
 children aware of relations and principles which 
 should only stir in the semiconscious depths of 
 the soul as prescient surmises. 
 
 The methodical treatment of stories is not only 
 an offense against the spirit of childhood ; it is also 
 an assault both upon the form and spirit of litera- 
 ture. The supreme merit of literature is its re- 
 spect for human freedom. It wins by allurement, 
 but never coerces by authority. It announces no 
 moral imperatives, but appeals to " admiration, 
 hope, and love " ; stirs liberating and aspiring im- 
 pulses, and is content to warn against evil by 
 portraying its ugliness and tracing its results. 
 ^' The playhouse," says one of George Macdon- 
 ald's canny Scotch heroes, " is whaur ye gang to 
 see what comes o' things as ye canna follow out 
 in ordinar life." Good stories well told enrich 
 the mind with concrete types of character which 
 interpret human nature, and concrete situations 
 which hint solutions of the problems of human 
 life. Commenting upon the characters in Shake- 
 speare's plays Goethe says that they " act before 
 us as if they were watches whose dial plates and 
 cases were of crystal which pointed out according 
 to their use the course of the hours and minutes, 
 while at the same time you could discern the com- 
 binations of wheels and springs that turned 
 
88 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 them." In actual life we often fail to discern 
 the feelings out of which convictions arise, and 
 to connect actions with the convictions from which 
 they result. Any true literary product makes us 
 aware of this intimate connection between im- 
 pulses, deeds, and convictions, and also traces the 
 social recoil of each deed upon the doer. Thus 
 it helps us to understand the springs of action in 
 ourselves and others, and to define to ourselves 
 which actions and motives make for and which 
 against the life of man in society. Yet it knows 
 no thus, no therefore, and no must, and never ap- 
 peals directly either to understanding or con- 
 science. Its animating principle is neither truth 
 nor goodness, but beauty. Free itself through love, 
 it dares to trust our love and freedom, and by this 
 generous faith calls forth the energy through 
 which " we erect ourselves above ourselves." 
 
 My reason for dwelling at such length upon the 
 psychologic fallacies embalmed in the methodical 
 treatment of literature is that the influence of 
 this method has been felt in the kindergarten. 
 As a single illustration of the way in which stories 
 have been tangled in a web of collateral informa- 
 tion and of the more or less ludicrous and far- 
 fetched moral imperatives distilled from them, I 
 quote from the Kindergarten Review for Decem- 
 ber, 1904 and January, 1905, some Suggestions 
 for Programmes based upon ^N'ursery Rhymes. 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 89 
 
 JACK AND JILL 
 
 What a little boy and little girl did to help their 
 mother: What the water was to be used for (washing, 
 drinking, etc.) How many have helped their mothers 
 this summer? Children's bumps: What to do for 
 them; must be brave and learn to endure pain. The 
 country well; well sweep; bucket and rope; pump vs, 
 city faucets. 
 
 DING DONG BELL 
 
 The kind little boy. What took him to the well. 
 Kindness to animals. Why we love the pussies. 
 What they do to help in the house. 
 
 LITTLE BOY BLUE 
 
 Care of sheep and cows. Not only fed but kept 
 from danger. They trample the cornfields. Children 
 must not stop to play when sent on errands, or sleep 
 when they should come to the kindergarten. Haycocks 
 make a nice sleeping place. Straw rides. Calling 
 sheep and cows by horns. 
 
 THREE LITTLE KITTENS 
 
 What mittens are made of; difference between mit- 
 tens and gloves. Which keep the hands warmer? 
 Careless children lose things — mittens, hats, books. 
 Need to be taught to find them. Children can wash 
 little things and so help mother. 
 
 PUSSY CAT, PUSSY CAT 
 
 London a big city — bigger than New York. Queen 
 lived there; good Queen Victoria; queens wear fine 
 
90 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 clothes; live in grand houses; but mice even get in 
 them. Pussy cat scares them away. Little children 
 may help great folks. 
 
 THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN 
 
 Did you ever see a crooked man or child? Should 
 never make fun of such; should be glad if you are 
 straight; how much is done for crippled children; 
 hospital at Forty-second Street. The doctor from Vi- 
 enna who operated on Armour's child. 
 
 Some years ago I was told of a class, the mem- 
 bers of which were studying the Iliad as a 
 manual of botany, numismatics, and ancient 
 geography. The wrath of Achilles, which the sov- 
 ereign poet announces as the theme of his epic, 
 was a subject indifferent to these eager searchers 
 for names of unknown plants, lost localities, and 
 vanished coins. Is there not a similar profana- 
 tion of the best literature for little children when 
 our nursery classics are made points of departure 
 for information about wells, pumps, faucets, mit- 
 tens, gloves, hospitals, surgical operations, and 
 children's bumps? And if Mother Goose be so 
 lovable that, despite this distortion, she can still 
 allure childish hearts, will even her charms prevail 
 when her every rhyme is made the text of a moral 
 homily culminating in a practical application to 
 the duties of daily life ? I am glad I was a child 
 in the good old days when I could enjoy the com- 
 
METHODICAL TREATMENT OF LITERATURE 91 
 
 radeship of Jack and Jill without a solemn 
 thought of duty to my mother or an arresting 
 sense of how heroically I should bear my bumps ; 
 when Tommy Stout and Little Boy Blue preached 
 only by example, and when the Crooked Man him- 
 self declared a secret of which the interpreter 
 who calls upon children to rejoice that they are 
 straight, and warns them against making fun of 
 deformed people, has never dreamed.^ 
 
 In brief epitome of the foregoing criticisms, I 
 challenge the methodical treatment of stories be- 
 , cause it forces attention to the relations between 
 consciously defined ideas, whereas the aim of 
 literature is to interpret the meaning of nature 
 and life through concrete images, and the spirit 
 of childhood demands such images as modes of 
 
 * In addition to the inherent defect of its principle the 
 systematic treatment of literature constantly betrays its 
 votaries into the error of diverting attention from the true 
 implication of a story or rhyme by harping upon a moral which 
 is foreign to its intent. It seems incredible, for example, that 
 moral exhortations to be grateful for straight backs and 
 warnings against laughing at deformed persons could be 
 deduced from a rhyme which fairly bristles with the state- 
 ment that a crooked mind must perforce see a crooked world. 
 As Mrs. Whitney puts it in Mother Goose for Grown Folks: 
 
 "Once begin with a crook 
 You'll go on with a crook; 
 
 Crooked ways, crooked luck, crooked people, 
 Crooked eyes, crooked mind, 
 Crooked guide posts will find 
 
 Yes, a crook in the very church steeple!" 
 
92 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 transit from particular facts to general concepts. 
 The stories selected for little children should fur- 
 nish clews to experience by presenting elementary 
 types of character and situation, and they should 
 be told in simple, straightforward fashion with- 
 out repetitions, questions, the intrusion of useful 
 information, the distillation of general principles, 
 or the hammering and pounding of minor moral- 
 ities. 
 
 The concentric programme and the methodical 
 treatment of literature are the characteristic 
 features of what can only be described as an at- 
 tempted revolution in pedagogy. The procedure 
 for which it contends has already refuted itself 
 in practice. Seeking a common core for mathe- 
 matical, biologic, and humane studies, it lost the 
 specific core of each study. Blind to the priority 
 of action over conscious thought, it foolishly at- 
 tempted to build character out of " presentations." 
 It expected from immature minds an impossible 
 act of unification. It refused to trust the allure- 
 ment of the beautiful and the repulsiveness of the 
 ugly. It aroused antagonism through its inces- 
 sant and intrusive good advice. Are we not 
 forced to conclude that the revolution attempted 
 was a mistake? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LITERATURE AND LIFE 
 
 The nursery rhymes transmitted by word of 
 mouth from generation to generation are one of 
 the instrumentalities through which mankind be- 
 gins the making of men. In them is preserved 
 for childhood the child-thought of humanity. 
 They portray elementary types of character and 
 elementary problems of life and they have been 
 sifted through the minds of so many generations 
 of men living under so many varieties of condi- 
 tions that they have lost all local, temporal, and 
 accidental features. They are the world-litera- 
 ture of the infancy of our race, and correspond 
 remotely with the few supreme world-poems which 
 touch the hearts and solve the problems of all 
 mankind. 
 
 It may help us to appreciate the universality 
 of our nursery rhymes to recall to mind a few of 
 the typical characters they celebrate. Who has 
 not blushed to discover Cross Patch in herself? 
 Who has not met many a Jack Horner pluming 
 himself on the pie he had no part in making? 
 93 
 
94 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Who has not fled from that scold of Surrey, whose 
 overzealous energy has ruined her temper? Who 
 refuses sympathy to the mother of a progeny so 
 numerous and so clamorous that they distract in- 
 tellect and destroy serenity; and what human 
 heart can be cold to the passion of that village 
 wife of long ago, smarting under the disappoint- 
 ment of a husband '^ no bigger than her thumb '^ 
 angered by the shiftlessness shown in his ungar- 
 tered hose and stung to contempt by the necessity 
 of prodding him into rhino-hygienic habits ? One 
 by one they rise before us, these defining charac- 
 ters of our nursery rhymes. Here is the old man 
 of the wilderness still asking his pointless ques- 
 tions: yonder the woman, angry without cause, 
 sticks fast in her apple tree ; the soul forever rest- 
 less, because forever seeking satisfaction in " vic- 
 tuals and drink^'^ looks out at us through discon- 
 tented eyes : the man who has made himself a mere 
 toy, because he would do nothing but play, follows 
 the drudge dulled by unremitting toil; and, last 
 figure of our moving panorama, we recognize that 
 perpetual type of commonplace humanity, Solo- 
 mon Grundy, about whom his biographer can 
 only record that he was born, christened, wedded, 
 and that he sickened and died.^ 
 
 The value of typical characters is that they be- 
 
 » I borrow many of these illustrations from Mrs. A. D. T. 
 Whitney's Mother Goose for Grown Folks. 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 95 
 
 gin the work of sorting humanity into classes. 
 One of the great mistakes made in psychology is 
 to suppose that the mind proceeds by abstraction, 
 comparison, and generalization to general ideas. 
 If the books on child study prove any one fact 
 more conclusively than all others, it is that nas- 
 cent thought seizes upon every single object as 
 representative of a class, and that to little chil- 
 dren all men are papas, all animals bow wows, and 
 all ceilings skies. The lesson of this fact is that 
 the attention of children should be directed to 
 those objects, actions, persons, and events which 
 are representative of true classes, in order that 
 they may not lose themselves in the labyrinth of 
 experience. The typical characters of literature 
 give clews to human nature and act as ^' assimila- 
 tive nets,'' with which the mind fishes for, catches, 
 and holds different kinds of men. That all this 
 fishing, catching, and holding is without the con- 
 scious connivance of the fisher goes without say- 
 ing. Indeed, the fact that it should never be 
 made conscious is the one point which must be 
 insisted upon out of pity for tormented childhood, 
 reverence for literature and insight into the proc- 
 esses of mental development. 
 
 Passing from the study of nursery rhymes to 
 that of traditional tales we find in the latter a 
 significant advance which gives them unique and 
 permanent value. Out of the classes into which 
 
96 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 humanity has been ordered emerges the ideal hu- 
 man being. This ideal man is first of all a free- 
 man of the universe. He is emancipated from all 
 material needs. He is visible and invisible at 
 will. He knows the secrets of nature, and she is 
 plastic to his purpose. Space constrains him not, 
 and he has triumphed over time. Where he would 
 be there he is. What he would do he infallibly 
 accomplishes. His character is drawn with 
 strokes as telling as they are few. He is brave, 
 kind, generous, pitiful, teachable, and prompt to 
 serve. His life is spent slaying giants and rescu- 
 ing imprisoned princesses. In a word, he is man^s 
 earliest vision of his own ideal self as conqueror 
 and deliverer, and to acquaint little children with 
 him is to quicken the ideal self in them. 
 
 In the myths of Greece, of Rome, and of the 
 Teutonic peoples the rude outline of ideal human- 
 ity sketched in household tales takes on solid 
 form and resplendent color. The hero is now on 
 one side of supernatural origin. Often, however, 
 he has a contrasting twin, a brother who betrays 
 him, or a sister whom he must deliver. Lacking 
 such a twin he has upon his otherwise invulner- 
 able body one vulnerable spot. Because of omens 
 pointing to his future greatness he is driven from 
 his home. He becomes a tireless wanderer. Dur- 
 ing his wanderings he overcomes all kinds of mon- 
 sters. He gains supernatural knowledge. As 
 
 J 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 97 
 
 moral consciousness deepens in the old story-tell- 
 ers he is set to do deeds which involve his own 
 sacrifice. But this sacrifice is a prelude to final 
 victory, and the myth ends with the return of 
 the hero to his home and his triumphal ascent of 
 his rightful throne. 
 
 This typical hero, son of a god, one of twins, 
 exposed to fatal injury by a vulnerable spot, 
 haunted by omens, persecuted and banished, seek- 
 ing service afar, slaying monsters, gaining super- 
 natural knowledge, returning to his native coun- 
 try, freeing his twin brother, ascending his throne 
 — what is he if not an embodiment of all that is 
 deepest in the human soul and in human life? 
 With the impulse to claim for him divine hered- 
 ity, the psychologic Occident is born and the wres- 
 tle of centuries begun between races content to 
 hold that man is an accident of the universe and 
 races whose hope, whose joy, and whose high des- 
 tiny are bound up in the faith that there is kin- 
 ship between man and God. The evil twin ap- 
 prises us that imagination is haunted by man's 
 double selfhood, and the struggle between him and 
 his nobler brother celebrates that holy war where- 
 in the soul is at once hero and betrayer, the bat- 
 tle ground, the battle, the temporary defeat, and 
 the final victory. Out of a similar foreboding 
 springs the impulse to give the hero that spot of 
 fateful import whose meaning is that the touch 
 
 8 
 
98 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 of human imperfection clings even to nobly as- 
 piring and achieving souls. Finally, the omens 
 which drive the hero from his home are mythi- 
 cal expressions of the fact that commonplace men 
 are always pitted against the great man and do 
 their best to get rid of him. 
 
 The wanderings of the hero need little interpre- 
 tation. Within the soul ^' latitude widens and 
 longitude lengthens " ; '' within it are zones, seas, 
 and continents,'' but without physical geography 
 spiritual geography would be forever unknown. 
 Therefore man, who is one world '' has another to 
 attend him," and ceaselessly exploring the earth 
 he discovers himself. 
 
 As the wanderings of the hero foreshadow the 
 triumphs of intellect, so his conquests predict 
 the triumphs of will. The attendant world must 
 be not only interpreted but dominated. The 
 demean lion and the Lernean hydra must be 
 slain; the Arcadian hind and the Erymanthian 
 boar captured and domesticated; the stables of 
 Augeus must be cleansed; the golden apples 
 brought from the garden of the Hesperides, and 
 even Hades must be invaded and its guardian led 
 to the upper world. The destiny of man is to 
 subdue and transform the earth and dwell in it 
 securely its master and its lord. 
 
 As I ponder the deep truths which steal into 
 the heart through the gateway of our occidental 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 99 
 
 myths there comes to me a new and thrilling sug- 
 gestion. Men's souls to-day are sad because na- 
 ture seems to them so totally depraved. But what 
 if mere brute man, who is all he should not be, 
 needs as his counterpart a brute nature which is 
 all it should not be ? What if being free, man 
 must create himself and if he can only create 
 himself by recreating his world ? What if, her 
 own great deed accomplished when man is born, 
 nature lays herself at his feet and appeals to him 
 to make her all she could never be ? What if our 
 fields and gardens, our domesticated animals, our 
 villages, towns, and cities, our railways stretching 
 connecting lines across the continents, our steam- 
 ships plying their uniting course across the seas, 
 mean that man is slowly creating an ideal world, 
 and through this creation is fashioning an ideal 
 self? 
 
 Perhaps the deepest thought which in obscure 
 presentiment hovers before the creators of occi- 
 dental myth is that the hero can win his cause 
 only by sacrificing himself. " Woe is me," says 
 Thetis in the Iliad, ^' Woe is me the mother of a 
 hero." For a hero must serve, a hero must suffer, 
 the highest hero must die for men. Yet since in 
 the eternal order sacrifice and self-fulfillment are 
 correlative ideas the hero though he die shall live 
 forever and reign forever on his rightful throne. 
 
 To know this hero of occidental myth is to love 
 
100 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES ' 
 
 him and to grow into his likeness. We invert the 
 relationship between life and literature when we 
 say that literature copies life. The truer state- 
 ment is that life copies literature, and that the 
 heroes of myth, legend, and poetry create the 
 heroes of history. Hegel reminds us that the 
 history of Greece had its inception in the ideal 
 youth, Achilles, and its consummation in the 
 actual youth, Alexander. The question is perti- 
 nent whether, lacking the hero of the Trojan War, 
 Greece could ever have incarnated her spirit in 
 the hero of Arbela. Or, to face frankly the su- 
 preme example of the power of literature over 
 life, who dare deny that without the Messianic 
 dreams of Hebrew prophets the world might still 
 be awaiting its Messiah. " Ever before us jour- 
 neys the mighty ideal ; it never was known to 
 fall in the rear." The prescient soul haunted 
 with visions of its higher self flings a portrait 
 upon the canvas of literature. Common men gaze 
 upon the portrait until their dull and mean exist- 
 ence becomes intolerable, and goaded by the 
 l)eauty of the ideal they cease not from their 
 striving until they have incarnated it in life. 
 
 No less significant than the identities of occi- 
 dental myth are the distinctive traits which re- 
 veal the racial souls of Greece, of Rome, and of 
 the Germanic peoples. The hero of Greek legend 
 is above all beautiful; the hero of Eoman legend 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 101 
 
 patriotic, the hero of Germanic legend insistent 
 upon the rights and claims of his own individu- 
 ality. Achilles is the golden youth of the world; 
 Curtius the devoted youth of the world ; Siegfried 
 the daring, defiant, jubilant, self -destructive 
 youth of the world. 
 
 History knows not one but many chosen na- 
 tions, and Greece was the nation elect of history to 
 realize the ideal of freedom in the form of beauty. 
 She transfigured all the phenomena of nature 
 into human forms of majesty and loveliness. She 
 interpreted the higher impulses of the human 
 heart as mandates of the gods, and as she had 
 made nature human, made man divine. She was 
 the great play-nation of the world, and her sons 
 created graceful and beautiful bodies by calling 
 into balanced exercise all typical forms of phys- 
 ical activity. She was the great art nation of 
 the world, and having created majestic and beau- 
 tiful men, carved in imperishable marble her more 
 majestic and beautiful statues of heroes and gods. 
 Greece was the great literary nation of the world, 
 summoning from the depths of her rhythmic 
 spirit the noblest meters; creating not only the 
 epic, the drama, and the lyric, but nearly every 
 form knoT\Ti either to prose or poetry ; elaborating 
 the criticism of language as the material of liter- 
 ary art and bequeathing to the world what has 
 ever since remained its standard work of literary 
 
102 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 criticism. She was the standard-bearing nation 
 of the Occident, and alike in myth and history 
 hurled her high defiance against Asiatic polyg- 
 amy, despotism, pantheism, and that perverted 
 self-renunciation which leaves no self to renounce. 
 Finally, Greece was the great philosophic nation 
 of the world and through the Platonic doctrine of 
 the self-moved and the Aristotelian insight into 
 completely realized self-activity (entelechy) pro- 
 claimed the original source and ultimate goal of 
 that freedom whose varied incarnation had been 
 the incitement of all her historic striving. For 
 all these reasons Greece was and shall forever re- 
 main the great culture-nation of the world, and 
 her appeal to each new age and generation is '^ to 
 mount from fair forms to fair deeds, and from 
 fair deeds to fair thoughts," until it stand at 
 last in presence of that " uncreated loveliness," 
 which to behold is to adore, and to adore is to re- 
 create. 
 
 Beauty is the only spiritual feature of matter 
 — is, indeed, spirit shining through matter. The 
 clod is not beautiful, but there is beauty in the 
 crystal which manifests formative energy and re- 
 flects the universal light. The flower is more 
 beautiful than the crystal because it reveals a 
 freer activity. The human form disciplined by 
 selected exercises is beautiful becavise it is ideal 
 activity incarnate. Human character is beautiful 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 103 
 
 when through self-restraint and self -direction it 
 has achieved spontaneous accord with the ideals 
 of freedom. Human speech becomes beautiful 
 through voluntary subjection to the ideal re- 
 straints of musical words, lofty diction, rhythmic 
 measures, and stately cadences. Always and 
 everywhere beauty is the outward and visible sign 
 of freedom, and implies self-restraint and self- 
 transcendance. Because her national life was one 
 long wrestle for freedom, Greece is the great re- 
 vealer of beauty, and her prototype is the youth 
 Achilles, beautiful in form and feature; beauti- 
 ful in his prowess, beautiful when bowed with 
 anguish and self-reproach, he bids strife to perish 
 from among gods and men; beautiful when con- 
 secrate to death, Athena sets about his head a 
 cro^Mi of golden mist and from it makes to blaze 
 a dazzling flame ; beautiful most of all when 
 touched by tender pity for an enemy at his mercy 
 he surrenders to aged Priam the body of his son. 
 As Greece is the nation elect of history to re- 
 veal the ideal of freedom in the form of beauty, 
 so Kome is predestined by the world-spirit to em- 
 body the ideal of freedom in the corporate forms 
 of will. From her we inherit laws preventing 
 that collision of each with all which reduces rea- 
 sonable action to zero, and reenforcing the valid 
 deeds of individuals with the strength of the com- 
 munity or nation. Lacking the common tradi- 
 
104 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tions through which most primitive communities 
 are held together the outlaws who settled on the 
 seven hills became the originators of the idea of 
 contract. Since in a contract two wills combine 
 there is suggested a common will superior to and 
 transformative of individual caprice. In the 
 pledge of the community as a whole to maintain 
 contracts inviolate, and in the pledge of each in- 
 dividual to honor and defend the community 
 which safeguards his rights, this higher will be- 
 comes more clearly emergent. Purpose is born 
 in men and new words are coined to express what 
 it contributes to the shaping of character.^ Pur- 
 poseful men demand purpose in nature, and a 
 veritable Ethics of the Dust is created by put- 
 ting purpose into every fragment of the external 
 world and organizing all lesser purposes to ac- 
 complish the supreme purpose of the state. The 
 human heart throbs with a new emotion and all 
 Romans become patriots. The mythical embodi- 
 ment of patriotism is Curtius, the self-devoted 
 
 » "Through the study of Latin the boy or girl gradually 
 becomes permeated with the motives of that serious-minded 
 people. He comes to realize the special significance of those 
 words that express the ideals of Roman character (and the 
 ideals of all character) words which we have preserved in our 
 translation into English — gravity, soberness, probity, honesty, 
 self-restraint, austerity, considerateness, modesty, patriot- 
 ism." — Psychologic Foundations of Education, Wm. T. Harris, 
 pp. 271-72. (A suggestion of Rosenkranz. — Ed.) 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 105 
 
 youth clad in shining armor and leaping into 
 the gulf which could only close when it had swal- 
 lowed Rome's most precious treasure. To the 
 historic lineage of this mythical hero belong Reg- 
 ulus, Cato, and Caesar, the Roman armies march- 
 ing to the conquest of the world and the prae- 
 torian courts which secure military conquests by 
 establishing Roman jurisprudence. 
 
 Rome falls but the eternal city is lifted by St. 
 Augustine out of earth into heaven, and in the 
 fullness of time the millennial struggle of the 
 Latin mind, and the aspiration of ten silent Chris- 
 tian centuries blend in the soul of a world poet 
 who chants " Cosmic patriotism " in immortal 
 verse. 
 
 To know and love Achilles is to begin to love 
 freedom as beautiful personality achieved by the 
 self -creating spirit through overcoming the natural 
 self. To know and love Curtius is to hear from 
 afar the mighty challenge of mankind to man, to 
 be haunted by that high impulse of devotion " be- 
 fore which our mortal nature trembles in sur- 
 prise " ; to be smitten with a foreboding that the 
 free human being must die not only to his lower 
 self but for his higher self incarnate in the state. 
 But what shall be said of Siegfried ? Does his de- 
 fiant and self-destroying career suggest any im- 
 plication of freedom ? Does it reveal a racial 
 soul ? Does it perchance forecast a racial peril ? 
 
106 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The various tribes of the Germanic race stand 
 out among all the races of men as by nature most 
 clamorous for satisfaction of immediate impulse, 
 and most insistent upon recognition of their im- 
 mediate personality. They will do what they 
 choose ; they will be valued for what they are, and 
 they will promptly slay any man who dares to 
 interfere with their free action, or refuses them 
 the honor they claim as their due. Bold, spirited, 
 adventurous, fierce, they defy nature, other men, 
 and all the gods. Once for all they are here and 
 they will make good their right to be. 
 
 We need only look within and around us to as- 
 sure ourselves that the old Teuton and Saxon are 
 still very much alive. " I must be loved just as 
 I am,'' whispers the maiden descendant of Hen- 
 gist complacently, unaware that she is merely 
 reverberating ancestral impulse. " Knock me 
 down if you can and if not get knocked down 
 yourself," shouts her brother to his mates. " The 
 cowboy on the American border lands," says Dr. 
 Harris, ^^ announces his approach to a settlement 
 by daring the whole village out to fight him ; the 
 miners of Poker Flat, the hunters and trappers of 
 the I^orthern Wilderness manifest also a chival- 
 rous personality which demands immediate recog- 
 nition, and. which will risk life without the slight- 
 est hesitation for this motive." American stories 
 for children celebrate the adventures of boys and 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 107 
 
 girls so abundantly able to protect, support, and 
 educate themselves that fathers and mothers seem 
 mere relics of an outgrown past. At last even 
 education falls into ancestral toils, and declining 
 upon the heresy of free play insists as the latest 
 discovery in method that children can become all 
 they ought by doing as they please. 
 
 The energy of life beats high in our ancestral 
 impulse, and I for one would not surrender my 
 own racial inheritance for that of any other race. 
 '' Other peoples," says Hegel, " have definite ob- 
 jects in which they seek supremacy. They seek 
 wealth or beauty, or abstract right or power or 
 caste distinction, but the Teutonic race seeks the 
 satisfaction of the heart." ^ The free spirit ob- 
 scurely aware of freedom demands that freedom 
 shall be honored. The contradiction which rends 
 the soul of all Germanic peoples is that each in- 
 dividual claims freedom for himself alone and 
 blindly identifies freedom with the gratification of 
 immediate impulse. Because of this contradiction 
 the Germanic races are the most savage and self- 
 destructive the w^orld has ever known. But his- 
 tory vindicates all her chosen peoples, and having 
 charged these self-destroying savages with regen- 
 erate ideals she is even now sending them forth 
 to redeem the world. 
 
 So mighty is the defiance of the Germanic 
 » Hegel's Philosophy of History, Eng. transl., p. 363. 
 
108 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 spirit that it is powerless to bring forth out of 
 itself the constraining ideals through which alone 
 its deepest impulse can be realized. It can, how- 
 ever, divine the destiny its soul portends, and it 
 has adumbrated the catastrophe which threatens 
 it in that tragic myth all of whose chief person- 
 ages are betrayed by imperative impulse into 
 fatal deeds and whose climax is the destruction 
 of gods created in the image of fated men. Of 
 this tragic myth the story of Siegfried is an in- 
 tegral part. A great genius has interpreted his 
 story in verse and music, and has taught us all 
 to love the forest lad sounding his merry horn; 
 rushing upon fierce beasts through pure delight 
 in combat ; forging with mighty strokes his magic 
 sword; imitating the love song of birds; slaying 
 the dragon and possessing himself of Tarnhelm 
 and ring; breaking the spear of Wotan; bursting 
 through the wall of flame; waking and winning 
 the sleeping Valkyr and learning from her the 
 mystic runes which should have made, but did not 
 make him wise. 'No story in all the world paints 
 such an appealing picture of light-hearted, way- 
 ward, and reckless youth. No story in its sequel 
 reveals so clearly the dangers which camp about 
 the freedom-loving, law-defying, adventurous, and 
 undisciplined soul. For any youth, and espe- 
 cially for any youth of Germanic lineage, to know 
 and love and mourn for Siegfried is to be haunted 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 109 
 
 by presentiments of all the fatalities which 
 threaten himself. 
 
 If the reader has divined that each of the three 
 great peoples of the Occident has foreshadowed in 
 myth and illustrated in history a distinct aspect 
 of free personality, the question will press, 
 whether the revelation be complete. From Greece 
 we learn that in free personality beauty attains 
 consummate expression; from Rome that person- 
 ality implies a common and therefore transcend- 
 ent will; from the Germanic peoples that it is 
 daemonic, and unillumined by its own ideal, rushes 
 madly to destruction. But what becomes of 
 beauty if its vanishing types point to no arche- 
 typal reality? What becomes of transcendental 
 will if there be no transcendent person in whom 
 it inheres ? And what avails a passion for free- 
 dom so compelling that it joyfully embraces 
 death if in that mad embrace freedom be forever 
 crushed and slain ? 
 
 The spiritual orient ends and the spiritual Oc- 
 cident begins, not with Greece, but with that 
 wonderful tribe which, wandering from the East, 
 halts for a while in Chaldea and Egypt and settles 
 finally a consciously chosen people in a promised 
 land. Asia is the mother of religions. She 
 brought forth Brahm and tried to still the craving 
 of her soul with his formless and impotent infini- 
 tude. Descending into more energetic depths of 
 
no EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the spirit she rose therefrom bringing Ahura 
 Mazda and Angra Mainyu locked in a deathless 
 struggle. Quickened bj the cycles of nature so cor- 
 respondent to and interpretive of the cycles of the 
 intellect, she conceived Osiris, who through death 
 achieved divinity. But her haunting question 
 was not adequately answered, nor her historic 
 mission accomplished until with the concordant 
 voices of Hebrew prophets and psalmists she pro- 
 claimed God a Free Person, degraded proud na- 
 ture to His handiwork, glorified man as His 
 image, and revealed righteousness and loving- 
 kindness as His eternal attributes. 
 
 It has been said '' that the first man who re- 
 strained the native instantaneous movements of 
 the self-preserving, self-reproducing instincts had 
 morality revealed to him.'' Such self-restraint 
 declares that the ideal and permanent self has 
 victoriously confronted the natural and vanish- 
 ing self. Of all historic peoples the Hebrew was 
 most intimately aware of this antagonism between 
 natural and ideal selfhood and most immediately 
 assured that the mandates of the ideal self were 
 uttered with divine authority and would be en- 
 forced by divine compulsion. '' The objective 
 validity of the moral '' was the point of departure 
 for the Hebrew religion, and since the inseparable 
 correlate of morality is will, through the logic of 
 conscience, ascent was made to the idea of a per- 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 111 
 
 sonal God. This great concept attained, the sub- 
 sequent history of the Hebrew people records one 
 long wrestle with its implications, and gradually 
 the national mind decides upon righteousness 
 and loving-kindness as the determining attributes 
 of Jehovah. ^' The Lord God is merciful and 
 gracious " and " Like as a father He pitieth his 
 children." And yet this loving God is also a right- 
 eous God and ^' will by no means clear the guilty.'^ 
 
 Great philosophers have made us aware that 
 loving-kindness and justice are necessary implica- 
 tions of personality. A selfish God would refuse 
 to share His being. But such a selfish God could 
 not be personal, because personality demands 
 that the self make itself objective. Hence per- 
 sonality presupposes an altruistic God who be- 
 stows real and not merely seeming being upon 
 His creatures. Again true being presupposes free- 
 dom, and the creature possessing it must be held 
 responsible for his deeds. Therefore God cannot 
 be loving unless He is just and by returning upon 
 each doer the moral equivalent of his deed recog- 
 nizes his freedom and dignity.^ 
 
 Only those who know how far imagination and 
 conscience outrun conscious definition and realize 
 
 » The argument advanced is borrowed from Dr. Harris and 
 is to be found in a monograph entitled Hegel's Voyage of 
 Discovery, read before the American Philosophical Associa- 
 tion, December, 1903. 
 
112 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 that without their antecedent activity reason would 
 have nothing to define, can appreciate the divine 
 message given through the Hebrews to all man- 
 kind. Appreciation deepens with recognition of 
 the fact that conscious definition too often leaves 
 the definer cold to the practical demands of the 
 truth defined. The glory of the Hebrew people is 
 not only that it gave us the one true God, but that 
 it gave us a nation living by faith in God. The 
 deliverance of Israel from Egypt was by His 
 might ; the land flowing with milk and honey was 
 His gift; national prosperity was from God's 
 hand ; national adversity was His chastisement ; 
 national enemies were His scourging rods; na- 
 tional captivity was the affliction with which 
 He visited His people because of the multitude 
 of their transgressions, and the undying na- 
 tional hope was that the redeemed of the Lord 
 should return and come with singing unto 
 Zion. 
 
 Between the chosen people and the true God 
 there was established a covenant of righteousness. 
 Their pledge to Him was obedience; His pledge 
 to them blessing for themselves and through them 
 for the whole world. Disobedience was deser- 
 tion to false gods and destruction for the deserter. 
 I^ever has the objective validity of the moral had 
 more signal recognition. Never has practical de- 
 nial of the moral imperative been more clearly set 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 113 
 
 forth as the sole and sufficient cause of individual 
 and national disaster. 
 
 The heroes of Hebrew story are many, but their 
 spirit is one, and whether they subdue kingdoms, 
 stop the mouths of lions, quench the violence of 
 fire, or raise the dead to life, their victory is al- 
 ways the triumph of a faith which works right- 
 eousness. To influence childish imagination with 
 their prevailing deeds is to kindle in the hearts 
 of children something akin to their believing, 
 loyal, and resolute temper. It is well to know 
 Achilles, Curtius, Siegfried, but if by the path- 
 way of the good, man climbs most securely to that 
 eminence of spirit whence he discerns final truth 
 and perfect beauty, it is dangerous not to know 
 Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Daniel, and 
 the Hebrew youths unharmed in the furnace 
 of fire. 
 
 The latest supposed discovery in morals is, that 
 there are none. The one fixed fact about moral- 
 ity is that it must be fluid. Nature ascends by 
 making creatures with more brains. Let us con- 
 spire with nature to create men with more brains. 
 Whatever contributes to this result it is expedi- 
 ent to do, and this versatile and adaptive expe- 
 diency is the genial successor of all despotic and 
 stultifying moral imperatives. With this discov- 
 ery thought retreats from the Hebrew intuition 
 that to morality belongs objective validity upon 
 
114 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 that contingent morality which even to-day is 
 characteristic of farther Asia,^ and as a logical 
 result abandons all lingering faith in an eternal 
 intellect to which human intellect corresponds. 
 Man is the orphan of a universe indifferent to his 
 fate and must either succumb to, defy, or outwit 
 the dread unknown. 
 
 History is concrete psychology, and to follow 
 the historic evolution of an idea is to discover its 
 psychologic implications. Momentous, therefore, 
 is the historic ascent of Hebrew imagination from 
 the objective validity of the moral to the vision 
 of a personal God, and to divination of justice 
 and love as His necessary attributes. These intui- 
 tions attained, mind is impelled by its own dia- 
 
 » " We wonder if the worst idea of Asia, that morality has 
 no immutable basis, but is a fluctuating law dependent upon 
 some inexplicable relation between the individual and the 
 Creator, or the individual and the All, will ever come over 
 here. The Indian holds that a line of conduct may be right 
 for one man, or indeed imperative, but wrong for another, or 
 indeed insufferable; that a world-wide law is unthinkable; and 
 that each man will be judged because of his obedience to some 
 law external to himself yet peculiar to his own personality. The 
 kings' obligation to the divine is not the peasants'; the ordinary 
 Brahmin must be monogamous, while the Koolin Brahmin 
 may have sixty wives ; the trader may cheat where the carrier 
 must keep contract; the usual Hindoo must spare life, while 
 the Thug may take it and yet remain sinless. That opinion 
 subverts the very foundations of morality and conduct." 
 (Italics mine). — Asia and Europe, Meredith Townsend, pp. 
 142-43. 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 115 
 
 lectic to deeper presuppositions. To visit upon a 
 finite being the complete return of his deed would 
 be to annihilate him. Therefore, justice cannot 
 be wholly just until it mete the equivalent of deed 
 upon a perfect doer. This perfect doer, moreover, 
 is presupposed not only by divine justice, but by 
 divine altruism, for love cannot be satisfied with 
 giving until it has given itself. Implicit there- 
 fore in the concept of a Personal God, wdiose 
 necessary attributes are justice and love, is that 
 doctrine of the Logos, which holds that from all 
 eternity a Perfect Person must have completely 
 objectified Himself in a Second Person equal to 
 Himself but distinguished from Him by the fact 
 of derivation and also that doctrine of creation 
 which discerns that, in thinking his derivation, the 
 Logos calls the world of [N^ature and Man into 
 actual being. ^ 
 
 We all know how this final implication of per- 
 sonality was first revealed to men. Alike by those 
 who accept and those who reject it, its historic 
 source is traced to the consciousness of Jesus 
 Christ and its initial form recognized in His im- 
 mediate relationship to a God whom He knew as 
 His father and to men whom He knew as His 
 brethren. His life and death conferred supernatu- 
 ral value upon each individual of the human race 
 
 ' For an explanation of these two doctrines, see Chapter 
 XII. 
 
116 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 because they declared every man to be a child of 
 God, worthy that God should die for him, and 
 called to be perfect as his Father in heaven is 
 perfect. 
 
 Coiled within the recognition of each man's 
 supernatural value is recognition of his ideal self, 
 and identification of this ideal self with the ideal 
 self in all other men. The man for whom God 
 dies is mankind. Mankind in men is the ideal 
 self in men. Being one in all men it makes all 
 men one. Hence whatever is granted to one man 
 must be claimed for all men, and whatever any 
 individual claims for himself, he must spend his 
 life to bestow upon his brother. 
 
 The Christian intuition of ideal selfhood ex- 
 plains and by explaining heals that breach be- 
 tween man as he is and man as he ought to be, 
 whose pain was the original point of departure 
 for the Hebrew religion. And as it completes 
 the striving of one great historic race, so it in- 
 itiates the striving of another. Christian mission- 
 aries carry to Germanic savages the message of 
 the Gospel. They tell men — by nature most as- 
 sured of their own supernatural value and heart- 
 hungry for recognition — of a God who died for 
 them. They stir in spirits eager for high ad- 
 venture the ideal of service. The rude warrior 
 who made good his right to be by slaying all who 
 dared contest it, surrenders to a self-sacrificing 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 117 
 
 God, and emulating His love is transformed into 
 a brave, courteous, and pious knight who spends 
 his life seeking to right wrong and to succor the 
 oppressed. 
 
 It was said in the earlier part of this chapter 
 that life copies literature. This is true, but the 
 relationship between life and literature is too 
 complex to be stated without paradox, and it must 
 now be affirmed that literature transfigures life. 
 Without Achilles, Alexander might never have 
 been, but without the unknown champions who 
 upon the borderland between Asia and Asiatic 
 Greece defended the impulses out of which were 
 crystallized occidental ideals, there had been no 
 Achilles and no Homer. So without the self- 
 destructive deeds of countless Teutons there had 
 been no Siegfried and no Gotterdammerung, and 
 without historic knighthood there had been no 
 Arthur, no Galahad, and no mystic vision of pure 
 spiritual life embodied in legends of the Holy 
 Grail. 
 
 To see what we should be is to discover what 
 we are and to rouse the native self to desperate 
 struggle. Becoming a Christian, the fierce savage 
 who for ages had made good his being by slaugh- 
 ter, found at last the one foe he must slay, the one 
 foe who might slay him. If Christianity gave 
 the Teuton God it also gave him the devil, and 
 in the warfare it set raging within his soul he 
 
118 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 knew the devil often won the victory. Inordinate 
 impulse was lashed to frenzy by ideal restraints, 
 and in moments of madness the whole of life 
 was freely staked against immediate gratification. 
 Again, projecting racial madness into myth the 
 Germans created the legend of Faust. They had 
 learned that there can be no twilight of the gods, 
 but they were intimately apprised of a final and 
 fatal twilight of the individual soul. 
 
 The legend of Faust and the legends of chiv- 
 alry are mythical expressions of an antithesis 
 which history must resolve. Faust asserts the old 
 imperative impulse, knighthood recognizes an im- 
 perative ideal. The ancient instinct, and the 
 accepted ideal seethe and whirl in the storm- 
 tossed spirit of a race, which had named its soul 
 after the storm-tossed sea.^ History shows the 
 submerging impulse, the ever more clearly emerg- 
 ing ideal. There shall be no claim for one man 
 which is not recognized as the right of all men. 
 Germany gives the world gunpowder and thereby 
 " makes all men equally tall and strong." She 
 invents printing and makes it possible for all men 
 
 ' See Max Miiller's Science of Language, American Edition, 
 vol. i, p. 380. Also Grimm's Dictionary under the word 
 Seele, "In its original form Saiwalo . . . earlier connected 
 with the word See (Saiwig) ... by the word Seele (soul) the 
 Germans called to mind the restless waves of the sea (lake 
 or ocean) which seemed to resemble the ceaseless working 
 of their own inner powers," etc. 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 119 
 
 to be wise. Seizing upon Luther as her cham- 
 pion she proclaims the right of individual thought. 
 Confronting with unflinching faith the negative 
 outcome of this daring deed in the horrors of the 
 French Revolution, she sings the triumphant 
 song which reverses the doom of Faust and ap- 
 peases the soul-hunger immanent in aboriginal 
 impulse by setting the free man on a free soil 
 among a free people. Last of all, with sublime 
 introspection she vindicates her racial instinct in 
 a philosophy which adequately defines freedom 
 and reveals it as the Creator of Hebrew Religion, 
 Greek Art, and Roman Law. 
 
 Freedom we call it, for holier 
 Name of the soul there is none; 
 Surelier it labours, if slowlier, 
 Than the metres of stars or of sun; 
 Slowlier than life into breath; 
 Surelier than time into death. 
 It moves till its labour be done. 
 
 As Germany solves the theoretic implications 
 of freedom, so the English-speaking branch of the 
 Germanic race discovers the practical instrumen- 
 talities through which freedom may be established 
 and confirmed among men. Discerning that free 
 men must not only be well governed but must 
 themselves become participant in the governing 
 power, England invents local self-government 
 
120 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 and America creates a national government of, 
 for, and by the people. Self-government de- 
 mands intelligence and public schools spring into 
 being. The free man must not be pent in space 
 nor limited in communion; hence, steamships and 
 railways carry him around the world and bring 
 the world to him. Over electric wires are flashed 
 each day the news of the nations. Public libra- 
 ries make the wisdom of the past accessible and 
 empower each man to live in communion not only 
 with contemporary but with historic humanity. 
 History began when the solitary were set in fam- 
 ilies. It will attain the ideal it has forever ap- 
 proached when through the federation of the 
 world it creates the cosmopolitan individual.* 
 
 With justified pride Englishmen remind the 
 world that they have given it Kunnymede, and 
 Shakespeare — the first great charter of liberty, 
 and the imperial genius who saw, as poet had 
 never seen before, the ethical demands of freedom. 
 Literature arose in concrete response to the ob- 
 scure search of intellect for the conditions under 
 which men might live together. To this impor- 
 tunate question the dramas of Shakespeare are 
 the poetic reply. They portray all typical col- 
 
 > See in The Poetry and Philosophy of Goethe, S. C. Griggs 
 & Co., Chicago, a paper by Dr. Wm. T. Harris on The 
 Poetry and Philosophy of Goethe, to which this chapter owes 
 many obligations. 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 121 
 
 lisions between particular men and the social 
 whole and mete to each colliding individual the 
 exact equivalent of his deed. The arbitrariness 
 of Lear, the ambition of Macbeth, the jealousy of 
 Othello cleanse men's souls of these debasing pas- 
 sions. The vacillation of Hamlet fires will to 
 stern resolve. The great historic plays fan the 
 flame of freedom in the soul by portraying its 
 struggle to incarnate itself in a national state. 
 As to Germany belongs the poet of the individ- 
 ual, so to England belongs the poet of society. 
 Through its supreme poet each of the two great 
 branches of the Germanic race has interpreted to 
 itself and to all men its own master impulse. 
 
 With recognition of the federated union of the 
 world and the cosmopolitan individual as the goal 
 toward which humanity has always struggled, we 
 resolve the complex relationship existing between 
 literature and life. Literature transfigures life 
 by discerning and portraying the lineaments of 
 generic or divine humanity. Life copies litera- 
 ture because it approximately defines her own 
 ideal. Incarnating this ideal she makes possible 
 a more accurate and more comprehensive defini- 
 tion. It has been said that no great general was 
 ever born in a nation of cowards, and no great 
 philosopher in a nation of fools. It may be added 
 that no great poet was ever born in a nation lack- 
 ing all mystic vision. The wave which dashes 
 
122 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 highest on the shore is borne there by the power of 
 the ocean. The supreme individual is the tri- 
 umph of mankind. He vindicates his right to be 
 by creating a humanity assimilated to himself. 
 
 The world is always repeating Pilate's ques- 
 tion, What is truth? Philosophy accepts and 
 interprets the answer of Jesus, Truth and the 
 Ideal Person are one, and bestows as her great- 
 est largess insight into the implications of person- 
 ality. Her definitions and presuppositions ap- 
 pease the intellect, but unallied with literature 
 they leave the will languid and the heart cold. 
 The ideal person concretely presented, appeals to 
 intellect, emotion, and volition. With the total- 
 ity of his selfhood he invokes the totality of ours, 
 and responsive to his challenge we gaze with ad- 
 miration, glow with love, and flame with high 
 resolve. 
 
 Creating a larger and more generous humanity, 
 literature necessarily creates a nobler speech. By 
 the criterion of language man is distinguished 
 from the brute. It arises when men begin to 
 live together and its use implies ascent into the 
 common mind. It is impossible until men have 
 learned to think some general concepts, and there- 
 fore its advent celebrates the emergence of the 
 ideal. While ideals are few and indistinct, lan- 
 guage must be poor and vague. Until society has 
 created individuals capable of original feeling, 
 
LITERATURE AND LIFE 123 
 
 thought, and action, it must gyrate in a tedious 
 round of conventional words and phrases. Noth- 
 ing but distinction of mind can create distinction 
 of speech. The men and women of great litera- 
 ture are cast in larger molds than their actual pro- 
 totypes, and use a nobler language. Their speech 
 grasps each idea in an accurate and lucid defi- 
 nition. Challenged to do heroic deeds their an- 
 swering words echo the clang of steel. Their 
 phrases sparkle with fine allusion and glow with 
 illuminating images. Their sentences move with 
 stately grace to musical measure. Being great 
 they express greatness. When in the actual world 
 intelligence has become transparent, will heroic, 
 sensibility delicate, and life harmonious, living 
 men shall speak even as they. 
 
