Class _AS>_1: ghtN COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. EDUCATION AND THE LARGER LIFE BY C. HANFORD HENDERSON "Can rules or tutors educate The semigod whom we await ? He must be musical, Tremulous, impressional, Alive to gentle influence Of landscape and of sky, And tender to the spirit-touch Of man's or maiden's eye : But to his native centre fast Shall into Future fuse the Past, And the world's flowing fates in his own mould recast." BOSTON AND NEW YOEK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY d£bz Btoer^i&e pte?& Cambribge 1902 THF LI&KARY OF CONGRESS, Two Ooh» Heccivp APR. 4 1902 COPVWeMT SNTRY CUSto-XXe wo. eOPY B. COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY C. HANFORD HENDERSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published April, igo2 TO THE MEMORY OF THE WISEST OF ALL MY TEACHERS, AND THE BEST OF FRIENDS Jlp ;Ptot&er Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/educationlargerlOOhend CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Point of View 1 II. The Social Purpose 30 HE. The Source of Power 69 TV. Organic Education 97 V. Cause and Effect . 132 VI. Childhood 167 A VII. Youth 205 VIII. Holidays 246 IX. At the University . 281 X. The Experimental Life 318 XI. The Agents of the Social Purpose . . . 350 EDUCATION AND LIFE CHAPTER I THE POINT OF VIEW It is the purpose of the present little volume to make a large inquiry, — the inquiry as to how edu- cation can be so applied in America as to best further the progress of civilization. The term civilization may be used to mean either the sum total of what man is doing in the way of material and intellectual achievement, or else the force under- lying this achievement, the inner soul of it. Edu- cation has a similar double meaning. It is the outward, visible result of an inner experience, or it is the movement of the inner experience itself. No complete view of life may lose sight of either meaning. They stand, indeed, in the relation of effect and cause. It is important, however, upon which meaning we place the emphasis. The outer aspect of civilization is history, the inner aspect is philosophy. The outer aspect of education is know- ledge, the inner aspect is development. In a prac- tical inquiry like the present, it is more helpful to deal with causes than with effects. We shall 2 EDUCATION AND LIFE mean by civilization a force, a progressive idea expressing itself as social environment. We shall mean by education an inner experience, a practical process for the nutrition and growth of the civiliza- tion idea. This method of treatment is justified by events. The same universe apparently has always sur- rounded us, the same earth and air and fire and water. The stubborn facts of the world seem to remain pretty much the same. Cold and hunger and nakedness make their old-time demands upon human activity. But from these seemingly com- mon elements we build in different times and places such totally unlike worlds ! There must be some unique ingredient which we severally add to the stubborn facts to work the wonder of the individual life. This ingredient is the idea. It makes the difference between savagery and civilization. What men or nations make out of their material environ- ment depends solely upon the ideas which they bring to the adventure. Small ideas make a small, primitive, savage world. Great ideas make Greece or America. When we come more critically to look at our material facts, earth and air and fire and water, to ask the origin of our transforming ideas, to seek the relation between fact and idea, we face at once one of the oldest of world-riddles. The ideas them- selves come apparently from an experience of these very facts. But if the facts were truly stubborn, they could yield nothing beyond fixed ideas. To THE POINT OF VIEW 3 make any advance in civilization possible, there must be some progressive interplay between fact and idea. Either Nature is less unalterable than we unreflectively thought her, or else the impres- sion she makes upon us is composite, a resultant of the present aspect, and the impressions induced by all previous aspects. In either case we are brought to look upon Nature, not as a fixed fact, but as a progressive environment. The important element is the idea, and the idea has the habit of growth ; fostered, or perhaps measured, by the en- larging of experience. Experience, in the larger sense of the word, is the only road to truth. Leonardo called experi- ence the mother of all science. Experience is sometimes obscure, but it is never more than seem- ingly contradictory. When we get to the bottom of any given experience, we find that it squares with the essential part of any other related experience. They both teach the same general truth, however different the special dress. It is this quality of experience, its inherent consistency, that has made our present civilization possible, As Browning put it, — " All »s love, yet all 'slaw." In the conduct of the individual and social life, it is a matter of the deepest concern to enlarge experience; to recognize the common element in human events ; to gather these elements into a dis- tinct philosophy, and finally to see to it that the 4 EDUCATION AND LIFE philosophy flowers into performance. And this process is the process of all scientific progress. We have the students and observers and investi- gators, the world over, gathering together the un- disputed news of the universe. We have the gen- eralizes, the Darwins and Spencers and Maxwells and Kelvins, disentangling the abstract truth from the special fact. And then finally we have the prophets, the far-seeing people, who turn the gen- eral truth back again into a novel fact. When these prophets deal with material laws, they are inventors ; when they deal with spiritual laws, they are seers. It is the time-honored process of in- duction, followed by deduction, and all branches of human inquiry must pass through both stages be- fore they can rank as sciences. Auguste Comte affirmed the test of science to be the power of prediction. This presupposes an essential order and reasonableness in the universe. Were human experience not consistent, we should be in a sorry plight. In a world of caprice, in a world devoid of this saving uniformity, we should not even have sanity, much less civilization. The experience of to-day would conflict with and contradict the ex- perience of yesterday. The times would be most surely out of joint and the world-distemper prove complete. But happily we do not experience such confu- sion. The particular service of the great physical laws of the conservation of matter and the conser- vation of energy has been to exclude caprice from our view of Nature and to introduce order. THE POINT OF VIEW 5 Education rests upon the same uniformity of ex- perience. It is well at the very outset to disabuse one's mind of any lurking belief that education is at all the haphazard sort of process which it is commonly conceived to be. One is not free to decide, offhand, between the different methods in school-keeping as advocated by rival masters. The matter may not be disposed of in this casual fash- ion. In a large sense there is no room for any play of mere opinion. Education is a definite process, quite as definite as the other sciences of experience. But it is not a primary science : it is an applica- tion. The direction of education, that is to say, the motif, is predetermined by the inner aspect of civilization, by philosophy, and this for practical ends is expressed in the concrete terms of a social purpose. When the philosophic idea has been clearly formulated, education has also been clearly formulated. Education is wrapped up in the philosophic idea quite as completely as the propo- sitions of geometry are wrapped up in the initial axioms. The method of education, that is to say, the art, is simply a rigid application of the princi- ple of cause and effect. It is my purpose, accordingly, to present educa- tion as a determinate, positive process, whose carry- ing out possesses the dignity of a moral duty. Let us have done, once for all, with the slippery notion that we may do this or that with our boys and girls, and that it is all right, provided we acted for their supposed good ; and let us lay hold of the far sturdier and truer notion that it is our supreme 6 EDUCATION AND LIFE business to find out what is for their good, and that it is our supreme business not to be defeated in realizing that good. Looked at in this way, the problem requires that we shall first gather our knowledge of life into a distinct philosophic idea, an idea which sums up the most general and abstract of human truth ; that we shall then express this idea in the concrete, specific terms of a social purpose, and finally that education proper shall be regarded as a practical process for the carrying out of the social purpose. As a process, education is to be judged by its effi- ciency and may be criticised on no other ground. Neither may its failures be lightly palliated. The educational process does or does not produce men and women of the desired social type, and this is a matter of very unimpassioned fact. To be an educator is not, then, to be a man merely conversant with the customs and conventionalities of the schoolroom. It is to be a man with a defensible social creed. To be a practical educator, a teacher, is to add to this the power to carry such a social creed into effect. Unless we are courageous enough and skillful enough to work back to this firm ground, the philosophic idea, we can have no as- sured position on any question of human import, and surely nothing to say about education that will be at all worth saying. This matter of method in handling the furniture of one's own mind is of such grave importance that a word, in passing, may not be out of place. The THE POINT OF VIEW 7 earlier years of life are spent for the most part in accumulating the material of thought, and there are souls who, through some fatal paralysis of the will, never get beyond this process of accretion. But to the earnest man there comes a divine mo- ment when new impulses are working in the heart, and he sets out to make use of his wealth. One who reaches this stage in the intellectual life must be appalled by the magnitude of the task before him. He finds perhaps in any single department of thought a fair degree of consistency. But when he compares these separate strands and attempts to weave them together into a beautiful and acceptable fabric of truth, he stands face to face with an im- possible task. The separate results are contradic- tory. I am disposed to believe that there are many who are living in this confusion of thought, who are possibly consistent along one line, but who are quite inconsistent when it comes to comparing these different results and trying to make them square with one another. The task of bringing one's ideas on separate matters into consistency with one another is so tremendous that few attempt it, and still fewer succeed in doing it. And yet this is the supreme task of the intellectual life, and one that we must all set about very earnestly, if the final outcome of our living is to be sane and whole- some. By some process, the habit of rigid self- analysis, the energy of untiring criticism, by some process adapted to one's temperament and carried to a conclusion, one must perform this initial vital 8 EDUCATION AND LIFE act of the intellectual life, the finding of one's self, before one can find another or render the largest social service. Such an attempt to make one's ideas square with one another, one's esthetics and religion and pedagogy, one's science and politics and economics, only shows the entire hopelessness of the task so long as these ideas are reached on independent and inadequate grounds. It empha- sizes anew the surpassing value of the scientific method, the working out of a firm philosophic basis, and the subsequent translation of this into the special terms of daily thought and action. One may not attempt within the limits of a chapter, or even within a single volume, to work out anything so stupendous as the philosophic idea, but one may with all modesty indicate a path of approach, and report such content as one has, one's self, been led to appropriate. Philosophy is a search for reality, or, as more cautious people prefer to say, it is the search for a theory of reality. As a practical matter, it is an attempt to rationalize the world, a profound at- tempt to harmonize and explain human experience. Philosophy has as a study this peculiar advantage, that it requires no equipment beyond an average intelligence, and no material beyond the data of daily experience. It is, then, open to every one to philosophize. It is worth remarking that the un- dertaking is not at all novel. All schemes of life, however simple and unsophisticated they may ap- pear to be on the surface, are founded upon some THE POINT OF VIEW 9 theory of reality. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all philosophize after a fashion, and perhaps those most unwarrantably who would most strenuously deny that they philosophize at all. The man who tells you that bricks are bricks ; and trees, trees ; and houses, houses ; and that this so-called outer world of matter and motion exists quite apart from man, takes what he supposes to be the common-sense view of the matter, and rather pities the rest of the world as a set of lost dreamers. But, in point of fact, he has become himself the most thorough-going of theorizers, for he has at one bound passed quite beyond the limits of human experience into a region of pure specula- tion. Take man out of the world-drama, and there is no reporter left to acquaint us with what is hap- pening. We do not know a world divorced from human sensation, from sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell. Such a world is a pure ab- straction. It is true that my senses report what seems to be a three-dimensional outer world as distinct from me as are the emotions of an un- known hero. Events happen in that outer world which I seem powerless to control. Sometimes I am the victim of them ; sometimes the beneficiary. But after all is done and said, I find that whether the events were enacted outside of me or not, the only report of them which I can possibly have is internal, has come to me filtered through my own brain, and colored by my own past. But what are these seeming reports of the senses ? 10 EDUCATION AND LIFE If they represent the total material of the world- drama, it is of the utmost importance to know their essence. In reality they are only changing states of consciousness on my own part. And no- tice also that if the drama be the reaction of an independently-existing, outer world upon my own organism, it is conditioned through and through by the state of the sense organs, and is therefore strictly individual. But the difficulty is that I can never know whether this is the case, whether this outer world has any independent existence, for I can lay hands on no testimony whatever beyond just this bare testimony of my own consciousness. So the question must remain forever unsolved. If I assume the existence of an independent outer world, as Kant and Spencer do, I pass into a realm of pure speculation, and one quite barren of prac- tical results, for the outer world, the cause of these sensations, must itself remain unknowable. It does no harm to label this hypothetical outer world, this abstraction of the philosophers. Kant calls it the Ding-an-sich, the " thing-in-itself," and Spen- cer robes it in appropriate mystery under the name of the Unknowable. But this labeling does no particular good. In either case, existent or non- existent, such a world, distinct from the thinking self, is pure speculation. The sensations only are experienced, and it is these which go to make up one's real world. The world of strict experience turns out to be a unit world, a panorama which unfolds itself in one's own consciousness. THE POINT OF VIEW 11 For convenience we may call this unit concep- tion idealism. It is a view of the world which rests wholly upon every-day experience, and is quite devoid of theory. As an idealist, I use the common language of mankind. I speak of the inner and the outer world, of the things about me as if they had existence apart from myself, but this is only the projection of my thought into the realm of language. I create an outer world in order to express my inner experience. I speak, then, with my brother of opposite view, in a language which is equally sincere and definite to both of us. We use the same words to express the same facts. In one sense, of course, we are all idealists, whether we accept or decline the particular label, for philosophy must rest upon human experience, and this experience, as a very little analysis has just shown, has no existence outside of conscious- ness. It is a panorama unfolding itself in the world of thought. As an experienced fact, the universe reduces itself to a succession of states of conscious- ness, and this is the only reality that we can know and build upon. It is perfectly natural to spec- ulate about this tremendous world-drama, and to wonder what it would all turn out to be if one could see it from some extra-human, divine van- tage ground. The speculation is not without ad- vantage, for it gives a certain flexibility to thought. One sets up a number of apparent possibilities, and then examines as to how far they square with the observed facts. A source of error creeps in, 12 EDUCATION AND LIFE however, just as soon as we become so enamored with any particular speculation that we mistake it for an observed fact of experience. All we ex- perience is consciousness, a unit stream of con- sciousness ; and consciousness is inexplicable. This speculative habit has long since divided the world into two sharply distinct modes of think- ing, monism and dualism. As the name implies, monism conceives man to be a unit. So far it is purely experiential and non-speculative. But it becomes speculative in its division into the two cults of psycho-monism and materialistic-monism. The first is what we have called idealism. It rests purely upon experience, and is the least daring and theoretical of all philo- sophic creeds. The idealist finds in his stream of consciousness a unit world of spirit, in which he recognizes not only himself but also the pageantry of human and non-human nature. The union of the self with other selves and Nature in one enfold- ing consciousness, of which he seems to share but a part, leads him to frame the conception of a cosmic consciousness, of a divine, pantheistic universe. Referring to the world-riddle with which we started out, it will be seen that the idealist absorbs the fact into the idea, and does not enter upon the difficult speculation of their separate life and inter- play. The materialist is equally monistic, but he passes completely over to speculation, since he absorbs the idea into the seemingly outer fact. He declares this to be the reality, and conscious- THE POINT OF VIEW 13 ness a passing property of matter. The contro- versy between the two cults of monism is ancient and profound, and need not be entered upon here. It is, however, worth remarking that while ideal- ism does not pretend to explain consciousness, ma- terialism cannot explain matter. Idealism has the advantage of sticking closer to the experienced fact. Idealism being pure experience, and materialism pure speculation, dualism, in spite of the appar- ent contradiction, occupies the curious position of standing midway between the two. It is part experience and part speculation, — experience in accepting the idea, the intellectual and spiritual life, and speculation in accepting the seeming fact of the outer world as an altogether separate real- ity. Dualism gives us two distinct worlds, — one of idea or spirit, and one of outer fact or matter. Man is thus divided into separate parts, into spirit and body. The social purpose and the educational process which grow out of this dualistic conception of man share its speculative character and its di- lemmas. The particular difficulty appears when we attempt a theory of knowledge. So complete is the chasm between idea and fact that no bridge can be found between them. Neither can know the other. We have thus on our hands two worlds in place of the single one which we started out to explain. The only view of the nature of man which can form an unchallenged part of the philosophic idea 14 EDUCATION AND LIFE is just this bare and simple belief that man is a unit, an integral consciousness, and beyond this, one may not pass. In thus limiting the world, as an experienced fact, to human consciousness, I seem at first sight to be robbing it of reality instead of conferring reality, for the intensity of consciousness varies. The world becomes more real and less real. It is as if existence itself ebbed and flowed, as if I were more awake and then less awake, living alternately under the influence of an intoxicant and an opiate. It is, of course, perfectly easy to declare this flux and flow a distemper of the individual mind, and to erect the outer world into a separate, unchange- able universe. But what you experience is not such a stable universe, with yourself left out, or even yourself as mere spectator. It is the flux and flow that you experience, the come and go, the projection and the fading. This is the life-drama, this is the world-passion, a stupendous panorama in which a part is distinct and clear-cut ; in focus, if you please to put it so ; and part is vague and shadowy, like the foreground in Corot's pic- tures. One is obliged to admit varying degrees of reality. Have you ever noticed, for example, in an apart- ment, filled with a great many ugly things, and a very few beautiful things, that the ugly things gradually lose their power to annoy, and the beauti- ful things have increased power to attract ? In the end we cease to see the ugly things and see only THE POINT OF VIEW 15 the beautiful things. Do you remember, how in any great gallery of pictures the majority of can- vases fade away ; how on your fourth visit to the Pitti Palace or the Uffizi you saw only a dozen or so pictures, and how in the Louvre the Salon Carre overshadows all the acreage of canvas ? Thinking now of your circle of acquaintance, do you notice that the real people are those you believe in and admire, that your love goes out to the people whom you have idealized ? It is the same in history, with places and books. Christ is more real than Pilate ; Athens than Kome ; Cinderella than her wicked sisters. This unequal reality in the world-drama is simply due to its unequal power to stir the emo- tions. Consciousness is faint or vivid just in the measure that it is emotional. The ebb and flow of reality has its counterpart in the ebb and flow of feeling. Not only our consciousness of other persons, places, and things, but even the consciousness of self shares in these fluctuations. There is a come- and-go character about the experience that is very baffling. The realities of the young man are not the realities of the middle-aged man, and these in turn are different from those of old age. In youth, the most persistent realities are those aroused by one's companions. There are moments when our love and interest so concentrate themselves on the person of a comrade that for the time he becomes a more intense object of consciousness, a greater 16 EDUCATION AND LIFE reality, than ourselves. In moments of danger and illness, of great sorrow or great joy, of any su- preme emotion indeed, the reality of self becomes secondary, and the greater reality is another. So in youth, the loss of a dear friend by death is to us a partial death for ourselves ; out of our own lives has gone an integral part of our own reality. Time assuages our grief by creating other realities, and so in part repairing the torn tissue of our emotions. Some of these fellow-voyagers alto- gether elude us, and when in later life their names are mentioned, we find them less familiar than the people in the last novel we have read. But to others, to the mother, to the beloved one, to the chosen comrade, we give the immortality of an ever-present reality. It is impossible to believe that this varying reality is a result of caprice, a mere whimsy of consciousness. There must be some indwelling principle which determines the grade of reality by the measure of its own presence. How is it that the world is such a strictly individual experience ? How is it that it is literally true that there are as many worlds as there are people in it ? We can best find an answer to these queries by probing the most persistent of all realities, the conscious- ness of self, and trying to find what principle it is which confers intense reality by its presence, and dissipates reality by its absence. That my love and interest should so concentrate themselves upon the idea of self, and give it this intense reality, is THE POINT OF VIEW 17 not explained, I think, by what is commonly called self-interest ; does not rest upon what one may ac- quire, not even upon what one may accomplish. These represent a monotony of process which can- not stir the emotions unendingly. The persistent, emotional care for the self rests upon something deeper and more fundamental. It rests upon one's faith in one's self, upon the consciousness of an unfolding self, upon the assurance that the most real element in the self is an unquenchable aspira- tion for the things which are excellent and beauti- ful. So even to myself I seem more real and less real ; more real as I approach the goal of this high endeavor, less real as I recede from it. The ecstasy and the travail of the spirit represent the crest and the trough in the reality of life. If I apply the same test to other persons, and to things, I get the same result. Their power to stir the emotions, to heighten consciousness, and so to become the in- tense realities of the experienced moment depends upon their supposed measure of worth. The per- sistent, emotional care which the self feels for other selves rests upon just such grounds as these. Our love for them rests upon what they are, or what we believe they are, upon our ideal of them, and no love is founded upon any other ground than a belief in the essential excellence of its ob- ject. It is the same with things. Art is always representative and symbolic. It lacks the reality of living men and women, of actual Nature, but the same touchstone applies to both. It is the 18 EDUCATION AND LIFE greater excellence which confers the greater re- ality. The marbles of Greece, the frescoes and canvases of Italy, are still the objects of loving reverence. They have been imitated in countless numbers. In hundreds of galleries men and women make their mute appeal in marble or on canvas, but hardly one touches the spirit. It is so much material, so much technique, so much time doubt- fully spent, but it is a slender reality. The marble of Greece has not only the poetry of form ; it has the deeper and more abiding loveliness of the in- dwelling spirit. So subtle is it that the eye alone cannot compass it. One would like to pass the hand reverently over the almost living limb and pulsing chest to fully apprehend it. The men of Michelangelo are the incarnation of penetrating, vital ideas. They are the channel through which he speaks. Beautiful and merciful, or stern and dreadful, they sweep over the whole scale of human emotion. This untiring quest of perfection is the most abiding impulse of the human spirit. Reality resides in this impulse towards perfection in the world of life ; in the promise of perfection in the world of things. And I propose now to go a step further, carry- ing over into the remote and less known the same principles which hold good in our experience of the near and better known. In moments of contemplation, we purify our ideals of all imperfectness. By constantly looking upon the goodness of the mother, we merge her THE POINT OF VIEW 19 at last in our thought into the perfect mother, the Madonna. By dwelling persistently upon the ex- cellence and the beauty of the friend, we trans- figure him into Apollo. So in the heart is accom- plished the apotheosis of those whose nature cast about them in real life the aureole of assured good- ness. The images which we thus create out of the material of our own emotional experience accom- plish in our consciousness just those steps towards deeper goodness and wider knowledge and more radiant beauty which the unfolding self pictures as its own destiny. So the self, building, observe, out of its own inner experience, projects into Olympus a higher order of being than it has visibly experienced on the earth. Saints and heroes, angels and gods, become realities of experience in so much as they represent perfectly definite and rational steps in that process of becoming which the unfolding self is conscious of having entered upon. One more step remains in this projection of the greater self into the empyrean of the unseen good. The quest of perfection stretches out unendingly. It is the occasion of infinite hope. But one can in words at least pass to the last term in such a series. When, by a supreme effort, the consciousness pro- jects its image to the utmost limit of possible experience, and declares the realization of all good- ness, the attainment of all knowledge, the satisfac- tion of all aspiration, the enfolding of all beauty in a cosmic is, then the self, though it may not con- ceive him, at least breathes the name of God, the 20 EDUCATION AND LIFE consciousness which includes the whole of the world- drama. When I ask myself what degrees of reality at- tach to these elements of consciousness, to the self, to the comrades, to the angels, to God, I can only answer that with the flux and flow of consciousness the reality changes. As we have seen, there are moments when the friend obscures the self and be- comes the more intense reality. There are moments when the angels overshadow both, and become more real than either. There are moments when the vague idea of God transcends all else, and fills the whole of consciousness. But there is no necessity, indeed, there is no merit, in arranging these reali- ties in anything like a graded scale. Their very soundness and integrity depend upon the unper- suaded play of consciousness. It is quite impossible to hold this ideal of an unfolding and progressive self, and to find the real- ity of the world in human consciousness unless we believe on the same grounds in a continuity of ex- istence, that is to say, in immortality. Such a belief has been the hope held out by religion for many centuries, and at times this hope has been sufficiently assured to be a vital element in the conduct of life. But, unhappily, the doc- trine of immortality has been for the most part associated with those religions which are either avowed or veiled forms of pessimism. In a world quite given over to the devil, the other world was offered by way of antithesis, and salvation was made THE POINT OF VIEW 21 to consist in a process of escaping from one into the other. This is but one of the many regrettable instances in which a vital truth, expressed in a poetic and spiritual form, became a distinct untruth in literal and unspiritual hands. When the nine- teenth century arrived with her gift of science to the world-life, with her teaching of ascent and develop- ment in place of sin and deterioration, it became impossible to hold with any degree of assurance to the crude and shocking forms of pessimism which had been robbing the previous world-life of so much of its usefulness and delight. The recogni- tion that this world is both good and sweet has withdrawn men's attention from the too passionate contemplation of another life, save perhaps in those august moments when the presence of death has once more forced the question. The failure of the old, literal antithesis between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of heaven carried down with it in many minds its attendant doctrine of immortality. It was, however, too precious a hope to be given over without a struggle. But, in the main, it has become an expectation which the modern world has fostered rather than insisted upon. Of recent years even this qualified expecta- tion has been growing fainter and fainter. Im- mortality has been made impersonal ; it has been transferred to the race, or finally, by many of the best and most earnest people, it has been given up altogether, and the prospect of annihilation has been bravely accepted. Perhaps only one who has 22 EDUCATION AND LIFE passed through all these phases of thought and belief can appreciate their significance. I have sometimes fancied indeed that one condition of a genuine belief in immortality is a perfect willing- ness to disbelieve it. From a scientific point of view there seems no warrant whatever for a belief in immortality, and probably this lack of scientific support is responsi- ble for the fact that such a belief is now somewhat old-fashioned, and is regarded as conservative and reactionary. But just as one would exclude specu- lation unverified by experience from a theory of man, would one quite as rigidly exclude it from a theory of his destiny. The fact that science is per- fectly silent in regard to immortality is not in any way significant as to the belief, but only as to the province of science. Those of us who have been brought up in the camp of the scientists, and have preserved intact our loyalty and our affection, know full well that science has no word to say on destiny or first causes. Her work is limited solely to the study of appearances, to the bringing of these into harmonious relation, and to the intelligent presenta- tion of the world-drama as it is. There is no search for the underlying reality, and no attempt, however partial, at any explanation of the universe. It may well be that this statement will bring to mind the much-quoted doctrine of evolution and the fierce fight which centred about it not so many years ago. The friends of religion rated evolution as an explanation of the world, and the friends of THE POINT OF VIEW 23 science made the same mistake. But the contro- versy turned out to be over a mere man of straw. Evolution, as a teaching of science, is a state- ment of the world-process, of how the present emerges from the past, and has no single word to offer by way of explanation. In this, it is precisely like any other of our natural laws, a chastened statement of human observation. So immortality, being outside the realm of present objective ex- perience, does not come within the province of science and may not be submitted to its judgments. The question of immortality belongs entirely to philosophy, to this searching scrutiny of the inner experience ; and as this comes to be more fully real- ized, a belief in immortality will naturally become once more prevalent. For philosophy, seeing in human consciousness the one undoubted reality, and in the impulse towards perfection the keenest manifestation of consciousness, must ascribe to this consciousness and to this impulse the same eternal quality that it ascribes to the great universe itself. That part of human experience which we call mat- ter and motion could as well pass into nothingness as the medium, the consciousness, in which they have their being. Here again, if we choose to go beyond experience, and once more speculate, we may ascribe to matter and motion, that is, to the great outer world of which these are the sole con- tent, a reality independent of man, and may declare this eternal, and man passing. But I find no sober, empirical ground for such a belief. 24 EDUCATION AND LIFE It may not be offered as an argument, perhaps, but it is worth remarking that the quest of perfec- tion which seems to us the most abiding impulse of the human spirit, the keenest manifestation of con- sciousness, would be quite meaningless, save as a progressive, unlimited, timeless process. These remarks upon the content of the philo- sophic idea are offered simply as considerations by the way, and not at all as a systematic explora- tion of the field. That would require, as I have said, not only a whole volume, but many volumes. Yet out of these considerations there do emerge what seem to me the essential elements of an ade- quate philosophic and social creed, and consequently the framework of a practical educational process. I would sum up these elements as six in number, and for a practical reason, which will appear later, I would divide them into two groups of three ele- ments each. The first group, having to do with the present moment, may be called immediate, and the second group, having to do with the larger mo- ment of humanity, may be called ultimate. This division is purely for convenience of treatment, and does not signify any time difference between the groups ; for, in a large sense, philosophy does not deal with past, and present, and future, with " this " world and the " next " world, but recog- nizes in the present moment the one reality of ex- perience, the one chalice into which is concentrated the whole wine of life. The immediate group would contain a belief in THE POINT OF VIEW 25 the unity of man ; a belief that Nature, or the outer world, is an interpretation and counterpart of the inner life ; and finally, a belief that the process of life is esthetic, is an operation for deepening the reality of the world by increasing its excellence and beauty. The ultimate group would include the more tran- scendental content, a belief in immortality ; a be- lief in the existence of more evolved beings, whom we may call angels and gods ; and finally a belief in the spiritual existence of the cosmic conscious- ness, the immanent God. These beliefs, with the implications which attend them, make up for me the content of the philo- sophic idea. As a man desiring to live the higher life of consistency and goodness, I must translate these elements into a distinct social purpose, and I must realize this social purpose through an efficient educational process. These beliefs are not novel. But I can readily understand that there will be many who will not agree to them as the true content of the philosophic idea. In particular, this conception of immortality and of angels and gods may seem mediaeval and metaphorical. While I do not aspire to cast a drag- net for the whole body of educators, even supposing that I could spin so great a web, neither do I want to part company with the earnest men and women of the profession save at some vital divergence of belief and consequently at some necessary diver- gence of practice. It is in this spirit of comrade- 26 EDUCATION AND LIFE ship that I feel bound to indicate how far we might profitably travel together, and just where we must meet an inevitable parting of the ways. It seems to me, then, that any one who accepts the immediate group of elements, or even the first of them, a thorough-going belief in the unity of man, might be interested to follow the system of education which it is the purpose of this book to unfold. As we have seen, this major belief, in human unity, is held in common by such opposite camps as those of the materialists and idealists. Though apparently the most unlike of thinkers, they both attempt to stick very close to the facts of human experience, and consequently they reach many of the same conclusions. It is only when the materialist passes over into the mists of specu- lation that the idealist loses sight of him. It is also worth remarking that the third element, the belief that the process of life is esthetic, though reached by quite a different and independent path, is in reality only another statement of the observed world-process, as formulated by the law of evolu- tion. In the old Stadt-Kirche at Weimar, on the tomb of Herder, one may read these thrilling words : "Licht, Liebe, Leben." It is the cry of an im- passioned poet, but it voices as well the deepest message of both philosophy and science. The sec- ond element, the view of Nature, is perhaps more debatable ground. Yet, even here, the antagonism is less than at first sight appears. To the ideal- ist, Nature is the interpretation and projection THE POINT OF VIEW 27 of the inner life, and varies as it varies. To the believer in the unknowable, Nature is the more po- tent and the eternal reality, and through environ- ment determines the inner life of the human spirit. I would not fill up with obscurity the tre- mendous chasm between these two views, but it is nevertheless true that the difference is one of em- phasis. The idealist puts it on human conscious- ness ; the naturalist, on the external world. But they agree in recognizing the intimate connection and dependence of the two. There is, however, a veritable parting of the ways between myself and those, if such there be, who do not hold at least a thorough-going belief in the unity of man. I cannot hope to interest them, and I cannot ask for their sympathy. The system of education to be developed in the following pages as a consistent, logical process of human culture, stands or falls with the doctrine of the unity of man. It would be quite meaningless from any genuinely dualistic conception of man. It can only have value to those who believe in man as a unit organism. I might add, parenthetically, that the believers in genuine dualism are a diminishing company. I do not mean that the ritual of dualism is less in evidence than formerly. I mean only that the sub- stance is being dissolved out of it. One sees on all sides religious sects whose creeds assert the most uncompromising dualism, the deepest pessimism, given over by a happy inconsistency to the prac- 28 EDUCATION AND LIFE tice and inculcation of a most cheerful monistic optimism. My meaning will be clear when I call at- tention to the gymnasiums, manual training classes, country clubs, Saturday half-holidays, improved tenements, diet kitchens, public baths, libraries, concerts, studios, laboratories, lectures, which have replaced the old and more logical asceticism, and now form the wise and approved activities of the religious. It is far better to profess a crude pessi- mistic dualism and practice a sweet optimistic monism than the reverse, but one cannot help wish- ing that our current creeds might at least keep pace with the very best of our current practice. It is an old complaint that practice falls behind creed. It may seem a novel and highly optimistic prayer that creed might keep pace with practice. As a practical operation, however, I conceive that education gains an immense power from the acceptance of our more transcendental beliefs in immortality and in an infinite series of angels and gods. These beliefs are not open, I think, to the charge of fostering what Huxley has so cleverly named " other-world lin ess " by turning one's atten- tion from the present to the future. The search for excellence and beauty is the search for pre- sent qualities ; and culture, which is the study and pursuit of perfection, is by nothing so much dis- tinguished from smaller ends and purposes as by its insistence upon the incomparable value of the present moment. Unless the present moment is rich and full, an infinity of such moments would THE POINT OF VIEW 29 be intolerable. But a sincere and vital belief in immortality has the immense merit of eliminating the element of time and giving one a sense of infinite leisure and of unfailing wealth. Furthermore, it turns the attention increasingly towards those things which are eternal, towards excellence and beauty and love and happiness, and it does make the tran- sient and expedient things, the shop-keeping and advertising, the speculating and overreaching, the counterfeits and insincerities, the things that lack the eternal element, seem all of them insignificant and unworthy. In quite the same way a belief in a more evolved order of beings, in angels and gods, brings with it a very real help in our own endeavor. It is in- expressibly comforting to feel that the excellence and beauty towards which we are ourselves toiling are even now the dear possessions of other sentient beings, gracious comrades in the same infinite spiral of being. Those who come of an old and honor- able family must feel the welcome pressure of good traditions, the noblesse oblige of a true aristocracy. So, it seems to me, that to feel one's self a part of the cosmic consciousness, a member of that greater company of excellence, of angels and gods, is to bring into one's own life the welcome pressure of an unfailing expectation, the noblesse oblige of a universe. CHAPTER II THE SOCIAL PURPOSE Human experience generalized is in reality what one means by the philosophic idea. It is the aim of the present chapter to translate this idea into the exact vocabulary of a social purpose. It can best be accomplished by developing each element of the philosophic idea into its own special contribu- tion to the programme of daily life. The inquiry is purely practical. It were well to ask, first of all, what we mean by a belief in the unity of man. This belief is at once the most concrete and the most abstract of truth. It is the creed of monism and is consequently the anchorage of such other- wise dissimilar thinkers as materialists and ideal- ists. From the point of view of materialism, the unity of man is an undeniable concrete fact. Man is, in the last analysis, only a bit of highly organized matter, the most complex and the most unstable of all Nature's chemical compounds. His thoughts and emotions are the subtle accompaniment of the rapid changes taking place in this sensitive and unstable organism. Human life is a part of such THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 31 reaction in much the same way that an electric cur- rent is a part of the reaction taking place in a voltaic cell. The electric current is quite as es- sential, quite as unavoidable a part of the reaction, as are the spent acid and the spent metal. So humanity, it is argued, is quite as essential a part of the human reaction as are the carbon dioxide and water vapor and other spent products of the bodily economy. This was summed up in that early and much-quoted maxim of materialism, that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. The analogy to the voltaic cell may be carried a step further. In the voltaic cell there comes a time when all the acid is spent, and all the metal is dis- solved, and then there is no more current, and the cell becomes a bit of quiescent earth. In the life of the human organism, they say, it is the same. There comes a time when the vital forces are spent, and the organs no longer perform their office, and then, there is no more human life, and the spent body is committed to the grave, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, It is impossible from this point of view to believe in immortality. It is true that the electric current is not lost. It is true that the human cur- rent is not lost. Both are spent in doing work, and the doctrine of the conservation of energy prohibits the belief that this work can ever be destroyed. Even the bodily heat of the multitudinous children of men has its effect upon the climate, and so upon the destiny of the physical earth. But both the human and the electric currents are dissipated, and 32 EDUCATION AND LIFE individually cease to be. In the same way a belief in higher orders of beings could have no interest and significance. It would be a mere idle specu- lation, for with the passing moment of humanity such beings could stand in no vital relation. Such a materialistic view as this, the view that makes man a unit, because it makes him all mat- ter, seems the easiest to slip into, and particularly easy for those who approach the intellectual life along the pathway of the natural sciences. How- ever thoroughly one may repudiate such a view for one's self, one must still feel a genuine respect for any view which has attracted so many honest and noble minds. One of the most lovable of these, Clifford, has, if I remember rightly, this tragic record on his tomb : " I was, I loved, I am not." Haeckel, who might from his earnestness be called the apostle of human mortality, expressly says, " The belief in the immortality of the human soul is a dogma which is in hopeless contradiction with the most solid empirical truths of modern science." But other spirits, equally beautiful and equally lovable, men like Agassiz and Clerk-Maxwell, have stood for a more complete view. And nothing, in- deed, seems to me quite so interesting in all the drift of modern scientific thought as the tendency which I detect, or think that I detect, in our most representative men of science to accept with all readiness the orderly and magnificent report of the world of phenomena which science is every day making, and at the same time to recognize that for THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 33 its inner reality and explanation one must turn to the experience of the intellectual life. This move- ment toward the humanizing and spiritualizing of the world, this deepening of the religious senti- ment, is, I think, as characteristic of the opening of the twentieth century as the wave of somewhat crude agnosticism which swept over the latter half of the nineteenth was characteristic of that period. I do not wish in any way to discredit the cleansing value of this wave, for I can easily believe that it was necessary to prepare the way for that sweeter and more reverent cult of the modern world, the worship of the Spirit. Quite of an opposite turn of mind to the ma- terialist stands the idealist. To him the unity of man is an undeniable, abstract truth. Conscious- ness is the one reality, the medium in which the world-play is carried out. Human experience is the universe, and the events of life are essentially the changing states of human consciousness. It is quite as impossible for the idealist as for the materialist to bisect human experience, and call one part matter, and the other part mind, and to think of them as separable and independent reali- ties. The whole experience of the moment, as idealists like to put it, is the reality, and must be accepted in its entirety. Such an experience, when viewed at short range, shows neither matter nor spirit, nor any other antithesis. It shows the even flow of a unit consciousness. It is impossible, then, to have evil experience 34: EDUCATION AND LIFE with the body and to have health in the mind, or evil experience with the mind and keep the body in health. It is impossible to be one thing and at the same moment its opposite, to be awkward and partial and weak and unbeautiful on one side of your nature, and clever and total and strong and beautiful on another side. One may not have one set of morals for business or politics, and another set for the home life. One may not say yes and no, be hot and cold, look forward and backward, all at the same moment. One may not have unde- veloped organs and deficient senses and faulty cir- culation and stunted, brain centres, and still be the source of a radiant complete life. Our own experi- ence of life makes impossible the view that man's bodily and mental and spiritual powers are simply the members of a triple alliance which in times of exceptional good-will may work together for a com- mon purpose, but at other times may secretly plot and plan against one another and against the com- mon good. It makes necessary the view that man must be considered as a whole, that his well-being means the well-being of his body, the well-being of his mind, the well-being of his spirit. This, very briefly, is what we mean by the unity of man, and this is precisely what we experience in life ; not bodies, not minds, not souls, but men, whole or partial as the case may be, but neverthe- less men. It is what we experience in our imme- diate, contemporary life, and it is what we find recorded in history. The partition of man into THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 35 dual or triple parts is merely verbal. The reality is the unit man. This is a matter to be strongly emphasized, this unity of man, for it is the very heart of the philo- sophic idea. Furthermore, as we shall see during the progress of the chapter, the attempt to trans- late this doctrine into a practical social programme leads to very far-reaching and radical results. It does this, because when combined with the belief that the world process is esthetic, it sets up a totally new standard, and one that is altogether in- exorable and imperative. The interplay between the world of human con- sciousness and the so-called outer world is what is commonly called a theory of Nature. Modern methods of estimating time and age lay increasing stress upon the quality of the years, and have less to say about the mere number of years that go to make up a human life. It is not how many years you have been about it, but what experience you have pressed into it. Jesus, in one third of a cen- tury, drained the cup of earth life ; Methuselah, with his traditional ten centuries, appears merely to have tasted it. A glance into history and bio- graphy, a glance at the men and women now around us, discloses the immense difference in the quality of life, in the content of a month, of a year. In some, the moment is almost overfreighted with thought and emotion and action, with experience in its richest and fullest terms, a casket of brilliant and many-colored gems ; in others, the moment is 36 EDUCATION AND LIFE so thin and sliudderingly bare, such a pallid blot of grayness against a desert of gray nothingness, that souls alive with the red wine of life hardly, or at best with something of a missionary effort, discern their anaemic brother. Nor need one go so far afield. One has only to look within one's own life, to the times when one has been alive and the times when one has been less alive, to see this very real difference in the days. There come to all of us periods of passage from less life to more life, and the consciousness of this larger pos- session, of this awakening, is one of the keenest joys that a man may taste. Now what I want to point out is that this experience of life, taken at its flood, all this thought, all this emotion, all this action, is absolutely dependent upon Nature, upon the so-called outer world. Without it we should have nothing to concern ourselves with, no symbols for our thought, no objects for our affection, no theatre for our activity. The peasant deals with the simple and specific facts of Nature. The phi- losopher deals with precisely the same Nature, only in a more comprehensive and generalized fashion. The most abstract of our ideas rests ultimately upon the most concrete of natural facts. This is all perfectly obvious, but it is quite worth recalling ; for those who have got well on into the intellectual life are prone to talk as if a few more stairs climbed and they would be passing into an empyrean quite above and beyond anything so limited as the pa- geantry of Nature. In reality they would be vanish- THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 37 ing into a void by the side of which the day before the first day of creation would be a whirlpool of events. The dependence of the inner life upon the outer world both for its content and its imagery is, absolute and unlimited. Although so obvious, it is still worth while to fol- low this thought into a very important realm of the human drama, into the realm of language. We are all familiar with Max Miiller's dictum that there is no language without thought and no thought without language. One will perhaps recall collec- tions of words which failed to express any thought, such, for example, as the attempted " fine writing " of those who have not yet anything to say, or the succession of sounds made by those 4 devastators of the day,' lecturers and preachers who have felt obliged to occupy a certain period of time; but these and all similar cases may, I think, be properly dismissed in the same way that Matthew Arnold dismissed them, by classing them as noise rather than as language. It is less obvious perhaps when we come to the second half of the doctrine, that there is no thought without language ; for in the progress of life one does meet with indications of experience which belong to the region of the inex- pressible. But even here, the inexpressibility im- plies not so much a failure of language as a failure to grasp the experience so definitely as to be able to put it into words. So true is it that thought and language run parallel courses in the mind that the study of comparative philology enables us to dis- 38 EDUCATION AND LIFE cern whether a race is retrogressive or progressive, just as the displacement of the lines in the spectrum of a given star tells us whether the star is receding from the earth or approaching it. We may say then that just as human consciousness is the one experienced reality, so the expression of this reality is to be found in language. Logically speaking we have only three classes of words, nouns and verbs and connectives. For convenience of treatment, the grammars name eight or nine, but the pronoun and exclamation (standing for the noun) and the adjective and article (as modifying its meaning) may properly be included in the one class, just as adverb and verb express a single thought, and preposition and conjunction make the necessary cement. My purpose in going into this detail is to point out that language reduces to the same three fundamentals that one discovers in the physical world. The entire content of this physical world resolves itself on the last analysis into matter and motion and relation, three elements which have their exact counterpart in nouns and verbs and connectives. In the physical world, we never ex- perience these elements separately. It is matter in motion in relation. So in the mind, we have no complete thought which does not include noun and verb, with some implied relation, some of the mathematic of existence. The richness of the intellectual life is measured in part by the fullness of its vocabulary. The work- ingman is said to get along with two or three THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 39 hundred words, while Shakespeare used fifteen thou- sand, and intermediate minds fall between the two fortunes. It is also to be noticed that literary style, the measure of success in language, depends upon the vividness of the physical images which it creates in the mind. The poet of Nature must bring up dis- tinct pictures. The poet of emotion must present situations which stir the emotions. The reporter of events must not tell us that they happened: he must let us see them happening. The most sacred, the most stirring, the most stupendous words of the language fail of effect if they are not so used as to be rich in this sensuous imagery. This parallelism of consciousness and Nature is the common fact which both materialism and ideal- ism are forever called upon to face. The one holds consciousness to be the symbolism of Nature, the reflection of Nature, the reaction which Nature sets up in the human soul. The other simply says that consciousness is the thing which we experience, and that it is wiser therefore to take consciousness as the primal fact, and to regard Nature as the symbol, the reflection, the interpretation of the human spirit. Contrary to popular opinion, it is the first, or realistic, view which presents the greater difficulties. We may quote the much-quoted objection of all the philosophers of idealism that every event in Nature is a manifestation in time, in space, and in causation, and then call attention to the fact that time has no physical analogue, that space has 40 EDUCATION AND LIFE no objective existence, that causation is an intel- lectual perception of relationship. Even putting aside the impossibility of any conception of physi- cal space, we are thrown back on an equal difficulty in trying to image it ; for either it proceeds infi- nitely in all directions, which is unthinkable, or else it is bounded, which is equally unthinkable, for a boundary makes necessary the thought of an equally definite something on the other side of the bound. One meets with no greater success in deal- ing with the ultimates of physical science, with mat- ter and motion. When all is done and said, matter remains explainable only in terms of human expe- rience. Every attempt ends in metaphysics. From the atoms of Lucretius to the vortex-whirls of Lord Kelvin, we find metaphysical units in place of physical ones. But whether we view Nature objectively or sub- jectively we must admit the ceaseless, all-important interplay between man and Nature, and must make Nature an integral, ever-present element of the social purpose. The third element in the philosophic idea, the belief that the world-process is esthetic, involves no antagonism of view between the most divergent lines of philosophy. Even pessimism and opti- mism take common ground. The only confusion is in the time element. Pessimism makes life a pro- cess of escape from a world of present evil into the brightness of a world to come. Optimism makes life a present passing into the larger good. It is THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 41 interesting to note that in ignorant and literal minds, Christianity, as suggested in the last chapter, is a pronounced form of pessimism, and as an his- toric creed must even be so classed, while the best practice is the very opposite. In spite of this convergence of belief, it is quite worth while to approach the matter by two oppo- site paths. Let us begin with the subjective. The one abiding impulse of the human spirit is towards perfection, and the study and pursuit of perfection is culture. It may seem a hard saying in the face of what the human spirit has done, in the face of its architecture, of its mills and shops and houses, in the face of its competitions and in- stitutions, most of all in the face of its men and women and children, that is to say of present society, of the human spirit in its aggregate expres- sion. It may seem a hard saying that all this rawness and hideousness has for its abiding im- pulse the study and pursuit of perfection. But it is a true saying. The failure is due to a failure to see in what perfection consists. It is due to a false point of view. The man who chooses to go to the devil does so because he fancies that the devil has more substantial good to offer him than has his own misshapen conception of deity. This is the story of temptation everywhere. One can imagine an insane person's doing the imperfect thing con- sciously and on purpose, traveling south in the avowed hope of reaching the north, and otherwise defeating his own ends by contradictory means, 42 EDUCATION AND LIFE But one cannot imagine a sane person's doing any- such thing. When one builds a house, the pur- pose is protection and comfort, and perfection would be the largest possible measure of protection and comfort. One may build a leaky roof and incon- venient rooms ; one may make inadequate provisions for light and air and heat ; one may offend the sense of beauty at each and every turn. These things are constantly done through carelessness and mean- ness; but given a certain amount of labor and material, the only defensible grounds for its expend- iture would be the getting of the utmost possible good out of it. And similarly with the less obvious operations, from the smallest to the greatest, up to the very greatest of all, to life itself. The only sane pur- pose in life is the quest of perfection. It is im- possible to deliberately choose a smaller good in preference to a larger good, for choice means the selection of the thing most to be desired. One may mistake the values. One may choose as the greater good what is really the smaller good, but one may not do it consciously. The glory of the imperfect, about which one hears so much, must not be misunderstood. The glorious thing in the imperfect is just its measure of perfection, either actual or potential, and nothing more. To believe anything else is, I think, to look through a glass very darkly. The glory that redeems every life, however mean and squalid, is the glory of the per- fect, and this is what the veriest drunkards and THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 43 harlots are seeking. In moments of clearer vision, moments of remorse, the standards become purified and rationalized, and the soul accuses itself of having followed a false light, of knowingly, deliber- ately choosing the smaller good. And this confu- sion in the time element, — for such it is, — this shifting of the point of view of one moment to the action of a totally different moment has given us the unpsychological doctrine of deliberate sin, and all the hopelessness and impossibility of the doc- trines which group themselves around it. But passing back from the moment of reflection and remorse to the moment of action, one cannot help seeing how utterly inadequate is such an explana- tion. There is deliberate, conscious choice, but from the very nature of our mental processes, it must be the choice of that which seems to us at the moment the thing most to be desired. And this conclusion cannot be escaped unless we are willing to subscribe to the simpler and more extreme case, and believe that a man in our own northern hemisphere may consciously set out for the equator, and as per- sistently travel towards the Great Bear. As soon as one realizes that this conscious choice of evil is psychologically impossible, one realizes also that the moral law is absolutely compelling. One may not see the right, and while still seeing it, do the wrong. It is impossible. One may see the right, and then afterwards do the wrong, like the man who saw his image in the glass, and forthwith looked away and forgot what manner of man he was. 44 EDUCATION AND LIFE One may choose between a present pleasure and a future benefit, and choose very badly from our own point of view; but in order that the choice may be made in favor of the present, the pleasure must assume dimensions quite beyond those of the declined benefit. This view does appear at first sight distinctly appalling. The universal charity and toleration which it makes necessary seem to undermine that wholesome public condemnation from which so much good is always expected to come. But some- how the good does not arrive in any very large mea- sure, and the gentler method of dealing with evil- doers, the method of pity and enlightenment rather than of condemnation, has been recommended by no less a teacher than Jesus. This belief that the moral law is absolutely com- pelling, that a man may not look upon the right and do the wrong, reduces the really significant world-problems to one, — to the problem of educa- tion. If knowledge and virtue be one ; if ignorance and vice be one, then surely the thing which a man would desire very earnestly for himself and desire for others must be that perfect knowledge which would lead to the perfect life. And so I must believe that among thoughtful people the pursuit of culture, that is, the study of perfection, must be the conscious purpose in life; and that among careless people the pursuit of perfection must still be the real purpose in life, however it may be obscured by a failure to see in what perfec- THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 45 tion consists, and by a failure to adapt the means to the ends. The impulse towards perfection is a blind impulse on the part of the great mass of man- kind. The mission of the social teacher is to make this impulse conscious, and to make it intelligent. That power which makes for righteousness, that is, for excellence and beauty, is in reality the onrush of a world-process which is essentially esthetic. This brings us very naturally to a consideration of that other more objective path of approach which science offers under the name of evolution. Were we quite to ignore the philosophical argument in- dicated in the first chapter and the psychological argument outlined in this, and limit ourselves strictly to the study of organic nature, we should still observe that however unconscious the actors in the struggle for life, the victory would still be with the more perfect organism. The process of natural selection goes on working quite regardless of the consciousness or unconsciousness of its ma- terial. The unfit, the deficient, the vicious, are eliminated by the operation of a process more in- exorable than the sweep of human law ; for unfitness and deficiency and vice are only general terms for those qualities and actions which lead to unfavor- able, that is, to destructive, results. Our own hu- man, conscious morality is simply the lesson we have learned from the experience of life. Things are right or wrong, not through the indwelling of some abstract, magician principle which might have been otherwise had God so willed, but for the simpler 46 EDUCATION AND LIFE and more divine reason that they do or do not lead to the furtherance of human welfare and happi- ness. When this is recognized, and men lead the glad life of an intelligent morality, they have the great reward which has ever been the portion of those nations which have cultivated intelligence and loved righteousness. It has been the same, back through all the unconscious stages of the world-life, back through unreflecting man and the brutes and the plants. Before man came, and the principle of human usage intervened to change the course of evolution by introducing a new stan- dard of fitness, before man came, each inch of ground was occupied by that plant which under the given conditions of soil and sunshine, tempera- ture and moisture, could produce the sturdiest and most vigorous offspring. Before man came, the battle of the brutes gave the victory, not to the strongest, not to the swiftest, but to the wisest and most cunning. And when man came, and entered into possession of a heritage his by right of greater intelligence and nobler worth, beast and plant came under the sway of a new standard of selec- tion, — the standard of human usableness. Mam- moth and mastodon, lion and tiger, serpent and scorpion, have passed, or are passing. In their stead one finds camel and horse, cattle and sheep, poultry and game. In the fields and gardens, one finds the same transformation, the same giving over of the world to the things of use and beauty. In the human world, even before consciousness came, THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 47 the world-process moved on resistlessly towards per- fection. In spite of local lapses, in spite of retro- grade eruptions of force, we see the steady elimina- tion of evil, the steady growth of good. