THE PUPIL 
 
 VERSUS 
 
 T H K 
 TEACHER 
 
 By RICHARD LOCHNER 
 
THE PUPIL 
 
 VERSUS 
 
 THE 
 TEACHER 
 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD LOCHNEP 
 
 L 
 
LBI015 
 

 MADE BY 
 
 TIMES PRINTING HOUSE 
 
 1317 Market Street 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 MAY. 25 1901 
 
 Copyright entry 
 CLASS 4X.XXC. N». 
 
 Jcoo 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright 
 
 applied for 
 
 April, i 9 oi 
 
TO EVERY 
 CONSCIENTIOUS TEACHER 
 IN AND OUT OF 
 THE PROFESSION 
 THIS BOOK IS 
 RESPECTFU ELY 
 DED ICATED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE CHIEF PRACTICAL AIM OF THIS BOOK 
 IS TO ELEVATE THE POSITION OF THE 
 TEACHER BY INTERPRETING SCHOOL LIFE 
 OF TO-DAY IN THE LIGHT OF ITS HISTORY 
 AND FROM THE STANDPOINT OF AN IDEAL- 
 ISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER, I9OO 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQE 
 
 I . THE PUPIL VERSUS THE 
 
 TEACHER i 
 
 II. HERBERT SPENCER'S 
 "EDUCATION" . . . . 67 
 
 III. THE SCHOOL AND THE 
 CRIMINAL 101 
 
 IV. SCHOOL SUPPLIES . . 106 
 
 V. DARWINISM AND THE 
 
 TEACHER 108 
 
 VI. HARMONY VERSUS THE LINE 
 
 OF LEAST RESISTANCE no 
 
 VII. REFERENCES TO AUTHORS 166 
 
 VIII. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS 140 
 
 IX. SOME APPROPRIATE 
 QUOTATIONS . . .146 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 Historic Developments. 
 
 In the olden time a child was often viewed as 
 a little lump of wickedness; to-day too often as 
 a little angel. The see-saw of history has seldom 
 brought about a stranger change. During the 
 Nineteenth Century the young Hercules, natu- 
 ral science, has come forward with giant strides. 
 Though fraught with much good to the human 
 race, yet a multitude of evils has followed in its 
 wake. A hundred years have passed and the 
 threatening clouds of the French Revolution still 
 hover over us. Has that great experiment in 
 democracy been a failure? In belittling the past 
 and in its hatred for those in power, did it not 
 go too far? In trying to begin anew, did it not 
 wish to throw away the very foundations on 
 which it must build? With much of this spirit 
 in our life to-day, may we not be in danger of 
 losing the soul of truth hidden in the errors of 
 the older age? 
 
 Long, long before that terrible outburst, were 
 sown the seeds of the new gospel, and when the 
 fury of the storm had been spent, scarcely any 
 side of human life had escaped. Of all the 
 changes good and bad, that followed, the school 
 got its share, and there is need to look more 
 deeply into the thoughts upon which our school 
 
work is grounded with a view to getting rid of 
 the evils, and by holding to the good, raise school 
 work to a higher plane. 
 
 Laissez faire in economics, do-as-you-please 
 in ethical theory, unbridled freedom in abstract 
 democracy, and natural individualism in educa- 
 tion have as their rock-bottom thought this as- 
 sumption: What is natural, is good. When that 
 is cast into the limbo of departed vanities, where 
 it should be, the writings of the naturalist school 
 may be rated at their real worth. 
 
 A little thinking will show that the word "nat- 
 ural" is quite rubber-like; it can be stretched to 
 cover many sins. Certain easy-going folk, whose 
 consciences take vacations, need never be with- 
 out a balm to heal the wounds which otherwise 
 would prove painful. Their wrong-doing comes 
 natural to them. Certain light-fingered gentry 
 may find their hands wandering toward some- 
 body's pocket. Perhaps such is easy and nat- 
 ural for him to do; though, as a reason for theft 
 it will be likely to carry little weight with the po- 
 liceman who gets hold of the thief. 
 