 The debt of man to literature is great. So is 
 the debt of man to history. But to neither nor 
 both does man ow^e everything. Existent human- 
 ity is often explained as a kind of self -creation out 
 of nothing. It is well to remind ourselves that to 
 make something out of nothing is impossible even 
 to omnipotence, God Himself only makes to be 
 that which has always been, and the broad crea- 
 tion, proceeding ever afresh from His thought and 
 love, is the ceaseless reaffirmation of His eternal 
 and all-inclusive deed. Man can make himself 
 actually only what from the beginning he is po- 
 tentially, and his self-realization is progressive 
 
124 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 self-definition. Being a personal energy he cre- 
 ates himself in and through communion with 
 persons. History records the stages of man's self- 
 realization in ever enlarging communities. Liter- 
 ature portrays the stages of man's self-discovery 
 and points forward to the greater communities 
 through which he shall explore himself more 
 completely, and climb higher above himself. Both 
 history and literature reach toward a consumma- 
 tion which is unattainable on earth and in time. 
 The deed which earth demands of man is ascent 
 into the human species. The exciting experience 
 to which eternity and infinity invite him is ascent 
 into the divine genus. When through communion 
 Avith all souls throughout the cosmos each soul per- 
 fects itself, the prophecy of literature will be ful- 
 filled and the purpose of history accomplished. 
 
CHAPTEK Y 
 
 HERBART AND FROEBEL 
 
 In discussing the concentric programme and 
 the methodical treatment of literature, I have 
 dealt with that form of Herbartianism which in- 
 vaded the kindergarten. It has been far from 
 my intention to imply that were Herbart alive 
 he would sympathize with the educational prac- 
 tice of his more radical disciples. Professor Stoy, 
 leader of the conservative Herbartians, expressed 
 the conviction that '^ Ziller's novelties were harm- 
 ful exaggerations." ^ The educators who created 
 a practical plan of work out of these exaggera- 
 tions would seem to have accepted with a too un- 
 questioning assurance the three main tenets of 
 Herbart, that the final aim of education is moral- 
 ity; its immediate aim many-sided interest; and 
 the means of arousing this desired interest, the 
 presentation of thought-masses. With minds in- 
 tent upon this aim and method their attention 
 directs itself to creating " connected unities of 
 subject matter," and apparently they remain se- 
 
 > Herbart and the Herbartians, De Garmo, p. 185. 
 125 
 
126 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 renelj unaware that a constraining thought-mass 
 can never be imposed by one mind upon another, 
 but must somehow be compacted by each mind for 
 itself. 
 
 Had the originators of concentric instruction 
 given their careful attention to Herbart's discrim- 
 ination between primordial and derived presenta- 
 tions, they might have avoided some of their more 
 glaring mistakes in the education of little chil- 
 dren. According to Herbart's psychology the 
 only original power of the soul is ^' that of enter- 
 ing through the medium of the nervous system 
 into reciprocal relations with the external world. 
 These relations supply the mind with its primor- 
 dial presentations — the sensuous ones of sight, 
 hearing, smell, taste, touch, pleasure, pain.'^ ^ 
 The interaction of these primordial presentations 
 produces the derived presentations which in their 
 varied developments form the greater part of the 
 mind's contents.- It follows that the building of 
 thought-masses must begin by laying a strong 
 foundation of primordial presentations, and this 
 is precisely what Herbart himself attempted to do. 
 The duty of instruction as he conceived it was 
 " to guide from below upward two series, sepa- 
 rate yet ever simultaneously progressing toward 
 
 ' Science of Education, Felkin's translation. Introduction 
 by translators, p. 33. 
 
 2 IHd., p. 34, sentence slightly transposed. 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 127 
 
 the highest immovable point." ^ These series he 
 distinguished by the names cognition and sym- 
 pathy. The series of cognition was to begin with 
 exercises for sharpening sense-perception; the 
 series of sympathy with stories presenting con- 
 crete types of action and character. The appeal 
 of the former series was to the child's several ex- 
 ternal senses, and its object w^as to create an ap- 
 perceptive mass whose reaction upon a progressive 
 experience would tend toward a correct interpre- 
 tation of nature; the appeal of the latter series 
 was to his taste or immediate likes and dislikes, 
 and its object was to build up a sound moral ap- 
 perceptive mass out of numerous simple aesthetic 
 judgments of repugnance and agreement.^ 
 
 Herbart was familiar with the experiments of 
 Pestalozzi, and through his doctrine of appercep- 
 tion, which insists upon the necessity of assimilat- 
 ing new perceptions by the total amount of pre- 
 vious experience, he added an indispensable 
 supplement to the theories of the Swiss reformer. 
 With the idea of apperception active in his own 
 mind he was necessarily dissatisfied with the 
 
 ' Herbart's A. B. C. of Sense Perception. Eckoff Int. Ed. 
 Series. The reader will perceive that the passage cited is one 
 of Herbart's many statements that instruction should be 
 divided into two main lines, the one for understanding, the 
 other for feeling and imagination. See Chapter I of this 
 book. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 89. 
 
128 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 alphabet of sense-perception offered by Pestalozzi. 
 Like Eroebel, he perceived that there might be 
 not one but many alphabets of externality, e.g., 
 alphabets of tastes and odors, of the muscular 
 sense, of color and musical tones, and of the 
 mathematical elements, form, number, and size. 
 Like Froebel, again, he perceived that the most im- 
 portant alphabet of external sense-perception was 
 that which would enable children to begin spell- 
 ing out the truths of mathematics. For without 
 mathematics '^ the objective data of experience 
 cannot be correctly apperceived," nor can that 
 causal interest be satisfied which " impels search 
 for the laws binding these data together." ^ Cog- 
 nizant of these truths Herbart provided a system 
 of instruction which ^' analyzes all forms into 
 triangles, and discovers the ratios of the sides of 
 
 • "Sense-perception on the part of the student supplies, 
 of course, the first elements of knowledge. But equally of 
 course the educator who in the Baconian phrase should be 
 the minister and interpreter of nature will arrange the sense- 
 perceptions of the child, in, for example, object lessons exactly 
 as he will any other work — namely, according to his view of 
 the general purpose of instruction. The question then is what 
 is the view that he should take? In the first place it will be 
 conceded that the object of learning is doing and that before 
 we can act properly, we must have properly learned. This 
 we cannot do except by attention, by devotion to the object 
 in hand. It aU comes to the accurate apperception of the ob- 
 jective data. In the second place the child seeks for the laws that 
 bind these data together. These laws may be at first of ex- 
 tremely crude empiricalness; the child may not even know the 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 129 
 
 the triangles one to another as' depending upon 
 the size of the angles." ^ This mathematical al- 
 phabet, it is evident, will enable pupils to classify 
 the infinitude of forms in nature under a finite 
 number of geometric archetypes ; will reduce these 
 archetypes to unity by analyzing them into a 
 single form ; will explain the varieties of this 
 form itself by showing that the ratio of its sides 
 one to another is dependent upon the size of the 
 angles; and finally, will direct attention away 
 from all forms to formative processes and thus 
 abet the child in that search for causal energy 
 which is the final source of his interest in the 
 inanimate objects of his environment. What 
 he really wants to know is not an object but 
 an object-making energy. Himself a causative 
 power he can appease his intellect only with 
 causes. 
 
 As Herbart perceived that mathematics offer 
 the best point of departure for the comprehension 
 of nature, so he recognized in good stories well 
 told the best point of departure for all studies re- 
 term laws, but that is what it seeks. But the data as well as 
 the laws are manifested in time and space; in other words in 
 mathematics. . . . Mathematics, then, is the mental basis for 
 apperceiving both data and laws." (Italics are mine.) — 
 Herhart's A. B. C. of Sense-Perception, p. 82. Chapter con- 
 tributed by Professor Eckoff. 
 
 1 Herbart's A. B. C. of Sense-Perception, Editor's Preface, 
 p. viii. 
 
 10 
 
130 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 lating to the comprehension of man. His sugges- 
 tions with regard to the selection of stories are 
 admirable. They must not celebrate the e;s:ploits 
 of children, " for the whole look of a well-trained 
 boy is directed above himself." ^ They must pre- 
 sent such men as he himself would like to be." ^ 
 " They must show the bad plainly, but not as an 
 object of desire." ^ " If the effect of a story is 
 to be lasting and emphatic it must carry on its 
 face the strongest and clearest stamp of human 
 greatness." ^ To these valuable suggestions, and 
 many others of similar purport, may be traced the 
 inspiration of that one great meritorious deed of 
 Herbart's more radical disciples — their insistence 
 upon the educational value of fairy tales, racial 
 myths, and periods of history important to the 
 development of the race " so far as a poet or 
 historian has described them in a classical man- 
 ner." ^ 
 
 In his distinction of a series of studies for cog- 
 nition, and a series for sympathy, Herbart simply 
 reaffirmed the traditional practice of pedagogy 
 
 ^ Science of Education, Felkin's translation, p. 89. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 89. 3 Ibid., p. 88. « Ibid., p. 89. 
 
 ' Ziller, cited in Ufer's Pedagogy of Herbert, p. 73. Her- 
 bart 's own series for sympathy is summed up as follows by 
 Professor Eckoff: "The Homeric poems for childhood, his- 
 toric writers for the growing boy, modern history for the 
 youth approaching maturity, Platonic exclusiveness of 
 aught however artistic, that might injure the moral picture 
 
HERB ART AND FROEBEL 131 
 
 with its recognition of science and the humanities 
 as the objective and subjective strands of educa- 
 tion. In his discussions of these two series there 
 is evident a deep insight into educational values. 
 In endeavoring to provide for each series a foun- 
 dation of primordial presentations he did original 
 work, and to his honor be it remembered that he 
 recognized in literature the most nearly accessible 
 and best path of approach to all humane studies ; 
 that he discouraged desultory object lessons; dis- 
 cerned that the data of sense must be not only 
 perceived but apperceived, and insisted upon 
 mathematics as the true point of departure for 
 the interpretation of nature. 
 
 Herbart's alphabets of cognition and sympathy 
 were designed for the use of children who had 
 attained school age. The worst defect of his plan 
 is its exclusive emphasis upon assimilative activ- 
 ity, and its failure to provide any response to that 
 demand for self-expression which is the most 
 marked characteristic of childhood. This defect 
 becomes still more apparent in the following sug- 
 
 of the world which is to be unrolled step by step like the 
 natural picture — such is Herbart's plan put into one sentence 
 and crumpled somewhat in the packing. . . . Homer occupies 
 the same position as the initial point in the education of the 
 sympathetic nature that the A. B. C. of Sense-perception, 
 whose mathematical nature will become perfectly plain as the 
 reader studies it, occupies as the initial point in the cognitive 
 education." — Herbert's A. B. C. of Sense- Perception, p. 85. 
 
132 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 gestions with regard to the education of younger 
 children : 
 
 I have suggested marking out with bright nails 
 on a board the typical triangles and placing them con- 
 tinuously within sight of the child in its cradle. I 
 was laughed at. Well, people may laugh at me still 
 more. For I, in thought, place near that board sticks 
 and balls painted with various colors. I constantly 
 change, combine, and vary these sticks, and later on 
 plants and the child's playthings of every kind. I 
 take a little organ into the nursery and sound simple 
 tones and intervals on it for a minute at a time. I 
 add a pendulum to it for the child's eye and for the 
 unpracticed player's hand that its rhythmic propor- 
 tions may be observed. I would further exercise the 
 child's sense to distinguish cold and heat by the ther- 
 mometer, and to estimate the degrees of heaviness by 
 weights. Finally, I would send him to school with 
 the cloth manufacturer to learn as correctly as he, to 
 distinguish finer and coarser wool by touch. Yes, who 
 knows whether I would not adorn the walls of the 
 nursery with very large gayly painted letters. At the 
 foundation of all this lies the simple thought that the 
 abrupt and troublesome process of stamping things 
 on the mind, called learning by heart, will be either 
 not necessary, or very easy if only the elements of syn- 
 thesis are early made constituent parts of the child's 
 early experience.^ 
 
 " What will I be doing while you are knocking 
 me down ? " inquired a plucky youngster of the 
 
 » Science of Education, Felkin's translation, pp. 158-59. 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 133 
 
 older comrade who had threatened to lay him on 
 the ground. I cannot read Herbart's suggestions 
 with regard to the education of infancy without 
 an irresistible impulse to paraphrase this query 
 and ask, What will the child be doing while Her- 
 bart is building him up ? Herbart's procedure is 
 to be preferred to that of his more radical disci- 
 ples because at least it avails itself of primordial 
 presentations. Like theirs, however, it is a false 
 procedure, because it conceives the educator as a 
 builder, and the intellect and character of the 
 pupil as something he may build. Furthermore, 
 it conceives intellect as prior to and creative of 
 feeling and will. Therefore : " Go to ; let us build 
 thought-masses in the child and they will build 
 him.'' 
 
 The study of Herbart's pedagogics has been 
 fruitful of good results, because it has directed 
 attention to the process by which new experience 
 is assimilated with previous knowledge, and old 
 ideas reconstructed through new experience. The 
 word apperception, which designates this assimi- 
 lating and reconstructing process, stands for the 
 most characteristic feature of the art of education 
 as understood by Herbart, and suggests also his 
 most important contribution to the science of edu- 
 cation. When, however, we study his explanation 
 of this process we are forced to admit that it has 
 many serious defects. The more important of 
 
1^4 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 these defects are that he emphatically denies the 
 spontaneous activity and structural form of the 
 mind and thereby loses two apperceiving agencies 
 of the highest value, and that he ignores the now 
 generally admitted fact that no strong appercep- 
 tion takes place without the conspiring influences 
 of feeling and volition. It is his merit to have 
 called widespread attention to an important proc- 
 ess and to have aroused critical discussions as to 
 its nature. It cannot be denied that his own de- 
 scription of the process is very inadequate. 
 
 JSTot only is Herbart's pedagogy rooted in an 
 inadequate conception of the apperceiving process, 
 but it is self -contradictory in its insistence upon 
 many-sided interest as both the result of thought- 
 masses and the agency through which they are 
 created. Without interest, no circle of thought, 
 and yet, without the circle of thought, no interest, 
 for in it alone resides ^^ the initiative life, the 
 primal energy." A debt of gratitude is due to 
 Herbart for his recognition of the significance of 
 interest or involuntary attention, but educators 
 are now rapidly coming to see that for wise meth- 
 ods of arousing and guiding interest they must 
 turn to Froebel. 
 
 The pedagogy of Herbart is intimately con- 
 nected with a pluralistic ontology and a mechan- 
 ical psychology. He conceives ultimate reality 
 as a plenum of independent monads, yet for some 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 135 
 
 reason, perhaps because of the exigency of explan- 
 ation/ perhaps because his own mind was con- 
 trolled by an apperceptive mass in which the idea 
 of relativity was dominant, he admits some com- 
 munion between these mutually excluding reals. 
 In accord with his ontology and his apperception 
 mass " his psychology is of the association type." ^ 
 The soul is a psychic monad devoid of all capa- 
 city, except that of self-defense against the attacks 
 of other monads. ^' Its deed of self-defense pro- 
 duces presentations,'^ and with their production 
 its activity ceases forever, and everything that 
 afterwards goes on within it is due to the energy 
 of its " naturalized assailants." ^ " The self is a 
 result of the union and interpenetration of pre- 
 sentations. In their totality these presentations 
 form the intellect. The furtherance or suppres- 
 sion of one presentation by another gives rise to 
 
 * " Herbart's method is to make any assumption whatever 
 that will bring harmony and consistency into our thinking 
 without regard to the explicability of the assumptions them- 
 selves." — Herbart and the Herbartians, p. 27, 
 
 2 The Educational Theories of Herbart and Froebel, John 
 Angus MacVannel, p. 62. 
 
 3 "The soul at first is merely blank formal unity of which 
 nothing can be said excepting that it can act in self-defence ; 
 the soul shows its character by what it does in the struggle for 
 existence. Its peculiar mode of self-defence is a sensation 
 or presentation. It admits presentations to its domain. 
 Admission proves to be occupation. Its former assailants are 
 so to speak naturalized as ideas." — Jbid., p. 62, 
 
136 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 feeling in its two forms of pleasure and pain. 
 The successful struggle of a presentation against 
 others that tend to suppress it is desire," ^ and 
 ^' Will is desire combined with the supposition 
 that it can be fulfilled." ^ In short, at Lotze puts 
 it, "Everything further that happens in it, the for- 
 mation of its conceptions, the development of the 
 various faculties, the settlement of the principles 
 on which it acts are all mechanical results which, 
 when once these primary self-preservations have 
 been aroused, follow from their own reactions; 
 and the soul, the arena on which all this takes 
 place, never shows itself volcanic and irritable 
 enough to interfere by new reactions with the play 
 of its states, and to give them such new directions 
 as do not follow analytically from them accord- 
 ing to the universal laws of their reciprocal ac- 
 tions." 3 
 
 Several insistent questions torment the reflec- 
 tive mind as it ponders Herbart's ontologic and 
 psychologic assumptions. If the soul can natural- 
 ize attacking monads as presentations, must there 
 not be between it and them some degree of par- 
 ticipation, and does not participation in any de- 
 gree imply a transcendent including unity? If 
 
 » Herbart's Doctrine of Interest, Wm. T- Harris. 
 
 2 Text Book of Psychology, Herbart, p. 82. In. Ed. Series. 
 
 3 Lotze, cited in The Educational Theories of Herbart and 
 Froebel, by John Angus MacVannel, p. 70. (Italics mine.) 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 137 
 
 the soul is devoid of activity, where does it get 
 energy to defend itself against its assailants ? If 
 it has even a minimum of energy to start with, 
 why does it lose it after its one great act of self- 
 defense ? And finally, if the self is a product of 
 free and independent ideas which, for some in- 
 explicable reason, have a continuous tendency to 
 assimilate, why assume a soul substance as the 
 arena of their wars, treaties, and alliances ? ^ 
 
 The most characteristic feature alike of Her- 
 bart's ontology, his psychology, and his peda- 
 gogy is an almost exclusive emphasis upon assimi- 
 lative processes. There would seem to be a close 
 connection between this emphasis and his own 
 experience. He knew nothing in life but learn- 
 ing and teaching. We read that as a child he 
 showed extraordinary power of understanding 
 and remembering the thoughts of others." ^ He 
 himself tells us that " Filling the mind, this it is 
 which before all other more detailed purposes 
 ought to be the general result of instruction." ^ 
 Out of the assimilated knowledge of the past will 
 spring that sympathy with and conformity to con- 
 ventional standards of action which is apparently 
 
 ' See The Educational Theories of Herbart and Froebel, 
 John Angus MacVannel, pp. 62, 63; 69, 70. 
 
 2 Science of Education, Felkin. Introduction by the 
 translators, p. 2. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 192. 
 
138 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 what Herbart understands by morality. Emer- 
 son reminds us how necessary it is to discriminate 
 between the thinker and man thinking. No less 
 important is it to discriminate between the teacher 
 and man teaching. Herbart was thinker and 
 teacher, not man thinking and teaching. Hence 
 the challenge of world-transforming events failed 
 to provoke in him any adequate response, and he 
 lived through one of the most sublime periods of 
 history not only without comprehension of its 
 meaning but without that thrill of excitement 
 and joy which in all susceptible sou*ls prophesies 
 the birth of a new era. 
 
 Never surely has there lived a man less respon- 
 sive than Herbart to the spirit of his age. It 
 was an age which, by smiting men's eyes with that 
 greatest of all object lessons, the French Revolu- 
 tion, wakened them to knowledge of the fact that 
 mind had attained its majority and that hence- 
 forth neither could intellect be appeased with 
 tradition, nor will with convention. Great heroes 
 of contemplation were wrestling with the problems 
 implicit in this revolution of the popular con- 
 sciousness and were solving them by creating 
 a philosophy which sanctifies historic achieve- 
 ment as a cumulative revelation of the divine 
 principle in man, and blazes a path of historic 
 progress by demonstrating the necessity of insti- 
 tutions for the realization of freedom. Stung to 
 
HERBART AxND FROEBEL 139 
 
 high resolve by the defeat of Jena and the Treaty 
 of Tilsit, Germany was rising as one man to 
 throw off a hateful yoke, and in repelling the in- 
 vader from her soil was accomplishing that first 
 great deed of national self-making, whose consum- 
 mation has been the imperial union of all German 
 states. With lightning flash of thought and 
 voice of thunder, Fichte was making his country- 
 men aware that " Will is the efficient living prin- 
 ciple of the world of reason, as motion is the 
 efficient living principle of the world of sense.'' 
 Goethe was startling Germany to far surmises by 
 painting its portrait as a melancholy and inef- 
 fective youth wandering in aimless dreams be- 
 tween the natural and supernatural worlds, and, 
 retranslating the heart of the Xew Testament, 
 was writing with the pen of Faust " In the be- 
 ginning was the act." And in the midst of all 
 the mighty stir and tumult of a revolution which 
 in every sphere was dethroning abstract intel- 
 lect and enthroning concrete deed, Herbart was 
 sitting peacefully in his study or among his pupils 
 building up thought-masses out of primordial pre- 
 sentations, and shaping standard character out of 
 assimilated ideas! 
 
 In striking contrast to Herbart's detachment 
 from the life of the world was Froebel's enthu- 
 siastic response to the revolution taking place in 
 popular feeling and striving to define itself in 
 
140 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 philosophy. The impulse of his age surged in 
 him when as a mere youth he wrote in the jour- 
 nal of a philanthropic friend, " You work to give 
 men bread; be it the effort of my life to give 
 men themselves^ The ideal of his age had clari- 
 fied itself in his mind when he defined the final 
 aim of education, not as morality, but as free- 
 dom. The method of education implicit in this 
 aim had revealed itself to him when in 1828 he 
 wrote to Krause : '^ In doing must all true edu- 
 cation begin ; in the deed must it be rooted ; from 
 the deed must it grow ; out of the living, creative, 
 self-observant and self-penetrating deed must it 
 develop." ^ The remainder of his life was devoted 
 to working out in practice the demands of this 
 aim and method. An education whose method is 
 to be rooted in creative and therefore free activity 
 must necessarily begin with the beginning of life. 
 Hence Froebel who had commenced his profes- 
 sional career as a teacher of boys ends it as the 
 founder of the kindergarten and the author of the 
 Mother-Play. 
 
 The two insights which enabled Froebel to 
 create the kindergarten, were insight into the 
 ideal values of human life as concrete expressions 
 of the substance of freedom, and insight into play 
 as that activity of childhood which achieves most 
 perfectly the form of freedom. Play has a per- 
 
 » Aus Froebel's Leben, p. 141. 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 141 
 
 sistent form and a manifold content. Froebel 
 borrowed its form and selected from its content. 
 He wished to preserve the spontaneity which dis- 
 tinguishes play from work. He wished to abet the 
 struggle of the soul toward concrete freedom by 
 selecting from among the native plays of child- 
 hood those which are related to the ideal values of 
 human life. 
 
 The antithesis between work and play has been 
 often defined, but seems to be ever and anon prac- 
 tically ignored. Work is something done for a 
 purpose. Play is something done for the pleas- 
 ure of doing it. Without work, in which he 
 holds himself to his set purpose, man would never 
 learn to subordinate his whims and caprices. 
 Without play, in which free rein is given to his 
 own initiative, he could never develop individual- 
 ity. Even in adult life alternations of work and 
 play are necessary to physical health, mental san- 
 ity, and moral poise. In infancy and early child- 
 hood, or, to be specific, until the child is three and 
 a half or four years old individuality is so feeble 
 that without constant free and undirected play 
 it would languish and die. The infant must 
 spend much time doing just as he pleases, in or- 
 der that he may ever please to be something or 
 somebody in particular. At the age of three or 
 four years, however, he enters a transition state 
 which ordinarily lasts until the age of six. If 
 
142 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 throughout this period of transition he does noth- 
 ing but exercise his powers according to his mo- 
 mentary whim he becomes so capricious and self- 
 willed that later it is difficult to waken in him 
 any sense of participation in a social whole, or 
 any reverence for the larger human experience. 
 If, on the other hand, he is forced to work dur- 
 ing this fluid period, individuality is enfeebled 
 and originality sapped. He needs a method of 
 education which, preserving intact the form of 
 freedom, shall fill this form with the substance 
 of freedom. To provide this mediatorial edu- 
 cation is the specific function of the kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 It is said that some years ago the roots of grape- 
 vines in the wine-producing regions of Europe 
 had become so weak through overcultivation that 
 they lost all power of resisting the attacks of cer- 
 tain parasites.^ Strength was renewed by grafting 
 the highly developed vine upon the stock of the 
 American " Concord '' grape, a variety recently 
 developed from the wild grape. The success of 
 the experiment was due to the fact that there was 
 identity of species between the scion and the graft. 
 Grapevines could not have been successfully 
 grafted upon oaks, but highly developed vines 
 could be grafted upon their own ancestral stock. 
 
 » The Philoxera vastatrix appeared in 1863 and soon after 
 spread to all the grape-bearing countries of Europe. 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 143 
 
 In like manner the kindergarten seeks the renewal 
 and development of physical, mental, and moral 
 strength by grafting upon the native manifesta- 
 tions of childhood as expressed in play, the higher 
 realization of their own implicit ideal. 
 
 Through his study of the different forms of 
 childish play Froebel became aware of the fact 
 that some of them point toward the practical arts, 
 some toward the fine arts, some toward science 
 and literature, and some toward the ethical life 
 of man as incarnated in social institutions. In 
 these creations of the human spirit Froebel found 
 his standards of value. In different native forms 
 of play he recognized the germinal tendencies of 
 which these values are the higher expression. To 
 guide the spontaneous energies of play over those 
 paths which lead most directly toward the sum- 
 mits of ideal achievement was his confessed aim. 
 His aspiration was to help children to do better 
 what they themselves were trying to do, and be- 
 cause his instrumentalities and methods conspire 
 to produce this result his disciples claim that he 
 has transformed play into education.^ 
 
 Whoso understands the general purpose and 
 method of the kindergarten will also understand 
 
 > In Chapter II of this book I have attempted to give a 
 general outhne of Froebel's plan. Kindergartners are asked 
 to re-read that chapter in connection with the definition of 
 Froebel's purpose given in the present chapter. 
 
144 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the complete accord of FroebeFs spirit with the 
 spirit of his age. As has been said, it was an age 
 in which, for the first time in history, man became 
 intimately aware of his own freedom. Its primal 
 deed was the Emancipation Proclamation of 
 Mind declaring that thereafter neither intellect 
 nor will should bow to any external authority. 
 Its second great deed was the transubstantiation 
 of authority into freedom by the discovery of its 
 inborn rationality. In exact correspondence with 
 these two achievements of the Zeitgeist are Froe- 
 heVs two revelations to education. The first of 
 these revelations is that children shall no longer 
 be shaped and fashioned by outside pressure, but 
 shall be abetted in their native effort to develop 
 through self-expression. The second and no less 
 important revelation is that in many of their fa- 
 vorite plays what they express are generic im- 
 pulses, and that, therefore, through freighting 
 play with the values of human life we enable chil- 
 dren to realize more rapidly and surely their own 
 impelling ideal. 
 
 The preceding brief statement of FroebeFs edu- 
 cational aim and method suggests the striking 
 contrast between his procedure and that of Her- 
 bart. This practical contrast is rooted in a con- 
 trasting psychology. As has been indicated, the 
 fundamental thesis of Herbart's psychology is 
 that presentations are the elements of mental life, 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 145 
 
 and the self a product of their fusion. The psy- 
 chology of Froebel, on the contrary, holds that 
 the self is an aboriginal energy whose ideal form 
 is self-consciousness, and whose history is a pro- 
 gressive realization and definition of its own im- 
 plications. Self -consciousness is the knowing of 
 the self, by the self, and such knowing implies 
 both the distinction of subject and object, and the 
 recognition of their identity. The life of the ego 
 is therefore a process of continuous self-diremp- 
 tion, and of the reintegration of its dirempted ele- 
 ments in a synthetic unity. 
 
 Since the ego is not a mere something which 
 incidentally possesses activity, but is self-activity, 
 and nothing but self-activity, its primal and con- 
 straining impulse must be action, and it will rush 
 outward into deed. Self-expression will precede 
 assimilation and determine what shall be assimi- 
 lated. For this reason Froebel seeks the point of 
 departure for education in play which he defines 
 as " self-active representation of the inner life, 
 from inner necessity and impulse." 
 
 The opposition between Herbart and Froebel 
 indicated in their pedagogics and defined in the 
 contrasting theses of their respective psychologies, 
 may be traced to an emotional root in the impene- 
 trable coldness of the one and the fervid response 
 of the other to the mood of a wonderful age, and 
 
 to an intellectual root in the antithetic concep- 
 11 
 
146 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tions of ultimate reality which are the thought- 
 precipitates of these contradictory emotional at- 
 titudes. To the atomic system of Herbart, which 
 regards the universe as an aggregate of monads 
 (and therefore not a universe at all), Froebel op- 
 poses an ontology whose creative idea is that ulti- 
 mate reality is absolute reason or perfectly real- 
 ized self-consciousness. It is true that Froebel 
 must be classed as a mystic, and a mystic is a 
 person who is making an inward transition from 
 faith to philosophy by beginning to realize in the 
 typical facts of religion a universal significance. 
 Being a mystic Froebel never achieved a scientific 
 statement of his ontologic convictions. Neverthe- 
 less, his writings make evident that in a more 
 or less adequate form he was aware of the several 
 great implications of absolute self-consciousness. 
 These implications are a perfect subject who has 
 eternally duplicated himself in a perfect object; 
 a manifold cosmos pervaded by law and objecti- 
 fying the infinite multiplicity of distinctions 
 pervaded by the unity of divine thinking; an evo- 
 lutionary ascent of nature determined by increas- 
 ing participation in the divine first principle and 
 culminating in man in whom is incarnate the 
 form of self -consciousness, which is freedom; 
 finally, the progressive realization by man of the 
 substance of freedom through a social communion 
 made possible by the fact that since every man 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 147 
 
 partakes of absolute reason, all men may and 
 should be partakers of each other. ^ 
 
 Froebel's psychology is that of the great think- 
 ers who achieved the highest triumph of human 
 intellect. His own more modest " acts of orig- 
 inality " are a study of childhood wherein its 
 manifestations are interpreted by the light of the 
 idea of self-activity; a method of early education 
 respondent to these interpreted manifestations, 
 and a series of instrumentalities indispensable for 
 the reduction of the method into practice. Only 
 as the kindergarten games and gifts are studied 
 in detail does the student realize the rich contri- 
 bution of Froebel's psychology to his pedagogics. 
 From his conception of the child as a self-creative 
 being flowed his emphasis upon the priority of the 
 deed. From insight into the truth that institu- 
 tions, arts, sciences, and literature are self-defini- 
 tions of the mind in which all individuals par- 
 ticipate sprang his idea of freighting the plays 
 of childhood with the values of life. From his 
 doctrine of the ascent of mind from the fact 
 through the symbol to the general idea arose his 
 accent upon imitative games, typical objects, acts, 
 processes, and characters, and the natural ana- 
 logues of elementary human experiences. From 
 the assurance that self-consciousness implies self- 
 duplication proceeded his idea of presenting to 
 
 » See Chapter XII. 
 
148 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the child in each stage of development an objec- 
 tive counterpart. From conviction of the neces- 
 sity of objectifying the unity of consciousness, its 
 structural form^ and its manifold content sprang 
 the three types of exercise known as forms of 
 knowledge, beauty, and life. And to give only 
 one more illustration, from the vision of self- 
 consciousness as '^ an identity pervading its own 
 distinctions,'' was born the attempt to make the 
 instrumentalities of the kindergarten an organism 
 wherein each member should be means and end 
 for all the other members, and for the including 
 whole. 
 
 No man can be so mightily possessed by an idea 
 as was Froebel without being betrayed into some 
 exaggerations. The enlightened lover of the kin- 
 dergarten will crave criticism of his mistakes, as 
 well as recognition of his merits. But criticism, 
 to be sound and valuable, demands a practical 
 knowledge of the way in which his instrumen- 
 talities are used, which thus far few if any of 
 his critics have possessed. It must be conceded 
 that his effort is unique and his results original. 
 In his interpretations of childhood he surpasses 
 not only all his contemporaries, but all his suc- 
 cessors. By freighting play with ideal values he 
 created a type of education which respects both 
 the form and the substance of freedom. By rec- 
 ognizing the supreme value of that kind of ap- 
 
HERBART AND FROEBEL 149 
 
 perception which is dependent on the nature of 
 the mind, he made a signal contribution to edu- 
 cational psychology. It would be his own dearest 
 wish that others should do better what he has done 
 so well. But he must be overtaken before he can 
 be left behind. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE FKEE-PLAY PROGRAMME 
 
 The most lucid expression of the free-play 
 programme, and the most complete illustration 
 of its practical workings are to be found in a 
 monograph entitled The Kindergarten Problem 
 which was published in 1899. The preface to the 
 monograph describes it as "a report upon one 
 year's work in a kindergarten system which had 
 broken somewhat with tradition." The conditions 
 causing the break, and the general plan adopted, 
 in order to bring new life into the Proebelian val- 
 ley of dry bones, are clearly stated in the following 
 extract : 
 
 The conviction, for years latent and urgent for 
 recognition, that free play is the only rational solu- 
 tion to Froebel's plea for self-activity, the undoubted 
 truth of the revelations of child study with regard to 
 the ancestral and racial traits of childhood, led to the 
 adoption of two recess periods of twenty minutes each 
 for spontaneous play in the kindergartens, to take the 
 place of the regular kindergarten games, and the 
 150 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 151 
 
 eagerness with which the play incentives were appro- 
 priated and put into active service by the children re- 
 vealed the strength of their interests. At first, but 
 few incentives were given, owing to ignorance of the 
 best incentives for their use, but as observation and 
 experience strengthened theory, the list gradually in- 
 creased and modified the original provision made. 
 To a few bean bags, tin street cars, wooden soldiers, 
 and a cloth elephant, whose only recommendation for 
 popularity was his obliging disposition in sacrificing 
 his dignity by becoming a football, and who was res- 
 cued from the sure fate which overtakes all who tam- 
 per with the game, have been added in the order 
 named, sand piles, dolls, toy dishes, toy brooms and 
 dustpans, toy washboards, reins, gas balls, hammers 
 and nails, garden tools, footballs, facilities for climb- 
 ing, jumping, seesaws, swings, and the latest achieve- 
 ment, a children's playhouse, where the tiny house- 
 keepers can keep the miniature family in the most 
 approved manner, and still have the benefit of the 
 fresh air and sunshine. 
 
 The bean bags, the wooden soldiers, the tin street 
 cars, and his lordship, the elephant, have been con- 
 signed to the oblivion of deserved rest — but the sand 
 piles have still the busy chattering groups of little 
 ones, digging wells and tunnels, molding and baking 
 in the sun the succulent pies and cakes so well known 
 to our own happy childhood, sifting the clean, dry, 
 fascinating sand until the sudden temptation to send 
 a mimic cyclonic deluge over unsuspecting comrades 
 is only diverted into more legitimate channels by the 
 prompt action of the ever-vigilant and ever-present 
 kindergartner. 
 
 The dolls, the toy dishes, brooms, washboards, and 
 
152 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 flatirons have a full share of attention from girls and 
 boys alike. The house is swept and garnished, in 
 the enthusiasm of play, some children considerately 
 sprinkling sand upon the floor, that the broom may 
 have excuse for action; the doll clothes are washed 
 vigorously in the sand with washboard and wooden 
 soap, and ironed while the iron is cold; the dishes 
 are washed and dried with imaginary water and tow- 
 els; the dolls are washed and dressed, one-eyed Rosie, 
 of long-suffering visage and pathetically dangling ap- 
 pearance being cuddled and loved and lullabied with 
 the fairest in the land ; while the hostess sets the table, 
 not omitting the tiny vase of weedy blossoms gathered 
 for the purpose, and proceeds to serve to the sedate 
 and expectant guests a banquet fit for the gods. 
 Sand is the basis and inspiration of the entire menu, 
 and the dignity and propriety of the occasion is not 
 marred by any ungeemly behavior, or the necessity for 
 correction to the verge of tears — there is no painted 
 line here to say, " Thou shalt not." 
 
 This seems like cooperative housekeeping, but no 
 such adult occupation is in reality the case. Each 
 child is entirely absorbed in her own particular bit of 
 drama, and cares not a whit about the success of the 
 whole. 
 
 Meanwhile, fiery steeds, restless chargers, and good, 
 safe family horses are being driven about the grounds, 
 with long grass tucked under the hat brims for manes, 
 with tinkling bells, and drivers with healthily exer- 
 cised lungs to keep them in subjection; bread, milk, 
 and vegetables are delivered without money and with- 
 out price to all who may ask. Without rest, or the 
 usual variation of eating and sleeping, with only an 
 occasional visit to the blacksmith for repairs, these 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 153 
 
 horses and their remorseless drivers, like Tennyson's 
 brook, " go on forever." ^ 
 
 Whatever else this description may or may not 
 be it is undoubtedly a correct presentation of the 
 ideal of perfectly free play. Each child is to do 
 what he pleases as he pleases. We observe, how- 
 ever, that free play is relegated to the recess pe- 
 riod, and taken in detachment from the rest of 
 the monograph, the passage cited merely provokes 
 doubt as to the advisability of forty minutes for 
 recess during a total period of only three hours. 
 The real issue, however, between the traditional 
 kindergarten and the child-study reformers is not 
 whether there shall be free play during recess, but 
 whether the entire three hours children spend in 
 the kindergarten shall become a recess dominated 
 by this ideal. That the answer given to this ques- 
 tion by the Santa Barbara experimenters is an 
 almost unqualified affirmative is evident from the 
 following record of two days in a kindergarten: 
 
 Monday: The morning being pleasant, we had our 
 marching and singing outdoors. One child was 
 chosen captain, the others following where he led. 
 
 » A Study of the Kindergarten Problem in the Public Kin- 
 dergartens of Santa Barbara, California, for the year 1898-99, 
 by Frederic Burk, Ph.D., City Superintendent of Schools and 
 Caroline Frear Burk, A.M., in cooperation with Orpha M. 
 Quayle, Supervisor of Kindergartens, Juliet Powell Rice, 
 Supervisor of Music, and Martha D. Tallant. pp. 38, 39. 
 
154 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 There was single-file marching, double-file marching, 
 straight-line marching, curved-line marching, slow 
 marching, fast marching, and every other kind of 
 marching that could be thought of hy one little hrain. 
 After the marching came free-choice singing^ the 
 children volunteering their favorite songs. 
 
 At 9.30 they all marched into the schoolroom, and 
 at the signal from the piano took their seats and sat 
 waiting for the usual morning story. This morning 
 the story was of The Wolf and the Crane. As the 
 children had seen the pictures of both a wolf and a 
 crane among their collection of colored pictures, they 
 thought that those were surely the originals of the 
 story. After the telling of the story, the children 
 were ashed to illustrate it on paper. After the illus- 
 trations they were given five minutes for free drawing 
 at the hoard. 
 
 From 10.05 to 10.25 recess was given. As usual, the 
 football took a prominent place in the games, as did 
 also sand-huilding, swinging, and 'jumping. 
 
 From 10.25 to 10.30 was occupied in marching 
 to the seats and resting, the piano being played 
 very softly, while all the little heads rested on the 
 tables. 
 
 From 10.30 to 10.50 was devoted to color work, the 
 children placing on a string first all beads of one 
 color; next, beads of another color, and so on until 
 all six colors were used. This they all did very read- 
 ily, with the exception of one little boy, who is appar- 
 ently color-blind. 
 
 From 10.50 to 10.55 the children were allowed to 
 look at a collection of scrap books which had been 
 given them and to converse freely about them. 
 
 11.05 to 11.25, recess. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 155 
 
 11.25 to 11.30, marching to seats and resting. 
 
 11.30 to 11.50, free play with any of the kindergar- 
 ten material which each individual chose. 
 
 11.50 to 12, they put away the material and sang the 
 closing song. 
 
 Tuesday: The school opened with free marchings^ 
 after which the children sang chosen songs. 
 
 At 9.30 the children took their seats, when the story 
 of The Dog and the Bone was told them. Then 
 they illustrated the story on paper and told it. Before 
 the hour closed five minutes were devoted to circle 
 drawing on the board, using the free-arm movement. 
 
 10.05 to 10.25, recess. 
 
 The day was foggy, so the greater number of the 
 little girls stayed inside and played house, while the 
 majority of the little boys and girls on the ground 
 enjoyed climbing upon the fence and jumping down 
 into the sand. A few of the boys played football, 
 and two little girls played with the swings. 
 
 10.25 to 10.30, they marched to seats and rested. 
 (This rest^ period seems very beneficial, as with very 
 little exception the children seem to enter into the 
 spirit of it.) 
 
 10.30 to 10.50, number lesson. I gave them a piece 
 of clay, then, drawing three circles on the board, told 
 them to make that number of marbles. After the les- 
 son they were permitted to make anything they 
 wished from the clay. 
 
 10.50 to 11.05, a collection of bird pictures was 
 looked at and talked about. The pictures had been 
 put away for several days, consequently were enjoyed 
 more than usual. 
 
 11.05 to 11.25, recess. Again the fence- climbing and 
 jumping were indulged in to a great extent. 
 
156 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 11.25 to 11.30, marching and rest. 
 11.30 to 11.50, free play!' 
 
 Is it possible to conceive a programme in which 
 the ideal of free play could be more consistently 
 carried out. The marching was free, the singing 
 was free, the selection of games was free, the 
 choice of material was free, the method of using 
 it was free, the illustrations of stories were free, 
 and lest all this freedom should be insufficient for 
 purposes of development, there were given, both 
 days, two recess periods of twenty minutes each. 
 There is not a single word in the diary to suggest 
 that any effort was made to lead the children to 
 build better, draw better, model better, or do any- 
 thing better than they were originally able to do. 
 The only inconsistencies in the two days' record 
 are the twenty minutes spent in stringing beads, 
 and the ^ve minutes presumably required to make 
 three marbles. With these exceptions the chil- 
 dren did nothing but amuse themselves or suffer 
 themselves to be amused by the kindergartner. 
 It may be added that even the stringing and 
 marble-making exercises were practically effort- 
 less. 
 
 Ignoring for the moment the self-refuting dia- 
 lectic of the free-play theory as expounded by 
 
 'The Kindergarten Problem, pp. 118-20. (Italics mine.) 
 — Alice L. Blackford. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 157 
 
 its advocates, and assuming that the freedom 
 claimed were possible, let us frankly recognize 
 that to carry out this theory would mean not a 
 modification of the historic kindergarten but a 
 complete revolution of its principles and prac- 
 tices. The institution which Froebel originated 
 was conceived by him as a transition from the 
 nursery to the school. The nursery is a place for 
 free play. The school is a place for work. The 
 kindergarten is a mediatorial realm wherein a 
 transition is made from play to work. As was 
 explained in the preceding chapter of this book, 
 the transition is effected by grafting upon selected 
 plays which reveal germinal tendencies toward 
 the values of human life the higher expression 
 of theij- own ideal. The value of the graft is 
 two-fold. It develops the mind through its own 
 free impulsion. It renews the energy of ideals 
 which had been paralyzed by their external im- 
 position. The values of life must not be conceived 
 as artificial flowers fastened by some external 
 hand upon a plant which could never have pro- 
 duced them, but as the perfect blossom in which 
 the plant completes its life and provides for its 
 own renewal.^ 
 
 Contrasting the free-play programme with the 
 concentric programme we become aware that each 
 is the fruit of a partial conception of the child. 
 
 » See Chapter V, pp. 140-144. 
 
158 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The concentric programme conceives him as pre- 
 ponderantly a learning being, and thereby retreats 
 from the position of Froebel to that of the tra- 
 ditional schoolmaster. The free-play programme 
 conceives him as a sentient being who reacts upon 
 stimuli from his environment, and by its claim 
 that there must be no interference with " the 
 primal hereditary impulsions " retreats from the 
 position of Froebel to that of Rousseau. The 
 Froebelian programme harmonizes the mutually 
 excluding conceptions of established education 
 and educational reform by accentuating those 
 modes of self-expression which reveal and confirm 
 generic selfhood. 
 
 A revolution in principle must revolutionize 
 practice, and a revolutionized practice must de- 
 mand changed instrumentalities. The Santa Bar- 
 bara experimenters were convinced that " abso- 
 lutely free play is the only rational solution to 
 FroebeFs plea for self -activity.'' The first result 
 of this changed conviction was the addition of 
 numerous instrumentalities, e. g., seesaws, swings, 
 climbing poles, and promiscuous toys, supposed to 
 be necessary as " play incentives." The second 
 result was a decision that " the kindergarten is 
 loaded down with an unsifted mass of material 
 which has been chosen by the adult mind as suit- 
 able for the logical development of the child." ^ 
 
 » The Kindergarten Problem, p. 81. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 159 
 
 It was therefore deemed necessary to discover the 
 spontaneous reaction of children toward the tradi- 
 tional kindergarten materials, and a test experi- 
 ment was made which our monograph describes 
 as follows : 
 
 Every day for half an hour the kindergarten mate- 
 rials, the gifts and occupations, were spread on a 
 table, and each child chose what one thing he cared 
 to play with for that time. At first the idea was car- 
 ried out in the form of a play; the table and its con- 
 tents were supposed to be a store, and the children 
 came, and, using the tablets or parquetry circles for 
 money, bought what they wanted, so that that half 
 hour of the day came to be known as " store time," a 
 name which clung to it long after the " store " idea 
 was reduced simply to the less romantic " free-choice 
 time." Each child took his material to his seat, as a 
 rule, and there did what he pleased with it.^ 
 
 The results of this effort to determine by a " sci- 
 entific '' test the interest of children in the dif- 
 ferent materials of the kindergarten demand our 
 careful consideration. The materials preferred 
 by the younger children stated in the order of 
 preference were beads, clay, the sewing card, the 
 tile board, parquetry, blocks, and the first gift. 
 The per cent of choices for blocks and balls were, 
 however, very small, being in each case only seven 
 per cent (7^), as opposed to nineteen per cent 
 
 » The Kindergarten Problem, p. 81. 
 
160 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 (19^) for beads, eighteen per cent (18^) for clay, 
 thirteen and one half per cent (13J^) for the 
 sewing card, ten and one half per cent (10^^) for 
 the tile board, and ten per cent (10^) for par- 
 quetry. With the older children there was less 
 variety of selection, forty-one per cent (41^) of 
 all choices being given to the sewing card, and 
 twenty-nine per cent (29^) to clay. The remain- 
 ing thirty choices were scattering, the only gifts 
 or occupations which received more than three 
 choices being parquetry, eight choices, and blocks, 
 six choices. 
 