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, human mon- sters were no longer possible. With the progress of that century, the world came into consciousness of its own destiny, — of the destiny of develop- ment. And now, at the opening of the twentieth century, with whom does potential victory rest? Surely a man with his eyes even half open must answer that it rests with those nations who are the most wholesome, the most intelligent, the most moral, — in a word, with those nations the most enamored of perfection. And in the nations them- selves, victory rests with those individuals who are strongest with the strength of the spirit. The tide of human life rises the highest in the men and women who are most highly evolved, who possess the greatest human wealth of strength and beauty and accomplishment and love, who most perfectly adapt means to ends, who select life-giving, con- serving ends, the men and women who have the power of benignant personality. We have a deca- dent class. It is quite true. But the mark of death rests upon it. We may pity, but we need feel no alarm. The red wine of life is in no danger of turning sour, for it is held in another chalice. Two things there are that make straight for degen- eration : one is idleness, and the other is disregard of the social welfare. But happily both of these 48 EDUCATION AND LIFE qualities are self-corrective, for they are both self- destructive. Idleness leads to illness, and social disregard means the withdrawal of that sympathy and good-will on the part of one's fellows, without which one cannot enjoy radiant, buoyant life. As an objective, scientific, unconscious opera- tion, evolution still declares, with philosophy and psychology, that the world-process is esthetic. The social purpose which flows out of these three elements of the philosophic idea, the unity of man, the interplay between man and Nature, the esthetic process of the world-life, is so plain that he who runs may read. The social purpose is a humanized world, composed of men and women and children, sound and accomplished and beautiful in body; intelligent and sympathetic in mind ; reverent in spirit ; living in an environment rich in the largest elements of use and beauty ; and occupying them- selves with the persistent study and pursuit of per- fection. In a word, the social purpose is human wealth. There is but one interest in life, and that is the human interest. All that makes for human wealth, for the sound, strong, beautiful, accom- plished organism ; for an enlarged and rationalized conception of Nature ; for the unfolding and per- fecting of the human spirit, — all this is light ; and all that makes against human wealth, however sanctioned by law and custom, platitudes and pre- judice, — all this is darkness. Education is simply the practical process by which we realize this social purpose and acquire THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 49 human wealth. It is a process, therefore, which is very far from being limited to the schoolroom. It covers rather the entire twenty-four hours, the entire year, the entire lifetime. The term edu- cation will be used in this comprehensive sense throughout the following inquiry. While it will be assumed that no man is wholly virtuous who is imperfect, it will also be assumed with equal insist- ence that an educational process is moral which creates in the individual the largest attainable measure of perfection. It follows, of course, that the process is immoral if it falls below the best. It is worth remarking that most of our present schemes of education are immoral. Human wealth may be pursued in two ways : either for quality, as when we try to produce a highly endowed, superior individual ; or for quan- tity, as when we try by commonplace and partial methods to make the masses a trifle more human. One is the method of aristocracy ; the other, of elementary democracy. Both methods are poor, for neither satisfies the social purpose. The social purpose is frankly avaricious of the utmost pos- sible amount of good fortune ; and this divine greed can only be satisfied when, as a society, we deliberately and consciously resolve to make the very best out of every individual, to make him highly endowed, to make him superior even to the full measure of his capacity. A nation which fails to do this fails to realize the social purpose, and must still be accounted barbarous. It has not yet 50 EDUCATION AND LIFE come into conscious harmony with the great esthetic world-process. Looking over the earth to-day one sees a goodly and an increasing company of de- lightful, cultivated, social, human people ; but one does not see a single nation that is other than bar- barous. Even America, the greatest of them all, is not yet social, has not yet thrown herself unre- servedly into the pursuit of human wealth. We make a fetish of the public school with its cheap information and shop-keeping accomplishments, but we have not yet conceived of human life as a moral and esthetic revelation of the universe, nor of education as a practical process of entering into this tremendous possession. Even the bounty of Nature, the indisputable heritage of the collective nation, her fields and forests, oil-wells and coal- mines, mineral deposits and stone quarries, water- power and roadways, — all this is handed over to the crude ministration of profit, and the majority of America's children are reduced to the position of wage-takers and servants, with little time or strength or heart for the carrying out of the true social purpose, the pursuit of the higher human wealth. The bulk of our laws have to do with merchandise and real estate. The few that con- cern themselves with man are mainly prohibitive, the things that he may not do. The realization of the social purpose demands a more positive ideal than this. It does not mean restrictions, restraints, the subordination of one class of citizens to an- other. It means liberation, freedom of motion, THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 51 choice of occupation, enlargement of opportunity, the absence of all restraint save that imposed by the equal good of the neighbor and the perfecting of the self. The present is a time of transition. The newer ideal of the social purpose is stirring the hearts of men. The old abuses are being called in question. The larger life and the larger human wealth are being canvassed as possibilities of realization. It is a time peculiarly full of hope and promise. One may not deceive one's self into thinking that the individual life can be idealized while the national life remains unsocial, for it is a matter of social complicity. In its broadest sense the ideal social type is a perfect human life, and every activity of one's neighbor or of one's self which makes against this ideal perfection must be counted as anti-social. The unity of man makes it impossible to reach perfection in any one aspect without covering all aspects. The social purpose is only realized by the idealizing and perfecting of all that concerns daily human living. As a practical problem, it has to do with a man's occupation, with his food, with his dress, with his dwelling, with his health, with his organic power, with his family, with his friends, with his pleasures, with his thoughts, with his emo- tions, — in a word, with every element that touches or makes up his life. The same unity which char- acterizes our view of his physiological constitution must characterize our view of him as an individual 52 EDUCATION AND LIFE in action. All elements in the daily life which make against human wealth are rigidly excluded, and there is no compromise permissible. Such a view closes many of the conventional doors. One may do nothing which makes one less of a man, less alive, less clever, less honest, less happy, less beau- tiful, — nothing, in fact, which makes one less com- plete and less universal. One may participate in no activity which involves the degradation of one's self or the degradation of another. The feeling that life is something very sacred and very beau- tiful, and that it may not lightly be squandered, would lead one to scrutinize even those occupa- tions which society has stamped with approval. Every performance may be looked at from two distinct points of view : that of the thing done and that of the doer. These are the two terms neces- sary to bring the thing about. We may call the one point of view the non-human, and the other the human. It seldom happens that the outlook in any performance is strictly one or the other. It usually involves a little of both. An industrial performance from the standpoint of the market is strictly non-human, for it has to do only with the thing produced. An educational performance, from the standpoint of the philosopher, is strictly human, for it has to do solely with the agent, the doer. But industrial performances are more and more coming under the eye of the social philosopher, and are introducing the human element. In the same way educational performances are coming THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 53 into touch with the market, and are submitting to the non-human standards of measurement. Both industry and education may pass quite over to the opposite extreme. In the hands of Tolstoy and William Morris work becomes a human perform- ance, whose value depends upon its effect on the worker, upon the joy and development it brings him, and secondarily upon the thing produced. So, in the hands of the commercialists, education ceases to be a human process, and is evaluated solely by the utility of what is or may be produced by the workers. In the matter of the professions even, the appli- cation of this human yardstick brings much into question. One finds many cases of sweet, disin- terested service, but one also finds the hungry profit-taker with scant hold on the vision of per- fection, and a keen appetite for pottage. The ostensible purpose of the professional life is to render social service, and this requires that the ser- vice itself be true, and the server himself be sound. If you accept the unity of man, if you believe in perfection as a worthy end of human endeavor, then no service is possible which harms your body, which occupies your mind with petty, ignoble matters, which makes your heart less genuine and sympa- thetic. A perversion or stunting of any side of your nature is an inroad upon the whole. Only that service is possible for you and good for the community which leaves you at the end a truer, sounder, more wholesome man. 54 EDUCATION AND LIFE As Emerson somewhere says, who cares what you do, if you spoil yourself in the doing. Most of the calls to a false social service have as their bait the involved profit. I have heard that for everything we do, we have two reasons ; one is a good reason, and the other is the real reason. Take away the fees and how many sound healthy minds would be willing to spend their days in an atmosphere of preventable disease and uncleanness ; how many men with good red blood in their veins would be willing to waste their lives in stores and counting-rooms ; how many lawyers would squabble over doubtful rights ; how many clergymen would preach polite sermons to people who do not listen ; how many teachers would consent to teach under conditions which they know to be harmful to both themselves and the children ? But the fees do not make it right so to waste a life. If we turn to the productive occupations, to farming, mining, and manufacturing, the impossi- bilities are quite as numerous. The home farm is still beautiful, where it is not made a drudgery by poverty, or a mere commercial venture by greed. But the factory farms of the South and West are not beautiful. Humanly speaking, they are hideous. The great harvests are gathered by men who can have no love for the soil and no interest in the bread which comes off of it, for the conditions pre- clude love and interest. The whole operation is for profit, and this not for the workers themselves, but for the men and women who exploit their labor. THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 55 The majority of people have a very strong feeling against fortunes made in the liquor traffic, because the results to both bodies and minds are so ob- viously unsocial ; but the same sensitiveness does not extend to the taking of large dividends and profits from industries and enterprises which are gathered none the less surely at the cost of human degradation and poverty of spirit and hopelessness. Modern society still carries out its private purposes at the expense of human life. The trouble with these multitudinous evil-doers is that they have no restraining sense of a high social purpose more ab- solute than any mere individual convenience. To these deaths you and I consent, and we consent quite as thoroughly to the unspeakable degrada- tion of our large cities, to the death of innocence, of health, of happiness, of hope, of all that makes human life better than the life of the beasts, we consent to all this, when we choose as our occupation any operation which gathers its profits from the forced labor of other people, which exploits human life. We are false to our belief in the unity of man and his impulse towards perfection when we accept any social ideal which involves physical, in- tellectual, emotional harm to any member of the social group, which withholds a wholesome life of body and mind and heart from the lowest and meanest of them all. This brief criticism of occupation is radical, pos- sibly severe, but it is unavoidable as a logical con- clusion from the philosophic idea, and furthermore 56 EDUCATION AND LIFE it should be borne in mind that it is no criticism on the human actors themselves. They are all striving practically after a perfection such as they see. The manufacturer who works for low wages and large output and high profits does so because these things represent to him the perfection of industrial opera- tions. The trade's union, striking for higher wages and ignoring the squalor and hideousness of life in a factory town, does so because for it high wages constitute the perfection of successful work. The merchant, buying his wares in the cheapest market and selling them in the dearest, believes that profit constitutes the perfection in commerce. The specu- lator, watching social movements and needs, and appropriating to his private purse values uncon- sciously created by society and belonging to it, does so because this sort of cleverness constitutes for him perfection in business. It must be remem- bered in dealing with these enemies of the true social purpose, that the same impulse towards per- fection stirs in them as in the men of clearer in- sight. The way out of the difficulty is not the way of denunciation, much less the way of violence, but the way of enlightenment, — " Come, let us reason together." It is also to be remembered that while some classes suffer more severely than others under the present imperfect social order, it is nevertheless true that all suffer. The burden falls the heaviest upon the working class, the proletariat ; but as this class is by all odds numerically the strongest, its misfortunes are due to its own ignorance much THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 57 more than to the deliberate selfishness of those more fortunately placed. In a country of almost uni- versal male suffrage, the path of the true social purpose is open, just as soon as the majority is suf- ficiently enlightened to desire it. It is impossible, in speaking of society as it now exists, to avoid the use of the word " class." No amount of political oratory can conceal the fact that even in the Great Kepublic we have as dis- tinct social classes as exist under the oldest mon- archies. That is to say, we have not achieved democracy. Within a class there is ample room for every human interest and occupation, but be- tween classes there can never be anything but essential antagonism. The social purpose, there- fore, which flows out of the philosophic idea can only be realized by the suppression of class dis- tinctions, and the glad 'passage of society into a single class bent on the perfecting of every indi- vidual, and on the enrichment of Nature, that is, the environment. Furthermore, this social pur- pose is international, and when realized would mean the federation of the nations. For the per- fecting of the individual life and the beautifying of the individual environment we want the whole world to minister. For the growth of the human spirit, we want a sympathy that shall stop at no political boundaries, but shall be as broad as the world itself. The absence of class and national boundaries between the children of men is a most important element in the social purpose, and it 58 EDUCATION AND LIFE must be clearly emphasized because the educa- tional process by which that purpose is to be realized must always be touched by this spirit of the universal brotherhood. Each century states its Utopia. Though the dream were never realized, it were still worth the dreaming, for no vision of a fairer earth leaves man quite where it found him. But it is notice- able, and the occasion of boundless hope, that succeeding Utopias come nearer to the actual world, and spring increasingly out of human experience. No Utopia can be imposed from without. It must grow up within the human heart itself, and not in one heart alone, but in the very heart of society. It is therefore the result of education, of that pro- cess which brings a man out of the limited world of the primitive savage instincts into the larger world of the enlightened emotions. It is impossi- ble to overestimate the importance of founding our system of education upon a true social purpose. The outer life is but the expression of the inner spirit. Education is an ideal adventure. If it can be made true to the social purpose, then the social purpose is realized ; for the obstacles to the realization of that purpose are not found in any outer events, but solely in current public opinion. But one must have patience. To make over our educational system into conformity with the social ideal is not the work of a day, but of a generation. To redeem society is the work of succeeding gen- erations. Meanwhile what may a man do, upon THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 59 whose heart this ideal of a social purpose has laid firm hold ? The answer is simple : he must be true to his philosophy. He may do anything which makes for the health of the body, anything which means fresh, pure air ; wholesome food and drink ; suitable dress ; adequate exercise ; manly work of hand and eye and muscle, — anything which means increased health and sensitiveness and power, in- creased beauty and usableness and delight. He may do anything which makes for the health of the mind, anything which means sanity, alertness, relia- bility, anything which means increased flexibility and order and strength. He may do anything which makes for the health of the spirit, anything which gives it greater play and truthfulness and power, anything which adds to the reverent delight of life. But as this separation of man into the members of a triple alliance is a mere convenience of speech, one is bound by the requirements of the higher life to consider as equally sacred the health of the body and the mind and the spirit. To satisfy the law, one must do more than simply omit to profane the health of the person, one must work for its positive betterment. It is equally imperative that one may consent to no mean and shabby environment. One must sur- round one's self with wholesomeness and beauty. The parallelism between consciousness and Nature makes this insistence upon convenience of arrange- ment and respect for form and color more than a mere matter of taste. It makes it a matter of 60 EDUCATION AND LIFE moral obligation. A man's surroundings are not accidental. They are a part of himself, and must likewise be chastened and purified. An ugly room, badly lighted, poorly ventilated, inade- quately heated, must be regarded as morally repre- hensible, whether provided for one's self or for somebody else. It is the projection of an evil thought, and, entering into consciousness, lowers the level* of human life. This view of Nature makes architecture and the fine arts, music and the drama, landscape gardening and home-build- ing, roadways and bridges, an expression of the social life of a community, and therefore open to that more comprehensive esthetic judgment which includes morality as well as questions of form and color and sound. Nor is it sufficient merely to wish for beautiful things ; one must know them and attain them. This requirement, also, must find adequate expression in the educational pro- cess. Furthermore, one must remember that in the world-process the stress is laid upon the best. To at- tain less than the best that is possible is unesthetic, that is, immoral. Life is not an affair for any modesty of purpose. That is a shabby bit of lazi- ness. Life is an adventure quite worthy of the superlative. To have the strongest and most beau- tiful body, the most intelligent and most accom- plished mind, the most reverent and most sympa- thetic spirit ; to wear the most pleasing clothes ; to inhabit the most beautiful house ; to work in THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 61 the most charming garden ; to produce the most admirable wares ; to establish with others the most ideal relations, —this is the formula for daily life into which the philosophic idea literally translates itself. To carry out this formula is to attain hap- piness for the self and also to add to the happiness of every other soul whom such a life touches. It is a good motto : " Le meilleur c'est assez bon pour moiP It is this attempt to translate the philosophic idea into a practical daily programme for the in- dividual man which throws out so many currently accepted occupations as quite unworthy of the human spirit. It does so because the point of view is changed, changed from the thing done to the men and women who do it. The ministry looks to the saving of other souls, not to the all-round, wholesome life of the minister; the law looks to the so-called sacred rights of property, not to the sacred, human rights of the lawyer; education looks to the process, not to the sturdy, manly life of the teacher ; farming looks to bread and meat, not to the soundness of the farmer ; manu- facturing has its eye solely on the output and the profit, not on the delight of the worker or the salvation of the profit-taker ; and, finally, com- merce, more shameless than the rest, has pro- claimed with the utmost frankness that business is business, and that its votaries are not in it for their health, but for profit. There might be something noble in this sacri- 62 EDUCATION AND LIFE fice of the self if it made a veritable contribu- tion to the social good, but that is impossible. The social good is not an abstract happiness, a fund of unexperienced emotion. It is the sum of individual good fortune. Furthermore, a group willing to accept the sacrifice of one of its mem- bers has by that very act made good fortune im- possible, for it has robbed itself of reverence and sympathy. It is true that the opposite doctrine is commonly preached. Resignation, renunciation, sacrifice, contentment, the whole catalogue of as- cetic abdications are urged by those who have never caught sight of the splendor of life ; but it is a coward doctrine, and has in it no element of the divine. The problem of humanizing life, for that is what translating the philosophic idea into a social pur- pose means, is difficult in this, that it involves a turning one's back upon the conventional solutions. But the problem is easy when this is once done. The obstacles to a complete, sturdy, wholesome life are not material; they are mental. They are to be found in those false ideas which dominate life like so many post-hypnotic suggestions. The con- flict is to be fought out in the spirit. It is there that victories are lost and won. I fancy that any one looking upon the Europe of the Middle Ages would have said that the most persistent fact was the feudal strongholds which were then the seats of power. But the ideas which consented to that order of things failed. To-day THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 63 those strongholds are in ruins. At the present mo- ment, the most persistent fact in the outer world is apparently the large cities, and those who have builded them look to their indefinite expansion. But these cities rest upon the idea of trade, upon the supremacy of the market, not upon the idea of human perfectibility. When the ideas which con- sent to this order of things fail, then will be seen the passing of the city. As the need for a whole- some, complete life makes itself felt in the human spirit, the idea strengthens and the obstacles fade. I say this, not as an abstract proposition, but as the plain experience of a multitude of earnest lives. One must work with one's hands, one must work with one's mind, one must keep a hot fire in the heart, — red blood, swift thought, warm heart, — these are the content of the social purpose. It is organic wealth, and of such wealth there is enough for all men. Habit is a great tyrant. The most of us are so far removed from the all-round life of bodily, men- tal, and emotional activity, that it presents itself to the imagination as a distinct hardship. Yet a life of diversified work is rewarded by greater power all along the line. The perspective of things gets straightened out. One will not slay cattle and sheep, and, red-handed, prepare them for one's own table ; one will not arrange a many course dinner, and then sit down and eat it ; one will not build and over-furnish a great house, and then tax one's self personally with its care ; one will not elaborate 64 EDUCATION AND LIFE one's own wardrobe, and spend one's days in laun- dry work and mending. But it is well to ask prac- tical questions, Who does all these things for us ? Does it contribute to their well-being? Does it make for perfection ? As one's imagination plays about these compli- cated tasks, and transfers them to the self, they become less and less possible, until finally they are repudiated for others as they would be for the self. The way out is very open and clear. It is the way of simple, rational living. One may spread one's own table with bread and wine, and sit down joyfully to the feast. One may care for one's own simple home, and take delight in handling objects of real beauty. One may prepare the simple dress which best becomes a beautiful body. These sim- ple tasks of every-day life — food and shelter and clothing — may be made to minister to the health of the body and to the delight of the spirit. When such tasks are shared with those one loves, with equal members of one's family, not with servants and hirelings, the delight in wholesome bodily ac- tion is touched with the heart delight of dear comradeship. Surely, every one remembers the unaffected joy with which Homer's people, king's sons and queen's daughters, shared in the common toil of life, and how truly they idealized it. We lose immeasurably by making these daily home tasks complicated and hideous, and then turn- ing them over to a class of people whom, by the very magnitude of the tasks, we hold remorselessly THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 65 to the lower life. Many who are warm advocates of an eight-hour day keep their own servants busy for almost twice that length of time. As a lover of perfection, one may not consent to any tasks which cannot be idealized, cannot be made sources of genuine joy, and one may not consent to them for others any more than for the self. It was a distinct human loss when we turned so much of our work over to machines and to unin- terested wage-earners. And it was a tremendous esthetic loss. We are coming to realize the poverty of our cheap machine-made goods, our chairs and tables and carpets and wall-papers and the rest. Middle-class houses are absolutely wearisome in the dull uniformity of their ugliness. It may be that Grand Rapids can turn out train-loads of quar- tered oak furniture much cheaper than you and I could, but that is not the whole of the question. The cheap thing gives pleasure but once ; this is when you pay the bill. It exacts compound pay- ment every time it enters into human consciousness. One would not for a moment wish to lose the immense benefits of machinery. But one would wish to withdraw it from the vulgar service of profit, and enter it once for all in the distinguished service of human esthetics. One would especially wish to see machinery applied in the performance of those daily tasks of necessity, the preparation of foods and fabrics, and withheld from all those more permanent tasks where hand-work confers individ- uality and beauty. 66 EDUCATION AND LIFE The unit life, striving to act in harmony with an esthetic world-process, demands each day a gener- ous amount of physical exercise, demands a sound, health-abounding body, and keen, well-trained senses. One half of the working day is not too much to give to bodily work. If you give less you hardly contribute your share towards the common need, and you fail to receive your share of that vital quickening which comes from having a live body. A strong man cannot tire himself mentally by half a day's work. If his task be self -chosen and well-chosen, he can get nothing out of it but pure pleasure and human profit. He will do his best work. The brain-worker, on the verge of nervous prostration, pale, bloodless, cold, does nothing quite worth the doing. The morbid, insane, degenerate things are done by these people, men and women of sickly life and coward habit. Art work can only be done by artists. The poet who prepared to write his masterpiece by first trying to make his own life a poem is the man who has best defined poetry ; for poetry, Milton says, is simple, sensu- ous, passionate. And as poetry is the highest ex- pression of our humanity in art, so the genuinely poetic life must be its highest expression in action. The life which is unaffectedly simple, which is sensuous in the rich, pure way that Milton uses the term, which is touched with wholesome human passion, is precisely the social type which repre- sents the translation of the philosophic idea into practice. THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 67 The bodily life becomes fine, the mental life becomes fruitful, just in proportion as they are touched with sound emotion. It is the wholesome human passion which makes the simple, sensuous life beautiful. It is the absence of this passion, this energizing play of emotion, which makes work drudgery, and all life dull and stupid. It is a crime for those of us who seek the perfect life to consent to any occupation which does not engage our love and interest. Daily life is thin and poor and mechanical when it is untouched with emo- tion. It seems to me a source of national poverty that so many of our people should work without emotion and without interest. One could serve the state with sincere passion, and perhaps our industrial workers will some time have that op- portunity ; but one can bring no passion into the service of the individual or corporate profit-taker. To one enamored of the perfect life, it is quite im- possible to accept hire and to put into the hands of another anything so altogether precious as one's own time and power. One must be the master of these, or one is no longer a man. As Wagner ex- presses it, " Without a strong, inner necessity, nothing true or genuine can ever come to pass." The transcendental elements in the philosophic idea do not change the quality of the social pur- pose, but, by adding to its sentiment, add a tre- mendous emphasis to its intensity and power. And this is precisely what one would expect. The immediate elements, as we have seen, spring di- 68 EDUCATION AND LIFE rectly out of the experience of the moment. The transcendental elements rest upon the same expe- rience by the projection of the unfailing reason- ableness of all this experience into the less imme- diate territory of the inner life. Consequently the transcendental elements simply heighten the impulses of the daily life. If a man believe him- self to be immortal ; if he feel, however remotely, that he may claim kinship with the hosts of heaven ; if he realizes, in this conception of the Perfect One, the promise of an infinite progressiveness, there must come to him a consciousness of his own high destiny so vivid and so compelling that he will instinctively reject the meaner and shabbier plans of life, — the shop-keeping and sharp bar- gaining, the speculating and the pettifogging, the trifling and idling, the oppressing and exploiting, — and will, as a man should, with all the force that is in him, devote himself to the study and pursuit of that perfection which is the true goal of the humanized life. CHAPTER III THE SOURCE OF POWER The educational process by which the social purpose, the splendor of life, is realized, is an inner process, a changed way of looking at life, a redemp- tion, and must be brought about not by any outer pressure, but by the growth and outreaching of the spirit itself. Compulsory training is a possible process. Compulsory education is utterly impos- sible, as impossible as any other form of salvation by compulsion. The kingdom of heaven may not be taken by violence. If education is to be a practical process, is to succeed, it must act through the channels of the inner life, and must reach the mainspring of human action, the very source of power. This is in reality the most important of the many details which must be met by the edu- cator when he comes to turn his predetermined social purpose into a daily process. I propose, therefore, to devote this chapter to an inquiry into the sources of conduct, developing some of the suggestions contained in the last chap- ter. Such an inquiry has a value quite aside from its educational importance, for human motives enter into all of the daily concerns of life and determine the validity and timeliness of all of our art-forms. 70 EDUCATION AND LIFE The study of mental processes is a current in- terest not at all confined to professed psycholo- gists. Life is made up of kaleidoscopic human relations, and every successful man, whether along the lower walks of the market or the higher walks of human enterprise, has consciously or uncon- sciously adjusted his task to the working of these processes. This popular interest in mind study satisfies itself at first with a mere search for what is curious and diverting, and even here the harvest is so great that one wonders it should have so long awaited the gathering. At present we are all familiar with the more striking of these results. We have had our attention called to the curious connection between the counting process and an individual number form ; to the devices by which we remember dates and sequences ; to the subtle connection between color and musical sounds ; to the association between personality and colors ; to the imagery which odors offer ; and to the hundred and one parallels by which we carry on the pro- cesses of thought. We have read Galton, and have learned — perhaps to our surprise, perhaps in confirmation of our own painful experience — that few men can very clearly bring up the face of their mother, or indeed of any one whom they have loved very deeply. Memory supplies such a mul- titude of pictures that we are not able to compose them into one face, and the image is blurred. Casual acquaintances, people to whom we are quite indifferent, march through the picture gal- THE SOURCE OF POWER 71 lery of the mind with a distinctness which fairly mocks the longed-for shadow faces. This might he developed into a method by which the doubtful lover could distinguish between love and fancy. Other curious instances fall under one's own obser- vation. Thus, one man reports that the diagram by which he succeeded in keeping the Lord's Prayer in a very youthful memory was in reality the path of progress from the trundle-bed in the nursery to the haven of the mother's room : her pillow and " Amen " always fell together. Again, it chanced one day in turning over an old atlas that he came to a very dreadful picture of the Aztecs offering up human sacrifices. He hurried on and soon forgot the matter, but when he tried to go to sleep that night the picture came back in all its dreadfulness, and with it an overwhelming sense of the cruelty of the world. He was conscious of an appalling, unendurable blackness, a blackness which he could only overcome by bringing into his mental field of vision a flood of golden light. This flood crept out of the northwest, advanced, wavered, retreated, and then, with one magnificent sweep, devoured the blackness, and he was able to go to sleep. Others report that they picture the weeks as a series of recurrent waves, and it is quite com- mon to distinguish the days of the week by differ- ences of color or texture. It is also a common experience that certain writers are not readable because their sentences fail to produce distinct visual images. 72 EDUCATION AND LIFE Many of these results have no particular impor- tance in the intellectual life, except perhaps to stim- ulate a deeper interest. Idle curiosity gives place in turn to a genuine concern to get at the heart of the connection between thought and action and so discover the motive power of the human drama. One best proceeds by scrutinizing human perform- ance in general. One cannot be in the world any great length of time without coming to distinguish in a broad way between two classes of people, those who are alive and those who are not, the live souls and the dead souls. The live souls are the people of power, the people who are and who do. The dead souls are the people of weakness, the apathetic mortals who are nothing and who do nothing. The difference is very real, the difference between red blood and yellow. There are all shades and degrees between the people of power and the people of weakness, but the extreme types are sufficient to point the lesson. On the whole, even an optimist must be op- pressed by the realization that among children there are many live souls, among older people many dead souls. In the little ones, there is still unity, the sound healthy body, the unencumbered mind, the unrepulsed heart. Their instincts are primi- tive and simple. What they want, they want very much. They take direct means, for their interests are very real. These qualities make childhood very lovable and very sacred. The death of a beautiful THE SOURCE OF POWER 73 child is a public calamity ; the earth for the mo- ment is less fair. This reality and aliveness, this human personal power, make the comradeship of children delightful. They live in an atmosphere which silently reproves the less wholesome atmo- sphere of the adult world. One notices that the most beautiful men and women are the happiest when they are with children ; that they seek them out, and that they are forever manifesting their af- finity by an equal simplicity and directness. That was a very penetrating observation, — " Except ye become as little children." The kingdom is not one of profit and overwork and nervous worry and com- petition and human slavery ; not a world of blood- less bodies and narrow minds and cold hearts. It is the kingdom of participation and delight, the kingdom of the radiant life. And into this fair kingdom only the little ones may come, and those who are like the little ones in simplicity and sin- cerity. In what, .must we believe, does this power consist ? If we go straight from the child's world of the kingdom into the adult world, we perceive a great contrast, and it manifests itself on all sides. If we stand at the door of the church, and watch the men and women going in and coming out, how many of them are saved? If we walk the length of the street and peer into the faces of the passers-by, how many of them are alive ? If we go into the mar- kets among the employed ones, and regard their carriage, and the clothes they wear, and their habit 74 EDUCATION AND LIFE of speech and thought, how deeply are we com- forted? If we pass in and pass out among the workers, among the men and among the women, and inquire into the secret of their lives, how many of them are free ? If we go among the professed teachers, the clergy and the schoolmasters, how many of them are sources of light ? In this older world, one finds the touch of death and of ill-con- cealed endurance. One finds the apathetic doing of distasteful tasks, the false activity of dead souls, the absence of glorious and radiant life. It is useless to point to their works, to the churches they have reared, to the houses they have builded, to the shops they have cluttered. It avails nothing that their office structures are very high and their bridges very long and their factories very big and their mines very deep. It is not impressive, the speed with which they come and go on their unworthy errands. It is no great matter that they can call the price of pork from New York to Chicago, and that soon the same unimportant news may be shouted all the way to San Francisco. None of these things are in themselves admirable. They bear the present stamp of a deficient humanity, for they are prompted by individual profit and not by the social good. They are not the source of power, not even the evidence of power. In what, must we believe, does this human weak- ness consist ? It may be that we are setting too high a standard, that it is too much to ask that the world shall in THE SOURCE OF POWER 75 all of its aspects be beautiful aud fine. I do not myself believe this. But perhaps if we turn to the gentler side of life, to social intercourse and arts and letters, to human performance generally on its less commercial side, we shall find the power which is lacking in the adult world of the market. And this in part turns out to be true. In every com- munity there are groups of earnest people, beauti- ful men and beautiful women, meeting together for noble purposes, saying the thing that is sound and true, doing the thing that is generous and fine. There are pictures painted, so full of emotion that one feels one's own pulse-beat quicken in looking at them ; there are houses builded which breathe the very spirit of the home ; there are poems and es- says and stories which report truly the inner life and its aspirations ; there is much being done ade- quate in every way to keep alive in the heart the sentiment of gratitude and hope. And yet, even on this professedly human side of life, one feels the chill of dead souls, the absence of the radiant life. It is a world too full of heart- burn and disappointment and juiceless function, too deficient in disinterested human service. Social pleasure is transformed into social duty. Social usage has its phrase-book of polite lies which pass current among apparently good people. And so, too, the high purpose of art and letters and music makes failure along these lines the more appalling. There is surely something significant that our art is so largely exotic, that our students of design are 76 EDUCATION AND LIFE copying Japanese prints, that our houses are filled with reproductions of the old masters, that our architecture is never of the period, but always of the past, that our few old buildings have a beauty unapproached by all the lavishment of a rich man's palace, that music speaks to our hearts of a far distant world, that the most glorious poetry is never thought of as a picture of the actual. Surely there is some grave reason for all this failure in present living, all this banishment of the beautiful dreams of the human spirit to a region of unreality. Why is it that we have so much partial death, so little of the full and radiant life ? These are hard questions, ungracious questions, some of them, but if we could answer them, we should be on the road to making this a surpass- ingly fair world, for knowing the source of power we could command power. In education, the reali- zation of the source of power is the beginning of wisdom. The answer is near at hand. The source of power is in human emotion, in human desire, in the hu- man heart. The children of men get what they work for, and in just the measure that they work for it, just the measure of their desire. The source of weakness is the absence of human sentiment and emotion, the absence of the inner necessity. Psychology, history, poetry, art, the events of the moment, all unite in testifying that this is the true answer. Human power is not a thing of the market, a thing to be bought and sold. It THE SOURCE OF POWER 77 is not a product to be manufactured by any me- chanical process. It is a growth ; it is something organic. The modern human sciences lay tremendous stress upon the health of the body. As the organ- ism in which the world-drama is to be played out, it must be adequate to its high purposes. And further, if the drama is to be a magnificent one, the motive power back of it all, the emotional im- pulse, must be strong and compelling. The ma- chinery of human action is found to be startlingly direct. What we want to do, we do or try to do. What we do not want to do, we neither do nor have the power of doing. One cannot too much insist upon it, that just this seemingly baffling and capricious thing, human desire, is the main- spring of all human action. It must be enlisted in all our enterprises, for otherwise our enter- prises fail. This all becomes very clear when we regard what the world is at any moment doing. It is true that vast numbers of people seem to be doing what they do not want to do, and multitudes of them complainingly say so. But it is impossible. Under any given set of circumstances, the thing that we do is the thing that we elect to do. Other- wise the muscular system would fail to act, for the motor nerves would bring no command. Even from a materialistic point of view, the world-drama is first rehearsed in thought, and subsequent his- tory is but the projection of thought into action. 78 EDUCATION AND LIFE And the prompter is the human heart, is human desire. We may regret the given set of circum- stances ; regret the narrow range of possible alter- natives ; we may wish with all our soul that circumstances were different ; but this must not blind us to the fact that things being as they are, we all do the thing that is least distasteful to us, that is, the thing that we want to do. By offering bitter alternatives, we can force men to do bitter things : Socrates voluntarily drinks the hemlock. There are two ways, then, of influencing human conduct. One is to offer limited alternatives, of which the least distasteful offers just enough hap- piness-producing quality to set it into motion. But compulsion of this sort leads to no good result. It is the method of absolutism. Educational and social work must proceed by the second path, not by narrowing the possibilities and so forcing re- sults, but by offering a free field and then enlisting desire on the side that experience has shown to be the best. To be psychological in the treatment of social problems, we must set ourselves to bring about the good sentiment, and then the good act will follow. It is the method of true democracy. The less patient way is to force the good act, but this sort of virtue requires the policeman. So important in education is this principle of voluntary action in a free field ; of choice of that alternative which is truly the richest in happiness, that it deserves the emphasis of repeated statement and illustration. Observe, for example, the pro- THE SOURCE OF POWER 79 cess when you make children go through the opera- tion commonly described as doing what they do not want to do. It may be that the act is an unwel- come lesson. This is what happens, — some ex- terior motive is substituted. It may be the desire to please you ; it may be the fear of some punish- ment, perhaps the withdrawal of your esteem or perhaps the infliction of a more direct penalty. What the children really want in such a case is not to do the lesson, but to avoid the unde sired result of appearing not to do it; and this latter motive being the stronger, they do the lesson after a fashion, do it just well enough to avoid the penalty of not doing it. And they have their reward. But meanwhile, they have lost in direct- ness, in sincerity, and in power. And you, who have forced the issue in this unscientific way, you, it seems to me, have been a blind leader of the blind. This thwarting of the real desire, and the substituting of another less natural and less gen- uine desire, means in the end a deadening of the sentiment and a mechanicalizing of the whole pro- cess of life. It is the early stage in the produc- tion of dead souls. Observe, too, the process when, through either military or industrial absolutism, you make men and women go through the operation commonly described as doing what they do not want to do. The results are even more tragic than with chil- dren, for the material is less flexible, and when once bent down by expediency, seldom assumes 80 EDUCATION AND LIFE again the upright position. It is surely quite safe to say that more than one half our workers are doing things which they say they do not want to do. But they do want the money, they do want the wage which comes from the doing of the distasteful task ; and driven by cold and hunger and nakedness, driven, above all, by the absence of a redeeming idea, they do want the wage more than they want to omit the work. What is the result ? The re- sult is that they want to give just so much work as will insure the getting of the wage and will avoid dangerous criticism, and that is all. And this is what they do, and such work is the work that we see. Worse still, there is no joy and delight in the doing. It is a tragedy that by thus trampling on the very condition of joyous work, work is quite robbed of its immense happiness-producing power. In reality, work is one of the things to thank the gods for. Every artist knows that. It is mourn- ful that the ideal of the majority of our present workers should be the man of leisure rather than the more perfect artist. But it will be so until work is humanized by the touch of genuine senti- ment, and so made one of the highest of human joys. It was the presence of this sentiment which made the old, loving hand-work so superior to the best of our uniform machine-made goods, a superiority which we tacitly acknowledge when we imitate the very imperfections of the hand-work in our attempt to bring back something of the old feeling. It was this sentiment which constituted the superi- THE SOURCE OF POWER 81 ority of the artist-artisans who fashioned mediaeval Europe into a very treasure-house of art. The formula of that much-quoted English painter who reported that he mixed his colors with brains can be still further improved upon. The master- painters of the world have put something even more essential into their colors, — they have put their hearts. And this has been the wonder-work- ing ingredient which has gone into all the master- pieces of the centuries. The bribe of gold does not produce art or litera- ture or music or architecture. If it could, think what prodigious achievements we should be find- ing in New York and Chicago and San Francisco. Think how these very rich cities would vie with one another as the birthplace of the muses. But the muses are not born there. What we find is simply a market for the things reputed to be fine, a generous market, but not a source. It is worth remarking that it was the same at Eome. When that tremendous art impulse swept over Italy which succeeding generations have known and studied under the name of the Renaissance, Rome alone was barren and unproductive. She was a centre of political and ecclesiastical power, but not a source of genuine human achievement. The sources were elsewhere, in Tuscany and Lom- bardy and Venetia, places which made it possible ; for the human spirit to be the prompter of human art-work. Rome was a charnel house, the home of the most impious of all iniquity, — the iniquity 82 EDUCATION AND LIFE which masquerades under the name of religion. She half coaxed, half forced the masters into her service, Michelangelo and Raffaelle and others of the great ones, but she did not herself produce a single artist of the first rank. Let us never grow tired of repeating that good and great things are only born of a good and great spirit. They do not present themselves as supply to the beckoning hand of demand. In speaking of the utter impossibility of getting art work out of men devoid of the joyous art spirit, William Morris makes this comment : " At the risk of being accused of sentimentality, I will say that since this is so, since the work which produces the things which should be matters of art is but a burden and a slavery, I exult in this at least, that it cannot produce art, that all it can do lies between stark utilitarianism and idiotic sham." These are the words, not of a closet philosopher, but of a working artist, a man of affairs. The poverty of our own national performance, — and this performance is singularly poor when you consider that there are seventy millions of us at work, — this poverty is due to the absence of the higher motive power, to the absence of genuine feeling, the deep human sentiment which makes great things possible. If you stifle affection, if you disregard family ties, if you outrage personal inclination, if you neglect social fellowship, what is left of the inner life, of that superb motive power which keeps a man going? It is true that he THE SOURCE OF POWER 83 plods along, but then the animals do that, and there is little credit in mere self-preservation. A life without positive good in it might as well not be. This suppression of sentiment, this closing one's eyes to thiugs which one ought not to close one's eyes to, is to waken up some gray day to the ennui of advancing years, and to wonder after all whether the game is worth the candle. It is a very real tragedy. One may not view it as a spectator at the play, for it is not representation, — it is reality. We need not grow tired of repeating, and it will be a long time before America may profitably grow tired of hearing, that the motive power of great achievement lies in the human heart and not in any form of enlightened selfishness of the acquisitive sort. The optimism which leads us to believe un- falteringly in the final outcome must not blind us to the present. Matthew Arnold quotes with large effect how the early crusaders were met at the end of each weary day's march by the eager clamor of the children : " Are we there ? Is this Jerusalem? " And each night the spent crusaders answered wearily : " Jerusalem is not yet. Jerusalem is not yet." We must not deceive ourselves. The bright pictures painted by demagogues, all sticky as these pictures are with milk and honey, are not yet true. Because our working people are not starving ; be- cause our middle classes have the smart look which comes about from living in a flat and being" fitted out in a department store ; because our rich people are squandering millions, it does not follow that we 84 EDUCATION AND LIFE are civilized or socialized. Jerusalem is not yet. The task remains, — the task of humanizing and socializing the national life by importing into it the red blood, the warm touch, the social concern of a loving sentiment. It makes a tremendous differ- ence what a man thinks about as he works, what he believes, what he feels. It makes a tremendous difference whether he is a free man, expressing his own full, rich, joyous life in his work, or whether he is a hireling with no satisfied emotion to ex- press. Human action is the expression not alone of the passing emotion of the moment, but as well of the cumulative emotion of a lifetime, of several life- times. We know that fine phrase, — the instincts of a gentleman, — and all that we gather into it, the noble action made sure by the striving of years, perhaps of generations, made sure, however sudden and overwhelming the demand. We know what a real thing it is, how it sums up in one instant, with- out hesitation or argument, all the efforts after perfection which we have affirmed to be the abid- ing impulse of the human spirit. And those who behold the operation of these beautiful instincts marvel, it may be, and regard them as something uncaused, the miracle of perfect breeding. In the practical process of education, a process quite without meaning except as it carries out the social purpose, we can make no progress unless we build our work persistently on the admitted source of power. It is observable everywhere that we THE SOURCE OF POWER 85 have a great number of useless learned persons, and their defect seems to be a failure of motive power. Half the equipment, with twice the hu- man spirit back of it, would have rendered much the greater service. It is on this very ground that our current schemes of education and society are open to most serious criticism. We are multiply- ing opportunities, multiplying the tools of achieve- ment, creating a vast accumulation of intellectual machinery, and then we make it ineffective by pro- viding insufficient motive power, — insufficient or- ganism and insufficient impulse. But if we really believed that the source of human power is to be found in the emotions, the very opposite course would be the one which we were bound to follow. Our first concern ought to be with the emotional life. Our progress even in educational matters has been mechanical rather than human. What we are constantly asked to admire is the machinery of instruction, the buildings, the laboratories, the courses of study, the learning of the teaching staff. We are prone to explain the fact that so many children pass through this admirable machine quite untouched by anything so deep as an educational process, quite devoid of even the rudiments of cul- ture, on the ground that there is some fault on the part of the children, just as if the problem of edu- cation were not to deal with children as they are, rather than with theoretical children. From this point of view of the source of power, 86 EDUCATION AND LIFE the desires and interests of childhood are very- sacred possessions, strongholds to be guarded, de- fended, and energized. It is of far graver impor- tance that children should live sincerely, that they should put joy and heart into their occupations, that they should do well the thing which they want to do, than that they should satisfy any peda- gogical plan of older people's devising. To carry out such a culture requires tremendous finesse, the finesse of knowing when to let people alone. It is difficult enough not to interfere with grown people ; almost impossible to keep meddling hands off the children. It is the record of so many men and women that they lived a dual life in childhood, an outer life of conformity and expediency, an inner secret life of charming fancy and naive supposition. In some cases, when the pressure was too great, the spontaneous, self-prompted life gave way alto- gether, and there remained only a cripple, moving through the rest of life on the crutches of outer suggestion. In other cases, where a better fortune diminished the amount of conformity demanded, the inner life had a fair field for its development, and in wonder we name talent or genius what is only nature. The people of power are the people who have heard and followed the inner voice, who have had sufficient strength of character to resist temptation, when temptation came in the guise of interference. This explains, I think, why it is that so many of the people in whom the world is most deeply inter- THE SOURCE OF POWER 87 ested have come from the great open of life, rather than from the schools. The biography of genius, even the biography of talent, shows a surprising percentage who have eluded the schoolmaster, and have come out winners. It is no argument against school-keeping, but a very forcible one against ill- advised school-keeping. Children differ not so much in natural endow- ment, great as are these differences, as they do in will power. The real work of education ought to be the cultivation of the will to do, rather than the setting of tasks which would be helpful if the will were there, but which, in its absence, are quite mean- ingless or even harmful. In the vocabulary of school life we call this force " interest," but it is bet- ter to name it "feeling," for the term is less peda- gogical, and it does emphasize what we want for- ever to be emphasizing, that even formal education is a theatre for the play of the same great forces which make up the outer world-life, and that it is a true process, just in proportion as it has this uni- versality. The apathy, the anaesthesia, which comes when feeling is faint and interest wanting, is the stone wall against which so many human move- ments dash and break. We can only hope for success when the motor part of our adventure is provided for. This more psychological method is quite at vari- ance with the educational ideas of an older genera- tion, and is even now somewhat of a shock to those assured persons who believe that the first proper 88 EDUCATION AND LIFE work of the school or of the sober-minded parent is to break the child's will. This is a process, by the way, which involves a dangerous strengthening of the adult will, but apparently this side of the matter has been forgotten. In an old book, published about 1748, 1 recently found this searching question : " To what sins are children especially prone ? " And the answer, done in awe-inspiring capital letters, was this mild re- sume of juvenile depravity : " To Ungodliness, Pro- faneness, and Self-sufficiency." It is needless to say that I found this book in Connecticut. Our average child may surely be cleared from the first and the second of these charges, while the last charge, self-sufficiency, is, when wisely directed, the very source of power. The old text about bringing up a child in the way he should go was twisted into the more convenient form of bringing up a child in the way you happen to want him to go, and this is quite a different matter. Happily this old morality, or rather, one ought to say, this old immorality, has crumbled to pieces, and a sweeter, sounder, saner spirit has taken its place. But old practices have considerable inertia. It is still thought, in certain quarters, a convenience to make a child go in the way we happen to want him to go, rather than in the way that he ought to go, and the result is what we see. Children are sub- mitted to the inventions devised for adult life, to the clothing, food, confinement, ceremonies, bric-a- brac, rapid transit, in a word, to the friction of THE SOURCE OF POWER 89 modern complex living, and in such an environ- ment they prove so altogether inconvenient that they must be suppressed, in order to save the already tense nerves of the adult world. It would be pretty hard lines for us, if we were obliged to listen to conversations in which we could take neither part nor interest, and when we wanted to read Maeterlinck or Hauptmann, to be told that something else was better for us. The plan of suppression, as a mere convenience, works very badly. No one has quite the heart to really carry it out, or perhaps the physical strength or patience, and the result must be accounted a product of our own mismanagement, and of nothing so comforting as total depravity. And when we remember that this plan of suppression, even were it a success as an adult convenience, would be an out-and-out failure educationally, since it corrodes the very mainspring of life, it is evident that we must seek for some other way out. The better plan is the more gracious task of carry- ing into every-day life the beautiful dreams of our singers and prophets. In this entirely practical inquiry into education, I feel at liberty to advocate these more ideal and beautiful methods, because I hope to show in the chapter on cause and effect that only those things are moral and beautiful which are at the same time practicable. And I mean to urge, what idealists are not commonly sup- posed to urge, that one's practicality is the true measure of one's morality. These beautiful dreams 90 EDUCATION AND LIFE of a fairer and more vital world require love and courage to realize them. But both love and cour- age are practical qualities which already exist, and which may be heightened by all those who regard them as worthy objects of pursuit. If we believe with Milton, that poetry is simple, sensuous, pas- sionate, then by making daily life simple and sen- suous and passionate, we should be making it a veritable poem. This programme of effort accords very well with the more prosaic analysis that we have all along been insisting upon. We could apply such a programme nowhere so fittingly and with such high hope of success as in the process of the children. It is interesting to note that this more rational plan of development makes quite unnecessary that other plan of suppression which we have seen to be both so unsuccessful and so disastrous. The better plan requires that children shall not be submitted to the complicated inventions devised for adult life, shall not be asked to be overdressed, and unduly fed, and closely housed ; to sit as still as a mouse, when every drop of red blood surging through their veins urges them into activity ; to bury themselves with abstractions and generalizations before the data of the concrete world have been at all mastered ; to put down that warm flood of feeling which consti- tutes their very life. To be simple, — this is less expensive and less difficult than to be complex. It means for children the least clothing necessary, a wholesome, unexcit- THE SOURCE OF POWER 91 ing diet, apartments free from useless impedimenta and rich in the more subtle beauty of color and proportion. It means long hours of sleep and pro- digal hours in the open, ample exercise and self- prompted occupations. To be sensuous, — this is the special privilege of childhood ; to care frankly and lovingly for the rich world of sensation, for warmth and sunshine and color, for sound and form and odor ; to rejoice in health and bodily power and appetite ; to feel the charm and glory of the magnificent drama of Nature ; to find life sweet and glad. And finally, to be passionate, — it is to touch this simplicity and sensuousness with feeling, and so to make it human and fine. From the point of view of the children much of this provision is purely negative, nothing more than a commendable letting alone. In an atmosphere so free from stress as this, there is every induce- ment for self -activity and for a wholesome uncon- sciousness of process. From our own point of view, the very letting alone is the part of a positive plan. The simplicity and sense culture and passion are objects of educational effort. When one starts upon such a pursuit as this, the danger is that these elements may come to be mis- taken for ends in themselves. It is this mistaking of means for ends which makes reformers rather tiresome traveling companions. A simplicity which is overconscious is much worse than a complexity taken for granted and submerged. 92 EDUCATION AND LIFE In reality these elements are only means. It is their cumulative effect which* makes the rich life of humanity. The simplicity is the condition of health and self-activity. The sensuousness is that consciousness of the outer world which makes pos- sible a full report of the senses, and a consequent rich material of thought. The passion is the love and interest and reverence and enthusiasm of life, the motive power back of all that is excellent and beautiful. We commonly think of education as something which has to do with children and young people, and with them alone. Sometimes, to be sure, we please ourselves with platitudes about education's extending through the whole of life ; but, with our commercial ideas of the value of adult time, we see to it that education, as an effective process, shall not interfere with the purposes of trade. When this non-human spirit dies, however, and we turn to a truer and sounder life, we shall be applying the term education to the whole of life as a process by which we realize the social purpose. As I have already said, it is in this broader sense that the term will be used throughout the present inquiry, as an all-inclusive process which begins with the first act of parenthood, and ends only when, with reverent hands, we close the eyes of those who travel into the undiscovered country. It seems to me, then, that there is no defensible warrant for the great gulf which in thought and practice we place between childhood and adult life. The sim- THE SOURCE OF POWER 93 plicity and sensuousness and passion which are so admirable in the little ones are no less admirable in men and women. The inventions devised for the adult world, those inventions which hinder the perfection of childhood, are in reality fatal as well to manhood. As a counterpart to the enfant terrible of the American home, we have the unlov- able, unbeautiful, ungracious men and women of our social and business world. The way out for us is the same as the way out for the children, — it is the simplifying of our lives, the vivifying of our bodies, the rebirth of our feelings. This simple and untechnical account of the source of power finds ample verification in every page of history, for the world-story after all is nothing more than the story of human sentiment. The causes that have been lost and won, the victo- ries and defeats, the Reformation and the Renais- sance, all the great things that have been done, have been first achieved in the emotional life, in the human spirit. The immense material resources of Asia hurl themselves against Greek sentiment and are shattered. The Roman empire, robbed of Roman spirit, falls apart ; China, the unalterable, the anaesthetic, is dying. Napoleon's cynical re- mark that Heaven espoused the cause of the larger army was nowhere better disproved than in his own history. The power of a patriot following is a spiritual fact which finds admittance to the army and navy register. A handful of colonial farmers is worth a regiment of Hessians. And so, too, 94 EDUCATION AND LIFE with conservatism. It has been routed by an in- visible enemy. After Waterloo, we find the forces of reaction in possession of Europe, in possession of armies and revenues and thrones. But in the heart of the people there was a greater force, and the work of liberation has not ceased. To one man comes a supreme passion ; the unity of Italy, it may be, the reality of the Fatherland, the liberation of Greece ; and behold, it is an accomplished fact. It was the wise Goethe who said, " Be careful what you pray for in your youth, lest you get too much of it in your old age." If we pray for profit and wages and all sorts of messes of pottage, we shall get them. If we pray for outward conformity and stock education, we shall get them. If we pray for ugliness and squalor and sweatshops and the tenement house of a hun- dred sorrows, we shall get them. But suppose that we changed our prayer. Sup- pose we prayed for health and beauty and accom- plishment and power and social fellowship, for that human wealth which will go all round, for the wealth of individual integrity and of social well- being. Surely as come the seedtime and the har- vest, we should get these things too. When this human wealth becomes an abiding emotion it will become a reality. The one irresistible, unconquer- able thing in all the world is human sentiment. The civilization of to-day is vital just in proportion as it engages that sentiment. It is a memory as soon as the sentiment is withdrawn. THE SOURCE OF POWER 95 The institutions of the hour are vested interests. They are built of solid substances, of brick and stone, wood and metal. They have money in the bank. A philosopher comes along and laughs at them ; a great teacher rebukes them ; a saint points beyond them. What is the result ? They dissolve into the past. It is impossible to exaggerate the omnipotence of human feeling, of human emotion, of human desire. It is the giant, the wonder-worker, and its service must be engaged in any human adven- ture in order to make the adventure succeed. It is a monopoly of power of the most colossal kind, a trust which may be used for the advantage or the disadvantage of mankind. " A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs." In the face of so tremendous and unequivocal a lesson, one cannot ignore the motive power of a world. The miller looks to his mill-race ; the en- gineer replenishes his coal-bin ; the motor-man sees to his current ; the sailor regards the quarter of the wind ; so must we people who have more impor- tant concerns on hand look for the carrying out of them to the strength and purity of the feelings. As men we must see to it that the heart beats high ; as educators we must see to it that the tide of childish feeling is at the flood ; as sociologists we must see to it that the people care. As we do this, we are strong ; as we fail to do it, we are 96 EDUCATION AND LIFE weak. Pagan defeat and superseding came when the human heart grew faint. It is the same world, this in which we live ; the source of its power is still in the round tower of the heart. CHAPTER IV ORGANIC EDUCATION [ The people of power are the people who have not only the strong motive force of a conserving passion, but as well a keen and efficient tool for carrying out its purposes. From the point of view of the unity of man, it is impossible to attain power save through the development of all the faculties of the body, the five senses of sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell ; the normal appetites for food and exercise ; the habit of free intellectual play, and the healthful life of the emotions. To have these operating together for the realization of a high social purpose, this is the health of the human organism, and nothing less than this may be accepted as success, i So it happens that those of us who hold to this conception of the unit man, look upon education as a process of organic culture, the thoroughgoing culture of all sides of man's nature, practically the regeneration of his organism ; for it is only by such a process that he can come into a totality of power, and can satisfy that impulse towards perfection which is the most abiding impulse of the human spirit. 