 Even were every natural thing easy, it would 
 not therefore be good. In the widest meaning of 
 the word, everything is natural, and if what is 
 natural is good, everything is good. This is 
 shocking enough to one's moral sense to bring 
 the whole thought under suspicion. Much that 
 is natural is surely bad and is so treated by 
 writers who tell us to do this and that, or to use 
 this method and that method because it is the 
 natural one. That some things are good and 
 
should be sought for, and others bad and should 
 be avoided, is true alike of law, morals, religion 
 and economics. 
 
 Should nature be our guide? Should we do 
 as nature does? Nature may mean so many 
 things that it means nothing. Nature neither 
 weeps nor rejoices. Often cruel, merciless and 
 wasteful, nature would justify the most blood- 
 thirsty deeds that blacken the pages of history. 
 "Nature, as positive observation reveals her to 
 us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our 
 reverence or our approbation. Once apply any 
 moral test to her conduct, and as J. S. Mill has 
 so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a monster. 
 There is no crime that men abhor or perpetrate 
 that nature does not commit daily on an exag- 
 gerated scale. She knows no sense either of jus- 
 tice or mercy. ... At one moment she will be 
 blessing a country with plenty, peace and sun- 
 shine; and ^he will the next moment ruin the 
 whole of it by an earthquake. Now she is the 
 image of thrift, now of prodigality; now of the 
 utmost purity, now of the most revolting filth; 
 and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any moral 
 standard at all, her capacities for what is admira- 
 ble not only make her crimes the darker, but 
 they also make her virtues partake of the nature 
 of sin." 
 
 The friend of naturalism who urges a choice 
 of the good things in nature, so far gives up his 
 fight and owns that he has been sailing under 
 false colors, for he sees that it is the goodness of 
 the thing and not its naturalness that makes it 
 
worthy of our choice. Nature from a human 
 standpoint is a mixture of good and bad, though, 
 as having no personality, deserving neither praise 
 nor blame, it may be better to say nature is mor- 
 ally indifferent. Knowing this, it becomes our 
 task rather to raise natural forces to a moral 
 level, than to sit idly by and growl at the fate 
 or ill luck that placed us here, like a brute growl- 
 ing at the sunshine and too lazy to find or make 
 a shady place for himself. 
 
 In the childhood of the race man was warlike 
 and savage; he built a wall about his city; his 
 lower nature ruled; he knew little how to fight 
 disease, famine and pestilence, and perhaps less 
 how to make nature's powers serve him. As the 
 race grew older, his warlike nature slowly be- 
 came softened ; he even comforts his dying enemy 
 and nurses the wounded back to health; the old, 
 the feeble and unfortunate are lovingly cared for; 
 nature's forces are harnessed; and man's better 
 parts grow in power over the worse. 
 
 Were we to think naturalism altogether bad, 
 we would do a great wrong. Great is its faith in 
 the goodness of man; yet with all its truth, it 
 fails to mark off sharply the good from the bad; 
 it gives us no test we can trust; and in its eager- 
 ness to foster the good, it forgets to crush out the 
 bad. Both its virtues and vices have found a 
 place in the school-room; and helped by a great 
 philosophy of the day, it has given to childhood a 
 meaning unique in the history of education. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 Evolution and School Method. 
 
 Closely linked with the doctrine of naturalism 
 has been the great law of evolution, which though 
 bearing many words of wisdom, yet more than 
 once has been a harbor for those who like to 
 back up their fads by a catchy phrase or strike 
 their enemies dumb by uttering the magical 
 words of a popular philosophic formula, "From 
 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous." Yet 
 with all its faults I love it still. In one way it 
 has been worked almost to death. Its upholders, 
 fixing their gaze chiefly upon the good things it 
 has brought, have twisted its meaning in the in- 
 terest of that easy-going optimism which finds 
 in a new phrase a cure-all for the woes of the 
 world. There is a darker side to the picture. 
 
 Though we can not say with Schopenhauer 
 that this world is the worst of all possible worlds, 
 for we can fancy it much worse; neither can we 
 say with Leibnitz that it is the best. Wickedness 
 as well as goodness has evolved. The mere fact 
 of evolution carries with it no guarantee of right- 
 eousness. Evolution is not a moral law; the 
 survival of the fittest is not now upon a moral 
 plane, and therein lies its greatest weakness. 
 