 The choices of the younger children are readily 
 explained. They were naturally attracted by ma- 
 terials whose possibilities were obvious. They 
 could see at once something to be done with beads, 
 clay, tile boards, blocks, and balls. Sewing and 
 parquetry offer fewer technical difficulties than 
 many other occupations, and hence are generally 
 among the first into whose use children are in- 
 itiated. The choices of the second-year children 
 force the conclusion that there had been lack of 
 intelligent guidance. These children had not been 
 led to discover the richer possibilities of the build- 
 ing gifts, hence the chart shows a waning interest 
 in blocks instead of the waxing interest which 
 thirty years of collective experience justifies us in 
 expecting. Tablets, sticks, and rings, whose varied 
 uses children need help to find, were scarcely 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 161 
 
 chosen at all; cutting, now almost universally 
 admitted to be one of the most popular, as well 
 as one of the most educative occupations of the 
 kindergarten, was chosen by only three children. 
 On the other hand, the sewing card received forty- 
 one (41) choices, a preponderance which expe- 
 rienced kindergartners cannot forbear to connect 
 with the fact that of all occupations, sewing is 
 the one which, after its few technical difficulties 
 are overcome, can be given with least strain upon 
 the director; which, for this reason, tends to be 
 constantly declined upon by easy-going kinder- 
 gartners, and in which, therefore, children most 
 often become capable of creative work. On the 
 whole, the experiment in Santa Barbara would 
 seem to have tested the ability of kindergartners 
 rather than the interests of children, and the judg- 
 ment the student is forced to pass upon it is, that 
 it failed in the essential conditions of a scientific 
 experiment, because it did not eliminate disturb- 
 ing influences. It may be added that such elim- 
 ination is practically impossible in a test of the 
 kind attempted. The jumble of different mate- 
 rials distracts unstable minds, and predisposes to 
 imperative or vacillating choices. The fact that 
 some of the occupations which children like best 
 after they have learned to use them do not ap- 
 peal to them at all until they have learned to use 
 them, makes the test of immediate choice unfair 
 12 
 
162 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 and misleading. The defects of directors create 
 disturbing influences of the most serious kinds. 
 Finally, the director's own judgments of value are 
 sure to react upon her children.^ The Santa 
 Barbara experiment, for example, was made at a 
 time when the minds of revolutionary kinder- 
 gartners were under the spell of critics who had 
 raised a mighty hue and cry against the geome- 
 try of FroebeFs gifts. Therefore, out of a total 
 of two hundred choices only thirteen were given 
 to building blocks, and one and one third to the 
 second gift. Since that time innovating kinder- 
 gartners have convinced themselves that material 
 which permits representation in three dimensions 
 is preferable to material which permits only rep- 
 resentation in the flat. In swift conformity to 
 this changed point of view children's tastes now 
 incline graciously toward the solid gifts — and 
 even the despised and rejected sphere, cube, and 
 cylinder is restored to a place of honor. The 
 practical conclusion to which we are forced by 
 these facts is that, if further test of the Froe- 
 belian instrumentalities is necessary, the only 
 reasonable test is the gradually accumulating 
 experience of the collective body of kindergart- 
 ners. The results of this test as carried out dur- 
 
 » In later test experiments the jumble of kindergarten 
 materials has been avoided. The other disturbing influences, 
 however, remain in full force. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 163 
 
 ing the past thirty-five years would seem to give 
 a priority of both interest and value to building 
 blocks, cutting, drawing, coloring, clay work, par- 
 quetry, and sewing. It is, however, a non sequi- 
 tur conclusion that because these occupations lead 
 in interest and value all others are devoid of in- 
 terest and valueless. The interest and value of 
 tablets, sticks, rings, folding, weaving, and card- 
 board modeling are very little less than the interest 
 and value of the occupations already mentioned, 
 and, finally, even those Froebelian instrumentali- 
 ties which possess the minimum of interest and 
 value cannot be entirely discarded without loss to 
 the child and some degree of failure to realize the 
 ideal of the kindergarten as a wise transition from 
 the nursery to the schoolroom. 
 
 It is too often forgotten that the traditional ma- 
 terial of the kindergarten is justified by the re- 
 sults of test experiments carried out through cen- 
 turies. Balls, building blocks, and materials for 
 arrangement games have commended themselves 
 to the taste of children and the judgment of par- 
 ents all over the world and through the ages. An 
 equally extended range of experience justifies 
 simple folding, weaving, twisting, or intertwin- 
 ing and embroidery, and as for the sand pile, clay, 
 pencil, paper, and coloring material, the evidence 
 in favor both of their value and their appeal is 
 surely sufficient to satisfy the most skeptical. 
 
164 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 There are so many things still to be found out 
 that it seems foolishness to waste time discov- 
 ering the already known, and settling the already 
 established. 
 
 To the criticisms thus far made upon the test 
 experiment in Santa Barbara some readers may 
 raise the objection that the free-choice period was 
 a temporary device, and that doubtless when its 
 results were attained the jumble of kindergarten 
 materials was discontinued and the planless meth- 
 od of allowing each child to do as he pleased with 
 the object of his capricious election was set aside 
 in favor of a more rational procedure. Our mono- 
 graph will not permit us to solace ourselves with 
 this false comfort. The experimenting kinder- 
 gartners, we are told, are eager to keep up the 
 free-choice period for its effect upon the children, 
 and they ^' pity the poor little starved, straight- 
 laced mortals who are restricted to the paltry 
 pabulum of the dictation exercise." As we read 
 this statement a doubt arises in our minds, which 
 further study of the Kindergarten Problem con- 
 firms. Its authors know. only the crude antithesis 
 between free play and dictation, and suppose 
 that children must either do exactly as they please, 
 or exactly as the kindergartner prescribes. The 
 mediatorial methods of the kindergarten — the 
 method of transit from imitation toward orig- 
 inality; the method of suggested subject which, 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 165 
 
 by eliminating indecision as to what shall be 
 done concentrates attention on how it shall be 
 done, and leaves children free to work out their 
 own plan of procedure; the method of free ini- 
 tiative with expert reaction, the inciting method 
 of the simple problem, the sympathetic method of 
 class or group work, wherein each child profits by 
 the ideas of his fellows, are all conspicuous by 
 their absence. In my judgment, lack of knowl- 
 edge of these mediatorial methods explains the 
 dissatisfaction of many kindergartners with the 
 instrumentalities of Froebel. 
 
 The first fallacy which created the so-called 
 /ree-play movement was the conception of the kin- 
 dergarten as " a substitute for childish play in 
 its totality. '^ It is with this fallacy alone that our 
 discussion has thus far been concerned. The 
 constant juxtaposition of free play with play in- 
 centives suggests a second fallacy which appar- 
 ently exercises compelling influence over the au- 
 thors of the Kindergarten Problem. This second 
 fallacy is the conception of the child as a creature 
 wholly dominated by instinct, and therefore a 
 slave to the suggestions of environment. " The 
 system of Dame Instinct," we are told, is quite 
 as complete as most systems furnished by the log- 
 ical adult, " and not half so stupid, either." ^ . . . 
 
 » The Kindergarten Problem, p. 44. 
 
166 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 " Instinct, however, is not the only factor to be 
 considered. Environment is equally important. 
 For instinct often remains dormant unless the 
 incentive furnished by the environment and nee 
 essary to the development of the instinct is pres- 
 ent. . . . Environment given, instinct becomes 
 a selective agent." * Hence, all kindergarten 
 gifts are offered as " incentives," and bean bags, 
 tin street cars, wooden soldiers, cloth elephant, 
 dolls, dishes, dustpans, washboards, flatirons, 
 reins, hammers, garden tools, footballs, seesaws, 
 and swings presented in motley array either arrest 
 development by delivering little victims of sug- 
 gestion over to the slavery of imperative impulse, 
 or create vacillating wills by provoking a desul- 
 tory and constantly changing activity.^ 
 
 Among the more important facts to which 
 modern psychology has called attention are the 
 pathologic conditions arising from disorganiza- 
 tion of the will. Hypochondria is an acute form 
 
 » The Kindergarten Problem, p. 45. 
 
 2 "The introduction of some simple reins of red tape with 
 bells has spread the enthusiasm for horse like wildfire. . . . 
 These horses and their remorseless drivers, like Tennyson's 
 brook, 'go on forever.'" — Ibid., pp. 45 and 39. "Rubber 
 balls were furnished freely and were the germs of a chronic 
 and incurable disease of ball-playing. ... A box of toys 
 has lately been placed in the yard of one of the kinder- 
 gartens and a general rush is made for this at every recess." 
 — Ibid., p. 45. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 167 
 
 of subjection to an imperative impulse or idea. 
 Hysteria is a chaotic disorder of " segmented " 
 will. Lesser degrees of the tendencies which cul- 
 minate in these acute disorders are common to all 
 men. In virtue of native temperament most lit- 
 tle children are prone either toward subjection 
 to a master impulse or toward that ^^ fickleness 
 of conduct " that '' irrational change of plan 
 which can itself become a hopelessly fixed habit 
 in a given brain." ^ One great duty of education 
 is to assist them so to integrate themselves that 
 they may escape the danger to which these defects 
 expose them, and the best method yet devised for 
 the accomplishment of this aim is the creation of 
 a healthy selective interest through the doing of 
 typical deeds. Professor Royce tells us that 
 " We must get children to do before they can con- 
 sciously will this or that particular form of do- 
 ing." ^^ Involuntary conduct," he writes, " must 
 precede the voluntary, but the right sort of invol- 
 untary conduct you can only establish through 
 appeals to the feelings and through presenting the 
 fitting objects of knowledge to the intellect." ^ 
 The method of the Froebelian kindergarten which 
 incites typical deeds through appeal to imag- 
 ination, and which, by means of typical deeds, 
 
 1 Outlines of Psychology, Josiah Royce, p. 69. 
 " Ihid., p. 374. See Chapter II of this book. 
 
168 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 creates a rational selective interest, is a practical 
 effort to realize this primary demand of true edu- 
 cation. The method of the free play kindergar- 
 ten, which tightens upon the child of strong na- 
 tive bias the chains of heredity and environment, 
 and increases the tendency of capricious wills to 
 hesitant and vacillating choices, is a parody on 
 all education. Persistent surrender to any master 
 impulse augments the danger of becoming en- 
 slaved by others, and fickle deeds must beget fickle 
 and irresolute characters. 
 
 The self-refuting dialectic of the free-play 
 ideal should now be apparent to the careful 
 reader. That ideal has a bifurcated root. One 
 fork of this root is the gratuitous assumption 
 that the kindergarten should be given over to 
 perfectly free play, the other is that exag- 
 gerated emphasis upon hereditary impulse and 
 environment which denies all freedom, and cul- 
 minates in the conception of play as a fated 
 activity. 
 
 The collapse of free play into reflex or semi- 
 reflex activities is more completely illustrated in 
 a chapter of the Kindergarten Problem which re- 
 lates to plays of physical action. ^' The essence of 
 play," we are told, is that it " should be directed 
 by the hereditary and instinctive impulses from 
 within. And the aesthetic or morally instinctive 
 games of the kindergarten are to be ranked with 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 169 
 
 a diet of beefsteak for suckling infants." ^ In- 
 herited impulses must be called into activity by 
 external stimulus, hence the kindergarten should 
 provide '' clean sand to roll, build, and model in. 
 mounds to jump from, poles to climb, balustrades 
 to slide from, paths to run in, bushes to hide in, 
 balls to throw, hammers with which to pound," ^ 
 and a goodly number of other incentives, such as 
 swings, jumping-ropes, and seesaws. These in- 
 centives quicken hereditary impulses, and call into 
 exercise our larger muscles. "It is a noticeable 
 fact," says our monograph, " that in running, 
 kicking, jumping, throwing, climbing, wrestling, 
 turning somersaults, etc., only fundamental move- 
 ments are brought into play. Our tree-dwelling 
 ancestors might have performed, and did perform 
 any and all of these movements, so that they are 
 handed down to the child's nervous system with 
 such a long and reputable list of references that 
 he is fain to make good use of them before ever 
 he is ready to attempt the newer-fangled accessory 
 movements of finger, hand, and eye, which have 
 been added to the curriculum of life by his nearer 
 ancestor, man." ^ 
 
 The dogma that " the larger and fundamental 
 muscles which move the greater joints precede in 
 their development the smaller, finer, or accessory 
 
 1 The Kindergarten Problem, p. 34. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 33. ^Ibid.,p.U. 
 
170 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 muscles which move fingers, throat, lips, and 
 make all the more delicate adjustments," ^ is re- 
 sponsible not only for much of the arresting prac- 
 tice of the Santa Barbara experimenters, but for 
 widespread neglect of the finger games of the 
 Mother Play, and widespread attack upon many 
 activities through which the traditional kinder- 
 garten developed manual skill. It has called 
 forth the demand that nearly all kindergarten ma- 
 terial shall be increased in size, and finally, it has 
 been one of the conspiring causes of recent efforts 
 to introduce into the kindergarten such household 
 industries as sweeping, dusting, and laundry 
 work.- The following statement made by the 
 greatest American exponent of genetic psychology 
 
 1 Adolescence, Dr. G. Stanley Hall, vol. i, p. 88. 
 
 2 The elimination of finger plays seems to me an unmixed 
 evil. The question of household industries in the kinder- 
 garten will be discussed in a later chapter. The enlargement 
 of kindergarten material involves in some cases questions 
 which psychologists admit to be still unsettled. For example, 
 the increased size of folding paper brings up the unsettled 
 question of the maximum limit of unstrained vision. In other 
 cases the enlargement of material obviously interferes with 
 educational results, e. g., when children are encouraged to 
 make very large pictures it becomes impossible for them to 
 overlook the picture as a whole, and therefore each object in 
 the picture has to have its place indicated by the kinder- 
 gartner. Finally, there are cases in which any decision 
 involves balancing many different problems. Thus the en- 
 largement of the blocks brings up the questions of increased 
 expense, diminished space for children to build in or retreat 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 171 
 
 would seem to indicate that revolutionary activity 
 had been somewhat precipitate. 
 
 Somewhere or other the false notion has crept into 
 our pedagogy that the child's fine muscles do not de- 
 velop until later than the large muscles. How can 
 one believe such a false statement when he sees a 
 young infant clutching with its little fingers and ex- 
 hibiting in this grip one of its strongest movements? 
 How can one believe this dogma when he sees the boys 
 and girls in the first grade doing all the work that 
 they do in writing with the fine finger muscles — liter- 
 ally overdoingUhis work in a very noticeable degree? 
 The fact is, the fine muscles are in full operation very 
 early in life/ 
 
 Surrendering the claim of prior development 
 the question emerges whether accent upon the use 
 of larger muscles may not be urged upon the 
 ground of prior muscular coordination. The suf- 
 ficient answer to this question is that the repe- 
 tition of already coordinated movements tends to 
 produce arrest of development, except in cases 
 where these movements are included in new and 
 larger coordinations. It is in virtue of the abun- 
 dance and variety of their diffuse or unorganized 
 movements that children can be led to form new 
 habits of action. " In movement, as in every 
 
 from the tables to the floor and loss of that unit of measure 
 which makes the Froebelian building gifts such a valuable 
 preparation for mathematics. 
 
 * Genetic Psychology for Teachers, p. 222, Charles Hubbard 
 Judd, Ph.D., Leipsic. Int. Ed. Series. 
 
172 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 other sphere," writes Dr. Judd, " nature attacks 
 her problems by producing more than she needs, 
 and then picking out the best. . . . Nature starts 
 out with a diffuse brain, as if she would say 
 to the individual, ^ I will not place any restric- 
 tions upon you, but will let you have at first 
 all the possible movements to select from.' She 
 stirs up the brain in all directions and the diffuse 
 movements begin to appear in abundance. There 
 are movements of the head and arms and feet and 
 trunk. Not all are necessary to the final form of 
 action, and most will drop away as development 
 goes on. But in the whole mass of movements the 
 right ones must be there, and development means 
 the selection of the right movements out of the 
 total mass of diffuse movements. Only one lim- 
 itation appears in all this provision of many 
 movements. This is the limitation we have al- 
 ready noted. ^ No mechanism could be devised 
 which would not in the general stimulation of the 
 muscles affect the small muscles more than the 
 large ones." 
 
 1 The limitation noted is explained at length in the fol- 
 lowing sentences: "They (the fine muscles) are the muscles 
 which in diffuse movements are most apt to be called into 
 action. It requires a less powerful excitation from the 
 nervous centers to set the fine muscles into action. They 
 contract at the slightest stimulation. ... In short, diffusion 
 always exaggerates first of all the movements of the fine 
 muscles." 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 173 
 
 Two facts would seem to be established. The 
 fine muscles are in full operation very early in 
 life. There is therefore no valid reason derived 
 from the condition of the child's nervous system 
 why fingers and eyes should not be duly exercised 
 as well as trunks, legs, and arms. Development 
 takes place through the coordination of diffuse 
 movements. To put the almost exclusive emphasis 
 of the kindergarten upon already coordinated 
 movements is, therefore, so far as we are able, to 
 arrest development.-^ 
 
 No one can study FroebeFs chapter on move- 
 ment plays without assurance of the fact that he 
 provides amply for the needed exercise of the 
 larger muscles. Were his suggestions with regard 
 to garden work carried out, the fundamental mus- 
 cles would be still further called into use. The 
 question at issue is not whether fundamental mus- 
 cles shall be duly exercised, but whether there 
 shall be such an elimination of the activities which 
 exercise the fine muscles as to destroy one chief 
 merit of the kindergarten as a factor in education. 
 
 " It is evident," writes Dr. Harris, " that if 
 the school is to prepare for the arts and trades, 
 it is the kindergarten which is to accomplish the 
 object, for the training of the muscles, if it is to 
 
 1 Pages 169-174 of this chapter have been submitted to Dr. 
 Judd, and I have his permission to state that I have repre- 
 sented his point of view correctly. 
 
174 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 be a training for special skill in manipulation, 
 must be begun in early youth. As age advances 
 it becomes more difficult to acquire new phases of 
 manual dexterity. 
 
 '^ Two weeks' practice of holding objects in his 
 right hand will make the infant in his first year 
 right-handed for life. The muscles yet in pulpy 
 consistency are very easily set in any fixed direc- 
 tion. The child trained for one year in Froebel's 
 gifts and occupations will acquire a skillful use 
 of his hands and a habit of accurate measurement 
 of the eye which will be his possession for life." ^ 
 
 The suggestions made by the authors of the 
 Kindergarten Problem with regard to representa- 
 tive plays are no less revolutionary than those re- 
 lating to games of physical culture. We are told 
 that there are three groups of representative plays 
 based respectively on the imitative, the construc- 
 tive, and the dramatic instincts. Omitting the 
 second group, which relates chiefly to plays about 
 which there is little divergence of opinion,^ let us 
 
 » History of the Kindergarten in St. Louis. Annual Report 
 of that city. 
 
 2 "A second class of plays requiring more imagination 
 includes those which are based on the constructive instinct. 
 Here the sand pile is the arena supreme. . . .The children 
 build fences, reservoirs, gardens; they pile up mountains; 
 they dig wells, tunnels, and trenches; they erect flag poles; 
 they concoct pies, cakes, tomales." — The Kindergarten 
 Problem, pp. 46 and 47. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 175 
 
 give our careful consideration to groups one and 
 three. These groups are described as follows: 
 
 GROUP I 
 
 Being an animal. — Based on the imitative in- 
 stinct: horse, fishes, bear, frogs, cow, wild turkey, fox, 
 rattlesnake. In a sequent paragraph we learn that 
 " as a horse the child runs and prances about ; as a 
 fish, he swims in the sand; as a bear, he runs and 
 growls; as a wild turkey, he flaps his arms; as a fox, 
 he hides in his hole; as a rattlesnake, he writhes his 
 body." ' 
 
 GROUP III 
 
 Representation of adult occupations. — Based on the 
 dramatic instinct : blacksmith, train - band, horse- 
 show, merry-go-round, farmer, Santa Glaus, baker 
 shop, bakery wagon, dairyman, planting garden, or- 
 chard, mother, sisters, doll with variations (holding, 
 rocking, dressing, kissing, talking to, taking to ride, 
 taking for a walk, putting to bed, dosing with medi- 
 cine, feeding with grass or lunch), washing dishes, 
 washing clothes, ironing, sweeping, party with dishes, 
 burial, kindergarten, school, Christmas tree, loading 
 wagons, hauling and dumping, driving horse, lasso- 
 ing horses, peddler, pantry with sand for food, hunt- 
 ing wild game, punishment, tomale man, bus, rain- 
 storm with sand for rain.* 
 
 1 The Kindergarten Problem, p. 46. ^ /^^(/^ 
 
176 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The disheartening facts forced upon us as we 
 read the list of games in both these groups are the 
 fatal blindness of the experimenting kindergart- 
 ners to the meaning of imitation and their cease- 
 less surrender to the momentary caprices of little 
 children. 
 
 What a child imitates he tends to become. What 
 he imitates he will notice. What he imitates he 
 begins to understand. Blind to the fact that 
 " nothing less than the child's personality is at 
 stake in the method and matter of his imita- 
 tions," the free play revolutionizers of Froebelian 
 games are perfectly willing to have children trans- 
 form themselves into sneaking foxes and writhing 
 rattlesnakes. Ignoring the reaction of imitation 
 upon selective interest they eye with equal favor 
 the representation of garden-planting, or human 
 burial. Aware of the fragmentariness of child- 
 ish thought they reject Froebel's wise and gentle 
 plan for overcoming it, and arrest development 
 by really encouraging " the distorted prominence 
 of isolated factors of experience." In short, 
 through a specific application of the fatal heresy 
 which underlies the whole free-play programme, 
 they shift upon children the entire responsibility 
 of selecting what they will represent and how they 
 will represent it. By this act of abdication they 
 reduce the kindergarten games to a hotchpotch 
 not only devoid of educational value, but abso- 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 177 
 
 lutelj perverting in its reaction upon intellect, 
 emotion, and will. 
 
 The attentive reader will doubtless have ob- 
 served that in the representative plays described 
 each child acted as an isolated individual, and 
 will therefore not be surprised to learn that our 
 Santa Barbara experimenters intentionally dis- 
 card circle games. The reason given for this radi- 
 cal change is that the individual child is prior 
 to the social child, and that traditional games 
 which emphasize the group as opposed to the in- 
 dividual belong to the period between seven and 
 twelve years of age. " The sacred circle of kin- 
 dergarten paraphernalia, we are told, does not 
 seem to be based on any natural penchant of chil- 
 dren of kindergarten age for the traditional circle 
 games.'' ^ The argument advanced is valid only if 
 it be granted that education should never lead chil- 
 dren to do anything which in their given stage of 
 development they might not and would not have 
 done of themselves. This assumption underlies 
 the whole free-play programme. Its clear state- 
 ment is its self-refutation. It has been shown 
 that both in biologic and social recapitulation 
 there are ^' short cuts " from lower to higher 
 planes of development. Why, therefore, should 
 education be reproached for consciously seeking 
 short cuts, when one of her avowed aims is to help 
 
 > The Kindergarten Problem, p. 50. 
 13 
 
178 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the individual to recapitulate within the span of 
 a single life the achievement of ages? 
 
 The kindergarten games mediate between the 
 traditional games of the nursery and the tradi- 
 tional games of the playground. Their content 
 is borrowed for the most part from plays anal- 
 ogous to Pat-a-Cake and Shoe the Horse, which 
 are played by mothers and little children the 
 world over. Their form is borrowed from the 
 traditional ring games of older children. They 
 are, therefore, transitional in type, and may, per- 
 haps, be best described as a repetition by many 
 children standing on a circle and following a 
 leader of the simple movements of nursery plays. ^ 
 
 The effort of the Froebelian kindergarten is to 
 reenforce in fair proportion generic or ideal modes 
 of self-expression. Froebel recognized in many 
 traditional games the deposit of unconscious rea- 
 son, preserved what was good in this deposit, and 
 omitted its objectionable features; supplied miss- 
 ing links, and presented a series of games wherein 
 each is related to all the others, and which, by 
 means of dramatic and graphic representation, 
 poetry and music win for the ideals they embody 
 a controlling power over the imagination. In 
 
 * In some instances, e. g., the farmer, both content and form 
 are borrowed from some simpler traditional ring game. I 
 agree with the authors of the Kindergarten Problem that it is a 
 mistake to introduce complex relationships into our circle 
 games. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 179 
 
 like manner, from among traditional toys, he 
 picked out those which possessed most educative 
 value, ordered them into related series, and sug- 
 gested a method by which they might be con- 
 sciously used to enrich, interpret, and organize the 
 child's experience, develop his creative power, and 
 awaken in him a selective interest which would 
 begin the process of his deliverance from the coer- 
 cion of heredity and environment.* If these se- 
 lected and organized games and gifts have no 
 value, then the traditional kindergarten has no 
 raison d'etre. But if Froebel has translated the 
 hieroglyphic of native play and found means 
 which, Avithout detriment to spontaneity, influence 
 the growth of character and the trend of thought, 
 then the substitution of free play for the media- 
 torial activity of the kindergarten with its prac- 
 tical consequences in the elimination of many 
 Froebelian instrumentalities and the addition of 
 many educationally valueless toys, is not educa- 
 tional progress but educational atavism. 
 
 The gist of the contention between the free-play 
 reformers and the traditional kindergarten is, 
 whether the immediate interests of little children 
 are a sufficient index of what is contributory to 
 their development. With the clear statement of 
 the point at issue hesitation betw^een the opposing 
 views seems impossible. Who does not know, as 
 
 » See Chapter II of this book. 
 
180 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 a fact of familiar experience, that many things 
 children delight in doing it is bad for them to 
 do; that many sense-incentives to which they ea- 
 gerly respond corrupt their taste, and that, since 
 many instinctive forms of play are survivals of 
 an out-grown stage of human progress, undue ac- 
 cent upon them tends to arrest development at 
 its point of departure. I hope I shall not seem 
 to be trifling with a serious subject if I frankly 
 confess that my own reaction against the hue and 
 cry for recapitulation of feral and animal ac- 
 tivities is best expressed in the words of Oliver 
 Herford's nursery rhyme: 
 
 Children, behold the chimpanzee; 
 He sits on the ancestral tree 
 From which we sprang in ages gone; — 
 I^m glad we sprang — had we held on 
 We might, for all that I can say, 
 Be horrid chimpanzees to-day. 
 
 In their attempts to revolutionize the kinder- 
 garten games, gifts, and occupations, the Santa 
 Barbara kindergartners acted under the spell of 
 false conceptions of the kindergarten, of the 
 child, and of the nature of play. Their experi- 
 ments in story-telling seem to have been conducted 
 under the spell of psychologists who insisted that 
 the chief end of literature was to create sense-im- 
 ages and call forth motor responses thereto. The 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 181 
 
 methods inspired by this psychologic fallacy are 
 described as follows: 
 
 In taking" up the story work in our kindergarten 
 this year, we decided to try with the entering class 
 of children from four to five years old, the favorite 
 rhymes of Mother Goose. We took up at first the 
 briefest ones, such as: 
 
 Or; 
 
 "Rub-a-dub, dub, 
 Three men in a tub." 
 
 " Jack, be nimble ; 
 Jack, be quick; 
 Jack, jump over the candlestick." 
 
 Oftentimes we acted them out before asking the 
 children to illustrate. For instance, the morning I 
 told them the rhyme of " Jack, be nimble," I had a 
 candlestick and candle, which we put on the floor; 
 then we suited the action to the words, each child who 
 wished going through the jumping. " Seesaw, Mar- 
 gery Daw," was given the first time with little suc- 
 cess for lack of illustration, but again I tried it, erect- 
 ing a miniature seesaw in the sand-box, with small 
 dolls on either end, and, when given the charcoal and 
 paper, the results were astonishing; each child had 
 now a visual picture to draw from. The first verse 
 of " Jack and Jill " was successfully illustrated in the 
 sand-box, with a hill of sand, dolls, little tin bucket, 
 a well at the top of the hill, with well-frame of sticks 
 and string to pull up the bucket. 
 
 " Ding-dong bell. 
 Pussy's in the well," 
 
182 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 was enjoyed with the above well, and a picture cat to 
 let down and pull out/ 
 
 This report needs no comment. The theory 
 that the one end and aim of story-telling is to 
 create visual images will always call forth meth- 
 ods which chain the mind to sense-perception. 
 Of all the hobbies that have perverted the prac- 
 tice of the kindergarten, the hobby of the visual 
 image has had perhaps the. most baleful influence. 
 Its results have been both comic and tragic. One 
 kindergartner poured a bucket of water along 
 the floor of her kindergarten, because she wished 
 her children to visualize a stream. Numbers of 
 kindergartners have described fairy palaces of 
 marvelous beauty and then asked children to 
 build them with the eight cubes of the third gift. 
 Nor is this sin against imagination confined to 
 the kindergarten. In the grammar school the 
 myth of Persephone has been shorn of its beauty 
 and its appeal to imagination by using paper dolls 
 to give children visual images of Ceres, Perseph- 
 one, and Pluto, and by intertwining yards of 
 black paper and tinsel to represent the realm of 
 Hades. In the Sunday school flaming red liquids 
 made colorless by chemicals have been supposed 
 to recommend to innocent childhood such curi- 
 ously inappropriate texts as " Though your sins 
 
 » The Kindergarten Problem, pp. 59, 60. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 183 
 
 be as scarlet they shall be white as snow ; " jointed 
 dolls, pierced with arrows, laid upon mimic fires, 
 and crucified upside down have effectually dis- 
 tracted attention from all that is most valuable in 
 the history of the great apostles of the church, and 
 china lambs of many sizes, but of common stiff- 
 ness and imbecility have stifled the tender and 
 touching appeal of Christ as the lamb of God. Is 
 it not time to call a halt to the experiments of 
 teachers so in bondage to the prosaic understand- 
 ing, and to point out clearly the errors of those 
 psychologists who value literature chiefly as an 
 instrument for creating mental images, and one of 
 whom hesitates not to ascribe Shakespeare's su- 
 premacy to the facts that he had magnificent sen- 
 sory training, made the proper motor responses 
 thereto, and was blessed with parents who could 
 neither read nor write ? 
 
 Having revolutionized the kindergarten games, 
 gifts, and occupations, and destroyed story-telling 
 as a simple art, the Santa Barbara experimenters 
 devote their final attention to kindergarten draw- 
 ing, which they insist should take exclusively the 
 form of picture-writing, should be preceded by 
 dramatic representation, and should begin with 
 blackboard exercises which demand large, free-arm 
 movements. " Education,'' we are told, " has been 
 and is burdened by a hapless confusion between 
 drawing as an art and drawing in a more primi- 
 
184 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 five stage of its evolution, found alike in the 
 child and in primitive man — drawing merely as 
 a way of telling something." ^ 
 
 It should be frankly admitted that by its neg- 
 lect of picture-writing, and its exaggerated em- 
 phasis upon type forms and conventional design, 
 the traditional kindergarten laid itself open to 
 the criticism of the child-study reformers.^ But 
 when the reformers fell into the error of entirely 
 repudiating design, they overlooked a tendency 
 abundantly illustrated in the products of primi- 
 tive peoples and repeated in the love of all little 
 children for arrangement games. Had this act 
 of repudiation been confined to drawing, its re- 
 sults, though regrettable, would not have been so 
 disastrous as they have actually proved themselves 
 to be. It is because it was extended so as to at- 
 tack forms of beauty with blocks, tablets, sticks, 
 rings, and lentils, to make all gift exercises illus- 
 trative, and to eliminate design from the kinder- 
 garten occupations that its influence has been so 
 
 1 The Kindergarten Problem, p. 57. 
 
 2 In the Mother Play, The Education of Man, and The 
 Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, Froebel makes many sug- 
 gestions with regard to ways and means of developing the 
 power of graphic representation of concrete objects. These 
 suggestions were too much neglected by his followers. See 
 in The Mother Play the Commentary on the Little Artist. 
 See also The Education of Man, pp. 75-79; and Education by 
 Development, pp. 62-68. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 185 
 
 subversive, and that it has called forth such an 
 active protest from Froebelian kindergartners.^ 
 
 In the earlier part of this chapter I called at- 
 tention to the two great fallacies which created 
 the free-play movement. I have tried to suggest 
 the results of these fallacies through consideration 
 
 * The exhibit of children's work made in New York during 
 the fourteenth annual convention of the International Kinder- 
 garten Union (April 22 to May 3, 1907), proved beyond dis- 
 pute, that through the craze for illustration combined with 
 the idea that immediate environment should determine the 
 subjects illustrated, too many kindergartens had become 
 instruments for arresting the intellect and brutalizing the 
 taste of little children. What influence except for evil can 
 it have upon a child to make a cardboard model of the ugly 
 tenement house in which he lives, and to make his copy, if 
 possible, uglier than the original? Wherein lies the educa- 
 tional value of paper articles of clothing badly cut and strung 
 from roof to roof in copy of the laundry methods of the 
 slums? What Hberating influence is exercised upon im- 
 agination by a faulty reproduction of the garbage man and 
 his cart? In short, why do ugly work in order to rivet atten- 
 tion upon deplorable surroundings? 
 
 A second fact proved by the exhibit, was that the mania for 
 illustration had caused many kindergartners to discard 
 traditional materials in favor of tissue paper, clothes pins, 
 strings, cracker boxes, and paper men and animals badly 
 drawn and colored. The leaves and flowers made of tissue 
 paper and used for stringing were an offense to nature and 
 an insult to taste. It is no argument to say that we must 
 meet children on their own plane. Upon every plane of 
 development something may be done to increase efficiency 
 and refine sensibility. To help children to make uglier things 
 than they could possibly have done without adult misguid- 
 ance is a caricature of education. 
 
186 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 of the general programme; the new methods pro- 
 posed for gift and occupation exercises, the em- 
 phasis upon mere movement games, the additions 
 suggested to the instrumentalities of Froebel, and 
 the devices thought necessary in order that the 
 simplest rhymes might penetrate the dense minds 
 of little children. My aim has been to prove that 
 whereas the free-play programme claims to be 
 the only rational solution to Froebel's plea for 
 ^^ self-activity," it is the one programme which 
 most effectually discourages self-activity. By its 
 preference for the fundamental movements of 
 hypothetical tree-dwelling ancestors, it prevents 
 that development of hand and fingers which made 
 the Froebelian kindergarten a transition toward 
 the manual training school ; by its insistence upon 
 the visual image, its neglect of symbolism, its dis- 
 traction of attention through a mixed multiplicity 
 of toys, and its refusal to advance from isolated 
 facts through serial connection to causal agency, 
 it arrests intelligence upon the lowest plane of 
 sense-perception. Worst of all, by its ceaseless 
 surrender to the whim of the moment, it kills the 
 will which is struggling to be born out of feeling 
 and desire. Its methods, one and all, are a refut- 
 ing commentary, which he who runs may read, 
 upon its major proposition, that " the kindergarten 
 is a substitute for childish play in its totality," ^ 
 » Dr. Harris. 
 
 I 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 187 
 
 and its minor proposition that play itself can 
 be adequately defined as ancestral impulses 
 called into activity by the solicitations of en- 
 vironment. 
 
 It will doubtless be objected to my discussion 
 of the free-play programme that the type of kin- 
 dergarten described has no actual existence, and 
 that there is not a single kindergartner in Amer- 
 ica who unequivocally accepts the ideal of free 
 play as a criterion by which to determine her 
 practice. The objection is at once valid and mis- 
 leading. Doubtless the dialectic of experience has 
 already practically refuted the wholesale fallacy 
 of free play, and the Santa Barbara experiment 
 will never be repeated. On the other hand, many 
 practices which sprang into being during the brief 
 authority of the child-study movement persist in 
 detached kindergartens, and few kindergartners 
 have so consciously interpreted the argument from 
 experience as to be wholly free from danger of 
 perversion. The necessity of the hour is that is- 
 sues should be sharply defined, frankly stated, and 
 fairly met. Granting therefore that no single 
 kindergarten is exclusively dominated by the fal- 
 lacy of free play, I maintain that the influence of 
 this conception is still traceable in a tendency to 
 increase unduly the number of running, skipping, 
 hopping, catching, throwing, and climbing games ; 
 in an unwise attempt to concentrate interest upon 
 
188 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 animals; in sporadic efforts to introduce into 
 the kindergarten toys devoid of educational value ; 
 in reversions to street games; in the tendency to 
 discard or minimize all the traditional material 
 of the kindergarten, except blocks, sand, clay, 
 scissors, pencils, paper, brushes, and paint; in the 
 elimination of exercises relating to the organization 
 as opposed to the unselective reproduction of ex- 
 perience ; in methods of story-telling which enslave 
 the mind to the mental image; in the repudiation 
 of symbolism as the characteristic form of mental 
 activity between the ages of three and six years, 
 and in a seeming total blindness to the fact that 
 while art is allied to play through its freedom and 
 spontaneity, it develops from the beginning under 
 the influence of that principle of order whose ini- 
 tial manifestations are rhythm, measure, and pro- 
 portion. ^ 
 
 The merit of the kindergarten, as that institu- 
 tion was conceived by its founder, is that, recog- 
 nizing the values of life as approximate defini- 
 tions of the structure of mind, it is able both 
 to root education in spontaneous activities, and 
 to guide it toward rational issues. The defects 
 of the concentric programme arise from the fact 
 that while recognizing the values of life it imposes 
 them from without instead of developing them 
 from within the child. The irony of the free-play 
 J See Chapter II, pp. 49-52. 
 
THE FREE-PLAY PROGRAMME 189 
 
 programme is that by ignoring the values of life 
 and tacitly denying to mind any true self -activity, 
 it presents the anomaly of an educational method 
 which lacks both a subject matter of education 
 and a person to be educated. 
 
CHAPTEE VII 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 
 
 The self-refuting practice of free-play kinder- 
 gartens cannot be fnlly appreciated until it is set 
 in the context of that general demand for a new 
 return to nature, of which it is one of the minor 
 expressions. The most ardent champion of this 
 contemporary Eousseauism is Dr. G. Stanley Hall^ 
 and a lucid statement of its main tenets is con- 
 tained in the following passage of his book on 
 Adolescence : 
 
 Rousseau would leave pre-pubescent years to na- 
 ture and to the primal hereditary impulsions, and 
 allow the fundamental traits of savagery their fling 
 until twelve. Biological psychology finds many and 
 cogent reasons to confirm this view if only a proper 
 environment could be provided. The child revels in 
 savagery, and if its tribal, predatory, hunting, fishing, 
 fighting, roving, idle, playing proclivities could be in- 
 dulged in the country and under conditions that now, 
 alas! seem hopelessly ideal, they could conceivably be 
 so organized and directed as to be far more truly hu- 
 manistic and liberal than all that the best modern 
 school can provide. Rudimentary organs of the soul 
 190 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 191 
 
 now suppressed, perverted, or delayed, to crop out later 
 in menacing forms, would be developed in their sea- 
 son so that we should be immune to them in maturer 
 years, on the principle of the Aristotelian catharsis 
 for which I have tried to suggest a broader applica- 
 tion than the Stagirite could see in his day.' 
 
 The demand for a new return to nature presup- 
 poses a strict parallel between the development of 
 the individual and that of the race, and puts an 
 arresting emphasis upon the rehearsal of savage 
 and pre-human activities.^ Biologists and com- 
 parative psychologists insist that the individual 
 human organism and the individual human mind 
 go through stages which recapitulate the history 
 of the animal world in its ascent toward man. 
 Anthropologists claim that in the development 
 of each human individual the great culture epochs 
 of history must be repeated. The tendency of any 
 mind to dwell too fondly upon biologic recapitu- 
 lation obscures its vision of historic recapitula- 
 
 » Adolescence, G. Stanley Hall, preface to vol. i, pp. x-xi. 
 Has not Dr. Hall perverted the Aristotelian catharsis rather 
 than given it broader application? Aristotle uses the term to 
 explain the influence of the tragic drama and suggests that it 
 purifies the soul through a vicarious experience of the out- 
 come of evil passions. It would seem that his idea is pre- 
 cisely to save the individual from that free fling of impulse 
 which Dr. Hall thinks indispensable to the growth of moral 
 character. 
 
 2 E. g., the activities of man's hypothetical tree-dwelling 
 ancestors. 
 
192 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tion, and creates theories which, when applied in 
 education yield fatal results. To this class of 
 theories belongs that conception of play, as " the 
 motor habits of the past persisting in the present," 
 which explains the practical paradox that in free- 
 play kindergartens there is no freedom. To the 
 same class belongs the theory that the fundamen- 
 tal traits of savagery should have free fling until 
 the age of twelve years. A being who must re- 
 hearse in the short span of an individual life the 
 culture stages of history may not give so much 
 time to the recapitulation of feral and brute ac- 
 tivities. 
 
 Disciples of the new return to nature have 
 failed to adjust the rival claims of biologic and 
 historic recapitulation. They have also given 
 scant attention to many questions involved in the 
 general conception of a parallel between the de- 
 velopment of the individual and that of the race. 
 Is it true that each stage of the process of de- 
 velopment is a direct outcome of its next inferior, 
 and a necessary transition toward its next supe- 
 rior? Must the individual live through experi- 
 ences which the race has outlived ? Were all these 
 outlived experiences necessary phases of phylo- 
 genetic development, or may it be that in some 
 of them, at least, humanity strayed from the path 
 of progress? Has mankind achieved such good- 
 ness and wisdom as it possesses by following na- 
 
 i 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 193 
 
 ture or bj warring against nature? If it made 
 war against nature where did it get the ideal 
 which incited the war ? 
 
 The answers to these several questions may be 
 most easily approached by considering the method 
 of moral education defended by advocates of the 
 new return to nature. This method has been 
 boldly formulated by Dr. Hall, who insists " that 
 a boy of twelve years of age should have been 
 through most forms of what parents and teachers 
 commonly call badness. . . . He should have 
 fought, w^hipped and been whipped, used language 
 offensive to the prude and the prim precisian; 
 been in some scrapes; had something to do with 
 bad, if more with good associates, and been ex- 
 posed to and already recovering from as many 
 forms of ethical mumps and measles, as by hav- 
 ing in mild form now, he can be rendered im- 
 mune to later." ^ This statement clearly implies 
 that the only way of getting rid of badness is by 
 being a little bad. It is a serious proposal to sow 
 wild oats, and akin to the idea that it is necessary 
 for youth to paint the town red. The conviction 
 in which it is grounded would seem to be that 
 every native instinct subserves some good pur- 
 pose, and has a sphere of legitimate exercise. It 
 may be that some instincts have only a transitory 
 value, and that in the development of man's moral 
 
 » Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 452. 
 14 
 
194 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 nature their role is analogous to that of the tad- 
 pole's tail in the development of the frog's legs. 
 They ^' exercise atavistic functions which will 
 abort before maturity/' but in and through such 
 exercise they stimulate virtues which otherwise 
 would never arise. Hence, " Give nature her 
 fling," and by letting children act as they are, 
 insure that they shall become what they ought 
 to be. 
 
 I look over the lists of our native instincts and 
 emotions given in contemporary psychologies, and 
 find among them deceitfulness, jealousy, terror, 
 rage and cruelty. Has deceitfulness a root of 
 blessing? Has jealousy "a soul of goodness" 
 would we observingly distill it out ? Are we to 
 conquer courage by surrender to blind terror, win 
 sweet serenity by indulging in rage, and achieve 
 loving-kindness by giving free fling to our native 
 cruelty? And if in these cases, at least, virtue 
 is attained not by self-indulgence but by self-con- 
 quest, may it not be well to consider whether the 
 only way that man can make himself what he 
 ought to be is by unmaking himself as he is ? ^ 
 Any considerate survey of our " feeling in- 
 stincts " will at least convince us that while nature 
 
 > The reader must distinguish between rage and anger, 
 terror and fear. There is a wise fear and possibly a righteous 
 anger. There can never be a wise terror or a righteous rage. 
 See the chart of man's native emotions prefixed to Mental 
 Evolution in Man, by George John Romanes. 
 
 i 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 195 
 
 supplies many of the materials out of which 
 we build our house of life, she has also left in 
 us some rubbish heaps — debris of her own past 
 building, which the human builder must throw 
 away. 
 
 Turning from this cursory glance at our native 
 instincts to the process of moral education as car- 
 ried out in history, we become aware that men 
 have not grown better by permitting themselves 
 to be a little bad, but that always and everywhere 
 virtue has been achieved by the exercise of self- 
 restraint. It is interesting in this connection to 
 recall the statement of Lecky, that '^ the first form 
 of human virtue is the courageous endurance of 
 suffering, this being the one conspicuous instance 
 in early savage life of a course of conduct op- 
 posed to natural impulses, and pursued through a 
 belief that it is higher and nobler than its oppo- 
 site." ^ The first books of ethics were written by 
 slaves, and Hegel explains their authorship by 
 the fact that being forced to do what masters 
 commanded slaves were subjected to a discipline 
 which lifted them out of servitude to their own 
 appetites and passions. Prohibitory laws pre- 
 cede mandatory laws. Confucius teaches the 
 golden rule in a negative form. The aim of all 
 the ceremonies of Zoroastrianism is to expel 
 
 ' Cited in Love and Law in Child Training, Emilie Poulsson, 
 p. 143. 
 
196 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 evil. The cardinal virtues of paganism — justice, 
 prudence, temperance, fortitude — are virtues of 
 self-restraint. Most of the Ten Commandments 
 declare what man must not do. It would seem, 
 therefore, that the doctrine of historic recapitu- 
 lation calls rather for the inhibition than the 
 indulgence of idle, predatory, and fighting 
 proclivities, and discourages the idea that char- 
 acter is formed by giving free fling to natural 
 impulse. 
 
 The method of laissez-aller, characteristic alike 
 of original and contemporary Kousseauism not 
 only arrests the parallel between the development 
 of the individual and that of the race, at its his- 
 toric point of departure, but also directly antago- 
 nizes the doctrine of psychology, with regard to 
 the function of inhibition. In a striking passage 
 of his Larger Psychology, Professor James de- 
 clares that " we should all be cataleptics and never 
 stop a muscular contraction once begun were it not 
 that other processes simultaneously going on in- 
 hibit the contraction." ^ In his very illuminating 
 discussion of deliberate suggestion, Professor 
 Baldwin describes that form of inhibition in which 
 " coordinate sense-stimuli meet, confront, oppose, 
 and further one another,'' and shows that this ten- 
 sion of opposing incentives is a necessary requi- 
 
 » Larger Psychology, vol. ii, p. 583. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 197 
 
 site to the rise of volition.^ Professor Royce tells 
 us that '^ all higher intellectual processes are ac- 
 companied by processes in the cortex which appear 
 when seen from without enormously inhibitory," 
 and insists that " upon the presence of inhibition 
 — i. e., of the prevention or overcoming of one 
 form of nervous excitement by the very fact of the 
 presence of another, the organization of all our 
 higher life depends. What, in any situation we 
 are restrained from doing, is as important to us 
 as what we do." - The least degree of conscious 
 introspection will make any adult aware that ten- 
 sion is indispensable to his intellectual and moral 
 life. Psychology, therefore, reenforces the lesson 
 of history, and confirms the insight that " only 
 with renunciation can life, properly speaking, be 
 said to begin." 
 