98 EDUCATION AND LIFE / The raw material of thought, if such an expres- sion be permissible, is composed of those elements of consciousness which we call the reports of the senses. Objectively speaking, it is the stuff out of which the whole thought-life is built. The brain can add nothing to this material. It can only work it over, and combine it into new relations. The thought-life is dependent for its fullness upon two quite determinate factors, — upon the completeness and accuracy of this report of the senses, and upon the soundness of the brain process in working the sense report into thought. / One does not have to be a very profound philo- sopher to perceive the bearing of all this upon organic soundness and integrity. Deficient sense organs cannot report the so-called outer world with any degree of accuracy and completeness. If we could imagine that these reports were all that they should be, that the sense organs were doing good work both at the outer extremities and at the corresponding brain centres, we should still not be able to expect resultant power if the brain lacked skill in working up this material into thought. Knowledge is a perception of relations. It implies, therefore, both the apprehension of detached facts and the bringing them into orderly relation. It would seem that, as a practical people, we are doing a most foolish thing to expect human ef- ficiency without fulfilling the conditions of human efficiency. If we have any doubt about the illogic of our ORGANIC EDUCATION 99 expectation, we have only to turn to life and ask if human power has been attained. I should be sorry to make out a bad case for life's power, for I have the most unbounded hope in its ultimate attain- ment, but the results so far are singularly meagre. The world is centuries old, and the opportunities for performance have been manifold and varied, and humankind has been like the sands of the sea. But in the calm, unemotional survey of the world which the sociologists give us, it seems that, on the whole, few human performances have been notable, and few men and women have been distinguished. The exact estimate of individual power is one dis- tinguished person in every half million. 1 In Amer- ica, then, we may boast about a hundred and fifty distinguished men and women. Such an estimate is of course open to serious question, since we might not agree to the same definition of distinction. A better test is, perhaps, to consult our own experi- ence, beginning our criticism where charity rightly begins, — at home. It would be an ungracious task to catalogue too closely our own abundant de- fect and to set off against it the slender list of our merit ; but surely every man and woman of us at- tempting to live the life and gain the power of totality must stand aghast at the spectacle of so very partial a performance. Nor is the weakness 1 It is true that the last edition of " Who 's Who in America " contains over eleven thousand names, hut it is to he rememhered that these people are not distinguished, hut are merely promi- nent for the moment hy reason of official position or other tran- sient emphasis. LofC. 100 EDUCATION AND LIFE far to seek. It comes from our partial hold upon life, from the incompleteness with which we see and hear and touch and taste and smell, from the limi- tations and the dullness of the brain, from the insensibility of the heart. If the same scrutiny be turned towards our neighbor, and with gentler method we inquire into his shortcomings, we find it even as with ourselves. It is in his lack of totality, his failure to report the universe, his insufficient grasp, his too feeble pulse. Deaf and dumb and blind and anesthetic, we stand in the midst of a universal wealth which we are un- able to appropriate. This poverty of organic power is not compen- sated by any amount of mechanical devices or any aggregate of material wealth. It is an illusion to substitute modern inventions for personal human power, and to imagine that the world has gained in excellence by the substitution. Let us recite the facts. The modern man has a voice which is a bit squeaky and harsh, and boasts no great carrying power ; but then he has the long distance telephone, and can call prices from New York to Chicago. Stentor could not have done that. The modern man is rather near-sighted and astigmatic, and may fail to recognize his best friend across the street ; but then he can look at the moon through his great telescopes, and can see things which Ptolemy never caught sight of. Our modern man may be a little dull of hearing and rather hard to talk to, but with the microphone he can hear a fly walk. He is a ORGANIC EDUCATION 101 trifle short-winded and finds running fatal, but why- should he want to run when the " elevated " shoots him over the city, and the " limited " over the coun- try ? All along the line of modern human defect we find the substitution of some mechanical excellence. The modern man is not personally attractive, but he has undoubted taste in bric-a-brac. He has lost his wholesome appetite, but gained a French cook. He fails in democracy, but he gives alms. He de- nies himself fresh air and pure water, but he has the sanitarium and the doctor. Stated in this bald fashion, the illusion is evident. One puts it aside as resolutely as one would put aside the tempter himself. The substitutes are poor trinkets to be offered in exchange for human power and beauty and excellence. From this way of looking at life, all activity which makes against the health and sanity and completeness of organic power is criminal, and this, whether the wrong be committed in the name of education, or industry, or art, or religion. Know- ledge itself is a poor thing unless it be the instru- ment of power, and knowledge gained at the ex- pense of power stands condemned already. One cannot recover from one's surprise to find so self- conscious a process as education, a process which we all admit to be a means and not an end, — ignor- ing its own material, the sensational world ; ignoring its own process, the wholesome all-round activity of the organism ; ignoring its own end, the cultiva- tion of power, and turning to the cheap substitutes 102 EDUCATION AND LIFE of outer fact. And this again is due, it seems to me, to the evil influences of our commercial ideas of life generally. The definite informational know- ledge has been held to have a clearly recognized market value ; it is a tangible possession akin to the machinery upon which we set so great store, and it is supposed in some occult way to offer a preparation for future work. Organic culture has no market in view. It has small eye to the future. It proposes only the goal of the present, for it does believe that this human end is better than the mar- ket, and that the only earnest of a good future is a well-used present. The panorama of life unrolls itself before each one of us, and to each offers a different signifi- cance. We may believe, if we choose, that the pan- orama at bottom is one and the same thing, and that the different report we return of it is due to the personal equation of the observer. But as we have seen, the impression made upon us is all that we apprehend. Whatever theory we may hold re- garding the essential nature of the panorama, we must act upon our experience of it, and our experi- ence runs somewhat like this : at the circumference of our life we encounter the outer world. We see and hear and touch and taste and smell through the contact of the several sense organs with this outer world. The activity is peripheral. From each extremity, each sense contact, flows a nerve impulse to the centre, to the brain, and here, by a subtle magic which science has not been able to ORGANIC EDUCATION 103 explain, the nerve impulse translates itself into a sense impression, a sensation. These nerve im- pulses are the only avenues of approach to the hu- man intelligence. They are, as we have seen, the whole raw material out of which the panorama of life is built. If we take any one organ, as the ear, the dif- ferences in its report are tremendous. The ear of the average man transmits enough sound to enable him to carry on the average occupations of life. He detects the larger differences of sound, the soft and loud tones, and in a rough way is conscious of the pitch, and notices the varied character of the tones. But the finer distinctions are all lost, — the smooth modulation by which we pass from soft to loud, the relationship of pitch expressed in the musical scale, the varying overtones which de- termine the character of the note. The two ears, simply as bodily organs, are quite unlike. One of them is a finer, keener instrument than the other, and in human service and esteem is surely worth more than the other. It will do very much the better work. And the one ear has been made better simply by training, the inherited training of a fortunate birth and circumstance, and the train- ing of personal, individual effort. To the outer ear, sound is nothing but an air pulse. All the differences of sound, the loudness, the pitch, the timbre, are represented in the air pulse. But this air pulse means nothing to the brain in such form, and the worth of the ear, its sensitiveness, depends 104 EDUCATION AND LIFE solely upon the nicety with which these air pulses are translated into nerve currents and sent hurrying along to the brain, and upon the discrimination of the brain itself in turning the nerve currents into the sensation of sound. Practically, then, we have three necessary elements, — the transmitter, the connecting line, and the receiver, and each must act effectively and surely. An anatomically perfect outer ear with a paralyzed auditory nerve, or a healthy nerve with a hardened ear drum, or a healthy outer ear and nerve with an inefficient brain centre, and we have an organ failing to per- form its function. The magnificent sensitiveness which calls forth our admiration, the ability to recognize unerringly the notes of the scale, to distinguish between DjJ and Eb, to detect the dis- crepancies in the tempered scale, or to note the overtones of a given fundamental, this superb excellence of ear depends upon the health of all three elements, of outer ear, and connecting nerve, and receiving brain centre. I recall a lecture on sound shadows, where the source of sound was a very high-pitched whistle, making many thousand vibrations per second. The usual piano of seven and a third octaves ranges from about 29 to 4096 vibrations per second, while the human voice falls between 87 and 775. The effect of the whistle was individual in the extreme. Many of the audience, people of presumably nor- mal hearing, were quite unconscious of the sound, but those who did hear, found the note almost un- endurable on account of its penetrating quality, ORGANIC EDUCATION 105 One need not enlarge upon the different universe, the widely varied panorama of life, which this in- dividual constitution of the ear alone brings about ; and yet sound is only a small part of the day's experience. If you take some other organ, such as the eye, w T hich is occupied during the entire waking day, the difference is even more striking. The average eye is a dull organ, dull in its perception of form, of color-tone, of light and shade. The panorama which it reports is a poor, blurred affair, a meagre wood-cut compared to the glorious painting seen by the sensitive, cultivated eye. It is a newspaper illustration alongside of Titian or Guercino. It is a matter of common experience and comment that mountaineers so little appreciate the marvelous beauty of their surroundings. It is frequently ex- plained as the dulling effect of familiarity. But this, I think, is not the right explanation. We do grow callous to ugliness, for when we once recognize it we withdraw our thought from it, and ignore and deny it until it almost ceases to be. But the reverse holds in the things of beauty. If we once see beauty we see it increasingly, for our thought goes out to it and dwells upon it and appropriates it, even exaggerates it, as Ruskin in the presence of Turner. The insensible dwellers in the midst of beauty see houses and trees, fields and forests and mountains ; they see the possessions of their neighbors, the farms of Smith and Brown and Robinson : but the landscape, which no man owns, they do not see and cannot delight in. 106 EDUCATION AND LIFE To take a cross-country walk with a friend is to submit him to a searching examination. What he sees and points out to you is extremely significant. His comments are revelations, not of the country, but of himself. He never reports the whole pano- rama, for he never sees it. His panorama is one of form, or color, or light and shade, or science, or trade, or human import. One man sees beauty, another geology, another crops and values, another domestic possibilities. A stroll through a picture gallery discloses the same large differences. Here the painter speaks. Looking at his picture, you may know what sort of eyes he had. It is useless to answer that we have all the same sort of eyes, and it is only a different way of using them. The eye may be structurally much the same in all of us, but as an organ of service, it includes the optic nerve and the brain centre : the function of see- ing is so individual that the panorama of life is a strictly private possession. Equally marked are the differences in touch and taste and smell. If these senses are alert and keen, the universe is one thing. If they are dull and uncertain, the universe is something quite dif- ferent. We can do little for the betterment of the outer organs, the eye and ear and the rest. We can help them out with certain mechanical devices, but these correct only anatomical defects. The real field for culture is interior. The basis of all organic culture is good health, ORGANIC EDUCATION 107 the health of sound nerve and red blood. The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link. Between the circumference and the centre, between the outer sense organ and the inner brain centre, there intervenes the machinery of commu- nication, of transmission, — the carrying nerves, — and these must be fulfilling their office, passing along the impulse centreward, or the terminals are * of scant service. In the same way the brain cen- tre, as we have seen, must be in good order, or all fails. Now beyond supplying false drums for the ear, and correcting lenses for the eye, and burn- ing out obstructions in the nose, and cutting the binding tendon of the ring finger, we can do al- most nothing for the outer sense organs, and no- thing, so far as we know, for the transmitting nerve, beyond general good health and vigor. It would seem, then, that to cultivate the senses is to cultivate the brain end of them. It looks very much as if the cultivation of the senses is really mental culture, and not a distinct and separate bodily culture at all. And this is precisely what we believe, we who believe in organic education, and we believe it both from our fundamental view of the unity of man, and also from this quite un- theoretical and every-day method of getting at the heart of the matter. That we see and hear and touch and taste and smell in consciousness is the direct conclusion of experience as well as of that idealistic philosophy which rests upon expe- rience. 108 EDUCATION AND LIFE This sort of sense culture multiplies tremendously the power of human acquisitiveness, — the only kind of greed which a man given over to the study and pursuit of perfection can at all commend and practice. The seeing eye and hearing ear, and dis- criminating touch and taste and smell, bring into consciousness a perfect wealth of sensation, abun- dant material for abundant thought. This alone would make life very rich. It is the sensuousness of the poet, and with simplicity and passion is the material of the highest expression of life. This rich sensuousness makes the difference between the full and the meagre temperament, the wealthy man and the poor man. It is interesting to notice how men, clever enough to see the bearing of this on the power of life, and consciously deficient in it themselves, have bemoaned their poverty. Emer- son writing to Carlyle, Amiel writing to himself, the half joy of the twentieth century face to face with the full joy of Greece, all confessions, all con- trasts, pour out the same burden of complaint, — the complaint of temperamental limitation. If the sense culture of which I speak accomplished only this, if it brought the rich phenomenal world in full, sound measure into human consciousness, it would be rendering a tremendous service, and one might still advocate it with a large enthusiasm. But the office of sense culture is double. Speaking objectively, the general ability of the brain to work up sensation into thought depends upon its own structural power. With the development of each sense, there goes along with it the develop- ORGANIC EDUCATION 109 inent of the corresponding brain centre, and this latter development, as we have seen, really consti- tutes the sense culture. The work of Paul Flech- sig, of Leipzig, though questioned by some psychol- ogists at the time, seems now to be very generally accepted. The sense of touch has its centre in the vertical lobe of the brain ; the sense of smell, in the frontal lobe ; the sense of light, in the occipital lobe, and the sense of hearing, in the temporal lobe. Between these four sense centres lie the real organs of mental life, the great thought centres, or centres of association. They are regarded by physiologists as the highest instruments of psychic activity, the physical centre of thought and consciousness, and are distinguished from the sense centres by a pecu- liar and elaborate nerve structure. But the brain itself is nothing more than an assemblage of all these centres, and their development means the development of the brain as a whole. So it turns out that along with one's increased power of know- ing the universe goes an increased possibility of thinking about it and putting it into orderly rela- tion. The very culture which brings this wealth of material brings the power to use it. The quanti- tative exercise of the sense centres means increased coordination of the faculties, and increased develop- ment of the thought centres. Intellectual activity appears to be a direct function of brain surface, just as the intensity of chemical action in dissolving metals in acid is a direct function of the surface exposed. The total brain surface is the sum of the surfaces of its parts. 110 EDUCATION AND LIFE It seems to me that in this double office of sense culture we have a profoundly significant truth, one which we are bound to lay practical hold upon, and having laid hold upon, to apply in education. As a safeguard, it may be wise to again remark, par- enthetically, that this account of brain action is a convenience of language, and must not blind us to the fact that what we experience is an integral stream of consciousness. If this sense culture yield such mental power, and we are after power, it is natural to inquire whether there is any other method of direct culture, any other way of getting at the brain, and making it still more efficient. There appears to be none. It is quite impossible to get at the brain directly. It is an inaccessible centre. One must approach it along the avenues of the sensory nerves. The brain gives audience to but one class of ambassador, and that is neural. If, then, the brain is to be de- veloped physiologically, it must be done by such exercise of the centres as will develop the centres physiologically. This development is the necessary accompaniment of all exercise of the senses which is not automatic. When it is automatic, it has no longer any power to attract the attention, and con- sequently no educational value. In any scheme of scientific sense culture, therefore, the work must be changed before it reaches the automatic stage. It is in this respect that school work differs so essen- tially from factory work. Furthermore, the greater claim of the work upon one's attention, short of un- ORGANIC EDUCATION 111 wholesome fatigue and dulling of emotional interest, the richer the mental reaction. As quantitative work makes this demand in the largest measure, it is of all sense exercise quite the most valuable. In the ordinary course of study, the curriculum of the present day, we too much deny this prin- ciple of brain development. Many of the studies are offered as almost purely disciplinary studies, and this is notably the case with ancient languages and certain forms of mathematics. In many cases the discipline is quite admirable, for it accustoms the mind to sound logical processes. Both the on- looker and the student himself are conscious of large benefit. But there is in the success of this method of discipline an element which has not, I think, been made nearly enough of. It is this, that the discipline succeeds with clever children, those who do not particularly need it, but fails in the case of large numbers of less evolved little people. If the study were pursued as an end in itself, as music or art or composition, and the unfit were eliminated by a process of natural selection, it is clear that there could be no adverse criticism. In this case, however, the study would logically have to be elective, as it would manifestly be cruel and irrational to doom a student to tasks in which failure was a foregone conclusion. But if a study be offered by way of discipline, and be compulsory, it is equally clear that it must be a means rigidly adapted to the end in view and must possess catholicity of application. 112 EDUCATION AND LIFE When one looks at the operation of the old cur- riculum, the pursuit of language and mathematics, one sees so many falling by the wayside, children who are the despair of their teachers, and for whom parents feel obliged to apologize. In every high school, the land over, one sees this constant falling out of line. Perhaps only one third or one quarter of the children remain to graduate. There are many explanations of this repeated failure, explanations quite genuine, and quite convincing to those who offer them, — the children are dull ; the standard is high ; the school is very particular ; it is not meant for the incompetent. We are all familiar with these arguments. But the matter has quite a different aspect when with both eyes open you are as willing to call in question the wisdom of the teachers and the studies, as you are to call in ques- tion the wholesomeness of the children. Surely an educational process is failing lamentably, when it succeeds with so small a percentage of its ma- terial. A harvester which scattered more than half the grain, a mill which discarded more than half its raw material, a mining enterprise which left more than half the ore untouched, would not be re- garded as very highly successful operations. How- ever clean the wheat, or attractive the ware, or glittering the metal, the adventure would be an admitted failure. In current education, however, it seems that many are called and few are chosen. There are even institutions, running in the name of education, which boast of the number of stu- ORGANIC EDUCATION 113 dents who are annually squeezed out. It may be an odd way of looking at it, but this sounds to me like boasting of one's own inefficiency, and I think we should all regard such an operation as quite the thing that it is. It seems to me, then, a very serious criticism of the non-organic education that it does not make for power, that it merely uses power. One cannot help being struck anew with the numbers of peo- ple who have come to distinction quite outside of the formal educational process, not uneducated peo- ple, but people educated outside of the schools, by life itself. The great literatures and fine arts and heroisms have not been the exclusive or even the general performance of the learned. The great things have more commonly been done in the large open of life, done by men and women of organic power, and sincere lives, and warm hearts. A discipline which succeeds with clever chil- dren, and not with dull ones, has been put to no very severe test. In fact, it has been put to no test whatever. With a brain depending for its material upon the report of a phenomenal world, and for its power of working this material into thought upon its own internal structure and nour- ishment, it becomes a perfectly meaningless pro- cess, to neglect the physiological part, and propose the impossible, formal tasks which now make miser- able the daily school life of the slow but sensitive child. Furthermore, children are dull or not dull according to the test you impose. If you ask 114 EDUCATION AND LIFE them to do things which happen to be easy for you, and they repeatedly fail, they may seem dull from that point of view. But suppose the tables were turned, and they set the tasks. Suppose they asked you to do the things which are quite easy for them, and you repeatedly failed, as you very probably would, you would be equally dull from their point of view, but you would be quite prone to defend yourself by ascribing failure to the un- suitableness of the task. Perhaps this is the de- fense proper to both cases ; perhaps the standards are not high, but are simply wrong ; perhaps the school is very particular only in wanting material which will make success easy and possible, and is not at all particular enough about the skill of its teachers and the reasonableness of its tasks. Theoretically the educational process ought to fit everybody. As a process, its sole end is to carry out the social purpose, and this purpose, as we have seen, is only the philosophic idea done in terms of life. In none of this theoretical founda- tion is there the least assumption regarding the superiority of the material to be acted upon. There is no discrimination. The belief in the unity of man applies to all, and the social purpose applies to all. There is practically no reason why the educational process should regard any material as impossible. To further the impulse towards perfection is to further it anywhere along the line, and to take humankind as it is, clever children and average children, and even dull children, and ORGANIC EDUCATION 115 to regard them all as available and welcome ma- terial. It is a very grave criticism of the current educational process that it is qualified to deal only with selected material and lacks catholicity. But when the process of organic education is submitted to the same scrutiny, it is found to be a process which is the possible carrying out of a logical social purpose. It asks for no picked ma- terial. It is meant for the betterment of the in- competent and deficient. It is meant, too, for the betterment of the clever and the average. It is only by such comprehensiveness that the educa- tional process can carry out the social purpose. Organic education assumes a brain, if not deficient, at least less perfect than it may ultimately become. It assumes a body not yet come into its full mea- sure of health and strength. It assumes emotions not yet coherent and compelling. In a word, it is not defeated by the intrusion of human weakness, for it assumes human weakness and immaturity at the start. The process is to take the children as they are, and to bring about their betterment. Its standard is high, but this applies to the end of the process and not to the beginning. No children are too dull ; none too incompetent. This process, too, is very particular, — it is particular to include all. It is not too much to say that organic education is the process of democracy, the process of minister- ing to the whole people, and about it centre the same hope and promise which centre about true democracy. 116 EDUCATION AND LIFE The cultivation of the senses means, as we have just seen, the cultivation of the brain ; and when this sense culture is undertaken for purely human and educational ends, it is planned throughout to realize the most complete brain culture pos- sible. This requires large skill. To make sure of the motive power, the emotional impulse, the work must appeal to the interest and love of the chil- dren. As far as possible, it must be self-directed and spontaneous and joyful. There must be an element of choice in it. Everything we do must be in harmony with our initial creed of the unity of man. We cannot cultivate the senses without at the same moment cultivating the emotions and the intellect. Any attempt to separate our work, to cultivate the heart or the mind or the body quite alone, is doomed to failure, for the organism does not so act. In the specific work of cultivat- ing the senses, this unity of action must always be borne in mind. And to be successful, we must be very specific. We must be willing to deal with every detail of daily life, with food and drink and dress, with sleep and baths and exercise, with read- ing and companionships and amusement, above all with the flood tide of the emotions. Upon these details, however homely, health and power de- pend. In the greater part of our present thought and practice, chaos prevails. There is a painful disre- gard of cause and effect, and this not alone among the ignorant classes, but as well among those who ORGANIC EDUCATION 117 affect culture. It is either excess or deficiency. We commonly show excess in food and stimulat- ing drinks, in dress and company. We show de- ficiency in exercise, sleep, and fresh air, in baths and amusement and affection. The very first step in the cultivation of the senses is the establish- ment of health through the rationalizing of these homely details of the daily life. It should be easy to correct excess : the process of cutting off is so very simple. But here the force of custom and our own lack of sturdiness come in and make the process difficult. American school children have a large amount of nervous activity, but they lack poise and vigor. They have not enough good red blood, and this comes about from lack of nourishment. They are insufficiently nourished while at the same time they are overfed. A little food and a large power of assimilation are what we want. I notice with interest that certain French physicians are recommending less food, and this is significant in a nation whose spe- cial forte it is to tempt the appetite. Plain, whole- some, nourishing food, given to a digestive appara- tus prepared to utilize it, is the first condition of organic culture. Our dress is another error of excess. As a rule, we wear too much clothing, too tight, too heavy, too unserviceable. It is a difficult matter to reform. Even though we have the testimony of persons who wear comparatively light clothing all the year, who do not wrap up their throats and bandage their 118 EDUCATION AND LIFE chests and otherwise invite ill health, the direct testimony that they never have colds, that they escape the grippe, that they are seldom if ever ill, it carries curiously little weight with it. Few persons seem willing to pay the price of this good fortune. It is a bit of cowardice. You have per- haps heard of the man who was so afraid of death that he committed suicide ! It appears almost that these victims of grippe and colds and the like are so afraid of a little suffering that they endure great suffering. It need not be pointed out that, merely as a matter of social esthetics, a cold in the head is quite an unsuitable thing. Dress reform need involve no loss of beauty. Indeed, if it did that, it would cease to be reform. Children's dress especially may be simple and serviceable, and still eminently artistic. Beauty in dress, like beauty in architecture, depends upon proportion and color. Ornamentation is a secondary contribution. One must also place company under the head of excess. We are social animals, as Aristotle long ago observed, and probably we were social even before we became human. Our becoming human is possibly a result of our being social. In social intercourse, we have in truth the very medium for human development. As Goethe says, "Talent forms itself in solitude, but character grows in the world- stream." But the simple, sensuous, pas- sionate living which constitutes the poetry and the good of life is not yet the rich possession of the adult world. The hope of the future lies in pro- ORGANIC EDUCATION 119 longing the period of childhood, and this hope can only be realized by reducing the friction of life, by simplifying it, and by giving the children long stretches of quiet time. It is a commonplace of observation that grown-up people are in few mat- ters quite so altogether injudicious as in their treat- ment of children. They take liberties with them. They make them self-conscious. They spoil or neglect, coax or tyrannize. While this remains true, the only thing to do is to protect the children by keeping them in the background, especially by keeping them out of boarding-houses and hotels. On the side of deficiency, we have a long list. It should be very easy to supply such inexpensive good as exercise and sleep and fresh air, baths and fun and love. But the very habit which has made daily life deficient in these matters makes for the continuance of the deficiency. The way out is to regard such matters as essential, and to order them into each day's life. Exercise, as exercise, aside from the cultivation of some special faculty, is rather a dull thing, and in a world suffering visibly from overwork, it seems hardly a social or a moral thing. But the necessary home tasks, which are full of meaning and may be made full of sentiment, might wholesomely be shared by the children, each according to his strength, and furnish the very exercise needed for health. Abundant play in the open air, a little garden of one's own, sleeping rooms with wide open windows, a house full of sun- shine and fresh air, — these things are all attain- 120 EDUCATION AND LIFE able as soon as they come to be regarded as essen- tial. The habit of scant sleep is a commercial one. We want to make all we can out of the days, for- getful that the real value lies in their quality. If we believed practically in immortality, we should perhaps be willing to go to bed earlier. When Emerson visited California a few years before his death, he traveled with such superb leisure that people said of him that he seemed truly to believe in a future life. In most localities in America, water is an abundant luxury, but its use for bathing purposes is much more restricted than it should be, much more so than we people who have one or two baths a day are apt to suppose. One of the ironies of our present educational illusion is the purely theoretical use made of the study of physiology. The little books contain full information in regard to the advantages of frequent bathing, and even go into homely details about the freedom of the pores of the skin from effete matter as being one of the conditions of good health ; but not one teacher in a hundred inquires whether these injunctions are carried out. Now, to an idealist, quite given over to a belief in cause and effect, it would seem wiser to practice hygiene than to preach it. In Switzer- land, they are introducing baths into some of the newer schoolhouses. One practical difficulty is the expense or even absence of hot water in the meaner city tenements, and in the majority of village and country cottages, but then cold water is far better. It is always obtainable, and it certainly produces a ORGANIC EDUCATION 121 sturdier physique and gives a greater immunity from colds. If the habit of cold baths be started in summer, it may safely be carried through the year. To be alive is essentially amusing. Life is vastly entertaining if one take it in the right spirit. Life is much better than the play, for one has the added fun of taking a part. And then, too, the drama unfolds much more logically than the majority of those offered at the playhouse. Even the homely tasks are full of fun if one so elect. Formal amusements are a little like formal exer- cise : they lack the snap and sincerity of the natural and spontaneous article. Once catch the forced smile, once guess the heavy heart, and the thing seems dull or even pitiful. Moreover, it is sandwiched in between two inconveniences, — the getting ready and the getting home. And yet we need more amusement, children and grown-up people alike, but an amusement scattered through- out the day and made genuine and simple and joyous. The connection between health and hap- piness is more than one of good wishes. The happiness is essential to the health. Misery of spirit induces a long chain of physical ills. The best imaginable tonic is an overflowing heart. This insistence upon good health is imperative. Two things only pass to the brain, blood and sen- sory nerve impulse. An anemic brain can make little use of the best arranged sensory experience. Good health is the first and absolute condition for 122 EDUCATION AND LIFE furthering that impulse towards perfection which is the heart of the social purpose. When we realize this, the careful mother will say : " My child seems ill ; I must send him to school ; " for the school, the institution whose peculiar province it is to carry on the educational process and realize the growing perfection of the social purpose, will stand for health and vigor and life. What does the careful mother say now ? She says the very opposite : " My child is quite ill ; the doctor says I must take him out of school." Does this not seem to you a shocking accusation, quite as shocking as the pro- clamation of ineffectiveness on the part of those very particular schools which boast the number of students they have been unable to handle success- fully ? What are we dreaming about, what fetish of false culture are we all worshiping, when we hear with mild regret that the schools are crippling our children, and when we do not rise up and stop the harm ? It is as if a shepherd misled his own flock, or a priest beguiled his own people into evil. The explanation is simple. Education is not yet conceived by the majority as a redeeming and saving process, the regenera- tion of the organism ; and lack of health is still regarded by the majority as a mysterious dispensa- tion, rather than as a result of definite and control- lable causes. When one comes to look upon health as simply a mark of intelligence, as a private duty and a public duty, as indeed an essential part of the moral life, and when one comes to regard ill- ORGANIC EDUCATION 123 ness as an immoral and quite impermissible thing, one has taken an important step in that process of education which proceeds along the line of cause and effect. With strong, beautiful bodies and good red blood, one may start hopefully upon the cul- ture of the senses, the seeing and hearing and touching and tasting and smelling. The good health of the body means the integrity of the sense organs, the efficiency of the neural processes, the soundness of the brain tissue. The real work of sense culture then becomes a process of mental dis- cipline. It is a question of exercising the functions and enlarging the intellectual discrimination. It is practically the perfecting of the organism, making it more open to full and accurate sense impres- sions and more skillful in combining them into a magnificent panorama of life. It is particularly to be observed that the cultiva- tion of the senses does not mean simply placing the healthy, human animal in the face of a rich phenomenal world, and letting this world make such an impression as it will. So negative a pro- cess would bring only limited good. It is true, I think, that men who spend the greater part of their lives outdoors, foresters and husbandmen, sailors and fishermen, have a sounder intelligence than those who submit themselves to the monotony of factory work ; but the office of education must be more positive than this. There must be a systematic endeavor to enlarge sense experience along its quantitative side. Every impression must 124 EDUCATION AND LIFE be followed by some action, something by which the impression will be gauged and measured and tested and chastened. Every sense impression means a sensory nerve current setting in towards the brain, then a process of intellection, and finally an outgoing discharge along a motor nerve. To translate the incoming nerve current into fine ac- tion is to cultivate the senses. If the action be measured, that is, quantitative, the intellection is more pronounced and intense, and consequently the mental culture is the greater. This makes the difference between educational hand-work and mere play with tools. In the training of the eye, for example, we must have the exercise of untiring attention and compari- son. If the judgment to be cultivated is that of distance, each space impression must be compared with other space impressions, and so eventually translated into terms of motor effort. The energy put forth in covering a given distance or reach- ing a given thing becomes the yard-stick for subse- quent measurement. If the concern be for form and proportion, there must be constant comparison of form with form, and the measurement given in terms of pleasurable feeling. When color is in- cluded, the contrasts and comparisons are innumer- able. If only light and shade are under considera- tion, the attention is concentrated on these solely, and all other elements are excluded. The train- ing of the eye is forced upon us by the very neces- sities and circumstances of life, but only to the ORGANIC EDUCATION 125 extent of making the eye a rough convenience. The seeing eye differs from the uncultivated eye almost in kind. You may remember how long it took you to find out that the shadow of a tree trunk on the snow is blue and not black, and more likely some one else pointed it out to you. You may remember the first time you ever saw green in the sky, the first time you realized that color is not absolute, but merely relative. You may remember the first time you caught the feel- ing expressed in a well-designed building, and the revelation which a sense of proportion brings. If we grant this great outer world an objective and independent existence, then clearly, human eyes have different powers of seeing, and the dif- ferences are spiritual, are the result of intellectual growth and culture. If it be essentially a subjec- tive world, as we idealists suppose it to be, the case is precisely the same. The unfolding mind has an increasing wealth of experience, and its projection, the outer world, is one of increasing interest and beauty. With these great possibilities within grasp, it seems a criminal thing to substitute outer facts, — words, — the report of others, — the dead thing, — for the living organic reality. The practical process of cultivating the eye is not difficult. It needs the seeing eye in the teacher, and this is not always a part of the curriculum of the normal school. After that it needs simply the enlargement of the experience of the children 126 EDUCATION AND LIFE along lines of observation and experiment, work which will enlist their interest and their self- prompted activity. In the cultivation of the sense of touch, we have a very similar course to pursue. The special organ of touch, the hand, is ever in contact with its opportunity, but nothing comes of it unless the will work itself out through the hand. It is a wonderfully delicate organ, and capable of great cunning, but it must be developed by intelligent exercise. The motor nerves to set this piece of mechanism into action must be strengthened and vivified. The brain tissue back of it must be drilled to efficient command. Above all, the hand must be taught to carry out the exact purposes of the brain, an obedience which will be forthcoming just as soon as the brain is itself exact in its opera- tions. The poor workman is the one whose inner panorama is obscured by clouds and mists. The divine craftsman is clairvoyant. The eye and ear and hand are made the objects of special training in our art academies and con- servatories and manual training schools ; and more and more, as the doctrine of human wealth pene- trates the social consciousness, is this special train- ing being introduced into the educational process of childhood. The senses of taste and smell are also of large importance in the successful conduct of life, but they have never, so far as I am aware, been made the objects of educational care. They might well be, for they stand in intimate relation ORGANIC EDUCATION 127 to the life-drama. There is a particularly close connection between the sense of smell and the processes of memory, a connection which Darwin pointed out many years ago. A suddenly per- ceived and once familiar odor has power to recall a person, a situation, a locality, with a vividness which few other reminders possess. The connec- tion of taste and smell is so close as to be one of dependence. It is well known that a loss of the sense of smell means a loss of taste, and all the curtailment of discrimination and pleasure which such a loss involves. A sense of smell is valuable also as an* index of the condition of the mucous membrane, and any impairment demands immedi- ate attention. In this case the chain of disaster is very direct. The loss of taste following upon that of smell means a diminution of appetite, and a feeble appetite is not consistent with robust health. Nor does the chain end here. The same diseased condition of the membrane, which brings loss of smell and taste, is very prone to bring about an impairment of hearing. Dullness of hear- ing is more frequently caused by catarrh of the eustachian tube than by anything else. The blunt- ing of these three senses — hearing, taste, and smell — means a shrinkage of the personal uni- verse, such as no parent or teacher ought willingly to contemplate. Furthermore, when the organs are in a state of health, the training of both taste and smell to quantitative judgments involves a mental training which is quite worth while. / 128 EDUCATION AND LIFE The carrying out of organic education means an enlargement of the personal universe, an in- crease in the dimensions of life, an expansion of personal control and power. In the whole educa- tional process I know of nothing more interesting and more touching than to watch this growth, the increased power of the accomplished organism. The little craftsmen who are just beginning their hand-work are so manifestly helpless. It is almost pitiful to see the lack of coordination among their faculties, the absence of any real control over the organism. Where there is anything like normal material to work upon, the change is marvelous. Control takes the place of lack of control; slug- gishness gives place to alertness, awkwardness to dexterity. It is not too much to say that the work of human regeneration is going on from day to day and before one's very eyes. In this world of enlarging personality, one cannot help being pro- foundly sorry for that other world which elects idleness. Where hand-work has been employed for the bet- terment of deficient human material, — the feeble- minded and the criminal, — the change seems even more marvelous. The personal statements of the superintendents of the home at Elwyn, Pennsylva- nia, and of the reformatory at Elmira, New York, and the published reports of those institutions, show that in the one, manual training is most highly valued as a mental restorative, and in the other, as a moral tonic. ORGANIC EDUCATION 129 The significant element in the transformation wrought by organic education is that it has taken place essentially in the brain itself. The clumsy people of the world, those who cannot seem to man- age their person and make use of their senses, show a similar clumsiness in their mental operations. After some experience in observing the connection between mental power and bodily performance, one comes to mistrust the mental capacity of those who are visibly not in control of their own organ- isms. We all know what curious physical awkward- ness results from embarrassment. The very word " clever " means quick. If we search the whole vocabulary of commendation, one that has come down to us polished by the wear of centuries, we find a significant connection between mental states and bodily acts. The clever people are the people in bodily command ; men and women of marvelous quickness of action ; happy possessors of that ad- mirable tool by which the human spirit carries out its admirable purposes, an accomplished, developed organism. Every one can recall such cases in life and in literature. These favorite children of for- tune surely point the way to the realization of the social good. All this is very obvious, and yet one may venture to repeat these obvious things because in our edu- cational process we are not yet acting upon them. We are not yet strengthening the source of power, the human heart ; we are not yet furnishing it with an efficient tool, an accomplished organism. Our 130 EDUCATION AND LIFE quest for perfection is not a very earnest one, is indeed a mere bit of idle sentimentality if we neg- lect these very obvious matters of the law. And what I have to say in concluding this chap- ter seems to me still more obvious. We care for perfection in our ideal pursuits, — in art, in litera- ture, in music, — and we admit that we care. We want the greatest possible charm and delight and beauty and excellence and power. Sculpture creates strong-limbed men and noble women and beautiful children, people of power. Architecture works for subtle proportion and fine suitableness, for the things of excellence. Painting makes permanent the magnificent color and pure line of our dreams of beauty. Literature has for its avowed purpose the production of those perfect art forms and that rich imagery and that genuine emotion which con- stitute human delight. And, finally, music realizes its high office in speaking most directly and most touchingly to the human spirit. Now, these are not idle words. They are not pretty playthings for the imagination to dwell lightly upon and then pass on to the solemn affairs of trade and busi- ness. On the contrary, they represent that more permanent achievement by which the men of a later time judge whether the age has been worthy or unworthy. It is the record of the best that we have thought and done. But art work can only be created by the artist, poems by the poet, symphonies by the musician. The solemn affairs of trade and business, about which a part of the world speaks ORGANIC EDUCATION 131 quite reverently and impressively, have no genuine contribution to make toward the abiding wealth of the world. This wealth is human. It consists of beautiful men and beautiful women and beautiful children. The practical concern of life is with human charm and human delight and human beauty and human excellence and human power. When we save the human soul, redeem it from commercialism and incompleteness and organic defect and all other uncleanness, then all else that is good shall be added unto it. And the monu- ment of this rich life will be an art and literature and music which will proclaim its own excellence. But one must begin at the human end, with the perfecting of the human organism. CHAPTER V CAUSE AND EFFECT It is the defect of all voluminous writers that they mix considerable chaff with their wheat. Men like Ruskin, who write with too great ease, or like Spencer, who write with too great industry, inevi- tably say things both true and false. But their very wealth of expression makes their words worth winnowing. That Ruskin is at times extreme, and Spencer sometimes mistaken, does not detract from the immense value of the best of their utterance. In such instances one may profitably recall the shrewd remark of Leibnitz, " Show me a man who has never made a mistake, and I will show you a man who has never done anything." And the case of Ernest Renan comes to mind, a scholar who has amply atoned for any minor errors in his ori- entalism by the magnificent sweep and vigor of his religious conceptions. One can usually trace out the line of unreliability. It is the result of some personal defect, some unfortunate and embittering incident, some too limited experience. The defect in Ruskin is due to the cumulative nature of his emotions. He becomes carried away by the force of his own feelings. He ends in CAUSE AND EFFECT 133 extremes. Yet lie may be read with the utmost profit, if we take seriously the wise aud beautiful things he has to say about life and art, and stop quite short when we detect the signs of intemper- ance. The defect in Spencer comes from his unsocial life, a defect which shows itself in the wasteful controversies he has indulged in, in his false view of the position of women, and in much of his social theory generally. Yet he is most helpful, " our great philosopher," as Darwin called him, and his service has consisted not in any very original contribution to human knowledge, but rather in the clear and orderly way in which he has stated and illumined the fundamental things in the sepa- rate sciences, and brought them into close touch with one another. Now, as the result of this wide analysis and synthesis, Mr. Spencer has been led to say what seems to me a very true thing indeed, that the intellectual progress of a people, or of an indi- vidual, is by nothing so clearly measured as by the hold which they have upon the principle of causation. To believe rigidly in cause and effect is to be a philosopher. To act rigidly upon the belief is to be an artist. As an article of intellectual belief, none of us deny the principle of cause and effect. On the contrary, we subscribe to it most heartily, and we have a very disparaging opinion of those who do 134 EDUCATION AND LIFE not show an equal loyalty. And yet I have ven- tured to name philosophers those who rigidly be- lieve in it. As a practical people, we all act upon the prin- ciple of cause and effect, — more or less, — and again we have a very disparaging opinion of the poor souls who fail in this particular. Yet I have ventured to name artists those who really do act upon it. There is apparently some discrepancy in both our belief and our action. The heart of the trouble is that in neither are we very thorough- going. I am afraid that we are all very lazy. It is apparently easier not to think than to think. As Emerson put it, " Men are as lazy as they dare to be." This sluggish way of taking life, and failing to act out our beliefs, has an organic cause. It is due to the poor tissue of which most of us are made, to the lack of circulation, to the dead and alive organism. It is a part of the illness and disease which come from pursuing things instead of pursuing the major human ends. Such laziness leads to indefiniteness. When lucidity is pressed upon us by some sharp, clear-cut questioning, we straighten up and make defensible answers. For the moment, we do believe in cause and effect, and are momentarily philosophers. But the philosophy soon fades, and we pass into our accustomed vague- ness. In this region of fuzzy thinking in which we too commonly live, we hold half a dozen con- tradictory beliefs and never know it. We believe CAUSE AND EFFECT 135 in causation as a direct article of the intellectual creed, but we also believe in a lot of other things which are an equally direct denial. When the questions grow at all subtle, and particularly when we knock up against old traditions and conventions and Mrs. Grundy and the rest of the obstruction- ists, we go very lamely indeed, and end by being anything but philosophers. This confusion is reflected in our action. In very obvious things we are causationists. If we want our corn to grow we put fertilizer in each hill. If we want to be warm, we show our respect for the wood pile and the coal bin. If we are setting out on a journey, we ordinarily inquire the road. If we build a house, we look to the strength of our material. In these very obvious operations we have grown quite practical. When it comes to disposing of the corn, and using the warmth, and dignifying the journey, and glorifying the house, we are much less successful. We are not a very subtle people. We are much more given to action than we are to thought. Consequently, we show our essential want of practicality just as soon as our belief or our action touches the domain of those problems which involve the more subtle elements. Now, education is one of those practical processes in which the principle of cause and effect is very much needed in both our creed and our practice. But it is also a process in which our inaptitude for subtle belief and subtle action most strenuously shows itself. Our current education is not sue- 136 EDUCATION AND LIFE ceeding in proportion to the money and effort which are being put into it, for the simple reason that it is not built up on the line of causation. Yet education, the problem of problems at the present moment, the living end of our philosophy, is a very simple and natural process as soon as one imports into it a thoroughgoing belief in cause and effect, and action which is equally causational. It is this necessity, the moral necessity of being practical, which makes education only discussable on the higher grounds of social purpose and se- rious philosophy. If one does not know where one wants to go, there is little chance of success in de- vising a process for getting there. The most prac- tical man in the world cannot follow sealed orders until the seal is broken. The two conditions of success in education are a vivid realization of the social purpose and an equally vivid realization of the practical, causational nature of the process by which it is to be carried out. We have seen what the social purpose is. We have seen that it is the production of human wealth. Our belief in human unity makes it quite as explicit that the educational process must be organic in order to create this wealth. These are direct causational lines, and it only remains for us to live up to them. Simple as the process is, how- ever, we shall have constant need of love and courage, love enough to keep the process at all times thoroughly human, and courage enough to be true to our own programme. Upon this love and CAUSE AND EFFECT 137 courage I insist, not as a mere pretty sentiment, but as a condition to the fulfillment of that obliga- tion which presses upon all morally evolved per- sons, the obligation of making their adventures succeed. It was maintained in the last chapter that good health is a part of the moral life of the body, and in the present chapter it will be main- tained with equal insistence that success, the wise adjustment of means to ends, is a part of the moral life of the spirit. It would be an easy matter to resist temptation, even when spelled with the capital letter of the old homilies, if it always came to us duly labeled. But the trouble is that it has a way of coming in the guise of virtue, and then it is almost irresist- ible. This is particularly true in education. It is a process which has enlisted tremendous interest and tremendous good intention. Its operations have all the guise of virtue. If one stand aloof from these attractive operations and decline to lend a hand, one must seem to others, and even to one's self, as rather a disagreeable and useless fellow, with a much greater turn for finding motes than for casting out beams. So great is the simili- tude of virtue in the best-ordered of our schools that they constantly act as a tempter to the would- be reformer. The intention is so good, the teachers are so devoted, the place is so clean, the children are so clever and so lovable, that the effect is to create the impression that we have attained what we have not attained. In the face of these tempta- 138 EDUCATION AND LIFE tions, one must be forever applying the eausational yard-stick, and forever repeating one's educational catechism, — What is the social purpose ? How must the educational process act? Is the philo- sophic idea a reality ? This method of defense is sure to rout the enemy. If one find the absence of the great idea, the absence of a distinct and defensible purpose, the absence of eausational meth- ods, then one surely has to deal with an immoral and unsocial process, and an earnest man cannot go in for it. In very truth, it seems to me a greater social service to hold back from much of our present educational method, the machine of official educa- tion, than to lend it a hand. But one may do this with more grace if one has a definite plan to offer as a substitute, and if one is trying, however par- tially, to put such a plan into operation. The pur- pose of the present volume is to suggest both a definite way of looking at the educational problem, and an equally definite way of solving it. Nor is this solution entirely in the future. It is discern- ible as the inner heart of many an earnest con- temporary movement. This newer plan of educa- tion rests upon just this principle of cause and effect. It includes all children as its proper ma- terial, and covers all ages from birth to the very end. In its conception, the plan is truly demo- cratic, and in its operation it is eausational. In deference to its underlying principle of the unity of man, it may be designated as organic educa- CAUSE AND EFFECT 139 tion. The nearest approach to the carrying out of the programme of organic education is to be found in our kindergartens, our manual training schools, our art schools, our music schools, and our gym- nasiums. These, in a measure, have in mind the social purpose, the sound, accomplished, beautiful person. In a measure, they carry out this purpose along the lines of cause and effect by wrapping up the soundness and accomplishment and beauty in the very tissue and fibre of the organism itself. There are occasional wise men who decline the reputed necessaries of life, the conventional dis- play in food and clothes and shelter, who limit themselves to the real necessaries, and who take, as their extra part, the luxuries of life, leisure, and health, and happiness. This ideal would plainly be considered uneconomic. According to the cur- rent commercial view of life, consumption must keep pace with production, or the industrial mill stops. It is only by getting people to want a whole lot of ugly and unnecessary things that the profit hunger of our enormous productivity can be even half satisfied. But it is not enough that peo- ple should simply want these things. They must also have the money to pay for them. This is sometimes lacking, when the machines have pro- duced more than men can contemporaneously con- sume or destroy, and wages must needs stop along with the over-efficient machines. Then we have the curious spectacle of hard times caused by over- production, thousands of people made hungry and 140 EDUCATION AND LIFE naked and houseless, because they have produced too great wealth. It does not quite sound like cause and effect. This pressure on consumption is sometimes dain- tily called raising the standard of living ; and this benevolently determines the rate of wages, for wages, like a mirror, reflect the exact cost of what the average workman thinks he must eat and drink and wear and have. And so the passing days are desecrated, useless toil producing useless things, — implements of war, patent medicines, advertising novelties, Saturday night shoes, velveteens, and bangles. And the working people, with their great possibilities of achievement, the very bulk of the world's population, have produced nothing admir- able, no monument of loving workmanship, and no great show of character. The simple plan of making production as great as wholesomely may be, and consumption as small as wholesomely may be, and then devoting the large spare time to nobler human uses, this plan has not been tried, and is not possible so long as the world's industry is run on the motive of profit and not on the motive of human development and human wealth. It is this constant defeating of the high purposes of life by our present unsocial industrialism which forces an educator to take definite position on social ques- tions, even had he not been forced to it by the initial, logical necessity of formulating the social purpose to be carried out by his educational pro- cess. CAUSE AND EFFECT 141 The plan of organic education is much like the plan of these occasional wise men who decline the reputed necessaries of life, and insist upon the true luxuries. It cuts out as much of the use- less as possible. It does not store up heterogene- ous facts with an assiduity which would make it seem as if books and libraries were not safe store- houses for them. It is not commercial and pru- dential. It makes no explicit preparation for the future. It dispenses with many of the present reputed necessaries of education, and frankly in- sists upon what is commonly considered a luxury, upon culture, the study and pursuit of perfection. It dares to set up and to defend against all comers the simple thesis that the one object in life worthy of serious pursuit is human strength and beauty and accomplishment and goodness. It dares to set this up for boys as well as for girls, for poor people as well as for rich people, for age as well as for youth. It rates this human object so high that the unsocial pursuit of lands and houses and stocks and gold becomes an open act of sacrilege. And when this pursuit is carried out at a human cost, at the cost of others' health and honor and life, it becomes an offense so grave as to be a blasphemy, as to rank with the unpardonable sin. This is a heresy, deeper than one at first im- agines, for if we had the love and courage to live up to it, it would quite transfigure the earth. There are signs in the air that we shall soon be living up to it. We are beginning in places to do it already, 142 EDUCATION AND LIFE here and there in America and in England and in those fortunate isles where it is also believed as a reality of experience that the world might be a fair place ; that its wealth is human, and is made up of beautiful men and beautiful women and beautiful children, and of nothing less superb than this. It is a deep heresy, for if one really accepted it and lived up to it along the lines of cause and effect, that is to say, lived up to it practically, one would consent to no spending of the days which made one poorer humanly, however great the wage, and one would consent to no such desecration for the neighbor. There is a dramatic incident in the reported life of David which I much like to dwell upon. He was fighting the Philistines, after the savage manner of his time, and was hard pressed near the Cave of Adullam. The day was warm, and David spake longingly of the pure cold water in the well at the gate of his city of Bethlehem. In an in- stant three of his men broke through the ranks of the Philistines, drew water from the well, and bare the water back to David. It was a stirring thing to do, noble service, bravely rendered. And David took the water and poured it out on the ground as an offering to the Eternal One. It had been won at the risk of human life. The cost was too great, David could not drink. In modern life we have not yet the love and courage to decline the goods won at the too great cost of health and honor and happiness. And this CAUSE AND EFFECT 143 is the human cost of much that is in the market. But to this inconvenience, if inconvenience one is pleased to call it, a practical belief in human wealth and in the sacredness of human excellence brings us. The kindergarten and the manual training school, and the kindred institutions already mentioned, have this practical belief in the surpassing worth of human excellence. In this they are philosophic. They do not always live up to their philosophy, and perhaps the older schools of art and music and gymnastic do not quite subscribe to it as the issue of paramount importance. They still work too much as if art were an end in itself, apart from the artist ; and music an end in itself, regard- less of the singer ; and the human body something admirable untouched by the human spirit. But art and music and gymnastic are increasingly tak- ing their place alongside of the kindergarten and manual training as means of culture rather than as ends of culture, and in this they are being hu- manized. In all these institutions of organic train- ing we find, too, the practical attempt to carry the principle of cause and effect