 The growth of knowledge has wrought 
 changes in the ways of teaching children ancl 
 governing them. New methods seem to spring 
 
up like mushrooms. Teachers are urged to teach 
 this, because the child likes it; or that, because 
 it is interesting; or the other, because it is nat- 
 ural. These stand or fall with their underlying- 
 assumptions: What the child likes is therefore 
 good — What is interesting is therefore good — 
 What is natural is therefore good. None of these 
 is the real ground of our choice either of branches 
 to be taught or methods of teaching. Each may 
 be good, but not necessarily good. Each may be 
 worth something to the teacher, but only as a 
 means to an end, and the end must be ethical. 
 Wherever the child's likings and interests over- 
 ride the moral ideal, those likings should be ren- 
 dered harmless. What is special to each child 
 can be fostered in the school-room only when it 
 conforms to the ethical laws which the school 
 aims to realize. Not to do so brings lawlessness 
 into the school under the plea of individual free- 
 dom and makes the whims of childhood the guide 
 of our school practice. It were vain to deny that 
 danger lurks in the free rein given to Young 
 America. 
 
 The Revival of Learning; the Reformation; 
 the break-up of the feudal system; the uprisings 
 of the people against constituted authority; the 
 growth of natural science with its companions, 
 agnostic philosophy and hedonistic ethics, have 
 all helped to carry the principle of individual 
 freedom far beyond reasonable bounds, even in 
 some cases so far as to declare too much freedom 
 to be impossible and all restraint criminal. At 
 bottom it is a question of what kind of freedom 
 
we are to have; the best is the only kind worthy 
 of the name and that is moral freedom. The 
 sooner we adapt our school methods to that end 
 the better. 
 
 The results of the new methods in education 
 do not bear out their rosy promises ; the trouble 
 is in the methods, which are based on a one- 
 sided view of human nature, and though their 
 main strength has come from the evolutionists, 
 yet if we look more searchingly into the facts 
 of evolution, there will be found much showing 
 how poorly its meaning has been read. 
 
 If the law of evolution be true, what is the 
 child? Not a bundle of goodness, by any means. 
 Indeed, it has been said, "Man was formerly little 
 less than an angel; evolution has made him little 
 more than a monkey." In body and mind the 
 child of the civilized man shows many traits char- 
 acteristic of the adult savage. The facts gathered 
 by Darwin and others point to a more or less 
 brutal ancestry. In spite of the work of the 
 Peace Societies and other humanizing agencies, 
 "the ape and tiger" in man are rather slow in dy- 
 ing. In the year of our Lord 1900, certain 
 brawny bruisers received over $30,000 for pum- 
 meling each other in the presence of several 
 thousand spectators. It is needless to multiply 
 instances illustrating the ways in which natural 
 impulses seek satisfaction even in the centres of 
 civilization. 
 
 Compare the civilized adult with the child ac- 
 cording to the theory of evolution. The man is 
 farther removed from savagery. He has passed 
 
through stages, physical, mental and moral, 
 which are unmeaning to the child. The child 
 concerns himself with things rather than 
 thoughts, with physical activities rather than self- 
 criticism. He likes tales of fairies, goblins, drag- 
 ons and other monsters; the grotesque and ab- 
 normal delight him; he admires bigness rather 
 than moral character. These impair his judg- 
 ment, while wider and more varied experience 
 makes man the more responsible being and gives 
 a balance of mind and worth of judgment impos- 
 sible to the child. In his ability to organize, in 
 his greater specialization of function, in his 
 knowledge and guidance of industrial forces, man 
 proves himself on a higher economic plane than 
 the child. Eliminating individual exceptions and 
 allowing for the conflict of economic and physical 
 with the moral and aesthetic and the many ways 
 in which they intertwine and change each other, 
 our abstract comparison proves man better than 
 the child. Such is the result evolution leads us to 
 look for and such we would expect on Ziller's 
 culture epoch theory. 
 
 With even greater force the same truth applies 
 to the teacher. If the ordinary man be superior 
 to the child, still greater is the superiority of the 
 teacher, socially, mentally, morally, aesthetically 
 and economically. The teacher is one of the fa- 
 vored few. Less than ten per cent, of the pupils 
 that begin education in the elementary schools 
 ever reach the high schools. If education ele- 
 vates, not many pupils will attain the eminence 
 of the teacher. 
 