 The thoughts I have been suggesting are obvi- 
 ous and commonplace. Their very general recog- 
 nition almost immediately undermined the influ- 
 ence of the Neo-Rousseau gospel. Its golden 
 rule, " Give nature her fling," made way for the 
 precept, ^^ Substitute acquired for native reac- 
 tions," and the emphasis of education was placed 
 upon " the organization of habits of conduct and 
 tendencies to behavior." ^ In the attempt to form 
 
 1 Mental Development, James Mark Baldwin, pp. 126-30, 
 and p. 372. 
 
 2 Outlines of Psychology, Josiah Royce, pp. 71-73. 
 
 3 Talks to Teachers, William James, p. 29. 
 
198 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 good habits, however, appeal was often made to 
 bad motives, and thus a fatal schism was intro- 
 duced into the moral life. The ground for this 
 divorce between motive and act is suggested in the 
 following statement, which I quote from Teachers' 
 College Record for November, 1903: 
 
 It is a folly of both the sentimentalist and the 
 ultra-rational thinker to insist that children should 
 not only think and act rightly, but also from the right 
 motives; that to tell the truth to avoid a beating is 
 no better than to tell a lie. For a mature, responsible 
 person, this may be true, so far as goodness and bad- 
 ness mean respectively things worthy of merit and 
 things worthy of blame — and so far as telling the 
 truth to avoid a beating forms precisely that habit. 
 But with most school children, certainly with kin- 
 dergarten children, telling the truth to avoid a beat- 
 ing will form the habit of telling the truth in general, 
 the memory of the original motive fading away, into 
 obscurity, while the actual habit of performance re- 
 mains. For a college student to study to win a large 
 salary is perhaps no better than idleness; for a gen- 
 tleman to be honest because honesty is the best pol- 
 icy is perhaps no better than to be dishonest. But 
 for the kindergarten child the important thing is that 
 it should be obedient, generous, cheerful, courageous, 
 and kind, the reason why being a matter that will, 
 with proper treatment, die out from the habit and 
 leave it as a general tendency. We all have to begin 
 with the so-called lower motives, and can hardly be 
 expected to have sloughed them off by the fourth year 
 of life. It is the good fortune of moral training that 
 the lapse of time so often preserves a good habit. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 199 
 
 while allowing the feeling of its source to die out from 
 consciousness/ 
 
 The point of this statement is that right action 
 may be divorced from right motive, and this is 
 a denial of the truth that the motive which in- 
 spires an act gives its quality to the act itself. 
 It is explicitly affirmed that " we all have to 
 begin with the so-called lower motives." The rea- 
 son given by contemporary child-students for this 
 assumed necessity of acting from lower motives is 
 the dominance in childhood of ^' the individual- 
 istic instinct.'' In his Fundamentals of Child 
 Study," for example, Mr. Kirkpatrick makes the 
 following statements: 
 
 The instinct of self-preservation is not only the 
 oldest instinct, but one that has been most uniformly- 
 useful to all species from the earliest beginnings of 
 animal life, hence we should expect it to be strong in 
 the young child. There is, however, a still more im- 
 portant reason for expecting it to be strong in the 
 young of all animals including man, viz., because it 
 is the only instinct that can be of any use in this 
 stage of early helplessness. Any tendency on the part 
 of a young animal or child to act for the good of any 
 other being than itself, would be futile and in many 
 cases injurious to itself and indirectly to its species; 
 
 » The Philosophy and Psychology of the Kindergarten, 
 Teachers' College Record, November, 1903, pp. 59, 60, 
 (Italics mine.) 
 
200 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 hence the individualistic instinct must be dominant 
 in the young of all species that survive/ 
 
 This passage assures us that as a result of the 
 total process of evolution the individualistic in- 
 stinct is exclusively dominant in childhood. In 
 the following statements we are apprised how it 
 functions in the child of kindergarten age: 
 
 The chief motive of life is to get everything pos- 
 sible for himself, objects, sensations, knowledge, privi- 
 leges, and honors. ... To be thoughtful of the in- 
 terests of others, or to be interested in anything not 
 concerned with the advancement of this kingdom of 
 his, would be to be something other than a healthy, 
 normal child." 
 
 In general, the question which the child mentally 
 asks of every object and every person is : " What are 
 they good for ? " meaning by good, " What can I get 
 out of them ? " He is the center of the universe, and 
 everything and everybody is for his pleasure.' . . . 
 Upon this rock of truth must be based any sound 
 method of moral education. " Good moral training 
 will lead the child to discover that he can get most for 
 himself in the long run by being kind to others, be- 
 cause of the return favors, rewards, and approbation 
 thus gained."* 
 
 The mind is a cautious investor that withdraws its 
 capital when it ceases to pay dividends of personal 
 satisfaction. All our means and methods must in the 
 
 » Fundamentals of Child Study, pp. 92, 93. 
 
 J Ihid., pp. 95, 96. ' IhU., p. 95. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 98. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 201 
 
 last analysis be arrangements for making the good 
 thoughts and acts of profit, and the bad thoughts and 
 acts of disadvantage to the personal cravings of those 
 educated/ 
 
 Summarizing the statements cited we may say 
 that they contain a diagnosis of the child's state 
 of mind and a theory of moral education based 
 upon this diagnosis. The child is declared to be 
 wholly selfish and thinking only of what pays. 
 The method of education proposed is to foster 
 right action by showing that it pays, and to re- 
 strain wrong action by proving that it does not 
 pay. It is claimed that notwithstanding the con- 
 stant appeal to selfish motives they will disappear 
 with age. This, however, is an assertion without 
 proof. 
 
 The validity of the method proposed depends 
 upon the correctness of the diagnosis. If little 
 children are really devoid of altruistic emotion, 
 there is nothing to do but to make virtue pay. In 
 this case, however, we substitute expediency for 
 virtue, and should frankly recognize what we have 
 done. " Kant," says Mr. Balfour, " compared the 
 moral law to the starry heavens, and found both 
 sublime. On the naturalistic hypothesis it would 
 be more appropriate to compare it to the protec- 
 tive blotches on the beetle's back and find both in- 
 
 ' Philosophy and Psychology of the Kindergarten, p. 56. 
 
202 • EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 genious." We accept adaptive ingenuity in lieu 
 of morality when we seek to make children good 
 by making goodness profitable. 
 
 Before acquiescing in such a radical substitu- 
 tion we should be very sure of the fact that in little 
 children love and sympathy are emotions unborn. 
 Romanes claims that social feelings stir in babies 
 ten weeks old ; that affection appears in babies of 
 fourteen weeks, and that sympathy is alive and 
 active in the child of five months. Most reputable 
 psychologists recognize the presence of organic 
 sympathy in very young children. The method 
 of making virtue pay rests upon a hypothesis of 
 more than doubtful authority.-^ 
 
 Waiving the doubts which arise in our minds as 
 we consider the psychologic reasons given for ap- 
 peals to expediency, we may cordially admit that 
 the effort to form right habits through rewards 
 and punishments which provoke the conviction that 
 virtue pays, finds many parallels in the course of 
 human history. The fear of the Lord has been 
 very generally the beginning of wisdom. The 
 history of the Hebrew people is a typical one, and 
 the Old Testament is one long record of ^' arrange- 
 ments for making good acts of profit and bad acts 
 of disadvantage to the cravings of the race whose 
 education it describes." Over the heads of the 
 
 * See also Professor Baldwin's Social and Ethical Interpreta- 
 tions, Chapter VI, "Instincts and Emotions," 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 203 
 
 chosen people hung constantly the dread of burn- 
 ings, ague, pestilence, seed sown in vain, wasted 
 cities, desolated sanctuaries, and deliverance into 
 the hands of national enemies. On the other 
 hand, long life, prosperity, and posterity were 
 assured to all those who obeyed the divine com- 
 mands, and devout Hebrews stayed their hearts 
 upon promises of blessing for themselves and their 
 descendants. The doctrines of heaven and hell as 
 taught in the historic churches of Christendom are 
 the climax of an educational effort to inhibit 
 wrong action and incite right action by appeal to 
 individualistic motives. For the righteous is pre- 
 pared a heavenly city, with streets of gold and 
 gates of pearl ; for the wicked yawns the pit burn- 
 ing with fire and brimstone, where there shall be 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth. 
 
 As I ponder the contrasting plans of moral edu- 
 cation proposed by the advocates of a new re- 
 turn to nature and a new war against nature, 
 both and neither seem justified in appealing for 
 support of their practice to the history of the race. 
 The former may urge with truth that men found 
 out what was right only through a long course 
 of experiment in wrong; the latter may claim 
 without fear of contradiction that not by the broad 
 path of self-indulgence but by the straight and 
 narrow path of self-restraint, has man climbed to 
 such moral eminence as he has thus far attained. 
 
204 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The admission of both claims destroys the atithor- 
 itj of either. The fact that when, through experi- 
 ment, any right course of conduct had been dis- 
 covered, it was immediately enforced, shows that 
 history can change its method. If it has changed 
 once, it may have changed more than once. 
 Therefore the next question we must consider is 
 whether there has been anywhere a second historic 
 revolution in the method of moral education, and 
 whether the result of this revolution has been to 
 set aside both the precept " Give nature her fling '' 
 and the maxim, ^' Make virtue pay." 
 
 Anyone who has critically and devoutly stud- 
 ied the Sermon on the Mount must be aware that 
 it initiates just such a revolution as I have de- 
 scribed. It is confessedly a revolutionary procla- 
 mation, and, as Bishop Brooks has pointed out, 
 embodies a series of protests against the insuf- 
 ficiency of existing laws. " Men say, ^ You shall 
 not kill ' ; I say, you shall not hate. Men say, 
 ^ You shall not commit adultery ' ; I say, you shall 
 not lust. Men say, ^ You shall not swear falsely ' ; 
 I say, you shall not swear at all. Men say, ^ You 
 shall love your friends ' ; I say, you shall love 
 everybody." ^ Power to obey these revolutionary 
 commands is liberated by a revolutionizing mo- 
 tive. Jehovah is not God, and in his stead is a 
 loving Father who maketh His sun to shine on the 
 ' Seeking Life, Phillips Brooks, p. 225. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 205 
 
 evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and 
 the unjust. All men are sons of the one Father, 
 and therefore partakers of His nature. They 
 must live worthily of their divine heredity. 
 Finally, they are able to appreciate the perfect 
 love of God through the germinal love in their 
 own hearts. For they, too, are fathers, though 
 imperfect ones, and being evil yet know how to 
 give good gifts to their children. 
 
 Many persons go through life without disen- 
 tangling the relationship between ideals and emo- 
 tions. They fail to perceive that, on the one hand, 
 all our higher emotions are begotten of ideals, 
 while on the other, these ideals themselves merely 
 universalize antecedent but partial and limited 
 emotions. Had men no love in their hearts they 
 could never have conceived the ideal of universal 
 love. Had they no native sympathy they would 
 never have invented patriotism or philanthropy. 
 As involuntary conduct must precede voluntary 
 and ^' we can never directly will an act until we 
 have before done that act, and so expressed the 
 nature of it," so involuntary feelings must pre- 
 cede all the moral ideals which define and extend 
 them. Hence " our first affections '^ are in very 
 deed, " the fountain light of all our day, the mas- 
 ter-light of all our seeing. '^ 
 
 The native emotion of parental love dates from 
 insects and spiders. The native emotion of sym- 
 
206 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 pathy dates from the hymenoptera. The moral 
 ideals of universal love and sympathetic service 
 date from the Sermon on the Mount and outside 
 of the Christian world are even to-day non-ex- 
 istent. A recent remarkable manifesto entitled, 
 " The Last Word of Islam to Europe/' declares 
 that for Mussulmans this world contains two 
 kinds of human beings, believers and infidels, 
 and announces as the highest moral obligation: 
 " Love, charity, brotherhood to the believers ; 
 contempt, hatred, disgust, and war for the infi- 
 dels.'' ^ In his very discriminating analysis of 
 the Asiatic mind Mr. Meredith Townsend points 
 out that not only does the Asiatic lack power to 
 give any general sympathy, but he lacks even the 
 idea that such sympathy should be given. He 
 adds that " it is, of course, open to anyone to say 
 that the grand Christian rule of love is not ob- 
 served in Europe either, but that is only an intel- 
 lectual quip. The European does care for his 
 neighbor to a certain extent, and does to a much 
 greater extent think that he ought to care. The 
 Asiatic does not. He cares for his family, his 
 caste, his class, his clan, and sometimes his pro- 
 fession, but of his neighbor he is little more re- 
 gardful than one dog is of another. He is not 
 
 ^ See note to an article by Dr. Harris entitled Social Culture 
 in the Form of Education and Religion, Educational Review, 
 January, 1905. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 207 
 
 affected by his misfortunes, and will help to in- 
 flict misfortunes on him with a serene callousness, 
 which in Europe is for the most part never found. 
 The Asiatic who could not endure to be an execu- 
 tioner, out of sympathy for the victims, is proba- 
 bly non-existent. That want of the power of sym- 
 pathy is the root of all evil in him, the ultimate 
 cause of all the tyrannies, the massacres, and the 
 tortures which from the first have disgraced Asi- 
 atic life." 1 
 
 The method of the Sermon on the Mount is 
 based upon an intuition of the ^' Expulsive power 
 of higher affections." It aims to enlarge the 
 range, and increase the strength of love and sym- 
 pathy, and thereby to repel wrath, lust, untruth- 
 fulness, and niggardliness. This method is in 
 accord with the doctrines of ^eo-Rousseauism in 
 so far as they assert that moral education must 
 work from within outward, and must therefore 
 find the point of departure in some native im- 
 pulse. It contradicts the later gospel in the fact 
 that it discriminates between our native emotions 
 and while intensifying the power and enlarging 
 the range of some of them, sternly inhibits any 
 indulgence in others. In its insistence upon in- 
 hibition it is at one with the educators who seek 
 to substitute acquired for native reactions. It 
 differs from them in directing its prohibitions 
 » Asia and Europe, Meredith Townsend, Introduction, p. 15. 
 
208 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 against evil passions instead of evil acts, and one 
 of its most characteristic features is its abhorrence 
 of that contradiction between act and motive 
 which is fostered by the method of making virtue 
 
 pay. 
 
 As an inheritance from his brute and savage 
 ancestry man possesses a stock of native emotions 
 among which are rage, resentment, lust, deceitful- 
 ness, and vanity. It was a great day in human 
 history when the blind victim of these imperative 
 impulses awoke to the consciousness that there 
 should be any limit set to the actions which they 
 provoke. It was another great day when this 
 awakened consciousness registered itself in com- 
 mandments believed to be divine and compulsory. 
 Such commandments, however, had double conse- 
 quences. They stirred in noble and sensitive 
 minds a prescient feeling of the sinfulness of those 
 initial emotions whose terminal acts they forbade. 
 They called forth in meaner minds all sorts of 
 devices for indulging the passions while seeming 
 to keep the laws. Untruthfulness was tolerated 
 when truth was not buttressed by an oath; cun- 
 ning devices winked at wrath and lust while in- 
 sisting upon obedience to the letter of the laws 
 against murder and adultery and through the 
 subtle connivance of that pettiest of all human 
 emotions, the emotion of vanity, acts of devotion 
 were prostituted into acts of self-indulgence by 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 209 
 
 praying where men conld see and applaud, and 
 sounding trumpets to announce the act of alms- 
 giving. There was a complete divorce between 
 the outer and the inner life. Men seemed to 
 others, and even to themselves, good, when in re- 
 ality they were bad, and self-satisfaction steeled 
 them against reproach and rendered them im- 
 penetrable to the most tender and touching ap- 
 peals. 
 
 Aside from the moral catastrophe precipitated 
 by inhibiting actions while cherishing their cor- 
 respondent emotions, serious dangers lurk in the 
 energy of inhibition even when it is directed not 
 against evil deeds, but evil passions. To directly 
 inhibit wrong feelings involves preoccupation 
 with them, and such preoccupation either in- 
 creases their sway or creates a pathologic con- 
 science. As Professor Royce reminds us, " A 
 brain that is devoted to mere inhibition becomes 
 in very truth like the brain of a Hindoo ascetic — 
 a mere ^ parasite ^ of the organism — feeding, as 
 it were, upon all the lower inherited or acquired 
 nervous functions of this organism, by devoting 
 itself to their hindrance. In persons of morbidly 
 conscientious life such inhibitory phenomena may 
 easily get an inconvenient and sometimes a dan- 
 gerous intensity. The result is then a fearful, 
 cowardly, helpless attitude toward life — an atti- 
 tude which defeats its own purpose and renders 
 15 
 
210 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the sufferer, not as he intends to be — ^ good/ but 
 a positive nuisance.'' ^ 
 
 In the Sermon on the Mount, contradiction be- 
 tween the inner and outer life is canceled by 
 directing the activity of inhibition not against 
 terminal acts but initial emotions. This change 
 of direction is its first great revolutionary deed. 
 Its second, and even more revolutionary act is to 
 produce inhibitory results by self-expressive meth- 
 ods. It liberates high energies, and sets them to 
 war with base passions. Through these two revo- 
 lutions it closes the fatal breach between being 
 and appearance, and escapes alike the danger of 
 hypocrisy and the danger of cowardice. 
 
 To do good acts from selfish motives is to seem 
 one thing and to be another. To be forever hold- 
 ing one's self in destroys the power of ever letting 
 one's self out. The good life is a positive life. 
 The good man gives, serves, loves, and through 
 the outrush of generosity, sympathy, and affec- 
 tion, sweeps away his own meanness, tyranny, 
 and lust. Moreover, by a good will which is anx- 
 ious to do more than selfishness can demand, he 
 calls forth responsive good will in other men. Re- 
 fusing to retaliate ; bestowing on his stern creditor 
 a free gift; always eager to give and lend, and 
 going gladly two miles with the man who would 
 have compelled him to go one, he wakes in other 
 » Outlines of Psychology, Josiah Royce, p. 77. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 211 
 
 men ^^ the nobleness which may long sleep but 
 which is never dead/' Thus in his own soul and in 
 the souls of others he overcomes evil with good, 
 and the grand transformation is wrought by sim- 
 ply acting toward all men as native affection im- 
 pels him to act toward those he loves. The seem- 
 ingly impossible commands of the Sermon on the 
 Mount are fulfilled every day by mothers who 
 yearn over erring children; by fathers eager to 
 save their own prodigal sons; by wives whom 
 cruelty and infidelity challenge only to purer de- 
 votion; by friends prompt to lay down life itself 
 for a friend. True love for one is enough to 
 teach any man how he ought to feel and act 
 toward all. 
 
 The problem of moral education is such a 
 serious one that no difficulty should be minimized 
 and no question evaded. It is therefore incum- 
 bent on us to face the one objection to which the 
 method of the Sermon on the Mount seems open. 
 To command the universal extension of a limited 
 and partial affection is to define an ideal but not 
 to bestow power to realize it. Our native human 
 affections enable us to understand the law; in 
 some of us they are strong enough to make us ap- 
 prove the law; in all of us they are too weak to 
 compel obedience to the law. 
 
 The motive power required for carrying out the 
 precepts of the Sermon on the Mount is furnished 
 
212 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 to those who believe its teachings by the doctrines 
 of God the Father, His providential rule, and the 
 infinite value of every human soul. It has been 
 well said that ^^ the moral reformation wrought by 
 Christianity may be summed up in the statement 
 that it raised the feeling of humanity from a 
 feeble restraining power to an inspiring passion." 
 Christ created what had never existed before, 
 ^' the enthusiasm for humanity," and He did this 
 by investing all men with supernatural value 
 through His revelation of each and every man as 
 a child of God. ^' The highest significance of 
 great men," says Professor Harnack,^ ^' is to have 
 progressively enhanced, that is, to have progres- 
 sively given effect to human value." The unique 
 significance of Christ is to have conferred upon 
 all men supernatural value. Through recognition 
 of this supernatural value all other standards of 
 value are overthrown. The differences between 
 men melt away in the light of a great equality, and 
 there is born a passion which is " neither love for 
 the whole human race, nor love for each indi- 
 vidual in it, but a love for. the race or for the ideal 
 of man in each individual." And as man is in- 
 spired with love for his brethren so he is assured 
 of the watchful love of the common Father. The 
 God who cares even for the flowers of the field 
 and the birds of the air, so loves His own children 
 » What is Christianity? Harnack, p. 73. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 213 
 
 that He counts the very hairs of their heads. This 
 assurance of loving providence disabuses men of 
 the blind terror bred in them by age-long struggle 
 with wild beasts and wilder elements, and lib- 
 erates that free energy w^hich finds expression in 
 hope, joy, and heroic endeavor. " "We look at the 
 rise of Christianity,'^ says Mr. Chesterton, ^^ and 
 conceive it as a rise of self-abnegation and almost 
 of pessimism. It does not occur to us that the 
 mere assertion that this raging and confounding 
 universe is governed by justice and mercy is a bit 
 of staggering optimism fit to set all men caper- 
 ing." 1 
 
 In the lists of our native emotions given in 
 contemporary psychologies, faith is conspicuous 
 by its absence. Yet some degree of mutual trust 
 would seem to be involved even in the habits of 
 gregarious animals and to lie at the root of any 
 form of human society. Like love, faith is both 
 a native impulse and a celestial virtue. As na- 
 tive impulse it is the response of man to his own 
 peculiar lineaments in other men, the recognition 
 of an identity between himself and the particular 
 persons to Avhom he is bound by the tie of blood 
 or the tie of special affinity. As a celestial virtue 
 it is the extension of this native impulse from 
 the few to all, through recognition by the indi- 
 vidual of correspondence between his total self, 
 ' Varied Types, Mark Chesterton, p. 63. 
 
214 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the total self of all other human individuals, and 
 the primal self whence all selves proceed. The 
 naive psychologists who created our Aryan speech, 
 had a wonderful intuition of the specific quality 
 of faith. ^' They derived both the verb to believe 
 and the verb to love " from a word luhh, which 
 has retained its original meaning in the San- 
 skrit lohha, desire, and the Latin lihidOy violent, 
 irresistible desire. The same word was after- 
 wards taken to express that irresistible passion 
 of the soul which makes man break through the 
 evidence of the senses and the laws of reason 
 (credo quia ahsurdum) and drives him by a 
 power which nothing can control to embrace some 
 truth which alone can satisfy the natural cravings 
 of his being.'' ^ The whole self seeks the satisfac- 
 tion of the whole self. To the object which as- 
 sures this satisfaction it responds with an irresist- 
 ible outrush of faith and love. 
 
 The objection may be raised that I am claim- 
 ing for Christianity an authority it does not pos- 
 sess. It is important, therefore, to explain that I 
 claim for its psychologic intuition and educa- 
 tional method only that right of the species over 
 the individual recognized in the doctrine of re- 
 capitulation. Advocates of the new return to 
 nature urge that since mankind had to make 
 moral experiments, every individual must repeat 
 » Science of Language, Max Miiller, vol. ii, p. 439 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 215 
 
 them. Preachers of the new crusade against 
 nature, insist that when through experiment any 
 action w^as proved to have destructive conse- 
 quences future experiments were prohibited by 
 law, and obedience to law enforced by rewards 
 and penalties. Hence respect for the parallel be- 
 tween the development of the individual and that 
 of the race demands not experiment but inhibi- 
 tion. My claim is simply that in history itself 
 both these methods were superseded by a new 
 method which is a synthesis of their merits and 
 an elimination of their defects. If, therefore, we 
 are to learn from history what to do, we must ac- 
 cept her higher as well as her more elementary 
 teachings. 
 
 Christianity is at least a historic experiment. 
 It may be that the hope of the world centers in 
 making the experiment more honest and more 
 radical. The characteristic features of the ex- 
 periment are the evolution of compulsory ideals 
 from native emotions and the guaranty of both 
 native emotion and compulsory ideal by the sanc- 
 tion of the universe. The cosmos has a character 
 akin to, but transcendent of what we recognize as 
 best in ourselves. 
 
 Manifestly any method of moral education pre- 
 supposes the truth of its final premise. The final 
 premise of the Sermon on the Mount is faith in 
 personality as the supreme principle of the uni- 
 
216 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 verse, and faith in the soul of man as partici- 
 pating in this principle. Denial of this faith lies 
 at the root of many regressive educational prac- 
 tices. Its vindication to reason was the feat of 
 that great age of which Froebel is the educational 
 exponent. Its rediscovery by a new path of ap- 
 proach and its reaffirmation as the final explana- 
 tion of physical and mental evolution is the task 
 with which intelligence is wrestling to-day. There 
 are hopeful signs that the task is in process of 
 accomplishment. Discovery of the part played by 
 attention in volition has given new and convinc- 
 ing reasons for a belief in free will, and shown 
 that man is something more than " the psycho- 
 physical mechanism into which causal science 
 construed him." ^ '^ The demand that psychology 
 shall be studied from the point of view of the ex- 
 perient " ^ instead of that of the external ob- 
 server, is transferring attention from " the flux of 
 conscious states and the laws by which it is 
 ordered to the unities of mind and the inter- 
 ests and aims which express them." ^ The study 
 of mind as " a cause in action working out its 
 own ends in conformity with its own nature," ^ 
 is wakening anew the conviction that " all true 
 
 1 Science and Idealism, Hugo Miinsterberg, p. 27. 
 
 2 Personal Idealism. Philosophical essays by eight mem- 
 bers of the University of Oxford. Edited by Henry Sturt, 
 p. 170. 
 
 3/6w/., p. 171. *lhid., p. 175. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 217 
 
 causes are first causes," and a " psychology of 
 first causes " is beating a short, though steep, 
 path of ascent toward the " philosophy of the 
 first cause." ^ From the mount of vision to 
 which this path conducts reality is described as 
 " neither a single being nor many coordinate and 
 independent beings, but a one mind who gives 
 rise to many." ^ Thus, the fundamental premise 
 of the Sermon on the Mount vindicated by 
 rational psychology in the age of Froebel, is now 
 in process of reestablishment, through a psychol- 
 ogy of immediate concrete experience, conceived 
 as the " science of free agency." 
 
 Triply buttressed by history, psychology, and 
 philosophy, the method of moral education 
 founded upon appeal to and extension of our 
 primal affections is impregnable against attack. 
 It has always been the method intuitively adopted 
 by mothers with a genius for motherhood. Com- 
 mon practice, however, vibrates perpetually be- 
 tween the extremes of adult coercion and adult 
 surrender. Neo-Rousseauism merely formulated 
 the theoretic equivalent of widely prevalent meth- 
 ods when it announced its golden rule : " Give 
 nature her fling." Disciples of the new crusade 
 against nature have merely reverted to the time- 
 honored methods of the peach switch and the 
 
 ' Personal Idealism, p. 192. 2 Ibid., p. 391. 
 
218 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 slipper, somewhat more judiciously applied and 
 justified by theories of brain-cells, nerve fibers, 
 and native and acquired reactions. There is no 
 progress in this swing of practice between an- 
 archy and a paternalism which is always tending 
 to relapse into despotism. 
 
 A wise method of moral education should me- 
 diate between the practice of those who hand over 
 the reins to natural impulse and those who believe 
 in driving children by reins held in the hands of 
 the educator and pulling hard upon bits of deter- 
 rent consequences. If the correspondence between 
 act and motive be a cardinal point in the moral 
 life, is it not a prime duty of education to nur- 
 ture those indigenous emotions out of which the 
 virtues grow ? If higher affections can wage 
 successful war against lower ones, even after the 
 latter have gained force by indulgence, why might 
 it not be possible from the beginning of life to in- 
 hibit selfishness by augmenting the energy of 
 social feeling? Instead of giving one or many 
 beatings to break up the habit of lying, might we 
 save children from falling into this habit by 
 strengthening the ties of faith and love, and di- 
 recting the attack of these native affections 
 against those emotions of vanity, terror, lust, and 
 greed, which are the most frequent provocatives 
 of falsehood? In general if bad habits can be 
 broken up after they are formed, why might it 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 219 
 
 not be possible to prevent their formation ? These 
 are the problems with which, as it seems to me, 
 Froebel has wrestled more successfully than any 
 other practical educator. His solution of them 
 makes him a teacher of moral hygiene as opposed 
 to moral therapeutics, and he has no equal as a 
 spiritual bacteriologist and a discoverer of spir- 
 itual antitoxin. 
 
 It does not fall within the compass of this chap- 
 ter to consider in detail Froebel's many and fruit- 
 ful suggestions with regard to the development of 
 the virtues from seeds of emotion native to the 
 soil of the mind. The limits of my present dis- 
 cussion permit only the general statement that he 
 bases moral education upon appeal to social sym- 
 pathy and claims as its point of departure that 
 '' feeling of community first uniting the child 
 with mother, father, brothers, sisters, and to 
 which later on is added the unmistakable discov- 
 ery that father, mother, brothers, sisters, human 
 beings in general, feel and know themselves to be 
 in community and unity with a higher principle, 
 i. e., with humanity and with God." ^ The ap- 
 plication of this principle to the evolution of spe- 
 cific virtues and the avoidance of specific vices, 
 is to be found in the Mother Play. To this 
 unique book I commend parents and teachers who 
 
 ' Education of Man, p. 25. 
 
220 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 feel the need of a metliod of moral education me- 
 diatorial between the antitheses of letting children 
 do as they please and either compelling them or 
 bribing them to do as they ought. 
 
 With insight into the truth that the feeling of 
 community supplies the point of departure for 
 moral education, we begin to realize that every 
 virtue may be defined as a mode of action called 
 forth by the relationship of individuals to a social 
 whole. Obedience is the expression in action of 
 that faith which is the ideal tie between the im- 
 mature and the maturer soul. Kindness is good 
 will, astir and active, between equal members of 
 a collective whole. Cleanliness (which to super- 
 ficial consideration appears a purely self-regard- 
 ing virtue) is necessary in order that the members 
 of a social whole may not offend one another's 
 senses. Industry makes possible the contribution 
 of something of value to the whole. Without 
 order industry cannot be effective. He who is for- 
 ever hunting things will have no time to do or 
 make things. Punctuality is respect for other 
 people's time and industry. Respect for the prop- 
 erty of others is really respect for their " stored 
 up " industry. Courtesy is treating each member 
 of a whole as if he were that which he ought to 
 be; or, differently stated, it is the recognition in 
 manner that he is fulfilling his communal obliga- 
 tions. In short, every one of these elementary vir- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 221 
 
 tues is rooted in and has been evolved from the 
 social tie. All other virtues have the same source, 
 and the way to develop them is by quickening the 
 sense of solidarity. 
 
 In old times great stress was placed upon the 
 formation of the habits to which I have referred. 
 But the old-time education failed to produce the 
 best results because it insisted upon external com- 
 pliance with a taught obligation and ignored the 
 necessity of that internal compliance which alone 
 is efficacious in building character. Many of the 
 educators who to-day are insisting upon the sub- 
 stitution of acquired for native reactions repeat 
 the error of the ancient tradition. A single blow 
 on molten iron has more shaping power than any 
 number of blows on cold metal. So a child's char- 
 acter is shaped more by a single act done because 
 with all his heart he wants to do it, than by any 
 number of acts perfunctorily performed. 
 
 Right habits are formed through the frequent 
 repetition of right actions, but right actions must 
 be repeated through the child's own initiative. 
 He who compels another to act against his own 
 desires is a tyrant, and tyranny in him breeds re- 
 bellion in his victim. He who knows how to stir 
 in another impulses w^hich make him want to do 
 the things he ought to do, is a benefactor and lib- 
 erator. To accomplish this feat is to realize the 
 highest ideal of moral education. 
 
222 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 I have concentrated the discussion of this chap- 
 ter upon contrasting methods of education, as 
 illustrated in the moral sphere, and I have done 
 this advisedly. For the more completely methods 
 are illustrated in one sphere, the easier it becomes 
 to recognize their merits or defects in other 
 spheres. It should now need but a few words to 
 suggest that in intellectual, no less than in moral 
 education, the method of surrender to immediate 
 impulse must give way to the method of inhibi- 
 tion, and the inhibition of lower interests must be 
 accomplished by creating higher ones. 
 
 It is an incontestable truth that no degree of 
 intellectual culture is possible without the habit of 
 attention, and attention is an inhibiting activity 
 which concentrates intellect upon a chosen subject 
 by checking its surrender to immediate sense 
 stimuli or arresting its idle gaze upon a moving 
 panorama of mental images. This inhibiting ac- 
 tivity takes two forms : the form of voluntary at- 
 tention, wherein will issues a fiat to intellect, and 
 the form of selective interest, wherein either 
 through native or acquired bias, intelligence oc- 
 cupies itself with preferred objects. 
 
 Through our acts of voluntary attention we 
 become the determiners of our own selective in- 
 terest, and choose for ourselves the ideas which 
 shall rule our intelligence and decide our lives. 
 On the other hand, since voluntary attention can 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 223 
 
 be sustained only for an incredibly short time, our 
 intellectual life would be poor, indeed, without 
 the conspiring influence of passive attention or 
 interest. " The sustained attention of the ge- 
 nius," as Professor James reminds us, " is for the 
 most part of the passive sort. The minds of 
 geniuses are full of copious and original associa- 
 tions. The subject of thought once started de- 
 velops all sorts of fascinating consequences. The 
 attention is led along from one of these to another 
 in the most interesting manner, and never once 
 tends to stray away.'' ^ In the drama of intellect, 
 therefore, selective interest plays a role analogous 
 to the " expulsive power of higher affections in 
 the moral life." ^ 
 
 The questions proposed in the earlier part of 
 this chapter have been answered, so far as I can 
 find their answers, in the teachings of history. It 
 seems true that in the process of phylogenetic de- 
 velopment each step " remembered its next in- 
 ferior," but its memory was often one of disap- 
 proval and the evolution of humanity has been 
 '' an evolution by antagonism." Such goodness 
 as men have achieved has been conquered in a war 
 
 1 Talks on Psychology and Life's Ideals, p. 102. 
 
 2 To strengthen the power of voluntary attention and to 
 create a rational selective interest are chief duties of education. 
 In early childhood stress must be placed upon the latter aim. 
 In the second chapter of this book I have tried to show how 
 Froebel seeks to realize the aim. 
 
224 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 against nature. The ideals which incited the war 
 have been discovered by a descent, or rather an 
 ascent of man into his own essential being. It 
 is an indisputable fact that mankind has often 
 strayed from the path of progress. It is not neces- 
 sary for individuals to repeat the abortive experi- 
 ments of the race. It is not necessary for them 
 to relive what humanity has outlived. Vestigial 
 emotions are harmful to their possessors, and 
 should be inhibited rather than indulged. In the 
 individual recapitulation of race progress many 
 results formerly reached by devious and winding 
 paths are attainable by " short cuts.'' The duty 
 of education is to help individuals to rewin an- 
 cestral successes and deliver them from the neces- 
 sity of repeating ancestral failures. 
 
 When some fortunate experimenter succeeds in 
 making a flying machine, those who follow him 
 will not repeat plans that failed. In making their 
 flying machines they will recapitulate only the 
 successive steps of the triumphant process. The 
 paradoxes of contemporary Rousseauism are due 
 to the fact that its champions ignore this manifest 
 condition of progress. They seem to think that 
 every individual must experiment for himself, 
 precisely as if no one had ever experimented be- 
 fore. Hence they arrest the development of al- 
 truistic feeling by persistent appeals to selfish- 
 ness ; they arrest the growth of will by surrender 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE 225 
 
 to native impulse, and they arrest the develop- 
 ment of intellect by methods which chain the 
 mind to sense-perception. They announce as a 
 fundamental principle that the development of 
 the individual must repeat that of the race. In 
 practice they repeat nothing but a discarded ter- 
 minus ah quo. 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTEK VIII 
 
 THE NEW EETUEN TO NATUKE 
 
 Whether we are at one or at war with the 
 new return to nature it surely behooves us to try 
 to understand it, and we cannot understand it 
 without some measure of sympathy with its cre- 
 ative impulse. 
 
 Emerson tells us that when quite young he 
 was importuned by a valued adviser to respect the 
 dear old doctrines of the church. He replied: 
 ^' What have I to do with the sacredness of tradi- 
 tion if I live wholly from within ? '^ 
 
 " But these impulses from which you live," 
 suggested his friend, " m^y be from the devil." 
 
 " They do not seem to me to be so," answered 
 Emerson, " but if I am the deviFs child, I will 
 live then from the devil." ^ 
 
 This story lays bare the noblest impulse that 
 beats in the heart of the new return to nature. 
 The integrity of the universe seems bound up 
 
 1 Essay on Self-Reliance. 
 226 
 
THE NEW RETURN TO NATURE 227 
 
 with the integrity of man's instincts. For these 
 instincts are the record of seonic achievement. 
 They prophesy the trend of future achievement. 
 They are powers without whose conspiracy future 
 achievement is impossible. Man's conscious ideals 
 may be mistaken definitions of the cosmic pur- 
 pose, whereas that purpose itself so far as accom- 
 plished is written in his instincts and emotions. 
 To distrust these holy records is to distrust the 
 universe and introduce a fatal schism into our 
 own souls. To give them frank and fearless ex- 
 pression is to avow the cheery faith that we share 
 the impulse by which all things live, and that we 
 are not afraid to trust the honest purpose of the 
 whole. We may not know whither we are going, 
 but we are going with the universe. We should 
 not try to swim against the cosmic stream but 
 strike out boldly in the direction of its main cur- 
 rent. Such as we are, nature has made us, or 
 rather we are nature incarnate and should bravely 
 and joyously accept ourselves as her product and 
 revelation. 
 
 " We are nature ; long have we wandered but 
 now we return. We are each product and influ- 
 ence of the globe. We have circled and circled 
 until we have returned home again. We have 
 voided all but freedom and all but our own joy." ^ 
 
 » Walt Whitman. 
 
228 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The power and appeal of the pedagogic creed 
 based upon recognition of instinct as the stored-up 
 result of cosmic action, was largely derived from 
 the breadth of its alliances. It must be frankly 
 recognized as the educational application of a 
 fashion of thought — or rather a fashion of feeling 
 — which for several decades exercised compelling 
 sway over many minds. Its source was the evo- 
 lutionary dictum that all things may be explained 
 by their process of becoming. Caught in the toils 
 of this specious error, men sought for God in the 
 wind, the earthquake, and the fire, and turned 
 deaf ears to the still, small voice which speaks to 
 the listening soul. Through the influence of the 
 same error all customs, traditions, and institu- 
 tions were interpreted as vanishing expressions of 
 different racial souls. Art was belittled by de- 
 fining it as mere copy of nature and forgetting or 
 denying its ideal mission ^^ to transmit the high- 
 est and best feelings to which men have risen." 
 Poets and novelists sounded a challenge for " ab- 
 solute surrender to the manhood current within," 
 and a vast body of literature was created, whose 
 most " discernible characteristic," as described by 
 its admirers, was ^' the movement away from the 
 summits of life downward toward the bases of 
 life ; from the heights of civilization to the primi- 
 tive springs of action ; from the thin-aired regions 
 of consciousness which are ruled over by tact to 
 
THE NEW RETURN TO NATURE 229 
 
 the underworld of unconsciousness — where are 
 situated the mighty workshops and where toils on 
 forever the cyclopean youth — Instinct." ^ 
 
 A friend has related to me a dream which 
 seems almost typical of this attitude of mind. 
 
 In her sleep she found herself upon a straight, 
 narrow, uphill path, bordered by white lilies. 
 She climbed wearily, but resolutely, looking nei- 
 ther to the right nor to the left. At last she stood 
 upon the top of a high hill from which she gazed 
 upon the boundless expanse of an emerald sea. 
 Instantly, with the cry " Depth is better than 
 height," she had plunged beneath its waves. 
 
 Depth is better than height — so declared that 
 now vanishing mode of thought which turned its 
 attention away from the sky toward which we 
 strive to the dust from which we sprang; away 
 from ideals to instincts ; away from the bitter 
 strife between what is and what ought to be, to 
 the joy of free abandon to native impulse. The 
 master passion of the new return to nature was 
 life. Living was its longing; more life its goal. 
 Man palpitates with energy and there is ruddy 
 blood in his veins. He should not permit his 
 mind to be '^ sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
 thought " and refusing to torment himself with 
 the mystery of life, should fling himself into the 
 
 1 James Lane Allen. 
 
230 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 excitement of living. For what he is the universe 
 has made him, and now he and the universe are 
 journeying together toward some undiscovered 
 and undiscoverable goal. 
 
 The ideal incentive of the new return to nature 
 has never been more sympathetically presented 
 than in Whitman's Song of Myself: 
 
 Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like 
 
 cheerful boatmen, 
 For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings; 
 They sent influences to look after what was to hold 
 
 me. 
 
 Before I was born out of my mother generations 
 guided me. 
 
 My embryo has never been torpid; nothing can over- 
 lay it. 
 
 For it the nebula cohered to an orb. 
 
 The long slow strata piled to rest it on; 
 
 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance; 
 
 Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and 
 deposited it with care. 
 
 All forces have been steadily employed to complete 
 
 and delight me. 
 Now, on this spot I stand with my robust soul. 
 
 The inspiration of this jubilant song derives 
 from the conviction that each individual is 
 product and epitome of the universe and may 
 therefore dare to trust his robust soul. Such 
 
THE NEW RETURN TO NATURE 231 
 
 a feat of daring has been attempted on a co- 
 lossal scale, and its history is simply the history 
 of the free-play movement in the kindergarten 
 writ large. As that movement started with the 
 demand for free self-expression and culminated in 
 swift surrender to whim and arresting accent 
 upon the motor habits of pre-human ancestors, so 
 the history of the new^ return to nature through- 
 out its entire sweep show^s a rapid regress from 
 civilization to savagism, and from gay conspir- 
 acy with cosmic forces to the defiant or abject ac- 
 ceptance of a fated universe. The literature 
 which started with a challenge for surrender to 
 the manhood current within, has ended by cre- 
 ating a disheartening series of pathological per- 
 sonalities and by setting each helpless slave of 
 imperative impulse in surroundings which move 
 to his own destruction ^^ the machinery of his 
 being." The conception of art as representation 
 culminated in representations which prostituted 
 art. The search of nature to find out God resulted 
 in the discovery of blind forces and chance re- 
 sults ; and all that evolutionary science can tell us 
 of the future is that whatever matter and motion 
 have done they will surely undo, and what has 
 been evolved is fated to be dissolved. Finally, 
 the racial souls heralded as the ancestors of insti- 
 tutional ideals, have turned out to be themselves 
 mere corollaries of brain structures created by 
 
232 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 heredity and transformable only by cross-breed- 
 ing. Surrender to this fatalistic view of human 
 nature has called forth denials of those cardinal 
 doctrines of Christian democracy which declare 
 the sanctity of the individual and impose upon all 
 men the duty to safeguard the liberty of each. It 
 has fostered an oriental and pagan disregard for 
 the masses of men, degraded humanity from the 
 image of God to an accidental and vanishing type 
 of life, and reduced history to a meaningless 
 tragedy. In so far as its conclusions are accepted 
 life ceases to be worth living. " It is what it 
 ought not to be, and passage from it into nothing- 
 ness is the only good." Thus, starting with the 
 repudiation of human ideals and the glorification 
 of human instincts, the new return to nature 
 has culminated, like its historic prototype, in a 
 reign of terror. It is burning itself up in the 
 hellish fire it has lighted and may be safely left 
 to the consuming flames of its own dialectic pro- 
 cess. 
 
 It has been urged as a criticism against Froe- 
 bel that his studies of childhood were conducted 
 under the incitement of that philosophical pre- 
 supposition which affirms that in the structure of 
 consciousness must be sought the key to human 
 development, and it has been tacitly claimed as a 
 merit of the child-study movement that the ob- 
 servations of its advocates are made with more 
 
THE NEW RETURN TO NATURE 233 
 
 candid and unprejudiced intellects. Either this 
 claim means nothing, or it means that in their 
 own judgment the minds of contemporary child 
 students are unbiased by any presupposition. It 
 may therefore not be superfluous to suggest that 
 a presuppositionless intellect is an impossibility, 
 though it may be freely granted that many an in- 
 tellect is swayed by presuppositions of which it 
 is unconscious. 
 
 The great majority of child students who have 
 conducted examinations and replied to question- 
 naires, have doubtless done so without a conscious 
 hypothesis as a guide in their investigations. 
 The leaders of the movement, however, have sum- 
 marized results and formed conclusions under the 
 influence of a series of presuppositions implicit 
 in the general statement that all facts and subjects 
 are explained by retracing their process of devel- 
 opment. 
 
 It is through the reaction of these presupposi- 
 tions that attention has been diverted from ideals 
 to instincts and undue accent placed upon hered- 
 ity and environment. 
 
 Kindergartners who wish to choose intelligently 
 between Froebel and his latter-day critics, must 
 therefore face and settle the question whether the 
 process through which a thing has come to be 
 explains w^iat it is or w^hether each thing is only 
 explained when set in a clear relation to its origin 
 
234 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 and goal. Thinkers accepting the former view 
 will not only seek to appease intellect with proc- 
 esses of becoming, but will always tend to em- 
 phasize earlier and lower stages of development. 
 Thinkers accepting the latter view, will seek the 
 eternal reality which includes all processes of be- 
 coming and will be impelled to the conviction 
 that completely realized self-consciousness is both 
 the origin and the goal of cosmic evolution, and 
 must therefore be the standard which determines 
 the ascent of life. Hence they will be quick to 
 discern in nature a tendency '^ to develop such 
 beings as possess internality and energize to re- 
 alize ideals," * and prompt to recognize this imma- 
 nent teleology as the highest revelation of the 
 doctrine of evolution. 
 
 The fundamental tenet of the IN^eo-Rousseau 
 creed is that instinct strictly defined as " inher- 
 ited association between stimuli and particular 
 bodily reactions," is the sole and sufficient guide 
 of life. This dogma implies a biologic psychology 
 which holds that mind is conterminous with brain 
 structure and discredits consciousness as an " up- 
 start novelty " ; ^ a ^^ provincial oracle " ; ^ a " wart 
 raised by the sting of sin";* a " late, partial and 
 
 • Psychologic Foundations of Education, William T. Harris, 
 p. 21. 
 
 2 Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 61. ^ ihid., Preface, p. vi. 
 
 * Ihid., vol. ii, p. 67. 
 
THE NEW RETURN TO NATURE 235 
 
 perhaps essentially abnormal and remedial out- 
 crop of the great underlying life of man-soul." ^ 
 The outcome of this psychology is that man is a 
 ^^ specialized and partial being," and the human 
 soul " but one of many types of mind in the 
 world " ; perhaps a ^' temporary and accidental 
 form which force or life has taken on " ; at best 
 " a transition from a lower to a higher race to 
 be evolved later." ^ 
 
 To thinkers accepting these conclusions, man, 
 conceived as a self-creative being, able to free him- 
 self from the chains of antecedent and environing 
 causation, ceases to exist. The permanent and 
 universal human person is submerged in the cau- 
 sal stream. With this submergence of the human 
 person is sunk the conception of personality as 
 the power whence the universe proceeds; and the 
 social union of all personal spirits as both the 
 
 > Adolescence, Preface, p. vii. 
 