into definite educa- tional action, and in this they are artistic. Each one of these schools has made its distinct contribu- tion. In each one we shall find some strength and some weakness. In attempting to develop a more complete scheme of education, it will evidently be the beginning of wisdom to examine very carefully into these older schemes of organic culture, so that 144 EDUCATION AND LIFE we may take advantage of their merit and escape the penalty of their defect. In the kindergarten we find a supreme source of strength in its recognition of the source of power, the emotional life, the first full and ample recogni- tion anywhere in education. Froebel is everywhere full of it. He abounds in such expressions as " the inner impulse," " the impulse to play," " self- activity," and the like. They were such realities to him that, in the true artist-spirit of adjusting means to ends, he went to work to devise a system of child education which should be built up on the emotional life. The kindergarten is the first scheme of child culture which is truly psychological. All others have been founded more or less upon the idea of compulsion, of force, and have grown out of a totally different philosophy of life. Our own gentle ancestors, who believed, it may be re- membered, that the sins to which children are especially prone are ungodliness, profaneness, and self-sufficiency, must have sought, if they were at all consistent, to cure such serious defects by measures equally serious. Education meant to them, as it does still to many of their descendants, and to all believers in the cheerless doctrine of total depravity and the old Adam, a system of un- tiring and thoroughgoing repression. In a garden more thickly planted with tares than with wheat, they were not willing, like the good husbandman in the parable, to let both come to the harvest, but were forever trying to defeat the enemy, and, as a CAUSE AND EFFECT 145 result, they pulled up much of the wheat. Per- haps the best chapters in our colonial history are those delightful ones which tell of the triumph of practice over theory. One might almost say that the main virtue of the Puritans was their failure to be consistent. But Froebel had the seeing eye. He saw the unity of man, and every- where insists upon its major importance. He saw the source of power, the inner impulse, and al- ways heeded it. He accepted in part the Socratic view of vice and virtue, without, perhaps, being quite conscious of his acceptance or of the origin of the view. It is indeed marvelous that one man, quite by himself, should have worked out so much of vital truth in education. He may well be called the Emancipator of Childhood. Froebel's system grew out of his experience. He was not a closet philosopher, an astronomer who had never seen the stars. He noticed the children at their play, noticed its spontaneity, noticed the charming touch of sentiment and fancy which they import into all their self-devised activities. Many, doubt- less, had noticed these same things before, and the large good which came out of them ; but apparently no one had been practical enough or interested enough to seize upon this play impulse as a cause, and make still larger and more helpful results flow out of it. The ungainly, benignant figure, watch- ing the children at their play, believing rigidly in cause and effect, a philosopher, acting rigidly on the principle of cause and effect, an artist, doubtless 146 EDUCATION AND LIFE seemed to his day and generation a sorry sort of dreamer, and not very likely to make any contribu- tion of moment to the progress of the hour. But it turned out that he was the practical man, the causationist, and they were the false dreamers. It is impossible to picture anything more genuine and alert than children at their play, and here, if any- where, the sympathetic observer ought to be able to get at the secret of child education. It seems to me, then, the supreme source of strength in the kindergarten, and the service for which we owe it reverence, that it made education an inner process, a self-activity, a redemption, in place of an out- wardly imposed discipline and repression ; that it built its method upon a conception of human unity ; and, finally, that it carried out its purpose through the free play of the inner impulse. Prac- tically, the kindergarten is a system of sense cul- ture through the healthful play of the emotions. It is activity touched with sentiment. The weakness in the kindergarten seems to me in not carrying the principle of cause and effect to logical completeness. As a system of organic cul- ture, it ought to concern itself with the health of the child ; with his life conditions, his food and dress and sleep and exercise and baths ; with the atmosphere in which he lives outside the kinder- garten ; with the condition of his sense organs, eye and ear and nose and nervous system gener- ally, for upon these the child's progress towards perfection depends, quite as much as upon the CAUSE AND EFFECT 147 directed play in the kindergarten itself. Perhaps it would sum up the matter to say that in order to accomplish its full purpose of human renovation, the kindergarten must concern itself with twenty- four hours in place of three, and must consider the organism as a whole. In sloyd and in educational manual training generally, we have one of the most promising ef- forts that has been made to realize organic edu- cation. The purpose is human development, and the method is strictly causational. It is the pe- culiar strength of sloyd that it, too, has realized the source of power in the emotional life of chil- dren and has made this an integral part of its method. Nothing seems to me quite so refreshing in all our educational provisions as the naive con- ditions imposed in Sweden on the introduction of the sloyd wood work. If the work is desired at any given school, say a district school where there is but one teacher, the authorities do not, as with us, decree that the subject shall be taught, but they inquire whether the teacher believes in sloyd, and this belief is held to be the first re- quisite condition. And the second condition is equally delightful. When the sloyd has been in- troduced, only those children may take it who want to take it, who choose it quite voluntarily. Given a teacher who believes in sloyd and children who want to take it, one can easily imagine what fine results are possible. Discriminating critics of that older manual train- 148 EDUCATION AND LIFE ing which came to us from Kussia have pointed out that in giving children a course of prescribed and abstract exercises in wood and metal, we are allowing no greater play of self -activity and spon- taneous impulse than if the prescribed course were in language or mathematics. This criticism is per- fectly just and still applies to much that is being done in even the so-called educational manual train- ing. In sloyd, as in the kindergarten, there is a pro- found belief in the unity of man. The changes which it attempts to set up in the organism are prompted by that abiding impulse towards perfec- tion which is the motive power of all education. The emotional life is enlisted in the work by a frank appeal to the interest and the affection of the children. Each piece of work is a finished article, however simple it may be, something that the child can use and care for. As far as possi- ble, he is allowed to choose what he will make, so that he can put his whole heart and interest into the work. It is also possible, by suggesting arti- cles which may afterwards form suitable gifts for the father or the mother, to touch the work with a generous and loving sentiment. The educational effort involved in sloyd does not end here ; it pro- vides that the work shall be carried out on strict physiological principles, shall be indeed a direct form of gymnastic, quite as much as direct culture of the hand and eye. Furthermore, part of the models involve ample freehand work, so as to cul- CAUSE AND EFFECT 149 tivate the sense of form and make the judgment as free as possible from the necessity of mechanical tests. Finally, it is sought to make all the models rich in the simple beauty which comes from good proportion rather than from decoration. The task proposed for itself by sloyd is exceedingly subtle, to engage the interest and spontaneity and affec- tion of a child, to cultivate the sense of beauty and the finer sense of touch, to increase the general bodily health and poise, and finally, throughout all the work, by the directed and purposeful overcom- ing of the resistance of the material, to give power of brain and skill of hand. It is a psychological programme and a long one, but sloyd accomplishes it successfully just in proportion to its practical fidelity to the principle of cause and effect. In the manual training first introduced into this country from Russia, both motive and method were different. This was in 1876. The motive was technical, the cultivation of a dexterity which might afterwards be applied in industrial opera- tions. The methods were those which were thought to be best adapted to the bread-and-butter problem. It may be remarked in passing that the term edu- cational is often applied to this earlier technical work, and was sincerely applied by the people who introduced it, but they meant something quite dif- ferent from what is meant when the term is used in the present volume. As opposed to factory work, to the making of something which would have a direct market value, the work was industrially edu- 150 EDUCATION AND LIFE cative rather than industrially productive, and the earlier teachers of manual training devised abstract joints and exercises in order to emphasize this dif- ference. They feared that the schools might some- time become factories, and start out on the danger- ous road of self-support. But the real difference is more profound than this. The earlier manual training was undertaken in order to give a skill of hand which might after- wards be used in industry. The later, or educa- tional manual training, is undertaken in order to give a skill of organism to be used in life. The one motive is technical: the other is human. The method used in technical manual training is natu- rally quite different from the method used in sloyd and educational manual training, for it is after a quite different result. The technical method does not concern itself with the interest and spontaneity and affection of the boy. It makes little attempt to have its exercises teach beauty or the finer sense of form. It is carried out in rooms that are light and wholesome, but it is in no sense gymnastic. It makes no direct provision for increasing the bodily health or poise. Even as a strictly bread-and-but- ter study the technical training would do better to concern itself with these human matters ; for, as we have been pointing out all along, it is the excellent man who produces the excellent work. We may then count the technical manual train- ing as a very partial contribution to organic educa- CAUSE AND EFFECT 151 tion, while we must count the educational hand- work as a very large contribution. Both forms o£ training fulfill the partial ends proposed for them- selves. As far as they go, they are excellent. They are open to criticism when they are applied as if fulfilling the full programme of human needs. The involved culture of the hand and eye, and of the brain centres back of the hand and eye, is a large part of organic education, but it must not be mistaken for the whole. In addition there must be the cultivation of the other senses, especially the ear and voice in speech and song and music ; there must be an adequate gymnastic for the develop- ment of general bodily power ; there must be an education in art, and finally there must be efficient drill in verbal expression. It is only when joined to all these things and to a sincere cultivation of the higher sentiments, that manual training may be said to offer a coherent scheme of culture. Taken alone, it is only one out of a number of elements of culture, very valuable and full of promise, but still only a part. If we turn now to the art schools of the country and ask what human lesson they have to suggest, we find them in places doing magnificent work in the cultivation of the eye and the hand just as the sloyd schools are doing magnificent work in the cul- tivation of the hand and the eye. But the art schools are far less human in their motive and far less true in their method. In looking at them as they exist to-day, one is much more struck with 152 EDUCATION AND LIFE their human weakness than with their human strength. The defect in the majority of art schools is vital. They are working for a technical end quite as truly as the technical manual training schools are. They propose art as an end, as a pro- fession, as a thing for-men and women to do. They ignore, in the main, the vastly greater end, the hu- man end. As a result, we have many paintings but little art work. It is the wrong method, even if art were the end. As an old lady of my acquaint- ance once remarked, " You can't get more out of people, my dear, than there is in them." That this is vitally true, we seem to be forever forgetting. True art is the overflow of a radiant spirit, and the growth of art in any community depends, not only on the number of workers, but also on the num- ber of appreciative on-lookers, creators of an atmo- sphere favorable to the art spirit. Probably to no country do lovers of the beauti- ful look with such wistful eyes as to Japan. There, one sees, or fancies that one sees, a nation which is truly esthetic, or which has been in the not very distant past. At first it seems to be a merely decorative art. It concerns itself with costume and ceremonial and flower arrangement and domes- tic architecture and landscape gardening, and with the utensils and apparatus of daily life. It seems something less ideal and elevated than the western art of the gallery and museum. But when you come to think about it, this eastern idea is the true one, the idea of having art minister to the daily esthetic CAUSE AND EFFECT 153 needs rather than to intermittent esthetic duty. I cannot but feel, with all due respect to modern knowledge, that the Japanese maiden arranging her chrysanthemums so that they will be an object of human delight, is rendering, in that particular at least, a truer and more beautiful service than the western girl microscopically hunting for some new variety of worm. You remember, perhaps, that fine incident of the cloissonne maker who brought his wares to one of the earlier Paris expositions, and sold them to such excellent advantage that he found himself quite unexpectedly in possession of fifty thousand dollars. He was warmly congratu- lated, and it was suggested to him that he could now enlarge his factory, and with a market already eager, he could soon make a fortune. But his reply was something better than that. It was that his ware would become inferior if he turned it out in such large quantity, that he would spend the money, rather, in creating a beautiful garden around his workshop, and that his work-people, in the midst of this encircling beauty, would then pro- duce still more beautiful ware. Our lives are enriched, not by having a wealth of bric-a-brac about us, but, rather, by the posses- sion of a few really beautiful objects which we have the open eye to see and appropriate. It seems to me that the weakness in the art schools lies in focusing their attention so exclu- sively upon the work. Their redemption will come when they turn to human life and make art a 154 EDUCATION AND LIFE means instead of an end. The current methods have the same defect that the motive has. They are largely prescribed, systematized, made mechanical and objective. They are not practical and causa- tional, like the methods of the kindergarten and sloyd. And the method reaches its extreme chilli- ness when art students are taught how to teach art. The defect in method will be remedied when the motive is humanized. Even now, the fact that art study is prompted by a feeling for the beautiful makes the effort to systematize and formalize it less efficient and less harmful than it would be working on less emotional material. The contribu- tion of the art school to organic education may not be considered more than incidental, a by-product of sight and handicraft in the main process of turning out what are meant to be art goods. The- oretically, the effect of such special culture could not be otherwise than very partial, and practi- cally, we find it to have just this defect. The art student is not more charming and more beautiful than other partialists. Too often the fragmentary nature of his culture makes him less charming and less beautiful. To be critical in musical matters seems like car- rying criticism to the very gates of Paradise. It is, perhaps, allowable if one does it in the hope of opening the gates. To be an artist in music re- quires an amount of organic power which stamps its possessor at once as a genius. To sing is to have a rarely disciplined throat and ear, and if the CAUSE AND EFFECT 155 singing be from notes, to add to this a quick, per- ceiving eye. To play a musical instrument is to have the ear and eye and the long-fingered wonder- working hand. To this we must add an obedient foot, if the instrument be supplied with pedals. Few acts of the artist-life require such fine co- ordination of faculty as the playing of a modern, triple-keyboard, many-stopped organ. In the schools of music, music is pursued as an end. If it be composition, the result is a definite, finished pro- duct. If it be performance, it is an organic state, and therefore necessarily a partial human end. But this end is incidental. It is only that we may have the music, and not that we may have the accomplished, beautiful organism. The schools of music have not produced great artists. They have helped artists who had power and who might have been great anyway. And when you think of the great number of young people in this country who have had persistent musical instruction along these technical lines, and have never become the slenderest of musicians, the army of women who have studied the piano for years, and have never produced a single great composition, or even at- tained distinction as performers, who from begin- ning to end " never let their left hand know what their right hand doeth," a doubt will obtrude itself as to whether the motive and the method are not in some respects faulty. The point of attack wants to be changed. It wants to be made human, and to have regard mainly 156 EDUCATION AND LIFE to the musician. We can afford to have the music the incident. No one object of human pursuit de- mands so complete an organic training as music, and were it pursued as a human end, for its effect upon the human person, it could be made a tre- mendous contribution to organic culture. With this change of motive, there would, as in the art world, be a distinct change of method. It is im- possible to teach music to any one who does not want to learn, and only commercial pressure could make a true musician attempt so unattractive a task. When music is taught as a human art, as a contribution to human perfection, and not as an end in itself, something that may be had for a fee, it will only consent to carry on its work along the lines of cause and effect ; that is to say, through the interest and spontaneity and affection of the learner. It will be given as an agent of culture, to increase the health and poise and sight and hearing and voice and touch, the organic human power of those whose high privilege it is to learn music, and to offer them a superb medium for the expression of the profound aspirations of the spirit. In the gymnasiums of the country we have two distinct institutions as unlike as possible in both their motive and their method. Like the music schools and art schools and manual training schools and kindergartens, both types of gymnasium are given to organic culture, but they make very un- equal contributions. The older type of gymnasium CAUSE AND EFFECT 157 is a place where the body is cultivated as a thing in itself, either for the performance of some athletic feat, — this used to be the sole office of the college gymnasium, — or for the sake of bodily exercise in some particular direction. The newer type of gym- nasium is quite a different place, and the system of instruction is quite different. This is notably true of Swedish gymnastic. In this newer type, gym- nastic is taken in the best sense that the Greeks took it, as a means of increasing the health and poise and power of mankind. The method of this gymnastic is very simple. It uses little apparatus, and may even be carried on without any whatever. All it requires is a large open floor or a hard dirt court. Bars and ladders and wooden horses are used where available, but they are not essential. The system is primarily a scheme for general bodily exercise prompted by individual will power. It seeks to cultivate the will through the greater control of the body. It is, indeed, a system of carefully thought out organic education. Like all true sense culture, it belongs more properly under the head of mental culture than under the head of what is commonly meant by physical culture. Notice some of its fundamental principles. It dispenses with music, because the rhythm then be- comes the guiding factor in place of the human will. It dispenses with all action on the part of the instructor during the class movement, for this would substitute imitation for the directing power of the will. Both of these provisions are very 158 EDUCATION AND LIFE subtle, and they do accomplish their purpose. The movement is explained and illustrated by the in- structor, and each child knows perfectly what is to be done. But he must do it himself, of his own volition, and quite unaided by music or model. All commands are short and clear, so that they may reach the intelligence with the utmost direct- ness and speed. The response must be equally quick and direct. The first command — " Atten- tion ! " — asks that the faculties be alert and ready to act, and the body in a suitable position of van- tage. The second command names the part of the body to be called into action. The third com- mand tells the direction of motion. The last com- mand describes the motion and calls for it. Thus : "Attention — right leg — upward — bend ! " Each word is spoken quickly and distinctly. The exer- cise is not only meant to develop the body through the muscular exertion required, but still more to develop the power of command. The exercises are all light, and the majority of them would scarcely bring fatigue if persisted in for considerable periods of time. But where the system is well carried out, and the commands follow one another in fairly rapid succession, mental fatigue comes before mus- cular fatigue, and indicates very positively where the work is being done. The whole purpose of the Swedish drill is to increase the health of the body, to make it alert, quick, usable ; above all, to put it under the absolute control of the will. To do this is to practically follow out the principle of cause CAUSE AND EFFECT 159 and effect. It adds immensely to the charm and the success of life, and so makes a large contribu- tion towards the quest for perfection. It gives one a resourceful feeling that the body is ready to do the bidding of the mind, is indeed a well-trained servant, untiring and devoted. Viewed from the point of view of organic education, the strength of the Swedish system lies in this, that it does make the body a very much more effective tool for carrying out the admirable purposes of the mind. It offers a general increase of power, and does not pretend to the culture of any particular faculty or sense. Its purpose is partial, but such as it is, it performs it. And this service is of the utmost im- portance, since, as we have seen, it is the founda- tion for all subsequent special sense culture. The object in thus passing in review the per- formance of the kindergarten, the educational work- shop, the studio, the conservatory, and the gymna- sium has been to point out their strength and their defect when viewed as possible processes for the carrying out of the social purpose. It is manifest that they all fail in this, that not one of them works out the principle of cause and effect to its logical completeness, that is, to a process covering twenty-four hours ; not one of them makes good health an absolutely unavoidable result ; not one of them has a compelling word to say about food and drink and dress and baths and sleep and open air and fun and love. It must be borne in mind that they do not pretend to. The contention is 160 EDUCATION AND LIFE merely that it is only by such pretension, and a practical making good of the pretension, that the social purpose can be realized. Organic education must cover the whole twenty-four hours, the whole year, the whole lifetime, and must have added to it such abstract training in language and science and mathematics as careful examination shows to be salutary, if it is to be the accepted process for the production of the people of power, men and women who are strong and beautiful and accom- plished and good. If we acted out the principle of cause and effect, I have said that we would be artists ; and in no department of human effort would it be so alto- gether interesting and profitable to be an artist as in this most important of all social operations, the realizing of the social ideal. Our failure to act causationally results from our deficient belief in cause and effect. We are not philosophers, even in education, one of the most ideal of our pursuits, and this means that in spite of all our boasting we are not yet a practical people. When it comes to the very obvious and unimportant things, to money- getting and shop-keeping and stock-jobbing and out-racing and over-dimensioning the rest of the world generally, we seem to have considerable turn for the practical, though even here I am told that ninety-seven per cent, of our business men sooner or later meet with failure. It must be humiliating to go in for such a minor end as money and then not get it. But in the more important affairs of CAUSE AND EFFECT 161 the hour, the gentle art of living, the vastly signi- ficant process of educating, we are hardly causa- tionists at all, but out-and-out dreamers ; with small turn for the practical, and quite deserving all the reproach which the doubters are so ready to throw at us. The first concern of a practical educational sys- tem should be with the life conditions. These are now left in part to the home, in large part to chance. To be sure, every careful mother tries to work them out to the best of her ability. But look what a tremendous task we are putting upon her, a task that would tax the wisest specialist. It would be far more reasonable to ask the care- ful mother to give her children the elementary English branches at home, for these are much more manageable than the questions which we do leave to her. Then, too, the mass of mothers are not practically careful and they are not practically in- telligent. The very children who start out with least in the matter of heredity get least under our present system in the way of efficient culture. In Greece they were more practical than this. At its best, education covered twenty-four hours. This is the first work to be done by practical organic education, to investigate and make known just these simple matters of daily living, — the sort of food and drink which will give the best results in the way of nutrition and growth ; the sort of dress which will give the amount of protection needed, and still permit a wholesome freedom of motion 162 EDUCATION AND LIFE and allow the air and sunshine to strengthen and vivify the little bodies ; the kind of baths which are best for children, the temperature, the number a day, the proper hour ; the amount of sleep which is needed ; the physical and intellectual atmo- sphere which should surround the child, and, finally, the sort of play and spontaneous occupation which ought most to be encouraged. It is unreasonable to expect a young mother, herself quite unin- structed in even the rudiments of science, to meet these difficult questions successfully ; and with our present commercial spending of the days, the fa- thers do not at all count in such matters. For this reason, it often happens that boys sent to good boarding-schools turn out the stronger men, for these all-important life problems have to be faced there, and some solution reached. Just in proportion as we believe in the unity of man and the principle of causation, are we bound to see to it that the human organism is wholesome and well nourished, before we may, with any de- gree of success, start out upon the work of special development, which is commonly supposed to be the sole function of the school. This constant appeal to the agency and test of causation is prompted by an intense desire to get at the practical things in education, and to make it a vital, effective process. If we want the seeing eye and hearing ear and trained voice and discrim- inating touch and taste and smell ; if we want good red blood and high spirit and serene poise ; CAUSE AND EFFECT 163 if we want charm and accomplishment and beauty ; if we want a warm and generous and reverent heart ; in a word, if we want human wealth, then we must set to work and strive for these things, and as a practical people we must work along the line of cause and effect, by employing agencies which are adequate to bring about the desired results. It requires character to be moral, and it requires intelligence. The decalogue represents a sturdy, primitive sort of morality which the world can never afford to disregard. The nations which have been true to this code have had their reward, a reward of physical health and well-being which have led to dominion and power. But the deca- logue is at its best when it is taken as the founda- tion of morality and not at all as the full super- structure. To satisfy the demands of the modern moral life, our code must be touched with the spirit of a new commandment, and must have added to it that impulse towards perfection which gives to morality the positive element of an ever- present and ever - progressive obligation. It is more inexorable than anything ever written on tables of stone. It requires not only that we shall entertain lofty ideals, but quite as rigidly that we shall attain them. Otherwise, the torch is handed to another and a worthier keeper. We must pro- pose to ourselves attainable ends. The unattain- able end is a simple absurdity which can possess charm only for the sentimentalists, and these peo- 164 EDUCATION AND LIFE pie, as we all know, are never moral. The attain- able end represents a failure, an out-and-out im- morality if it is not reached. In a word, morality- is a practical operation and not an idle sentiment. The bad son who said he would n't and did, is counted better than the good son who said he would and did n't. Morality is only satisfied by success. This may seem a hard saying, but it is literally true. The good farmer is not the one who raises poor crops. The good engineer is not the one whose structures collapse. The good cap- tain is not the one who runs his ship on the rocks. The good doctor is not the one who kills his pa- tients. Neither, let us forever bear in mind, is the good man the one who misses living the good life. Success is the measure of goodness. Morality, which has to do with right living, is only satisfied by right living. The most evolved conduct, as Mr. Spencer has pointed out, is the conduct in which means are most perfectly adapted to ends, that is to say, conduct marked by just this quality, the quality of succeeding. So the philosopher-art- ist is the only truly moral person, and he is moral because as philosopher he has a rigid belief in cause and effect, and as artist he has the rigid habit of carrying cause and effect into action. A faith so sturdy as this may not be held by weaklings. It is the faith of the men and women of power. Failure is only another name for im- morality. Human failure means human immoral- ity. The absence of health and strength and CAUSE AND EFFECT 165 beauty and wisdom and accomplishment and lov- ableness is a moral delinquency. It means that that impulse towards perfection, which alone makes human life significant and divine, has either been denied altogether, or else that as a plan of life it has been so feebly handled as to come to nothing. To be moral is to be practical ; to be practical is to succeed. As idealists are the really practical peo- ple of the world, they are obliged to look upon the process of education as a human adventure in which they dare not fail. The social purpose is a practical, attainable end, and consequently the educational process is moral only as it accomplishes this end. To those who love the things of the spirit, and who delight in the intellectual life, this frank and practical proposition to save man through the puri- fication and regeneration of his organism means much more than the mere production of so many clever, healthy animals. It means essentially the redemption of the spirit, for the two go hand in hand. One end cannot be realized without the other. Although we discarded dualism in the very first chapter, as a view of the world not borne out by experience, I cannot forbear returning to it a moment in order to suggest that the older plan of spiritualizing the world along dualistic lines has signally failed. It is perfectly true that the body wars against the spirit, but this is not because they have a dissimilar course to run ; it is because they have a common destiny, and any misadventure with the body means a corresponding misadventure 106 EDUCATION AND LIFE with the spirit. The way out of the difficulty is not the dualistic way of still further maltreating the body, but the monistic way of redeeming and perfecting the body. Nor can I forbear to suggest once more that the things of the spirit can only express themselves through the rich imagery of the senses, that the delight in the intellectual life is but a delight in the symbolism of the world- life. After all, the intellectual life is but a reflec- tion of the sincere passion of experienced life, a representation. The reality is the passion itself. To attain human wealth we want to put into daily life itself those elements which make art and lit- erature glorious, and to turn increasingly from art and literature to life. Eeality is better than repre- sentation ; life at first hand, warm, glowing, beau- tiful human life, is better than any picture of it. CHAPTER VI CHILDHOOD If we believe that the wealth of the world is human, that it consists of beautiful men and beau- tiful women and beautiful children, people of accomplishment and goodness and power; if we believe in cause and effect, and are consequently practical people, with a turn for making our plans come true, then the educational process which is to carry into effect this magnificent social creed must be a thoroughly practical process which will keep this end resolutely in mind, and will as reso- lutely work for its accomplishment. Just as the social purpose covers the whole of life and includes all citizens, so the educational process must cover the whole of life, and include all citizens. Human life is a continuous experience from the moment of parental conception to the moment of withdrawal from the visible world. So far as we know, birth and death are the only abrupt crises in this human experience, and even these are only apparently abrupt. There are many phases in the experience as a whole, but they fade into one another very, very gradually. The educational process, to be true to its high end, must have the 168 EDUCATION AND LIFE same continuity and the same gentle passage. We may, however, without violence, count childhood as a distinct period if we are careful to make its clos- ing characteristic the initial characteristic of the succeeding period of youth. As human life responds to the ideal of a progres- sive perfection, its span must increase both in point of actual years and in the richness of their con- tent. This will make each period of life corre- spondingly longer. As the possibilities of life grow strong and fine, it requires distinctly greater peri- ods of time to do even half justice to their poten- tial content. As the human vista broadens and lengthens, there is an over-spilling of the days of childhood. And why, indeed, should we wish to compress and contract anything so altogether charm- ing? From a human standpoint there is no reason. Ample childhood makes rich youth, and rich youth glorious manhood, and these, taken together, form the perfect life. From a commercial standpoint this is of course very bad doctrine. It diminishes the cheap, underpaid labor of the world by with- drawing children from the service of profit. Then, too, competition is so keen that those who want to come to the top in the commercial caldron feel that they must begin early and work up. One hates the very phrase, this beginning early and working up, for it has turned many a human pro- mise into human failure. It seems to me, then, that from our ampler human view it is not too much to count the first fifteen years of life as the dear pos- CHILDHOOD 169 session of childhood, and to treat these years frankly as the golden age of innocence. There is also a deep biological reason for making such a division. Of the five phases in the life- history of the human organism, — birth, nutrition, growth, reproduction, and death, — childhood cov- ers the whole of birth, both pre-natal and the early years of post-natal existence, the period of most ac- tive nutrition, and by far the greater part of growth. At birth the average child weighs about eight pounds. By his fifteenth birthday he will weigh in the neighborhood of a hundred pounds, an increase of at least twelvefold. During all the rest of life the increase will be hardly twofold. Roughly speaking, the human organism attains one half its growth in one fifth of its life, and the other half, at unequal and, in the main, at diminishing rate, during the remaining four fifths. Childhood is marked by tremendous physical activity, and the educational process must build itself upon this as a fact of major importance. Childhood may properly cover the whole of life up to the beginning of the development of the. reproductive functions. The process of childhood must concern itself phy- sically with birth, nutrition, and growth ; it must concern itself intellectually with the awakening of the spirit, its nourishment and expansion. The real culture of a human organism begins years back in the lives of the boy and girl who later enter into parenthood, just as their life cul- ture had still earlier origin. In every wholesome 170 EDUCATION AND LIFE organism the instinct of reproduction, the instinct of race-preservation, is as natural as the instinct of self-preservation, and we are poor philosophers if we ignore this vital fact. Both instincts have led to cruelty and disorder. But both instincts are necessary, and are capable, therefore, of the highest idealization. In the following pages, the question of reproduction will be dealt with not as a mis- fortune, a savage force which we would do much better without, but in what is believed to be the far more wholesome spirit, as a distinct good for- tune, as a social force which may be wholly be- nignant and human. From the point of view of perfection, the quest of that which is excellent and beautiful, the office of parenthood is a very sacred office, which may not lightly be entered upon, or even entered upon at all by those who are dis- qualified. A wedding ceremony does not consti- tute the qualification. It is much more organic than that. In our more complex societies we have created a very deep sentiment that children may not be born out of wedlock, and as a social safe- guard it has been in part successful ; but, like the Decalogue, this is only a foundation of morality, and not at all the full measure of the spirit. We must create the far more important sentiment that only those may enter into wedlock who have the pure, fair bodies and the sound minds of accepta- ble parenthood. In this connection I should like to point out one form of marriage which is to-day making against the CHILDHOOD 171 perfection of the individual life, and of the child- hood which is the offspring of such a union, — I mean the economic marriage, the marriage of a pure, fair woman with a man of unsuitable age and deficient soundness of organic tissue, and allowed for the simple reason that he can afford her ample financial support. Such an economic marriage represents a moral transgression on very Jiigh grounds. Yet it is sanctioned in families which nourish a high tradition of honor, and solemnized in churches which profess a high sense of religion. My own deep interest in that social reform which means, among other things, the entire liberation of woman and her economic and civil equality, through a wiser administration of the national re- sources, is prompted by a desire to see in her the sturdier life of a real independence, and to see also the purification of the race life at its very foun- tain, in the holy office of parenthood ; and this, I believe, will only come about when both men and women are economically independent. The culture of childhood, as a consciously di- rected process, should cover the period of gesta- tion, from conception to birth, quite as carefully as the first fifteen years of independent organic life. Every personal experience of any range whatever in- cludes a knowledge of some child dreadfully marred, perhaps wholly handicapped, by the unfavorable circumstances of its pre-natal life. Our knowledge has come largely through these disasters. But perhaps we shall be still more alert to the im- 172 EDUCATION AND LIFE portance of such pre-natal influences, if we simply marshal the conditions before our eyes, eyes open to the principle of cause and effect, and then make sound application of our general knowledge. In the whole range of chemistry we do not find more complex, more unstable, organic material than this highly sensitive, highly organized, human embryo. It i& curiously open to every impression, to every influence. Even were it less impressionable through its own constitution, it is growing at a speed which makes it the scene of intense molecular activity, and hence singularly open to those more permanent molecular re-arrangements upon which the future condition of the organism so largely depends. At no other period in the life of the human organism do we have such altogether astonishing growth. In a period of about nine months, an almost micro- scopic egg, a germ only about the one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter, develops into the relatively giant proportions of the human infant. These are quite familiar facts, but the thought is less familiar that as causationists in education, as people given over to the practical study and pursuit of perfec- tion, we are quite bound to give these vital facts very grave consideration when we come to the for- mulation of a thoroughgoing course of organic education. Just as the embryo, so fraught with human possibilities, is open to all sorts of harmful influences, so also is it open to all sorts of perfect- ing influences. The very sensitiveness which makes it so open to harm makes it equally open to good, CHILDHOOD 173 and it is this very hopeful aspect of the case which positive education must seize upon. I am venturing to discuss questions which are commonly considered outside of the province of the educator, but their tremendous importance makes allowable my plain speech. The influences surrounding maternity must not only be guarded, — they must be carefully culti- vated. It is a field for the most beautiful and far-reaching work, the work of bringing beauty and health and serenity into the very organic fibre of the future men and women of the race. The im- pulse for this work must come from the heart of the mother, but it is an impulse which may be strengthened and instructed by the outspoken voice of the teacher, a voice which must proclaim, if need be, with the vehemence of an Isaiah, the double truth that ill-born children are ever a crime, that well-born children are ever a possibil- ity. This is the law. These considerations ought to make motherhood very sacred, a time for all gentleness and patience and love, a time for music and beauty and spiritual elevation of thought ; and this for the sake of both the mother and child, — for the mother who is to meet such tremendous suffer- ing as the price of renewed life, for the child who is to carry the impress of these influences through- out three-score years and ten. There is some prejudice against the public amelioration of the anguish of motherhood, through the establishment of maternity hospitals and the like, lest by reducing 174 EDUCATION AND LIFE the suffering they may also reduce the incentives to domestic morality ; but such a supreme moment in the life of a fellow-being is not the time to ask questions. It is for society to reduce the temptations, the economic pressure which leads to vice, to lay its strong hand upon the libertine, the real offender, and not in cruelty to select the anguished mother as the instrument of its wrath. Whatever her guilt, she has in part atoned for it by a deeper suffering than men can ever know. And it must be remembered that the child at least is guiltless, and in the name of our common human- ity deserves to be ushered into the world under such conditions as will best further its subsequent life. Let me repeat it, that the concern of the utmost moment in the educational process of childhood is to see to it that children are well born. No after care and training can make the weakling strong. No subsequent neglect, short of absolute injury, can entirely rob the strong one of his strength. So vital are these considerations that, with the evolution of a keener social conscience, they must become incorporated into our marriage laws, just as they have already become incorporated into the private conscience of more evolved individuals. The first fifteen years of separate organic life are full of educational possibilities of the highest moment, possibilities which under our present ad- ministration of childhood are very commonly lost. We have still the highly sensitive organism in which CHILDHOOD 175 to wrap up the accomplishments and powers of later life, and we have also the plasticity which comes with rapid growth ; when the molecules of the body are in a state of motion — and in children they are fairly dancing with activity — it is much easier to re-arrange them in predetermined patterns than when the molecules have the relative sluggish- ness which comes with more advanced years. I am very fond just here of an illustration borrowed from the engineering world, for it seems to me to drive the truth home with quite irresistible force. When a rod of iron is subjected to constant vibra- tion, as in a much-used bridge structure, it rapidly becomes crystalline, and must be replaced by more fibrous metal. Yet the same rod in the quiet of a warehouse would suffer no such molecular change. It is only when the molecules are in motion that the crystallizing forces have a chance to act. It is lit- erally the same with children. When the organism is rapidly changing, as it is during the whole period of normal childhood, it is wonderfully impressi- ble. When it ceases to change rapidly, it ceases to be readily impressible. Periods of arrested growth are marked by difficulty of organic acquire- ment. When the organism is too sluggish, certain arts are quite impossible. The mastery of the violin, as we all know, is entirely out of the ques- tion unless one begin even before the teens are reached. The art of swimming is very easy for a boy of ten, and exceedingly difficult for a man of thirty. Illustrating the same point, we find that 176 EDUCATION AND LIFE older and more sluggish organisms rise to unwonted activity under stress of unusual conditions, — deaf people hear on a rapidly moving train ; dull men " rise to the occasion " and surprise themselves and their friends ; an excited author writes better than he knows how ; a man of deficient aural memory finds himself humming a tune, which he has al- lowed himself to beat time to by some bodily move- ment. So true is all this that one even reads on credible authority that a movement of the jaws, as in the mastication of dried figs or other difficult comestibles, is favorable to thought. I should be sorry, however, to have this argument used in sup- port of chewing-gum ! This sensitiveness and this mobility make the years of childhood the very most important years of all for the purposes of organic education. One could ask for no better material than normal, healthy childhood. The schemes of education which have every other merit but that of succeeding, commonly ex- cuse themselves by putting the blame on the chil- dren. If you at all remember that old-fashioned game of croquet, you will recall numbers of players who always charged defeat upon their mallets, and were forever trying new ones. The schools busily hunting for perfect children, and failing with those they have, are much in the position of these clumsy players. As long as the supply of new children keeps up, they can go on trying new mallets, but with precisely the same results. It seems to me CHILDHOOD 177 that childhood is often slandered, when the real fault is in the educational process itself. What- ever the human material were, it is just this human material which education is called upon to work up, so that in any case a failure would mean fail- ure. But it means this in a double sense when you remember how excellent the average human material is, how plastic, how impressionable, how thoroughly vital. One could ask for nothing bet- ter. The whole question is one of method, what to do with this material. It is particularly impor- tant that the educational process of childhood shall be eminently successful, since the processes of all the later periods must wholesomely flow out of this and build themselves upon it. Not only have we then the best sort of material to work upon, but we have also the highest possible incentive to work well. The process now current, of giving the so-called English branches, the classics, a little foreign lan- guage, and a touch of organic work, is manifestly not successful. If we judge it theoretically, it stands quite condemned. Notice its many deficien- cies. It does little or nothing towards making sound, vigorous health a necessary result. It of- fers no adequate provision for the cultivation of the senses, and consequently no adequate provision for the physiological culture of the brain as a bodily organ. It makes little or no attempt to build up the source of power, the emotional life. It is not a process directed to the realization of a 178 EDUCATION AND LIFE high social purpose. It does not propose for its end sound, beautiful, accomplished, lovable chil- dren. It proposes for itself what seems to me the quite unworthy task of having children learn with much worry and vexation of spirit a variety of matters not of first-rate importance anyway, and quite easily learned later in life, should they ever be wanted. In fact, many of the things the chil- dren learn with so much waste of time one year, they would have found out for themselves the next year. I know the process very well, and I am not, I think, doing it any injustice. I know its theory : I used to hold it myself. The theory is that by this process the children are prepared for life, that they are taught things which will be of high use- fulness later on. But if you ask what life, use- ful for what, you find out that the life for which the children are supposedly prepared is not rich human life, that the things taught do not minister to excellence and beauty, to human wealth, but that the life is at second hand and the ministra- tion is to things. Now culture, as we have else- where said, the study and pursuit of perfection, is by nothing so distinguished from smaller ends and purposes as by its insistence upon the surpassing value of the present moment. This current pro- cess in education, which denies the life of the moment for the life of some future time, cannot be an operation of culture. The very humanities are studied, not for their rich human content, but CHILDHOOD 179 as a matter of discipline to strengthen the mind for tasks to come. We seem to be dealing with stimulants and tonics rather than with foods. If we judge this current process by its results, it also stands condemned. The children are not prepared for life; they have not the information they are supposed to have, and they have not the mental discipline. Worse still, so many of them fall out of line altogether. These considerations conspire to make one feel that the current process in educa- tion, and particularly the process of childhood, is an immoral process, — immoral in not proposing a defensible social purpose, and immoral in not car- rying out the end it does propose. In turning now to a more philosophical and social scheme of education, one is at once struck with the difference in the time setting. It is wholly a thing of the present moment, for human wealth, its end and aim, is not a thing to be, but a thing that is. The charm of human life is a present possession. Human delight is a present experience. The peo- ple of goodness and power are a present reality. I lay great stress upon this present nature of the better education, for all our lives long we are put- ting off the good thing, the thing in which we please ourselves by believing that we believe, and so run great risk of dying without attaining it. In all practical schemes of salvation, the acceptable time is now. So little does this humanized organic edu- cation wish to anticipate the future that it would prolong the period of childhood, prolong the period 180 EDUCATION AND LIFE of youth, and end by prolonging life itself. And each period it regards as an end in itself, to be made beautiful and glorious in and for itself, not a vestibule to a vestibule to a vestibule. The next element to attract one's attention is the sweep of the process. Not only does the process of childhood cover fifteen years of post-natal life, but it claims as well the whole twenty-four hours and the whole year. The actual school process need occupy only a few hours each day, but it must work in conjunction with a home process which has the same purpose and is equally practical in carrying it out. This requirement is made imperative by our very philosophy of life, by our belief in the unity of man. It is quite as unreasonable to pro- vide for one quarter of the day by a punctilious school process, and leave the other three quarters unregarded, as it is to appeal so incessantly to the intellectual life and leave the supporting bodily life unnourished. It is a failure in practicality, and therefore in morality. Let us picture for a moment the disposition of a child's day who is living a wholesome, artistic human life, and this is only another way of using Milton's fine phrase of simple, sensuous, passionate. The child is still sleeping, and in a room which is singularly bare, singularly clean, and singularly fresh. There is no carpet on the floor. There are no hangings and no upholsteries. There is almost no furniture in the room, and especially no toilet apparatus, with its pails of dirty water and other CHILDHOOD 181 untidiness. The walls are of wood or of clean, hard plaster, presenting in either case a surface which may be freely washed. They are quite de- void of impedimenta, save a large picture of per- fect childhood, perhaps Madonna and Child, placed where the morning sun will strike it, and where the little one will see it when he first awakes. The bed is equally simple. In place of the usual sheet made smooth and cold and uncomfortable with such useless labor, one finds a coarse rough sheet doing better service. On this the little fellow lies stretched out at full length, without a pillow, or with only a very low one. He is covered by a sin- gle ample coverlet, which allows free movement and some circulation of air. This bare little room is beautiful, not alone be- cause it is the home of healthy childhood, but because it has the two essentials of all beaut}^ — color and proportion. The good parents have evi- dently preferred to spend their money on an archi- tect rather than on a house decorator. Hygienic things are commonly very ugly, but it is a great mistake to suppose that this offense is necessary. And now the child opens his eyes. Have you ever been present at such a time, and caught the sweet odor of growth and seen the look of glad surprise and felt the healthy renewal of life ? At such a moment one has the touch of true emotion, I had almost said, of worship. One seems to stand face to face with the wonder of a new creation. It is wise to let the child awake naturally and as slowly 182 EDUCATION AND LIFE as lie will. If he is in health and his life condi- tions are what they should be, he will be quite as keen to be out of bed and starting the delight of a new day as you can possibly be to have him. Should he seem sluggish or to demand an undue amount of sleep, there is something wrong, and the matter ought to be investigated. Probably the diet is un- suitable, perhaps too heavy and too clogging. In any case, the way out of the difficulty is not by cur- tailing natural sleep and routing the little fellow out against his will. One must work scientifically, and to work scientifically is to work through the will and not in opposition to it. Then comes a dash to the bath-room, a quick cold bath, a brisk toweling, an impetuous return, and you have before you a ruddy and very much awake little cherub. Perhaps once a week a good hot bath, with plenty of soap, is not amiss ; but it should be at night, and the little fellow should go at once to bed, for the hot water is relaxing, and by opening the pores makes one particularly sensitive to colds. But the daily morning bath should always be cold, winter and summer alike. If the child is somewhat delicate, the bath may be simply a quick sponge, but for sturdier children a plunge or shower is more invigorating. In any case, the bath need not occupy more than two or three minutes. If one is in doubt about the relative merits of hot and cold water, one has only to observe children under the two regimes and remark how much sturdier the cold- water children are. After a hot bath the child can- CHILDHOOD 183 not get into his clothing quickly enough, and after- wards he is very apt to shiver and to complain of being cold and chilly. But the boy who comes from a cold bath will want to play around awhile before he gets into his clothes at all, and will be much less given to wrapping up and to coddling himself. Moreover, it is observable that he is much less lia- ble to colds and grippe than his less sturdy brother. And now, how will you dress him ? — Badly if you follow the fashion ; wholesomely, if you follow simplicity. You can add nothing to the beauty of a healthy, well-bred, naked boy. A simple dress, the least the climate allows, of good form and color, stoutly made, permitting free exercise, and giving sun and air a chance to vitalize the little body, this is what is wanted, — not upholstery after the Little Lord Fauntleroy pattern. All that can be whole- somely discarded, hats, shoes and stockings, and the like, add so much freedom and so much organic possibility. It is very difficult to be rational in one's dress, for the least deviation from the current mode at- tracts an amount of attention which more than bal- ances the advantage. I like, myself, to wear no hat, but harmless as this little eccentricity is, I never think of indulging in it except when I am in the hill-country, for the price is very much more than I am willing to pay. Children are particularly sensitive to such comment, and suffer more keenly than some of us suspect when they are obliged to wear or to do unusual things. I should be the last 184 EDUCATION AND LIFE to inflict such martyrdom. Under any given condi- tions, the most sensible clothing will be the sim- plest and least that can be worn, without attracting attention. But in every community there are lead- ing families which have it in their power to make wise dress and social customs the fashion, and it is a form of social service quite worthy of their attention. It is one of the many advantages of life in the country, that is, on a farm or on an estate of some size, that one has greater freedom to be wise. My own summer home is in the hill-country, and I have many little brothers spending the summer with me. As the estate is a large one, and some- what isolated, it is possible to establish ideal so- cial customs without offending less evolved per- sons and without making the boys suffer from the sense of being unusual or marked. In the matter of dress we adopt the Greek ideal when Greek life was at its sturdiest and best. The little fellows wear no clothing beyond a pair of simple bathing tights. On reception days or when mak- ing excursions off the estate, they wear only two garments, a low-necked, quarter-sleeve jersey and a pair of knee trousers to match. It is possible to get these woven suits of very good quality and excellent color, so that the costume, beside being eminently simple and hygienic, is entirely accept- able on esthetic grounds. Indeed, when you add a healthy, merry youngster, with handsome, sun- tanned face and wind-tossed hair, and sturdy brown CHILDHOOD 185 arms and legs, it is a picture as pretty as anything you will see at Capri. The effect of this constant exposure is very marked. There are no tonics for the growing body at all equal to sunshine and fresh air. Even two months of this simple life in the open bring a wonderful increase of health and strength. The boys do not catch colds, even when the days are wet and cold and windy. That the benefit is more than temporary is shown by the excellent health record which the boys make during the intervening winters. It seems to me, too, that this frank and open treatment of the body is essentially the modest one, and as a matter of experience it has met with the most wholesome response. I have been tempted to quote this extreme case of simplicity in dress, not because it can be imi- tated at present in many localities, but in the hope that the principle underlying it may everywhere receive increasing application. Amid the crowds and dampness and filth of the city, a barefooted child is manifestly out of place at any season of the year. But in the country or at the seashore, in summer, the least clothing that children may rea- sonably wear will make them the sturdiest and the happiest, Our small boy being dressed as sensibly as may be, the next thing to do is to give him his break- fast, and this opens up a large question in social esthetics, the question of what we shall eat and drink. An acceptable diet, it seems to me, must 186 EDUCATION AND LIFE satisfy these three conditions : it must do no vio- lence to the sentiment, it must make for robust health, it must involve no social disadvantage. Any food whose getting involves pain and terror to other living creatures offends the sentiment. Any food which is liable to speedy decay or deteriora- tion, or which may not be digested with reasonable ease, makes against health. Any food whose pre- paration means rough, brutal practices and un- ideal occupations on the part of others must be accounted a social disadvantage. We have very little scientific data on this question of foods, and what little we have we make scant use of ; but I am quite disposed to believe that on hygienic grounds, as well as on moral and esthetic grounds, the com- ing diet will be largely or wholly vegetarian. I notice that this seems to be the general trend of opinion on the part of those who view life from a distinctly human standpoint. Simple, nourishing, unexciting food is evidently what our little man wants, and he wants it in an atmosphere of good cheer and leisure, not the haste and gray cheerless- ness of a clerk's breakfast. It was Voltaire, I think, who remarked that he had no respect for a man who, after thirty, asked his physician what he should eat. In the case of children, their im- mediate guardians must study out the question of a suitable diet. It will depend upon the tempera- ment of the child, the resources of the locality, the climate, and the season of the year. I would suggest, by way of breakfast, what I give my own CHILDHOOD 187 boys : fresh fruit, fully ripe and in perfect condition ; some cereal, such as shredded wheat, oatmeal or rolled wheat, with cream and a little sugar ; and finally, rolls and butter or corn bread and butter, with one or two glasses of milk, and perhaps an egg or some marmalade. This is a very simple break- fast, and one might even omit the last course, but it seems to me quite unwise to make it more elab- orate. Especially I would cut out meat and pota- toes, and all greasy and fried foods. It would be difficult to prescribe the amount which a child shall eat. In the presence of an abundance of tempting food he may easily eat too much, but with plain and simple food, this will hardly occur. Good digestion waits on appetite. These questions of quarters and sleep and bath and dress and diet are not commonly taken up in any detail by the formal educator, but they are the conditions of health, and just in proportion as we are artist-philosophers must we take them up and solve them. We are only moral as we are successful. In framing the occupations of children, we are as regardless of the procession of the seasons as we are of many other important matters. It is a part of our belief in machinery and dull routine and shop ideals of life generally that we have come to think there is some merit in having children get up in the dull gray of a winter's morning, and lie abed in the glorious sunshine of summer. In this we are not at all practical. It is particularly 188 EDUCATION AND LIFE in the process of childhood that we want to take glad notice of the seasons, and arrange all occupa- tions in harmony with them. I assume, then, that to be up in good season means different hours at different times of year, and always means the hour of full light. Even in families called intelligent the breakfast table is usually interrupted by a mad rush for the cars or for school. But if we want wholesome, beau- tiful children, we will follow the breakfast with a short period of leisure, and then go serenely about the day's work. One of the first needs in the child's day is for general bodily exercise, and this can better be given in the home than in the school ; for in the home the exercise can be purposeful, some household service which will be of real use. Here, again, the service can be made a joy or a task, according to the spirit we put into it. It must be remembered that the childish will to do is rather fitful and uncertain, given to taking up occupations with enthusiasm and then dropping them before completion. The remedy is to fill out and complete the will, and this, it seems to me, can best be done by working merrily and joyfully with the child. A small boy will help you make his bed and " tidy up " his room with the greatest pleasure if you give him your good company at the same time, — the only sort of company you ought ever to give any one, — while he would find it a very dull and distasteful task if he had to do it alone. Tell him a story, sing a duet with him, CHILDHOOD 189 try to out whistle him, in short, see to it that you are merry workers in this merry, charming world. But don't rob him of the service, with its measure of health and good spirit, and don't teach him to look down on women while he is still in knicker- bockers by forcing him to think that these homely necessary tasks are unsuitable for him, but none too good for his mother or sisters or the women servants. In no case, however, may this service be paid for in other coin than loving appreciation, for that is to turn the child into a miserable lit- tle trader, and quite rob the service of value. It seems to me that this home service is far wiser than that so often required of children in families of moderate means, and that is the running of errands. The children feel the friction of the market much more than grown-up people do, and they are brought into touch with persons and con- ditions which they may not wisely meet. A day is well begun which has in it these whole- some elements of home life, this serenity and good comradeship and service ; and we may now afford to think of the more formal occupations of the school. It is to be observed, though, first and last and always, that the home life is the primary thing and the school life quite secondary. The very first requirement of the school is that it shall be near the home and so located that it can be reached without danger and without nervous friction. This cannot be the case where we have such large schools as we have at present, drawing 190 EDUCATION AND LIFE their children from over a wide area. And these large schools have really no advantage. They are rather appalling to a sensitive child. He is hap- pier and much better off as a member of a smaller group, which appeals more directly to his love and interest. These small groups are perfectly feasible in organic education. The work itself is so largely individual that a single group may properly in- clude children of quite unlike ages. The games and the class drills are general enough in their character to cover quite wide ranges. The habit of massing together children of the same age takes away from the pleasure and picturesqueness of life, and ends by making the children themselves quite selfish and unregardful of others. The most ideal group that we can picture is the perfect family group in three generations, the noble, white-haired man and woman, and their children and their chil- dren's children. The little ones in a mixed school of this kind gain so much from the older children, and the older children have a tenderness and a gentle con- sideration brought into their hearts by the greater helplessness and greater needs of the little ones. It is a pretty sight to see a generous child caring for one a little bit younger than himself. The large schools, with their vast numbers and exact classification, have largely been brought about by administrative rather than by human considerations. In concentrated populations they doubtless offer certain mechanical conveniences, CHILDHOOD 191 but even from an administrative point of view they are not unqualifiedly successful. The present excuse for bringing up children in the city is the supposed educational advantage. Were this ad- vantage much more substantial than I myself am disposed to believe it, it would be completely off- set by the absence of fresh air and sunshine, free- dom of motion and glad contact with Nature, to