 8 
 
The teacher then being theoretically and, as a 
 rule, practically a better being than the child, let 
 us examine some obvious conditions of American 
 life to see whether the teacher is rated at her true 
 worth. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 The Child vs. the Teacher. 
 
 On more than one occasion a certain super- 
 vising principal said, "Nine-tenths of the disorder 
 in the school-room is the fault of the teacher." 
 This and other sayings of his rest on the assump- 
 tion, "The child has a right to take advantage of 
 the teacher and the teacher must blame herself 
 if she can not prevent him." Many a time a 
 teacher on taking an unruly boy to that principal, 
 was told, "Miss B., it is your fault." A not very 
 polite but quite forcible proverb sums up that 
 principal's individualistic philosophy, "Each one 
 for himself and the devil take the hindmost." 
 
 Teachers commenting on deficiencies in the 
 children were told, "It is your duty to teach this, 
 that and the other to overcome these deficiencies." 
 She could take nothing for granted. The child 
 was all rights, no duties; the teacher all duties 
 and no rights that the child was bound to respect. 
 Such a theory stands almost self-condemned. It 
 is a glaring and extreme reaction from the histor- 
 ical school and not only fails to make allowance 
 for the obvious deductions from the theory of 
 evolution, but also overlooks facts essential to the 
 ethical adjustment of the relations between pupil 
 and teacher. 
 
 When the child becomes a god needing pro- 
 pitiation, and the teacher a worshiper at the 
 
 10 
 
shrine, the teacher's position is certainly humil- 
 iating. More than one American boy views the 
 teacher as a lawful prey. Flashy, trashy novels, 
 the influence of the streets, the comparative laxity 
 of home discipline help to render many children 
 less ruly in school and the teacher's lot more bur- 
 densome. Even in the high schools, pupils play 
 tricks on their betters, the professors, and even 
 conspire to produce disorder in the class. Chil- 
 dren and especially spoiled ones have too much 
 power, and they feel it and exercise it. Having 
 its basis in naturalism, it manifests a contempt 
 for authority, a don't-care-I-do-as-I-please spirit. 
 It is no uncommon thing to hear a pupil speak 
 disrespectfully of a teacher. "Do you think I'm 
 going to mind her?" Some even are brazen 
 enough to say to a teacher, "You are only a pub- 
 lic servant. My father pays his taxes. I am en- 
 titled to an education." 
 
 Such a system in sacrificing the teacher sac- 
 rifices the school work also. A few determined, 
 vicious pupils have a teacher almost at their 
 mercy. Only the exceptional teacher can stand 
 the strain of discipline and suffer but little there- 
 from. In theory teachers are granted but little 
 authority; to maintain that they must be wide- 
 awake, continually on the alert, meeting each out- 
 break as it occurs; held responsible for successful 
 teaching and discipline by supervisors, assistant 
 superintendents, directors and parents, no won- 
 der many teachers go home wearied and worried 
 and perhaps passing a sleepless night or dis- 
 turbed by bad dreams, return to school in an irri- 
 
 ii 
 
table frame of mind. A teacher may be very 
 good morally and possess ability to communicate 
 knowledge and yet fail in an American school be- 
 cause she is lacking in the doubtfully desirable 
 qualities of the police officer. Not only the 
 teacher but also the best boys and girls in a class 
 suffer from the disorder occasioned partly by lax 
 theories. Just as the good citizen pays for the 
 keep of criminals in the jails, so does the good 
 pupil pay for the disorder caused by the bad. 
 The bad boy is kept in the room at the expense 
 of the good, the better sacrificed for the worse. 
 
 My appeal is therefore for greater strictness 
 and less laxity; for increase in the authority of the 
 teacher and decrease in the power of the children. 
 
 I once heard an eminent Philadelphia econ- 
 omist and theologian say, "The American child 
 is the terror of the European hotel. In reaction 
 from the strict methods of our forefathers the 
 pendulum has swung too far in the opposite di- 
 rection. Let us help to get it back to the right 
 place." 
 