 ' "If we had all that our heredity could possibly bestow, 
 we should be but specialized and partial beings. ... It 
 is not inconceivable that many a species that has become 
 extinct took with it out of the world the promise and potency 
 of a higher psychic development than that of man, but of a 
 radically different type from his. . . . Although the highest 
 being that is, he is perhaps not the highest, or even among 
 the highest, that might have been, to say nothing of what 
 may be in other planets, or that will be in ours. The best and 
 only key to explain mind in man is mind in the animals he 
 has sprung from, and in his own infancy, which so faintly 
 recapitulates them." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 65. 
 
236 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 goal toward which it progresses and the eternal 
 reality through which it is finally explained. 
 With loss of divine and human personality the 
 values of life cease to appeal as standards by 
 which to measure education and the chief, if not 
 the sole concern of pedagogics is directed toward 
 " the ways and means of investing man's capital 
 of native instincts.'' 
 
 The pith of all Neo-Eousseau doctrines is that 
 man and the universe are developing through a 
 process of mutual action and reaction but that 
 toward what climax or anti-climax they are mov- 
 ing, we do not and cannot know. The result of 
 their reciprocal action is deposited in and revealed 
 through our basal instincts, and therefore the duty 
 of education is to assure each child free scope for 
 the exercise of every native proclivity. 
 
 The pith of Froebelian doctrine is that man 
 and the universe are evolving in a discernible di- 
 rection toward a definable goal. In a preceding 
 chapter of this book I have described this goal as 
 an infinite community of souls, each of which ful- 
 fills itself through communion with all others.^ 
 Such a goal of the cosmic process implies that the 
 universe is psychical in its nature; that there is 
 kinship between man and the infinite source 
 whence he proceeds, and that since the distinctive 
 
 » See Chapter II, pp. 63-64. 
 
THE NEW RETURN TO NATURE 237 
 
 characteristic of man is self-consciousness, the 
 structure of consciousness and not the basal in- 
 stincts of men must determine both the subject- 
 matter and the method of education. 
 
 The transcendental self-determining energy 
 which achieves and reveals in self-consciousness 
 its own ideal form, is present wherever there is 
 life. This self-determining energy or will created 
 instincts by acting in definite ways. But it did 
 not die when it had made these instincts — neither 
 did it abdicate the throne of life in their favor. 
 It is just as alive, active, and sovereign as it 
 ever was. It is able to modify the instincts 
 which are deposits of its own past deeds. It is 
 able to undo its own past mistakes. Blind in 
 plants, dim of vision even in the highest animals, 
 it achieves eyes in the intellect of man, and there- 
 after increasingly directs itself through conscious 
 ideals. 
 
 In the dark underworld of unconsciousness the 
 Cyclopean youth. Instinct, may perhaps toil on for- 
 ever. But upon the shining heights of life the 
 celestial youth. Divine Humanity, shall hereafter 
 renounce his brute and savage heredity and claim 
 his ^^ heredity from God.'' He shall repudiate 
 instincts that are evil and get rid of instincts that 
 are outgrown. He shall purge valid instincts of 
 partiality and redeem them from distortion. He 
 shall create new instincts as allies in his struggle 
 
238 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 for freedom. All these things, and greater things 
 than these, he shall do through the power of 
 ideals which will be ascending definitions of his 
 own personality and ascending revelations of the 
 Infinite Person from whom he proceeds. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 
 
 The concentric programme was carried into the 
 kindergarten by that tidal wave of Herbartianism 
 which some years since swept over our school sys- 
 tem. The free-play programme was the outcome 
 of the child-study movement. It is well to remind 
 ourselves that neither of these now vanishing 
 methods arose within the kindergarten, but were 
 due to the influence of educators not imbued with 
 the ideals of which it is the embodiment. The 
 same fact holds with regard to the living issues to 
 be discussed in this chapter. They have arisen 
 through the pressure of outside influence, and em- 
 body theories not only at variance with but de- 
 structive of the fundamental principles of Froebel. 
 
 As the most rapid approach to the living is- 
 sues now dividing the kindergarten public, I pre- 
 sent a programme published in the Kindergarten 
 Magazine for October, 1907.^ The most cursory 
 
 1 I present this programme because it illustrates all the 
 fallacies of the industrial kindergarten and because through 
 the pages of the Kindergarten Magazine it reaches thousands 
 of young and inexperienced kindergartners. 
 
 239 
 
240 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 glance will disclose the fact that it is concentric 
 in its form, but differs from its Herbartian pro- 
 genitor by placing its accent upon primitive indus- 
 tries instead of primitive culture products. The 
 correlating center of this programme is the potato, 
 and the exercises for the several days of the week 
 are as follows : ^ 
 
 I desire to state explicitly that I do not intend to imply- 
 that any leading representative of the industrial ideal in the 
 kindergarten would approve of this programme. 
 
 As actually carried out in the kindergarten, the industrial 
 ideal assumes many different forms. Some kindergartners 
 merely represent household industries in play. Others actually 
 introduce such industries into the kindergarten, but call for 
 them at comparatively rare intervals and do not make them 
 centers of correlation. It is impossible to describe all shades 
 of opinion and practice. Judging, however, from printed 
 articles and exhibits of kindergarten work, from lectures, and 
 from the kindergarten supplies called for in different cities, the 
 following tendencies would seem to be quite widespread. 
 
 1. The tendency to make household industries a part of 
 kindergarten activity. 
 
 2. The tendency to supplant play by work. 
 
 3. Preponderant appeal to the understanding. 
 
 4. Insistence upon functional values. 
 
 5. The substitution of constructive work for free self- 
 expression. 
 
 6. The too great restriction of kindergarten games to the 
 representation of industrial activities. 
 
 7. The elimination of that appeal to imagination through 
 typical acts which is the most characteristic and valuable 
 feature oi the Froebelian kindergarten. 
 
 > The following prefatory note explains the general ideas 
 underlying this programme: 
 
 "This subject should begin with the planting of the potato 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 241 
 
 I. PLANTING OF THE POTATO 
 
 The digging and planting of potatoes. Gather them 
 into a pile, load one of the children's wagons, carry 
 them to the cellar of the person to whom the potatoes 
 are to be given, and store them away. 
 
 IL BOILING OF POTATOES 
 
 (a) Let the children wash and peel potatoes, (h) 
 In the interval of waiting for them to be cooked, feed 
 the peelings to the chickens, or clean a water bottle 
 with some of them by breaking them up and shaking 
 them around in the same with water. This whole les- 
 son can be given in the kindergarten; hut if at the 
 home of one of the children, the potatoes should not 
 he eaten hy the children, hut the work can he done as 
 a service to the family, though one potato might he 
 tasted. Enough more than those required for the 
 family dinner should be cooked that a few may be 
 taken to the school for use the next day. 
 
 in. FRY POTATOES, USING SOME OF 
 
 THOSE BOILED ON THE 
 
 PREVIOUS DAY 
 
 (In contrast to the lesson of the day before, let this 
 one be given in the kindergarten.) 
 
 in the spring. The potato can be harvested in the autumn. 
 As the season of frost approaches the children begin to wear 
 warmer clothes, the leaves to fall, and the family to make its 
 preparation for the winter. At this time let the children 
 inspect their garden and decide upon whom to bestow their 
 CFop of potatoes, and then store them away for the winter." — 
 Kindergarten Primary Magazine, October, 1907. 
 17 
 
242 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 (tz) Each one can slice one potato, and turn the 
 same into the skillet, (h) While waiting for them 
 to brown, assign different occupations to different 
 members of the group. Two at a time can watch the 
 potatoes^ some set the table and decorate it with au- 
 tumn leaves, while others put the kitchen corner of 
 the kindergarten into order, sweeping the floor and 
 washing the soiled pans that previously contained their 
 potatoes. Of course, at least an hour's time is essen- 
 tial to complete this lesson in an orderly way. 
 
 IV. GRATING OF POTATOES FOR POTATO 
 PANCAKES 
 
 (a) The children grate the potatoes in water. Turn 
 this grated mass into a cheese-cloth bag and squeeze 
 out the water (saving this water with its sediment 
 until the following day), (b) Beat both parts of one 
 egg, pour it into the grated mass, thinning it with 
 a little milk, grease the frying pan, and bake the 
 cakes, letting each one take part. Let this be done 
 as a surprise for one of the teachers, the children 
 presenting them to her. The children, of course, 
 should have a taste. They should* he given time to 
 wash all the dishes and to put everything away. 
 
 V. THE MAKING OF STARCH 
 
 This can be done by pouring off the colored water 
 from the sediment left in the pan from the previous 
 lesson. The sediment will prove to be starch. Let 
 the children find this out by the pouring on and off 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 243 
 
 of clean water till it grows entirely clear. Draw 
 off the last water entirely, and let the starch dry 
 in the sun. 
 
 VI. THE DOLLS' WASHDAY 
 
 The dolls come to the kindergarten with their soiled 
 clothes, and the children wash them. Be sure to have 
 them sort the white and colored clothes and make 
 laundry books. See a more complete description of 
 how to plan this lesson in the kindergarten outline 
 under the subject of water.^ 
 
 VII. IRONING DAY 
 
 Of course, the ironing of these clothes must follow 
 the washing, and then the dolls can be dressed in 
 their clean clothes and be invited to listen to a 
 story, and look at some appropriate pictures. 
 
 See the set of pictures illustrated by Ludwig 
 Eichter, There are several drawings consisting of 
 children washing their doll's clothes, and the like. See 
 his Aus dem Kinderleben containing twenty-four 
 pictures, songs and rhymes. 
 
 In all these lessons while the children are busy with 
 doing, call their attention to the different changes as 
 they occur throughout a complete process. Do not 
 tell them beforehand that the potato contains starch; 
 let the truth present itself. It will be observed that 
 all these miniature science lessons, however, contain 
 a strong ethical value, the children's activity being 
 based upon an inspiration to serve others. 
 
 ' (All italics mine.) 
 
244 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 No person imbued with the educational prin- 
 ciples of Froebel can read this programme without 
 an immediate perception of the fact that its au- 
 thor has either consciously rejected or uncon- 
 sciously lost the idea which originally created the 
 kindergarten. As has been repeatedly stated in 
 this book that creative idea was to freight the 
 form of play with the values of life. The char- 
 acteristic feature of the programme presented is 
 that in it the form of play has been supplanted 
 by the form of work. 
 
 To realize the meaning of this transposition we 
 must consider even more carefully than we have 
 done hitherto the respective marks and values of 
 play and work. The characteristic quality of play 
 is that it is an activity which is its own end. It 
 is therefore free to modify or change itself. The 
 following description of a little child's play with 
 her blocks will illustrate this quality of freedom, 
 and suggest its value : 
 
 The child sits on the floor and I ask her to make a 
 church like the one she sees pictured in her book. She 
 begins, lays the foundation of the church: a long line 
 of blocks laid straight, with another line crossing the 
 first about two-thirds of its length. Then suddenly 
 her face lights up and she quickly takes more blocks 
 and lays a third line parallel with the second and 
 crossing the long line at one third of its length. 
 " What are you doing that for ? " I ask ; " I never 
 taught you to make a church with two cross lines." 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 245 
 
 " Oh, no ; I am making an animal," says she, " with a 
 head and a tail and four legs." She has, to my knowl- 
 edge, never made an animal like this before, and she 
 certainly did not set out to make an animal. It had 
 come to her in her progress with the church that the 
 arrangement might be altered so as to make an ani- 
 mal. That is, her mental picture had come, in her 
 action upon it, especially in laying the cross line of 
 blocks, to be assimilated with her old mental picture 
 of an animal; and forthwith, by the addition of an- 
 other line like the former, the church turned into an 
 animal. Now this is an invention in the strictest 
 sense. It is peculiar to the child. Who ever before 
 made an animal out of a church? What external in- 
 fluence suggested to the child the similarity between 
 the essential lines of the two objects? What former 
 single mental picture of her own adequately explains 
 this sudden outcome? If none of these, then all the 
 sources are exhausted and we must say that she is an 
 inventor as much as any historical genius is who has 
 enriched the world by his thought. 
 
 But now the child does something further; she calls 
 upon everybody in the room to come and see the ani- 
 mal which she has made; she, no less than the first 
 Maker of whom we are told, looks upon the thing 
 which she hath made, and lo! it is very good. And 
 then she amuses herself by making the animal again 
 and again, and saying also, " It is not a church, for a 
 church doesn't have these two ends (the third line 
 across), I have made it into an animal." So — and this 
 is her second invention — she has changed her thought of 
 herself. To herself she is now a person who can make 
 animals out of churches. She is in a new sense — or 
 at least from a new point of view — an agent; her 
 
246 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 growing sense of her own originality, power over 
 things, freedom to depart from the thraldom of imi- 
 tation has received an impulse. The next time she 
 comes to play with her blocks the splendid invention 
 of this occasion is full in her mind, and the blocks, 
 together with the suggestions which I make for their 
 use, are to her things for her domineering ego to 
 trifle with, despise, and utilize as never before. She 
 has, therefore, come to a new thought of herself, and 
 this is also a discovery, an invention.^ 
 
 Through play the child becomes original and 
 conscious of originality. He feels himself a crea- 
 tive first cause ; rejoices in his sense of freedom ; 
 and is impelled to further exercise of creative ac- 
 tivity. Through the reaction of creative deeds he 
 creates himself as a unique individual. Without 
 this self-creative activity all human beings would 
 tend to become tiresome repetitions of one dull 
 pattern. 
 
 In contrast with play, which is its ov^m motive 
 and whose characteristic mark is its freedom to 
 change itself, work is activity directed to the ac- 
 complishment of a purpose and its demand is that 
 the worker shall hold himself persistently to his 
 task. In play, activity and end coalesce; in work 
 they fall apart. The accent of play is upon a proc- 
 ess of activity; the accent of work upon its prod- 
 
 1 Social and Ethical Interpretations, James Mark Baldwin, 
 pp. 107, 108. 
 
i 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 247 
 
 net. The value of work is that it subordinates the 
 self; the value of play that it creates the self. 
 
 Many recent discussions with regard to play and 
 work betray confusion of mind. It is often as- 
 sumed that the distinction between work and play 
 implies that some activities always preserve the 
 form of play, while others can never lose the form 
 of work. The truth of this assumed implication 
 being denied, an effort is made to remove entirely 
 the boundary line between the two types of activ- 
 ity. It is urged that many games of strength and 
 skill demand a persistent training which is not its 
 own end and reward. Here, therefore, is play 
 turning over into work. Little children enjoy 
 cooking, sweeping, washing, and ironing for them- 
 selves and apart from their results. Here is work 
 turning over into play. " Up to the sixth year," 
 writes Miss Dopp, '^ when the object begins to 
 stand out more clearly in the child's mind, when 
 the inner and the outer begin to differentiate, 
 there is no distinction between work and play.^ 
 To be sure there are differences in activities very 
 early, but if not fettered by external conditions 
 the activity is equally free play whether it serves 
 the purpose of utility in the sense of the adult; 
 whether it serves the purpose of play, as making 
 a dolPs house, or whether it is purely imaginary, 
 as in the case of dramatic play. It is important 
 
 » Is not the reason for this, that the child never works? 
 
248 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 that the child get his full share of each variety of 
 play and that its free character be maintained." ^ 
 
 The argument advanced is vitiated by the fal- 
 lacy of the assumption whence it proceeds. The 
 distinction between play and work does not imply 
 that different activities are bound forever to their 
 respective forms. The same activity may take on 
 at one time the form of play and at another the 
 form of work. The difference between activities 
 depends upon the tendency to assume preponder- 
 antly one or the other form. Through a tacit rec- 
 ognition of prevailing tendency, the common sense 
 of mankind has relegated some activities to the 
 class of play and others to the class of work. The 
 housemaid who knew she had become a Christian 
 because contrary to former practice she always 
 swept dust from out the corners and from under 
 the bed divined truly the criterion of work. She 
 knew that the purpose of sweeping was a clean 
 room, and that she was the instrument of this 
 purpose. 
 
 Activities which offer scope for originality will 
 tend to assume preponderantly the form of play; 
 those which do not permit original action will 
 tend to assume preponderantly the form of work. 
 There is, therefore, a maximum possibility for 
 play in dramatic games and in building and ar- 
 
 » The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, Katha- 
 rine Elizabeth Dopp, pp. 116, 117. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 249 
 
 rangement exercises, and a minimum possibility 
 for play in cooking, laundry work, sweeping and 
 dusting. It is true that from time to time little 
 children imitate these several activities for the 
 pleasure of the imitation. Such pleasure, how- 
 ever, must wane with their enforced repetition, 
 and it is impossible to make them integral exer- 
 cises of the kindergarten without changing play 
 into work. Moreover, it is unlikely that such 
 work will be well done, and therefore its educative 
 value will be lost. To cook coarsely, scrub, sweep, 
 and dust carelessly, wash without cleansing and 
 iron without smoothing is simply to form bad 
 habits and obscure ideals of cleanliness, thorough- 
 ness, and refinement. 
 
 The argument against making household indus- 
 tries integral parts of kindergarten activity con- 
 denses itself into the statement that this cannot be 
 done without entirely revolutionizing the form of 
 that activity. Fairness demands that we should 
 consider the justifying reasons offered for the pro- 
 posed revolution. The reasons which seem to have 
 had most influence are lucidly and precisely stated 
 by Miss Katharine Dopp in a book entitled The 
 Place of Industries in Early Education, and I 
 cannot do better than quote her words: 
 
 From the remotest to the most recent times, in the 
 simplest as well as in the most highly organized so- 
 cieties, industry has been a dominant force in the up- 
 
250 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 building and maintaining of social structures. In the 
 more simple social groups it is possible to perceive 
 very clearly the fundamental place of industry in so- 
 ciety and the vitality of its relation to all other activ- 
 ities of life. In such societies it appears as the ma- 
 trix that holds within itself the other interests of life 
 which it nourishes until they hecome strong enough 
 to support themselves.^ . . . 
 
 There is a closer relationship than is usually recog- 
 nized between the activities of the child and the se- 
 rious activities of society in all ages.^ . . . 
 
 It is an accepted truth that those racial activities 
 which are most ancient and most prolonged have had 
 the most potent influence in determining the attitudes 
 of mankind. Attitudes due to such causes appear 
 earliest, and although they may early be overlaid with 
 more complex habits, they remain strong throughout 
 life; and when, as decay sets in, the more complex 
 habits one by one disappear, these native instincts 
 reassert themselves and persist till the last. 
 
 There are instincts that have resulted from later 
 racial activities, but their early appearance as well as 
 their permanence is in direct proportion to the re- 
 moteness and duration of the activities which pro- 
 duced them. Comparatively recent racial activities 
 certainly operate in determining the attitudes of the 
 child; but they operate not through physical, but 
 through social heredity. 
 
 Darwin is a notable example of those scientists who 
 have attempted to explain human emotional attitudes 
 by reference to those of animals. However fruitful 
 such an investigation may be, it seems to promise less 
 
 > The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, Kath- 
 arine Elizabeth Dopp, p. 2. 2 Ibid., p. 6. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 251 
 
 for educational purposes than investigations along 
 racial lines; for it must be remembered that continu- 
 ity in emotional attitudes can be explained only on the 
 basis of biological function. For this reason educa- 
 tion must wait upon biological science until the condi- 
 tions needed are established, and even then the use 
 of the materials offered is open to the charge of ex- 
 plaining the more clear by the less clear. Until we 
 know more of the consciousness of animals we are 
 scarcely in a position to make a profitable use of ani- 
 mal psychology in interpreting the activities of the 
 child. 
 
 When we attempt to interpret the attitudes of the 
 child in the light of the activities of the race there 
 is more hope of success; for the continuity of the bio- 
 logical function upon which the continuity of emo- 
 tional attitudes depends is assured.^ 
 
 * «- -X- » » 
 
 In proportion as society lays hold of instinctive re- 
 actions and harnesses them to present social needs the 
 process of education is promoted. The most serious 
 mistake has been the tendency to ignore the psychical 
 attitudes of the child by imposing upon him the highly 
 organized products of present social life. It is begin- 
 ning to be more generally recognized, however, that 
 education^ to be vital, must be grounded deep in 
 physical heredity, and to be of real social service 
 must be guided and refined in the light of our own 
 highest social ideals. The natural emotional reac- 
 tions are fixed, and we need not expect any funda- 
 mental change. It is the part of wisdom to build upon 
 
 • The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, Kath- 
 arine Elizabeth Dopp, pp. 61, 62. (Italics mine.) 
 
252 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 this sure foundation, rather than to seek one among 
 the shifting sands of more recent times. The achieve- 
 ments of recent civilization are of value not in deter- 
 mining the foundation, but in fashioning the struc- 
 ture that is reared upon it/ 
 
 * * -x- * * 
 
 Civilization is only as yesterday when viewed with 
 reference to the long period of human development . . . 
 the deep-seated, permanent, and abiding impulses are 
 the result of racial experiences before man had 
 emerged from the savage stage; . . . later racial activ- 
 ities influence psychical attitudes in a much less per- 
 manent way.^ 
 
 ***** 
 
 The child lives in the present. He must find his 
 satisfaction in an immediate way. His pleasurable 
 emotions are bound up with his instinctive reactions. 
 Because these reactions have been marked out by the 
 serious activities of the race in its first steps in human 
 progress, because they represent the processes of mod- 
 ern civilization in their most rudimentary forms, they 
 serve to present the educational opportunity for estab- 
 lishing helpful relations between the life of the past 
 and that of the present. By making use of these in- 
 stinctive reactions it is possible to make a gradual 
 transition from the dramatic and play interests of 
 the child to the more serious interests of the adult.^ 
 ***** 
 
 The house industries are especially significant with 
 reference to elementary education. They represent 
 
 1 The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, Kath- 
 arine Elizabeth Depp, pp. 88, 89. (Italics mine.) 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 8. 3 Ibid., pp. 89, 90. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 253 
 
 the experiences of the race in industrial activities, 
 whether private or public, through the long ages which 
 preceded the handicraft period. They are important 
 as factors in the shaping of the early forms of our in- 
 stitutions, and give a significance to much that would 
 be meaningless apart from such a relation. They rep- 
 resent the activities which were instrumental in the 
 formation of our physical coordinations and psy- 
 chical attitudes. In relation to the early years of 
 development they are much more important than the 
 industrial activities of later periods, because they cor- 
 respond more closely to the psychical attitudes of the 
 child than do the activities of later periods. The ac- 
 tivities of later epochs are not without their influ- 
 ence in shaping the attitudes of the child, but they 
 operate more through social than through physical 
 heredity.^ 
 
 Let us summarize the thoughts presented in 
 these several extracts in order that we may grasp 
 their logical connection and appreciate the peda- 
 gogical conclusion to which they point. 
 
 I 
 Industry is " the matrix that holds within itself 
 the other interests of life." 
 
 II 
 
 The native interests and instinctive reactions of 
 contemporary childhood have been created by the 
 industrial activities of society throughout the ages. 
 
 1 The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, pp. 
 14, 15. (All italics mine.) 
 
254 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 III 
 
 " In proportion as society lays hold of instinc- 
 tive reactions and harnesses them to present social 
 needs the process of education is promoted/^ 
 ^' To be vital education must be grounded in phys- 
 ical heredity." 
 
 IV 
 
 " Those racial activities which are most ancient 
 and most prolonged have had the most potent in- 
 fluence in determining the attitudes (or instinc- 
 tive reactions) of mankind. 
 
 " In relation to the early years of development 
 household industries are much more important 
 than the industrial activities of later periods be- 
 cause they correspond more closely to the psychi- 
 cal attitudes of the child." 
 
 The reader will remember that the free-play 
 programme was dominated by the ideal of biologic 
 recapitulation. The salient fact with regard to 
 the plan of education proposed in the extracts 
 quoted is that it deserts biologic recapitulation in 
 favor of historic recapitulation. Its primary as- 
 sumption is that contemporary mankind can be 
 more adequately explained by human than by 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 255 
 
 brute heredity. The deeds and expressions of ani- 
 mals and men have made man all he is. The 
 deeds of men have been more influential in shap- 
 ing contemporary mankind than the deeds of ani- 
 mals. The most ancient and most prolonged 
 racial activities have contributed most to the shap- 
 ing of man. Primitive activities explain the in- 
 stinctive reactions of childhood, and education 
 should begin by repeating them. These primitive 
 activities are represented to-day by household in- 
 dustries. Therefore, let little children cook, wash, 
 scrub, sweep, and dust. 
 
 These statements bristle with unproved as- 
 sumptions. Let us begin with the final one. Is 
 it true that all our present household industries 
 correspond with primitive activities ? In the 
 mind of any candid person a visit to the St. Louis 
 Fair would have dispelled the idea that this ques- 
 tion could be answered in the afiirmative. The 
 one fact which glared upon the observer as he 
 walked about among the primitive peoples there 
 assembled was that they washed little and 
 scrubbed, swept, and dusted not at all. Cleanli- 
 ness in all its forms is tainted with modernity. 
 When, therefore, we insist that little children 
 shall repeat the cleansing processes of contempo- 
 rary life, what are we doing but " seeking a foun- 
 dation for education among the shifting sands of 
 recent times ? " 
 
256 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 We may close our eyes to the inconsistency of 
 the industrial programme, but we must not evade 
 the doubts which assail our minds with regard to 
 the strength of its theoretic foundation. Can man 
 be adequately explained either by his brute or hu- 
 man ancestry, or by both conjoined ? 7s industry 
 the fountain source of the arts and institutions of 
 society? The proof offered in support of these 
 assumptions seems to me insufficient. In the final 
 chapter of this book I shall offer an alternative 
 explanation of man, and in the next preceding 
 chapter discuss the relationship of industries to 
 arts and institutions. For the moment I must 
 restrict myself to a series of denials and a brief 
 confession of faith. I do not believe that the 
 psychical attitudes of childhood can be fully ex- 
 plained by physical heredity. I deny the state- 
 ment that even instinctive reactions have been 
 created solely or chiefly by racial activities of in- 
 dustrial type. I am sure that industry is not " the 
 fountain source of the arts and institutions of so- 
 ciety." I conceive man as self -creative energy. I 
 conceive history as the process through which man 
 makes himself actually what from the beginning 
 he is ideally. I recognize in play, art, literature, 
 ethics, and religion, aboriginal expressions of the 
 free human spirit and denying that they are 
 the offspring of industry confess them its pro- 
 genitors. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 257 
 
 Referring the reader to the final chapter of this 
 book for the vindication of my confessed faith, I 
 pass on to consider an additional reason urged for 
 the introduction of household activities into the 
 kindergarten. ^^ The child of to-day/' we are told, 
 '^ has no opportunity to observe or participate in 
 primitive forms of industrial activity and there- 
 fore understands nothing that is going on around 
 him.'' Carpet sweepers conceal what the broom 
 revealed ; the machines used in laundry work hide 
 the actual process of cleansing; the sewing ma- 
 chine bars acquaintance with needle and thread; 
 spindle and distaff are instruments unknown. 
 The homemade candle has yielded to the electric 
 light. Vehicles are decreasingly moved by ani- 
 mals and increasingly moved by invisible forces. 
 In short, nothing is done in the direct way that a 
 child can understand. In virtue of human inven- 
 tions he is born into a wonder-world and lives in 
 a kind of magic dream. To dissolve this dream of 
 magic is a prime duty of education, and the 
 method of accomplishing it is to repeat the stages 
 of the industrial process from " the stage of the 
 hand, through that of the tool, to that of the ma- 
 chine." '^ The child who has traced the tool from 
 the action of his own body through the varied 
 stages of its development, has felt as he wielded it, 
 the rhythmic movements of economical adjust- 
 ments. He is now prepared to see how the mechan- 
 
 18 
 
25^ EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 ical principles with which he became familiar in 
 the study of primitive life are utilized by means 
 of better appliances, and how this action which 
 has been rendered rhythmical, and hence auto- 
 matic, may be handed over to a machine.'' ^ 
 
 Postponing to a later chapter all discussion of 
 the proposed evolution of industries in its relation 
 to the education of older children, let us concen- 
 trate our attention upon the demand that little 
 children shall repeat the primitive stage of indus- 
 trial development, and that one object of the repe- 
 tition is to deliver them out of a world of magic 
 into a world of comprehended fact. The clear 
 definition of a purpose helps us to decide our own 
 attitude toward it. Let me be entirely frauk, and 
 descending at once to the final root of difference 
 between the industrial ideal and the ideal of the 
 Froebelian Kindergarten, confess that I for one 
 have not the least desire to dissolve the dream of 
 wonder in which young children live. " To the 
 child," says a thoughtful essayist, " the tree and 
 the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as 
 each other, or rather neither of them is natural 
 but both are supernatural. For both are splendid 
 and unexplained. The flower with which God 
 crowns the one and the flame with which Sam the 
 lamplighter crowns the other are equally of the 
 
 1 The Place of Industries in Elementary Education, pp. 
 170, 171. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 259 
 
 gold of fairy land.'' ^ Far be it from me to in- 
 vade this realm of miracles. Childhood is the age 
 of dreams and one of the greatest of educational 
 offenses is to waken prematurely the dreaming 
 soul. 
 
 The method called forth by the industrial ideal 
 involves a persistent and exclusive appeal to the 
 understanding and thereby condemns itself. The 
 reader will doubtless have observed in the potato 
 programme the careful attention given to the con- 
 nection between potatoes, starch, and laundry 
 work. In another programme by the same kin- 
 dergartner a similar connection is made between 
 corn, corn-meal, and cooking. Children are sent 
 to search for flat stones; between these stones the 
 corn is ground; finally, a tripod is set up and 
 mush is cooked. It is conceivable that each house- 
 hold industry might be illustrated in similar fash- 
 ion and doubtless such illustration would conduce 
 to its better understanding. The important ques- 
 tions to consider, however, are the value of this 
 result ; the relative value of other educational aims 
 which must be neglected if this one be made para- 
 mount, and finally, the adaptation of this particu- 
 lar form of education to the stage of development 
 represented by children between the ages of four 
 and six. 
 
 The potato programme must not be dismissed 
 » Heretics, Chesterton. 
 
260 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 •until the reader has become aware of its labored 
 attempt to justify all exercises by the criterion of 
 immediate utility. Potatoes are dug, loaded on 
 wagons, and carried to the cellar of a chosen 
 beneficiary. They are boiled for a family lunch 
 and made into pancakes as a surprise to the kin- 
 dergartner. Starch is made for use when the chil- 
 dren wash their doll's clothes. This programme, 
 however, covers only an hour of the time spent 
 daily in the kindergarten, and the question arises 
 whether during the remaining period purpose and 
 prose make way for play and poetry. There can 
 be no doubt as to the answer which industrial 
 kindergartners make to this question. Alike in 
 their writings and through their practice they in- 
 sist that every exercise shall have some functional 
 value, or in other words, that it shall subserve 
 some immediate and conscious purpose. Children 
 make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving; pop corn 
 for the Christmas tree ; make jelly for a sick play- 
 mate. They wash and iron their own dusters, 
 towels, and aprons; color the raffia to be used in 
 weaving; make toys they themselves want, or 
 utensils to be employed in household work. Add- 
 ing the time required for constructive exercises to 
 the time required for gardening and household in- 
 dustries, reserving a half hour for circle games or 
 their substitute, and allowing a brief period for 
 talk or story, the entire three hours the child 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 261 
 
 spends in the kindergarten are filled to over- 
 flowing. 
 
 In order that we may understand how radical 
 is the change wrought by the industrial ideal in 
 the form of kindergarten activity, it is necessary 
 that we should contrast the constructive work it 
 calls forth with the Froebelian gift and occupation 
 exercises. The character and value of such con- 
 structive work is explained by Miss Patty S. Hill 
 in the following passage from an article on the Re- 
 lations of the Kindergarten and the Elementary 
 School as illustrated in their exhibits.^ 
 
 One can but be impressed with the similarity in the 
 results exhibited from kindergartens and lower grades. 
 We are tempted to criticise this until we read the 
 grade child's account of what he has done, and find 
 that though the manual products are similar, the in- 
 tellectual content in each case is entirely different. 
 For example, we see similar cardboard and wooden 
 "boxes and trays in exhibits all the way from the kin- 
 dergarten to the first grade, their educational value 
 in each grade depending upon the degree of work done 
 by and for the child, the amount of originality, prep- 
 aration of raw material, conscious measurement, etc., 
 demanded. For example, here is a written record ac- 
 companying a simple cardboard tray with careful 
 drawings of the same, made by a ten-year-old fourth- 
 grade child. She writes: 
 
 " I have made this cardboard tray in school. The 
 
 » Kindergarten Magazine, October, 1904. (Italics mine.) 
 
262 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 material was seven inches square when I cut it, which 
 made forty-nine square inches. I had to use very 
 careful measurements to get it exact, because it is 
 very expensive material and we have to try not to 
 waste it. When we fold it the bottom is three inches 
 square and one inch deep and it contains nine cubic 
 inches. We had to score some lines to turn it over to 
 make it the shape of a box. Its color is green and it 
 looks very pretty. I am going to use it to put my hair 
 ribbons in. They will just about fit in the box, if I 
 fold them carefully, and it is going to come very 
 handy to me." 
 
 If the kindergarten child had made this same ob- 
 ject, the conscious measurement would have been 
 thought out by the teacher. She would have prepared 
 the material and thought out the completed object, 
 the kindergarten child prohahly originating the meth- 
 od of securing this result with the carefully prepared 
 materials placed hefore him. The prepared material 
 often hints and suggests processes of construction to 
 the kindergarten child." At first glance this seems 
 quite limiting to the creativity and originality of the 
 kindergarten child, but a deeper study convinces one 
 that even the discovery of processes of making objects 
 which have been planned by the teacher demands 
 quite good ingenuity and originality from a little 
 child. 
 
 The gist of this statement is that children may 
 be educated by doing the same things all the way 
 from the kindergarten to the first grade, the edu- 
 cative process consisting in decreasing the amount 
 of work done for the pupil and increasing the 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 263 
 
 amount done by him. It seems a rather monoto- 
 nous and dreary plan of development. We may 
 grant the value of a reasonable amount of con- 
 structive work when children are sufficiently ma- 
 ture to conceive a product, prepare material and 
 make accurate measurements, but it is beyond 
 dispute that the traditional exercises of the kin- 
 dergarten are far better for the little child than 
 constructive work, wherein he confessedly carries 
 out a plan not his o^vn with material prepared by 
 his teacher. 
 
 ^ The method of Froebel follows the order of psy- 
 chologic development, and provides for an ascent 
 of activity from physical movement, through sym- 
 bolic representation and experimental arrange- 
 ments with unforeseen results to what may be 
 fairly defined as free creation. The little child 
 begins by rolling, swinging, bouncing, whirling, 
 and spinning his ball, and by swinging and spin- 
 ning his sphere, cube, and cylinder. His pleasure 
 in the first instance is simply in what he is doing. 
 Soon, however, his rolling ball suggests a wheel, his 
 swinging ball a flying bird, and cubes and cylin- 
 ders begin to be not only themselves but the mani- 
 fold objects to which their forms bear crude resem- 
 blance. Receiving the third gift the child is con- 
 tent for a time to pile its eight cubes in different 
 ways or arrange them in rows of different kinds. 
 He can scarcely arrange them in any way without 
 
264 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 their taking forms which will suggest some object 
 he has seen. If he piles them one above the other 
 a word from the kindergartner opens his eyes to 
 see in the unsought result of his activity a tree, 
 a tower, a telegraph pole, or a lamp-post. If he 
 arranges them side by side, he is confronted with 
 a wall, if in two parallel rows, behold the railroad ! 
 The change of a single block transforms one of his 
 rails into a short train of cars and quickly the 
 other rail is added to increase its length. Having, 
 as it were, reached these results accidentally the 
 child next directly aims to reproduce them, and 
 thus through the suggestiveness of his material is 
 helped to take the step from experimental arrange- 
 ment to conscious production. The fact that while 
 intent only on arranging his blocks he produced 
 an object leads him to observe this object more 
 carefully in order to detect its possible transfor- 
 mation into some other object. Through this mu- 
 tual reaction of process and product he evolves a 
 series of forms. The fourth, fifth, and sixth gifts 
 offer him a larger amount and greater variety of 
 material. In the use of the fifth and sixth gifts, 
 moreover, attention is transferred from the change 
 of one object into another to changes within the 
 object itself. The child now looks at his dwelling 
 house or church to see how it might be improved 
 and through a variety of experimental changes 
 clarifies his own ideas. Having attained this 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 265 
 
 stage of development he is prepared for the tran- 
 sition from play to work. The stages of his ascent 
 have been from physical movement, through sym- 
 bolic representation, experimental arrangement, 
 reproduced result, free creation, serial evolution, 
 to the progressive transformation of a single ob- 
 ject so that it may more adequately correspond 
 with a self -defining ideal. To expect of little chil- 
 dren that they should clearly image an object and 
 go to work and make that and nothing else is to 
 expect an impossibility. Clear images are created 
 through the interaction of process and product. 
 
 Omitting the first two stages which belong to 
 the period of infancy the method of development 
 followed with the kindergarten gifts is repeated 
 in the use of the occupations. In weaving, for 
 example, the child begins with simple combina- 
 tions of number; discovers patterns as the result 
 of this combination and thereafter through the 
 reciprocal influence of pattern and numerical ar- 
 rangement creates interesting and beautiful de- 
 signs. In folding the beginning is made by creas- 
 ing and bending paper in different ways; these 
 creases and bends suggest simple objects and 
 finally the child folds with intention to make ob- 
 jects. Further illustration is superfluous, and it 
 is hoped that the reader will have observed how 
 exactly FroebePs genetic developing method cor- 
 responds with the spontaneous movement of the 
 
266 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 child's mind as shown in the play of Professor 
 Baldwin's little girl with her blocks. The many, 
 and I hasten to add, the just criticisms made 
 against the practice of Froebelian kindergartners 
 arose from the fact that ascent in evolutionary 
 processes was too swift, and that this error some- 
 times led to the imposition of fixed series in lieu 
 of the free production by children of different 
 series. For many years this error has been rec- 
 ognized, confessed, and lamented. It is, however, 
 one thing to renounce an error in practice and 
 quite another thing to throw away a true prin- 
 ciple because it has been mistakenly applied. 
 
 Thus far we have considered chiefly that type 
 of exercise known in the kindergarten as ^' making 
 forms of life.'' Brief attention must now be given 
 to forms of beauty. In the Froebelian kinder- 
 garten these forms are the outcome of an effort to 
 make a concrete genetic development of the prin- 
 ciples of design. They begin with arrangements 
 in which simple elements are repeated and ad- 
 vance to the evolution of symmetric figures 
 through application of the principle of contrast. 
 They presuppose the theory explained in the sec- 
 ond chapter of this book, that " art is play under 
 the influence of the principle of order." ^ They 
 
 1 The Fine Arts, G. Baldwin Brown, p. 16. A more adequate 
 statement by the same author is as follows: 
 
 "On every grade of his being man possesses an ideal, self- 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 267 
 
 further assume that this principle of order is na- 
 tive to the human mind and expresses its constitu- 
 tion and that for this reason both primitive men 
 and little children seek spontaneously to make pat- 
 terns by the rhythmic repetition of simple ele- 
 ments and to create symmetric figures. 
 
 It may be cheerfully conceded that in order to 
 realize the ideal toward which forms of beauty 
 aim Froebelian kindergartners need more knowl- 
 edge and appreciation of art than they possess. 
 Many of them are conscious of defect and are 
 striving to overcome it. But their own insuffi- 
 ciency does not invalidate their argument and 
 the points for which they contend are that there 
 should be a genetic development of the principles 
 of design ; that the traditional material of the kin- 
 dergarten is the best thus far offered for this pur- 
 pose ; and that by means of that peculiar Froebe- 
 lian device the mediation of opposites, little 
 children are enabled to satisfy far more com- 
 pletely than is possible to their unaided might the 
 deep human impulses of creation and transfor- 
 mation. 
 
 determined life existing side by side with, but apart from this 
 life as conditioned by material needs. This life expresses 
 itself in and is nourished by various forms of free and spontane- 
 ous expression and action, which on the lower grades of being 
 may be termed simple play but on the higher grades take the 
 shape of that rational and significant play resulting in art." 
 p. 9. 
 
268 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 It would be going too far to say that industrial 
 kindergartners entirely repudiate the idea of a 
 genetic development of design. It is, however, 
 undeniable that their insistence upon functional 
 values makes such a development impossible. If 
 children must always make designs as ornaments 
 for some previously constructed useful object, 
 there will be scant time for the evolution of rhyth- 
 mic patterns or symmetric figures. As a matter 
 of fact the industrial ideal practically eliminates 
 forms of beauty and as the outcome of such elimi- 
 nation banishes from the kindergarten the surface 
 and linear gifts; substitutes plain sewing and 
 weaving for the pattern creating exercises of Froe- 
 bel; minimizes the production of symmetric fig- 
 ures in paper folding and cutting, and places the 
 accent of the former occupation upon constructing 
 useful objects and the accent of the latter upon 
 forms of life sometimes cut freely and sometimes 
 cut by following outlines drawn by the kinder- 
 gartner. 
 
 The contrasting methods advocated by Indus- 
 trial and Frobelian kindergartners indicate that 
 one practical issue between them is to be found in 
 the relative stress which they respectively place 
 upon utilitarian and aesthetic ideals. Since the 
 majority of men must depend upon manual skill 
 for a livelihood one duty of education is to pre- 
 pare them for the practical arts by early training 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 269 
 
 of the important muscles of the body and by the 
 cultivation of skill of hand and accuracy of eye. 
 Conversely emphasis upon the craftsman at the ex- 
 pense of the man is destructive of the goal of edu- 
 cation, which is the emancipation of the individ- 
 ual from the tyranny of his natural and petty 
 self through the revelation of his ideal selfhood. 
 For this reason Froebelian kindergartners deplore 
 the tendency to make industrial aims paramount 
 in education and believe that the accent of the 
 kindergarten should be placed upon the beautiful 
 rather than the useful, upon the embryo artist 
 rather than the embryo artisan. For American 
 children heightened accent upon the fine arts is 
 especially important. Critics of America are con- 
 stantly pointing out the fact ^' that her unparal- 
 leled achievement in the practical arts has not 
 been accompanied by any serious contribution to 
 literature and art." She produces great inventors 
 and great industrial kings, but she does not pro- 
 duce great poets, great sculptors, great painters, 
 great scientists, or great philosophers. Industrial 
 ideals dominate her mind and compel her ener- 
 gies, and she seems so increasingly given over to 
 the pursuit of wealth and power that one thought- 
 ful observer hesitates not to affirm that " her soul 
 is tending to atrophy and decay and that she is 
 threatened with the danger of producing men who 
 are not spirits but only intelligent machines.'^ 
 
270 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Is it not therefore both wrong and dangerous to 
 increase the sway of utilitarian motives by making 
 immediate utility our standard of value in any 
 grade of education ? 
 
 Deeper than the issue between utilitarian and 
 Eesthetic ideals is the psychologic issue with regard 
 to the order of mental development. It is claimed 
 that historically industry is the fountain source of 
 art. It is also urged that children must have a mo- 
 tive for activity, and that the image of a product 
 is necessary to stimulate interest in a creative 
 process. In direct contradiction of the former 
 claims Froebelian kindergartners believe that his- 
 torically art preceded production for use and play 
 preceded art; that in the development of the in- 
 dividual this order is repeated and that, in virtue 
 of the revelations of phylogeny and ontogeny, edu- 
 cation should begin with self-expressive activity 
 and advance to self-expression controlled by the 
 principle of order. In opposition to the latter 
 claims they insist that children delight in doing 
 for the sake of doing and need no motive for activ- 
 ity save activity itself. The boy who spins tops 
 and bounces balls has no thought of ulterior con- 
 sequences from his play. The imitation of adult 
 deeds is made by children with no conscious pur- 
 pose. Building, drawing, painting, modeling may 
 be begun with some thought of their result but 
 alike with the artist and the child there is a con- 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 271 
 
 stant tendency to forget the outcome of creative 
 action in the joy of creating. To return once more 
 to the procreant thought of this chapter and to 
 the final issue between Industrial and Froebelian 
 kindergartners whenever it is claimed that activity 
 needs an extraneous motive, and when interest in 
 a product is substituted for delight in a process 
 the form of play yields to the form of work. To 
 give work ^' the right of way " in early childhood 
 is either to ignore or deny the primary revelation 
 of genetic psychology. 
 
 The reaction of the industrial ideal upon kin- 
 dergarten games is scarcely less marked than its 
 reaction upon the gifts and occupations. The 
 most noticeable tendencies of this reaction are to 
 break up the circle into small groups ; to encourage 
 the children in these groups to make their own 
 dramatizations; to discourage the representation 
 of any but human activities and among human 
 activities to give preference to those that are in- 
 dustrial in type. In brief, just as the work sub- 
 stituted for gift and occupation exercises circles 
 around human industries so the interest of dra- 
 matic games is to center in portraying these in- 
 dustries. 
 
 Since what the child imitates he becomes and 
 what he becomes he sees in the world around him, 
 it is evident that by unduly restricting the range 
 
272 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 of his imitations we conspire to create in him a 
 narrow and rigid individuality and a limited out- 
 look. The Froebelian kindergarten portrays the 
 activities of the family and civil society, but it 
 also strives to waken the love of country, to 
 quicken some prescient feeling of the meaning of 
 religion and to suggest those wonderful analogies 
 through which nature becomes the poetic inter- 
 preter of human experience. Through these 
 varied representations it aids children to create a 
 large, generous, and plastic selfhood and thereby 
 capacitates them for a sympathetic appreciation 
 of the manifold aspects of life. " Above all 
 things," says that penetrating student of child life, 
 Professor Baldwin, '' Above all things, fathers, 
 mothers, teachers, elders, give the children room. 
 They need all they can get and their personalities 
 will grow to fill it. . . . Fill their lives with va- 
 riety, variety is the soul of originality and its only 
 source of -supply." ^ 
 
 The two most characteristic demands of the in- 
 dustrial programme are that children shall repeat 
 primitive industries and shall be told stories about 
 the people who originally created these industries. 
 We have considered the former demand and dis- 
 covered that by inducing a secession from play to 
 work it not only revolutionizes the kindergarten 
 but puts it out of existence. We must now direct 
 1 Mental Development, James Mark Baldwin, pp. 359, 360. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 273 
 
 our attention to the second demand, and I shall 
 attempt to show that it leads to the substitution of 
 manufactured stories prosaic in their content and 
 hortatory in their tone for the fairy tales and 
 myths which are the priceless legacy of the child- 
 hood of the race to the children of all ages. 
 