say nothing of the positive elements of disadvan- tage in city life. But with the organization of smaller and more diverse groups into sound schools, it becomes possible to have the best sort of culture in even the most remote country places, anywhere, indeed, that a score or more of children may be gathered into a beautiful, large room with a teacher of organic power. It seems to me that all the ad- vantage lies with the small, neighboring school as contrasted with the large, remote one. A short journey in a storm may be entirely wholesome and delightful, where a longer journey would be quite impossible ; and so much of our weather is stormy, that as a practical people we ought to make pro- vision for the fact in our school plans. The jour- ney in steam car or trolley involves many subtle exposures as well as fatigue and loss of time. It is quite appalling to think how many of our school children spend a couple of hours each day in going to and from school, one seventh of the whole wak- ing day ! The journey is a monotony of routine, bad air and crowds. It is almost without com- pensations. • 192 EDUCATION AND LIFE Let us imagine our little boy at one of these small organic schools. Sometimes the father or mother accompanies him ; sometimes a neighbor- ing playmate ; sometimes he trots off alone. The school building, like the home, is simplicity itself, and depends for its beauty upon the same eternal elements of beauty, upon color and propor- tion. One is struck with the large amount of free floor space. The children are evidently expected to move around the rooms, and are not asked to keep still and forever to keep still, when every impulse is towards action. The main schoolroom has a comfortable bench built in around the walls, and there is a good piano at one end of the room ; otherwise the floor is perfectly free. Low, broad windows give an agreeable light. On the walls between the windows there are bookshelves and a few choice pictures. But the best thing in this very good schoolroom is the teacher, the beautiful strong man or woman who is to turn the room to human uses. The teacher greets the little people with genuine welcome, and is greeted by them with simple affection. It is evident that they have not to do with a taskmaster, but with a dear comrade. In spite of the freedom, it is not a noisy room. You hear childish laughter and high soprano voices, but that is all. There is no furniture to be overturned or stumbled against, and the children, with their bare feet, or felt slippers, can make no annoying clatter. The day begins with music, simple singing in CHILDHOOD 193 unison, and is entirely by ear. First comes some- thing sweet and solemn, the Lord's Prayer, or a simple, reverent chant ; then something merry and human, a song of the seasons. This passes into a practical music lesson : the scale is sung ; then the common intervals are struck, and the children name and sing them. Afterwards, several of the children in turn play the scale, or find the inter- vals, on the piano. There is no theory or science of music. It is all art, pure and simple, the art of beautiful sound. A new song is tried, the words being learned in connection with the music. Then comes a final song, selected by the children them- selves, and the music ends for the time. And now the teacher reads a lesson, something essentially entertaining, the story of a fine action, some performance of a philosopher-artist, the sort of story which will carry its own moral, and need no explanation or application. There are no formal chapel exercises. Religion and morals can best be taught to children when involved in something concrete, and they are too fine a thing not to run through the whole day. It is notice- able, too, that the teacher is apparently a very un- scientific person. He says nothing about elocution and how children ought to read. He simply reads well himself. The morning lesson is followed by a gymnastic drill founded on the psychology of the Swedish system. It is really a mental drill, as those appre- ciate who have tried the Swedish gymnastic. It is 194 EDUCATION AND LIFE not meant to make athletes, but to give control of the body, and to make the body obedient to the will. The drill is quick and sharp, but it only lasts for ten minutes uninterruptedly. A vigorous march, a short run, a moment of complete rest, and then a second drill, one of vaulting and jumping, a second interruption, and a final drill for the older children on the vertical ladders. In pleasant weather, the drill takes place out of doors on a wooden floor, or on a court either of hard dirt or smooth turf. In bad weather, the drill is in the main schoolroom. This first period of the day ends with fifteen minutes of free play. The pe- riod has been planned to cultivate general bodily power, the motor nerves, the ear, and the voice ; to touch this activity with wholesome sentiment, and to allow some chance for spontaneous action. It hardly seems possible, but an hour and a half have gone, and the morning is half spent. As- suming that the school began at nine o'clock, it is now half after ten. I hope the reader is not shocked to observe that no formal lessons in arith- metic or geography or grammar or history or the like have yet been learned. I hope he will not be shocked at the end of the day to find that this is still the case. The quest is for human organic power, and such a quest must proceed along causa- tional lines, rather than by the path of informa- tion. At the beginning of the second period the chil- dren seat themselves on the benches. Two of their CHILDHOOD 195 number bring in a small table and spread it with simple food, bread and butter, crackers, milk, or fruit. The children serve the teacher, and then the other children, taking turns in rendering the service. Hands and faces are washed, and the children are ready for a half hour's language lesson. Every other day, the lesson may be in English reading. In the growing months, the sub- jects have to do with natural history in its broadest sense and with exploration and frank adventure. In winter, one turns more naturally to mythology and history and biography and general literature. The reading is made real by constant reference to maps, portraits, photographs, and natural objects. The teacher begins the reading, being careful to do it well and in a lively human way. Succeeding paragraphs are read by the boys and girls them- selves, no formal effort being made to teach them to read, but allowing them to come into the art naturally and through their own interest, the way most of us learned who really care for reading and for the intellectual life. In this way science and history and geography, fairy stories and poetry and biography, are treated frankly as literature, as something to be enjoyed, and, it may be, absorbed, but never as tasks to be drudged over. The hard work of the day is really organic ; the simple fun and recreation are largely intellectual. On alternate days the language lesson may be in spoken French. I select this rather than German or Italian because of its wonderful lucid- 196 EDUCATION AND LIFE ity, its real power to serve the child in forming an acceptable literary style of his own ; and also be- cause, in spite of the second-rate position of France politically, her speech is still the world-language, and therefore a very important tool in internation- alism. The language lesson is followed by some of the most important work of the day, an hour in hand- work. The children pass into another room fitted up with the necessary work-benches and tools. They work individually, and consequently the dis- similar ages and tastes and speeds are no disad- vantage. They make only finished articles, which will be of genuine service to somebody. The chil- dren choose the articles themselves and decorate only what is admirable. The exercises involve a sufficient amount of number-work to bring famil- iarity with the fundamental processes of arithmetic, — adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, — so that even from the older point of view the children are not so badly off. Most of this manual training is in sloyd woodwork, but perhaps one day a week may be given to sewing, in which the boys as well as the girls take a part, and one day to clay modeling. The particular form of hand- work may well vary with the locality and the season, but at least one hour a day should be devoted to this cultivation of hand and eye, and of general intelligence. And now the morning has quite gone and it is dinner time. The children all go home for their CHILDHOOD 197 dinner, and as they all live so near, an hour and a half is ample time for the going and coming and the simple meal itself, with a little time to spare for outside play and comradeship. The dinner should be the heartiest meal of the day. It may suitably consist of three simple courses, — a hot, nourishing soup ; then several well-cooked vegeta- bles, especially green vegetables, and beans and cel- ery, with a little meat or fish or poultry, if these be eaten ; and finally some simple pudding made of rice or farina, not forgetting the decorative effect of a few stoned raisins, or a colored sauce. These suggestions are made only as a basis for something better. The point is to avoid all fried and greasy foods and an excess of potatoes or other starches, and to have the diet sufficiently rich in nitrogenous material, and in green vegetables, such as lettuce, spinach, asparagus, green peas. If meat is not used, one must be particularly careful to supply the nitrogen in some other form. One may be a consistent vegetarian as far as the moral and social requirements of an ideal diet are concerned, and still use eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. It might be well to include any animal food which has either not had sensation at all, or so low a sensation that death hardly seems a violence, as in the case of oysters, clams, scollops, and other lowly organized sea foods. Even fish and poultry may be so handled as not to offend the sentiment. There still remains the objection that holds in the case of all animal food, — the liability to decay 198 EDUCATION AND LIFE and consequent poison. If it be admitted to the diet at all, great care must go along with it. But however simple the dinner, it must be esthetic, and it must be served in an atmosphere of good fellow- ship. Better a jolly dinner of herbs than a sour- faced feeding on tough beef. The afternoon begins at half past one with a quiet half hour given to various occupations ac- cording to the ages and tastes of the children. The smaller ones may well take a nap, or be read to by the teacher or one of the older children. The older children are allowed to read what they choose from a selected library. The entire point is to have a half hour of entire quiet. Then comes an equal period of art work. Whatever the medium, — pencil, crayon, or paint, — the work is self- prompted and self-directed. The teacher suggests and helps, names possible tasks, criticises the re- sults, explains successful methods of representa- tion ; but the real impulse is from the child, and the office of the teacher is simply to encourage the child to give expression to this impulse. It will be a great gain if the teacher himself occupies his spare moments with some work which the chil- dren will admire and can understand. Nothing so inspires one to art work as true art work in progress. It is advisable to have much of the work rich in color, even barbaric in its splendor, provided the colors be pure and clean, and the combinations possible. The older children may make dimensioned drawings of the articles which CHILDHOOD 199 they intend to make in the wood-shop. But even here I would recommend that the work be entirely freehand, so as to develop hand and eye and ac- custom the child to depending upon himself. The remainder of the afternoon, the best and mellowest part of it, from half past two on, is given to voluntary bodily occupations, and is spent out of doors whenever the weather permits. The occupations differ with the season. The children attend to their gardens, or care for their pets, or play games, or walk, or ride their wheels, or do any simple wholesome thing they are most inclined to. If they want to build a hut and play Robinson Crusoe or Indians, it will be a useful sport. If they prefer the circus and to try tight-rope walk- ing, it is the very thing for them to do, provided the rope is not too high and there is a fat feather- bed underneath. Games of their own devising are much more educational than anything we can pos- sibly devise for them. We can suggest and help and encourage, but we make a false step when we substitute our will for theirs. When the weather is stormy, there are charades and tableaux and acting, hand-ball and basket-ball and stage-coach. The more original the game, the greater its de- mand upon action and inventiveness, the better. It is to be remembered, too, that games of skill are infinitely better than games of chance. The latter I would discourage, as well as store-keeping, stamp-trading, and all occupations which tend to develop the commercial spirit. It is far wiser for 200 EDUCATION AND LIFE children to have their wants simply and whole- somely provided, and to have* nothing to do with money or barter. This afternoon programme is entirely flexible and is altered to suit the day and the season. It may not be carried out in this particular form at any time, and usually not more than three times a week in any form. The other afternoons, if day and season allow, are spent in some outing, depend- ing upon the local conditions. If there is a lake or river near by, there will be swimming in sum- mer, skating in winter, boating in spring and fall. It is very important that both boys and girls should learn to swim and skate and row before they are fifteen years old, much more important than that they should learn arithmetic or geography. Fur- thermore, if it can possibly be managed, now is the time to teach them to ride horseback. One is never quite at home in the saddle, unless one be- gins as a child. Then there may be a forest to go sylvestering in, or a neighboring hill that invites a climbing. If the community is agricultural, and it has always seemed to me that those children are most fortunate who have the run of a farm, there will be plenty of natural occupations for the chil- dren, planting, haymaking, fruit and nut gathering, and these are better than anything of our invention. The one supreme condition is that the occupations shall be in the company of friendly, gentle people who have the love and confidence of the children. Neighbor husbandman, bear this always in mind. CHILDHOOD 201 And now our little man comes home. He has had a long, full day, but he is not unduly tired. He has been doing the things which were natural and proper, things in which he could put his inter- est and affection. He has had exercise and rest, fresh air and food, self -directed activity and gen- erous sentiment. He carries no books. He comes home free-handed and free-minded. He is an available member of the re-united family group. There are still charming little services which he can render, a helping hand in the preparation of the evening meal, some loving foresight for the comfort of the father, some chivalry for the mother, and you cheat the little man if you have a servant do these things. If the father has been away all day, he may want a substantial dinner in the even- ing, or it may be necessary by way of hospitality, but it is a mistake to have the little people share it. A simple meal is much better for them, per- haps a course of milk-toast, or hasty pudding, and then some cooked fruit or jam with simple biscuits. But the children need not be banished from the table. And at this evening meal, how many de- lightful matters there are to talk about, if one has had these wholesome activities and sentiments in one's day. The father and mother will surely want to know what trees are green in the forest, what flowers are in bud in the garden, whether the water was cold at the swimming, or the ice smooth for the skaters, what article was fashioned in the work- shop, what feat was accomplished in the drill, what 202 EDUCATION AND LIFE thoughts were aroused by the reading, and just as surely as the father and mother want to know all this good news, the little boy will want to tell it, and out of his sincere genuine living will come equally sincere and genuine expression. And then come the quiet hour in the garden or at the fireside, the droll fancies and the half guesses, the drawing closer to you as the darkness deepens, and the precious love and confidence it expresses. The day is done, and it is bedtime. Once more you stand in the beautiful bare little room upstairs, and help the boy to bed. Reverently you remove the simple clothing. You put your arms around the beautiful little body. You feel the warm breath against your cheek. You listen to the child prayer. You draw the coverlet over the little form. In a moment the boy is sleeping. As you kneel beside him, you silently thank the All-Father that in the form of childhood he has chosen to renew the world- life. In childhood, so rich is the abundance of life that I have not been able to give a complete pic- ture, §ven of a single day. I have been able to give only the barest sketch. It must be taken sim- ply as a suggestion. Doubtless a wider experience will alter many of the details. Yet to the plan it- self I hold very tenaciously, for in my own experi- ments in education, just so far as I have been faith- ful to the human, organic spirit of this plan, I have succeeded, and just so far as I have been unfaith- ful to it, I have failed. It is an aristocratic plan CHILDHOOD 203 in its insistence upon human excellence, but it is also thoroughly democratic in insisting upon this excellence for all. Further, it is a plan which may not be dismissed by any cry of Impossible ! or Utopian ! The bare and beautiful home costs less than the overcrowded, ugly one. The universe fur- nishes fresh air more ungrudgingly than we do foul air. Cold water is more obtainable than hot. The simple dress and simple fare mean less labor and less money and less service. It is true that the organic schoolhouse does require space outside and roominess within, but it is a simple structure, and the equipment is not expensive. The forces of Nature, of plant growth and animal growth and child self-activity, are ready to our hand. Lake and river and ocean and forest and mountain and field and park and storm and air and sun, the real teach- ers of childhood, serve us without salary. Even the strong, beautiful, reverent men and women who are to gain from these forces the reaction of human organic power will be available as soon as we de- mand them. Even were it true that there were great difficul- ties in the way of carrying out this plan, it would still be very worth while to overcome the great dif- ficulties ; for into these first fifteen years of life must be crowded the most important educational work of all, the development of a strong, rich personality. If we fail, there will be temperamental poverty for the rest of life. The information now offered as a substitute for this thoroughgoing development 204 EDUCATION AND LIFE is of doubtful value anyway, and later in life can be easily gained should it happen to be wanted. But organic education must work while the material is still plastic. The most highly evolved conduct, the most hu- man conduct, is the conduct which most perfectly adapts means to ends. To be moral is to be prac- tical, — to be practical is to succeed. If we want human power, if we believe in this eternal, world- wide quest of perfection, then we must as a highly evolved people, as late comers on the stage of hu- man effort, from whom great things are properly expected, we must turn to those practical organic operations by means of which this power and per- fection may alone be gained. The educational process of childhood is only a moral process as it produces the children of good fortune. CHAPTER VII YOUTH Some time ago an elderly lady went into one of our large toy shops, and finding much the same goods as in former years, asked, rather impatiently, " Do you never have any new toys ? " " No, ma- dam," answered the shopkeeper, very humbly, " but the children are new." In developing a scheme of education out of a given philosophic idea, one must feel at times that one is frequently offering the same wares. I can only hope that the importance of the subject will lead the reader to bring to succeeding chapters such a renewed inter- est that he will not be unpleasantly conscious of the repetitions. I propose in the present chapter to apply the principles of organic education to the problem of the high school. Perhaps no considerable body of people have found themselves able to quite accept the scheme of education for childhood which has just been outlined. And probably no considerable body of people have found themselves able to quite reject it. However open to criticism the scheme may be in matters of detail, its central position seems to me impregnable. The wealth of the world is 206 EDUCATION AND LIFE human. The end of education is an accomplished and lovable humanity, beautiful men and beautiful women and beautiful children. Those of us who believe in culture, in the practical study and pur- suit of perfection, must forever keep our creed in mind. There is, I am disposed to think, a large body of earnest people who are deterred from the accept- ance of a programme of organic education such as has just been outlined, by what they regard as practical obstacles, but who give their partial or complete assent to the theory of the scheme. They agree very cordially with the idea that childhood, that is, the first fifteen years of life, should be de- voted to organic work, to gymnastic and music and manual training and spoken language, to the culti- vation of those bodily accomplishments and powers upon which so much of the charm and the success of life, so much of individual and social virtue, indisputably depend; and they agree /that to early youth, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth birth- day, — the high-school period, in fact, — belongs the formal elementary work of language and sci- ence and mathematics. But every attempt to re- deem the education of childhood from formalism and make it a warm, human, organic process, has met at the outset with one of those very practical difficulties which could not in kindness be ignored. There are, of course, minor difficulties in the way of equipment and suitable teachers, and the back- sliding parents who protest that their children are YOUTH 207 learning nothing ; but these difficulties, though troublesome, are all manageable, and in the end entirely soluble. If well-to-do people want it, they can have roomy, open halls in place of stuffy class- rooms ; and simple benches, ladders, bars, and vaulting-horses in place of expensive school desks, just as they can compass clubs and churches and libraries. And the teachers, too, are forthcoming. Already there are normal schools of gymnastic, and sloyd training schools for teachers, and ad- mirable conservatories of music, and crowds of delightful men and women who believe in the dear mother tongue as an instrument of use and beauty, and in the modern speech of Europe as a means of communication, and not as a badge of supposed culture. These sources of the good article are di- rectly at our hand, and they will send us charm- ing people, vital, red-blooded, just as soon as we want them. We have only to set the standard, only to let it be known that human qualities — charm and character and accomplishment — count more than a knowledge of facts, and the require- ment will gladly be met. And they will cost no more than the less joyful and less full-blooded men and women who are now doing their conscientious and nervous best to make children miserable. Nor shall we be needing an unreasonable number of teachers to carry out this scheme of organic educa- tion. It is quite possible, for example, to combine gymnastic with manual training ; to combine music with English and French. Such partnerships are 208 EDUCATION AND LIFE entirely natural and suitable; they would indeed do much towards making the life of the teacher more joyful and wholesome. It is very dreary to teach all branches of human knowledge, and even more dreary to teach only one branch, all day and every day. The personal thunder which made a first lesson so telling gets to sound absolutely in- sincere when given over and over again to succeed- ing sections. There are, of course, glorious ex- ceptions, but the average specialist is a very nar- row and unlovable person, better qualified for re- search work than for leading eager spirits into the holy places of the intellectual life. Nor is it en- tirely Utopian to expect that under these broader accomplishments of the teacher, and giving to the accomplishments their essential graciousness and charm, will be found warm human hearts beating with high moral and social and artistic purpose. When we want comrades of this character, in place of operatives in the factory of instruction, we shall quite readily be able to get them. Even the parents are manageable. What they all want is the children's best good, and this, too, is what the anemic normal school graduates want. Let us do them both entire justice as sincere seekers after perfection, and this, even though we may believe that they are failing to see in what perfection consists. It is, perhaps, natural, in an age when children just in their teens have distinct views on territorial expansion and tariff legislation and the temperance question, that a devoted parent YOUTH 209 should be appalled at the spectacle of an ignorant child, however beautiful and accomplished and lovable. But in the long run, the human heart is sound. When the organic training begins to show results, when the father and mother notice that the little one is sturdier and more alert and more vital, more of an individual, more human, the look of glad recognition which they exchange with each other is the sign and symbol of an approval which may be counted upon. I have called these difficulties minor difficulties because they are all so easily surmounted. But the major difficulty, the one which may not in kind- ness be ignored, the one which prevents the hu- manizing of the lower schools, and vetoes many a wholesome, red-blooded experiment in education, is really this — when these children of good fortune, for such I must regard them, come, at fifteen years of age, to the door of the high school, they find it closed. They are not wanted. They do not know parsing and grammar and spelling and arithmetic and political geography and physical geography and history and civil government and physiology. They are simply strong and well, clear-eyed and accomplished, inquisitive and earnest, full of power and promise. Comparing the two groups of util- ities, the high school chooses the former. But often, it chooses with a sigh. What, then, is the excuse ? It is the same excuse all along the line. The lower schools would be good if the high schools would let them, and the high schools would 210 EDUCATION AND LIFE be good if the colleges would let them, and the colleges would teach the knowledge of most worth if the community would let them, and business men would be honest if it were not for competi- tion, and finally, I suppose, we should all be for going immediately to heaven if we were not for stopping elsewhere. Apparently, it is a superior madness which drives us. Now this difficulty of the lower schools is a very real and practical difficulty, a solid ghost. We may protest and call names, and make ourselves as disagreeable as we please, but the fact remains. Education has become a machine, just as politics has become a machine, and it is a serious matter to get out of line. It would be a veritable unkind- ness to submit children to an educational process, which, however perfect in itself, would leave them in their sixteenth year quite stranded, quite out of the educational current. And this, it seems to me, represents the very core of the difficulty. A pro- cess of organic education, to be practical, — and unless it is practical, it is neither moral nor kind, — must provide always an open vista, must extend continuously from birth to death, with all doors open and welcome everywhere. But there is a way out, even from this difficulty. I have used one of the most charming words in the language, Childhood, to cover the educational process of the lower schools. Let us use the scarcely less charming word, Youth, to cover the high-school period. YOUTH 211 To keep life simple, sensuous, passionate, in the fine sense in which Milton used these terms, is a somewhat more difficult task when the life happens to be the life of youth than when it happens to be the life of childhood. Youth is a time of transi- tion, the passing of childhood into manhood, and, like all transition times, it is difficult. There is real pathos when the boy starts out all eager for some old- time sport, and stops in the middle of it. It has lost its zest. Who cannot himself recall a black day when, for example, wading turned out to be less fun than you thought it was, or some old game which you were once so keen for suddenly became uninterest- ing. In youth, it seems to me, the boy is by fits and starts a child and a man, neither very thoroughly and neither for any great length of time together. He is a bit trying at times, — just as you and I used to be, — awkward, uncertain, perhaps some- what selfish and unresponsive. But he needs, if ever he needs, your best love and sympathy. He is to no one quite so trying as he is to himself. All this conspires to make the problem of the high school a problem of considerable nicety. It is a time of surprises and curious inversions. The un- satisfactory child becomes the studious youth ; or the good child the troublesome youth. New forces are at work. Hereditary traits begin to ripen, traits quite unheralded in childhood. Many of these appear for the first time with adolescence, and seem to be intimately connected with the growth and maturing of the reproductive functions. Nor 212 EDUCATION AND LIFE must we forget nor neglect the tremendous physical changes which come with these race-conserving functions, changes which the lad himself does not understand and about which he needs the most careful and reverent instruction. In a word, our youth, with his growing strength and sense of manly power, is a bundle of tremendous possibili- ties, and needs the utmost care and wisdom and loving comradeship that we can give him. But this problem of the high school, the educa- tional process of youth, cannot be forestalled. It can only be met when it comes. And this, after all, is to us the most serious criticism of the older education, and of the older social schemes gener- ally, that they turn life into a long drawn-out pre- paration, with only stolen bits of realization here and there ; childhood preparing for youth, youth preparing for manhood, manhood preparing for a leisure which never comes. The free, bodily, emo- tional life of childhood, genuinely devoid of antici- pation, genuinely taken up with immediate reali- zation, is the best possible preparation for the more intellectual life of youth. The simple, sensuous, passionate life is a matter of the present moment, and culture is a matter of the present moment, and we miss the best of it all if we live either in the future or in the past. So the high school must begin with no requirements. It must allow child- hood to live its full, free life, and it must set its new, initial tasks for youth. This means practi- cally the open door, the absence of all entrance ex- YOUTH 213 animations. If childhood has been misspent, it 's a pity, but the problem of youth still remains. And childhood is least likely to be misspent if it has been given over frankly and fully to the occupa- tions proper to childhood, to that organic culture which must be accomplished during the first fifteen years of life. The open door of the high school makes this organic culture both possible and wise. The open door removes the one really serious ob- stacle to the carrying out of the programme out- lined in the last chapter, for it provides the neces- sary outlook, the vista which gives continuity to the educational process. But the open door of the high school does more than this. It serves the high school quite as vitally as it does the lower school. It will in time bring better material to the high school, children of power and promise ; and it enables the high school to per- form its whole function, without obliging it to de- cline such a large part of it. If we agree to this conception of the high school, that it is the educa- tional process of youth, we must, I think, feel that as a practical process it quite fails unless it deals with youth, not selected youth, but youth such as we find it. And I do not see how we can escape this conception of the high school, unless we are willing to deny the fundamental proposition that education is the practical process by which we real- ize the social purpose. There are American cities, I regret to say, where the passion for examining children is so great and 214 EDUCATION AND LIFE the mistrust of the educational machine in its own effectiveness is so profound, that the door of the high school is doubly barred. There is one exami- nation at the lower schools and then a second and quite distinct examination, covering the same ground, at the high schools themselves ; and both examinations are held in the month of June, in apartments where the thermometer is frequently above ninety degrees Fahrenheit. In reality, the open door, instead of introducing impossibilities, greatly simplifies the problem of the curriculum. It is always easier to plan an initial course of study wisely than it is to articulate one course with another course given under totally different conditions. We have been meeting with much failure in our high schools, building on very uncertain foundations indeed, because we have been taking our entrance examinations seriously, and have assumed that the children know many things which they turn out not to know. Particu- larly is this true in the matter of language. The German teacher complains that he can do little be- cause the children do not even know their English grammar. The French teacher says the same thing. The Latin teacher says practically the same. But the children are supposed to know their Eng- lish grammar, for they have passed an examination on it. In assuming ignorance on the part of the incoming youth, the boys and girls from the lower schools, we put ourselves nearer to the facts in the case, and are building on much surer ground. YOUTH 215 It seems to me that children o£ fifteen who can read and write and count, and who want to come to the high school, have satisfied the essential re- quisites for entrance. If, in addition to this, they have had the organic work proper to childhood, then the working out of a satisfactory course of study is not difficult. Under the present social regime, the regime of economic uncertainty for every man> woman, and child, it is necessary that the high-school curriculum shall introduce an economic condition. It is this, that since changes in the family fortune cause so many children to be withdrawn from the high school, it is very desirable that the most concrete and di- rectly useful studies shall be placed in the early part of the four-year course, and also that, as far as may be, the studies shall be condensed into rea- sonably short periods of time. In this way the children who are obliged to drop out will get some substantial good as far as it goes. It might in any case be desirable to place the more concrete studies first, and to have a very small number of somewhat condensed courses running at any one time, but we may at least hope that sometime it will not be necessary on just these grounds. If we look upon education as a process covering the whole of life, and if the social purpose seem to us the unfaltering pursuit of excellence and beauty, we must natu- rally believe that the educational process of youth will be regarded as one of the main concerns of society, and will not be allowed to depend upon so 216 EDUCATION AND LIFE uncertain a thing as the success or failure of some individual venture in the world of the market. This first condition, the economic requirement, may, I think, be looked upon as a passing ex- pedient. And then there are two other conditions which the high-school curriculum is called upon to satisfy. One is the necessity of preparing for college so as to keep open the educational vista, and the other is the necessity of being true to the present moment, so as to make the school an instrument of culture rather than an obstacle. Those who are prac- tically working over this problem must, I think, feel that the two conditions just named are essen- tially antagonistic, just as the two similar condi- tions in the process of childhood, the preparation for the high school and the utilization of the pre- sent moment, were found to be antagonistic. The way out is also the same. It is to confine one's self to the task of using to the best advantage the pos- sibilities of the present moment. From an organic point of view, the process of youth is not so very different from that of child- hood. It is only more subtle, and adds an increas- ingly intellectual element. We have still the same unit organism, still the same need for sound health, keen sense, and usable muscle, still a dependence upon the same source of power, the emotional life. There is no break in the educational process, no abrupt change in the direction of its working. Childhood glides imperceptibly into youth. Even YOUTH 217 the profound physical changes which mark the passing of childhood, and usher in the coming of manhood and womanhood, are very slow and grad- ual changes. All that can be said for small organic schools for children holds also for youth. A high school of a hundred scholars is vastly better than our present gigantic establishments, with their two or three thousand young people gathered from the four quar- ters of the town, and forced to spend two, or even three, hours a day in the nervous and altogether uncompensated act of transit. The first care of the more philosophic education would be to remove this strain by lessening the size of the high schools and increasing their number. These smaller schools seem to me to have every advantage. The build- ings themselves can be made more humanly attrac- tive ; the journey can be made simply a pleasant walk ; the young people can go home for a quiet, wholesome dinner ; they can know their schoolmates better, and form genuine friendships with them ; and, best of all, the teachers can really know their scholars, and can treat them as individuals. And these are all very solid advantages ; that is to say, very solid if you are working for human wealth rather than mere administrative mechanism. In some of the larger city high schools, I am told by the teachers themselves that they do not even know their scholars by name, but merely by a number, and this only from the correspond- ence with a given desk number. One distractingly 218 EDUCATION AND LIFE busy woman told me that she had eighteen hundred girls come under her instruction every week. I think that the church, during the darkest night of the Middle Ages, could offer nothing more gro- tesque. Imagine trying to lead number 57 into the perfect life, without knowing his or her name, and without being able to recognize 57 except when the youth happened to be at a desk of that number ! In a somewhat scattered community, it is quite possible to combine the high school with the lower school in case it would not make the establishment too large, and this would have the advantage of the more mixed and picturesque group of young people and children. Perhaps the very best thing that a child gets at school, in any case, is just this human companionship, the social side, and it is got in larger measure as the group is more interest- ing and varied. Let us assume, then, a small high school of about one hundred and twenty children, and a four-year course, and let us inquire how the day shall be spent in order to get the greatest human good out of it. As with childhood, the educational process will be shockingly ineffective unless it cover the twenty- four hours. Our lad must awake, as he did when a child, in a clean, bare, beautiful little room, with a plen- tiful supply of fresh air in it. Or, if he have younger brothers, I think he will be the better fellow if he share a larger apartment with the YOUTH 219 small boys, and give them daily of his love and care. Some people are born unselfish, but the great majority of us have to come into this divine virtue through the influence of a compelling en- vironment. If our boys are selfish, it is because we make them so. I know of nothing more odious than a lusty, swaggering, selfish boy, — a type which one sometimes meets in America, and, I re- gret to say, quite as frequently among the privi- leged classes as among poorer folk. And I know of nothing more lovable and interesting than a strong, gentle, unselfish boy, — the type which alone represents human wealth and the realization of the social purpose. But whether odious or lovable, these boys are what we make them. They are our children, and it is for us to say. If we are their parents after the flesh, then it is we who have bestowed their heredity. If we are their spiritual parents, that is to say, their teachers, it is we who decide their environment. I believe, my- self, that selfishness is the root of all evil, the one unforgivable sin, and that love, which is the sweeter name for unselfishness, is the one salvation. So im- portant does it seem to me to cultivate this human, loving side of youth that I would even have the two boys occupy the same bed. The isolation of a single brass cot is counted more hygienic, but if both children are clean and healthy, as they should be, and there is plenty of sweet, fresh air in the room, as there should be, the one bed will be en- tirely wholesome. The lad who puts protecting, 220 EDUCATION AND LIFE loving arms around a small brother will make the stronger man and better father. And the little fellow himself will gain immensely from this sense of manly comradeship. Our lad must get up after the sun does, when the light is clear and strong. He must have a vigorous bath in cold water, and must have a few moments of honest exercise, perhaps one or two hundred arm and leg and trunk movements, before he puts on any clothing. His dress and fare must be simple and sturdy. The breakfast may not be hurried through and the family life clean forgot. Did it ever occur to you what a grave crime we commit in the name of education when we allow our young people — worse than that, when we force them — to omit the graciousness and charm of home life in order to rush off to school, and then at school, with most indifferent success, try to teach them in what the graciousness and charm of home life consist? It is very fine and very beautiful when we teach these young people to admire heroic action, and to sympathize with the human touches in history and literature. It is very fine, I s&y, pro- vided we follow it up with heroic action on their part and on our part, and multiply the human touches in their lives and in ours. If we omit these practical acts of morality and of good feel- ing, then the admiration and sympathy which we have called up make for weakness rather than for strength. We are producing sentimentalists in place of the people of power. And sentimental- YOUTH 221 ists, we all agree, are quite undesirable and im- moral persons. The disaster of teaching sentiment without fol- lowing it up by sturdy action can be seen in many a family and school. The boys openly sneer at the better things of life ; at seventeen they are already cynics. The girls become either insincere or sentimental. And again we have ourselves to thank for it. It is a very responsible thing to be " grown-up," for then we become a part of the causation of life. If we place the breakfast hour at half after seven, and allow thirty minutes for the meal (which is ample, provided the breakfast is as simple as it ought to be), we have still a clear half hour before the young people need be starting on their walk to school. In this thirty minutes so much could be done toward laying the foundations of a magnifi- cent manhood and womanhood, if only the father and the mother had the love and leisure to avail them- selves of the opportunity. Many beautiful things are possible in even so short an interval, when the interval comes every day. The older habit of hav- ing family prayers after breakfast had much to commend it, so long as the service was simple and sincere, and the daily life of the parents made them worthy to administer the office. It were much better to abolish it than to have it insincere. A tricky business man, a sharp dealer, will do his children less harm to appear before them frankly as a careless liver than to play the hypocrite. 222 EDUCATION AND LIFE Should they meet goodness in later life they will be less likely to mistrust it. Even the sharing of the home tasks, the com- radeship of common effort, has a large contribution to make towards the educational process of youth. At present, this early part of the day is made as devoid of thought and feeling as possible. The morning meal is dreary, for all are rushing, and after the meal there is no family life at all. The father is off, the children are off; one hears no connected conversation, no music, no comradery, only hurrying footsteps and the front door bang- ing. It were much better to let a bunch of fresh flowers and the words of good fellowship take the place of the half-cooked beefsteak and the greasy fried potatoes ; to have the family life respected, even if the business life and the school life have to be neglected. This wholly unideal and unnecessary condition of affairs can be reformed, as so many of our social shortcomings can be reformed, by the simple habit of looking at everything from a human rather than from a commercial standpoint. The sacred days may not be desecrated without making us fright- fully poor. If the boys and girls have a sane, sweet morning at home, and come to the high school after a brisk, wholesome walk, the day is well begun. It is nine o'clock, and school opens with a simple chapel exercise, followed by singing and the short daily drill in gymnastic. All of this need not occupy YOUTH 223 more than half an hour, and then from half after nine until half after twelve we have three solid hours for intellectual work. If we count five school days, this gives fifteen hours a week. They may profitably be devoted to language and mathe- matics, throwing all the science and hand-work to the afternoons. The time may be divided some- what as follows, — three hours to English, four hours to literature and history, four hours to French or German, or Greek or Latin, and four hours to mathematics. By giving a full hour to each lesson, it is quite possible to have all the work done in school, and this plan has such vital advantage that I want to ask your close attention to it. In a general way, it may be said that the majority of boys and girls do not know how to study, and that they need much more help in this primary occupation of the intel- lectual life than they do in the much less difficult and much less important act of reciting. In the matter of English, for example, a quiet hour given to the writing of a theme, following suggestions made by the teacher, and receiving direct help when necessary, will come to much more than the uncertain, unsystematic composition work done at home. So the hour of combined analysis and etymology, where the work is done on the spot, and where all participate, will lead in the end to a keener sense of the function of words, and a nicer discrimination in their choice, than can be gained by any amount of recitation work. 224 EDUCATION AND LIFE There is, indeed, so much to be said against recitation in all departments that I wonder it should ever have been thought wise. As con- ducted at present, the recitation assumes a perfect knowledge on the part of the scholar, and has been devised apparently to give him a chance to display this knowledge and to assure the teacher that, however preposterous the original assumption, it is nevertheless true. It is, I suppose, the only way of quieting the doubtful conscience of the teacher. The natural result is that the recitation becomes a time for hiding ignorance, and putting forward the best foot of knowledge, a proceeding no doubt ornamental, but less certainly useful. If one mistrusts this account of the matter, one has but to look at the widespread and almost irre- pressible habit of prompting to see that this at least is the way the boys and girls themselves look at it, whatever may be the theory in the mind of the teacher. The recitation method makes the home the real place for gaining knowledge, and the school the place for displaying it. We might profitably invert this arrangement, letting the school be the place for gaining knowledge, and the home the place for applying it. Another manifest evil is that the stu- dents who really do know the lesson and have come up to the theoretical expectation of the recitation are obliged to listen to the halting and garbled account of it given by the students who do not, an ordeal which is certainly very trying, so trying YOUTH 225 indeed that if the quicker ones take refuge in clay dreams and all sorts of wool-gathering, they can scarcely be blamed. We older people should do the same, or more likely still, we should refuse out and out to submit to any such process. It is a mis- chievous thing to sit in the room with any sort of purposeful noise, even a dull sermon, and not listen to it, for in this way the habit of attention becomes quite impaired. These arguments, taken together, seem to me to form an insurmountable objection to the recitation method. The opposite method of making the lesson hour the time for learning has everything to commend it. It replaces apathy by a wholesome self-activity. It has particular advantages when we come to the study of history and literature. By treating his- tory as literature, and enriching the historical nar- rative by constant reference to contemporary liter- ature, it is possible to cover the ground much more completely, to enlist in the study a very lively interest, and to make a much deeper and truer impression than by any amount of memorizing. The real value of history study is just this human value, the development of a more complete and more tol- erant attitude toward life and time. It ought to bring out one's appreciation of the immense human forces which have gone towards making the world what it is. The broad world outlook is what is wanted, and this comes only from the broad, sym- pathetic reading of a correlated history and litera- ture. 226 EDUCATION AND LIFE The themes in English may profitably have for their subject events or incidents touched upon in the history, and this writing of them down in black and white will give a sufficient amount of exactness and accuracy. The correlation of English, history, and literature has the further advantage of concentrat- ing the attention upon one period, a plan which pro- duces strong, clear impressions, and saves us from the waste of a dissipated thought. Four years of such careful work, seven hours a week, will yield large returns in the way of an ability to handle the mother tongue, and of a wide acquaintance with the general history of the world, and with its most powerful literature. In the matter of the historical sequence, there is much to be said on both sides, for the chronologi- cal order, and for a partially inverted order ; but when all the arguments are weighed, the advantage seems to me to lie decidedly with the chronologi- cal sequence, the study in succession of Greek and Roman and mediaeval and modern history. In addition to the advantage of presenting the world- process in the natural order, the chronological sequence has the merit of allowing an objective treatment of ancient history, while the boys and girls are still young, and an easy passage to a more subjective method when we come to the more com- plex institutional history of our own country and time. The question of sequence, however, is of far less moment than the broader principle of treat- ing the history frankly as literature, and making YOUTH 227 this whole group of studies — English, history, and literature — a bit of human work in which the boys and girls shall take a sincere interest and delight. The question of mathematics opens up a large and debatable territory. Like the poor, the prob- lem of turning boys and girls into even tolerable mathematicians seems ever with us. In four years, four hours per week, it is entirely possible to cover plane and solid geometry, elementary algebra and plane trigonometry, and to do it well, even assum- ing, as we do here, that the children in the lower schools have no mathematics beyond the elementary number work involved in gymnastic and sloyd. The most logical sequence seems to me to be plane geometry, algebra up to quadratics, solid geometry, advanced algebra, and plane trigonometry. In the majority of schools it is customary to have the elementary algebra precede the plane geometry, but the arrangement does not seem to be wise. Logically the geometry appears to deserve first place as the most graphic and comprehensible of all the lower mathematics. Arithmetic, as a sep- arate study, is omitted altogether from the curricu- lum of both the lower school and the high school, and this because it is better taught by implication in the gymnastic and sloyd, and also in the geo- metry and algebra. All the knotty problems of arithmetic can be better solved by algebra, and all the simple operations can be taught more effec- tively as they are met in daily school experience. 228 EDUCATION AND LIFE The method of using the lesson hour for the purpose of study is quite as pertinent in mathe- matics as in the history-English group. An hour devoted to mathematics, not merely set aside and squandered in half work, but really devoted to hard, concentrated work, will accomplish much when repeated four times a week for four years. This devotion can best be secured when the teacher is right there to help and direct and encourage. A proposition in geometry clearly and slowly demonstrated by the teacher becomes a model in both English and mathematics, and at once sets a high standard of presentation. The boys and girls may repeat the work the same day, or if a longer interval be thought desirable, on the next lesson day, and in repeating the demonstrations learn them quite as thoroughly as if they had been droned over at home. The lesson can be made more alive and more helpful, if the chalk diagrams are some- times omitted, and mental diagrams be made to serve in their stead. This method of mental geo- metry, with which the reader is perhaps already familiar, is coming into more general use, and the testimony of those who have tried it is much in its favor. The demonstration proceeds exactly as in the older method, save that the proposition hav- ing been stated, the necessary diagram is dictated by the teacher or the student, and is constructed by the rest entirely as a mental diagram. In some instances color is used. The boys and girls are al- lowed to select whatever color they please as a back- YOUTH 229 ground, and against this to construct such lines as will stand out most clearly. The less imaginative students follow the text-book in making use of a white background, with black lines. Others follow my own suggestion, and having a clear dark blue background, such as the color of the sky on a fine night, trace the lines of the diagram in silver white. The letters are the same shade as the lines. The main point is that the mental diagram shall be consistent and shall be held tenaciously throughout the entire demonstration. It is splendid mental gymnastic, for it cultivates both concentration of thought and a vivid, powerful imagination. Any wool-gather- ing, and one is completely lost. The imagination, acting in connection with a healthy, well-trained organism, is the open sesame to pretty much every- thing good that is good. It is at once the basis of all art-work, of all discovery and invention, of all true morality and progress ; in a word, it is essen- tial to the success of daily life. To image things in stone and marble, on canvas, in thought, in sound, things that never have been imaged ; to see things that never have been seen ; to put yourself in another's place, and so learn charity; to con- ceive a better society than has yet been realized, — all this is the high office of the imagination. As lovers of perfection, we must cultivate imagination in our children and in ourselves, remembering always, however, that it is a force for good only when working through a wholesome personality. In addition to this increase in general power and 230 EDUCATION AND LIFE imagination, the mental geometry is a large practi- cal convenience. In solid geometry, for example, solids of revolution may be generated, planes may be passed, oblique figures may be righted, positions may be changed. The whole space world becomes fluid and obedient to the thought. Furthermore, one gains the power to turn a flat working drawing into machine or building, and in these temporary three dimensions to study the structure to far greater advantage. If our architects had this power of projection, I think we should be spared at least some of the dreadful buildings which now offend the eye. The method of mental geometry is difficult at first, and for certain orders of mind is always dif- ficult, but when once grasped, it brings a sense of mastery quite worth the effort. There are high-school children who are able to study three and four languages at the same time, and the operation is not uncommon, but they pay either the price of great superficiality or the price of neglecting nearly everything else. Either price is too great. In the old university at Bologna, they show you, with much pride, the library of Joseph Mezzofanti, who knew forty-two languages at the time of his death. But when you ask about his own contribution to life, it seems that he had nothing particular to say in any of them. Imagine forty-two vehicles moving solemnly across the field of vision, each vehicle without passenger or cargo. The procession would not be impressive. YOUTH 231 The saner plan, in this matter of language, from the point of view of those of us who regard educa- tion as a purely human process, is to be as temper- ate in this as one is in food and drink. English has always the highest claim, since it is the medium of our own daily expression and the storehouse of our own most cherished traditions. But after this claim has been amply satisfied, one may profitably take up a second language, preferably a modern one, and follow it to the point of usability. There is a grave doubt, which Hamerton has expressed at some length in "The Intellectual Life," as to whether the average man can even know two languages intimately, his own and one other, know them so well that he can make them both and at the same time a true medium for his thought. This doubt becomes graver as the list is extended. But one may, in four years, gain a fair command of one modern language beside one's own, and this lin- guistic task is as large as the high school ought to undertake. With lessons an hour long, the work can easily be accomplished in school and quite without home study. There are, doubtless, many pleasant exceptions, but in general the work will come to much more if it is in the hands of a well-equipped compatriot. Those who have watched the perform- ance of the so-called " native " teacher — which is our somewhat illogical way of naming a foreigner — must feel, I think, with me, that however intimate his knowledge of pronunciation and idiom, his power to serve American children, even in impart- 232 EDUCATION AND LIFE ing a knowledge of the language, is much less than the power of an able American teacher who is in touch with his boys and girls, and understands them in a way the foreign teacher never can. It stands to reason, too, that if an American, who makes it his special business to learn French or German, cannot succeed well enough to teach it acceptably, then the task of learning the language must be quite hopeless for average boys and girls, who, at best, must go in for it somewhat casually. Furthermore, as an agent of the American social purpose, the foreign teacher is manifestly and entirely disqualified. Neither the absolutism of Prussia nor the French passion for la gloire has any place or welcome in America. At half after twelve, the boys and girls go home for their dinner. In our present high schools the hours are usually from nine o'clock until two or three, with a half-hour intermission for a hurried cold lunch. This arrangement is made necessary by the tremendous distances, but it is a very bad arrangement, and is responsible for much indi- gestion and much general lack of health. No one who has taught in a high school can be blind to this fact. He must have detected the debilitating effects in his students, indeed, in himself as well, and yet we go on doing it just as if we did not know better. This thoroughly unhygienic plan is a serious menace to public health and vigor. In the small organic high school, near the homes which it is meant to serve, it is entirely possible for YOUTH 233 the boys and girls to go home for dinner. The intermission of an hour and a half gives them a chance to have a brisk, healthful walk, a long breath of outdoor air, a direct touch of sunshine, and a hot, nourishing dinner. Not one of these things may be omitted without harm. The afternoon work begins at two, and is divided between science and hand-work. It ends at four. The occupations will be planned according to the tastes and aptitudes of the boys and girls, and will depend, too, upon local conditions and resources, Ordinarily, two afternoons a week will be given to laboratory science work, to physiography, physics, chemistry, and physiology, during the successive four years of the course, the instruction being touched by local color, and made as practical and concrete as possible. The boys and girls will want to know about the geology of the immediate local- ity, about the scientific principles involved in the local indiistries, about the physiographic features of the surrounding region, and these are all very good things for them to know about. Studied broadly, the science of one's surroundings may be made a basis of all scientific study. The habit of local investigation is a great good. In after life, if the young people move away from that particular locality, they will be very prone to make a study of their new environment, and come into intelligent relation with it. In four hours a week, it is im- possible to attain anything like an exhaustive treatment of the scientific branches named, but it 234 EDUCATION AND LIFE is entirely possible to learn the large facts in each branch, and to come into the habit of careful scien- tific thought. I have placed the physiology last. From a hu- man point of view, it is vastly the most important of all the scientific studies. It ought to rest upon a thorough, elementary knowledge of physics and chemistry, in order that it may be scientific. It ought to be studied by minds which are reasonably mature, in order that it may be practical and sig- nificant. Given, as it usually is, to children of fourteen and fifteen, physiology is a stupid farce. Any one who doubts this statement has but to read the examination papers in physiology, presented either at entrance to the high school or shortly after admission. He will, I think, conclude with a more ancient philosopher that we are wonderfully and fearfully made. But physiology may be a large social service when taught to properly pre- pared boys and girls, already in their nineteenth year. In order to treat the physiology frankly and helpfully, it is well at present, and may be well for some generations to come, to put the boys and girls into separate classes. Ultimately, when the human body becomes more beautiful and more wholesome, it is to be hoped that we shall not be ashamed of it. To minister to the social purpose, the increase of human wealth, the physiology must deal with the five phases in the physical life, with the mys- YOUTH 235 tery of birth, with the vital problems of nutrition and growth, with the important subject of repro- duction, with the grave question of death. Every normal life must meet these issues, and it is the office of education to idealize and perfect all that has to do with life. The instinct of reproduction is next in importance only to the instinct of self- preservation. It is the race instinct of self-pre- servation. Boys and girls, standing now on the threshold of manhood and womanhood, and al- ready conscious of the working of a new force, need the most careful and practical instruction, if this inevitable and tremendous force is to spend itself for social good instead of social evil. They must be taught in all reverence and sweet minded- ness the meaning of marriage and parenthood, the conditions of conception and birth, the hygiene of child and adult life. And finally, since the brief span of a man's life must be lived in the constant presence of possible death, our children must be brought up without fear of death, without the be- lief that death is an evil, but rather in that sweeter faith which grows out of an experience of the goodness of present life, the faith that this last great mystery, however profound, has still at the heart of it the same goodness. The remaining afternoons, three in number, may well be given to music, drawing, and manual train- ing. It would be a dissipation of thought to at- tempt all three subjects in six hours a week. As the children have had elementary instruction in all 236 EDUCATION AND LIFE of them, they will have given some indication of taste and aptitude. It is well to follow this indica- tion, and to arrange the work accordingly. Sev- eral combinations at once suggest themselves ; such as a half hour each afternoon for music, followed by an hour and a half of manual training or of drawing. I should myself be most tenacious of the music, as the art-form of the cult of the Spirit. Perhaps the wisest plan would be to consider the music permanent, and to let the manual training and drawing alternate in periods of several weeks each. In most schools it will be preferred to give the boys and girls different subjects in manual training ; the boys, joinery, wood carving, pattern- making, moulding, ornamental iron work, chipping and filing, and machine construction ; the girls, joinery, wood carving, sewing, dressmaking, mil- linery, and cooking. The truer plan, I believe, is to exclude the more special forms, to look upon the high school as a time for more purely educa- tional work, and consequently to give the boys and girls precisely the same course. This general course might profitably include joinery, wood turn- ing, wood carving, clay modeling, plain sewing, plain cooking, and a practical course in nursing and hygiene. The present manual training schools are much too technical, more touched by the needs of the market than by human needs. This techni- cal education is exceedingly valuable, but it should come later. For the same reason, it seems to me that the drawing should be largely freehand line YOUTH 237 and color work, and should include only the ele- ments of mechanical and architectural drawing. A school day, spent in this rational manner, and leaving plenty of time for a wholesome home life, might easily be repeated six times a week without being a burden. But the one free day is worth keeping for a different reason. It offers a fine opportunity for an enlargement of experience and for the doing of purely voluntary tasks. It can best be spent out of doors, on some well-planned expedition on foot or on the wheel. For this pur- pose good weather is required, and so it is far wiser to make the holiday a movable feast. It is also better to have it come in the middle of the week, since Sunday is a sufficient break between the ends. By making the holiday on Wednes- day, or, in case of storm, the first clear day after Wednesday, both of these conditions are as well fulfilled as our uncertain American weather will permit. The plan seems to me far wiser than the mechanical one of having the holiday always on a Saturday. In bad weather, and especially in winter, the young people are much better off in school than anywhere else, and every schoolboy knows how much more likely it is to rain on Satur- day than on any other day of the week. If the weather is persistently stormy, it may be wise to devote one school day in each week to voluntary occupations, letting the boys and girls spend the time in library or classroom, laboratory or workshop, wherever they are most interested, 238 EDUCATION AND LIFE or wherever they may feel themselves a little defi- cient. Another important office of the free day is to help discover to the boys and girls those deeper interests on which the subsequent special work of life is to be founded. Remember that life in its larger aspects is as yet untasted, and they have small data for choice of subsequent vocation. At present, we have no free day. We have a nominal holiday, but so great is the pressure of school life that conscientious students, as I know very well, use the day to catch up in their work ; and in some institutions this so-called spare time is counted in when allotting the tasks of the week. A word about Sunday, and its influence. My own rule for the day is very simple. It is this : never do anything on Sunday so stupid that you would not be willing to do it on Monday, and never do anything on Monday so wicked that you would not be willing to do it on Sunday. On the whole I think this is a pretty good rule, for it is practical, and it is founded on the spirit of the newer commandment. It cuts out dull sermons, and squeaky organs, and singing through your nose out of tune, and ugly churches, and sanctimonious books and phrases, and cant and hypocrisy, and much else that is unbeautif ul and irreligious in our present mode of spending Sunday. And from the occupations of Monday, it quite as resolutely cuts out sharp bargaining and doubtful business prac- tices, and degenerate books and unclean plays, and much else that is a human desecration. It seems YOUTH 239 to me a great advantage for children to go to church on Sunday, provided the church is made a delight instead of a duty, and provided the cler- gyman is a good man. One finds sacerdotalism, formalism, dogmatism, smooth phrases in the pul- pit, but one does not always find goodness. I have had a saintly clergyman tell me in