 In a lecture delivered July 6, 1900, Professor 
 Schoenrich said, "The fundamental evil in Ameri- 
 can education is a lack of training to obedience. 
 'Obedience is the first duty of the pupil, of the 
 child, of man,' is one of the first principles in the 
 German system of education. 'But in a free coun- 
 try,' we often hear said, 'we have no right to com- 
 pel the child to obedience; it must be convinced 
 by reasoning.' Aye, if children understood rea- 
 soning it would not be necessary to first educate 
 them." 
 
 12 
 
Referring" to tricks played by pupils, I once 
 heard a French professor say, "Such sings would 
 not be sought of at ze Academie." I have rea- 
 son to believe that they would not be tolerated in 
 Germany, either. 
 
 Speaking of desirable methods a principal said. 
 "The teacher should win the respect of the pu- 
 pils. " So utterly perverted has become the 
 standpoint! Stated in that abstract way, I do 
 not hesitate to say that the very reverse is nearei 
 the truth, "The pupils should win the respect ol 
 the teacher." Respect is a relative term. There 
 are different kinds. The teacher, as such, is en- 
 titled to respect for her authority. It is not to 
 be won. It is to be given as deserved. It should 
 be guaranteed. We now have the anomaly of 
 compulsory education without compulsory obe- 
 dience. The very idea of teacher as superior and 
 of pupil as inferior carries with it the fundamental 
 assumption of obedience to authority. Pupils are 
 not at school to be critics of the teacher; the 
 teacher is not there at their approval. Criticism, 
 appointment and removal of a teacher should be 
 the function of her superiors, not her inferiors. 
 Qualities that one pupil will respect another may 
 not. On any decent ethical theory a teacher is 
 entitled to respect from pupils by virtue of her 
 superior intellectual abilities, her moral character, 
 her recommendations and appointment by those 
 far wiser than children. If she is to win respect, 
 it must be respect for additional qualifications, 
 such as brilliancy, lovableness, not for her author- 
 ity. The integrity of the school rests upon the 
 
 13 
 
inferiority of pupil to teacher and the obedience 
 of the former to the latter. That is absolutely 
 essential; for we often obey and respect those 
 whom we do not love and often disrespect and 
 disobey those whom we do. Does that sound 
 odd? None the less it is true. Respect for au- 
 thority, not love, is the absolutely necessary 
 requisite for a school system. We may have 
 both, but if one must go, let it be love. Ameri- 
 can children have not yet reached that culture 
 epoch in which love is all in all. 
 
 Here we may be met by the example of Pes- 
 talozzi. But let those using Pestalozzi show how 
 he would work in Philadelphia to-day. Could 
 teachers establish relations with pupils as did 
 Pestalozzi? Would it be desirable if they could? 
 Is there no essential difference in the conditions 
 of American life and influence of American insti- 
 tutions, which spoils the analogy and weakens 
 the force of the argument? Moreover, Pesta- 
 lozzi's methods of teaching would scarcely meet 
 with the approval of any board of education at 
 this end of the nineteenth century. 
 
 In view of all the facts, do we not pay too much 
 in misdirected effort, nervous prostration, waste 
 of school supplies and the long train of evils 
 caused by disorderly pupils? Is it not too much 
 of a sacrifice to give the teacher so little author- 
 ity, so many functions and so much responsibil- 
 ity? 
 
 Believing our present system works injustice 
 to all concerned, I submit the following sugges- 
 
 14 
 
tions as indicating lines along which we may 
 profitably direct our investigations : 
 
 i. Minimize discipline by minimizing need 
 ror it in the school-room, and thereby 
 
 2. Minimize the nervous strain on the teacher 
 
 (a) Guaranteeing respect for her authority in 
 the matter of order. 
 
 (b) More varied and efficient punishment than 
 we now have. 
 
 (c) Holding pupils and parents more respon- 
 sible than we do now. 
 
 3. (a) If the teacher be given proper authority 
 and commensurate means for enforcing it, then 
 she can be held strictly responsible for both order 
 and successful teaching of the subjects. 
 
 (b) If, however, she be denied the appropriate 
 means for enforcing her authority in the school- 
 room, she can be held responsible for neither. 
 
 (c) If responsibility for order be thrown on 
 parents, pupils and principals, then the teacher 
 can be held responsible only for successful teach- 
 ing of the subjects. 
 
 I therefore call in question the ethical basis un- 
 derlying the relations now theoretically subsist- 
 ing between pupil and teacher. 
 