 " The function of the story," says Miss Dopp, 
 " is to supply the child with racial experiences 
 that will enrich his own more narrow personal ex- 
 perience." Since such stories do not exist they 
 must be written. Those which follow are quoted 
 from Miss Dopp's book, The Tree-dwellers.^ 
 
 A STORY OF LONG AGO 
 
 This is a story of long ago. 
 
 It will tell you of the first people we know anything 
 about. 
 
 It will tell you how they lived before they had fire. 
 
 It will tell you how they worked before they had 
 tools. 
 
 Many wild beasts lived then. 
 
 They were fierce and strong. 
 
 All the people feared them. 
 
 The cave-bear could strike with his big paws. 
 
 The tiger could tear with his sharp teeth. 
 
 The rhinoceros could trample one under his feet. 
 
 Each animal knew how to do one thing well. 
 
 ^ These stories are written for children of six and a half or 
 seven years of age. 
 19 
 
274 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 But the people could do a great many things. 
 
 They could remember, too, what had happened be- 
 fore. 
 
 They learned to profit by their mistakes. 
 
 You will learn how they became brave and strong. 
 
 You will learn how they used their bodies and minds. 
 
 They began the work we are doing to-day. 
 
 They took the first steps. 
 
 People who lived after them were able to do a little 
 more. 
 
 The next people could do still more. 
 
 Many people have lived and worked since then. 
 
 The work they have done helps us to-day. 
 
 We have something to do, too. 
 
 We can do our part better if we know what others 
 have done. 
 
 We can do it better if we learn to use our hands. 
 
 We can do it better if we learn to use our minds. 
 
 That is why we have this little hook. 
 
 II 
 
 THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 
 
 What do you need in order to live? 
 
 What do you think that the tree-dwellers needed? 
 
 SHARPTOOTH 
 
 Sharptooth was a tree-dweller. 
 
 She lived a long, long time ago. 
 
 She did not have any home. 
 
 Nobody had a home then. 
 
 People wandered from place to place. 
 
 They had no shelter except the trees. 
 
 Each night Sharptooth slept in the branches. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 275 
 
 Each day she hunted for something to eat. 
 
 Sometimes she was very hungry. 
 
 She had hard work to find enough food. 
 
 She could not go to a store to buy it. 
 
 There were no stores then. 
 
 She could not buy food of a farmer. 
 
 There were no farmers then. 
 
 All the plants were growing wild. 
 
 All the animals were wild, too. 
 
 Sharptooth was afraid of them. 
 
 That is why she climbed the trees. 
 
 ALONE ON THE WOODED HILLS 
 
 Although Bodo ^ was glad to take care of himself, 
 he often wished that his mother were near. 
 
 Sometimes he called to her. 
 
 When she heard his call she would answer him. 
 
 Then he would swing on the branches until he found 
 her. 
 
 But sometimes she was too far away to hear. 
 
 Then he listened in vain for her answering call. 
 
 Sometimes it was hard work to keep back the tears. 
 
 Once he sobbed so loud that a sleepy bear heard 
 him. 
 
 The bear started up and began to growl. 
 
 Bodo hid in the branches of a tall tree. 
 
 He stayed there until the bear went away. 
 
 Then he was very hungry. 
 
 As he started out to find something to eat, he heard 
 a rustling among the branches. 
 
 He listened. 
 
 Bodo hoped that his mother was coming. 
 
 » Bodo is Sharptooth's little son. 
 
276 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 But it was only a boy who was hunting birds* eggs. 
 
 Bodo watched him climb among the branches. 
 
 He watched him suck the eggs that he found. 
 
 How he wished that he might find some eggs ! 
 
 He began to look for some. 
 
 In a moment he saw a bird's nest above him. 
 
 He climbed up the branch and peeped into the nest. 
 
 There were three beautiful eggs. 
 
 His eyes danced with joy. 
 
 He sucked the eggs. 
 
 Then he smacked his lips and hunted for more. 
 
 In these stories everything is explained to the 
 child. He is even told why they were written. 
 The tacit assumption is that education must appeal 
 primarily and persistently to the prosaic under- 
 standing. Finally, an explicit statement of this as- 
 sumption is made in the author's comments upon 
 the story of ''Bodo Alone on the Wooded Hills.'' 
 
 The portrayal of the situation which caused our 
 early forefathers to rob birds' nests and kill young 
 animals will no doubt shock the sentimentalist who 
 orders eggs or veal as a matter of course. There 
 might be good ground for his feeling were there not 
 present in the child the instinct to do similar deeds 
 even though living under social conditions that do 
 not justify such acts. Anyone who will take the 
 trouble to recall his own childhood, or to make the 
 acquaintance of children of six and a half or seven 
 years, will realize that such instincts are present, and 
 that they must find expression in one form or another. 
 Is it wise to ignore the facts of the case and allow 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 277 
 
 the child to form the habit of gratifying his blind 
 instincts, or shall we recognize the situation and meet 
 it with all the wisdom at our command ? Is it not the 
 better plan to tell the child frankly of the way in 
 which people lived at the time when they did what 
 he would like to do now, and lead him to discover the 
 changes that have taken place that lead us to disap- 
 prove of actions which, under different conditions, 
 were considered good?^ 
 
 It is a bad fault of these stories that they ex- 
 plain everything they tell. It is a worse fault that 
 they leave so much untold. Sharptooth had many 
 experiences which her biographer forgets. There 
 were nights when perched in the trees she looked 
 with wonder at the sky and stars. There were 
 days when something in her stirred uneasily after 
 she had given Bodo an angry whack. One sum- 
 mer morning while washing him in the river she 
 started at his image in the water and was shaken 
 by a strange surmise that the image near his might 
 be her own. Something more than a reverberation 
 thrilled her when from the distance there came to 
 her the echo of her own voice. There were hours 
 of danger, nights of lonely suffering, seasons of 
 death when the mystery which encompasses all 
 life folded her in its embrace and quickened her 
 soul with prescient forebodings. Being human she 
 had the ^' blank misgivings of a creature moving 
 
 » The Tree-dwellers, p. 133. (Italics mine.) 
 
278 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 about in words not realized." After a while the 
 faint stirrings of her spirit grew stronger in her 
 descendants and began to seek expression in story. 
 Men dreamed of all-conquering heroes and world- 
 exploring wanderers; of ascents into the sky and 
 descents into depths of the earth ; of a golden age 
 when secure from danger and blessed with plenty 
 innocent humanity lived in peace and joy. We 
 dream to-day of our own planet subdued, trans- 
 formed, and idealized; of future converse with 
 intelligent spirits in other worlds ; of " a cosmic 
 community living in glad obedience to a perfect 
 moral law." These dreams are our gTcatest re- 
 alities because they are the sacred promises of a 
 God whose earthly sanctuary is the human soul. 
 The little child dreams as we do because he, too, 
 is an original fountain of self-creating energy, and 
 from the beginning of life is haunted by presenti- 
 ments of his nature and destiny. His feeble 
 power of divination needs nurture from the ora- 
 cles of human imagination. Without fairy tales, 
 myths, legends, fables, poetry, the eyes of the hu- 
 man spirit will grow blind. When this calamity 
 happens to the children and youth of a nation the 
 fate of that nation is sealed. ^' Where there is no 
 vision the people perisheth." 
 
 The purpose of this chapter is accomplished if 
 the reader has been helped to realize afresh " the 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMME 279 
 
 deep meaning Avhich lies hid in childish play." 
 Through play we make ourselves. In work we use 
 ourselves. The inspirer of play is poetic imagina- 
 tion; the overseer of work is the prosaic under- 
 standing. Bold, free, adventurous, romantic — 
 imagination scales the heights and descends into 
 the depths of our being. Cautious, deliberate, pa- 
 tient — understanding sets its limited and imme- 
 diate end, and to this end adapts its means. 
 Through the power of imagination we roam 
 through space and time, assume all characters, 
 enter into all lives ; share all passions, sympathize 
 with all great ideals and with wondering minds 
 approach the portals of all mysteries. Through 
 understanding we decide hoAv we may most wisely 
 meet the practical emergencies and compulsory 
 duties of life and with firm resolve concentrate 
 energy to the accomplishment of specific purposes. 
 Without the liberating and expanding activity to 
 which imagination invites us, our thoughts would 
 have no range, our hearts no sj^mpathy, and our 
 wills no final end. Without the efficiency with 
 which understanding endows us and the consecra- 
 tion for which work empowers us our far-faring 
 thoughts would lose themselves in the void; re- 
 sponsive sympathies would fail to provoke unsel- 
 fish deeds, and the final aims of human existence 
 would beckon in vain to our languid wills. 
 
 1^0 thinker who understands the complemen- 
 
280 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tary roles of play and work in the drama of hu- 
 man life will deny the value of either form of ac- 
 tivity. But no student of genetic psychology will 
 fail to recognize the priority of play over work in 
 the order of development. Of all children the 
 most unchildlike is the child who does everything 
 for a purpose and to whom everything is ex- 
 plained. For such a child has ceased to wonder 
 and has forgotten how to play. 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 The industrial programme has arisen in the 
 kindergarten through the reaction upon that insti- 
 tution of a movement in general education whose 
 avowed aim is the socialization of the school. It 
 would be unjust to the representatives of this 
 movement to hold them responsible either for the 
 interpretations which kindergartners have made 
 of their ideas of for the manner in which they 
 have embodied such interpretations.^ On the 
 other hand, the attempted revolution of kindergar- 
 ten practice described in the foregoing chapter 
 cannot be understood until it is connected with 
 
 ' In this connection I desire to say that I ventured to quote 
 from Miss Dopp in the preceding chapter because so far as I 
 am aware she is the only representative of the industrial ideal 
 who has attempted to apply that ideal in detail to the kinder- 
 garten. Her book has undoubtedly had much influence in 
 shaping the practice of industrial kindergartners. On the 
 other hand the industrial ideal, as carried out in many kinder- 
 gartens, betrays the conspiring influence of the Pestalozzi- 
 Froebel House of Berlin. So far as I am able to judge this 
 latter influence was paramount in the programme cited in 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 281 
 
282 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the greater revolution of which it is a phase. In 
 this chapter, therefore, I shall endeavor to present 
 the ideal of school socialization so far as possible 
 in the words of its most eminent representative, 
 and in the following chapter shall discuss its 
 merits. 
 
 The purpose of the larger educational move- 
 ment to which I have referred is to so reorganize 
 the school that " its standards of value may be 
 determined by functional relation to social life." 
 The value of each particular study and the motives 
 in connection with which each study shall be pre- 
 sented are to be measured by the criterion of social 
 utility. The school is or should be a typical com- 
 munity. Its exercises must be planned to meet 
 community needs. This ideal demands that in 
 method accent shall be placed upon constructive 
 activities. It also demands that ethical character 
 shall be developed through the practical challenge 
 of the community life. 
 
 Writing in support of this ideal of education 
 Dr. Dewey makes use of the following very per- 
 tinent illustration: 
 
 I am told that there is a swimming school in the 
 city of Chicago where youth are taught to swim with- 
 out going into the water, being repeatedly drilled in 
 the various movements which are necessary for swim- 
 ming. When one of the young men so trained was 
 asked what he did when he got into the water he 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 283 
 
 laconically replied, " sunk." The story happens to 
 be true; if it were not it would seem to be a fable 
 made expressly for the purpose of typifying the pre- 
 vailing status of the school as judged from the stand- 
 point of its ethical relation to society. The school 
 cannot be a preparation for social life, excepting as it 
 reproduces within itself the typical conditions of so- 
 cial life. The school at present is engaged largely 
 upon the futile task of Sisyphus. It is endeavoring 
 to form practically an intellectual habit in children 
 for use in a social life which is, it would almost seem, 
 carefully and purposely kept away from any vital con- 
 tact with the child who is thus undergoing training. 
 The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in 
 social life. To form habits of social usefulness and 
 serviceableness apart from any direct social need and 
 motive, and apart from any existing social situation 
 is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going 
 through motions outside of the water. The most in- 
 dispensable conditions are left out of account, and the 
 results are correspondingly futile.^ 
 
 The italicized sentence in this statement throws 
 into clear relief the aim and method of the last 
 attempted reform in education. The school is to 
 prepare for social life. The only way to prepare 
 for social life is to engage in social life. In an- 
 other paragraph of the same article we are told 
 that " apart from participation in social life the 
 school has no end or aim." The hope by which 
 
 ' Ethical Principles Underlying Education, John Dewey, 
 pp. 13, 14. (Italics mine.) 
 
284 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the socialized school lives is the regeneration of 
 our social order. '^ When the school introduces 
 and trains each child of society into membership 
 within such a little community, saturating him 
 with the spirit of service, and providing him with 
 the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall 
 have the deepest and best guarantee of a larger 
 society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious."^ 
 If the aim of education be to prepare for social 
 life and if this aim can be realized only by en- 
 gaging in social life, it follows that the school must 
 be transformed into an " embryonic yet typical 
 community." It is matter of familiar knowledge 
 that in the practical attempts to realize this ideal 
 various forms of active occupation have been made 
 the " articulating centers " of school life.^ The 
 phrase ^^ articulating centers " is an important 
 one, for it suggests a connection between the 
 method of the socialized school and the core of in- 
 terest characteristic of the concentric programme. 
 The fact that the new cores or articulating centers 
 are to be active occupations points to an influence 
 from the child-study movement whose most meri- 
 torious achievement has been the transfer of in- 
 terest from the child conceived primarily as a 
 percipient and assimilative being to the child con- 
 ceived primarily as a self-expressing being. The 
 
 i School and Society, John Dewey, p. 44. 
 ' Ibid., John Dewey, p. 28. 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 285 
 
 further course of our discussion will show that in 
 the concentration of school exercises around indus- 
 trial occupations a noteworthy attempt has been 
 made to overcome the anarchy of unguided self- 
 expression by relating the spontaneous activities 
 of childhood to the values of life. Readers of this 
 book will recognize in such an effort a rediscovery 
 of the method of Froebel. They will also perceive 
 that radical differences in the application of the 
 method imply different appreciations of the sev- 
 eral great human values and different conceptions 
 of the child. In the following chapters of this 
 book I shall endeavor to unearth the root of these 
 differences. 
 
 Like the original authors of the concentric 
 method the educators who seek to make industrial 
 occupations the " articulating centers " of school 
 life justify their selection of cores by an appeal 
 to the theory of historic recapitulation. In the 
 application of this theory by the two schools of 
 educators however, there is a difference deeper 
 than their agreement. It will be remembered that 
 the " Gesinnungs-Stoff " of the concentric pro- 
 gramme was selected from culture products be- 
 longing to successive periods of race development 
 which it was claimed repeat themselves in the de- 
 velopment of each individual. A change so radi- 
 cal that it can only be described as a revolution, 
 was made when the industries characteristic of 
 
286 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 successive periods of history were substituted for 
 culture products. The reasons which it is claimed 
 demand such a substitution are clearly presented 
 by Dr. Dewey in his interpretation of the Culture- 
 Epoch Theory. Quoting the statement of Pro- 
 fessor Felmly that '^ The appropriate food for each 
 of our spontaneous interests is the mass of ideas 
 that engaged the ancestors to whom the instinctive 
 interest is due/' he suggests that " the term activi- 
 ties be substituted for the term ideas, or better yet, 
 that the two terms be conjoined." ^ Commenting 
 upon the amended statement he writes as follows : 
 
 Whatever words he used, the point is that the in- 
 terest and instinct correspond not primarily to the 
 products of a given age, but to the psychical condi- 
 tions which originated those products; these condi- 
 tions secured for the child then he is prepared to deal 
 educatively with the products. When the child is in 
 the " agricultural " stage, it is sheer assumption to 
 suppose that his chief interest is in the literary or 
 institutional products of that epoch; it is also sheer 
 assumption to suppose that this agricultural interest 
 is adequately met on the educational side by allowing 
 it to feed at first on the cultural products of this 
 epoch. It is an interest which demands primarily its 
 own expression, and not simply an acquaintance sec- 
 ond handed with what that interest effected at some 
 remote period. 
 
 1 Interpretation of the Culture-Epoch Theory, John Dewey, 
 Second Herbart Year Book, p. 92. 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 287 
 
 The agricultural instinct requires, according to 
 the true analogy, to be fed in just the same way in 
 the child in which it was fed in the race — by contact 
 with the earth and seed and air and sun and all the 
 mighty flux and ebb of life in nature. It requires 
 to be fed by knowledge of how agriculture is now 
 carried on, what its products are, how these reach the 
 market, etc. Then the child may be brought into con- 
 tact with the historical cultural products, and will 
 have some " apperceptive organs " for them, and will 
 be able to use them vitally. I do not say that to give 
 him contact with these products before his interests 
 have found some expression of their own is to give 
 him a stone instead of bread, but it is not too much 
 to say that it is giving him relatively a toy instead of 
 a reality.^ 
 
 The ideas which have created the last revolu- 
 tion in education should now be clear. The school 
 is to be transformed into a typical community 
 life. The " articulating centers of this life " shall 
 be industrial occupations. In connection with 
 these occupations the historic development of man 
 is to be recapitulated. Our next task is to apply 
 this conception of the school to the methods and 
 subject matter of education, for the claim is made 
 that by its application to method we solve the ques- 
 tion of school discipline ; by its application to the 
 subject matter of instruction we estimate the rela- 
 
 » Interpretation of the Culture-Epoch Theory, Second 
 Herbart Year Book, pp. 92, 93. 
 
288 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tive values of the several studies of the school cur- 
 riculum. 
 
 The socialized school seeks to solve the problem 
 of discipline by offering to children opportunity 
 for participation in common productive activities. 
 Dr. Dewey writes: 
 
 Order is simply a thing which is relative to an 
 end. If you have the end in view of forty or fifty 
 children learning certain set lessons, your discipline 
 must be devoted to securing that result. But if the 
 end in view is the development of a spirit of social 
 cooperation and community life, discipline must grow 
 out of and be relative to this. There is little order 
 of one sort where things are in process of construc- 
 tion ; there is a certain disorder in any busy workshop, 
 there is not silence, persons are not engaged in main- 
 taining certain fixed physical postures, their arms are 
 not folded, they are not holding their books so and 
 so. They are doing a variety of things, and there is 
 the confusion, the bustle that results from activity. 
 But out of occupation, out of doing things that are 
 to produce results, and out of doing these in a social 
 and cooperative way, there is born a discipline of its 
 own kind and type. Our whole conception of school 
 discipline changes when we get this point of view. In 
 critical moments we all realize that the only disci- 
 pline that stands by us, the only training that becomes 
 intuition, is that got through life itself. That we 
 learn from experience and from books or the sayings 
 of others only as they are related to experience are not 
 mere phrases. But the school has been so set apart, 
 so isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OP THE SCHOOL 289 
 
 of life, that the place where children are sent for dis- 
 cipline is the one place where it is most difficult to 
 get experience — the mother of all discipline worth the 
 name. It is only where a narrow and fixed image of 
 traditional school discipline dominates that one is in 
 any danger of overlooking that deeper and infinitely 
 wider discipline that comes from having a part to do 
 in constructive work, in contributing to a result 
 which, social in spirit, is none the less obvious and 
 tangible in form, and hence in a form with reference 
 to which responsibility may be exacted and judgment 
 passed. 
 
 The great thing to keep in mind then regarding 
 the introduction into the school of various forms of 
 active occupation is that through them the entire 
 spirit of the school is renewed. It has a chance to 
 affiliate itself with life; to become the child's habitat; 
 where he learns through directed living, instead of 
 being only a place to learn lessons having an abstract 
 and remote reference to some possible living to be 
 done in the future. It gets the chance to be a minia- 
 ture community, an embryonic society. This is the 
 fundamental fact.^ 
 
 A wisely directed participation in industrial 
 occupations not only solves the problem of school 
 discipline but makes possible the unification of 
 all school studies. Upon this subject Dr. Dewey 
 writes as follows: 
 
 The unity of all the sciences is found in geography. 
 The significance of geography is that it presents the 
 
 1 School and Society, pp. 30-32. 
 20 
 
290 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 earth as the enduring home of the occupations of man. 
 The world without its relationship to human activity 
 is less than a world. Human industry and achieve- 
 ment, apart from their roots in the earth, are not even 
 a sentiment, hardly a name. The earth is the final 
 source of all man's food. It is his continual shelter 
 and protection, the raw material of all his activities, 
 and the home to whose humanizing and idealizing all 
 his achievement returns. It is the great field, the 
 great mine, the great source of the energies of heat, 
 light, and electricity; the great scene of ocean, stream, 
 mountain, and plain, of which all our agriculture and 
 mining and lumbering, all our manufacturing and 
 distributing agencies, are but the partial elements and 
 factors. It is through occupations determined hy this 
 environment that manlcind has made its historical and 
 political progress. It is through these occupations 
 that the intellectual and emotional interpretation of 
 nature has heen developed. It is through what we 
 do in and with the world that we read its meaning 
 and measure its value. 
 
 In educational terms, this means that these occu- 
 pations in the school shall not be mere practical de- 
 vices or modes of routine employment, the gaining of 
 better technical skill as cooks, seamstresses, or car- 
 penters, but active centers of scientific insight into 
 natural materials and processes, points of departure 
 whence children shall he led out into a realization of 
 the historic development of man^ 
 
 In illustration of the method proposed Dr. 
 Dewey tells how the occupations of sewing and 
 
 1 School and Society, pp. 32, 33. (Italics mine.) 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 291 
 
 weaving may actually be made points of departure 
 for the studies of history and science : 
 
 The children are first given the raw material, the 
 flax, the cotton plant, the wool as it conies from the 
 back of the sheep (if we could take them to the place 
 where sheep are sheared so much the better). Then 
 a study is made of these materials from the standpoint 
 of their adaptation to the uses to which they may be 
 put. For instance, a comparison of the cotton fiber 
 with wool fiber is made. I did not know until the 
 children told me that the reason for the late develop- 
 ment of the cotton industry as compared with the 
 woolen is that the cotton fiber is so very difficult to 
 free by hand from the seeds. The children in one 
 group worked thirty minutes freeing cotton fibers from 
 the boll and seeds, and succeeded in getting out less 
 than one ounce. They could easily believe that one 
 person could only gin one pound a day by hand, and 
 could understand why their ancestors wore woolen in- 
 stead of cotton clothing. Among other things dis- 
 covered as affecting their relative utilities, was the 
 shortness of the cotton fiber as compared with that of 
 wool, the former being one tenth of an inch in length, 
 while that of the latter is an inch in length; also that 
 the fibers of cotton are smooth and do not cling to- 
 gether, while the wool has a certain roughness which 
 makes the fibers stick, thus assisting the spinning. 
 The children worked this out for themselves with the 
 actual material, aided by questions and suggestions 
 from the teacher. 
 
 They then followed the processes necessary for 
 working the fibers up into cloth. They reinvented 
 the first frame for carding the wool — a couple of 
 
292 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 boards with sharp pins in them for scratching it out. 
 They redevised the simplest process for spinning the 
 wool — a pierced stone or some other weight through 
 which the wool is passed, and which as it is twirled 
 draws out the fiber; next the top, which was spun on 
 the floor, while the children kept the wool in their 
 hands until it was gradually drawn out and wound 
 upon it. Then the children are introduced to the in- 
 vention next in historic order, working it out experi- 
 mentally, thus seeing its necessity and tracing its ef- 
 fects, not only upon that particular industry, but upon 
 modes of social life — in this way passing in review 
 the entire process up to the present complete loom 
 and all that goes with the application of science in the 
 use of our present available powers. I need not speak 
 of the science involved in this — the study of the fibers ; 
 of geographical features; the conditions under which 
 raw materials are grown, the great centers of manu- 
 facture and distribution; the physics involved in the 
 machinery of production; nor, again, of the historical 
 side — the influence which these inventions have had 
 upon humanity. You can concentrate the history of 
 all manhind into the evolution of the flax, cotton, 
 and wool fibers into clothing.^ 
 
 As industrial occupations supply concentration 
 centers for history and science, so taken in connec- 
 tion with these studies they are indispensable pre- 
 requisites to the proper appreciation of literature. 
 This relationship is clearly brought out in Dr. 
 
 School and Society, pp. 34-36. (Italics mine.) 
 
 J 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 293 
 
 Dewey's discussion of myths. " It seems to be 
 assumed/' he writes '' that the myth i« a primitive 
 simple product which the mind sheds by a sort of 
 direct radiation, or to mix the metaphor, by spon- 
 taneous combustion termed fancy. And that, 
 therefore, there is some special, almost pre- 
 ordained fitness in it for the child. But naivete 
 belongs rather to this view of the myth than to 
 the myth itself. The myth is a complete social 
 product, reflecting in itself the intellectual, the 
 economic and the political condition of a certain 
 people." ... It is " of permanent value as a 
 story in just the degree to which the child has been 
 led for himself first to appreciate the natural facts 
 and the social conditions which are reflected in it. 
 If he has been led in his nature study to realize 
 the part played by the sun in the economy of life, 
 if he has been led to appreciate the historic con- 
 dition of people with a precarious relationship to 
 fire, myths of the sun and fire may play a serious 
 and worthy part. Let us treat the intellectual re- 
 sources, capacities, and needs of our children with 
 the full dignity and respect they deserve and not 
 sentimentalize nor symbolize the realities of life 
 nor present them in the shape of mental toys." * 
 
 Besides supplying concentration cores for his- 
 tory, science, and literature industrial activities 
 
 1 Interpretation of the Culture-Epoch Theory, Second Year 
 Book of the National Herbart Society, p. 95. 
 
294 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 are to be made the ^' allies of art." The following 
 passage from School and Society shows how this 
 alliance is effected: 
 
 The expressive impulse of the children, the art in- 
 stinct, grows out of the communicating and construc- 
 tive instincts. It is their refinement and full mani- 
 festation. Make the construction adequate, make it 
 full, free, and flexible, give it a social motive, some- 
 thing to tell, and you have a work of art. Take one 
 illustration of this in connection with the textile 
 work — sewing and weaving. The children made a 
 primitive loom in the shop; here the constructive in- 
 stinct was appealed to. Then they wished to do some- 
 thing with this loom, to make something. It was the 
 type of the Indian loom, and they were shown blankets 
 woven by the Indians. Each child made a design 
 kindred in idea to those of the Navajo blankets, and 
 the one which seemed best adapted to the work in hand 
 was selected. The technical resources were limited, 
 but the coloring and form were worked out by the 
 children.^ 
 
 Thus far we have considered the plan of mak- 
 ing industrial activities the " articulating centers 
 of school life " only from the point of view of the 
 final purpose of education. We must now con- 
 sider it from the point of view of an effort to me- 
 diate between the native interests of childhood and 
 the studies of the school. It is claimed that the 
 " fourfold interests of the child — the interest in 
 
 » School and Society, p. 60. 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 295 
 
 conversation or communication, in inquiry or find- 
 ing out about things ; in making things or con- 
 struction and in artistic expression " ^ are all met 
 by the plan proposed, and that it offers the best 
 connection between his immediate experience and 
 the experience of the race. For his forcible state- 
 ments of the truths that education must find its 
 point of departure ix^ the native manifestations of 
 childhood and its goal in the assimilation of race 
 experience. Dr. Dewey deserves the thanks of all 
 those who are wrestling either theoretically or 
 practically with the problems of elementary edu- 
 cation. Kindergartners owe him a special debt of 
 gratitude for his effectual aid in destroying the 
 prestige of the new return to nature and under- 
 mining faith in its golden rule " Give nature her 
 fling." The following extracts from the Child 
 and the Curriculum will perhaps sufficiently indi- 
 cate his point of view : 
 
 Abandon the notion of subject matter as some- 
 thing fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the 
 child's experience; cease thinking of the child's ex- 
 perience as also something hard and fast; see it as 
 something fluent, embryonic, vital; and we realize 
 that the child and the curriculum are simply two 
 limits which define a single process. Just as two 
 points define a straight line, so the present stand- 
 point of the child and the facts and truths of studies 
 
 1 School and Society, p. 61. 
 
296 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 define instruction. It is continuous reconstruction, 
 moving from the child's present experience out into 
 that represented by the organized bodies of truth that 
 we call studies. 
 
 On the face of it, the various studies, arithmetic, 
 geography, language, botany, etc., are themselves ex- 
 perience — they are that of the race. They embody the 
 cumulative outcome of the efforts, the strivings, and 
 successes of the human race generation after genera- 
 tion. They represent this, not as a mere accumula- 
 tion, not as a miscellaneous heap of separate bits of 
 experience, but in some organized and systematized 
 way — that is, as reflectively formulated. 
 
 Hence, the facts and truths that enter into the 
 child's present experience, and those contained in the 
 subject matter of studies, are the initial and final 
 terms of one reality. To oppose one to the other is to 
 oppose the infancy and maturity of the same growing 
 life; it is to set the moving tendency and the final 
 result of the same process over against each other; it 
 is to hold that the nature and the destiny of the child 
 war with each other. 
 
 If such be the case, the problem of the relation of 
 the child and the curriculum presents itself in this 
 guise : Of what use, educationally speaking, is it to be 
 able to see the end in the beginning? How does it 
 assist us in dealing with the early stages of growth 
 to be able to anticipate its later phases ? The studies, 
 as we have agreed, represent the possibilities of de- 
 velopment inherent in the child's immediate crude ex- 
 perience. But after all they are not parts of that 
 present and immediate life. Why, then or how, make 
 account of them? 
 
 Asking such a question suggests its own answer. 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 297 
 
 To see the outcome is to know in what direction the 
 present experience is moving, provided it move nor- 
 mally and soundly. The far-away point, which is of 
 no significance to us simply as far away becomes of 
 huge importance the moment we take it as defining a 
 present direction of movement. Taken in this way 
 it is no remote and distant result to be achieved but 
 a guiding method in dealing with the present. The 
 systematized and defined experience of the adult 
 mind, in other words, is of value to us in interpreting 
 the child's life as it immediately shows itself, and in 
 passing on to guidance or direction.^ 
 
 The convictions out of which has grown the 
 effort to socialize the school may be summarized 
 as follows : 
 
 I 
 The purpose of the school is to prepare for 
 social life. 
 
 II 
 Such preparation can only be made by engaging 
 in social life. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The school must therefore be transformed into 
 a miniature community. 
 
 IV 
 
 The articulating centers of life in this miniature 
 community shall be industrial occupations. 
 
 1 The Child and the Curriculum, pp. 16-18. 
 
298 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The organization of community life around in- 
 dustrial occupations calls forth methods whose 
 " emphasis is upon construction and giving out 
 rather than upon absorption and mere learning." ^ 
 Through this change of emphasis selfishness is at- 
 tacked and the spirit of social service developed. 
 
 VI 
 
 In so far as the spirit of social service is devel- 
 oped and the habit of cooperation formed the 
 problem of school discipline is solved. 
 
 VII 
 
 Industrial occupations may be so taught that 
 they not only foster the spirit of social service but 
 become the organizing centers of science, history, 
 literature, and art. Hence, in addition to solving 
 the problem of school discipline they unify all 
 branches of school study. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The point of departure for education must be 
 sought in the native interests of childhood. The 
 goal of education is the assimilation of race expe- 
 
 Ethical Principles Underlying Education, p. 15. 
 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 299 
 
 child's present experience and those contained in 
 the subject matter of studies '' can be connected 
 because " they are the initial and final terms of 
 one reality." The concentration of school life 
 around industrial occupations achieves this con- 
 nection because while meeting the child on his own 
 plane and responding to the impulses of " saying, 
 making, finding out, and creating " it moves for- 
 ward from these impulses toward appreciation of 
 the great values of life embodied in the studies of 
 the school. 
 
CHAPTEK XI 
 
 THE LIVING ISSUE 
 
 Having listened to Faust's confession of his 
 pantheistic creed Goethe's Gretchen speaks from 
 the depths of her troubled soul : 
 
 Das ist alles recht schon und gut; 
 Ungefahr sagt das der Pfarrer auch, 
 Nur mit ein bischen andern Worten. 
 
 As the Froebelian Kindergartner ponders the 
 ideals which have created the socialized school she 
 finds herself in a state of mind analogous to 
 Gretchen's. For she, too, believes that education 
 should strive to create a nobler social life. She 
 admits a correspondence between the development 
 of the individual and that of the race. She ac- 
 cepts with whole heart the dictum that " the child 
 must be conceived primarily as " an agent or 
 doer." ^ She knows that instincts and impulses 
 must be kept from '^ discharging at random and 
 running off on side tracks." She wrestled with 
 
 1 Ethical Ideals Underlying Education, Dr. John Dewey, 
 p. 27. 
 
 300 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 301 
 
 might and main against the free-plaj programme 
 because it encouraged such '^ random discharges/' 
 and because of its emphasis upon activities which 
 were ^^ symptoms of a waning tendency '' ^ and 
 survivals of an outgTown past. Her own most 
 cherished conviction speaks to her in the words: 
 '' Guidance is not external imposition. It is free- 
 ing the life process for its own most adequate ful- 
 fillment." ^ To her as to the creator of the social- 
 ized school the problem of education is to find 
 " the most effective points of attachment between 
 the spontaneous activities of the child and the 
 aims which we expect these powers to realize." ^ 
 In her anxious mind the question forms itself, 
 With so many points of agreement why do I so 
 deeply disagree ? Are not the ideals of the social- 
 ized school, she further queries, the very ideals I 
 learned from Froebel, or do the similar sounding 
 words express a different meaning ? Is this differ- 
 ent meaning responsible for the practices I cannot 
 approve? Is the explanation of this different 
 meaning to be found in a context of ideas which 
 must modify or rather completely transform every 
 principle which advocates of school socialization 
 seem to hold in common with the founder of the 
 kindergarten ? 
 
 » The Child and the Curriculum, p. 19. 2 75^^?., p. 22. 
 
 3 Ethical Principles Underlying Education, p. 27. 
 
302 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Many kindergartners are honestly perplexed by 
 these questions. To answer them they must search 
 their own minds and define their points of disa- 
 greement with the ideals of the socialized school. 
 May I blaze a rough path for such an exploring 
 party by frankly confessing what I discover as I 
 explore myself ? 
 
 INDUSTRIES AND LITEEATUKE 
 
 I begin by considering the relationship assumed 
 to exist between industrial occupations and litera- 
 ture. Dr. Dewey seems to hold that the charac- 
 teristic industries of different periods of history 
 stand in ancestral relation to their culture-prod- 
 ucts.^ He claims that the chief value of these 
 products lies in their reflection of natural facts 
 and social conditions. He believes that children 
 must develop, apperceptive organs for such prod- 
 ucts by repeating the industries from which they 
 descend. To borrow his own illustration contact 
 with earth and seed, air and sun, knowledge of 
 how agriculture is now carried on, what its prod- 
 ucts are and how they reach the market are neces- 
 sary preliminaries to sympathetic appreciation of 
 the culture products of an agricultural stage of 
 historic development.^ 
 
 Looking into my own mind I discover that I 
 
 > See Chapter X, pp. 292-3. ' Ibid., p. 287. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 303 
 
 do not share these convictions. I do not believe 
 that industries are the progenitors of culture prod- 
 ucts. I am sure that the reflection of local and 
 temporal conditions is not the chief value of litera- 
 ture. My most cherished psychologic insight for- 
 bids the approach to imagination through the un- 
 derstanding. The elaborate preparation of an 
 apperceiving mass for the seizure and digestion of 
 culture-products seems to me to invert the true 
 order of development whose point of departure is 
 always the typical fact.^ 
 
 A simple illustration may help to define my 
 point of view. In the story of David there are 
 details which point to a pastoral stage of develop- 
 ment. David is a shepherd lad. He has devel- 
 oped courage by struggling with the wild animals 
 that attacked his sheep. In the lonely watches 
 of the night he has learned to confide in a God 
 who will protect him as he protects his flock. He 
 fights with a shepherd's sling and with five smooth 
 stones carried in a shepherd's bag. These details 
 are picturesque and appealing, and if I may trust 
 my own memories of childhood they can be appre- 
 ciated without any actual experience of pastoral 
 life. The supreme value of David's story, how- 
 ever, lies not in the coloring of its details by a 
 
 » See Chapter II, where I have attempted to show that with 
 Uttle children typical facts must be presented in the guise of 
 typical acts. 
 
304 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 pastoral experience but in the fact tliat through a 
 most appealing concrete example it suggests every 
 implication of the highest ideal of heroism. It 
 opposes physical strength and vainglorious self- 
 confidence to the high courage of a believing and 
 ardent soul. Goliath is a giant completely armed. 
 David is an unarmed and tender youth. The 
 former is a braggart who magnifies his own prow- 
 ess; the latter a hero of faith and humility fight- 
 ing for the deliverance of his people in the 
 strength of his God. ^' Come to me/' shouts 
 the champion of the uncircumcized Philistines, 
 ^^ come to me and I will give thy flesh unto the 
 fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.'' 
 " Thou comest to me," responds the young hero 
 of Israel " with a sword and with a spear and 
 with a shield, but I come to thee in the name of 
 the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Is- 
 rael whom thou hast defied. This day will the 
 Lord deliver thee into mine hand." 
 
 Every effort I make to test the tie between in- 
 dustry and literature confirms my conviction 
 that it is a very slender one. What essential rela- 
 tionship exists between the stories of Boots, 
 Dummling, or Cinderella, and any form of indus- 
 trial activity? What light is cast by industrial 
 avocations upon the myths of Bellerophon and 
 Horatius, the stories of Daniel and Elijah, or the 
 legends of the Holy Grail ? What explanation of 
 
 d 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 305 
 
 the Oresteia of ^schylus or the (Edipus of Sopho- 
 cles can be found in the industries of Greece dur- 
 ing the lives of these two great dramatists ? What 
 clew to the tragedy of Hamlet is furnished by the 
 economic life of England in the Elizabethan age ? 
 The reader who has given careful attention to 
 the fourth chapter of this book will not accuse me 
 of ignoring the connection between literature and 
 life. But life and industry are not coextensive 
 terms. The spirit of a people or an age is not 
 fully expressed in and cannot be adequately inter- 
 preted hy its industries. Every civilization em- 
 bodies some specific ideal of family life, some pe- 
 culiar social conventions, some determinate mode 
 of political organization, and some characteristic 
 type of religious dogma and worship, as well as 
 some particular kind or kinds of industry. Its 
 literature mirrors not one but all of the forms in 
 which its spirit has sought incarnation. Hence 
 the literature of an age should not be approached 
 through its industries, but the industries, arts, and 
 institutions of an age may all be approached 
 through its literature." ^ 
 
 > " There are five or six categories of facts or ideas which 
 are the natural framework and afterwards continue to be the 
 evidences for any civilization worthy of the name. They 
 are language and grammar, religious dogma and worship, 
 literature and fine art, philosophy and science, social organi- 
 zation and political institutions." — Taine summarized hy 
 21 
 
306 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Xot only is the life of each historic people and 
 age to be approached through its literature, but 
 life and literature alike derive their supreme value 
 from the conceptions which they embody of na- 
 ture, of man, and of the power whence both pro- 
 ceed ; or, from an awakened sense of defect in 
 inherited conceptions and a struggle to make 
 clearer and more comprehensive definitions. The 
 culture-products of a constructive age mirror the 
 ideals it is incarnating; the culture-products of a 
 transitional age reflect the problems with which it 
 wrestles. All great historic ideals are partial ex- 
 pressions of generic humanity; all great human 
 problems express the recurrent effort of man to 
 define his generic nature more adequately and to 
 comprehend more clearly its final presuppositions. 
 It is because all true literature reveals mankind to 
 men that the culture-products of each people and 
 each age appeal to all people and all ages. 
 
 This insight interprets the permanent interest 
 of the literary products referred to in an earlier 
 paragraph of this chapter. We do not outgrow 
 Boots because the type of character he represents 
 belongs to elect individuals in all ages. " He is 
 the man whom Heaven helps because he can help 
 himself, and so after his brothers try and fail, he 
 
 Boutmy — Le Parthenon et le Genie Grec. I quote the passage 
 as translated in The Athenian Drama: Sophocles, Introduc- 
 tion, pp. xix, XX. 
 
 I 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 307 
 
 alone can watch in the barn, and tame the steed, 
 and ride up the glass hill, and gain the princess 
 and half the kingdom.'' ^ We can never forget 
 Bellerophon until the progeny of the Chimsera are 
 extinct. Horatius will live so long as bra^e hearts 
 respond to the call of country. Daniel and Elijah 
 can never die while immortal spirits aspire toward 
 communion with eternal reality; and until we re- 
 nounce our Christian faith in the infinite worth 
 of each human soul, we shall be spurred to roman- 
 tic adventure by the example of the Knights of 
 Chivalry. 
 
 In the life of mankind as in the lives of indi- 
 viduals there are dramatic crises — periods of tran- 
 sition when " the old order changes making way 
 for the new." Such a crisis is portrayed in the 
 sublime trilogy of ^schylus whose argument is 
 the deliverance of man from the duty of blood- 
 revenge by the establishment of a great court of 
 justice. The Oresteia is " the glorification of 
 Athens — that is, of a truly human civilization," 
 and to each appreciative reader '' the adventures 
 of individual passion will seem as naught beside 
 this colossal type of tragedy whose theme is the 
 destiny of nations." ^ 
 
 If literature is to reveal mankind to men it 
 
 » Dasent's Norse Tales, Introduction, p. cxliv. 
 2 Journal of Henri Amiel, translated by Mrs. Humphrey 
 Ward. 
 
308 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 must not only celebrate human triumphs but un- 
 veil the sources of human disaster. All men are 
 " guilty innocents/' perpetually betrayed by pas- 
 sion and pride into sins they would never have 
 committed with intent. Of this guilty-innocent 
 humanity the (Edipus of Sophocles is the consum- 
 mate portrait. CEdipus solves the riddle of the 
 Sphinx, yet, notwithstanding oracular warning of 
 his impending fate slays his father and marries 
 his mother. The poet psychologizes the old myth 
 by showing that " the soul contains the event that 
 shall befall it.'' He heaps one dramatic improb- 
 ability upon another in order to make manifest 
 the profundity of his hero's blindness. Hence the 
 tragedy of the son of Laius is a revelation which 
 forever ^^ confounds the conceit of human self- 
 sufficiency in horror." ^ 
 
 In contrast with the (Edipus, which discloses 
 the fatal outcome of overweening self-confidence, 
 Hamlet is a tragedy of the world-order which is 
 perpetually challenging mankind to bring forth 
 greater men by imposing upon existent humanity 
 tasks it is not able to perform. " It is clear," says 
 Goethe, " that in the character of Hamlet, Shake- 
 speare meant to represent the effects of a great ac- 
 tion laid upon a soul unfit for the performance 
 of it. . . . There is an oak tree planted in a costly 
 
 » The Athenian Drama: Sophocles, Introduction, p. 1. 
 
 i 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 309 
 
 jar which should have borne only pleasant flow- 
 ers in its bosom: the roots expand, the jar is shiv- 
 ered. A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, 
 without the strength which creates a hero, sinks 
 beneath a burden which it cannot carry and must 
 not cast away." ^ 
 
 The two insights I have striven to suggest are 
 that the literature of each nation and each age re- 
 flects all aspects of its life, and that the varied life 
 thus reflected is itself either an approximate em- 
 bodiment of universal and abiding ideals, or ex- 
 presses a struggle of the generic spirit to define 
 these ideals more adequately. Manifestly neither 
 the embodied ideals of a constructive age nor the 
 haunting enigmas of an age of transition can be 
 explained by their contemporaneous industries al- 
 though it may be freely granted that industrial 
 conditions conspire with other causes to create the 
 Zeit Geist. In our own days, for example, the 
 nearer intercourse between the East and West 
 brought about by commercial enterprise is incit- 
 ing a comparison between oriental and occidental 
 ideals of religion, of domestic life, and of political 
 organization, upon whose outcome depends the 
 future of history. Commerce has furnished the 
 occasion for this pregnant comparison, but it nei- 
 ther offers solutions of the questions at issue nor 
 
 1 Wilhelm Meister, Carlyle's translation. 
 
310 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 capacitates intellect for their adequate appre- 
 hension. 
 
 The question as to what constitutes the chifef 
 value of culture-products is one of such moment 
 in education that I am unwilling to leave it with- 
 out some discussion of Dr. Dewey's view of the 
 myth. In a statement already quoted * he affirms 
 that " the myth has permanent value as a story in 
 just the degree in which the child has been led 
 for himself first to appreciate the natural facts 
 and social conditions reflected in it." In another 
 sentence of the article from which this statement 
 is quoted, he says that '' it is self-deception to sup- 
 pose that by some inner affinity between the myth 
 and the child's nature he is being morally intro- 
 duced into the civilization from which the myth 
 sprung^ and is receiving a sort of spiritual bap- 
 tism through literature." Finally, referring par- 
 ticularly to the sun-myth, he tells us that if the 
 child " has been led in his nature-study to realize 
 the part played by the sun in the economy of life, 
 if he has been led to appreciate the historic con- 
 dition of people with a precarious relationship to 
 fire, myths of the sun and fire may play a serious 
 and worthy part." ^ 
 
 » See Chapter X, p. 293. 
 
 2 Interpretation of the Culture-Epoch Theory, Second Year 
 Book of the National Herbart Society. (Italics mine.) 
 
 i 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 311 
 
 I am not sure I understand these statements, 
 for I find it impossible to believe what they seem 
 to imply. I cannot suppose that Dr. Dewey 
 really means that children should translate such 
 myths as those of Herakles, Arthur, or St. 
 George, into poetic portrayals of the conflicts of 
 the sun; should recognize his rays in their invin- 
 cible weapons, or his noonday splendor in their 
 flaming eyes and streaming locks. But if this be 
 not what he means and if w^e may tell our cher- 
 ished myths in simple fashion and without expla- 
 nation of their solar lineage, how shall we inter- 
 pret the statement that ^^ myths of the sun play a 
 serious and worthy part in education in so far 
 as the child has been led through nature-study to 
 realize the part played by the sun in the economy 
 of life ? '' 
 
 Waiving these intrusive doubts and confining 
 ourselves to statements whose purport is unam- 
 biguous, it is evident that to Dr. Dewey the spir- 
 itual baptism of literature means introduction to 
 some local and temporal form of social life and 
 some particular natural environment. The word 
 baptism suggests the thought which lies at the 
 heart of my opposing contention. Baptism is the 
 outer and visible sign of a regenerating agency. 
 The natural man must be made over into a spir- 
 itual man, and baptism is the rite under which the 
 church symbolizes this transforming process. The 
 
312 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 baptism of literature means that it is one of the 
 conspiring agencies through which the process of 
 regeneration is effected.^ 
 
 The prototype of all the heroes of myth is the 
 hero in man. It was heroic man who made the 
 sun battle with night, storm, and eclipse, and who 
 in the victories of the Lord of Day beheld adum- 
 brations of his own conquering career. Having 
 thus idealized natural phenomena by imputing to 
 them human meaning, men promptly forgot the 
 phenomena idealized and the solar substrate of 
 primitive myths remained hidden until it was re- 
 discovered by the modern science of comparative 
 philology. The interest of children in Heracles, 
 Siegfried, and St. George is as unaffected by their 
 solar descent as it is independent of the local 
 and temporal setting of their heroic deeds. The 
 value of myth is that through it deep calls unto 
 deep and man challenges men. Humanity is a 
 hero born to a conquering destiny. It is because 
 myth portrays this hero and foreshadows his vic- 
 torious career that it becomes for each participant 
 member of humanity a baptism of the spirit and 
 of fire. 
 