all seriousness that he regarded the Quakers as worse than the heathen, because they had had the blessed sacra- ment offered to them and had refused it, — the Quakers, with their sweet, gentle, just lives ! I should not want one of my boys to come under such influence. The very air and sunshine would be a rebuke. It seems to me that a parent ought to scrutinize with great care the quality of the cler- gymen who presume to minister to the spiritual needs of his children. And he ought to scruti- nize with even greater care the curious material which, with the best intention in the world and frequently the worst preparation, offers itself for service in the Sunday-school. To permit persons to teach in the name of God on Sunday, who would not be permitted, in the name of the town, to teach during the week, is a shocking form of irre- ligion. Church - going and Sunday-school-going are far from being an unmixed good. They may even be the occasion of moral and religious harm. The same judgment must be applied to the church as to the other institutions of society. Morality requires the successful adaptation of means to ends, requires that we be causationists, that we be 240 EDUCATION AND LIFE practical. A church which does not redeem the daily life stands as much condemned as a school which does not educate. Both fail to serve the social purpose, the increase of human wealth, and must be supplanted by something better. But the church, like the school, may be idealized, may be redeemed from commercialism, from insin- cerity, from formalism. The church, working with the school and the family, teaching what they teach, the high destiny of man, the splendor of life, the communion of the divine spirit, the immortality of the soul, may offer a service of such inspiration and such compelling beauty, that it will be of all possible ways of spending Sunday morning the very best way for those who seek the perfect life. But the church should be near the home. If the children cannot walk there, or cannot get there by an easy, pleasant drive, they had much better stop at home. If the near church is unideal and un- suitable, two courses are open. It may be avoided, or one may throw one's self into it and try to make it genuinely helpful to one's own children and to the community at large. It is hardly necessary to add that if this latter plan allows any promise of success, it is socially the nobler. The rest of Sun- day ought to be spent simply and naturally, with wholesome games and outdoor sports, with reading aloud and good comradeship. The worst possible use of the day is to waste it, and this one does when one gives one's self over to any sort of aim- less and incoherent occupation. YOUTH 241 The school day ends at four, and the boys and girls leave the building with free hands and free hearts. There are no lunch baskets and no books to be carried home ; better still the day's school work is done, and there are no tasks to burden the spirit and interfere with the simple pleasures and duties of the home life. This freedom to live the fuller and more joyous life, to render unworried service to the busy mother and father, to enjoy their comradeship in serenity and leisure, to take the free playtime of the late afternoon without uncomfortable pricks of conscience, all this would quite justify the plan of using the school for the place of learning, were it not already justified on other grounds. Save in the very heart of winter, the period from four to six is a rare time for all sorts of outdoor delights. The earth is warmed with the day's sunshine ; the wind has a habit of going down with the sun ; the lights are soft and beautiful ; the illuminated walls and long slanting shadows add a touch of poetry to the dullest land- scape. One can imagine no finer playtime for boys and girls and for older people as well. It is a sacrilege that all these glories pass for the greater part unobserved ; that day after day the sun sinks into the golden west without causing a genuine thrill in thousands of waiting human hearts ; that one by one the stars take their places in the nightly drill of heaven, and the moon pours out her almost spiritual light, and we remain insensible. It is an easy nratter to remedy this. The rem- 242 EDUCATION AND LIFE edy is to live and work in the present moment, and to keep quite sacred the breathing spaces when we may enjoy nature and enjoy one another. This free playtime, devoid of care and worry, devoid of the shadow of unfinished tasks, has as much to teach the children and young people, as much in- deed to teach us older ones, as the more serious work of the school and the profession. In every well-equipped high school there will be a swimming tank and gymnasium, open on alter- nate afternoons to the boys and girls, and here in stormy weather they will have a chance to take sufficient exercise to keep them in the best of health. They ought all to have learned to swim several years earlier, but should this duty have been omitted, the deficiency must be made good at once. Not only is the swimming one of the most perfect forms of physical exercise, but in the course of the busy, stirring lives which it is to be hoped all these boys and girls are going to live, a knowledge of how to swim may save their own or another life. Then, afterwards, comes the preparation of the evening meal, and later, the partaking of it. If the day has been well spent, the people who gather around the board are not tired out and silent. They are still companionable. They have the sat- isfaction which comes from worthy tasks well per- formed. There is a pleasant sense of rest and peace, the quiet interchange of the day's experi- ences. This evening meal, after a busy, happy day, may be a bit of genuine fine art. At its best, YOUTH 243 it is a simple meal, but it lends itself to artistic treatment. It were well to begin with the illumi- nation, — " Let the lower lights be burning." It were well to bring out the silver candlesticks if you have them, and the best china, for you will never be supping more worthy guests. Remember, you are entertaining the children of the state, the future men and women of the commonwealth, the cup-bearers of all progress. And it were well for such guests as these to bring out the best talk, the noblest, the wittiest, the most entertaining, the most inspiring, and to encourage your guests, the young people and the children, to give of their best, too. You, perhaps, recall the incident of the French ser- vant, who whispered to her mistress, the hostess, — " Another anecdote, madame, the roast is burned. " A social man can do almost everything in life quite alone, with some degree of success, except to eat alone, and this social instinct is well worth culti- vating in our young people. It is wise to bear in mind that man was a social animal before he was human, and that his becoming human is perhaps a direct result of his being social. But this social instinct can nowhere else be so successfully culti- vated as right here in the home circle. In the family group, with the father and mother and the grandparents and the little ones, our high school boys and girls are very charming, but they are much less charming, and much less successful, when they attempt society by themselves. It is apt to be frivolous and self-conscious, even insincere, for it is 244 EDUCATION AND LIFE founded on such inadequate social experience. It is the sort of society which wears itself out in a very few years, and leaves men and women, not yet in their prime, quite stranded and cast aside. One sees much of this immature society in America, and it is not desirable. The best social success does not come to youth, for youth has not yet a sufficiently serious contribution to offer, to make the best soci- ety possible ; it comes to men and women who have spent their youth in quieter and more sheltered ways. Society is strengthened by every act of temperance; by keeping children, children; and youth, youth. The more ideal plan is to have no formal " coming out," with its early extinguish- ment, but into this braver and more inclusive soci- ety to have one entered for the rest of life. Every evening meal, however simple, may be a veritable feast if love spread the table and clever- ness serve it. And then, afterwards, comes the delightful home evening, its talk and music, its reading aloud and its games, an evening quite unshadowed by school tasks of any kind, and given over in frank joyousness to social inter- course and pleasure. And now it is nine o'clock, — or half after ; the day is done, and our young people must be off to bed. The beauty sleep must all be got before midnight. To be successful, the educational process of youth must provide for the wholesome life of the body and the mind and the heart ; it must preserve the simple, sensuous, passionate life in all its purity YOUTH 245 and integrity ; it must avoid premature manhood and womanhood ; it must include all youth ; it must cover the entire twenty-four hours ; it must limit itself resolutely to the present moment. If the programme outlined in this chapter does all these things, then it is the true process of the social purpose, and deserves our most loyal alle- giance. Each change we make in the programme must be along these lines, and must be for the increase of our total human wealth. CHAPTER VIII HOLIDAYS One hears much talk in America about our not having enough holidays, and, by way of argument, one is asked to regard the care and pressure and nervous prostration all too visible in the daily pro- cession of our social life. So convincing is the argument that I, for one, have been wholly con- verted by it, and quite seriously would be for making every day a holiday. Life is so great a possession, so unending a procession of delightful possibilities, that each day ought to be a new glad- ness, each night a fresh benediction. It is alto- gether a monstrous thing to make it otherwise, to admit into any day a spirit less joyful and radiant than the spirit of the best holiday. Is love not immortal ; is beauty not a reality ; is space not the home of angelic hosts ; is charity not the greatest thing in the world ; are men not our brothers ; is the best not our destiny ? To realize this, to real- ize, that is to say, the splendor of life, would be to make each day a veritable holiday. However, a holiday is not a thing to waste. It is a day to make the very most of. At best, it is all too short. But at present, holiday-making in HOLIDAYS 247 America is not a very beautiful operation. It con- sists for the most part of lounging and rowdyism and dissipation and forced fun. The human spirit, bowed down by care and pressure and nervous prostration and illness, cannot at once respond to the glad spirit of the new day. It can only lounge or shout. So unideal is our popular holiday-making that at such times gentler people do not stir abroad, and on such a holiday, one is tempted to wish, not that we had more of them, but rather that we had none of them at all. To make a holiday one must have the true holiday spirit, and this is not subject to command, — has a way of refusing to act inter- mittently. To be successful, our holiday-making must be continuous, — every day must be a holi- day. And so it would be if we were bent on carry- ing out the social purpose and went in unreservedly for human wealth. I do not propose to stop the wheels of enterprise, but only to have them spin more merrily and more sanely. The work of the world would get done easily enough, even if life were an unending holi- day, that is, all the work that is worth doing, for, rightly handled, work is the greatest fun of all the fun that is ; only you must bring to it good health and high spirit and a love for the beautiful ; and the work itself must be worthy, not cheap and nasty stuff, unnecessary toil that one can take no interest in, but sturdy, honest, manly work that you can put your heart into, and do because you have chosen to do it, and would rather do just that 248 EDUCATION AND LIFE particular thing than anything else in the whole round world. I say all this because I believe it to be true, or, rather, because I know it to be true. I choose, myself, to work, sometimes to work very hard in- deed, so that the friendly doctor calls, " Temper- ance ; " but it is self-chosen, delightful work. When you do what you want to do, honestly and squarely, it does not at all deserve to be called work, but is the most splendid sort of play, and every day is a holiday. Now I am obliged to believe that in this compelling desire of mine for some form of grati- fying activity, I am not at all unique, but am to that extent simply wholesome and normal. For I see hundreds of men and women all around me, friends, acquaintances, strangers, doing precisely the same thing, working, not from the pressure of want, but in obedience to that inner necessity which makes activity a condition of health and happiness. We joyous workers neither deserve nor ask any credit for all this activity. It is true that we plume ourselves a little bit on our wis- dom, our wisdom in knowing how to be happy ; but that is all. We might give up our work, and join the crowd of overfed, idle folk that you may meet any winter down in Florida, or on the Riviera, but we have no desire to be so sadly bored. We pre- fer the fun of life, the splendid, self-chosen, useful, welcome work. This answer only hints at how the pleasant work of the world would get done. It seems to quite leave out of sight the many hideous tasks HOLIDAYS 249 which now cast their shadow over the daily life of civilization. This is entirely true, but the inner necessity is still adequate to all social demands. The hideous tasks are unnecessary, and had much better be left undone. There are sad tasks, like burying our dead ; there are homely tasks, like providing food and shelter and clothing ; there are laborious tasks, like hewing wood and drawing water ; there are exacting tasks involved in con- struction and transportation, and in investigation of all kinds. But one may lend a willing hand and do one's sturdy, manly share in all necessary work, and still decline to be an undertaker or a head- waiter or a contractor or a shop-keeper. There is no trace of merit in doing unworthy work for unworthy people, or extremely disagreeable work for corresponding hire. Large dividends are won by all sorts of hideous, brutal, fatal work, but that never produces human wealth, never renders loyal service to the social purpose. If we described it at all in the plain speech of our own philoso- phy, we should have to call such activity by a very ugly name. We should have to call it treach- ery to the social purpose, treachery on the part of those who organize such work, and treachery on the part of those who do it. As a loyal citizen of the social commonwealth, I must oppose this false ac- tivity to the utmost of my power. I must call it by its right name. I must make it less and less possible. I must fight it on every side. And the great and ever available weapon of attack is through the channel of men's ideas. This turning of our 250 EDUCATION AND LIFE legitimate, life-long holiday into days of human drudgery will quite disappear from off the face of the earth as soon as we, the workers, will it to be so, as soon as we declare once and for all against this false activity, and in favor of necessary, whole- some, beautiful work. This little preface is meant to lead up to the question of school holidays. At the present time, that is to say, during these years of grace at the opening of the twentieth century, our private high schools are in session for about one hundred and fifty days out of the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and our public high schools for about one hundred and eighty days. The private schools begin work about the first of October. They have two days' holiday at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, and various single days throughout the year. They stop work very early in June, giving al- most four months' holiday in summer. As a rule, the more expensive the school, the shorter the total session. The public schools have about the same holidays, but somewhat shortened. They are in ses- sion about one half the total year. These facts are familiar to all persons who know anything about our metropolitan school systems, and particularly familiar to those parents who are much puzzled to dispose of their children wisely during the long periods of time when there is no school. But the facts are worth reciting when we come to consider the problem of holidays. We HOLIDAYS 251 should also add the fact that, in spite of this very short school session, many children break down under it completely, and must be withdrawn, while of those in nominal attendance a large percentage are always absent on account of illness and for other causes. In Massachusetts, the actual attend- ance is 143.5 days out of 180 days. All of these facts, taken together, present con- siderable material for thought. And this material is increased when we come to regard the teachers. Although working on half time, as it were, com- pared to the other vocations, and occupied only half the year, teachers, as a class, present less than normal strength and vigor. So common is the expression, "a broken-down teacher," that it hardly attracts one's attention, and arouses only a very faint sympathy, the sort of sympathy that we give to old age and other inevitable calamities. To one who regards education as a practical process by which we realize the social purpose, it would seem that the process is singularly inter- mittent to be in activity less than one quarter of the day, and less than one half the year. If the in- quiry were not on the face of it entirely absurd, one would be tempted to ask whether the social purpose is likewise intermittent, a fever which comes and goes, and leaves the patient quite incapable of ef- fort during fully three quarters of the waking year. Or, it may be that the social purpose is divided between the school and the home, giving the lion's share, that is, seven eighths of the total year, to the 252 EDUCATION AND LIFE home. This is a practical view of the matter, but it is not carried out with any degree of practicality, that is to say, it is not carried out morally. If this very big lion's share, the share of a very roar- ing lion, belong properly to the home, it would seem that by far the more important part of edu- cation consists in instructing the home, and that a true state normal school ought to devote seven eighths of its time to the enlightenment of fathers and mothers, and one eighth to the narrower peda- gogy of the school. But this is not done, and, as we all know, even in the schools themselves, the question of parenthood and its tremendous social duties is hardly touched upon at all. That is to say, we leave this immense slice of the educational process quite unprovided for, leave it to youug, inexperienced, unguided, often wholly uncultivated, persons, and the result is our present mixed pro- gramme of experiment and neglect, — largely neg- lect. Now, whether we so esteem it or not, the educational process is bound to cover the whole twenty-four hours. Even in sleep there is no es- cape. Cause and effect are busily at work. " That which ye sow, ye reap. See yonder fields ! The sesanium was sesamum, the corn Was corn. The silence and the darkness knew ! So is a man's fate born." And the distressing, or, perhaps, the wholesome, part of it is that in the final counting up of results, ignorance is no extenuation. The boy, sleeping in a vitiated atmosphere, eating improper food, wear- HOLIDAYS 253 ing unsuitable clothes, reading unfit books, asso- ciating with vulgar companions, falling into vicious habits, must reap the corresponding harvest, how- ever ignorant he or his parents. By so much is the social purpose defeated and the educational process made of no avail. And we must remem- ber that it is not alone the social sacrifice of one individual man. His influence and his children must also be counted. Now this social failure of the home is so man- ifest, and the recognition of it so widespread, that on all sides one sees the beginning of a movement to provide rational occupation for children during at least a part of their large holiday time. On Saturdays, one hears of morning classes in wood- work or sewing or cooking or gymnastic; one meets a young college man with a troop of lively boys, bent on a day's outing in the country. Dur- ing the long summer vacation, the metropolitan boards of education, even the more intelligent towns, especially in New England, are establishing the so-called vacation schools on the very spot and in the very buildings declined for summer usage by the older education ; while for those who can afford to pay for them, numerous summer camps for boys, and now even for girls, are springing up in the mountains and at the seashore. Both of these movements, for the rescue of Saturday and for the rescue of the summer, seem to me eminently whole- some. But I want to call attention to the fact that at present these movements, for the greater 254 EDUCATION AND LIFE part, reach only the poor and the moderately well- to-do. The Saturday classes and the vacation schools are mainly in the slum districts and pro- vide only for the poorer children, while the Satur- day outings in charge of college men and the sum- mer camps in charge of specialists are from their very nature available only for families of some means. The great middle class, the bulk of our population, is as yet quite unprovided for. One sees then, at the present time, a shrinking school year, and an increasing outside movement to fill up the gap. Is this logical? I propose to inquire. It must seem even to the friends of the estab- lished order that in the official school year the holiday plays an excessive part. From whatever point of view you look at it, a school process, which covers directly only one eighth of the time, which limits itself to seven or eight months out of the twelve, which spills over into the home life not in a cooperative way but as an interruption, which entirely abdicates during four or five months of the year, cannot be looked upon as a social process of any high degree of efficiency. Yet this prac- tice is so general in America that one is forced to believe that it rests either upon some underlying necessity or upon some principle which commends itself to the judgment of serious minded people. It is our present business to find this out. As far as I can discover, the Saturday holiday is prompted by the feeling that school children deserve some HOLIDAYS 255 pleasure, and that all work and no play makes Jack a dull bov : the Thanksgiving holiday. Wash- ington's birthday. Lincoln's birthday, and the rest are given for the same reason, and from a laudable desire to keep in mind those American sentiments not too prominently exemplified in current political life ; the Christmas and Easter vacations have a touch of religious sentiment, though, the latter holi- day does not always correspond with the festival itself and is becoming increasingly merely a spring vacation. They must be counted with the long summer vacation as a necessary let-up in the grind of the school year. The summer vacation has the additional argument that American cities are ex- cessively hot in summer and that the children sim- ply cannot study during the heated term. TVe may further add' that the long vacation gives the chil- dren, whose parents can afford it, a chance to get a taste of country life, and that in the country it gives the children an opportunity to help in the garden and harvest field. I believe this to be a fair statement of the raison d'etre 'of our present excessive school holidays. If not. the reader must make such correction of the statement as his own larger experience enables him to do. From my own point of view, the point of view which it is the purpose of the present volume to set forth, these arguments have little to commend them. Taken in their entirety, they are wholly inadequate. Let us examine them one by one. 256 EDUCATION AND LIFE It is perfectly true, not only that school children deserve some, pleasure, but that they deserve much pleasure, the most that we can bring into their lives. It is perfectly true that even a good deal of work and a very little play makes Jack a dull boy. But pleasure is not a commodity, a sort of sweet bun that you can buy at the baker's for a penny. It is a quality, and like all human qualities has its degrees of moral worth and worthlessness. The factory hand, relieved for a day from the dull grind of uninteresting work, finds it a pleasure to simply lounge on the corner. The laborer, hungry and exhausted, finds pleasure in the warmth and stimu- lus of a glass of grog. The schoolboy, set free from tasks which he does not care for, finds plea- sure in almost any form of laziness or aimless ex- ercise. But all of these are cheap and nasty forms of pleasure, and cannot be seriously recommended in the name of education. Pleasure must be by contrast, but we do not want it to be contrast with undesirable things. We want it to be pleasure when contrasted with all possible ways of occupying the moment. The highest pleasures for children and for boys and girls are those occupations which, when contrasted with all possible occupations, will bring the greatest amount of gratification. It is a moral world, through and through, and that is best which brings the best result. Otherwise we should have no means of recognizing the best. The aim and proper method of education is to provide the best possible occupations, and being a culture pro- HOLIDAYS 257 cess, the best possible occupations for the present moment. Consequently it makes each day abso- lutely and literally a holiday. For children we con- ceive the best occupations to be largely bodily, — activity touched with sentiment ; for youth, to be partly bodily and increasingly intellectual, — activ- ity touched with both thought and sentiment. At their best, the holiday and the school day are iden- tical. How could it be otherwise ? Both serve the same purpose, — the increase of human wealth, — and both mean the best possible spending of the day. There seems to me no theoretical ground for the Saturday holiday ; and, indeed, were we truly religious, and did we import into each day its true measure of reverence and love, its true worship of the Spirit, there would be no occasion for the Sun- day holiday, since the office of priest and teacher would merge into one. But as this is considerably further on than we have yet got, we may hold it as a goal rather than as a present plan for any large majority of schools. So I have been led to recom- mend no Saturday holiday in the process of child- hood, and in the process of youth a weekly holiday only when the weather is fair, and the day can be used to better advantage than in the school itself. I am not saying that our present school day is a holiday for either teacher or student. In the very best of our schools it is, but they are exceedingly rare institutions. In the majority of our schools it is very far from being the case. The school day is an admitted grind, and the holiday a blessed 258 EDUCATION AND LIFE relief. If this is the necessary character of school days, why of course the more holidays the better. Instead of two holidays a week, let us have three or five or even seven. This would in all serious- ness be an excellent plan, if we then started out to utilize the holidays and to make them serve the social purpose. But it would be a still more ex- cellent plan, and far more logical, if we stopped the shrinkage at once, and turned each school day into a holiday, a day so wisely spent that at the end of it one would be so much stronger and so much more refreshed than at the beginning that one would be still better prepared to meet the morrow, and no let-up would be necessary. This would be infinitely better than exhausting our material and then trying somewhat ineffectively to restore it, and to bring it back to concert pitch. We may well retain the holidays of religion and humanity, — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Wash- ington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Easter, and May day, — but we could somewhat improve our man- ner of keeping them. Especially we might well omit the holiday habit of over-eating. In primitive times, when the food supply was somewhat precari- ous and uncertain, one way of celebrating the advent of plenty, and so coming even, as it were, with the wolf, was to make a feast and eat and drink much more than was good for you. But in these more abundant times upon which we are fallen, when we are all reasonably sure of three good square meals a day, there really seems no particular excuse for HOLIDAYS 259 doubling up and eating two meals at once. We had much better celebrate these days by making them the occasion of renewed inspiration and re- newed courage. The Harvest-home, the Springtide, the Resurrection, the birthdays of great and good men, might well come to us fraught with meaning and delight, and we should be losing much to give up these special times and seasons. And now I come to the question of the summer vacation. Granting that a rational school process which refreshes and vitalizes, instead of exhausting and depressing, makes a holiday under ordinary conditions both unnecessary and undesirable, there still remains the question of summer heat, of the country outing, and of child labor. Let us take them up one by one. The summer heat in American cities is a mat- ter of too vivid experience to need any discussion. It is not limited to July and August. Any time from the first of June to the first of October we are liable to periods of such excessive heat that the ordinary occupations of life, and especially the ordinary school process, can only be carried on at great discomfort and at great disadvantage. The condition is not exceptional, but annual, and must be met and provided for. Our present provision is most inadequate. The private schools, as we have seen, simply close ; and since all of their children are commonly sent into the co'untry, it is perhaps the most sensible thing that they could do. The public schools brave a part of June and some of the 260 EDUCATION AND LIFE most trying heat of September, with results which are sometimes directly fatal and always widely disastrous. The ordeals of June are particularly burdensome, the examinations, graduations, promo- tions, and it is a pale, limp lot of both children and teachers who finally disband towards the end of the month. If one did not know better, one would be tempted to ask, " Have they been very ill ? Are they just out of the hospital, all these peo- ple ? " But one knows only too well that they are just out of school. And then, finally, when the schools do close, what happens ? The heat is not disposed of, and neither are the children. A few of them get off to the country. A few of the most weakly of them get a short respite through the fresh-air fund and the country-week association ; but the majority of them remain just where they were, save that instead of being occupied in fairly decent schoolrooms, they are in the hot, dirty street, or in the small, close houses. And meanwhile the social purpose is at a standstill, is, perhaps, having negative work done for it; its formal agent has abdicated. This plan of unconditional surrender is neither brave nor wise nor economic. In reality, it is not such a dreadful enemy, the heat. It simply intro- duces a distinct condition into the day's problem, and, if properly met, the heat may be made a source of pleasure and good instead of a source of pain and evil. To suggest only a few of the simple physical benefits which come with warm HOLIDAYS 261 weather, we have a more plentiful supply of fresh air in our houses than at any other season of the year ; we have more opportunity to be in the open, and particularly, at night, an opportunity to enjoy the moonshine and the starlight ; we may wear much less clothing, a freedom which children espe- cially appreciate ; we may have frequent swimming and bathing, one element of a boy's heaven. Instead, then, of giving up, simply surrendering, suppose we inquire what the educational process might do with the summer by way of carrying out the social purpose. Acting in conjunction with the heat, instead of in defiance of it, much splendid work can be done. In fact, in the matter of human possibilities, the summer is the very richest season of the whole year. The days are the longest, the nights are the balmiest, vegetation is at its height. Nature is in her most exuberant mood. It is a rare season, and I can but pity the man or woman or child who does not hail its return with a full and welcoming heart. It may be a breath of Pan, but it seems to me almost an irreligious thing not to rejoice in all this fertility and bounty and love- liness. Education loses a tremendous opportunity if she does not go hand in hand with Nature through all the long, glad days of summer. Now two practical plans at once suggest themselves by which the educational process can be carried with advantage through the warm weather. The most ideal plan, and the only one which will finally sat- isfy the social conscience, is the plan of sending all 262 EDUCATION AND LIFE the children of the city out into the country. The •second plan, which has the advantage of being immediately applicable, but which must be looked upon as merely transitional, is the plan of keeping the schools open all the year and adapting both the buildings and the occupations to the exigencies of warm weather. Both plans open such large vistas that they may not be discussed at full length, but we may at least touch upon them. The first plan is not so wild as it may at first sound, and is not at all Utopian, but a practical, socially economic suggestion. We undertake much more tremendous enterprises in the name of indi- vidual and corporate greed, and carry them to a successful conclusion. This enterprise is far more important. A city which can boast a clean, healthy, moral, beauty-loving population would need no other objects of civic pride, for all else would be added unto it. But this work of personal redemp- tion must begin with the children, and a causation- ist may well take the ground that any movement, however costly and difficult, is still socially eco- nomic if it produce a better breed of men. To take the children of a city to the country for four months means the desertion of their homes for that period, the provision of temporary country homes, the employment of an army of people to instruct and care for them, and finally the com- plete separation from the parents and the conse- quent breaking of home ties. It means also a rather dismal summer for the mother and father HOLIDAYS 263 left behind in the city. These difficulties are over- whelming, and there would still remain the ques- tion, if this pure air, better water, greater freedom, simpler life, closer touch with Nature, are good during four months, why not five, six, twelve months? And this practically is the solution. It is not the temporary exodus of the children for four months, with its undesirable separations and uneconomic duplicating of the apparatus of life, but the permanent exodus of the family group into surroundings more conducive to the ideal life. It is the re-populating of the country, and the shrink- age of the city, that is, as a place of residence. Cities have not builded themselves. They are the outward expression of perfectly distinct social forces. Withdraw these forces, turn them into other channels, and the cities are as doomed as if an earthquake had jostled them. The primary motive may well have been protection. The walled city is the earliest type, and for a long time the only type. But this necessity has long since passed. Many of the towns and cities of Europe retain their ancient walls on account of their picturesque- ness and historical interest, and possibly because of their attractiveness to the tourist world, to the crowds of American, English, and German money- makers who now bring gold and moral desolation to many of the fairest spots of Europe. But many of the towns and cities have leveled their own walls, and turned the sites of them into peaceful, tree -lined promenades. This first motive, that of 264 EDUCATION AND LIFE protection, may be quite dismissed. The second motive, I should say, was and is the natural gre- gariousness of the human race, a very real motive, and one from which much good may be made to flow. We like to be together. We like the touch of human fellowship. We are social by instinct ; and when modern society wishes to impose its cru- dest torture, it dooms a man to solitary confine- ment. The city is an expression of this gregarious- ness. The country was formerly a denial of it. A scattered population, very poor roads, exceedingly inadequate means of locomotion, made the isola- tion of the country a real hardship and added much to the attracting force of the city. The most successful country life in America was in the South. The large plantation was a community in itself. The mansion was large and well peopled, — the master and his immediate family, the cousins and other relatives, the crowds of arriving and departing guests, the numerous house servants. The slave quarters were even more populous. In a world so gay and so toiling there was little chance for loneliness. Had it all rested upon something better than human slavery on the one side, and bodily laziness on the other, it would have been difficult to have supplanted these patri- archal groups by the present hideous industrial towns of the South. But new forces are at work, forces which may make the country more sociable in its possibilities than the city itself. In the first place, the holdings HOLIDAYS 265 are necessarily smaller. The abolition of slavery and the growing scarcity of even paid labor — a scarcity which I for one rejoice to see, since it means an increase of democracy — have made it increasingly impossible for one man to successfully operate a farm of several hundred or several thou- sand acres. A small, well-cultivated garden plot of ten or twenty acres is more profitable. Further- more, the change in the national diet, the dimin- ished use of meat and the increased consumption of vegetables, grains, and fruits, must be taken into consideration. Many families which formerly had meat two or even three times a day now have it once, and a few are dispensing with its use alto- gether. This reduces the long stretches of pasture land, and brings about a more intensive and more highly civilized culture of the soil ; moving the farmhouses much nearer together, and giving a highly evolved agricultural community the aspect of a well-laid-out and charming village. I have been on these small garden-farms in California where the year's profit from a single acre was one thousand dollars. I have not the exact figures at hand, but taking the average production per acre and the market price of staple commodities, and then reducing the total by the necessary cost of cultivation and transportation, and one reaches very meagre net returns, in many cases not over five or ten dollars per acre, in many cases consider- ably under the smaller of these figures. Ours, for example, is notably a wheat growing country. I 266 EDUCATION AND LIFE have seen wheat fields in Idaho which produced one hundred and five bushels to the acre ! But the average yield from these great factory farms of the West is not in the most favorable years over sixteen bushels per acre. Taking the present price of wheat, one can see that the only way to make such meagre returns commercially possible is the socially impossible present method of working im- mense farms with cheap, ignorant labor, but little better than the slave labor of the ante-bellum days. Social evolution means, then, the diminished acre- age of farms and the increased neighborliness of farmers. To this must be added two vastly important fac- tors, good roads and our marvelously improved methods of locomotion. The good roads come with the more intensive culture of the land. We can- not afford to build good roads through large, slov- enly farms. There is not enough money to do it. We must put up with mud lanes just as we must put up with cheap and nasty barbed wire fences. Good roads are expensive. They are only possible where there are many people to use them, people with decent living incomes in their pockets. But with country houses moderately near together, and good roads in between them, an automobile, a bi- cycle, a modern easy-running wagon, even a pair of sturdy legs, satisfies the conditions of the most exacting gregariousness and makes country life eminently social. The same facilities make it just as possible to have lectures, concerts, and plays, — HOLIDAYS 267 that is, if the people want them, — even libraries, gymnasiums, and the best of schools. None of the reputed advantages of the city need be omitted. There are six hundred and forty acres in a square mile. If you take sixteen square miles, divide them into homesteads of twenty acres, and allow six people to each family group, you will have a total of three thousand and seventy-two persons, a community large enough, if so minded, to attain every social advantage. Now take a piece of paper and draw on it a large square, divid- ing it into sixteen smaller squares, four on a side. Draw the two diagonals crossing in the centre and mark the centre C. With C as a centre, and radii equal respectively to one side and to two sides of a small square, incribe the smaller and the larger cir- cles. Let the diagram represent a map of such a community as we are considering, and let the diago- nals and cross-lines, with such branches as may be necessary, stand for good roads. It will be seen at a glance that the most remote households from the centre of community life will be those at the ends of the diagonals, but they will be only y/8 miles away, or 2.83 miles, and the roads being good, such a distance could be readily covered by a bicycle or automobile in fifteen or twenty minutes. About sixty per cent, will live between the two circles, and will consequently be between one and two miles from the centre of things ; while almost twenty per cent, will live within the smaller circle and will be within a mile of C. Suppose 268 EDUCATION AND LIFE that at C we reserve two hundred and forty acres for public uses, — park, experiment station, race- course, fields for outdoor sports, and sites for pub- lic buildings. This dispossesses twelve families, leaving a community of just three thousand souls, — allowing one soul for each body, which is the proportion we hope ultimately to attain. Such a township of three thousand souls could amply support a first-class supply store ; a post office, express, telephone and telegraph station ; a repair shop ; a hotel ; a large and beautiful public building, with a theatre for lectures, concerts, and plays, a university such as will be described in the next chapter, a gymnasium, a swimming tank, a public library and reading-room, a science bureau in connection with the experiment station ; and finally, the offices for the local government. In addition, this public campus might be made the site for one or more churches, for a public cream- ery, and for such industries and manufactures as the locality made desirable. These advantages, great as they are, are not illusory. They are quite within reach of any three thousand souls who want them, and they are much in excess of the advantages offered by any present city in America. Many of the reputed advantages of the city are indeed out-and-out illusion. Lec- tures for the most part are given to persons who do not particularly need them, to the classes rather than to the masses ; concerts are expensive and are several miles off; while the theatres, when good, HOLIDAYS 269 are likewise expensive, and when cheap and poor are hardly to be reckoned as part of the culture process. This arrangement of a township four miles square is only one out of many possible arrange- ments, and has been chosen because it is the sim- plest. It may be worth remarking that in sixteen square miles of territory there would, in the East at least, be very likely to be one or more first-rate water powers which might be utilized by the com- munity for electrical purposes, both traction and lighting. In such a case, in place of arranging our sixteen squares in a perfect square, it might be bet- ter to arrange them in a rectangle, eight squares long by two broad. The centre, C, would then be one mile from each side and four miles from each end. ' An electric tram line, eight miles long, pass- ing from end to end through the centre, would still further reduce the practical distance of each house- hold from the centre. Half the entire population would be less than half a mile from the public tram, and the other half would be less than a mile. Such a tram could safely be run fifteen miles an hour, or a mile in four minutes. The most remote citizen would be less than a mile from a tram which would in sixteen minutes take him to the social centre. My sole purpose in going into these details is to point out that country life may be made just as social as city life. I have assumed in the illustra- tion chosen that the township is self-supporting ; 270 EDUCATION AND LIFE that is, that each family makes its living off of the twenty-acre garden-farm, with possibly some slight share in the industrial life at the centre. If the industrial activities were still greater, it would be possible to reduce the holdings to ten or even five acres, doubling or quadrupling the population while still preserving the wholesome freedom of the coun- try. Finally, if the township were connected by rapid transit with the city, and the city were still retained as the bread-and-butter centre, the hold- ings might be reduced to one acre, and the town- ship still preserve the aspect of a very roomy and beautiful village. An acre is about 207 feet square. If half of this were used for lawn, orchard, and building site, and the other half cultivated in- tensively as a garden, it would be possible to almost feed a family of six, and much reduce the demand for outside resources. Protection and gregariousness built the cities of the olden time. In the century just ended there came a still more powerful force, a force which has led to their multiplication and astonishing ex- tension. It was the force of commercialism. The city is preeminently the institution of the market. Here is the place to buy time and labor and en- ergy and health and strength and honor, — all the things a man can sell, whether he ought or ought not. Here is the place to exploit mankind and traffic in all possible wares. The age being com- mercial, the city is the natural expression of the age. It is essentially a market, with living accom- HOLIDAYS 271 modations for the bulk of the traders, very mag- nificent accommodations for the successful ones, very mean and shabby accommodations for the less successful ones. To turn one's back upon the city no longer means loss of protection, and I have been trying to show that it need not mean any sacrifice of the social instinct; but it does assuredly mean the giving up of commercial speculation, and the gambling spirit generally. You have to get people together in considerable numbers, and put a pressure on them, the pressure of necessity or desire, to get any great profit out of them. The city satisfies both of these conditions. It furnishes the crowd and it furnishes the pressure. There is the daily necessity for food and clothing and shelter, and there is the desire for pleasure and display. Pro- fit could ask no better harvest field. As long as profit, that is "business," is the main concern of the adult world, the city will hold its own and will grow larger and possibly even more hideous than at present. From our present point of view this business spirit is distinctly anti-social, since it goes in for money profit at any cost, and is not concerned with the real social purpose, the increase of human wealth. Just so far, then, as a city represents the apotheosis of this spirit, the worship of the golden calf, — and there are few cities which do not, — it must be looked upon as a hostile force, an anti- social thing, essentially opposed to the deepest pur- poses of those who care for excellence and beauty. 272 EDUCATION AND LIFE This apparent digression in a chapter which has ostensibly to do with school holidays has been made unavoidable in coming at a practical treatment of the problem of getting the children into the coun- try. Every one, I think, must admit that it is highly desirable to get them into the country for at least four months in the year, that it is uneconomic to provide duplicate homes and service for such numbers, and finally that it is most undesirable to separate them from their parents. As I have already suggested, every argument makes the coun- try the better place the whole year round, and this becomes the only practical arrangement when it is realized that the exodus of the children must and should mean the exodus of the entire family. The carrying out of the social purpose involves the abandonment of the city as we now know it, and an extension of the idea of home to include both a house and a garden. Tremendous as such a pro- gramme is, education cannot avoid it. But when the idea once takes hold of a man, that the matters of supreme importance are health and beauty and accomplishment and goodness, the programme is as good as carried out, for the matter has become inevitable. Such a man will set about getting the best possible environment for his family and him- self, for it will become a religious duty to do it, much more binding than putting a dollar-bill on the collection plate or subscribing to formal arti- cles of belief which he neither knows nor under- stands. An enterprise, undertaken in this spirit, HOLIDAYS 273 as a matter of prime importance, seldom fails of success. But meanwhile the children are in the city, the idea of human wealth has not penetrated into the consciousness of their parents, the summer heat is on, and there remains the temporary expedient of which we spoke, the adaptation of school buildings and school process to the conditions of the season. It is not necessary to build school buildings with flat tin roofs, thin walls, and sliding windows which open but half way. It is entirely possible to build the walls thick, to make the windows open all the way, to have the roof project several feet, to give it such a slope that there will be an adequate air chamber over the upper rooms, to surround the building with an open playground, and provide trees and vines and other cool greenery. Such a building will be far more comfortable and whole- some than the average dwelling, and not less suited to the requirements of winter. In the same way it is the merest common sense to adapt the chil- dren's dress to the heat. A clean, healthy boy, with only a neat woven suit and with sandals for street wear; a wholesome girl, with these and a simple cotton frock cut with low neck and short sleeves, need not suffer with the heat, and it would be a very conventional person indeed who found such simple dress unsuitable. The school process al- ready outlined for childhood and youth in the small organic schools will need very little modification to adapt it to summer. In the warmest weather, there 274 EDUCATION AND LIFE will naturally be a selection of the quieter games and exercises, greater use of the swimming tank during school hours and as a part of the regular occupations, more frequent excursions to the park and to the country. In the high school, some of the intellectual work may give place to manual work. It would, in fact, take little skill to arrange a school programme that would be infinitely better than the present unofficial programme of a summer in the city, with its aimless, profitless waste of time. The children do not even have a good time, for laziness, let me repeat, is not a source of happiness. It becomes a habit and may then lead one to decline more active sources of happiness, but it does not provide a substitute. The long summer vacation for city children lacking adequate opportunities for games and wholesome occupations tends to promote laziness and other vicious habits, and has, I think, nothing to be said in its favor. Socially, it is a grave mistake, since it both wastes an opportunity and undoes some of the good work already done. I come now to those more fortunate children who are taken out of town for four or five months, and in the country, among the mountains, at the seashore, have an opportunity to taste the freedom and delight of Nature. For them the long sum- mer vacation is an immense benefit, provided, of course, the other conditions are wholesome, and especially the human comradeship. It is quite possible to reap an even richer harvest than from the regular school year itself. The simpler and HOLIDAYS 275 more sturdy life, the fresh air and exercise, the chance to walk and run, ride and row, swim and climb, the contact with Nature, with plant and ani- mal, mineral and rock, sunshine and storm, — these are the great teachers of childhood, and when their lessons are learned in reverence and love, one is the richer for the rest of one's life. But it is to be remembered that into this full and marvelous world children do not come quite unaided, any more than the race came at a single generation. It is a world that must be opened to them, and necessarily by one who has himself entered it, and knows the main traveled roads and some of the by-paths. It is very good for children to find out as much as they can for themselves, but they must be put in the way of this knowledge, and must be stimulated and helped. And it is to be remem- bered that there come rainy days, and even long stretches on sunny days, when other occupations are to be provided, hand-work, reading, sketching, games with something better in them than a mere playing with chance. The wealth of the summer is potential. It must be made actual by sym- pathetic and intelligent comradeship. Without this, the long summer vacation may bring to the child in the country, as to the child in the city, actual deterioration. The ordinary summer hotel and boarding-house are the very last places for children, and even at one's own country place, stablemen and ignorant servants are the last com- panions for them. 276 EDUCATION AND LIFE Some very noble people board, but the majority of those who board are not noble, and are not suit- able companions for a child. They have perma- nently or temporarily thrown over social responsi- bilities, and are out of touch with that more serious and more beautiful life which comes to flower only in a home. No one who has watched the treat- ment of children in hotels, the way they are trifled with, the alternate coaxing and bullying that they receive, the frivolous and self-conscious attitude to- wards life that is cultivated, can regard such an environment as commendable, or even permissible. The simplest cottage, a cabin even, or a tent, is much to be preferred, and may be made the instru- ment of greater good and happiness. A long chapter might be written about servants, but it would be sad reading. Taking the class as a whole, I believe it to be socially the least desir- able, the most unsound class that we have. And I believe this because it is of all our laboring classes the most deficient in democracy and self- respect. This is particularly true of the men. Many women believe themselves forced into do- mestic service because they have not been trained for something better, and, above all, they fall into it because they have not had the will and character to work out a sounder and less slavish scheme of life. But a man has greater opportunities, and, having these, is the more accountable. To be acceptable as a servant, he must have a certain amount of intelligence and address, a certain ap- HOLIDAYS 277 pearance and physique. To be permanently suc- cessful, he must add to this, honesty and reasonable faithfulness. These qualities fit a man for some- thing better than being ordered around by other people, his superiors, perhaps, only in the matter of bank accounts. These qualities fit a man for something better than servility. Here in America they open the door to any number of self-respect- ing, independent occupations. When, in the face of these opportunities, a man elects to be a servant, and adds to it a willingness, even an eagerness, to exhaust ingenuity itself in quest of fees, it stamps him at once as a person of very unsound outlook on life, and a most unfit companion for boys and girls. It is worth remarking that, however deplorable our modern plutocracy, the moral burden of it rests upon both the rich and the poor ; the rich in enslaving their neighbors, the poor in being willing to be enslaved. The young man whose only ambi- tion is to be employed by some one else, provided with job and wages, invites the exploitation of his labor and the piling up of those tremendous for- tunes which he afterwards condemns in terms of bitter invective. The way out, here as elsewhere, is through the open door of a more democratic and self-respecting idea. Whether, then, the long summer vacation is an advantage even to the children who are spending it in the country depends upon how they are spend- ing it, and, above all, with whom. 278 EDUCATION AND LIFE For out-and-out country children, particularly in the farming districts, the project of an all-year school meets with the opposition that the children are wanted in the harvest field and garden, wanted to drop corn, pick stones, pull weeds, make hay, fetch the cows, gather berries, wanted for a hun- dred and one smaller occupations, wanted some- times before they are quite old enough and strong enough for the tasks. The test of these demands is extremely simple. They are socially sound just so far as they offer the best possible occupations for children. They are socially unsound just so far as they substitute inferior occupations. All the occupations have the great merit of being genuine. The work is there and has to be done. The doing of it will be sincere and helpful, and this is the first condition of artistic work, the doing of something that will be a delight and ser- vice to somebody. It is much better than mak- ing things and then destroying them. Many of the occupations, also, are so little muscular that they may be safely undertaken by children and by boys and girls. It seems to me that this outdoor work may properly occupy a part of each summer day ; but to further the social purpose, that is, to be educational, it must satisfy precisely the same con- ditions as the school process. It must make for health, strong bodies, and good red blood, and therefore be varied and never exhausting. It must further the development of the senses, the sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell, HOLIDAYS ' 279 and consequently be quantitative, and sufficiently- varied to bring the several organs into constant use. It must be plainly intelligent, so as to stimu- late the intellectual activity. Finally, and above all, it must be touched with wholesome emotion. The children must be interested in the work, must want to do it, must do it right gladly and merrily, in the company of gentle persons whom they love and who love them. If these conditions are ful- filled, then child labor is a splendid thing. If they are not fulfilled, child labor is anti-social and wrong. By insisting so strenuously that child labor in garden and field shall satisfy precisely the same conditions as the school process, the two are prac- tically identified, and this is what I meant that they should be. The school has simply been trans- ferred to the open, and holds its sessions each fair day of spring and summer and autumn in the most beautiful and best equipped of schoolhouses. Storm and cold alone drive the school indoors, and at times even storm and cold are braved in order to get the lesson out of them, and the tingle and excitement which come from meeting them. " Delight, joy, sympathetic interest in things, is the only reality," says the ever wise Goethe. " It alone calls forth what is real in ourselves. Every- thing else is vain and produces but vanity." But if holidays and work and school are simply the best possible spending of the days, — the most joyful, the most helpful, the most educational, — 280 EDUCATION AND LIFE then they must be at heart one and the same thing. They must be the terms of a common purpose, the modes by which we realize the social good. This result miglit have seemed at first an absurdity, a paradox ; but now I hope it has been so far justi- fied that one may count it not only as a truth, but as the most profound and far-reaching truth in education. I have applied it in the educational process of childhood and youth. I mean in suc- ceeding chapters to carry it to the logical extreme, and apply it to the process of men and women in action, that is, to the concerns of adult life. The redemption of humanity is not a sudden act of conversion. It is a slow and constant pro- cess, the gradual unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit. But in every rational scheme of salvation the acceptable time is now. Why put off the holiday until Christmas, or Easter, or summer- time, even until to-morrow ? Why not make to-day a holiday, by importing into it a sympathetic inter- est in people and things, — sound emotion and sound activity? CHAPTER IX AT THE UNIVERSITY If the lower school cover the educational pro- cess of childhood, and the high school cover the process of youth, then the university must cover the process of manhood and womanhood. It must be simply a process for carrying out the social pur- pose in the adult world, and must have the same purpose as the schools, the increase of human wealth. It is in this spirit that I propose to con- sider the university, and to inquire what form it must take in order to satisfy the requirements of the social purpose, and be the fitting culmination of the formal educational process. Although the university is among the very old- est of our institutions of learning, — the University of Bologna recently celebrated its eight hundredth anniversary, — its precise place in our American system of education is not yet fixed. It is not yet articulated with the high school. The ideals inside the university are still in part conflicting. Per- haps its very age is responsible for this uncer- tainty. So many traditions have gathered around the university, it is so venerable and authoritative, that it does stand more or less for the ideals of the 282 EDUCATION AND LIFE past, and the rising tide of democracy has not yet flooded its purposes. At heart, the university is aristocratic in that older sense which made excellence an exclusive quality and not a general possession, and it is there- fore much given to making distinctions. It has always been the process of the privileged few, an institution with distinct requirements and supposed rights. It is still such in the minds of many, and this belated ideal, for such I must regard it, stands confused and uncertain in the face of the newer, democratic forces. These forces, however, are steadily gaining ground. In England they have been showing themselves in that democratic impulse which has been making educational history under the name of university extension, and this impulse has had the distinction of originating in the universities themselves. In Germany the university is so far democratic that it is alike open to all classes, pro- vided they can bring a somewhat high order of intellectual equipment. In Switzerland, one finds still greater freedom, and more genuine democracj 7 , perhaps the widest open door in all the world of universities. Here in America, we have no one type of univer- sity. We have several quite distinct types. The older universities, with their eyes more steadily fixed upon the traditions of the past than upon the requirements of the present moment, are still touched with medievalism. The newer universi- AT THE UNIVERSITY 283 ties, and especially those of the West, show more distinctly democratic tendencies. Some of them are still hampered by the personal whims and preju- dices of their founders, but time will probably remove these disabilities. Between these two ex- tremes, we have the greatest of our present Amer- ican universities, institutions like Harvard, which have the tremendous impetus of a glorious past and a firm hold upon the present. But not one of our representative universities has yet seized upon the full idea of democracy, that the university is the process of manhood and womanhood, and, as such, is open to everybody, and is called upon to serve all in the smaller or greater measure of their needs, rather than in the prescribed measure of its own elaborate require- ments. The thought has still to take root that the sole function of a university is to render social service, not the exclusive service which it is pleased to formulate, but that general human service which represents the carrying out of the social purpose. One may sum this all up in a word by saying that the universities need to be democratized. In England this need was recognized by the univer- sities themselves. In this country the need was pressed upon the universities from without. It cannot be said that the extension movement has taken any great hold in America. It was my own undeserved fortune to deliver the first extension lecture given in this country. It was on chemistry, and was given to St. Timothy's Workingmen's 284 EDUCATION AND LIFE Guild in Koxborough, Philadelphia, in November, 1890. The movement, therefore, is still quite young. I have watched it very carefully, and I have had high hopes of its usefulness, but each year has made it clearer that in America, at least, it is not a democratic movement. It has rendered genuine service, but among a class for whose im- provement other agencies already exist, that is to say, it has reached teachers, people of leisure, in- tellectual people, even people of fashion, rather than workingmen. It has become, in fact, a form of intellectual amusement, to be ranked with the German opera, and the symphony concert, and other agreeable pastimes, rather than as a form of serious intellectual work. I do not want to speak slightingly of any of these occupations, and I be- lieve there are people who make very serious work of them. I only want to point out that they are not activities at all parallel to genuine university work. The extension movement has had the great merit of attracting to our shores a series of bril- liant English lecturers, and of bringing out a number of talented lecturers from our own uni- versities. Some of our men have likewise gone to England, and this interchange of wisdom has done more to effect a genuine Anglo-American alliance than the more official movements at Wash- ington. The really effective impulse towards the exten- sion of adult education in this country has come from without the universities, and has shown itself AT THE UNIVERSITY 285 in such movements as Chautauqua, and the peo- ple's colleges which have sprung up in various parts of the country, and especially in our tremendous schools of .correspondence, — some of them two hundred thousand strong ! — designed to meet the needs of people in quest of knowledge in out-of- the-way corners of the land. Now this outside impulse has been very genuine, and when you consider the difficulties to be overcome, it has been marvelously successful. In the face of this wealth of opportunity, one might be tempted to call hands off, and to declare that any man or woman in America, with the proper spirit, already has suf- ficient chances. But this negative attitude does not represent the conception of the social state. The social state entertains a much more positive con- ception than this. It is not satisfied to leave social betterment to chance. It would bring human wealth within reach, within easy reach, indeed (God knows heredity will make the taking of it hard enough), and even with gentle insistence would press it upon the sons and daughters of the state. It must not be thought that the universities have been apathetic in this matter of adult educa- tion. Much of the work just enumerated has been carried on, and carried on with devotion and glad- ness, by university men. Furthermore, the univer- sities have ministered most nobly to the same adult needs in the summer schools, which a number of them have established, and which represent an 286 EDUCATION AND LIFE openness of opportunity quite in excess of anything offered in the regular courses. We see, then, on the one side, a multitude of men and women genuinely desirous of further and higher education, and on the other side a number of universities genuinely desirous of spreading the higher education abroad, but hampered by their own traditions and a sense of their own righteous requirements. And meanwhile we see the multi- tude turning to those outside agencies of culture, agencies which lack the personnel and equipment of the great universities, but which are available, and, to a certain extent, effective. Even within the universities one finds uncer- tainty in regard to their proper function. There has been a notable growth of the university spirit within the past decade, but there are still institu- tions which do not seem to know whether they are colleges or universities. The traditional American college occupies, per- haps, the most uncertain position of all. The old four-year course of undergraduate study is being seriously entrenched upon by the advanced work done in the best high schools, and young people of twenty are asking increasingly for the freedom of study and choice of subject involved in the uni- versity idea. It seems to me that the manifest destiny of the typical college, with its prescribed studies and narrower ideals of service, is either to disappear entirely, or to emerge into the greater freedom and election of the university. This latter AT THE UNIVERSITY 287 is the condition of affairs which represents the largest measure of practical simplicity. It prevails in Switzerland, and, with certain undemocratic restrictions, in Germany. In both countries the native students pass through the lower school and the Gymnasium, representing a combined process of nine years, and, on graduation, may enter any Swiss or German university without further exam- ination. In the Gymnasium, the students receive a good general education along certain lines, an effective training in language and mathematics, somewhat less effective in science, and almost no- thing in the way of manual training and gymnastic. At the university, the studies are elective, the attendance is voluntary, the degree is given for actual work done, — an acceptable thesis showing the power of original investigation in one's major study, an examination in that and in two minor re- lated studies. In many of the German universities there is a prescribed residence, but in Switzerland there is in this, as in everything else, the utmost freedom. One remains for as long or as short a period as one will, several years or several weeks ; the degree is given for qualification, not for any amount of mechanical compliance. The Swiss universities are quite consistent with the political ideal of the nation. They are open to men and women alike, open, indeed, to everybody who cares to use them, and the use may be very partial or very complete. There are no entrance examina- tions, no prescribed studies, no time requirement. 