 I shall now pass to a consideration of certain 
 methods recommended for maintaining order 
 in school. 
 
 15 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 The Futility of Reasoning. 
 
 Reasoning with children is not so good as it 
 has been painted. The child as such is impulsive 
 rather than rational. The limitations of his mind 
 prevent him from seeing his conduct in the light 
 of high moral reasons. No reasons are likely to 
 change the mind of a pupil prone to argue. 
 Moreover, the pupil that appreciates the reasons 
 inherent in conduct and can ac + because of them 
 will seldom be in need of reasoning or moral 
 suasion. What reasons can be given for good 
 conduct in school? Duty to self, to classmates, 
 to teacher, to parents, to society; these may be 
 reinforced by love of teacher and parents, by the 
 desire to please them, by the honor of having 
 done well, by the other good results that follow 
 and the bad ones avoided. Are not these the 
 very best of reasons? If these reasons do not make 
 a pupil good, reason is futile. More than one 
 teacher has found that out by bitter experience. 
 
 Moreover, unless judiciously used, reasoning 
 has a tendency to lower the teacher to the level 
 of the pupil. It has the appearance of putting the 
 teacher under obligation to justify her conduct 
 to the pupil, who may come in time to view it as 
 his right to have an explanation of the teacher. 
 The opposite course is far better. He is to obey 
 because he is pupil; she to require obedience be- 
 caues she is teacher; the reasons therefor the 
 
 16 
 
pupil will understand and appreciate when older, 
 though he may already know the most important. 
 A fallacy runs through the entire argument in 
 favor of reasoning and moral suasion — namely, 
 when he knows what is right, he will therefore do 
 what is right. Non sequitur, as any intelligent 
 person knows. Not only so, but we often sup- 
 pose a child does not know, when he does. Af- 
 ter going to school for six or seven years he is a 
 stupid child that does not know what the school 
 requires in the way of order. Try a seventh 
 grade child; ask him why talking is wrong in the 
 school-room; select other instances of disorderly 
 conduct; question him skilfully, aiming to dis- 
 cover reasons he could bring against it. You will 
 find he knows quite well what is right, but in 
 common with many older folks fails to do right. 
 Let the teacher assume her function self-suffi- 
 cient, not needing justification, giving the pupil 
 no right to an explanation. The school is good; 
 the pupil must assume that. The teacher gives 
 only right commands; he must assume that. To 
 allow a pupil to question either is to strike a blow 
 at the very foundation of school discipline. 
 
 Appealing to a boy's sense of duty and sense 
 of honor is often useless. Those most in need of 
 it are as a rule those least affected by it. Boys 
 loving honor and revering duty give a teacher 
 no trouble; and in a different sense there is that 
 American "schoolboy honor" whose chief pride 
 lies in shielding culprits. In the strict sense ap- 
 pealing to honor and duty is appealing to motives 
 yet unborn. 
 
 17 
 
The few vicious and turbulent spirits in a 
 class that look upon school as a prison, upon the 
 teacher as a tyrant, view an appeal to honor and 
 duty as a confession of weakness. In so far as it 
 partakes of the nature of reasoning it is open to 
 all the objections stated above. 
 
 Love and kindness are not cure-alls. When in- 
 judiciously used, when bestowed on the unde- 
 serving, their effects are decidedly bad. Need I 
 mention teachers that have failed because they 
 were too kind, too loving, too good-natured? 
 Love and kindness are more or less relative terms; 
 what is kindness to one may not be to another. 
 Frank appreciates his teacher more because kind; 
 John views kindness as a sign of weakness, a 
 bribe almost, and he takes advantage of the 
 teacher. Forgiveness may come too easy and be 
 unjust; and often the disapproval of the teacher 
 amounts to nothing because John respects not 
 the teacher and values not her approval. When 
 the teacher's authority is absolute and unques- 
 tioned, then love and kindness become valuable, 
 additional methods; but while children remain 
 selfish and narrow and fail in duty, so long will 
 love and kindness carry with them no guarantee 
 against imposition. Not love and kindness, but 
 respect for authority and fear of the consequences 
 keep children in order the first days they go to 
 their new teacher. Well and good if she can 
 maintain that order; but let the strangeness wear 
 off and "familiarity breed contempt," she may as 
 well bid good-bye to those first few pleasant days 
 of the new term. Have you never heard it said, 
 
 18 
 
''Miss So-and-So is a successful teacher; she has 
 good order; she gets it by love and kindness"? 
 