 In its insistence that the child should be fed 
 with nursery rhymes, fairy lore and myth Her- 
 bartianism did its most righteous deed. In its 
 
 » See Chapter V, Literature and Life. See also in Sym- 
 bolic Education, Chapters III and IV. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 313 
 
 insistence that these culture products should be 
 made cores of interest it committed its great edu- 
 cational offense. With the substitution of indus- 
 trial avocations for classic stories as the articu- 
 lating centers of school life, the vices of concentric 
 instruction are increased and its one redeeming 
 virtue lost. 
 
 INDUSTRIES AND ART 
 
 Literature is not the child of industry. Nei- 
 ther, I hasten to add is art. 'No ^^ proud util- 
 ity " gave birth to architecture, sculpture, paint- 
 ing, music, or poetry. Long since wise Herr 
 Teufelsdrockh made the startling suggestion that 
 ^' the first purpose of clothes was not warmth or 
 decency but ornament,'' and that " the first spiri- 
 tual want of barbarous man is decoration." It is 
 interesting to find this suggestion repeated and 
 amplified by that serious economic historian Carl 
 Bucher in his book on Industrial Evolution. 
 
 " Industrial activity," he writes, " seems every- 
 where to start with the painting of the body, tat- 
 tooing, piercing or otherwise disfiguring separate 
 parts of the body, and gradually to advance to the 
 production of ornaments, masks, petrograms, and 
 similar play-products. In these things there is 
 everywhere displayed a peculiar tendency to imi- 
 tate the animals which the savage meets with in 
 his immediate surroundings, and which he looks 
 
 / 
 
314 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 upon as his equals. The partly prehistoric rock 
 drawings and carvings of the Bushmen, the In- 
 dians and the Australians represent chiefly ani- 
 mals and men; pottery, wood-carving, and even 
 wickerwork begin with the production of animal 
 forms. Even when the advance is made to the 
 construction of objects of daily use (pots, stools, 
 etc.), the animal figure is retained with remark- 
 able regularity ; and lastly, in the dances of primi- 
 tive peoples, the imitation of the motions and the 
 cries of animals plays the principal part. All 
 regularly sustained activity finally takes on a 
 rhythmic form and becomes fused with music and 
 song in an indivisible whole. 
 
 " It is accordingly in play that technical skill is 
 developed and it tends to the useful only very 
 gradually. The order of progression hitherto ac- 
 cepted must therefore be just reversed: play is 
 older than work; art older than production for 
 use.'' 1 
 
 Assuming that Professor Bucher has thor- 
 oughly verified the facts he presents in support of 
 his statement of the historic priority of both play 
 and art over production for use, we must deny to 
 the educators who make industries the point of 
 departure for art the right to buttress their pro- 
 cedure by appeal to the parallel between the devel- 
 
 » Industrial Evolution, Carl Bucher. Translation by S. 
 Morley Makett, Ph.D., pp. 27, 28. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 315 
 
 opment of the individual and that of the race. 
 From the point of view of historic recapitulation 
 the invented loom and the Indian blanket are not 
 only unnecessary but misleading forerunners of 
 decorative design. Is it not a psychologic error to 
 suppose that the art instinct grows out of the con- 
 structive instinct? Is it not a pedagogic blunder 
 to claim that children need a motive for making 
 designs other than pleasure in designing ? ^ 
 
 The attempt to derive art from industry not 
 only violates the order of history but implies a 
 conception of art which ignores its defining mark. 
 Such a defective conception of art is implied in 
 the following sentence : " Make the construction 
 adequate; make it full, free, and flexible; give it 
 a social motive, something to tell, and you have a 
 work of art." This statement identifies art with 
 picture-writing and fails to recognize that " the 
 distinctive principle of art is order, including 
 under this general term rhythm, measure, propor- 
 tion, and all those modes of arrangement used by 
 artists which may be summarized as composi- 
 tion." - A concrete genetic development of the 
 
 » The children made a primitive loom in the shop; here the 
 constructive instinct was appealed to. Then they wished to 
 do something with this loom, to make something. . . . 
 They were shown blankets woven by the Indians. Each 
 child made a design, kindred in idea to those of the Navajo 
 blankets. See in Chapter X, the context of this passage. 
 
 2 See the discussion on art in Chapter II of this book. 
 
316 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 principles of composition must be included in any 
 valid method of teaching art. 
 
 The historic point of departure for the evolu- 
 tion of art is the tattoo, which is a regular pattern 
 pricked over the human body in order to make it 
 more conformable to savage taste. It betrays a 
 love for monotonous repetition which the savage 
 himself does not understand but which is explica- 
 ble through " the identity in form between the 
 rhythm of his soul-activity and the sense-percep- 
 tion by which he perceives, regularity.'' ^ A simi- 
 lar delight in repetition is shown by every art in 
 the earliest stage of its development. The first 
 musical instruments are gongs, triangles, cymbals, 
 jawbones, and rattles, wdiose sole purpose is to ac- 
 centuate rhythmic intervals of time. The first 
 poetry consists of metrical chants and refrains. 
 Man creates art because he desires to reveal and 
 know himself and he enjoys the regular recurrence 
 of graphic elements, musical notes, and verbal 
 phrases, because it corresponds with the primary 
 fact of conscious intelligence which is that it in- 
 volves a constant return of the self to the self. 
 Art is therefore an aboriginal expression of the 
 free human spirit ; it is play or spontaneous activ- 
 ity which imposes upon itself the structural form 
 of human consciousness. Self-consciousness in- 
 
 1 Psychologic Foundations of Education, Wm. T. Harris, 
 p. 354. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 317 
 
 volves first the ever-recurrent return of the self 
 to the self; second, the antithesis of the self and 
 its object; third, the penetration by the self of its 
 own manifold distinctions. To these several im- 
 plications of self-consciousness correspond the 
 three great principles of art, regularity or rhyth- 
 mic repetition, symmetry or balance, and har- 
 mony. 
 
 Like the savage the young child enjoys per- 
 cussion instruments and rhythmic phrases and 
 delights in making rhythmic arrangements of but- 
 tons, shells, pebbles, or other objects. Both his- 
 tory and child study therefore suggest rhythmic 
 arrangement as the psychologic point of departure 
 for the development of art. We read that 
 
 There are nine and sixty ways 
 
 Of composing' tribal lays. 
 
 And every single one of them is right. 
 
 There are likewise countless ways of spacing and 
 grouping concrete objects, graphic elements, and 
 freely drawn figures. The primary aim of the 
 art teacher should be to incite her pupils to origi- 
 nal discovery of varied rhythmic arrangements. 
 Later the principles of balance and harmony may 
 also be learned through their creative application. 
 In short, through a method of guided self-expres- 
 sion mind and hand may be trained to artistic 
 
318 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 creation, and appreciation of the beautiful may be 
 developed.^ 
 
 '' On every grade of his being," says Mr. G. 
 Baldwin Brown, " man possesses an ideal self- 
 determined life existing side by side with but 
 apart from his life as conditioned by material 
 needs. This life expresses itself in, and is nour- 
 ished by, various forms of free and spontaneous 
 expression and action, which on the lower grades 
 of his being may be termed simply play, but on 
 the higher grades takes the shape of that rational 
 and significant play resulting in art." We liber- 
 ate the artist in the soul when we induce the child 
 to impose upon creative activity its own ideal 
 forms. 
 
 INDUSTRIES AND HISTORY 
 
 As the crowning values of literature and art 
 are destroyed through relating them to industrial 
 avocations, so the eminent meaning of history is 
 lost sight of when spinning, weaving, and sewing 
 are made its " articulating centers." To my mind 
 the most puzzling sentence in School and Society 
 is the sentence which affirms '' that the history of 
 all mankind can be concentrated into the evolu- 
 tion of the flax, cotton, and wool fibers into cloth- 
 ing." The view of history which this sentence 
 
 » See Composition, Arthur W. Dow. The Baker and Taylor 
 Company, New York. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 319 
 
 implies is amplified in the statement that " it is 
 through occupations determined by natural en- 
 vironment that mankind has made its political and 
 historical progress/' ^ The pedagogic conclusion 
 drawn is that '' industrial occupations shall be 
 made points of departure whence children shall be 
 led out into a realization of the historic develop- 
 ment of man." 
 
 Any conception which commends itself to hon- 
 est and earnest thinkers must contain some vital 
 truth. If I am not greatly mistaken the view of 
 history presented owes its power to the fact that 
 it ascends from the idea of extraneous relations 
 between man and the world to the idea of a self- 
 related totality of historic experience. This con- 
 ception gets rid of two fallacies of thought. It 
 throws away the idea of a fixed environment to 
 which man must adjust himself, and the idea of 
 a predetermined self, i. e., a self in which facul- 
 ties exist prior to their exercise. History is a 
 process of becoming w^herein both man and his 
 world are constantly changing. Combining with 
 his fellows, man makes over his world, and nature 
 is the instrument of his '^ ever-increasing pur- 
 pose. '^ Through interaction between the individ- 
 ual, the social whole, and the physical environ- 
 
 ' In order to avoid repeating a quotation given in full in 
 Chapter X, I have ventured to substitute the word natural 
 for the word this. See Chapter X, pp. 289, 290. 
 
320 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 ment, all three are constantly modified. !N'either 
 men, societies, nor nature are fixtures. All are 
 fluid, transitive, evolutionary.^ 
 
 The new return to nature was dominated by the 
 idea of biologic recapitulation, and its master- 
 word was Instinct. The socialized school is domi- 
 nated by the idea of historic recapitulation, and 
 its master-word is Purpose. It has been discov- 
 ered that man has or rather is will. The entity 
 known as consciousness may be fictitious, but the 
 entity known as will is real and in essence is an 
 activity directed toward the accomplishment of 
 ends. For the sake of interrelated ends men act 
 together and use nature as their tool. Through 
 the accomplishment of these ends individuals, so- 
 cieties, and the earth are progressively trans- 
 formed. 
 
 There is great inspiration in the belief that 
 nature and humanity are not made but in process 
 of making, and the interpretation of history as 
 man's continuous creation of himself and his 
 world challenges our gratitude for its service in 
 delivering us from that relic of faculty psychol- 
 ogy, the predetermined self, and that relic of me- 
 chanical evolution the fixed environment. It is, 
 however, a non sequitur conclusion from this con- 
 
 » For a more adequate presentation of this view of history, 
 see The Educational Theories of Herbart and Froebel, Dr. 
 John Angus MacVannel, pp. 102-106. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 321 
 
 ception of history that '^ it is through occupations 
 determined by geographical environment that 
 mankind has made its historical and political 
 progress." Before this conclusion I halt, for I am 
 sure that mankind has made its most notable ad- 
 vances not through purpose and prose but through 
 free self-expression, in play, in love, in art, in 
 literature, and in religion. 
 
 In the essays of that most poetic evolutionist, 
 W. K. Clifford, I find a passage giving his view 
 of the way in which " freedom or action from 
 within has effected the evolution of physical or- 
 ganisms. The improvement of a breed," he as- 
 serts, " depends upon the selection of sports, that 
 is to say, upon modifications due to the overflow- 
 ing energy of the organism which happen to be 
 useful to it in its special circumstances. Modifi- 
 cations may take place by direct pressure of 
 external circumstances; the whole organism or 
 any organ may lose in size and strength from 
 failure of the proper food, but such modifications 
 are in the downward not in the upward direction. 
 Indirectly external circumstances may, of course, 
 produce upward changes. . . . But the immediate 
 cause of change in the direction of higher organi- 
 zation is always the internal and quasi-spontane- 
 ous action of the organism.''^ ^ 
 
 * Lectures and Essays, W. K. Clifford, vol. ii, p. 293. (Italics 
 mine.) I should prefer to say that ascending changes are due 
 22 
 
322 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 As sport or quasi-spontaneous activity is the 
 immediate cause of ascending changes in the phys- 
 ical world, so, free activity is the final source of 
 human progress, and as we have seen the order of 
 historic evolution is from play, through art to 
 production for use. Activity for a purpose is his- 
 torically later than activity which is its own end 
 and reward. Moreover, it is always through ac- 
 tivities which are ends in themselves that human- 
 ity ascends to higher levels. The fine emotions, 
 begotten of subtle personal relations, quicken the 
 spirit of romance and spur to chivalrous adven- 
 ture. " Beauty " which " is its own excuse for 
 being " is forever beckoning responsive souls to 
 new heights of life by its more perfect self-revela- 
 tions. Religion, which is a spontaneous leap of 
 free spirit toward the eternal freedom, augments 
 the energy of intellect and will by its solution of 
 the enigmas of origin and destiny. Out of the ro- 
 mance of love, the delight in beauty, the fervor of 
 moral enthusiasm, and the zest of intellect must 
 be created nobler industries and a higher organi- 
 zation of social and political life. Faust may end 
 his career by draining a marsh but he would never 
 
 to the action of life conceived as an energy transcendant of 
 organism. I quote the passage not because it tallies exactly 
 with my own point of view but because I hope it may approxi- 
 mately suggest my point of view to persons holding the tenets 
 of deterministic evolution. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 323 
 
 have dreamed of the free man, among a free 
 people, on a free soil, had he not loved Gretchen, 
 wandered through classical Walpurgis Night, been 
 wedded to Greek Helen, and learned from Chris- 
 tianity of that divine grace which his poet creator 
 symbolizes in the vision of the Ewig-Weibliche. 
 
 In so far as we comprehend that through the 
 varied forms of free self-expression man mounts 
 from height to height of historic achievement we 
 shall know that not industry but religion is the 
 foundation of social life and the creator of civili- 
 zation. For how can love be joyful, fervent, and 
 faithful if haunted forever by prevision of its own 
 sure and swift extinction? How can great litera- 
 ture and art arise unless man learns to translate 
 aright " the inner meaning of nature and human 
 life ? " And how shall he discover this meaning 
 save as he agonizes to answer the questions whence 
 am I, whither go I, and for what reason am I 
 here ? The belief that civilization has arisen out of 
 man's struggle to get food, shelter, and clothing is 
 an illusion. It has been created by his passionate 
 quest for God, freedom, and immortality, and its 
 different types are only to be explained by differ- 
 ent answers to the haunting questions of human 
 origin, human nature, and human destiny. 
 
 I contrast the dominant religion of Asia whose 
 supreme power can tolerate no freedom save its 
 own with the Christian revelation of a loving God, 
 
324 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 whose eternal life is persistent communication of 
 His own free being to His creatures. I contrast 
 Nirvana where individuality is forever lost, with 
 the city of God, where individuality is forever 
 established through social communion. I contrast 
 the governments of Asia where the ruler is every- 
 thing and the people nothing, with the nations 
 of Europe and America where the state is great 
 in proportion to the greatness of its citizens. 
 And, as my mind lingers over these contrasts, I 
 become aware that their final explanation is to be 
 found in the fact that the orient has interpreted 
 nature and human life through the principle of 
 proud and selfish exclusion, while the Christian 
 Occident has interpreted both through that partici- 
 pant humility whose root is love. Brahma shares 
 nothing with the ephemeral manifestations of his 
 abiding life. The Christian God yearns to share 
 all He is with His creation, believes that men 
 are worthy to participate in His being, and by the 
 power of divine humility spans the chasm be- 
 tween utter nothingness and eternal perfection. 
 
 It is because Asia models her life upon the life 
 of an excluding first principle " that she has des- 
 potic governments and caste systems." For the 
 same reason every typical Asiatic is both a slave 
 and a tyrant. The nobleman is a slave to his em- 
 peror and a tyrant to his retainers. Each retainer 
 is a slave to his lord and a tyrant to those less in 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 325 
 
 rank than himself. The lowest man is a tyrant 
 to his wife and children. ^Nothing is common, not 
 even morality. The meaning of nature and hu- 
 man life, as read by Asia, is that both are arbi- 
 trary and vanishing manifestations of a Power 
 which is ^' infinite, single, eternal, alone." In this 
 answer to the question of origin lies the clew to 
 her history and the explanation of her institu- 
 tions. 
 
 " Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the 
 kingdom of heaven." The humble God who 
 shares His being with His children expects of 
 them conformity to His character. They must 
 believe in each other as He believes in them. 
 They must share with each other as He shares 
 with them. Hence they must accept the truth that 
 in some very deep sense all men are free and 
 equal ; must recognize that in virtue of such free- 
 dom and equality every individual is sacred ; must 
 confess that the effort of all is needed to safeguard 
 the liberty of each, and as the practical corollary 
 of their generous creed must " mutually pledge to 
 each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sa- 
 cred honor that they will strive to secure equal 
 and exact justice." 
 
 In the convictions which I have briefly summar- 
 ized is contained the key to occidental civilization. 
 Their inspirer is the Christian religion. They 
 tally with the conception of history as a process 
 
326 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 wherein man is making himself and his world. 
 The freedom that they claim for each individual 
 means that every man is a self-making energy. 
 The equality they assume means participation in 
 this energy. The consummation toward whicli 
 they aspire is a self-related totality or social 
 whole, each of whose members reflects its whole- 
 ness and which will tolerate in its physical en- 
 vironment nothing upon which it has not set its 
 own stamp. 
 
 In so far as man suspects himself to be a free 
 being he liberates energy and develops wants. 
 " Will the whole finance ministers and uphol- 
 sterers and confectioners of modern Europe," ex- 
 claims Carlyle, "undertake in joint-stock company 
 to make one shoeblack happy? They cannot ac- 
 complish it above an hour or two; for the shoe- 
 black also has a soul quite other than his stomach, 
 and would require for his permanent satisfaction 
 and saturation simply this allotment and no more, 
 and no less: God's infinite universe altogether to 
 himself, therein to enjoy infinitely and fill every 
 wish as fast as it rose." ^ This " infinite shoe- 
 black " must learn that his cravings can be satis- 
 fied only by the spiritual goods which are in- 
 finitely shareable. Meantime, as a by-product of 
 Christianity, we have the marvels of modern in- 
 
 » Sartor Resartus. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 327 
 
 dustrj. When man discovered his own infinite 
 nature his wants increased and productive energy 
 rose in its might to meet them. That most care- 
 ful student of Asiatic civilization Mr. Meredith 
 Townsend reminds us that '^ Asiatics have halted 
 everywhere in their march toward mastery of 
 nature." . . . ^^ They have treated earth as if 
 they feared it. Dung is burned for fuel above un- 
 used coal-bearing strata/' . . . and " though Asi- 
 atics w^ork in all metals yet from end to end of 
 Asia great stores of iron, of platinum and tin, of 
 copjDer, silver, and gold lie untouched." ^ Asiat- 
 ics will never master nature until they learn that 
 they are masters of nature, and they cannot know" 
 themselves as masters of nature until they discover 
 themselves as children of God. 
 
 Dear lover of playing childhood for whom I 
 write — glad confessor of the faith that " Man 
 made in the image of his Creator must from the 
 beginning be conceived and treated as a creative 
 being " — look into your own consciousness and 
 see if it does not corroborate mine. Recall once 
 more the fact that in the order of historic evolu- 
 tion '^ play preceded art and art preceded pro- 
 duction for use." Remember that in ages beyond 
 the reach of our chronology men dreamed of a 
 man w^ho had triumphed over space and time and 
 
 » Asia and Europe, Meredith Townsend, p. 9. 
 
328 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 who was equipped for free activity as even yet in- 
 dustry has not learned to equip her sons. Listen 
 to the roar of the great battles of history from 
 Marathon to Gettysburg and hear beneath their 
 din the music of liberty. Let the great historic 
 individuals whose names humanity cherishes with 
 fondest reverence, march before you in stately 
 procession and as you recognize Confucius, Gau- 
 tama, Zarathustra, Moses, Isaiah, Christ ask your- 
 self if they do not live forever in men's minds 
 because of their ascending revelations of the truth 
 which makes man free. Summon before imagina- 
 tion the great monuments of history and try to 
 enter into the spirit which created them. Pros- 
 trate yourself in the Jewish Temple and confess 
 your most enslaving sin! Lift adoring eyes 
 toward the eternal loveliness enshrined in the 
 Parthenon. Stand in the Roman Forum with 
 head uncovered before the majesty of law. Enter 
 the Pantheon, and lifting your eyes toward its 
 wonderful dome reflect that as each stone is sup- 
 ported and protected by all the rest, so the free- 
 dom of each individual must be established in 
 and through his relationship to the social whole. 
 Last of all kneel in a great Gothic cathedral and 
 feel divine love reaching downward to your noth- 
 ingness and striving to lift you into the blessed- 
 ness of its communion. Then shall you, too, con- 
 fess with fervor that ^' history is the progress of 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 329 
 
 man into the consciousness of freedom," and that 
 the stages of historic progress are defined by the 
 knowledge that ^^ One is free j that some are free ; 
 that all are free." 
 
 INDUSTRIES AND SCIENCE 
 
 We have considered the results which flow from 
 the attempt to make industries '^ articulating cen- 
 ters for literature, art, and history. There re- 
 mains the consideration of their relation to 
 science. In this case the connection is a more 
 valid one. The principles of physics may be illus- 
 trated through the machinery of production ; 
 chemistry may be approached through cooking ex- 
 ercises; botany through agriculture and horticul- 
 ture; and natural history through care of domes- 
 tic animals. On the other hand the method of 
 scientific study illustrated in School and Society 
 is open to two serious criticisms. The first is that 
 children between the ages of eight and twelve are 
 not capable of making the wide syntheses which it 
 demands. They cannot intelligently trace the 
 " effects of a mechanical invention upon modes of 
 social life," neither are their minds capable of a 
 process of unification including ^^ the study of 
 fibers, of geographical features, the conditions 
 under which raw materials are grown, the great 
 centers of manufacture and distribution, the phys- 
 
330 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 ics involved in the machinery of production." ^ 
 Such large unities belong to the period of matur- 
 ity not to the period of childhood. The second 
 criticism is that following this method we lose all 
 possibility of a scientific evolution of the sciences. 
 For to teach a science according to scientific 
 method involves first, individual observation of 
 its typical facts ; second, discovery of the relations 
 subsisting between these facts; and, finally, in- 
 sight into the principle which unifies these rela- 
 tions. The method illustrated in School and So- 
 ciety is so busy with the relationship of each 
 subject to every other that it cuts itself off from 
 the consideration of any particular subject as a 
 self-related whole. 
 
 MEEIT AND DEFECT OF THE SOCIALIZED SCHOOL 
 
 The socialized school made a memorable con- 
 tribution to scientific pedagogy in its effort to 
 guide the spontaneous activities of childhood tow- 
 ard the corresponding values of life. It has, 
 however, undone its own best deed by assigning 
 paramount value to human industries and by its 
 attempt to make industries " articulating centers 
 for science, history, literature, and art." 
 
 In defense of its procedure the socialized school 
 invokes the principle of historic recapitulation. I 
 
 » See Chapter X of this book, pp. 291, 292. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 331 
 
 have tried to show that the principle invoked con- 
 demns its procedure. It may be conceded that 
 each science is related to a corresponding art, but 
 it must never be forgotten that the final spur of 
 scientific activity is the search of a causative agent 
 for a causality akin to its own. Literature and 
 the fine arts are projections of a spirit which re- 
 veals in order to discover itself. The first book of 
 human history as opposed to human annals was 
 written when a great people wakened to the con- 
 sciousness of freedom. Greece refused the tribute 
 of earth and water demanded by the Persian 
 king, and the father of history celebrated the 
 immortal deeds which followed hard upon her 
 high defiance. Science, literature, art, and his- 
 tory are all revelations of the free, self-creating, 
 self-defining activity of the human spirit. It may 
 be added that lacking free activity man could 
 never have developed and organized industries, 
 but must have remained forever ^^ a root-digging, 
 fruit-eating animal.'' ^ 
 
 The condensed result of our critical discussion 
 is that the methods of the socialized school have 
 been vitiated by an erroneous view of the process 
 of historic development. This misleading inter- 
 pretation of history in turn has apparently been 
 provoked by the conviction that the sole aim of tlie 
 
 » Industrial Evolution, Bucher, p. 29. 
 
332 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 school is to prepare for social life, combined with 
 a conception of social life whose almost exclusive 
 emphasis is upon the relationship of the indi- 
 vidual to the economic organization. It is true 
 that in theoretic presentations of its ideal we are 
 told that the school should prepare not only for 
 industrial activity but for membership in the fam- 
 ily and the state. Even in these theoretic presen- 
 tations, however, the ideal of economic efficiency 
 is paramount, and in practice it becomes not only 
 paramount but almost exclusive of other aims. 
 The result is that the socialized school fails to 
 make adequate provision for the " things fertile 
 of distinctive individuality." In the choice of 
 subject matter preference is given to industries 
 and applied science. In method the preponderant 
 appeal is to dry and frigid understanding. In 
 character the qualities most valued are " force, 
 efficiency in execution, initiative, insistence, per- 
 sistence, courage, and industry." ^ The man 
 "whom the socialized school aims to produce is the 
 w^orthy and efficient member of a developing in- 
 dustrial organization. Gazing upon his portrait we 
 understand the process proposed for his creation: 
 
 We are in the midst of a tremendous industrial and 
 commercial development. New inventions, new ma- 
 chines, new methods of transportation and intercourse 
 
 ' Ethical Principles Underlying Education, p. 29. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 333 
 
 are making over the whole scene of action year by 
 year. It is an absolute impossibility to educate the 
 child for any fixed station in life. So far as education 
 is conducted unconsciously or consciously on this 
 principle, it results in fitting the future citizen for 
 no station in life, but makes him a drone, a hanger-on^ 
 or an actual retarding influence in the onward move- 
 ment. Instead of caring for himself and others he 
 becomes one who has himself to he cared for. Here, 
 too, the ethical responsibility of the school on the 
 social side must be interpreted in the broadest and 
 freest spirit; it is equivalent to that training of the 
 child which will give him such possession of himself 
 that he may take charge of himself; may not only 
 adapt himself to the changes that are going on, but 
 have power to shape and direct those changes/ 
 
 » Ethical Principles Underlying Education, p. 12. (Italics 
 mine.) 
 
 I hope my readers will understand that I am not attacking 
 the need of that form of education which prepares for indus- 
 trial efficiency, but that I am questioning whether this form 
 of education should be given paramount value in our elemen- 
 tary schools. Dr. Dewey tells us that ''hardly one per cent 
 of the entire school population ever attains to what we call 
 higher education; only five per cent to the grade of our high 
 school; while much more than half leave on or before the 
 completion of the fifth year of the elementary grade." — School 
 and Society, p. 42. It seems to me a great mistake to lose 
 our short opportunity of helping children to create a larger 
 personality and therefore a richer life, by concentrating our 
 attention upon preparing them for industrial efficiency. As 
 a recent article in the Outlook points out, "An education 
 which trains men only to make a living and does not fit them 
 to make a life would sap the very sources of inspiration and 
 make a monotonous workshop of the modern world." 
 
334 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 ^' Consider the ant/' says a brilliant contempo- 
 rary essayist, " Consider the ant and beware of 
 her. She is there for a warning. In universal 
 anthood there are no ants. From that fate may 
 men save man." ^ The condemnation of the so- 
 cialized school is that its practice " engenders in- 
 distinction.'' If a nation be great in proportion 
 to the greatness of its individuals then one aim 
 of education should be to liberate all forms of 
 spiritual energy, to accentuate the idea of personal 
 distinction, and to cultivate not only practical in- 
 telligence and efficiency but fine perception, sen- 
 sitive feeling, delicate and discriminating taste, 
 prescient imagination and rational insight. Such 
 an education will have in view not only or chiefly 
 the efiicient member of a developing industrial 
 system but the statesman, the poet, the artist, the 
 spiritual seer, and the philosopher. May it be in 
 part because education has been overzealous to 
 give practical knowledge that America is failing 
 to produce her quota of great individuals. 
 
 The dominance of industrial ideals has not only 
 reacted unfavorably upon the school curriculum 
 but has also created a false conception of school 
 discipline. I agree with Dr. Dewey that 'border 
 is simply a thing which is relative to an end.'' 
 The kind of order enforced will therefore depend 
 
 » A Modern Symposium, G. Lowes Dickinson, p. 156. 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 335 
 
 upon the end set. If the aim of the school be to 
 prepare for social life and if participation in so- 
 cial life be construed to mean efficient cooperation 
 with the economic organization then, manifestly 
 the school must be transformed into an embryonic 
 community of industrial type and its order will 
 be the order of a busy workshop. But if the func- 
 tions of the school are to endow the individual so 
 far as possible with the experience of the race and 
 to make him master of the instrumentalities 
 through which he may increasingly assimilate this 
 experience, then its discipline must conform more 
 nearly to that sanctioned by the best tradition. 
 
 There is one feature connected with the substi- 
 tution of the order of the workshop for the order 
 of the traditional school which has not received 
 sufficient attention. In the actual workshop there 
 is work which must be done, and the workmen are 
 there to do it. This work is not for their develop- 
 ment. They labor for the sake of a product and 
 the great lesson they learn is that of self-subordi- 
 nation. In the socialized school, on the contrary, 
 " the typical occupations followed are freed from 
 all economic stress," and " the aim is not the eco- 
 nomic value of the products but the development 
 of social power and insight," ^ In other words, 
 the order of the workshop is dissociated from the 
 
 1 School and Society, p. 32. 
 
336 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 purposes of the workshop; is, therefore, not rela- 
 tive to its own end and losing this relation cannot 
 be maintained. 
 
 One of the most valuable lessons of history is 
 the ruin which results when one institution bor- 
 rows the form and usurps the function of another. 
 The socialized school borrows the form and usurps 
 the function of civil society and thereby condemns 
 itself. Civil society is the institution through 
 whose organizing agency each individual profits 
 by the labor of the social whole and in return con- 
 tributes to the whole his mite of service. The 
 principle of this great institution is economy. 
 Human power is economized through the speciali- 
 zation of vocations. By making it possible for 
 each individual to do something which in virtue 
 of natural aptitude he can do rapidly, easily, and 
 well, the amount of production is increased and 
 the drudgery of life diminished. Furthermore, 
 specialized vocations increase the dependence of 
 each individual upon all others and thereby con- 
 tribute to the solidarity of society. The educa- 
 tional influence of participation in the activities 
 of civil society is very great, but it is dependent 
 upon the existence of actual duties and genuine 
 responsibilities. When the school models herself 
 upon the economic organization she does its educa- 
 tional work badly and minimizes her ability to 
 do her own. 
 
 i 
 
THE LIVING ISSUE 337 
 
 THE METHOD OF FKOEBEL VERSUS THE METHOD 
 OF THE SOCIALIZED SCHOOL 
 
 If the questioning kindergartner for whom this 
 book is written has followed me as I have explored 
 my consciousness, she should now be aware of the 
 contrast between the method of Froebel and the 
 method of the socialized school. The reason for 
 this contrast should also be apparent to her mind. 
 Both forms of education accept as their point of 
 departure the spontaneous activities of childhood. 
 Both confess that from among such activities those 
 which relate to the values of life must be selected. 
 The procedure of the socialized school, however, 
 is dominated by the assumptions that all man is 
 he has made himself in and through the historic 
 process and that the '^ articulating centers " of this 
 process have been industrial avocations deter- 
 mined by geographical environment. Recapitulat- 
 ing this process it seeks to relate literature, science, 
 art, and history to industries. The method of the 
 traditional kindergarten, on the contrary, presup- 
 poses that both the great human values and the 
 manifestations of childhood which point toward 
 them, are primal outpourings of the free human 
 spirit. ' 
 
 The kindergartner who participates in this in- 
 sight will reject the idea that children need ex- 
 traneous motives to induce them to dance and 
 23 
 
338 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 sing, play dramatic games, string beads, arrange 
 pebbles or tablets; build, draw, paint, model, in- 
 vestigate, or listen to fairy tales. Her aim will be 
 to call forth the varying forms of self-creative 
 activity; her emphasis will be upon the artist as 
 opposed to the artisan ; her supreme desire will be 
 to stir those primal affections which are the emo- 
 tional equivalents of our religious, ethical, politi- 
 cal, and aesthetic ideals, and the characteristic fea- 
 ture of her method will be appeal to imagination 
 through typical acts, facts, characters, relations, 
 and processes.^ 
 
 In so far as the methods of the socialized school 
 have reacted upon the kindergarten they have re- 
 sulted in the substitution of work for that media- 
 torial activity wherein the form of play is 
 freighted with ideal values. They have likewise 
 substituted appeal to understanding for appeal to 
 imagination, and they have galvanized into spas- 
 modic activity the moribund theory of concentra- 
 tion. The living issue between kindergartners is 
 whether the influence of these reactions shall per- 
 sist. The indications are that their prestige is 
 waning and that their hour of prevailing vogue 
 
 draws to its close. 
 
 • — — 
 
 1 See Chapter II. 
 
CHAPTEK XII 
 
 THEEE WORLD VIEWS 
 
 In that great soul drama which faces all the 
 problems, wrestles with all the doubts, and battles 
 with all the sins of the modern world there are 
 two contrasting passages whose structural signifi- 
 cance escapes the notice of many readers. The 
 first is the soliloquy in which Faust, immediately 
 before signing his compact with the devil, curses 
 the whole world-order, and as the climax of his 
 blasphemy curses patience most of all. The sec- 
 ond is the passage in which the aged Faust, recon- 
 ciled to the world-order, denounces the impatient 
 and inconsiderate deed through which Baucis and 
 Philemon lest their lives, and shakes himself for- 
 ever free from the toils of Mephistopheles. Be- 
 tween the curse directed against an arbitrary and 
 malignant universe, and the denunciation of a 
 deed done in violation of the nature of an altru- 
 istic universe, the poem runs its redeeming course. 
 
 The curse upon the world-order follows the 
 scene in which Faust makes a last vain struggle 
 to hold his faith in God. As the result of all his 
 339 
 
340 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 study he has come to the conclusion that nothing 
 can be known. Therefore, the loves, the hopes, 
 the aspirations of life are lying dreams. With 
 inexorable logic Faust curses hope, for there is 
 nothing to look forward to ; cu;:'ses faith, for there 
 is nothing to be believed; and curses patience 
 most of all, for why should man, the conscious 
 and suffering product of an unconscious universe, 
 submit patiently to the stings and arrows of his 
 outrageous fortune ? 
 
 The mental attitude of imprecation is frequent 
 in contemporary literature. To give only a single 
 example the following passage from Maeterlinck's 
 Life of the Bee reads almost like a repetition of 
 the curse of Faust. ^' Human consciousness is 
 probably the most surprising phenomenon this 
 world contains. It is this which permits us to 
 raise our head before the unknown principle and 
 say to it: What you are I know not, but there 
 is something within me that already enfolds you. 
 You will destroy me, perhaps, but if your object 
 be not to construct from my ruins an organism 
 better than mine, you will prove yourself inferior 
 to what I am and the silence which will follow 
 the death of the race to which I belong will declare 
 to you that you have been judged. And if you 
 are not capable even of caring if you be justly 
 judged or not, of what value can your secret be ? 
 It must be stupid or hideous. Chance has enabled 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 341 
 
 you to produce a creature that you yourself lacked 
 the quality to produce. It is fortunate for him 
 that a contrary chance should have permitted you 
 to suppress him before he had fathomed the depths 
 of your unconsciousness ; more fortunate still that 
 he does not survive the infinite series of your 
 awful experiments. He had nothing to do in a 
 world where his intellect corresponded to no eter- 
 nal intellect, where his desire for the better could 
 attain no actual good.'' 
 
 This passage states the haunting issue in men's 
 souls with the greatest precision. Man is con- 
 scious. If there be no eternal consciousness to 
 v>^hich his consciqusn^s corresponds, he is an out- 
 cast of the universe. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURALISM 
 
 ^^ I have swept space with my telescope," says 
 Lalande, " and found no God." The picture 
 which materialistic science unveils before the 
 mind's eye is that of a chance and purposeless 
 process. " While the embryo of a new world is 
 being formed from a nebula in one corner of 
 the vast stage of the universe, another has con- 
 densed into a rotating sphere of liquid fire in 
 some far-distant spot ; a third has already cast 
 off rings at its equator which round themselves 
 into planets; a fourth has become a vast sun 
 whose planets have formed a secondary retinue of 
 
342 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 moons." Thus are the worlds born but they are 
 born only to die, for '^ after a while the frozen 
 moons shall fall onto their planets; the planets 
 onto their suns. Two distant suns perhaps al- 
 ready stark and cold rush together with incon- 
 ceivable force and melt away into nebulous clouds, 
 and such prodigious heat is generated by the col- 
 lision that the nebula is once more raised to in- 
 candescence and the old drama begins again." ^ 
 
 The universe thus described is a mad dance; a 
 nauseating whirl from nothingness to nothingness. 
 Our earth is one of the partners in its backward 
 and forward swing, and upon its surface life in all 
 its stages enacts a monstrous^ drama. In the plant 
 Avorld individual is arrayed against individual, 
 species against species, and scarcely a speck of 
 earth can be found where warfare is not as cease- 
 less as it is cruel. In like manner every animal 
 preys upon other animals and is in turn preyed 
 upon by creatures frenzied with the blind strug- 
 gle for life. Moreover, with sensibility is born 
 malignant passion and the mad dance of stars and 
 planets, the mad slaughter of the vegetable world 
 begins to feel itself in the animal world as lust, 
 hatred, cruelty, revenge, and murderous impulse. 
 Human history presents a spectacle of similar ma- 
 lignity and futility. Its incitements are fated 
 
 » Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe. Translated by 
 Joseph McCabe, pp. 72, 73. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 343 
 
 emotions and fated ideas for every feeling which 
 stirs the human breast, ^' every decision at which 
 mankind have arrived and every consequent action 
 which they have performed was implicitly deter- 
 mined by the quantity and distribution of the 
 various forms of matter and energy which pre- 
 ceded the birth of the solar system." ^ The out- 
 come of this fatal history is a common grave for 
 the successive races and nations which for a brief 
 hour strut across earth's tragic stage. " Final 
 wreck and tragedy/' says Professor James, ^^ is of 
 the essence of scientific materialism as at present 
 understood. The lower and not the higher forces 
 are the eternal forces or the last surviving forces 
 within the only cycle of evolution which we can 
 definitely see." ^ 
 
 THE EEACTION AGAINST NATURALISM 
 
 Against final wreck and tragedy the human 
 mind rebels, and alike in contemporary novels 
 and essays and in contemporary psychology and 
 philosophy may be discerned the effort of thought 
 to free itself from the disheartening conclusions 
 of materialistic science. The novelists who a few 
 years ago could portray nothing but the fatal con- 
 flict of blind passions, and some of whom, carried 
 away by their Interest in instinct preferred ani- 
 
 > The Foundations of Belief, Balfour, p. 20. 
 2 Pragmatism, William James, p. 105. 
 
344 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 mal to human heroes, are now depicting men and 
 women who take their '' fighting chance " and 
 with resolute will attack hereditary evil. Essay- 
 ists are writing of individual and national 'pur- 
 poses as opposed to individual and national im- 
 pulses. Science suspects that natural selection 
 cannot fully account for evolution, and that in 
 attempting to explain the history of the organic 
 world we must give due weight to the action of 
 human and animal intelligence. Psychology dis- 
 covers that in virtue of ^^ the part played hy vol- 
 untary attention in volition a belief in free will 
 and purely spiritual causation is still open to 
 us." ^ The conviction gains currency that the 
 atoms out of which science evolves the universe 
 are nothing but naive projections of man's own 
 sensations, and that its assumed unknowable force 
 is a projection of his blind will. Thought shifts 
 its center of gravity from the outer to the inner 
 world and once again makes man ^' the measure 
 of all things." A cheering revival of faith, hope, 
 and courage begins to make itself felt. The essay- 
 ist, who incontestably interprets most sympathetic- 
 ally the consciousness of his contemporaries, jus- 
 tifies this revival by the folloAving reasons: 
 
 We are just at the moment when a thousand new 
 reasons for having confidence in the destinies of our 
 
 1 Talks to Teachers, William James, p. 191. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 345 
 
 kind are being born around us. For hundreds and 
 hundreds of centuries we have occupied this earth; 
 and the greatest dangers seem past. They were so 
 threatening that we have escaped them only by a 
 chance that cannot occur more than once in a thou- 
 sand times in the history of the worlds. The earth 
 still too young was poising its continents, its islands, 
 and its seas before fixing them. The central fire, the 
 first master of the planet, was at every moment burst- 
 ing from its granite prison; and the globe, hesitating 
 in space, wandered among greedy and hostile stars 
 ignorant of their laws. Our undetermined faculties 
 floated blindly in our bodies, like the nebulae in the 
 ether; a mere nothing could have destroyed our hu- 
 man future at the groping hours when our brain was 
 forming itself, when the network of our nerves was 
 branching out. To-day the instability of the seas and 
 the uprisings of the central fire are infinitely less to 
 be feared; in any case it is unlikely that they will 
 bring about any more universal catastrophes. As for 
 the third peril, collision with a stray star, we may be 
 permitted to believe we shall be granted the few cen- 
 turies of respite necessary for us to learn how to ward 
 it off. When we see what we have done and what we 
 are on the point of doing, it is not absurd to hope that 
 one day we shall lay hold of that essential secret of 
 the worlds which, for the time being, and to soothe 
 our ignorance (even as we soothe a child and lull it 
 to sleep by repeating to it meaningless and monoto- 
 nous words) we have called the law of gravitation. 
 There is nothing mad in supposing that the secret of 
 this sovereign force lies hidden within us or around 
 us within reach of our hand. It is perhaps tractable 
 and docile, even as light and electricity; it is per- 
 
346 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 haps wholly spiritual, and depends upon a very simple 
 cause which the displacing of an object may reveal 
 to us. The discovery of an unexpected property of 
 matter, analogous to that which has just disclosed 
 to us the disconcerting qualities of radium, may lead 
 us straight to the very sources of the energy and life 
 of the stars; and from that moment man's lot would 
 be changed and the earth, definitely saved, would 
 become eternal. It would, at our pleasure, draw 
 closer to or farther from the centers of heat and 
 light; it would flee from worn-out suns and go in 
 search of unsuspected fluids, forces and lives, in the 
 orbit of virgin and inexhaustible worlds.^ 
 
 Hope revives ^^ when we see what we have done 
 and what we are doing." The most characteristic 
 feature of contemporary thought is the transfer of 
 attention from instinct to will, from human pas- 
 sions to human purposes. Singularly enough 
 there seems a lack of agreement as to what these 
 purposes should be. The end of man is assumed 
 to be action. But action itself needs a fi.nal end 
 and what this final end should be our prophets 
 seem not to know. 
 
 ^^ The golden rule is that there should be no 
 golden rule." Into this pointed epigram Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw condenses the result of a fashion 
 of thought which, while recognizing human voli- 
 tion, tends to disparage human reason by conceiv- 
 
 » The Double Garden, Maurice Maeterlinck, pp. 341-344. 
 Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. (Italics mine.) 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 347 
 
 ing it as nothing but a weapon forged by will for 
 the accomplishment of its blind purposes. We can- 
 not depend upon any of our present moral impera- 
 tives because they represent '^ merely temporary 
 adaptations made in the struggle for existence.'' 
 " The will of man is forever outgrowing his ideals, 
 and therefore conformity to them is constantly 
 producing results no less tragic than those which 
 follow the violation of ideals which are still 
 valid." ^ Men " ought to be as careful how they 
 yield to a temptation to tell the truth as to a temp- 
 tation to hold their tongues " ; and as for women, 
 " the desirability of their preserving their chas- 
 tity depends just as much on circumstances as the 
 desirability of taking a cab instead of walking." ^ 
 The taking of life is a frequent duty. The heredi- 
 tary criminal ^' is a coil of wild serpents which 
 seldom are at rest with each other, thus singly 
 they depart to search for prey in the world." ^ 
 He should be put out of existence through love for 
 the beyond man toward whom life is striving.* 
 
 > Ibsen, Bernard Shaw. 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietsche, p. 46. 
 
 * "The role, then, of those whom our plan would eliminate 
 consists of the following classes of individuals coming under 
 the absolute control of the state; idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, 
 habitual drunkards, and insane criminals; the larger number 
 of murderers; nocturnal housebreakers, such criminals, what- 
 ever their offense as anight through their constitutional organiza- 
 tion appear very dangerous; and, finally, criminals who might 
 
348 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 As defective organization makes life worthless, so 
 hopeless disease makes it a prolonged misery. The 
 responsibility of ending it may be freely assumed 
 by individual physicians and nurses. The Ten 
 Commandments have not only budged but toppled 
 to pieces, and as we learn from one of the most 
 widely read novels of the hour ^^ La vraie morale 
 se moque de la morale.^^ ^ 
 
 In so far as the adaptive ingenuity with which 
 it is proposed we should replace '' our conven- 
 tional morality " sets itself any ends, these ends 
 seem to be the preservation of healthy human 
 life and the improvement of the human brain. 
 ^^ Believe me,'' says the spokesman of the new 
 ideal in Maeterlinck's drama of Monna Vanna, 
 " believe me nothing is worth a life that one 
 saves; all the virtues, all the ideals of man, all 
 that he calls honor, fidelity, and the like, seem 
 but a child's game in comparison." ^ " Life," 
 declares the hero of Mr. Shaw's drama, Man 
 and Superman, " is a force which has made in- 
 numerable experiments in organizing itself . . . 
 
 be adjudged incorrigible. Each individual of these classes 
 would undergo thorough examination, and only by due process 
 of law would his life be taken from him." — Heredity and 
 Human Progress, by W. Duncan McKim, M.D., Ph.D., p. 
 192. (ItaHcs mine.) 
 
 » The Fruit of the Tree, by Edith Wharton. 
 
 2 Monna Vanna, translated by Alexis Irenee Du Pont 
 Coleman, p. 24. • 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 349 
 
 the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the 
 megatherium, the flies and the fleas, and the 
 fathers of the church, are all more or less suc- 
 cessful attempts to build up that raw force into 
 higher and higher individuals, the ideal indi- 
 vidual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, 
 and withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious ; 
 in short, a god." ^ With this effort of life man- 
 kind must conspire. '^ Liberty is no longer catho- 
 lic enough," and hereafter " men will die for 
 human perfection to which they will sacrifice all 
 their liberty gladly." - The way to create this 
 human perfection is by getting ^' better births and 
 a better result from the births we get," ^ and " any 
 collective human enterprise, institution, move- 
 ment, party, or state is to be judged as a whole 
 and completely, as it conduces more or less to 
 wholesome and hopeful births, and according to 
 the qualitative and quantitative advance due to its 
 influence made by each generation of citizens born 
 under its influence toward a higher and ampler 
 standard of life." ^ 
 
 I have tried to indicate as briefly as possible 
 the more marked tendencies of contemporary lit- 
 erature. Their point of departure is a transfer 
 
 » Man and Superman, pp. 113, 114. 2 Ibid., p. 110. 
 