288 EDUCATION AND LIFE They are thoroughly democratic. One who has tasted this open freedom, and has experienced the delight of working purely for the work's sake, finds the walls and hedges built around American education sadly irksome. In England, which is one of the most democratic countries in the world, the universities are curiously undemocratic. They are still the institutions of privilege and separation. In such a time of transition as the present, it is particularly pertinent to inquire what direction the American university is to take, if it is to be an operation of that complete and lifelong culture which comes from applying the philosophic idea to the practical details of daily life. In reality, the inquiry is very simple, just as soon as one comes to look at the university in this light ; not as a dis- tinct institution, but merely as a part of that edu- cational process which covers the whole of life and has for its sole function the realizing of the social purpose. For practical convenience, the university sums up that part of the process which has to do with men and women. Like the process of child- hood and the process of youth, the university must get itself realized in the present moment, and similar to them in spirit, it must take men and women as it finds them, — not selected, favored men and women, but men and women as they are, — and must carry out the social purpose in them, the creating of organic human wealth, the bringing about of human accomplishment and beauty and power. AT THE UNIVERSITY 289 The one requirement that the process of the university must be contemporary simplifies matters quite as thoroughly as the similar requirement simplified them in the high school and the lower school. Here are men and women to be led into a larger emotional and intellectual and bodily life, into the better kingdom of the more perfect life. It is a present need. And the university is the social process for helping on this growth. It is a present opportunity. No condition may properly interpose itself between the two. As a contem- porary process, the university may not send long fingers into the past in the way of entrance exam- inations. It must dispense with these altogether. In doing this, the university is not only fulfilling its own function, but it is once for all freeing the high school from external pressure just as the abolition of entrance examinations in the high school freed the lower schools from external pres- sure. It declares the open door all along the line. When you have done this, you have made the idealizing of secondary education possible. As the agent of a larger purpose, the university must re- strict its process to the present moment, and must not, by its requirements, fetter the earlier processes of education. Where these processes have been well carried out, the young people have had the best possible preparation for the university. Where these processes have not been well carried out, it 5 s a pity, but this does not absolve the university from its own special function. As a social process, 290 EDUCATION AND LIFE the university may not decline the work proper to it, simply because there has been failure or only partial success further back along the line. There is indeed the greater reason why the university should be the more urgent and the more pains- taking in its own ministrations. It is surely a thoroughly bad policy, socially speaking, to still further neglect those who have been already neg- lected. But this is practically what the universi- ties have been doing, and this is the reason that Chautauqua and university extension and the peo- ple's colleges, and the schools of correspondence and the summer schools and all that we may call the extra-official machinery of education, have sprung up so abundantly and have met so large a popular need. This doing away of entrance examinations would be a great benefit to the university itself. It is far more wholesome for the university teachers to put their whole energy into artistic work, into the work of presenting their subjects just as clearly and just as well as they possibly can. It has been said that we have the best teaching in the kindergarten and the worst in the universities. This has, of course, much of that exaggeration to be found in most picturesque statements, but there is at least a grain of truth in it. The university teacher is charac- terized by a knowledge of his subject rather than by his art in presenting it. If the amount of en- ergy which now goes into keeping students out of the university could be turned to account in help- AT THE UNIVERSITY 291 ing them after they get in, the cause of culture would be considerably furthered. The art of the university teacher does not end with presentation. In addition, he has an immense field in the way of helping individual students, explaining, illustrating, simplifying, and a still more important field in the matter of strengthening the inner impulse, the motive power of the student life. This triple task is quite enough, and it is one into which a sturdy, red-blooded man could throw his whole heart. The task is one of social service, and it has about it the joy and refreshment which come from rendering social service. It is, in a word, a worthy and sig- nificant task. Furthermore, this doing away of the entrance examinations has, from the point of view of the university, the added merit of disposing once for all of that apparently endless task, the task of making the entrance requirements uniform. The conventions which have been held, the beautiful holidays which have been used up, the brain mat- ter which has been exhausted, in trying to recon- cile the conflicting requirements of our American universities, represent an appalling waste of time and energy. To restrict the university to the present moment is to unlock all these doors, and to make them uniform in making them all wide open. As the process of a social purpose which is democratic, the university may not select its ma- terial, may not exclude men and women on any pretense. The greater their necessity, the greater 292 EDUCATION AND LIFE the university opportunity. The very name of the university has this all-comprehensiveness. Just as it is a place to gather all knowledge, so is it a place to gather all adult seekers after knowledge, — it is a process of the whole. We people who ask of the university this universality of purpose, we people who believe in the university as the last term in our scheme of formal education, believe in it as the inclusive process of manhood and woman- hood, do not for one moment ask this universality as a favor. We ask it that the university itself may fulfill its high function, may escape the nar- rowness and provincialism which now cling about it and about some of its teachers, and may come once for all into the democratic open. This, it seems to me, would represent a glorious ideal, an institution standing in our midst as the upholder of the best truth we know, and ready to give this truth in small or large measure to the least and to the greatest. The present attitude of the universities is exclu- sive, and, quite without intention, even unfriendly. They are looked upon by the masses with a touch of suspicion. If the universities could be the centre of our national aspiration towards perfec- tion, could be the efficient helper of our working- men and workingwomen, there would come to the universities that strength and power which come to every man and every institution made by reason of appreciated service the centre of popular devo- tion and interest. And this larger role the univer- AT THE UNIVERSITY 293 sities have it in their power to play if they will but open their doors to all men and women, and will give the same welcome to the hard-pressed student worker who can afford time for but one course, that they now extend only to those who take many courses and ostensibly give their whole time to it. And now let us change the point of view to that of the men and women who would go to the uni- versity. If these men and women have gone through the lower school such as we have pictured it, and the high school, they are already young people of power, and well grounded in the elements of language and mathematics and science. They have, moreover, strong and beautiful bodies, well- trained senses, developed brain matter, alert spirits. In age, they will be from nineteen to twenty years, quite old enough to undertake the advanced work of a modern three-year university, and to do it in a properly mature way. They represent, in fact, excellent human material for the university pro- cess. This state of wholesome preparation will be increasingly the normal situation. As the lower school is recognized as the educational process of all childhood, and the high school as the educa- tional process of all youth, the social purpose will be carried out in this inclusive fashion, and will not be content to leave so many of its children to be provided for later by the more expensive and infinitely less satisfactory process of the poorhouse and the asylum and the penitentiary. There is but 294 EDUCATION AND LIFE one way to cure social deficiency, — it is to stop the supply. But there will always be some exceptions ; and to-day, as a result of our individualistic adminis- tration of the national resources, a very bad admin- istration in my own way of looking at it, the ex- ceptions far outnumber the rule. At the present moment there is no adequate provision by which this multitude of irregulars can have the advantage of the university. They are not prepared to take the entrance examinations, and there is no place where they can prepare. They can take a private tutor, but this is expensive and in general most unsatisfactory. They cannot go to the high schools, for they are out of line, even for those institutions. Even if they could go to the high schools, it would be a poor solution of the problem. Men and wo- men do not care to study in the same classes with boys and girls, for they have a different mental habit and a different rate of speed ; and then, too, there is a sensitiveness on the part of these older people which, however unreasonable it may seem in the abstract, is nevertheless a genuine obstacle. All these circumstances, under our present edu- cational regime, combine to withhold education from the great majority of those who have missed its early advantages ; and since this missing of early advantages is usually the misfortune rather than the fault of our multitudinous irregulars, we are, it seems to me, treating their aspirations with man- ifest harshness and injustice. We are throwing AT THE UNIVERSITY 295 them over to a blind fate instead of making intelli- gent provision for them ; allowing, as in the case of the long summer holiday for the children who cannot go out of town, allowing the social purpose to come quite to a standstill ; only in this case it is for the entire year instead of for several months. I cannot feel that this is a causational, practical way of dealing with the social problem. It seems to me that the only way we can deal with the problem successfully is to make the university the process of democracy, the social process for the betterment of all men and women. And this necessitates the open door. Let us look a little more closely and see just what this open door of opportunity would mean. I can readily imagine that there are many good and earnest people who will be quite shocked at the bare proposition to do away with entrance ex- aminations at the university, and who will regard such a departure as ushering in another dark age. But this whole scheme of organic social education, as I have been emphasizing with perhaps tiresome insistence, is admirable, is indeed moral, only so far as it is practical ; and as a part of this scheme the open door of the university must submit to the same test. The whole idea of a university is to offer oppor- tunity for study in all departments of human in- quiry, in philosophy, language, history, mathemat- ics, science, art, law, medicine, and theology. It is a tremendous idea, but one that our great univer- 296 EDUCATION AND LIFE sities come pretty near to realizing. Now my point is that to offer this opportunity well is the sole func- tion of the university, and that to use it well is the sole function of the student. Neither member of the joint alliance may properly interfere with the function of the other. The responsibility of artis- tic, effective presentation rests with the university. The responsibility of sound scholarship rests with the student. It is not necessary to build walls and to dig ditches about the courses of study. They are attractive only to those who have some taste in that direction and some power of assimilation. It is of so great importance to no one as to the stu- dent himself that he shall only undertake work for which he has adequate preparation, and in which there is reasonable hope of success. This is quite worth remembering. It is not necessary to make laws against swimming the Hudson until one has passed a searching examination in the natato- rium. Suppose, for example, that all the courses in mathematics were thrown open to the public, the courses in geometry, algebra, arithmetic, trigono- metry, analytics, calculus, differential equations, quaternions, and the rest. The public has never shown an undue greediness for mathematics. It is altogether improbable that any student would enter the course in calculus, pay the fee if there be one, and day after day attend the lesson, unless he had done sufficient preliminary work to make the course intelligible and to give him some hope of success. It is not necessary at the library to lock AT THE UNIVERSITY 297 up La Place's " Mecanique Celeste " or Clerk Max- well's " Electricity." And it is the same all along the line. It is not at all probable that any young man or young woman would enter second-year French or second-year German if they had not done the first-year work. People are not so anx- ious to be bored. And the responsibility for prac- tical, effective action is one of the most important lessons which school and university have to teach. It can be taught only as an art, by putting this in- creasing responsibility on the students themselves. To open the door of the university would be a much easier and simpler matter than we are prone to imagine. It could be done successfully to-mor- row. The only change in the curriculum that we should have to make would be to see that all departments of study offered initial as well as advanced work. By numbering the courses con- secutively, it would be very easy to indicate to the outside world what the university regarded as the proper or necessary sequence. I have found, my- self, as a matter of practical experience, that stu- dents are far more anxious to be wisely guided in their work than we can possibly be to so guide them. Furthermore, an explicit statement in the catalogue, at the beginning of each department of study, could be offered by way of suggestion as to necessary or advisable sequence, alternative, or combination. A boy who wants to be an excellent physician, and who reads on such authority that his best plan is to take the courses in biology first, 298 EDUCATION AND LIFE and to pass from that department to medicine, will be delighted to receive the suggestion and to carry- it out. The initial courses may be made parallel to the high-school courses in the same branch, so that regularly prepared students will not duplicate their work, while at the same time if any one course at the high school, through illness, or inaptitude, or even inattention, has not been met successfully, the gap may here be made good. Those who are quite unprepared may set to work at once to remove their disabilities. Now this plan is not very revolutionary, is not indeed at all revolutionary. Already the universi- ties offer initial work in all unusual departments of study, such as Hebrew or Sanskrit, and even in modern languages and in science. It would require a very slight extension of the curriculum to make it possible for any one, man or woman, young or old, full student or partial student, to go to a univer- sity and begin work in any department of study, and to carry it just as far as individual need might require. And this universality of purpose and process and service, I conceive to be the true func- tion of the university. Nothing less than this is the realization of our superb social purpose, the making the best that is possible out of every single individual. At the present moment, the operation of going to college is a somewhat elaborate operation, so elaborate that numbers of unsophisticated persons are quite deterred from at all making the attempt. AT THE UNIVERSITY 299 It means the ordeal of an examination now so comprehensive that it is commonly divided into two parts and separated by an interval of a year. It means, in most cases, the going away from home, and the remaining for four years at an ex- pense of several hundred dollars a year. It means, in many cases, the relinquishment of home duties and opportunities of service which ought not to be relinquished. These requirements are some- what appalling to all, and to many they are simply impossible. A small boy, a friend of mine, who had been listening very attentively to an enumeration of the Harvard requirements, said with a sigh, " Dear me, I wish I were growing littler instead of big- ger." To make the university, then, the educational pro- cess of manhood and womanhood in any complete sense would require a greater number of small in- stitutions near the homes of the people ; would require an absolutely open door; would require perfect liberty to take one or several courses as circumstances made it possible and wise. These are not difficult or unreasonable require- ments, nor need they interfere with the granting of degrees, should that bit of formalism continue to be prized. It is a very simple matter to label a student bachelor or master or doctor when he has successfully taken a given number of courses, and this is indeed the growing custom at the pre- sent time. There is a marked tendency to limit the 300 EDUCATION AND LIFE time requirement for the bachelor's degree to three years, or eighteen full courses, and to make one degree, the bachelor of arts, stand for this amount of mental discipline, quite regardless of the sub- jects through which it has been gained. The initial courses suggested in language and mathe- matics, such as are parallel with high-school work, need not count towards the degree, and there need be no lowering of the present standard. But it is even simpler to omit the label altogether, and cer- tify in some official way just what work has been accomplished. We all know so many unwise per- sons who are doctors of philosophy and so many wise ones who are not that the value of degrees does become increasingly casual. They are at best only a shorthand way of certifying that one has submitted to regular intellectual discipline, and the more specific record would really tell a story more to the point. Furthermore, when the university becomes the social process of all man- hood and womanhood, its ministration will be taken for granted, and there will be as little occa- sion for boasting of the fact as there is occasion at present for an ordinarily well-conditioned citi- zen to mention that he has had three meals or his daily bath or has been telling the truth. And I cannot help thinking that the best way of proclaim- ing that one is wise is to put it, not on sheepskin, but into convincing daily action. In the beautiful city of Zurich, in Switzerland, there is an old and famous university which offers AT THE UNIVERSITY 301 almost the freedom that I have been outlining. It was my own good fortune to study there. The hours were long, but they were voluntary. There was no sense of rush. There was practically the leisure to grow wise. The laboratories were open from eight until twelve, and again from two until six. You came and went at your own convenience. The professor was at hand, and his assistants. The artisans were in the workshop and ready to serve. All of the conditions for work were made as complete and favorable as possible. The lec- tures were in progress at all hours; in summer, as early as from six to seven in the morning, and in winter, as late as from six to seven in the even- ing. At the beginning of each semester and for two weeks, all courses were open. The student was free to attend as many courses as he cared to, and judge whether they were meant for him or not. And each professor and lecturer was in duty bound to publish on these opening days the ground he intended to cover, and to indicate his method of treatment. At the end of the two weeks, the students were expected to know what courses they wished to take, and to enter upon them and pay the required fees. The fees were very small, amounting in the case of lecture courses to only five francs — one dollar — per semester for each hour of lecture a week. Thus, a lecture every day, six a week, would cost but six dollars for the whole semester, or twelve dollars for the academic year. The student was not obliged to continue 302 EDUCATION AND LIFE a course already begun. If he had made a mis- take, or if the lecturer proved dull and unhelpful, the student was at perfect liberty to drop out and use his time to better advantage elsewhere. By dividing the year into semesters, the student had two opportunities of beginning new work, in Oc- tober and in March. The students were gathered from all corners of the earth, men and women, young and old. One class of ten students, I remember, represented seven different nationalities. They studied differ- ent things, at different rates, for different pur- poses. The work was self-prompted, and in the main, singularly earnest, for each student was re- sponsible to a very exacting and very well-informed taskmaster, that is to say, to himself. It was an inspiration to have an old gentleman with gray hair and time-chiseled face sit next to you in the course in geology, tramp with you in the Black Forest or among the lower Alps, enriching his older life at the same fountains where you were enriching your younger one. He took no other work at the university, but that was his concern, not the university's. The university served him to the extent of this one course, served him well, and he profited by it, — that was enough. And it was serious work, not an exposition of the entire sci- ence in ten lectures, but the same serious work offered to the candidates for the doctor's degree. It seemed to me that this old gentleman, with his fine, earnest face and historic name, was like a liv- AT THE UNIVERSITY 303 ing benediction, silently proclaiming to the younger men and women the eternal value of the best knowledge. And so you might go on as you would, take as much as you would, or as little as you would, go as fast as you would, or as slow as you would. It was the function of the university to present know- ledge. It was yours to select and assimilate. When it came to giving the degree, the requirements were specific, but perfectly reasonable. You selected your major study, your Hauj^tfach, — in my own case, geology, — and quite in your own way and at your own convenience, you worked out some ori- ginal problem, some problem of Alpine geology, or whatever might suit your fancy and be possible at that season and in that locality. When this Arbeit was completed, you presented it to the head pro- fessor of the department, and if acceptable to him and to his confrere in mineralogy, you were allowed to come up for examination. But you were quite sure beforehand that the Arbeit would be accept- able, for you had gone over it in the rough with the friendly professor himself, sitting on the gallery of his little chalet up on the Ziirichberg, while the professor's little daughter brought you fresh moun- tain strawberries still wet with dew. Then came the examinations. The most important one was on the major subject, a monograph on some topic selected by yourself from a list of several. You were locked in a little room, with an unlimited quantity of paper and pens and ink and the limited 304 EDUCATION AND LIFE quantity of your own knowledge. You were free to write as much and as long as you would, — the janitor brought you food. Then you went home and waited, a little nervously, perhaps, until the postman brought you word that you might go ahead with the oral examinations. These were three in number : the major subject, geology, let us say ; the obligatory minor, in this case mineralogy ; and in any second minor you might select, such as experimental physics or chemistry. These oral examinations were open to the public. Each one lasted for thirty minutes, and during that time the professor in charge was free to ask any question he would. And yet it was far from being an unpleasant ordeal. The professors were friendly men, and their questions were carefully graded, the difficulty being made less as you passed from your major down to your second minor. When it is all over, and the dean holds out his hand and says, " Herr doctor, I congratulate you," you are a little bit relieved, but the red tape has always been at a minimum. The Arbeit and the monograph may be in any of the great languages of Europe, and even the oral examinations are in your native tongue, in case the examining professor is able to manage it. If not, it is in German, but the professor says reassur- ingly, "It is the idea we want. If you cannot think of the German word, use the Latin or the French. It is the same to us, if you have the idea." And the degree means, not at all that you AT THE UNIVERSITY 305 are a wise man, but simply that you have shown yourself able to do original work in your own de- partment, and are equipped at least with the tools of the intellectual workman. This Swiss method, with very little adaptation, may well serve as a model for that freer university which is to be the last term in the formal process for carrying out the social purpose. It is a psycho- logical method, as well as democratic. Notice that it is a process for carrying out the inner impulse of men and women ; that it is founded upon the principle of self -activity quite as thoroughly as is the kindergarten ; that it not only allows, but com- pels, choice ; and finally, that it is resolutely a process of the present moment. When we come to make specific our conception of the American university, we are forced to deal with the same practical details of daily life as when we considered the process of youth and of child- hood. To fulfill its office as the agent of the social purpose, the university must stand for the better- ment and development of the adult world, and so the name represents in truth not so much an insti- tution as a national process. Viewed in this light, the operations of the university become necessary rather than optional in their character, wrapped up in the philosophic idea quite as completely as all other phases of life and education are wrapped up in the one comprehensive idea. To believe this is to see that the university doors must stand wide open to all comers, that its methods must be built 306 EDUCATION AND LIFE upon the emotional life of its students and teach- ers, upon their desires and affections, and that its operation must be the causational one along the path of the accomplished organism. Our boys and girls are now nineteen, and stand on the threshold of manhood and womanhood. The university must mean to them increased free- dom and increased opportunity, but it must be a process of the twenty-four hours and of the twelve months. The good health and organic power built up with so much care in the lower school and in the high school must not be squandered at the uni- versity. Rather must this wealth be conserved and heightened. The university, like the schools, is a culture process, and it is the present moment which is to be enriched. No possible future good may obscure this fundamental requirement. The flood of personal, human, good fortune is a rising flood, and may know no ebbing. Our lad of nineteen, or our maiden, must waken to each glad new day with the same fresh enthusi- asm which greeted the days of childhood and youth, must waken, if possible, in the same simple, beau- tiful home, and in the midst of the same sincere, sympathetic home life. If family circumstances permit the lad to give his entire time to the uni- versity, he may well complete his course in three years without pressure, without worry, and without loss of health. And this would be especially the case if the course, instead of being six or seven months long, should cover ten or eleven months. AT THE UNIVERSITY 307 Long hours are no disadvantage, provided they are wholesomely spent. Our lad may well go to the university from nine, or even from eight o'clock in the morning until twelve, and again from two until six, provided he have Sunday and one, or possibly two, afternoons a week off for other ex- periences, and have his evenings free for family and social life, for music, conversation, games, reading. And this can be perfectly well arranged. No student ought to take more than six courses, of which at least two may profitably be laboratory courses. If we suppose six mornings of four hours to be at our disposal, we can readily cover the four lecture courses in the mornings, not one hour each day, but two hours three times a week. This would permit a lecture and a succeeding seminar, or a succeeding study period, and if well used, would be amply sufficient without home work. By hav- ing only two subjects during the morning, and pre- ferably two related subjects, the attention is not dissipated, and one may do ample justice to the studies without undue fatigue. Furthermore, each lecture should contain a distinct thought by way of nucleus, a thought which may be anticipated at the close of the preceding lecture, and reiterated at the beginning of the succeeding one. In this way each salient point would receive mention three times, first as a preliminary statement, then as a full and extended exposition, and finally as a brief summary. The discussion between student and professor, personal explanation, parallel reading, 308 EDUCATION AND LIFE and the following out of interesting by-paths may well occupy the succeeding hour. But my special point is that the work should be done at the uni- versity, in properly equipped rooms, with proper guidance and assistance, that the attention should be concentrated on one or two subjects and on one point within the subject, and that the time outside of the university should be absolutely free. One matter in which all industrial reformers are very keen is that individual work shall be done in the establishment itself under hygienic conditions, and shall not be farmed out to home contractors, for it is the latter practice which has given rise to the "sweat shop," with all of its tragic sorrows. No firm is admitted to the " white list " of the city if its wares are the product of this inhuman sweat- ing. The application is obvious. If the laboratory work be confined to the after- noons and we have four afternoons at our disposal, of four hours each, we may have two laboratory courses well given, for each course would have eight hours. The time may be divided into four two-hour periods or into two four-hour periods, as circumstances make the more advisable. Or, if two three-hour periods suffice, and they would in most branches, the extra hour may well be given to the gymnasium and the swimming tank. In any case, there must be the most ample provision for good health. If the gymnasium cannot be compassed during the afternoon, it must come sev- eral times a week during the evening. Further- AT THE UNIVERSITY 309 more, a large part of Sunday, of the two free afternoons, and even a fair slice of each noon in- termission ought to be spent in the open in good, vigorous, sociable exercise. It is held by many persons whose opinion is entitled to all respect, that one great advantage of our present system of large and distant colleges is the sending a boy away from home, throwing him on his own resources, making a man of him. This is perfectly true if the home be an unwise one. But there is nothing in all the length and breadth of the land that is the equivalent of a wise home ; for it is the home which is the social unit ; it is the home whose perfecting means the fulfillment of the social purpose ; it is in the home that the race life and the individual life are to be purified and redeemed. To send a boy out of a wise home into the care- less life of a college dormitory or students' boarding- house is a singular piece of infatuation. To sud- denly absolve him from all home duties is to make the lad selfish; to cut him adrift from care and sympathy is to expose him unduly to temptation ; to starve his emotional life is to lessen the whole- some power of sentiment. In the wise home, our lad has always had freedom ; his life has been the expression of his own inner impulse, and it has been carried out through his own self-activity. He has been shielded from evil on the same hygienic principle that he has been shielded from sewer gas and malaria, because diphtheria and chills and 310 EDUCATION AND LIFE fever are not good for him. And as to making a man of him, as the phrase commonly goes, it means rubbing off the bloom, making him something less sweet and clean than he need to have been. The staunchest trees, the oaks and elms and cedars, grow slowly and live long. As we want our lad to make the fullest measure of a man, it were well not to press his manhood, but to let it come nat- urally and joyously as the full summer follows on the springtime. At nineteen, if he has had wise teachers and parents, he does not have to learn the essential things of life, the working of his own body, the prompting of sex, the changes which dif- ferentiate manhood from boyhood, and especially he does not have to learn all this through the min- istration of evil and vulgarity. He has learned it from purer and better sources. There comes eventually a time when our young collegian will profitably go away from home, not to exploit the problem of good and evil by the crudest sort of experimenting, but rather to in- crease his knowledge and experience of the good. In more evolved times each community will have its university just as it now has its high school. But these smaller universities cannot each offer all the branches of human knowledge. They may each offer the more fundamental branches, and leave special lines of inquiry to larger and more central institutions, or else each smaller university may offer the fundamentals and one or more specialties. I like the latter plan the better, as insuring the AT THE UNIVERSITY 311 greater vitality. In either case, there would be a natural and wholesome movement of older students from place to place, pursuing the more advanced work of the latter part of their course wherever they could do it to the best advantage. This in- terchange could be accomplished with the greatest simplicity and democracy, it seems to me, if, in place of dormitories and boarding-houses, the stu- dent went from his own home into some other home, made partly vacant by the temporary absence of a student, — son or daughter, — or made additionally hospitable by the growth of the social and university spirit. This arrangement might be the occasion of much good on both sides, and it would have the great practical advantage of robbing the peripa- tetic philosophers of any additional expense. It is highly important that the university should take up the work of education where the high school drops it, but it is equally important that the univer- sity should also minister to the intellectual needs of that larger part of the community which may not give all its time to the formal process, — the son who is the necessary support of his family, the daughter who must devote a large part of her time to an invalid mother, the father who is busy with the bread-and-butter problem, the mother who has pressing home duties. At present we make no adequate provision for these needs. Yet we could meet them very readily if we held that broader conception of the function of the university. A local university with its doors open to all comers, 312 EDUCATION AND LIFE to the follower of one course quite as cordially as to the follower of six, could be an immense force for good in our community, saving spinsters and other less occupied persons from the inanities of afternoon teas and card-playing, and making cul- ture a vital, ever-available thing. A lecture course requiring six hours per week, or a laboratory course requiring eight, would be possible in many a busy life; and in many a frivolous life might be the beginning of better things. When we become a moral and esthetic people, we shall have done with illness and invalidism, but the day is still distant. Meanwhile, we have in our midst many young persons of deficient strength, who cannot take six courses a year under any conditions whatsoever, but who could with great benefit take two or three courses. These are matters worthy of our very grave consideration. It is not an idle dream, this thought that we might have in every community a university with the outstretched hand of intellectual comradeship for every man and woman : it is a very practical possibility. To carry out the plan we have only to desire it. Here, as elsewhere, the obstacles are mental. But already we have sufficient good-will in the community to realize the plan, if this good- will could be concentrated upon such an ideal and turned to its practical realization. And there is sufficient spirit-hunger on the part of the people to make this democratizing of the university a reality of service. It is a pleasant picture to fancy AT THE UNIVERSITY 313 every considerable town with its university just as it now has its high school, — a university represent- ing the formal side of the educational process of manhood and womanhood ; to fancy that every one could go there and receive the best instruction in the best things, could get just in proportion to his time and ability and desire. It is thrilling to feel even in imagination the warm community of interest which would spring out of this intellec- tual comradeship, to see the gray-haired men and elderly women, keeping alive and young the best part of human life, the alert spirit, and growing old only in the best sense, in experience and in wisdom ; to see the young men and maidens doing their part in the family life, and still getting the best that the higher education can give. It is a pleasant picture to fancy that the daily life of toil might go on for each one of us touched always with the emotion of intellectual wonder and the sense of intellectual growth. And this, the open univer- sity would make possible. The needs of the simple life can be satisfied with much less than a whole day's labor of productive toil, but the leisure saved is valuable only as it can be put to some noble use. In all of our schemes for ideal living we fail to be practical, and therefore fail to be moral, if we forget that a certain amount of genuine toil is both necessary and desirable. The present hideousness of toil comes from the fact that it is misdirected and misdistributed. We are forever doing use- 314 EDUCATION AND LIFE less, meaningless things in place of the wholesome, beautiful tasks of the simple life. We are forever letting some go scot free, to their own hurt, and binding dreadful burdens upon others, even to the losing of their souls. We are drinking the same poison which proved fatal to Greece, and to every other nation which once was and now is not, the poison of an unconcern for our brother's good. It is a poison which will be equally fatal for America. But the cup grows less alluring as we get the full taste of it. Some time, perhaps, it will be reso- lutely dashed to the ground. In looking at the beautiful life of our present universities, at its opportunity, its serenity, its spirit of high adventure, one cannot shut one's eyes to the fact that for this beautiful life there is a price, the price of less opportunity, less serenity, less high adventure on the part of a multitude of workers. It is the excess of their intemperate toil which makes the universities possible. We should be democratizing the universities to very little pur- pose if we did not provide, as well as the open door, the partial leisure which is to make the open door available for working men and women. We can only do this through smaller institutions, by scattering the universities and taking them in very fact to the people ; only by casting out the useless, meaningless toil, and redistributing the essential remainder, so that into each life there shall come a sound temperance, the temperance of moderate toil and sufficient leisure. This saner life can AT THE UNIVERSITY 315 alone bring the opportunity to use the culture of the university. In proposing that the university shall be the educational process of all men and women, I am but proposing that it shall fulfill its obvious func- tion in realizing the social purpose; for the social purpose, I cannot too often repeat, is not the pur- pose of the few, but of the many, of the whole ; and this purpose, under all disguises and contra- dictions and eclipses, is just this practical study and pursuit of perfection. When, therefore, the university fails to reach the masses, fails to touch their lives with genuine culture and aspiration, it fails in a very grave social trust : and in the full sweep of those newer democratic forces which are to-day enkindling the hearts of men, the univer- sity of the old regime will either be renovated or supplanted — renovated, if it embrace the more comprehensive purpose ; supplanted, if it does not. Those who are satisfied with the Grecian plan of life, a seeming excellence made possible by a foundation of human slavery, — and this, mark you, is also the American plan and practice, — those who are satisfied with this plan, and who are willing to believe that they profit by it, cannot be expected to enter with any great degree of enthusiasm upon the work of giving up privileges and assuming common duties. Yet there is but one privilege a man may properly cling to. It is the privilege of doing a man's share in the necessary toil of the world, so that other men may have men's shares in 316 EDUCATION AND LIFE the leisure and delight of the world. It is this spirit which will make the university available as the process of the whole. We have been here considering a very grave prob- lem, and I hope not altogether from the outside. It is a part of the larger problem of our whole social life. While we have only been able to touch upon this problem, we have, perhaps, gone deep enough to satisfy the query with which the chapter started out, the query as to what type of university will satisfy the social purpose. And the answer is, that it must be a university with wide-open door ; that it must represent the educational process o£ all men and women ; that it must offer initial as well as advanced work in all of its departments ; that it must appeal to the love and interest of its students; that it must preserve the integrity of their organisms, leaving them richer, humanly speaking, at the end of the process than at the beginning ; that it must provide for the betterment of all organisms which are deficient. To do this is to realize the social purpose ; to do less than this is to fail. I venture to outline so broad a programme be- cause I believe it to be a thoroughly practical pro- gramme, and because I believe that we shall have no difficulty in carrying it out just so soon as we become a genuinely social people, just so soon as we desire the complete human life for the neigh- bor as well as for the self. The first step is an increased social sensitiveness, a keener social con- AT THE UNIVERSITY 317 science. We want a wholesome concern for the salvation of the social group, and we want a very watchful eye for the happiness of the present life. And it is coming, not haltingly, but with rapid strides, first, into the hearts of men, as a senti- ment ; then into the minds of men, as an idea ; then into the action of men, as the process of democracy. And the social purpose, organic hu- man wealth, will be the purpose of the university for all men and women, just as it is the purpose of the schools for all boys and girls, and for all children. CHAPTER X THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE There comes a time when the process of formal education ends. Childhood has come and gone; youth is past ; adult life is reached. The lower school and the high school have made their several contributions. Even the university has given the larger part of its own service, and must be content in the future with occasional and casual ministra- tion. But life has not passed, the social purpose is not exhausted, and just as surely the educational process may not consistently end. It is only that the process has changed hands. It has ceased to be formal and official, ceased to be the work of any institution, however august, and has become the sole work of the individual himself. When the university drops the work of education, or even the larger part of it, and each individual takes it up for himself, the work assumes a different character, for it is built out of quite different material and conditions. It becomes in a very practical sense original work, an adventure in the unknown. Since this work has to do with life in its larger aspect, and since life is of all experiments the most divine, we may well call this final process in education the THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 319 experimental life, the process of men and women in action. When one announces that quite the most magni- ficent thing about life is life, one is not toying with the words. One is simply announcing a vital truth, and one that is very obvious. But it is a plati- tude which will well bear repeating, for rich and poor alike, the world over, are squandering nothing quite so remorselessly as just this most magnificent of all their possessions, their life. The poor are squandering it on food and shelter and clothing, and very wretched stuff at that; sometimes they are squandering it in forced or self -chosen idleness. The middle classes are squandering it on a some- what better grade of the so-called necessaries, and in still larger measure they are squandering it on the hazard of wealth. The rich are squandering it on the bolder hazard of greater wealth, and in pur- suit of impossible pleasure, — pleasure bought at the expense of another. But in the midst of this disorder, and enabling us, by the contrast, to recog- nize it as disorder, one does see, here and there, men and women spending life wisely and beautifully, living the experimental life, and more thrifty still, one sees on all sides, the children. Now whether we squander life on the trifling pursuits of the majority, or whether we spend it wisely and beautifully, after the manner of the minority, will all depend upon the ideas which we bring to the adventure. The same stone may be fashioned into a temple of the spirit or into a for- 320 EDUCATION AND LIFE tress of cruelty : it depends upon the idea of the builder. The same metal may be wrought into sword or ploughshare : it depends upon the idea of the artificer. The same grain may nourish as food or deprave as drink : it depends upon the idea of the husbandman. So the same life may be squandered on that which is not worth while, or expended on that which is excellent : it depends upon the idea of the man. The altogether sig- nificant, compelling, momentous thing is the idea. This is at once the hope of all advance movements, and their despair. It is the hope, because the right idea pierces all obstacles, and accomplishes the im- possible, — the triumphant idea becomes the tri- umphant fact. It is the despair, because the trans- mutation of coward ideas into heroic ideas is the work of years, of generations. In the absence of the right idea, the force and material of the uni- verse avail nothing. It has been the custom, and continues to be the custom, to regard education as a process which ends for the masses with the lower school ; for the more fortunate, with the high school ; and for the gifted few, with the university. We speak pityingly of the man whose early education has been neglected, but have no pity for our fellows or ourself that we are neglecting the far greater opportunity of a later and more mature education. To have edu- cation cover the whole of life for all of us is not regarded by any great number of people as more than a very idle dream. But to advocate this THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 321 dream as a thoroughly serious and practical plan of life, a workable idea, is the purpose of the pre- sent chapter ; for such a plan is only to extend the scheme of a rational, social education to its logical completion. The obstacle to be overcome is an anti-social idea, that poor idea which makes us be- lieve in things rather than in men, believe in indi- vidual profit and privilege rather than in the social good fortune and individual human wealth. Such a conception of society is the very opposite of that which comes from the application of the philosophic idea to the affairs of every-day life, is indeed the defeat of that truer and more defensible social purpose. The real goal is organic good fortune for each and all, and may efface itself before no scheme of material wealth. This is the only sense in which it is possible for all of us to become wealthy, this wealth of individual organic power. For the wealth of the market, great as it is, and great as we want it to be, houses and lands and goods and the apparatus of produc- tion and transportation, this immense and growing wealth is still not sufficient to make us all wealthy in any individual way. And this wealth, even if it were enough, would quite lose its power if by any chance it came to even distribution. For whatever may be one's social creed, it is impossible to deny that the present power of wealth depends upon its inequality, depends upon its power to command the service of other people. On the one side, we have the wealth of the market, and on 322 EDUCATION AND LIFE the other side, we have human need or human greed, usually human need. It is poverty which gives power to this sort of wealth, to individual material wealth. It is only difference of level that makes the wealth available. Some one else must be in want. The stream which does not run down hill turns no mill. The magnificence of private wealth is a magnificence which is only made possi- ble by the drudgery of a multitude of weary work- ers, by their practical slavery. When one criticises a tyranny, one must condemn both parties to it, both the tyrant who tyrannizes and the masses who submit. When one criticises a plutocracy one must be equally impartial, for a plutocracy is possible only where both rich and poor consent to the idea. In America, the unsuccessful man cannot plume himself upon being more right- eous than the successful one, for both consented to the idea ; and we did this, partly because the opera- tion had never with any very loud voice been called in question, and still more perhaps because the chances of gain were so great and so alluring that they blinded us to the real significance of what we were doing. We had a virgin continent to ex- plore, field and forest and mine to be had for the taking, and we had, the more the pity, the captive black man of Africa and the disinherited white man of Europe to do the work, and yield us the profit. And this work of double exploitation, the exploita- tion of a continent and of a people, has gone on so unfalteringly that now, instead of the democracy THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 323 which we started out to realize, we have a country with two classes in it, those who have, and those who have not. And we glory in our work, in this con- quest of a continent, and this piling up of great wealth ; but when the story of the last century conies to be written by a later and more moral hand, it will picture a century of black and white slavery quite as genuine as the slavery of the mediaeval centuries which we affect to discredit. And for this state of affairs, shocking as it un- doubtedly is, no one class is to blame, neither the rich nor the poor. We started out somewhat even, at least we natives. We gambled for the most part honestly. Some won, some lost ; but the sin of winning was no greater than the sin of losing. The sin was in the gambling. We are all to blame, for we all consented to the idea, to this insatiable itching palm, to this profit-taking at a human cost. But now the case has another aspect, and is brought nearer home. The continent is possessed : the European recruits have become American citi- zens. The chance of fortune is so far diminished that even the chance of work is guarded : America, a country which started out to be a democracy, the refuge of all ,who were sore oppressed, has so far abandoned her mission that she accepts without shame a policy of exclusion. The time has come when we must either give up our passion for profit, or must exploit our own fellow-citizens. The dread- ful results of our profit-hunger are too manifest on 324 EDUCATION AND LIFE all sides, and notably in our large cities, for us to be able any longer to plead ignorance. It is this older, profit-tainted view of life which is responsible for the custom of regarding educa- tion as a limited process, and speculation as really the main business of life. It is a genuine gambling spirit, for it makes men willing to stake every- thing — health, beauty, accomplishment, goodness, life itself — on the chance of a possession which, when compared with these superb things, is piti- ably, infinitesimally small. It has made possible such a monstrous expression as " the almighty dol- lar." It has made possible many worse things. So long as such a view prevails, "business" will stand as the constant rival to education, and by limiting the process as far as possible, will mean practically the defeat of the social purpose. At the present moment, it must be confessed that this business view of life does prevail. Even boys in good circumstances, financially speaking, drop out of the lower schools and the high schools, go stragglingly to college, for they have the very natural feeling that if profit is the main business of life, the sooner they get about it the better. And then this fact that wealth is wealth, only because poverty is poverty, makes wealth essen- tially the enemy of popular education, for poverty and education never have gone hand in hand, and never can. The material part of life must be at- tended to first ; one must have food and shelter and clothing; and when this problem presses heavily, THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 325 as it does upon the great majority of our people, we can have little hope of making education co- extensive even with youth, no hope whatever of making it coextensive with life. And so I must regard the present individualistic administration of our resources as distinctly anti-social, since it is defeating the process of education, a process whose defeat is a crime, and so defeating that social pur- pose which gives to this process its high compulsion. It is as an educator with a turn for the practical that I want to see such a social administration of these bountiful resources as will make education general and coextensive with life. This can never be so long as we pull down our neighbors' stockades in order to keep the wolf out of our own garden. The practical method would be to make common cause against the wolf. The administration of common justice has been found to be infinitely better than the operation of private revenge. In saying, then, that the majority of our people are squandering their life, one does not condemn them, for under the present social regime it is al- most impossible for them to do otherwise. The way out for the masses of these people cannot be individual ; it must be social. And yet we have a small minority living the experimental life and carrying on the process of education to the very end, and they are doing it necessarily under the present regime. It is an entirely practical and possible plan for some, and it would be possible for all if the idea of the 326 EDUCATION AND LIFE experimental life could penetrate the armor of an unsocial and unfavorable environment. One by- one, they might escape into the better kingdom. But that inaptitude for ideas which is engendered by want and misery is a prison which must always be reckoned with. Those of us who have come into a purer region of thought through the favor- ing influence of a more gracious environment, and have attained something of the rational life, must not expect the same high spirit on the part of our less fortunate brother and sister. If we do, we are hardly causationists, hardly artist-philosophers. Ours is the responsibility, the high privilege, of so acting upon the social environment that better thoughts will come into the hearts of men, and better deeds will flow out of the more liberal, more human thought. A man constantly on the defen- sive, constantly fighting cold and hunger and nakedness, is not open to the gentler influence of a redeeming idea. Nor need we be fearful of en- feebling our neighbor, making him less independ- ent, less manly, less capable of wholesome personal initiative, — which is the stock argument of social competition and anarchy. Charity does this, ser- vility does this, the habit of wage-taking does it, but decent, wholesome life conditions, never. If they did, in what great danger should we persons of the leisure class stand, and how eager we should all be to abandon the vantage ground of a little property and throw ourselves into those positions of struggle which we fancied to be so admirable for the charac- THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 327 ter and well-being of our neighbor of the masses ! But it seems that we do not do this, do not court bad food and impure air and inadequate clothing and hideous surroundings and exhausting toil. We know full well that these are not the conditions of liberal thought and redeeming ideas. We know that health comes only from a wholesome life. Under our present social conditions, the experi- mental life is possible for only two classes of per- sons, both of them privileged classes, the people of superior endowment, and the people of means tempered by ideas. The one class has the highest possible measure of independence ; the other class has a borrowed independence secure only so long as the ideas hold out. But before we look into the matter of how these people live the experimental life, let us inquire what it is to live that life, since we have only said in a broad way that it is to carry the process of education through the whole of life. The pursuit of perfection is the pursuit of that which is excellent and beautiful, and this is what we mean by organic wealth, the sound, beautiful, accomplished organism, the heart of brotherhood, the reverent, cosmic spirit. One on whom this vision of the perfect life has laid firm hold cannot regard the quest as peculiar to any age or time, or place or circumstance, cannot indeed regard it as a quest which will ever be satisfied, save as a pro- gressive realization. He must look upon it as the major end of both the individual and the social 328 EDUCATION AND LIFE life. As such it must determine the disposition of the days, what occupations are possible, and what are not; must declare for or against all contem- plated plans, and must be coextensive with every bodily and intellectual activity, every emotional impulse. The man who undertakes so comprehen- sive a quest as this must be as resolute as one of Arthur's own knights, and more faithful. The practical carrying out of such a plan of experi- mental living is a concrete operation and may not be impatient of details. Perfection — using the term always in a relative sense — is a social as well as an individual quality, and is not open to hermits. It is gained by the developing of one's own personal powers, and by the right ordering of one's relations with others. It has always this dual aspect. So the man, liv- ing the experimental life, will be very jealous of his person, of his health and his manhood and his or- ganic wholeness and accomplishment. The admi- rable purposes of the spirit require an admirable tool. And so no activity will be possible which may not be idealized and made to minister to the furtherance of the complete life. But he will be just as jealous of his relations with others, that these relations shall be fine and helpful and ideal. The magnificent personality of an experimentalist is magnificent only in action. It gets itself real- ized only in the rendering of some honest social service. To live the experimental life is then to make each year, each day, each hour contribute THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 329 to the increase of one's own personal power and goodness, and to allow this incomparable purpose to be interfered with by no schemes of profit, no smaller and meaner ends. Such a life is experi- mental, because it has but one fixed element in it, and that element is its purpose, the quest of culture, the study and pursuit of perfection. And such a quest as this demands the boldest kind of experimenting. It demands a willingness to go here and there, to submit to this and that influ- ence, to do one thing and then another, to be ever open to the emerging requirements of the spirit. Literally it means to take one's life in one's hand ; to cultivate a certain detachment ; to fight shy of mechanical engagements and routine prisons ; to avoid all avenues to the commonplace, however luxurious and inviting, — in a word, it is to be a soldier of good fortune. It is very easy to be dull. It is very easy to give your second-best, to be less excellent than you might have been. It is very easy to decline accomplishments which require hard work, to de- cline a health and beauty which ask the price of sturdy living, to decline human service which in- volves an overflowing measure of love and skill. It is very easy to call laziness patience ; to call meanness prudence ; to call cowardice caution ; to call the commonplace the practical, and mere in- ertia conservatism. Now this turn of ours for taking the line of least resistance is so deep-set that to shake one's self 330 EDUCATION AND LIFE free of it is a prodigiously hard thing. The aver- age man finds the world serviceable to his hand. He can buy his clothes ready-made, and his shirts and his shoes ; even his opinions can be got of the newsboy for a penny. He is patted on the back as modest and useful, and is praised for being content with that situation in life to which it has pleased God to call him. And he is particularly patted and particularly praised by those shrewd persons who find his docility profitable. And then when the chapter is finished, and this useful man dies, he has a little obituary notice in his favorite newspaper, telling how for twenty-five years he was the faithful servant of such and such a cor- poration, or for eighteen years never took a single holiday, or for thirty-three years was the untiring member of some giant, profit-taking enterprise. If his profits were big enough, his picture is added. And this record of omitted growth and wasted human opportunity is made the subject of journal- istic eulogy. Brave indeed is the young person who can be brought up in an atmosphere so satu- rated with untruth as this and not believe that the path of duty is to go and do likewise. When I say these things to my friends, they tell me that I do not sufficiently allow for the beauty of faithfulness ; but I have to answer them as I answer myself, that faithfulness in a bad cause is not admirable ; that the halting, partial service of those who seek with still half-opened eyes to fol- low the higher ideal is infinitely the braver loyalty. THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 331 Now I am not reciting these human calamities in any spirit of more-righteous-than-thou, for I well know that unless Heaven help me, and I help myself, I shall repeat the same calamities in my own life, and I know that unless the same help come to you, you will do the same. But there do come to all of us occasional moments of insight, when we see that this drivel of the children of the established order is not the divine message of the great universe ; that this message, on the contrary, is forever proclaiming openness and plasticity and generosity and fearlessness and totality. It is not proclaiming the modesty of high adventure un- essayed. It is whispering always, — Be thou per- fect, perfect, even as I am perfect, as God is per- fect. To fulfill this high mission and keep alive the universal charge in one's own heart is not to follow the line of least resistance, however easy ; is not to be dull, however great the temptation ; is not to be commonplace and commercial and sal- aried. It is to be the fullest measure of a man that the bit of flesh and bone you call your own allows you to be. And to do this is to keep one's self free and unsold and unattached, to experi- ment with life, and be ready to brave the unknown of a possible but as yet unrealized experience. The commonplace and commercial life has at bot- tom the fear of being unprovided for. The experi- mental life must " fear nothing but fear." The point of view is the great thing, but the popular point of view has a curious way of in- 332 EDUCATION AND LIFE verting values. To substitute the pursuit of per- sonal power and excellence for the conventional pursuit of wealth and family and reputation is commonly estimated to be on the whole a rather selfish proceeding, and the experimentalist must be prepared in perfect serenity of spirit to meet this inexplicable charge not once but many times, to meet it indeed until the splendid results which flow out of the simple living of the better life have become too manifest to be denied. It is needless to say that this charge of selfishness will not bear investigation. No amount of personal industry will make a man wealthy. The days are not long enough and human strength is not great enough. The only way to become wealthy is to appropriate a part of the wealth created by other people, that is, to exploit labor; or to appropriate the wealth created by Nature, that is, to exploit the national resource ; or, by speculation, to appropriate the wealth created by the growth and movement of population, that is, to exploit society. And these operations are not the operations of the unselfish spirit. They may hardly be offered as a desirable substitute for the pursuit of that human wealth which so blesses its possessor and makes no other man the poorer. And if the operations themselves be questionable, surely no amount of good purpose in the subsequent expenditure of the spoils can redeem the operations and make them admirable. Under these circumstances the pursuit of wealth cannot be a possible plan of life for the man whose THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 333 eyes are resolutely set upon the things of excel- lence and beauty, cannot, in short, be a part of the experimental life. The upbuilding of a family must be looked upon in much the same way. The ability to sup- port children, even without exploiting labor or Nature or society in their behalf, does not con- stitute the right to have children, the moral, es- thetic right. Unless a man has first gained per- sonal power and excellence himself, he cannot transmit these qualities to his offspring, and he is ill performing the function of race preservation if he preserve that which is not admirable, his own weakness and half power and lack of totality. The pursuit of family is only admirable when one has first ordered one's own life in the paths of excel- lence and beauty. And in this matter of a reputation, by whatever series of exploits it is won, it is marred in the very making of it if it be touched by a trace of self- consciousness. The military leader charging for the White House, the actor with his thoughts be- tween the pit and the gallery, the writer with his eye on the public, the painter working for the market, do not achieve the sort of reputation which a man in the sober moments of life would care to have or work for. It is the sincere, unregardful working out of one's own life purposes, the attain- ment of power and excellence for the sake of power and excellence, and not for the sake of applause ; it is this quiet, unobtrusive private pro- 334 EDUCATION AND LIFE cess which has given the world its calendar of All Saints. The pressure of life is to make us all average men. It is to force us along the line of least re- sistance, and to land us finally in the abyss of the commonplace, making heaven a bit of distant blue sky above us rather than a garden of delight round about us. And this coward plan of life, this abdication of the best, is recommended to us in all seriousness as something quite dutiful and admirable. In reality, it is high treason to the human spirit. The alphabet is a remarkable set of characters. It contains, in fact, the whole dictionary. It is only that the letters have not yet been arranged. And the dictionary is a still more remarkable col- lection of symbols. It contains, as some French- man has long since observed, every good thing that may be said. It is only that the words have not yet been grouped. And to-day is a remarkable moment of time. In it is every possibility of ex- perience. It is only that the experience has been unlived. But to this larger experience and this larger life, the universe daily invites us. Yet for the most part we lend deaf ears and turn blind eyes. To lead the experimental life is to accept this superb invitation and to pass into that region of delight and beauty and magnificence which is the vital life. It would be a poor service to commend a plan of life which might not be carried out, to sing the THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 335 praises of a paradise quite surely lost. But it is not so with this better life. It is an entirely pos- sible plan. If one has some means, tempered by ideas, and is content with that simple life which gives the spirit its necessary breathing space, then one has both the time and the impulse needed for the experimental life. If one has superior endow- ment, the impulse is assured, and the committee on ways and means, a committee which has permanent headquarters in every brain, however idealistic, has, on the whole, an easy problem ahead of it. And this superiority need not be overwhelming, need not amount to genius, not even to talent, need not, in fact, exceed the slender possession of the majority of the middle classes. Good health, average natural ability, the elements of a liberal education, these represent, it seems to me, what may be called the material part of the equipment. The spiritual equipment is equally simple, but some- what more rare. It is an unfaltering determina- tion to do nothing which is not essentially up- lifting to the self, and at the same time a genuine social service. In reality, these spiritual requirements are one. It is impossible to lift one's self at the expense of others. It is equally impossible to serve others without at the same time serving one's self. Any growth in the man which does not serve the com- munity must be counted a false growth, and any service to the community which sacrifices the man must be counted a false service. In spite of seem- 336 EDUCATION AND LIFE ing exceptions this solidarity of interest is literally true, and one sees how true it is if one but remem- bers that the universe is at bottom a moral uni- verse, and that man is essentially a social being. The drama of human life is not a game of human solitaire. It is a drama made possible only by the human, social relation of the players. When one starts out on the quest of human perfection, one can make no progress whatever save through these relations and through this human interplay. Even the quest of bodily excellence, of strength and beauty and accomplishment, apparently the most private aspect of culture, has this equal gift for others. The strength must show itself, the beauty must be seen, the accomplishment must express itself in action. And when we come to the heart of this organic excellence, to its reverence and its goodness, we come to qualities which might, it is true, express themselves in the desert in bodily purity and self-respect, in communion with God, but which require for their full expression the manifold relations of social life. The most com- plete and perfect form of selfishness is the most complete and perfect form of altruism. We sum up, then, the spiritual requirement of the experimental life in no theoretic way when we say that it is an unfaltering impulse towards the unfolding and perfecting of one's own spirit, the unfaltering practical impulse which will not be denied, or turned aside, or quenched. And the realization of the experimental life is THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 337 the giving free play to this impulse in every single issue of the daily life. We should fare but ill in this interminable quest if we had to be forever conscious of it, for that would make us far from simple-minded, and anything but companionable. Happily we are under no such compulsion. The very striving may be made as habitual as courtesy, or standing up straight, or any other of the instincts of the well-bred life. The desire for the best may pass into one's general attitude towards life and be its determining force. I do not forget that a man must live, and that the material basis of life costs money. If one is without means, without tools or land or house, one has no choice ; one must sell one's time for the moment and serve for hire. There is a choice, however, in the work itself, — work that a man may do and still keep his manhood, work that is full of significance and meaning and beauty, and work that a man may not do and keep himself a man, the work that is meaningless and unworthy and dishonest. And I am told by those who are trying to lead the beautiful life and are finding it hard, that it is the latter sort of work which most com- monly offers. Meanwhile the landlord and the provision dealer and the tailor are importunate : there is sore need of money. It would be easy to suffer want if it touched only one's self, but when it bears heavily upon delicately reared women and little children, upon the family for whom one is bound to provide, then the want is very bitter. 