 But does she get it first by love and kindness? 
 Does she not realize her authority of paramount 
 importance in back of it all? Will she not become 
 more distant and dignified if her authority be in 
 danger, and uphold it and preserve it at the ex- 
 pense of her kindness ? 
 
 A teacher may be kind and dignified too. The 
 pupil may always feel the act coming as from a 
 superior. In these democratic days we are prone 
 to let down the bars between unequals and suffer 
 the consequences. What is a kind teacher? Is 
 it one that gives presents or pets the pupils? Or 
 just one that is not harsh? Such kindness is not 
 positive, but negative or neutral, meaning sim- 
 ply absence of cruelty. Is the kind teacher one 
 that gives encouragement to all? Surely not; for 
 stated thus abstractly she must encourage the 
 bad and undeserving as well as the good. Indis- 
 criminate kindness and encouragement are injus- 
 tices. Not any inherent virtue in kindness per se, 
 but the self-evident justice in encouraging the 
 deserving makes our acts worthy. 
 
 Just as kindness in the teacher may mean ab- 
 sence of cruelty, so may goodness in a pupil mean 
 only absence of badness. The good boy is often 
 a passive one; the bad often active. He that re- 
 frains from disorder is good, whatever be his 
 motives; he that commits disorder is bad, what- 
 ever be his motives. The activity of the bad boy 
 makes him prominent and his example is more 
 impressive than that of the good boy who is un- 
 
 19 
 
obtrusive. Time and time again have I heard a 
 boy try to excuse his own misconduct by appeal- 
 ing to the bad behavior of some one whose exam- 
 ple he followed; never have I heard a boy con- 
 demn his own misconduct by comparing it with 
 the good conduct of a better boy whose example 
 he should have followed. So great is the self- 
 righteousness of the American child! "Two 
 wrongs make a right" is the fundamental princi- 
 ple of the moral arithmetic of the angelic (?) 
 pupil, and sometimes of his parents also. 
 
 To be more specific, the bad boy is to the good 
 as positive malevolence to "negative benefi- 
 cence," the former expressing itself in active ag- 
 gressions disregarding the rights of others, the 
 latter in passive non-participation in aggressions 
 rather than in positive measures helping to se- 
 cure greater respect for the rights of others. 
 
 "Secure order by having interesting lessons." 
 Interest is not a cure-all. Pupils may become so 
 interested as to create disorder by jumping out 
 of their seats, jostling each other and by talking 
 about the interesting lesson make it difficult for 
 the teacher to restore order and continue her 
 work. Interest is relative. All can not be equally 
 interested. Not only so, but there are cases in 
 which it is the order that makes the lesson inter- 
 esting and not the reverse. A lesson not interest- 
 ing when the class is disorderly often becomes 
 interesting when order is restored. Why? Per- 
 haps because the principal comes into the room. 
 Pupils brighten up, answer the questions asked, 
 attend earnestly to the lesson which would have 
 
 20 
 
been just as interesting in the absence of the prin- 
 cipal had they been orderly. No change in the 
 teacher or her methods, but fear of the constituted 
 authority producing order, made interest pos- 
 sible. This same truth underlies the maxim. 
 "We must have order or we cannot teach." 
 
 Interest really the means to an end has 
 tended to become the end itself. It has its limits. 
 If what is interesting is good, then what is most 
 interesting is most good. Determining our 
 course of study accordingly, for the boys we 
 might introduce blood and thunder tales of the 
 wild and woolly West; for the girls love stories, 
 the fashions and other vanities of femininity; for 
 both, the comic pages of our Sunday journals, 
 stories of the knight and his lady fair and the 
 court intrigues of the Middle Ages. In addition 
 to this entertaining material ,the boys might be 
 given a course in practical pugilism supplemented 
 by study of the lives of great prize-fighters from 
 Heenan and Savers to Corbett and Jeffries. How 
 interesting! But sufficiently absurd to bid us 
 pause. Yet such absurdity is the legitimate con- 
 clusion of a naturalistic view making interest the 
 be-all and end-all of school methods. Children 
 are interested in many things not good for them. 
 The existence of a principle guiding our choice 
 of interests demonstrates how thoroughly our 
 methods must be subordinated to moral law, to 
 the absolute Ought determining our needs as 
 rational beings. 
 