 3 Mankind in the Making, H. G. Wells, p. 30. 
 * Ibid., p. 19. The same ideal is presented in a novel by 
 this author entitled The Food of the Gods. 
 
350 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 of interest from instinct to will conceived as free 
 and indeterminate. Their point of arrest would 
 seem to be the repudiation of " absolute standards 
 and eternal values." Intellect is conceived as the 
 tool of a sovereign though rather blind energy of 
 volition. This energy must perforce act, but the 
 brains it has thus far created are able to conceive 
 with clarity only proximate ends. It will there- 
 fore concentrate effort upon improving the in- 
 strument of intellection, will frankly recognize 
 that the purpose set involves '^ a transvaluation 
 of all moral values/' and will relegate final prob- 
 lems to the greater humanity it aspires to create. 
 When it has made superman, possibly, he may 
 know what is worth doing. 
 
 Each age has problems peculiar to itself. Its 
 solutions of these problems are reflected in its lit- 
 erature and later interpreted by its philosophy. 
 Feeling, action, imagination, and discursive re- 
 flection must always outrun philosophy, because 
 philosophy is consciousness exploring, inventory- 
 ing, organizing, and explaining its own content. 
 The philosophy which most nearly interprets the 
 content of much contemporary thought is begin- 
 ning to be generally known as Pragmatism.^ 
 
 1 I do not mean to imply that Pragmatism indorses all the 
 subversive opinions which have found expression in literature. 
 It is, however, undoubtedly attacking the same problems as 
 contemporary literature and making analogous though not 
 identical solutions. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 351 
 
 PRAGMATISM 
 
 In his Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychol- 
 ogy Professor Baldwin defines Pragmatism as 
 " the opinion that metaphysics is to be largely 
 cleared up by the application of the following 
 maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: 
 " Consider what effects, that might conceivably 
 have practical bearings, we conceive the object of 
 our conception to have. Then our conception of 
 these effects is the whole of our conception of the 
 object." 
 
 Strictly speaking the above definition applies 
 only to the pragmatic method. It is vindicated by 
 the fact that it Avas as a method alone that prag- 
 matism made its modest debut upon the stage of 
 thought. The word Pragmatism Professor James 
 tells us, '' was first introduced into philosophy by 
 Mr. Charles S. Peirce," " who in an article en- 
 titled How to Make Our Ideas Clear " pointed 
 out " that our beliefs are really rules for action," 
 and urged " that to develop a thought's meaning 
 w^e need only determine what conduct it is fitted 
 to produce." ^ ^^ To attain perfect clearness in 
 our thoughts of an object," adds Professor James, 
 " we need only consider what conceivable effects 
 of a practical kind the object may involve — what 
 
 1 Pragmatism, William James, p. 46. 
 
352 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 sensations we are to expect from it, and what re- 
 actions we must prepare. Our conception of these 
 effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us 
 the whole of our conception of the object, so far as 
 that conception has positive significance at alL'' ^ 
 
 In brief, the pragmatic method is that which 
 tests ideas by their consequences. Its Achilles 
 tendon is that it lacks any criterion by which to 
 test these consequences themselves. Professor 
 James admits that pragmatism has to postpone 
 dogmatic answer with regard to the truth of any 
 form of religion because pragmatists do not " yet 
 know certainly which type of religion is going to 
 work best in the long run.'' ^ But how can a con- 
 sistent pragmatist ever know what religion will 
 work ^' best ? " Upon his own principle who or 
 what shall decide that ^' best " whose working is 
 the criterion of selection ? Lacking an eternal and 
 absolute standard for the ^' Best '' he can never 
 know the true. Neither, it may be added, can he 
 know the good, and hence his estimate of moral 
 values must be as shifting and uncertain as his es- 
 timate of religious values. Is he not in the same 
 case with our literary prophets who, sure as they 
 are that " the end of man is action," seem imable 
 to find for action any final and consistent ends ? ^ 
 
 1 Pragmatism, p. 47. 2 75^^,^ p, 300. 
 
 3 The doctrine (Pragmatism) appears to assume that the 
 end of man is action. ... If it be admitted, on the contrary, 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 353 
 
 A dilemma so obvious as the one suggested 
 could not fail to escape the notice of pragmatists 
 themselves. Its solution has been attempted by 
 the extension of pragmatism from a method of 
 philosophic procedure to a theory of truth. As a 
 method, pragmatism asks what will work? As a 
 theory of truth it is the conviction that ideas be- 
 come true in so far as they accomplish the work 
 of uniting new experience with old. '^ Any idea 
 upon which we can ride, so to speak ; any idea that 
 will carry us prosperously from any one part of 
 our experience to any other part, linking things 
 satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, sav- 
 ing labor ; is true for just so much, true in so far 
 forth, true instrumentally." ^ 
 
 This instrumental theory of truth was reached, 
 as Professor James points out, by generalizing the 
 process through which men settle into ncAV opin- 
 ions. ^' The individual has a stock of old opinions 
 already, but he meets a new experience that puts 
 them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them ; or 
 in a reflective moment he discovers that they con- 
 that action wants an end and that that end must be something 
 of a general description, then the spirit of the maxim itself, 
 which is, that we must look to the upshot of our concepts in 
 order rightly to apprehend them, would direct us toward 
 something different from practical facts, namely, to general 
 ideas." — Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, by James 
 Mark Baldwin. 
 
 1 Pragmatism, William James, p. 58. 
 24 
 
354 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 tradict each other ; or he hears of facts with which 
 they are incompatible; or desires arise in him 
 which they cease to satisfy. The result is an in- 
 ward trouble to which his mind till then had been 
 a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by 
 modifying his previous mass of opinions. He 
 saves as much of it as he can, for in this matter 
 of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So he 
 tries to change first this opinion, and then that 
 (for they resist change very variously), until at 
 last some new idea comes up which he can graft 
 upon the ancient stock with a minimum of dis- 
 turbance of the latter, some idea that mediates be- 
 tween the stock and the new experience and runs 
 them into one another most felicitously and ex- 
 pediently." 
 
 " The new idea is then adopted as the true one. 
 It preserves the older stock of truth with a mini- 
 mum of modification." . . . The most violent 
 revolution in an individual's beliefs leave most of 
 his old order standing. . . . IS^ew truth is always 
 a go-between, a smoother over of transition. It 
 marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show 
 a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity. 
 . . . The reasons why we call things true is the 
 reason why they are true, for to be true means 
 only to perform this marriage function." ^ 
 
 Justice to the pragmatic conception of truth 
 
 > Pragmatism, pp. 59-64. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 355 
 
 demands explicit recognition of the fact that man 
 is conceived not as its sole creator, but only as one 
 of the participant agencies in its continuous crea- 
 tion. This limitation of man's creative function 
 redeems the pragmatic doctrine from the reproach 
 that it destroys all objective standards. Reality 
 exists ; it is " something resisting yet malleable." ^ 
 This resisting yet malleable reality consists of 
 *^ the flux of our sensations . . . the relations 
 that obtain between our sensations or between 
 their copies in our minds/' ^ and, finally, of 
 " the previous truths of which every new inquiry 
 must take account." ^ According to pragmatism 
 man is " pent in . . . between the whole body of 
 funded truths squeezed from the past and the co- 
 ercions of the world of sense about him." * He 
 feels the ^' immense pressure of objective con- 
 trol." ^ On the other hand " in our cognitive as 
 w^ell as in our active life, we are creative. We 
 add both to the subject and the predicate part of 
 reality. The world stands really malleable wait- 
 ing to receive its final touches at our hands. Like 
 the kingdom of heaven it suffers human violence 
 willingly. Man engenders truths upon it." ^ 
 
 Not only are such truths as we possess man- 
 made, but man might have made quite other 
 
 » Pragmatism, p. 258. 2 75^^.^ p. 244. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 245. * Ibid., p. 233. 
 
 5 Md., p. 257. , 
 
356 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 truths. Common sense, for example, means in 
 philosophy the " use of certain intellectual forms 
 or categories of thought." ^ These categories or 
 " fundamental ways of thinking about things are 
 discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors which 
 have been able to preserve themselves through- 
 out the experience of all subsequent time.^ . . . 
 ^' Like our five fingers, our ear bones, our rudi- 
 mentary caudal appendage, or our other vestigial 
 peculiarities, they may remain as indelible tokens 
 of events in our race history. Our ancestors may 
 at certain moments have struck into ways of think- 
 ing which they might conceivably not have found. 
 But once they did so and after the fact the inheri- 
 tance continues. When you begin a piece of music 
 in a certain key, you must keep the key to the 
 end." ^ The categories of common sense are 
 merely working hypotheses. They seem, more- 
 over, to be products of our psycho-physical organ- 
 isms, for we read that ^^ were we lobsters or bees 
 it might be that our organization would have led 
 to our using quite different modes from these of 
 apprehending our experiences. It might be, too 
 (we cannot dogmatically deny this), that such 
 
 ' Pragmatism, p. 171. The following enumeration of these 
 categories is given on p. 173. Thing; The Same or Different; 
 Kinds; Minds; Bodies; One Time; One Space; Subjects and 
 Attributes; Causal Influences; The Fancied; The Real. 
 
 2 Md., p. 170. ' lUd., pp. 169-70. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 357 
 
 categories unimaginable by us to-day would have 
 'proved on the whole as serviceable for handling 
 our experiences as those which we actually itseJ^ ^ 
 
 The net outcome of the pragmatic doctrine is 
 that " to an imascertainable extent our truths are 
 man-made products." ^ The " trail of the human 
 serpent," as Professor James himself declares, " is 
 thus over everything." ^ ^' The question What is 
 the truth ? is no real question (being irrelevant 
 to all conditions) . . . the whole notion of the 
 truth is an abstraction from truths in the plural, 
 a mere useful summarizing phrase like the Latin 
 language, or the law." ^ " The true, to put it 
 very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of 
 our thinking, just as ' the right ' is only the ex- 
 pedient in the way of our behaving." ^ 
 
 With the dissolution of the right and the true 
 into the expedient the accord of pragmatism with 
 the spirit of contemporary literature becomes evi- 
 dent. Into the lineage of both enters the presup- 
 position that truth conceived as correspondence 
 with eternal reality is .nonexistent, and this, for 
 
 1 Pragmatism, p. 171. (Italics mine.) 
 
 Professor Schiller seems to me rather more respectful to our 
 actual categories than Professor James. He says: "I have 
 faith that the process of experience that has brought us to our 
 present standpoint has not been wholly error and delusion 
 and may on the whole be trusted." — Humanism, Preface, 
 p. xix. 2 Ibid., p. 242. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 64. * Ibid., p. 240. ^ /^^^.^ p. 222. 
 
358 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the excellent reason that there is no eternal reality 
 with which to correspond. 
 
 With the emergence of this presupposition into 
 clear consciousness pragmatism becomes not only 
 a method for testing the validity of ideas and a 
 genetic theory of truth, but also a hypothesis with 
 regard to the structure of the universe. Briefly 
 stated this hypothesis is that the universe is still 
 in the process of making; that it has alternative 
 possibilities, and that its future is not assured. It 
 has no will of its own. Tennyson's confession 
 " Our wills are ours to make them thine " has no 
 longer any meaning. As we substitute truths in 
 the plural for " Truth with a big T and in the 
 singular," so we must substitute wills in the plu- 
 ral for one eternal and absolute will. As has 
 been already said pragmatism " postpones dog- 
 matic answer with regard to the subject of re- 
 ligion,'' because it is not yet certainly known 
 '^ which type of religion will work best in the long 
 run," ^ but the sympathies of pragmatists are 
 with " the view that the universe is ultimately a 
 joint-stock affair." ^ " The only obvious escape 
 from paradox," writes Professor James, " is to cut 
 loose from the monistic assumption altogether and 
 to allow the world to have existed from its origin 
 in pluralistic form as an aggregate or collection 
 
 ^ Pragmatism, p. 300. 
 
 2 Humanism, F. C. S. Schiller, M.A., Preface, p. xx. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 359 
 
 of higher and lower things and principles rather 
 than an absolutely unitary fact." ^ 
 
 The salvation of this adventurous universe is 
 uncertain. It has, however, ^' a fighting chance " 
 of safety.^ The condition of its safety is that 
 '^ each several agent does its own ^ level best' . . . 
 It is a social scheme of cooperative work genu- 
 inely to be done." ^ Pessimism holds that the sal- 
 vation of the world is impossible. Optimism de- 
 clares it inevitable. Pragmatism rejects both op- 
 timism and pessimism in favor of meliorism or 
 the doctrine that salvation is possible, but not as- 
 sured.* 
 
 As salvation is possible but not certain so (in 
 the opinion of Professor James) it is partial.^ 
 He gives up " the claim of total reconciliation." ^ 
 I can believe, he writes, " in the ideal as an ulti- 
 mate, not as an origin, and as an extract not the 
 w^hole. When the cup is poured off, the dregs are 
 left behind forever, but the possibility of what is 
 poured off is sweet enough to accept." ^ '' The 
 way of escape from evil," according to his doc- 
 trine, '^ is hy dropping it out altogether, throwing 
 
 » The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 132. 
 ^ Pragmatism, p. 292. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 290. * Ibid., p. 285. 
 
 6 He says that on this subject he cannot speak ofl&cially as 
 a pragmatist. 
 
 6 Pragmatism, p. 296. 
 
360 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 it overboard and getting beyond it, helping to 
 make a universe that shall forget its very place 
 and name.^^ ^ 
 
 Pragmatism sounds a clarion call. Its universe 
 with a fighting chance stirs the blood and makes 
 the nerves tingle. It restores to man the dignity 
 of freedom. The pragmatist has awakened from 
 the nightmare of naturalism. He knows that 
 ^^ life is not the mere rattling off of a chain that 
 was forged innumerable ages ago." ^ He believes 
 that in " our voluntary life things are really being 
 decided from moment to moment " ; he is con- 
 vinced that these decisions have momentous con- 
 sequences and therefore once again " life and his- 
 tory tingle with tragic zest." ^ But has he spoken 
 the solvent word ? Is his world of plural truths, 
 plural wills, and plural possibilities the world in 
 which we actually live ? I think not. 
 
 ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND MODERN PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 We have all heard that history is philosophy 
 teaching by example. It may be claimed that it is 
 likewise psychology teaching by example. As we 
 study it we learn how the human mind develops. 
 One of its surest revelations is that this develop- 
 
 > Pragmatism, p. 297. Author's italics. 
 
 2 Briefer Psychology, William James, p. 238. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 237, 238. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 361 
 
 ment is vortical in form and that thought is per- 
 petually tracing, ascending, and widening circles, 
 which correspond with the lower and smaller cir- 
 cles of earlier periods. 
 
 It has been recognized by many thoughtful stu- 
 dents of contemporary science that its solution of 
 the universe as the ephemeral manifestation of a 
 single, persistent, and unknowable force is closely 
 akin to the religious doctrines of farther Asia. 
 This kinship is more clearly defined in the state- 
 ment that conclusions reached by Asia through 
 the intuitions of feeling and imagination are re- 
 afiirmed by science upon the plane of the conscious 
 understanding. A single passage from the Bhaga- 
 vad Gita or Sacred Lay will suggest the character- 
 istic tenets of the great Oriental Creed: 
 
 The high-minded, inclining to the nature of the 
 gods, worship me with their hearts turned to no other 
 object, knowing me to be the imperishable principle 
 of all things. There exists no other thing superior 
 to me. On me is all the universe suspended as pearls 
 on a string. I am the savor in the waters, and the 
 luminous principle in the moon and sun, the mystic 
 syllable, Om in all the Vedas, the sound in the ether, 
 the masculine essence in man, the sweet smell in the 
 earth, and I am the brightness in the flame, the vital- 
 ity in all beings, and the power of mortification in 
 ascetics. ... I am the eternal seed of all things that 
 exist. I am the intellect of those beings which pos- 
 sess intellect, the strength of the strong. ... I am 
 
362 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 the lust in all beings which is prevented hy no law. 
 And know that all dispositions whether good, bad-, or 
 indifferent proceed also from me/ 
 
 It is impossible to mistake the sense of this pas- 
 sage. Brahma is the characteristic quality in each 
 thing. He has no distinctive quality of his own. 
 In him are obliterated not only all physical, but 
 all moral distinctions. He is ascetic mortification, 
 and he is lust. All dispositions whether good, bad, 
 or indifferent proceed from him. As we learn 
 from another passage of the same lay, " He is the 
 same to all beings and has neither foes nor 
 friends." " Even if one who has led a very bad 
 life worships me,'' says Brahma (or Vishnu), ^' he 
 must be considered a good man for he has judged 
 aright." 
 
 It is characteristic of this ancient faith that it 
 seeks deliverance not through moral action but 
 through the extinction of thought. The devotee 
 we are told practises devotion in the following 
 way : " Holding his body, head, and neck all even 
 and immovable, firmly seated regarding only the 
 tip of his nose and not looking around in different 
 directions, the devotee should remain quiet with 
 passionless soul. Thus he attains the supreme 
 extinction and is conjoined with Brahma." ^ 
 
 » Bhagavad Glta, p. 52. Translated by J. Cockburn 
 Thomson. (Italics mine.) Vishnu speaks in this quotation 
 as Supreme Being identical with Brahma. ^ Ibid., p. 45. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 363 
 
 The three characteristic tenets of the great ori- 
 ental creed are one unity; indifference to moral 
 distinctions; and the goal of extinction. The re- 
 vival of these three tenets in the creed of natural- 
 ism is too patent to require illustration. All stu- 
 dents of the scientific thought so popular within 
 the past fifty years are familiar with Herbert 
 Spencer's many formulations of the doctrine of a 
 single persistent force as the final cause and ex- 
 planation of the world. " The one fact," he tells 
 us, " which underlies all experience as its neces- 
 sary presupposition is a single great force." This 
 force is unknowable. It is in all things, but re- 
 vealed by none : It " wells up in man under the 
 form of consciousness," but this form is as ephem- 
 eral as any of its other forms. Like old Proteus 
 it takes on all shapes but abides in none. Hu- 
 manity is only one of its vanishing embodiments. 
 Therefore conscious individuality is an accident. 
 Free will is an absurd illusion. Every human 
 action was predetermined before our solar system 
 w^as born. All life is misery and the one hope of 
 man is extinction of the will to live. The ablest 
 statement of this naturalistic creed is that of 
 which Goethe makes Mephistopheles the exponent. 
 
 Believe me who for many a thousand year 
 The same tough meat have chewed and tested, 
 That from the cradle to the bier 
 No man the ancient leaven has digested. 
 
364 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 Trust one of us, this whole supernal 
 
 Is made but for a God's delight ! 
 
 He dwells in splendor single and eternal, 
 
 But us, he thrusts in darkness out of sight, 
 
 And you he dowers with day and night. 
 
 It has been necessary to renew our appreciation 
 of the old thought which the world has so recently 
 revived and outgrown in order to understand the 
 great change which is even now going on imme- 
 diately around us. For, precisely as naturalism 
 revived the intuitions of Brahmanism and Bud- 
 dhism upon the plane of the understanding, so con- 
 temporary pragmatism is reaffirming the charac- 
 teristic tenets of the religion variously known as 
 Dualism, Mazdaism, or Zoroastrianism. 
 
 The most characteristic fact about this ancient 
 religion is its renunciation of unity and its setting 
 up of distinction. This distinction seized origi- 
 nally as an antithesis of light and darkness de- 
 velops gradually into an antithesis of good and 
 evil. Two rival powers, Ahura Mazda and Angra 
 Mainyu, are at work in the world, and each man 
 must choose with which one of them he will con- 
 spire. A few passages from the Zend-Avesta will 
 show how the world is parceled out between them : 
 
 The first of the good lands and countries which I, 
 Ahura Mazda, created, was the Airyana Vaego by the 
 good river Daitya. 
 
 Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 365 
 
 and he counter-created by his witchcraft the serpent 
 in the river, and winter a work of the Daevas. 
 
 The second of the good lands and countries which 
 I, Ahura Mazda, created, was the plains in Sughdha. 
 
 Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, 
 and he counter-created by his witchcraft the fly 
 Skaitya, which brings death to the cattle. 
 
 The third of the good lands which I, Ahura Mazda, 
 created, was the strong holy Mouru. 
 
 Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, 
 and counter-created by his witchcraft sinful lusts/ 
 
 So the enumeration proceeds through many 
 creations of Ahura Mazda and counter-creations 
 of Angra Mainyu. Ahura makes a beautiful land 
 which Angra curses with '^ stained mosquitoes." 
 Another good land is brought forth and followed 
 by counter-creation of the sin of pride. A num- 
 ber of good lands are created and instantly suc- 
 ceeded by counter-creations of excessive heat, 
 witchcraft, unbelief, and different dreaded ill- 
 nesses. 
 
 1^0 alert mind can ponder these creations and 
 counter-creations without becoming aware of two 
 facts. The human mind had become aroused to 
 distinctions in both the material and .spiritual 
 worlds. By some of these distinctions it was at- 
 tracted, by others it was repelled. The men who 
 created the Zend religion did not like winter, flies, 
 
 » Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv, pp. 4-6. 
 
366 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 stained mosquitoes, witchcraft, pride, lust, unbe- 
 lief, or oppression by foreign rulers. So they 
 lumped all these undesirable things together and 
 branded them as creations of Angra Mainyu who 
 was all death. 
 
 The consciousness out of which the Zend-Avesta 
 sprang has its crudest analogue in such questions 
 as ^' Why did God make flies and mosquitoes ? '' 
 A more dignified example of this mental attitude 
 is given in the following poem of William Blake : 
 
 Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
 
 In the forests of the night, 
 
 What immortal hand or eye 
 
 Could frame thy fearful symmetiyi 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 In what distant deeps or skies 
 Burns the fire of thine eyes. 
 On what wings dare he aspire ? 
 What the hand dare seize the fire? 
 
 * * -x- -x- * 
 
 What the hammer? What the chain? 
 In what furnace was thy brain? 
 What the anvil? What dread grasp 
 Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 When the stars threw down their spears 
 And watered heaven with their tears 
 Did He smile His work to see? 
 Did He who made the lamb make thee? 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 367 
 
 Tiger, tiger, burning bright 
 In the forests of the night. 
 What immortal hand or eye 
 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 
 
 As I have said this poem suggests the state of 
 mind out of which sprang the religion of the Zend- 
 Avesta. Men had become so keenly aware of the 
 dark side of life that they could no longer believe 
 in a single power as the source of all things. This 
 dark side of life includes the baffling phenomena 
 of nature, the problems of pain and sin in their 
 relation to the individual, and the many seeming 
 tragedies of human history. The creators of the 
 Zend religion faced the darkness of life with 
 quickened intelligence and quickened courage, and 
 out of dauntless hearts answered the challenge of 
 evil with the assertion that they would fight it. 
 This is their great deed. They will not sit down, 
 look at the end of their noses and say Om. They 
 will not seek peace in extinction. Granted that 
 Ahura Mazda is not all powerful. He is, never- 
 theless, locked in deadly combat with Angra 
 Mainyu. They incline to the belief that he will 
 be victorious. But whether victory or defeat 
 await him, they will help him in his fight. 
 
 Like its religious prototype pragmatism has 
 arisen out of an honest and resolute grapple with 
 the enigma of evil. The revelations of science 
 shroud this enigma in deeper mystery. The phi- 
 
368 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 losophy of naturalism conspicuously fails to ex- 
 plain it. Idealism seems to make the absolute 
 responsible for it and such a solution repels the 
 moral consciousness. Better no Creator than an 
 immoral Creator. Better a plural and insecure 
 universe with a " fighting chance " for getting rid 
 of evil than a universe wherein the existence of 
 evil is permitted because " it enriches the life of 
 the absolute first principle." 
 
 The deliverances of both Professor James and 
 Professor Schiller make evident the fact that they 
 understand this immoral doctrine of evil to be 
 characteristic of the philosophy of absolute ideal- 
 ism. " Under the auspices of the Hegelizing 
 idealists/' writes Professor Schiller, ^^ Philosophy 
 has uplifted herself once more to a metaphysical 
 contemplation of the absolute, of the unique 
 whole in which all things are included and trans- 
 cended. Now, whether this conception has any 
 value for metaphysics is a moot point on which 
 I have elsewhere expressed a decided opinion ; but 
 there can hardly be a pretense of denying that it 
 is the death of morals. For the ideal of the abso- 
 lute whole cannot be rendered compatible with 
 the antithetical valuations which form the vital 
 atmosphere of human agents. They are partial 
 appreciations which vanish from the standpoint 
 of the whole. Without the distinctions of good 
 and evil, right and wrong, pleasure and pain, 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 369 
 
 self and other, then and now, progress and decay, 
 human life would be dissolved into the phantom 
 pla;;^ of an unmeaning mirage. But in the ab- 
 solute all moral distinctions must, like all others, 
 be swallowed up and disappear.^ In even more 
 emphatic protest Professor James writes as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 It is perfectly safe to say now that if the Hegelian 
 gnosticism which has begun to show itself here and 
 in Great Britain were to become a popular philosophy, 
 as it once was in Germany, it would certainly develop 
 its left wing here as there and produce a reaction of 
 disgust. Already I have heard a graduate of this very 
 school express in the pulpit his willingness to sin like 
 David, if only he might repent like David. You may 
 tell me he was only sowing his wild, or rather his 
 tame oats, and perhaps he was. But the point is that 
 in the subjectivistic or gnostical philosophy oat-sow- 
 ing, wild or tame, becomes a systematic necessity and 
 the chief function of life. After the pure and classic 
 truths, the exciting and rancid ones must be expe- 
 rienced; and if the stupid virtues of the philistine 
 herd do not then come in and save society from the 
 influence of the children of light, a sort of inward 
 putrefaction becomes its inevitable doom.* 
 
 Evidently both the authors quoted sincerely 
 believe that the absolute of Hegelian idealism is 
 
 1 Humanism, F. C. S. Schiller, M.A., pp. 2 and 3. (Italics 
 mine and the capitals of the original mostly changed to 
 " lower case " letters.) 
 
 2 The Will to Believe, by William James, pp. 171, 172. 
 
 25 
 
370 EDUCATION A.L ISSUES 
 
 a kind of Brahma in whom all distinctions even 
 those of good and evil are transcended, and they 
 rightly prefer Ahnra Mazda and his age-long con- 
 flict with Angra Mainyu. Their interpretation 
 of absolute idealism seems strange to one who, like 
 myself, has learned from its study that " the whole 
 search of philosophy is for a distinction that will 
 hold,'' ^ and who seems to herself to have found 
 that abiding distinction in an eternal personal- 
 ity. I have attempted to state as briefly as pos- 
 sible the tenets of naturalism and pragmatism. 
 I shall now endeavor to present with equal brev- 
 ity the insights of absokite idealism as I under- 
 stand them. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 
 
 The fundamental presupposition of this phi- 
 losophy is that the final explanation of the uni- 
 verse must be sought in a completely realized 
 self-consciousness. It seems to me a significant 
 fact that underlying every practical issue dis- 
 cussed in this book has been some theory of 
 self-consciousness which attacked either its pri- 
 ority, its value, or its actual existence. It will be 
 remembered that Herbart defined the Ego as ^' a 
 result of presentations which unite and interpene- 
 trate one another." For Herbart, therefore, " the 
 
 * Dr. Harris. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 371 
 
 self is a composite/^ and " consciousness not the 
 condition, but rather the resultant of ideas which 
 are primarily forces." ^ By the leader of that 
 child-study movement whose educational outcome 
 was the free-play programme, consciousness was 
 hypothetically conceived as " a wart raised by the 
 sting of sin," " a product of alienation," or " a 
 remedial process." The greatest interpreter of 
 pragmatism is persuaded " that breath moving 
 outward between the glottis and the nostrils " is 
 ^' the essence out of which philosophers have con- 
 structed the entity known as consciousness. That 
 entity," he adds, " is fictitious while thoughts in 
 the concrete are fully real." - 
 
 Denying the fundamental postulate of idealism 
 the philosophies referred to are naturally hostile 
 to a method of education which is intrinsically re- 
 lated to the idealistic view of the world. In this 
 intellectual hostility lies the final explanation of 
 the several attempts made to revolutionize the 
 kindergarten. Conversely the final justification of 
 the traditional kindergarten is impossible unless 
 the idealistic philosophy be the most adequate state- 
 ment of truth thus far achieved by human reason. 
 
 1 The Educational Theories of Herbart and Froebel, by 
 John Angus MacVannel, p. 69. 
 
 2 Does Consciousness Exist? Prof. William James, Journal 
 of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Septem- 
 ber, 1904, p. 491. 
 
372 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 It must be granted that many interpreters of 
 idealism have aided to bring their fundamental 
 postulate into disrepute by assuming that the per- 
 fect self-consciousness " includes all individual 
 selves.'' As has recently been pointed out by a 
 thoughtful writer such inclusion of individual 
 selves in a common consciousness ^' is one instance 
 of that fertile source of philosophical error — the 
 misapplication of spatial metaphors." ^' Minds 
 are not Chinese boxes which can be put inside one 
 another." ^ ..." To talk of one self-conscious 
 being therefore as including or containing in him- 
 self or being identical with other selves is to use 
 language which is wholly meaningless and self- 
 contradictory, for the essence of being a self is 
 to distinguish one's self from other selves." - In 
 my judgment it is in virtue of the fact that so 
 many idealists have been betrayed by this " spa- 
 tial metaphor " that their explanations justify 
 the strictures of Professor James and Professor 
 Schiller. 
 
 " Mind is communicable but not divisible." It 
 cannot be described as having " parts " or being 
 made up of " elements." The human soul is not 
 a " part " of God. It is not an " element " in 
 God. It is not an " aspect " of God. It is not a 
 " fragment " of the self-consciousness of the Ab- 
 
 » H. Rashdall, Personal Idealism, p. 388. 
 2 Ibid., p. 388. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 373 
 
 solute. What then is it and how is it related to 
 its creative source ? The answer to this question 
 which I accept is that each human soul is a du- 
 plicate of the self-determining form of the divine 
 self -consciousness. 
 
 The distinctive characteristic of self-conscious- 
 ness is subject-objectivity. The self makes itself 
 its own object. In this act of self-objectification 
 intellect and will are conjoined. The self objecti- 
 fies itself. This is an act of will. It recognizes 
 itself in its object. This is an act of intellect. 
 The self-objectification and self -recognition are 
 not two acts but one act having two phases or 
 aspects. 
 
 When we attempt to explain to ourselves this 
 self -objectifying act, we realize that it involves 
 not only the objectification of determinations but 
 the objectification of self -determining energy. If 
 the thoughts of God are deeds, then nature is the 
 drama of those deeds, and with the arrival of 
 nature at living beings the process of self-object- 
 ification reaches that dramatic moment when it 
 objectifies its own free self-making energy. 
 Thenceforward, free energies must make them- 
 selves.^ 
 
 Without pausing to consider the bearing of this 
 insight upon the nature of living, but non-human 
 
 1 The attentive reader will soon realize that I am stating a 
 theory of creation which must be amended. 
 
374 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 beings let us ask what it means as related to the 
 nature and destiny of man and what light it casts 
 upon the character of God. 
 
 The first insight which suggests itself is that 
 the objectification of the divine self -determining 
 creates noumenal and not merely phenomenal 
 being. If God gave men only a seeming power of 
 self-determination He would not really objectify 
 Himself; therefore He could not know Himself, 
 and lacking self-knowledge would not be the ab- 
 solute self-consciousness wdiich is the final postu- 
 late of idealism. In other words, unless man is 
 really self-determining and therefore free and 
 responsible God cannot be Eternal Personality. 
 The freedom and moral responsibility of each 
 individual soul are therefore guaranteed by the 
 realized self-consciousness of the divine first prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 As the final postulate of idealism guarantees 
 the freedom of man, so it establishes the goodness 
 of God and supplies an absolute criterion for mo- 
 rality. The condition of an absolute self-con- 
 sciousness is that it shall make itself objective. It 
 cannot do this without conferring its own freedom 
 and independence upon its object. It gives, there- 
 fore, of its best. It gives itself. Giving itself it 
 reveals itself as love. For what is love if not the 
 giving of itself to the object loved ? A self -objec- 
 tifying first principle is therefore an altruistic 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 375 
 
 first principle. '^ ^ God creates because He has no 
 envy.' The fundamental principle of morality is 
 goodness in the sense of grace or loving kindness. 
 Its nearest illustration is mother-love, which en- 
 dures the caprices and misdeeds of infancy and 
 saves it from destruction through much pain and 
 trouble. Goodness presupposes the giving of real 
 being to the creature ; not a phenomenal being but 
 a noumenal being, and such noumenal being is 
 self-activity, freedom, independence, responsibil- 
 ity, both intellect and will.'' ^ 
 
 Thus far we have considered only one aspect 
 of self-objectifying activity. The consideration 
 of this aspect seems to have yielded an altruistic 
 God and a free man.^ We must now consider its 
 second aspect. Having objectified himself God 
 recognizes Himself in His object. Can He so rec- 
 ognize Himself in nature and in man ? Can the 
 perfect recognize himself in the imperfect? Can 
 the Infinite and Absolute Being recognize Himself 
 in finite and developing beings ? If not, may we 
 have been mistaken in our identification of the 
 act of divine self-objectification with the process 
 of nature and its culmination in man ? 
 
 Pondering more closely our fundamental pre- 
 supposition that a perfect self-consciousness ob- 
 jectifies and recognizes itself we become aware 
 
 ' Hegel's Voyage of Discovery, by W. T. Harris. 
 
 2 Here begins the amendment of my original statement. 
 
376 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 that its object cannot be less perfect than itself. 
 To admit a process of evolution as the object of 
 the divine self-consciousness is to define a finite 
 God who passes through stages of imperfect doing 
 and knowing. To accept a finite God is to con- 
 ceive a God who had a temporal beginning. The 
 contrast between time and eternity is not quanti- 
 tative but qualitative. The eternal must have 
 realized all its potentialities — the temporal is 
 always in process of realization. All temporal 
 processes presuppose an eternally realized energy 
 as their source. A temporal God is neither self- 
 explanatory nor explanatory of the universe. The 
 logical results of conceiving God as finite and tem- 
 poral are atheism and acosmism. 
 
 If, therefore, we accept the fundamental pos- 
 tulate of idealism that the final explanation of 
 the universe is a completely realized self-conscious- 
 ness, we are impelled to the conclusion that the 
 self-realization has been complete from eternity. 
 The object of such a consciousness cannot he a 
 process of becoming. It must be another con- 
 sciousness in every respect equal to the first, hut 
 differing from it in the fact that it has been eter- 
 nally generated by the self-objectifying act} The 
 fact that all idealists have not reached this con- 
 clusion does not militate against its logical neces- 
 sity. It merely suggests that the implications of 
 » Amendment. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 377 
 
 the idealistic pre-supposition have not been ade- 
 quately apprehended. 
 
 The results of this inadequate apprehension 
 have been the philosophies of monism and plural- 
 ism. Monism has tried to explain nature and 
 human history as the process of the divine self- 
 knowing. The result has been that it merged 
 human individuality in the divine and thereby 
 lost human freedom, responsibility, and immor- 
 tality. Pluralism has insisted upon the separate- 
 ness and independence of each individual self- 
 consciousness. To justify its insight it has been 
 driven either to make " Reality consist of eternal 
 souls Avithout God," ^ or to accept a God who is 
 not a creator but merely one member (though the 
 greatest member) of a society of interconnected 
 souls. The philosophy of pluralism is confronted 
 with two enigmas. How can eternal souls be in 
 a process of becoming ? How can the universe be 
 whole and one if there is no absolute mind which 
 wills and knows its w^holeness ? Pluralism makes 
 an unsuccessful attempt to answer the former 
 enigma by distinguishing between souls as " eter- 
 nal realities " and the same souls as appearing in 
 time. It seeks to get rid of the latter enigma by 
 substituting a possible empirical unification of 
 things for their rational unity.- 
 
 1 Personal Idealism, p. 393. 
 
 2 Pragmatism, p. 280. 
 
378 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 The division of idealists into the rival camps 
 of monists and pluralists suggests the possibility 
 of a synthesis which would give validity to the 
 truths for which they respectively contend. It 
 may be that the conception of an eternal self-con- 
 sciousness objectifying and recognizing itself in a 
 second self-consciousness which is in every respect 
 its equal but differs from it in the fact that it was 
 generated through this objectifying act, offers the 
 point of departure for the synthesis required. 
 Let us endeavor to approach this synthesis by ask- 
 ing ourselves wherein the second self -consciousness 
 above described will differ from the first, and 
 since self-consciousness and personality are syn- 
 onymous terms let us now drop the expression first 
 and second self-consciousness, in favor of the ex- 
 pression first and second person. Between the 
 first and second persons (as between all true per- 
 sons) there is both identity and difference. They 
 are alike in that both are eternally realized self- 
 objectifying minds. They differ in the fact that 
 the self -objectifying consciousness of the first is 
 that of an aboriginal generator, while the self- 
 objectifying consciousness of the second is that of 
 a generator who has been himself eternally gen- 
 erated. He is possessed of the same perfection as 
 the eternal generator and since to know, is to cause 
 to he, his knowledge of his perfect personality is 
 objectified as a third perfect person. He knows 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 379 
 
 himself, however, not only as eternally perfect but 
 as eternally generated, and this knowledge makes 
 objective his owti derivation as a process ascend- 
 ing from nothingness toward identification with 
 the first perfect person. This objectified process 
 is the evolutionary ascent of nature and man. 
 It is " a becoming from that which is not to that 
 which is and is perfect." ^ Hence on the one hand 
 it contains eternally all degrees of imperfection 
 and on the other it is a process wherein imperfec- 
 tion is forever being eliminated. 
 
 The most difficult act of thought in its attempt 
 to explore the implications of a completely real- 
 ized self-consciousness is to understand how the 
 self -objectifying act closes with the eternal pro- 
 cession and its culmination in a third perfect 
 person. The question arises, " Must not this 
 third person also objectify himself and thus 
 cause a fourth who in turn originates a fifth and 
 so on in infinite progression ? " ^ The answer 
 to this question is that such an infinite progres- 
 sion is superfluous because the third person does 
 forever objectify his eternally complete processio 
 in an actual process of becoming and his eter- 
 nally realized personality in the eternally re- 
 newed mutual recognition of the first and second 
 persons. 
 
 J Hegel's Logic, by W, T, Harris, p. 379. 
 2 Ibid., p. 13. 
 
380 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 If we have correctly apprehended the implica- 
 tions of a completely realized self -consciousness, 
 they would seem to point inexorably to the conclu- 
 sion that perfect personality must be triune. 
 Each of these triune persons conspires in the sin- 
 gle act of self-objectification through which their 
 reciprocal relationship is eternally defined. The 
 First Person '^ in knowing Himself generates the 
 Second from all eternity. The Second in knowing 
 His derivation recognizes His origin in the know- 
 ing of the First, feut the First, too, recognizes the 
 recognition of the Second,'' ^ and this mutual rec- 
 ognition is objectified in a process of evolution 
 ascending from utter nothingness to perfect per- 
 sonality. The evolutionary process must be care- 
 fully distinguished from the Third Perfect Per- 
 son, in whom on the one hand it has eternally 
 completed itself and through whose conspiring 
 activity it is on the other hand forever renewed. 
 " This evolutionary process," says Dr. Harris, 
 " has unique relations to each of the Divine Per- 
 sons. To the First it is the recognition of His 
 own process of generating through goodness or 
 altruistic action; to the Second it is the recogni- 
 tion of another's goodness and altruism — namely, 
 that of the First ; to the Third it is a recognition 
 
 » Hegel's Logic, p. 379. This is the final amendment of my 
 original statement. 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 381 
 
 of His o^vn double procession through the altru- 
 ism of the First and Second." ^ 
 
 Our analysis of the implications of a com- 
 pletely realized self-consciousness has led to con- 
 clusions in substantial agreement with the theol- 
 ogy of the Christian Church. These conclusions, 
 however, are not offered as dogmas to be accepted 
 upon authority, but as insights to be actively 
 reproduced by the individual thinker. Moreover, 
 they add to Christian theology a more precise 
 conception of the Holy Spirit and of His relation- 
 ship to the process of creation, to the individual 
 human soul, and to the church universal. 
 
 In order that we may actively assimilate these 
 more precise conceptions, we must make a clear 
 distinction between the Holy Spirit and that con- 
 tinuous creation of worlds in time and space 
 which is His eternally renewed procession. This 
 procession in turn must be conceived as an eternal 
 return of the imperfect toward the perfect. It 
 involves an ascent of being from chaos through 
 matter, motion, star dust, revolving spheres, or- 
 ganic life and human institutions, to the perfect 
 institution or cosmic community which (like the 
 human institutions w^herein it is imperfectly mir- 
 rored) " collects power from each of the members 
 and endows each with the power of all." - This 
 
 1 Hegel's Logic, W. T. Harris, pp. 379, 380. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 14. 
 
382 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 cosmic community has existed from all eternity, 
 and since it is necessarily postulated through the 
 implications of a realized self-consciousness, it 
 harmonizes the eternal society upon which plural- 
 ism insists with the noetic unity for which monism 
 contends. 
 
 It will be remembered that the conclusions to 
 which we have been impelled had their point of 
 departure in the contradiction which arose from 
 our attempt to explain man as the objectified 
 thought of a monistic God. This contradiction 
 inheres in most interpretations of idealism, and, 
 as Dr. Harris has pointed out, its source is HegeFs 
 identification of creation with the Logos or Second 
 Divine Person.^ Through this identification fini- 
 
 1 "I have often before alluded to this distinction of the 
 Processio from the Second Divine Person as the important 
 thing neglected by Hegel, a neglect that in some measure 
 justifies the censure of pantheism that has been so freely cast 
 upon him. It is not, however, with Hegel precisely as the 
 charge has made it to be. Hegel does not in any wise fail in 
 the proper characterization of the Third Person, nor in the 
 doctrine of the invisible church and the 'Communion of 
 Saints.' Freedom and immortality in the most concrete sense 
 are held by Hegel. The defect pertains to the conception of 
 the nature of the Second Person. The Processio is taken for 
 the Logos. Hence there is an implication, that the First in 
 knowing himself perceives in himself finitude originating and 
 passing over into perfection. Recognizing this in himself, he 
 at the same time creates it; for his knowing is creating. 
 ' In God knowing and willing are one. ' But such recognition of 
 the origin of finitude in himself implies a consciousness of a 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 383 
 
 tude is thrust without warrant into the perfect 
 consciousness which idealism presupposes. With 
 this thrust, therefore, idealism slays itself. There- 
 after, stating its theory as ^^ the positive inclu- 
 sion of all finite facts in the unity of the su- 
 preme consciousness of the absolute," it virtually 
 makes God the author of sin and justifies the 
 valiant attack of Professor James against a di- 
 vine being who is responsible for the Brockton 
 murderer. ^ 
 
 Do we escape this dilemma when we conceive 
 creation as arising through the contemplation by 
 the Logos of His own derivation ? It seems to me 
 that we do. For the self -objectifying act through 
 which He creates all living beings involves recog- 
 nition of His own self -determining energy and 
 therefore of their freedom. The self-objectifying 
 act through which He creates man involves recog- 
 nition not only of self-determining energy but of 
 self-determining energy which has achieved the 
 final form of self-consciousness, and . in which 
 therefore the generic ideal can be realized in the 
 individual. Even plants and animals are self- 
 creative energies, and their many genera and 
 
 derivation, a begottenness, and this shows at once that Hegel 
 has conceived the First as the Second. He has attributed 
 to the Father the consciousness that belongs to the Logos. " 
 —Hegel's Logic, W. T. Harris, p. 381. 
 
 » See The Will to Believe, William James, pp. 160, 161, 177. 
 
384 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 species arise through the varying forms in which 
 they adapt themselves to environment and modify 
 environment to themselves. Man is not only a 
 self -creative being but a responsible being, because 
 in virtue of his form of self-consciousness he can 
 discriminate between his partial, accidental, and 
 temporary self, and his total, essential, and im- 
 mortal self. According to our doctrine, therefore, 
 God is not the Creator of sin. He creates free 
 beings and they create their own sin. 
 
 We have seen that the giving of real freedom 
 to the creature implies goodness in the Creator. 
 Goodness is altruism or love which gives itself. 
 This real freedom conferred upon the creature by 
 divine altruism can only be recognized by holding 
 him (man) responsible for his deeds. Such recog- 
 nition of responsibility involves man's right to the 
 consequences of his own actions. Being free, man 
 is amenable to justice, whose principle is the re- 
 turn of the deed upon the doer. To deny him 
 this return is to mock him with the semblance of 
 freedom. Hence, as Christian intuition has deeply 
 discerned, hell is a final tribute of respect from 
 the Creator to the creature made in His own im- 
 age. As a tribute to freedom, however, hell im- 
 plies the immortal persistence of freedom and 
 therefore of the possibility of amendment. Man 
 cannot justly receive the return of his deed unless 
 he is responsible for it. He cannot be responsible 
 
THREE WORLD VIEWS 385 
 
 unless he is free and capable of amendment. 
 Slionld he lose his freedom even through his own 
 sin he conld no longer be punished for sinning. 
 Implicit in the doctrine of hell is the insight 
 which triumphs over hell. Man may stay in hell 
 forever if he so choose.-^ He may always es- 
 cape from hell if he will. Being free, he will 
 not choose forever to contradict his freedom. 
 The resources of infinite love will be taxed to 
 the utmost to illuminate his intelligence and 
 influence his recalcitrant will. The only im- 
 possibility is that he should cease to be, for his 
 immortal existence is bound up with that eter- 
 nal act in w^hich divine knowing and willing 
 are one. 
 
 Perfect justice in the sense of a complete return 
 of the deed upon the doer can only be exercised 
 toward a perfect being. To exercise it toward im- 
 perfect beings would make an evolutionary world- 
 order impossible. Since this evolutionary world- 
 order is necessarily presupposed by the self -object- 
 ifying act through which the Logos makes actual 
 His own timeless derivation, goodness, or altruism, 
 must be recognized as the fundamental principle 
 of the divine character and justice be given valid- 
 ity only in so far as it does not collide with, but 
 on the contrary furthers the aim of goodness. Out 
 
 1 W. T. Harris, Spiritual Sense of Dante's Divina Comme- 
 dia, second edition, p. 19. 
 26 
 
386 EDUCATIONAL ISSUES 
 
 of reciprocal relationship between the goodness 
 that gives freedom and the justice or righteous- 
 ness which respect for freedom demands arises 
 that providential process through which ^' God 
 educates the human soul.'' 
 
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