338 EDUCATION AND LIFE The temptation to accept any sort of work which yields the much-needed money is a sore temptation, and one may well pray not to be led into it. Even if one escape this shipwreck, and secure work which is morally clean, the deeper morality of whether it is the work most suitable to one's own human needs, and of how long one may properly continue to do this particular kind of work, this deeper morality remains to be satisfied. If the work is dull and stupefying, if it fail to offer a chance for increased development and power, then however great the wage, it is immoral work, and one is bound by the requirements of the experimental life to give it up, for such work as this is not lead- ing one to the point one has determined upon. If a work has nothing to recommend it but its wage, it stands quite condemned. When new work offers, and one submits it to this human test, and asks with careful scrutiny as to whether the work ministers to the needs of the worker, it is comparatively easy to properly esti- mate it ; but the task is far more subtle when a work already entered upon, a work which did at one time clearly serve the purposes of development, gradu- ally ceases to render this service. It is so very easy to go on, for in the most alert of us there is a tremendous amount of inertia. The remembrance of the old enthusiasm remains. It is difficult, too, to seek new work and to strike out on untried paths, and this is particularly true if the salary meanwhile has been growing larger and one's expenditures have THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 339 been keeping pace with it. One tells one's self that one is very useful, and that no other man can do the work quite so well. One's friends, perhaps indeed one's family and one's employers, say the same thing. The pressure is all for keeping the man right there. You see how completely the point of view has changed and swung around from the hu- man requirement to the thought of the work. And do you know what happens ? In the majority of cases the pressure prevails. The man stays and stays and stays, holds on to his position as if it were the great thing in life ; becomes each year more and more of a machine, and less and less interesting as a man. He bears with fortitude the loss of his soul, and shows the white feather whenever his position is thought to be in danger. It is as if a child at school who manifested some aptitude for long divi- sion were kept forever at that, instead of passing on to new and helpful work in geometry and cal- culus ; kept forever doing sums in long division, until at last he was gathered to his fathers, a slowly finished quotient. This mechanicalizing of life, this making of it something quite automatic and insensible, is a veri- table tragedy, for it means quite surely the death of the spirit. One need not go far afield for illus- trations. How many men and women in your own limited circle of acquaintance have been turned into human failures by the bribe of a too large salary. They have been unwilling to let go : they have been prudential and cowardly : in the end 340 EDUCATION AND LIFE they have lost their life. To lead the experimental life is to put the human gain first, and always first, to value the work, the position, only so long as the human reaction is helpful and desirable. It is to pass from post to post ; from place to place, if need be ; from vocation to vocation, and to land as soon as possible in the best of all positions, the position of the independent worker, where one is no longer hired and salaried, but is the master of one's own time and energy and spirit. It is only as true men and women, living the free and independent life of the unhired and unsold, of the people who have at least the good fortune of seZ/*-possession, that we can come into the largest good for ourselves and can render the most genuine social service. Ours is an age of gigantic achievement along material lines, but it is not j^et an age of any great independence of thought. It is an age of stock opinion and concealed opinion, of ill-disguised ser- vility. The majority of our people are hired ; the rest give hire. Between them stands this wall, a very real wall, keeping them from meeting like true men and women in all frankness and sincerity. One hears it asked, — Shall a man quarrel with his bread-and-butter ? But it is not explained how it came about that a man's bread-and-butter should be in the keeping of another. And I venture to affirm, after regarding at some length the free lance and the salaried man, that the effect of taking wage upon the majority of people is simply disastrous, spiritually disastrous. Life is altogether too pre- THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 341 cious a thing to sell it to another at any price whatever, and I count it a national misfortune and a national weakness that in the great democracy which we tried to set up and failed there should be so few men who are masters of themselves, and worthy to uphold so great a political idea. It is then a first requisite of the experimental life that one shall as soon as possible decline out- right to be hired, however insinuating the wage, and shall declare once for all for the life of self-pos- session and self-mastery. And it is not so difficult to do this as one might at first imagine. The real issue is in the idea. The men who want to be free, can be free. Once a little ahead, and the man who has the good health, average natural ability, and the elements of a liberal education essential to an experimentalist, can make an independent liveli- hood in many acceptable ways. If he have a turn for first-hand, primitive methods, he can go directly to the soil ; as farmer, fruit-raiser, flower-grower, as shepherd, woodman, miner, he can make a living and still be a man ; and if his undertaking require more than individual power, as modern industrial undertakings commonly do, he can through cooper- ation utilize this corporate power without paying the price of his own freedom. In England, at the present time, fully one seventh of all the people are directly interested in some cooperative enter- prise. If our experimentalist prefer handicraft, he has a world of possible independent activity opening 342 EDUCATION AND LIFE before him. If he have a turn for the arts or for professional service, he can as artist, architect, sur- veyor, engineer, make an independent living. In purely intellectual fields he may be a teacher or a writer, and in certain churches he may still be a clergyman. In fact, the only activities denied to those who decline to be hired are the dull and uninteresting activities which require machines in place of men. My point is that any one, man or woman, with the modest equipment of an experi- mentalist, and a little bit ahead, can always go to work at something which will contribute at once to the individual and the public good. It is by such independence as this that persons of superior en- dowment rob material wealth of its power. Silently and with superb disdain, they are the constant and successful rivals of this wealth. For wealth, be it remembered, is quite an inert and powerless thing by itself. It has power only as it has power to command the service of others. And just as soon as superior people decline to render this service for hire, just so soon as they decide to be their own masters, wealth will lose its tremendous power, and the experimental life will be increasingly open to all men. And I find myself going back always to that older and uneconomic view of life that the best human service is too august a thing to be paid for in the lower coin of the market. It must be accepted, this august human service, in the same way that we accept the bounty of nature, as a gra- cious gift. THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 343 It is true that there come times when the bread- and-butter problem presses, and on the idealist, on the believer in unit man, quite as surely as on other persons. But the problem is already half met when one elects the life of simplicity, of plain food and modest shelter and serviceable dress and sane amusement. And the other half is much less difficult than we are prone to believe it. The diffi- cult thing is to make the start, to burn one's ships, and declare once for all for the free life. But when the start is made, when one resolutely declines all occupations not ennobling and human, when one devotes one's self absolutely to the self-chosen task, there will be no lack of bread; for work done in this spirit has a quality and distinction to it which even the world of profit and speculation recognizes and values. No one in health, living soundly and truly, need fear the baying of the wolf at his own door. There are multitudes who will tell you that these schemes for ideal living are not practical, but they have no right to speak, these people who have never tried them. Surely the men and women who have essayed the ideal life and who have succeeded, are the better guides. And they unite in affirming, as an experimental result, that the noblest philoso- phy which can be entertained in the heart can like- wise be translated literally into the daily life. The secret of the experimental life is this perfect freedom, this openness of mind, this unfaltering progress. It is the extension of the educational spirit into the whole of life. In education we do a 344 EDUCATION AND LIFE thing only until we know how to do it. Then we pass on to some new task. When we have read Caesar, we turn to Virgil ; when we have mastered geometry, we pass on to trigonometry ; when we have analyzed some simple chemical, we throw it away and essay something more difficult ; when we have done the easier work in wood, we make a box. And if we failed to do this, failed to pass on con- stantly from the five-fingered exercises to the sona- tas, from the multiplication table to the calculus, we should be doing so stupid a thing that the schools would be absolutely doomed, and formal education would altogether disappear from off the face of the earth. The same spirit may well be imported into that later and unofficial process of education, the daily life of the adult world. It is a stupid thing to go on all your life making nails or pins or buttons or shoes ; to go on growing the same-sized potatoes ; even to go on painting Madon- nas, perhaps making them, like Perugino, some- what less lovely at the end than in the beginning. It is a stupid thing to go on doing anything after the inspiration and joy and human profit have quite gone out of the doing. Life is simply what we get out of it, and it is a great pity to cheapen so magnificent a gift. The one bright spot in our commercialism is that its enterprises are often undertaken in the hope that their success will enable us to give our children all educational advantages. We want them to have a succession of masters ; to be taught this fact and THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 345 that accomplishment ; to go to college ; to travel, it may be, in Europe ; to spend the winter in the city, the summer in the country ; to taste life in all its fullness and variety. It may be that all this activity is not quite wise for people still so young, but it has at bottom a wise and helpful thought, the enrichment of life. Why should this process stop when the children come to be men and women, and could so much better respond to its advan- tages? Why should this same solicitous thought not be imported into our own more mature plan of life ? The world is so irrepressible a teacher. Her lessons are so vastly interesting. Her beauty is so superb and penetrating. The mere panorama of the world-life, the sweep of its processes, the untir- ing cycle of its activities, contain at first hand and in themselves all the elements of art and science. To be an experimentalist is to yield one's self un- reservedly to this comprehensive world teaching, to go here and there, to do this and that, to see one thing and another, to accept the world as a giant possibility and to use it to the full. It is to go to school all one's life to a perfect schoolmistress, — to the universe. To do otherwise is an ungracious, irreligious act. It is to decline life, and in its stead to accept a clerkship. In choosing such a rotation of occupation, one need run no risk of becoming the proverbial Jack- of -all-trades. The great people of the world have had this large versatility. You recall the tremen- dous sweep of Caesar's activities. You see Michel- 346 EDUCATION AND LIFE angelo painting Madonnas and building bridges, frescoing ceilings and shaping David. You pic- ture Leonardo leading all Florence spellbound by the charm of his many-sided genius. In Goethe, you have the poet, philosopher, statesman, scientist, artist, man of letters. In Shakespeare you have an epitome of the world. In my own fellow-towns- man, Franklin, you have a man distinguished, if I have counted rightly, in at least eleven different directions. If this versatility were simply the pro- duct of genius, it could hardly be used, even by way of suggestion, in shaping the life plans of average men ; but it is rather the condition of genius. The biography of achievement is the bio- graphy of men alive on many sides of their nature, of men taking active part in the drama of the world. It is easy to point to the ne'er-do-weels who have turned their hands to many things, but the list is more than matched by the people who do only one thing and still do it very badly. In both cases it depends upon the motive. If the will be weak, if the inner motive be insincere, all plans of life yield poor results. It is quite possible that industrially speaking you can get more out of a body of spe- cialized, automatic workers not disquieted by ideas above the dull and sordid occupations of the mo- ment. A nation of factory hands will doubtless produce more commodities than a nation of think- ers ; and to read many of our writers on economics, and to follow their impassioned utterances on the benefits of the division of labor, one might think THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 347 that this was the great social desideratum. But the question is as to whether we care more for commodities or for developed, accomplished human beings. The praise of special toil, of life measured in terms of salable products, comes, I notice, from the men who gather a profit from the output, and is echoed by those who by reason of the excessive toil and narrow interests involved in such a life are quite incapacitated for sound thought. But such is not the word of Jesus or of those other social teachers who speak of the beautiful life. This message has always the same refrain, the putting of the life ahead of meat, the body ahead of rai- ment, the recommending as the major concern of life that first seeking of the kingdom. This mes- sage of religion is reiterated by philosophy ; for religion and philosophy are at heart one and the same thing, and when translated into the terms of daily life give us that social purpose whose realiza- tion we have been endeavoring to further in work- ing out a consistent and adequate educational pro- cess. This process would be singularly ineffective if, after ministering to childhood and youth, to early manhood and womanhood, it should suddenly cease, and should allow the social purpose to give way be- fore the doctrine of the market. It seems to me, then, that the experimental life is not a thing to be taken up or laid down as you will, casually and capri- ciously. It seems to me to have the same impera- tiveness for later life that the more forma] processes of education have for earlier life, and as the joint 348 EDUCATION AND LIFE programme of religion and philosophy and science to be altogether unescapable, unless religion and philosophy and science are likewise repudiated as guides to the practical conduct of life and quite relegated to the garret of doubtful hypothesis and fetish. There are minds quite inhospitable to phi- losophy and science, but which yet hold quite stub- bornly to what they conceive to be religion. There are minds to whom philosophy is everything. There are minds quite ready to part company with religion and philosophy in order to follow what they regard as the surer light of science. But there are few minds, if any, so completely agnostic as to deny all three aspects of what men hold to be the truth. I have been trying to show that religion, by teach- ing the contemporary inner process of the kingdom of heaven ; that philosophy, by teaching the present unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit ; and that science, by teaching the continuous, esthetic nature of the world-process, — are in reality teach- ing one and the same thing. It represents the so- cial purpose, and its programme is the programme of the social purpose, — the immediate, life-long, eternal quest of human wealth and power, the quest of strength and beauty and accomplishment and goodness. The end of life is human discipline, is not the getting of property, not even the getting of know- ledge, but is the getting of character and accom- plishment, a human acquisitiveness. This is an old message, but it is increasingly imperative. It is THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 349 first of all to be, and then to know and to do, and only incidentally to have. This is the complete programme of the experimental life. As a plan of life, it is simply the extension of education ; and the extension of education, the making of education a life-process instead of a school-process, is in fact nothing less splendid than the practical carrying out of the quest of human perfection. CHAPTER XI THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE There is no sentiment, however catholic and august, which is not the private possession of an individual human heart. This measures the di- mensions of it, and establishes at once both its limitation and its reality. It is difficult not to personify our sentiments, and particularly those which have to do with anything so large as the social group ; to personify them so completely that we come to speak of them and think of them as something quite outside of ourselves and very much greater and more commanding. It is, of course, necessary to have some handle by which to manage these apparitions, a need which is com- monly supplied by means of some well-worn phrase. The Love of Country goes stalking about the land like a giant recruiting officer. The Balance of Trade — when in our favor — settles brood- ingly on our hearthstone with almost the con- solatory power of religion. The Good of Hu- manity, like a benign shepherd, drives us into curious pastures and sets us to nibbling at strange herbage. Good Times move along with the ex- hilaration of a case of champagne. I cannot but THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 351 think that we are more frequently the victims than the beneficiaries of this phrase-making, personify- ing habit. The good phrases become guardian spirits on whom we throw entirely too much of our own proper work. The bad phrases become devils at whose door we lay misfortunes, the cause of which belongs in reality much nearer home. In either case we become so much the less causa- tionists, so much the less earnest livers of the moral life. Unconsciously, and almost unavoidably, I have been speaking of the social purpose in the fore- going chapters in quite this personifying way, much as if the social purpose were a modern Ga- briel, whose trumpet blasts, now reaching only those of sensitive social ear, would in time rouse the whole world to its too-long delayed duty. One pictures the social purpose as a well-mannered young person in the traditional draperies, hovering over a commercial world, and vainly trying to in- duce a better practice. Such a conception, which, I confess, does grow out of our every-clay mode of speech, seems to me so altogether unhelpful and un- inspiring that I have thought it wise to devote this final chapter to a very practical attempt to bring the social purpose back from the empyrean into its proper home in the hearts of men. This reality of the social purpose as a purely human, individ- ual possession becomes the more manifest when one begins to make inquiry as to the agents of the social purpose. 352 EDUCATION AND LIFE It is easy in a large way to make answer that as the social purpose concerns all persons, so all persons are the accredited agents of the social pur- pose. Stated in this bald way, what has just been said sounds very like a platitude. " If every one would see to his own reformation, How very easily we could reform the nation." So long as the educated classes believe that the present unideal state of affairs is due entirely to the ignorance and brutality of the masses, and rest there ; so long as the masses attribute their hard- ships solely to the pressure of the moneyed classes, and rest there ; so long as the middle, bourgeois class truckles to the aristocrats or masses, accord- ing as they prove the better customers, and rest there, — the greater and more social commonwealth will emerge but slowly. No appeal to the supposed virtues of that class to which one happens to be- long helps matters along very greatly, and denun- ciations of an alien class are equally ineffective. No class appeal is a social act, however flattering its phraseology. The hope of the world does not lie with the proletariat, fond as their leaders are of telling them that it does ; for the world of their creation would be a very dull, hard-fisted, stupid place. Nor does it rest with our smug traders, with their passion for shop-keeping and the com- monplace ; for, as a class, they have neither the muscle for working nor the disinterestedness for seeing. Neither can I feel that this great hope is the sole possession of even our educated, aristo- THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 353 cratic classes, the most promising of the three ; for in this gentler world it is too much forgotten that a certain amount of homely toil is a necessary con- dition of life ; the unchastened aristocratic plan would leave the social underpinning too insecure for the social superstructure. The problem of the social state is too large for any one class to solve. The only way out is for us to make common cause, and in the substantial solution which we might thus achieve, to pass out once for all from the narrow- ness and provinciality of class cleavage into the freedom and opportunity of brotherhood. But we can only reach this richer and more beau- tiful life of cooperation and brotherhood through the deepening and broadening of our own social instincts. This better life is the expression of a better thought. The sentiment must go before the action. And since both sentiment and action are distinctly individual possessions, it is in the human heart and in the human body that society must be redeemed. Each man, each woman, each child, is the agent of the social purpose. The work of so- cial realization must be carried out by a twofold process, by the socializing and humanizing and per- fecting of one's own individual life, — the brave living of the experimental life, — and by an untir- ing effort to foster the social instinct in others, — in one's relatives, one's friends, one's acquaintances, one's home community, one's country. It is idle illusion to believe that this social in- stinct hangs literally in the air, ready to precipi- 354 EDUCATION AND LIFE tate in refreshing showers on the parched earth of human greed. Nothing of the sort happens. Pub- lic opinion is the sum of strictly private opinion. The Zeitgeist is not an extra-human personality, a Dantesque presence which divides the ether with that well-mannered young person who so charm- ingly personifies the social purpose. It is true that we have the curious phenomenon of mob- action, but the mob acts simply because each com- ponent so willed, and itself originates nothing. To cause the stampede, some one must cry " Fire ! " And it is noticeable that mob-action is distinctly less evolved, distinctly more partial, than the best individual action that could have been forthcoming. Vox populi, vox Dei, is not complimentary to the moral order of the world. It is to be remembered that the most powerful weapon of propaganda is example ; not example with one eye on the neighbor, and consequently more theatrical than genuine, but the sincere daily expression of one's own purified social instincts. And one must be contented with partial results until the full results can be reached. One cannot live the social life in an unsocial community, for the conditions do not allow it. One suffers always from the ignorance of one's neighbors. One is conscious of a forced complicity in every social crime. But one can live a more human and more social life than one has been living, and from each new vantage ground ascend another step. The community will follow, for the community is your- THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 355 self and your neighbors. And the failure of the neighbor is not so much due to the fact that he is at heart unsocial as it is to the fact that he has not been awakened. His is rather a negative posi- tion, a drifting with the uninformed current of affairs. The positive life counts out of proportion to its numerical strength. A sentiment must be measured not only by the number of persons who hold it, but by its own intensity and by the ab- sence of equally positive and persistent contrary sentiment. As an effective force, one social man in a community easily outbalances a score of men who are simply non-social. Indeed, if the one man have enough love and courage and patience and consideration, he may outbalance the whole of a negatively minded community, and bring it into better things. But whatever the effect of his life on others may be, it is quite certain that this effect will be at its height as his own individual life is human and social and excellent. In America, the machinery for a more social state already exists. We are in need of no politi- cal revolution. Xor could the social state, from its very nature, be the result of any outward revo- lution. Its coming is an inner process, a growth in love and humanity. We have the power, in the suffrage, to accomplish all needed reforms, just so soon as the reforms have been accomplished in our own desires. Since the suffrage is so important a social tool, it behooves us to guard it with every care, not only 356 EDUCATION AND LIFE its honesty, but also its social quality. We gain no excellence through suffrage, if the suffrage is not in excellent hands. We are too prone to think that the suffrage is a talisman, a dumb wonder- worker whose mere presence achieves the miracle. The fact that republics, in spite of their partial successes, have failed to accomplish the splendid programme laid out for them by their founders should alone disillusionize us and make us see that the hand back of the ballot must be intelligent, and must have something more than mere fingers and thumb to recommend it. The suffrage is in need of keener scrutiny. At the present time it is not universal. We exclude all classes thought to be disqualified, that is to say, all young persons under twenty-one, all foreigners, all insane persons, all invalids not able to reach the ballot-box in per- son, all persons who have too recently changed their residence, and finally, by a great injustice, we ex- clude all women in the majority of states, quite re- gardless of fitness or unfitness. We have limited suffrage rather than universal suffrage. The prin- ciple underlying the exclusion is a perfectly sound one, — the suffrage may not be claimed by those who are not qualified to use it. The difficulty is that the line of distinction is not properly drawn. Universal suffrage is not intelligent. It is in reality most unintelligent, an altogether barbarous misapplication of democratic principles. The fact that all our men and women and children are the agents of the social purpose does not at all imply THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 357 that each one of them is prepared for each and every social function. For each function certain conditions are required, and the fulfillment of the social purpose requires us as causationists to first fulfill these conditions. This is all so manifest that no illustration is needed. It is precisely the same in this matter of the suffrage. Not every one is prepared to exercise it, but we must see to it that the exclusions and admissions are on just grounds. To whom, then, does it properly belong ; from whom must it properly be withheld ? It belongs evidently to mature participants of the social life. It must be withheld evidently from all persons who are either immature or are non- participants of the social life. I think this is a just answer, and that the work- ing out of it would give us a just suffrage. Let us ask what it is to be mature and participant. In the first place participation is not a matter of sex. In America, our men are so engrossed with business affairs, that our women have been repeatedly charged with over-participation in so- cial life. The way out would not be the retreat of the women, but the advance of the men. In any case, the women are a very active and very im- portant element in our social life, and to exclude them from the suffrage is as unwise as it is unjust. Neither is participation a matter of race or color or religion. In the second place, participation requires the possession of normal mental and phy- sical powers. The man adjudged to be insane, and 358 EDUCATION AND LIFE the invalid confined to his room, are hardly in a position to guide affairs which they are incapaci- tated from sharing. There is something to be said in favor of the temporary invalid, and of the man laid up for the moment by some accident, and a nicer scrutiny will make provision for them. Fur- thermore, participation manifestly requires resi- dence and a genuine share in current activities. And finally and most emphatically, participation requires an ability to read and write and speak the English language. Without this ability, no man or woman, whatever their other qualification, may be truly said to take part in our American life. They are excluded from its higher activities, they have no share in its larger thought, they do not come into touch with its representative men and women. How real this disqualification is, a man must feel, however well educated, who has lived for some time in a country whose language he did not speak. The sense of social exclusion is absolute and appalling. He would be rash indeed to wish to vote on any local question. To be mature is an equally definite requirement, but somewhat more difficult to establish. As be- tween the bright child of twelve and many a man and woman of thirty, between an alert collegian and an illiterate fellow just past his majority, the judgment of maturity would often have to be given to the cadet ; but since the line must be drawn for the present somewhat arbitrarily, it may well stand for both sexes at twenty-one. But maturity THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 359 requires more than mere age. It requires, like social participation, a sound mental condition and at least the elements of education. At the present time, when so large a part of human communica- tion is by means of the written and printed word, a man who does not read cannot be called mature, for he has been shut out from the intelligence of the world, and has not come under the influence of those forces which make, for maturity. To admit him to the franchise is most unsuitable and un- intelligent. When at the same time we exclude intelligent women, we are curiously inconsistent. If, then, the suffrage were given to all mature participants of the social life, it would be given to all men and women over twenty-one years of age, irrespective of race or color or religion, provided they had normal mental power, and could read, write, and speak the English language ; and it would be withheld from all persons, regardless of sex and nationality, if they could not satisfy these very sim- ple and rational requirements. This would enfran- chise the majority of women and a few Asiatics ; it would disfranchise many negroes and illiterate whites, and all ignorant immigrants, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Slavs, who cannot by any stretch of the term be said to participate in our present na- tional social life. And both of these changes, of enfranchisement and disfranchisement, would be most salutary, and in direct line with the realiza- tion of the social purpose. These measures may well be urged, because it is 360 EDUCATION AND LIFE felt that they are just ; but measures which are just are found in the long run to be likewise expedient. It is too late a day to plead the social usefulness of women, for that is quite a foregone conclusion. In so many vocations they have proven themselves the equals of men, and in some their superiors, that the state can no longer afford to lose the in- terest and the service of women. It is not only unjust to women to exclude them from the suffrage, but it is unjust to the best interests of the com- munity. Women are not more moral than men. Like most protected and semi-protected persons, they entertain abstractly a higher moral standard than is professed or carried out by men of affairs, but this is simply because they have been sub- jected less to the stress and strain of life in the open. True morality is a product of this larger social experience. When women compete with men, when they come to put their sentiments to the test of action, they do not prove themselves more moral. One may not quote the affair of Eve, for Adam's subsequent lack of gallantry leaves him in the more unfavorable light of the two. However, it is in the open that women come them- selves into the larger moral life. Their enfran- chisement may not be urged under any illusion that they would purify the ballot. That will only come about when, through education and experi- ence, both men and women find that righteousness is the only rational and practical scheme of life. But this enfranchisement may well be urged, both THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 361 as a matter of delayed justice, and from a belief that the state would gain tremendously in all its deliberations and activities by adding the interest and point of view and service of women to the in- terest and point of view and service of men. In the same way, the enfranchisement of those Orientals who elect America, and who have the intelligence and industry to learn the English language, would be both just and expedient. It need hardly be added that this ingathering would not include the crowd of coolies who come here simply as temporary workers, and who, in the mat- ter of language, essay nothing more serious than "pidgin" English. Universal suffrage has so long been a shibboleth of democracy that any proposition to restrict the suffrage by withdrawing it from persons who have once enjoyed the right to misuse it is pretty sure to meet with a tremendous outcry, and particularly from those more intelligent states of the Union which are not themselves suffering from the pre- sence of a large ignorant vote. Massachusetts is shocked that South Carolina does not wish to be governed by illiterate negroes, even though Massa- chusetts is herself wincing a little bit under the pressure of her own increasing Irish vote. But no one can go into the black belt of the South, into the homes of the " poor whites," into the coal mining districts of the Appalachians, into the Italian quarters of any metropolis, without feeling the keen injustice, the absolute social unwisdom of 362 EDUCATION AND LIFE an ignorant, unqualified voting list. Universal suf- frage is unsound in theory, quite as unsound as it would be for a father and mother with half a dozen children to conduct their family affairs by popular vote ; and it is disastrous in practice. The social purpose in America cannot be furthered by persons who have no conception, and can have none, of what that purpose is. The argument for a restricted suffrage does not at all invalidate the statement that each man and each woman and each child is an agent of the social purpose, an agent in whom and through whom the social purpose is to be accomplished. Each child fulfills the social purpose by growing strong and beautiful and accomplished and good under the influence of those forces which an en- lightened adult world brings to bear upon child- life. Each ignorant adult fulfills the social pur- pose, not by going and voting, and so imposing his own ignorance and half view of life upon the des- tiny of the community, but by going to work and learning to read and write and speak the language of the community, and by otherwise cultivating those qualities which will enable him to participate in its social life. And, finally, an educated adult, a qualified voter, fulfills the social purpose by first idealizing and perfecting his own individual life in every way in his power, and then by endeavoring, through a right use of the suffrage and other social influences, to establish those educational, esthetic, and industrial conditions which best minister to THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 363 the perfecting of social life and the increase of human wealth. Universal adult suffrage should be the goal of every intelligent community ; but it must be reached, not by the enfranchisement of the disqualified, but by the qualifying of the disfran- chised. If the social instinct were developed in the qualified voters of America, this individual human betterment would be the supreme object of their effort, rather than private profit and privi- lege. But it is quite hopeless to expect any great change of view on the part of older people. When Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood, it is said that not a single physician in England over forty years of age accepted the new view. It was the same with evolution. It has been the same with nearly every advance movement. The later years of life seem chiefly useful in working out and perfecting the impulses of earlier days. The con- tagion of new ideas is a matter for younger blood. The conception of a social state, working with all singleness of purpose and with a quite religious devotion for the increase of personal integrity and worth, the increase of human wealth, the unfolding and perfecting of the spirit, is not a conception which readily displaces the old-established passion for getting ahead. The conception of the social state must grow up with another generation. Education, that practical process by which we realize the social purpose, has then a double work to perform. It is to carry out the social purpose in the present children and youth, men and women 364 EDUCATION AND LIFE of the race, and at the same time it is to cultivate to the utmost that social instinct which will make each succeeding generation more devoted and more efficient agents of the social purpose. But a stream cannot rise above its source. This cultivation of the social instinct can only be accomplished if the teachers, the official agents of the social purpose, have this clearly defined point of view and the power of engrafting it. And all this brings us back to our starting point, to that initial argument of the first chapter, that a teacher is ill qualified for either half of his task, however profound his knowledge of language or mathematics or science, if he have not along with this technical equipment that far more important human equipment, a clear, practical philosophy of life, and causational meth- ods of applying his philosophy. In the lower schools at the present time, the teachers are commonly women, and this is good or bad according to the personality of the particular woman. It is good if the personality be large, if the woman be of such age and experience that she is able and willing to deal with the details of child- hood, and if she is deterred by no false modesty from dealing with the bodily as well as the intel- lectual needs. If she be herself a mother and could spare the time for this public service, it would add immensely to her equipment, for it would add both the experience and the heart of motherhood. But the plan of women teachers is exceedingly bad, and especially for sturdy, growing, virile boys, THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 365 if the women be inexperienced young girls, fresh from college or normal school, and quite unwilling and unable to deal with the vital, bodily side of life. From the point of view of those of us who believe in the unity of man, and in organic educa- tion, it is quite absurd and unreasonable to intrust the education of a boy to a teacher who would be entirely shocked even to look upon the beautiful organism which she is supposed to be developing, and who is prevented by instinct from dealing with the boy in any thoroughgoing, effective way. Edu- cation, as I have been trying to present it, has to do with the body and all of its impulses and its life, as well as with the intellect and the heart ; and only those are prepared to undertake the work who are prepared to deal with the body and the intellect and the heart. The inexperienced young girls who fail in this work are much less to blame than the older persons who impose so strange a task. And that they do fail, I think every head-master who has received boys from their hands would be obliged to bear witness. And yet it is highly desirable to have women teachers for boys as well as for girls, desirable so that the boys may come at all stages of their lives under the influence of good women, and may have the benefit of their wisdom and point of view. But it seems to me equally desirable that girls shall be always in touch with good, strong men. The way out is very simple. It is to have both men and women teachers even in the lower schools ; an 366 EDUCATION AND LIFE elder woman to deal with the younger children, tenderly but effectively, and with that matronly modesty which is not appalled by a naked child and his healthy appetites ; a man, strong and gentle, to give the sloyd and some other sides of the work. Co- education can best be carried on by a coeducational teaching force, and coeducation, in spite of its dif- ficulties and occasional disadvantages, still seems to me a necessary condition of that nobler, freer life which is the goal of enlightened democracy. Society is made up of boy-babies and girl-babies, of boys and girls, of youths and maidens, of men and women, and is vastly more interesting by rea- son of such a constitution. To perfect society is to perfect this human interplay and to bring about a more ideal comradeship all along the line, from the nursery onward. At the high school and university it is even more important for the carrying out of the social purpose that the teaching body should include both men and women. At the high school, the question of sex is coming slowly into consciousness ; at the university, it reaches an impulsive and uninstructed flood. Wise men are needed in the gymnasium to guide and strengthen the boys and men ; wise women are needed to serve the girls and women. Both instructors must deal with the question fear- lessly and effectively, both to prepare for wise parenthood and to guard from evil. But in other lines of instruction, the best results come from utilizing the wisdom and experience of both men THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 367 and women for both boys and girls, men and women. And always the mission of the teacher is the double one of realizing the social purpose in the persons of his immediate students, and of cultivating that conception of a social state which shall make for the increased human wealth of all, of a state which shall resolutely seek the well-being of each and every citizen, his strength and beauty and accomplishment and goodness. But we should be ill serving our ideal in this work of official education, if the process is not made, with equal thoroughness, to serve its own agents, the teachers, and to help on the perfecting of their own lives. A teacher who sacrifices himself, a process which sacrifices its own agents, is already self -defeated. It is altogether as important that the school and academy and university shall bring daily inspiration and help to the teacher as to the child and youth and man. And this falls in excellently with our theory of the experimental life. If one bring good health and high spirit to the adventure, it is a sweet delight to teach ; to meet each day affectionate children, inquiring youth, spirit-hungry men and women, to make one's own knowledge clear and accurate in trying to present it to others, to gain the helpful reaction of mind against mind. But one must bring to the work certain qualifi- cations not only in the way of direct preparation, but also in the way of experience in the great open of life. And then there comes a time when this work is no longer good for the teacher. He has 368 EDUCATION AND LIFE given his best to the work and he has got the best out of the work. To be at once and always a teacher is a very poor plan of life. It is much better to regard the teaching as a contribution and a discipline, and then to pass on. When one has made the contribution and reaped the discipline, one is bound, by the requirements of the experi- mental life, to seek a larger personal reaction and a theatre for greater social service. In doing this, a man does not turn his back upon old interests and pursuits. He simply broadens and extends them. As an investigator, as a writer, as an artist, he carries his branch one or many steps further and touches a larger audience. As a public-minded householder, as a statesman, he may bring his ripened powers to the service of a still larger destiny. To keep its agents vital, to call them when qualified, to part company with them when they are needed elsewhere, is a most important part of the duty of official education, and apparently most difficult. I am emphasizing this need so strongly because on all sides, and especially in our public schools, one sees feeble, dispirited teaching and worn-out, discouraged teachers. One cannot communicate what one has not got, and it is abun- dant, beautiful, glorious life that we want. With the progress of this conception of the so- cial state, formal education for all children of the state will cover the first twenty-two, or even the first twenty-five years of life. After that ought to follow a full half century of splendid self-directed THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 369 activity, to be followed by the twilight peace of wise counsels and old age. This half century of maturity is the time for playing out the full drama of life, for realizing the social purpose in all its height and depth and breadth. It is now that a man establishes his home, begets his children, finds his varying and progressive life-work, touches the destiny of his age. The heart beats high, the eye flashes, the cheek inflames, the blood goes riotously through the veins ; for now it is that a man knows that he is the regent of an eternal God, the agent of a superb purpose, the knight and soldier of good fortune. God help him if he is less than this, for he has missed the full measure of a life. It is the high mission of education to beget in all of us this avariciousness of the best. School and home alike fail if they do not impart, along with a magnificent organism, a full appetite for the splendor of life. If the educational process has been wise, there has been from the lower school onward a gradual abdication of authority on the part of both teacher and parent, an increasing in- sistence upon self -activity and self -direction. When these young people come to face the larger respon- sibility of mature life, they come prepared. If they bring a distinct plan of life, they come addi- tionally well armed. As Whewell quaintly says, " Rightly to propose a problem is no inconsidera- ble step towards its solution." In this larger life- drama, the functions of thinker and doer may not be separated. The specialization and division of 370 EDUCATION AND LIFE labor have been carried much too far. It is not true, that fiction which the vagarists would have us believe, that by taking ten fragments of men and piecing them together, you produce a tenfold giant. On the contrary, you produce something distinctly less than a whole man, for each fragment lacks soundness and integrity. In the domain of art, the divorce of artist and artisan has crippled both. The masters of the Renaissance were work- men, many of them clever artificers in gold and sil- ver ; many of them direct wielders of the chisel ; many of them architects and engineers as well as artists ; many of them musicians, not a few of them poets. The versatility of Leonardo and Michel- angelo was not so much a product of their genius as a condition of it. The effect of separating the artist and artisan, and of robbing art-work of the joyous art-spirit, has been to produce work which William Morris so strongly characterized as being either stark utilitarianism or idiotic sham. The artist, separated from the material which he is in- directly to fashion, produces designs which are tor- tured and grotesque, — ■ essentially inartistic. The artisan, deprived of the art-spirit, turns out work devoid of feeling and subtlety. The truth of this contention finds one long illustration in the history of art. And not only is it true in the graphic arts, in sculpture, and in painting, but also in music and in literature. The great composers have been mas- ter musicians. The great writers have been men of action, — Thucydides, the soldier ; Dante, the THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 371 patriot ; Shakespeare, the actor ; Goethe, the states- man. Everything vital in representation has been first rehearsed in action, just as everything vital in action has been first rehearsed in thought and feel- ing. It is a unit world, and truth hides itself unless sought for in its totality. It is the same in education and in life. One man may not do the thinking and another man the work, and have the thinking and the work sound. The closet philosopher, out of touch with life, himself not a teacher, perhaps not even a father, cannot be counted a very safe guide in so eminently human and social a process as education. The truth is not reached in that way. The leader, the teacher, must be in the midst of men, a worker among workers, a direct observer of the life which he seeks to know and guide and redeem. The greatest of human teachers, the men whose teach- ing has been so transcendent that it has become the foundation of a religious cult, have moved in and out among the people, and so much truth as they have given to men has been discovered, not invented. If the thinker, to be sound, must also be a doer, it is quite as imperative that the doer shall also be a thinker. There is no disaster so overwhelming and complete as when a spiritual plan falls into the hands of unspiritual agents and they proceed to the impossible task of carrying it out. Nothing has done so much to discredit the newer forms of education, the kindergarten, manual training, and 372 EDUCATION AND LIFE science teaching, as the lack of genuine qualifica- tion on the part of its agents. It is necessary to fight shy of doctrinaires everywhere, not only among the closet philosophers, but even more among the so-called " practical " people. One who is in the world of affairs runs against many theorists, from the mild elderly woman, who " goes in for the lost tribes," to the rampant egotist, who is for giving his own twist of thought to all things thinkable. The name of these theorists is legion. The smaller and more inadequate the initial experience, the more stupendous the theory and the more insistent the claim of being practical. To avoid these pitfalls and render genuine so- cial service, one is bound to seek the more complete view of life which results from enlarged thinking and diversified activity, quite as one is bound by the requirements of the experimental life to do it for the health of one's own spirit. There is no antagonism between the social and the individual requirements. As the number of experimentalists increases, and society becomes permeated with per- sons bent on human wealth, the conditions favor- able for the attainment of this good fortune will be increasingly current. But individuals working together for a common purpose constitute a state, and as they themselves become more social and more cooperative, the state which represents their joint sentiment and activity becomes more social and cooperative. It is in this silent, almost imperceptible way that THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 373 the social state is born, not by outward revolution, not by class warfare, not by each man's waiting for his neighbor to be good, but by this more subtle change in individual sentiment and practice. Few sentiments affect the welfare of masses of men so intimately and so profoundly as the concep- tion they entertain of the function of the state ; for the state, as the expression of the corporate will, becomes by far the most important and most powerful agent of the social purpose. The history of the state is a history of men's changing senti- ment in regard to human relations and social op- portunity. The conception of the social state which is now emerging has been a slow evolution, and marks a tremendous advance in civilization. The change has been from a negative to a positive con- ception. As the institute of justice, the state was supposed to concern itself solely with maintaining the freedom of its citizens. And this duty was believed to be discharged by the negative process of preventing aggression, — either foreign aggression, as against the nation ; or internal aggression, in- dividual against individual. The state was the cor- porate policeman, and its one motto was "Hands off ! " This primitive conception did good service in its day, for, beside resisting foreign invasion, it substituted a public tribunal, with impartial stan- dards of justice, for the broad hazard of personal revenge. And this was a great gain which has not yet come to perfection. But as men wrought out such partial freedom as they might, there came 374 EDUCATION AND LIFE a growing perception that the full measure of free- dom does not result from this negative letting- alone. Place a man naked and unarmed in the midst of a most bountiful nature, and though he is nominally free, he is in reality the most pitiable of prisoners, the slave of daily want, of danger, of fear, of lack of opportunity. His freedom is the veriest mirage. So, too, the citizen of a state which merely protects him from physical violence enjoys a very shadowy sort of freedom indeed, and especially if the bounty of nature has long since been appropriated by earlier comers. One may still study this particular variety of freedom in many corners of America. But with a larger ex- perience of life, and the intelligence which grows out of experience, there comes a more positive con- ception of freedom. It is seen to consist not in letting a man alone, for that freedom turns out to be an illusion, but in surrounding him with oppor- tunities and facilities for the full play of his in- dividuality, the effective working out of his life purposes. With this changed conception of free- dom there comes a changed conception of the func- tion of the state. As the instrument of freedom the state must play a more positive role in the affairs of men. The function is more than one of mere bodily protection, it is the function of en- larged opportunity. It is the experience of men everywhere that by association they can accom- plish ends which are quite impossible to the solitary worker. The more just and complete the coopera- THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 375 tion the more beneficent the results. The state, being the institute of justice, and being by its na- ture all inclusive, represents the most perfect form of cooperation possible. The large undertakings now successfully carried out by private corpora- tions can be still more successfully carried out by the state ; for the private corporation, being bent on profits, naturally takes the ground that any- thing is good enough which the public will accept, and no price too high that the public will pay ; while the state, being free from this necessity, and able to borrow money at nominal interest, may take the more ideal ground that nothing is good enough which is short of the very best. All of the tremendous arguments which may be urged for association as a general principle of conduct may be urged with heightened force in favor of that more complete and perfect form of associa- tion represented by the state. And to this broader and more helpful conception of the state we are steadily advancing. One by one the state has been taking over functions and duties once vehemently denied to it, but now amply justified as helping to free men from4he tyranny of things. Lighthouses have been built and manned ; waterways improved; maps and charts prepared. Cities have been paved and lighted and drained ; water has been regarded as a public necessity. Water power and natural gas for manufacturing purposes have been made available. Tram lines have been taken over or built ; municipal tenements 376 EDUCATION AND LIFE have been erected ; free libraries and public baths and gymnasiums have been established. In order to facilitate communication of thought and spread intelligence, a post-office system has been inaugu- rated, which, in point of efficiency and in volume of business transacted, rivals the most gigantic of our modern gigantic enterprises. In some countries, and notably in those where the service in this respect is the best and cheapest for the people at large, both telegraphs and railways have been taken over by the state. Boards of health have been established ; quarantine has been inaugurated ; currency has been provided. Best of all, in every country marked by any degree of intelligence and prosperity, an elabo- rate system of public education has come to be re- garded as a public necessity, — schoolhouses have been built by the thousand, colleges and universi- ties by tlie hundred, investigations have been car- ried on, publications issued, expeditions fitted out. This list, long as it is, does not by any means ex- haust the present directions of state activity. And from none of these multitudinous functions would any but a very small body of reactionaries have the state withdraw. There is no turning back in this work of increasing the freedom of the individual by diminishing the tyranny of things. A function once taken over meets with so lit- tle opposition, because it is recognized that by no private agency could the work be so efficiently accomplished. No one would seriously propose to give over the post-office or abandon public educa- THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 377 tion. That both of these services can be vastly improved quite goes without saying, but the point is that they are nevertheless far more efficient than they would be in private hands. In view of this very favorable experience, and the sound theory underlying it, we should be passing at once to the complete application of association and cooperation by having the state take over all of our public utili- ties, were it not for the dominance of that particu- lar form of the unsocial spirit known as commer- cialism. A considerable body of our professedly democratic people still like to exploit their neigh- bors. This spirit of greed is the most formidable enemy of the social purpose, for it is forever setting up toll-gates on the path to better things. It hin- ders the realization of the social state in precisely the same way that the vendetta, the spirit of pri- vate revenge, of over-requital, hinders the adminis- tration of justice. It is a spirit which the socially- minded person, the experimentalist, is bound to fight to the death. Rampant as the spirit of commercialism now is, I cannot but regard its manifestation as the last upnaming of the fire before it goes out. The fail- ure of commercialism, ninety-seven per cent., I be- lieve, of those who pin their faith to it, and the scant happiness of the three per cent, who succeed, are adding very telling arguments to the testimony of the experimentalists that the other way is better. Commercialism has its apologists, very honest folk no doubt, but their arguments have a strange 378 EDUCATION AND LIFE sound. It is hard to believe that a railroad worked to pay high interest on bonds, large dividends on watered stock, princely salaries to the upper admin- istration, and bent on developing certain localities where its directors have property at the expense of certain other localities where they have none, — it is hard to believe that such a railroad can serve the public better than a railroad run on the same principles as the post-office. It is hard to believe that it is better socially to have a dozen families huddled into one tenement house and the large lot next door stand idle, waiting for a higher price. It is hard to believe in the wisdom of an economic regime under which scarcity and want are the result of an overproduction of necessary commodities. It is hard to believe that human wealth is increased and the social purpose furthered by committing the natural resources of a country, the gold and silver, copper and iron, coal and oil, field and forest, into the private keeping of a few individuals instead of administering this bounty for the good of all. This and much else of our current commercial doctrine is excessively hard to believe, so hard, in- deed, that after a time one gives up the attempt. But the social spirit is deepening and spreading. The full programme of the social state means the nationalizing of land and of all industries which minister to the necessities of decent human living ; that is, it means the taking over of public and necessary utilities. The carrying out of the social purpose requires that a man shall have adequate THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 379 food and shelter and clothing, air and water, light and heat, education and amusement, beauty and social opportunity. And further, it requires that the necessary material part of his life shall be won at the least possible expenditure of labor and time, so that the necessary spiritual part of life may have sufficient energy and leisure for its realization. No state, however ideal, can do away with the necessity of daily human toil ; but it can idealize the conditions of toil, can make it a source of health and pleasure, and it can limit the amount and time to wholesome bounds. In England and America, we are fighting for the eight-hour day of work. It would be a fine thing if we could realize it, but it would be still finer if we could make it four hours, and we could if we wanted to. The whole idea of the social state is to further the freedom and opportunity of the individual life, and so make possible the increase of human wealth. The social state is the instrument of individualism, not its opponent. The social state limits individu- alism in only one way ; — it denies the right of the individual to exploit his neighbor, even as justice denies the vendetta in taking over punishment from the hands of private vengeance and making it a state function. But it is easy to see that this ap- parent limitation of individualism is in reality a most practical and effective furtherance of indi- vidualism. By preventing individual aggression, the state protects the individual against aggres- sion ; by making the general conditions of life sweet 380 EDUCATION AND LIFE and wholesome, the state makes it increasingly pos- sible for the individual to make his own life sweet and wholesome ; by making the neighbor intelli- gent and self-respecting, the state helps the indi- vidual to idealize his own life. Edifying as it would be for us all to turn home missionaries, it seems to me an absurd mistake to picture the social state as the instrument of such missionary effort. What is good for the neighbor is likewise good for me. It is the neighbor who forms the environment and who reacts in a thousand ways upon the daily life of the individual. If the social state is the highest form of altruism, it is also the most accom- plished and successful form of selfishness. One man is just a single individual, but he is neighbor to thousands. Nor is it true that when the social state, through association and cooperation, reduces the bread-and- butter problem to a minimum, to its proper place, it will rob a man of wholesome initiative and enter- prise. The same argument might have been used against the suppression of the robber barons of the Middle Ages, or the Algerian pirates in the early days of the republic. The social state is not an entity outside the hearts of men, alternately coaxing and browbeating them. It is an expres- sion of so much of the individual will as is common to all or to a majority of the community. The social state would mean, not that men had lost initiative and enterprise, but rather that they pre- ferred to spend their initiative and enterprise in THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 381 better and more social ways than .by exploiting their neighbors, preferred to spend this force in the more interesting and delightful occupation of perfecting the self and realizing some of the mag- nificent possibilities of the present moment. To give over the quest of profit and the Shylock view of life generally is not to give over initiative and enterprise. The experimentalists have given over profit, but I have painted them ill if I have not shown them to be a more daring and picturesque band of adventurers than ever went in search of the golden fleece. Every increase in strength, in beauty, in accomplishment, in goodness, brought about by the betterment of the life conditions through the amelioration and idealizing of daily toil, means increased power to use this lengthening leisure to advantage. One need not make personal trial of the shop-keeping and book-keeping and time-keeping and the various other forms of hold- ing tight by which men waste and lose their lives, to see that on the very face of it such occupations are infinitely less worth while than art and sci- ence and letters, investigation and travel, religion and music, love and comradeship, field and forest, sunshine and fresh air, even than swimming and boat-racing and tennis. The old remark that a man can be doing many worse things than making money is a very cheap and nasty disposition of the august possibilities of a human life. When we realize the social state and so reduce