 Teachers are urged to prepare lessons before 
 teaching them and have ready materials for work, 
 
 21 
 
such as books, pencils, paper, etc. This is good 
 advice, but of itself it will not secure order, 
 though once having order, it tends to reduce the 
 chances of disorder to a minimum. It is quite pos- 
 sible for a teacher to have order and not be ready 
 promptly to distribute materials for work. 
 Though the class be idle while she is getting 
 ready, yet it is under control. 
 
 On the other hand, a teacher may have a good 
 character and possess teaching ability; may be 
 kind, loving, patient, quiet, industrious and pro- 
 gressive; and yet fail because lacking the spirit 
 which makes those methods the expression of her 
 personality; or possessing it, yet fail because in- 
 efficient punishments make it easy for the vicious 
 to scorn her authority. In the midst of profound 
 silence an unruly pupil may burst forth like a 
 blazing volcano, in an act of disorder completely 
 ruining the lesson so well prepared by a teacher 
 the latchet of whose shoe he is unworthy to un- 
 loose. It is discouraging, yea, even exasperating, 
 and worst of all, it is rank injustice. Such a 
 teacher is worth too much to be sacrificed for the 
 sake of such a pupil or a hundred such. 
 
 "Order is Heaven's first law." "The most 
 sacred duty of the teacher," says James L. 
 Hughes, "is to maintain good order," and ac- 
 cording to the same writer the most important 
 reason for keeping order is because it trains 
 character. All the more reason, therefore, to 
 make disorder as nearly impossible as can be and 
 all the more reason to have not only a varied and 
 efficient means for encouraging the good, but 
 
 22 
 
also a varied and efficient system of punishments 
 to bring upon the head of the culprit the just 
 retribution of his own misconduct and discourage 
 the weaknesses of will and perversities of charac- 
 ter all too common in American life. 
 
 The next chapter will deal with the nature of 
 punishment and with certain specific modes of 
 punishment now in vogue. 
 
 23 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 Punishments. 
 
 "We are compelled to say that crime has no 
 positive existence except in the particular will of 
 the criminal. Here, then, it must be attacked; 
 here its denial of right must be contradicted and 
 defeated. Such treatment of crime is Punish- 
 ment. 
 
 "Punishment is per se just; ... it is in reality 
 but the completion or actual and full development 
 of his own act considered as an act of will. . . . 
 But when the law recoils, in the form of punish- 
 ment, on the head of the offender, he is treated in 
 accordance with his right: his act is developed to 
 its logical consequence, and the offender in re- 
 ceiving punishment is really being treated sim- 
 ply with the honor due to a presumptively ra- 
 ional being. 
 
 "In view of the foregoing results, derived from 
 analysis of the nature of crime as proceeding from 
 that free-will of man which is the proximate 
 source of right, our author finds himself com- 
 pelled to comment adversely on various theories 
 regarding the nature and ground of punishment 
 that are often brought forward. In these theories 
 crime is regarded merely as an unfortunate and 
 regrettable evil and punishment as another evil 
 of like character, to which society must resort in 
 order, by frightful example, to deter others from 
 
 24 
 
committingcrime;or for the maintenance of pub- 
 lic safety, the protection of property, the improve- 
 ment of the criminal or the like. These theories are 
 to be termed superficial rather than abstractly 
 false. They are founded on considerations inciden- 
 tal to punishment, and which constitute its extrin- 
 sic justification, rather than on a perception of its 
 intrinsic nature and justification. The consider- 
 ations mentioned 'are in their place ... of es- 
 sential consequence,' but the theories founded on 
 them all tacitly presuppose 'the previous demon- 
 stration that punishment is intrinsically just.' ' ; 
 
 Recently in an editorial a newspaper com- 
 plained of the prevailing laxity of our times. 
 Silly sentimentalism had made criminals heroes. 
 Foolish young women had sent sweets and bou- 
 quets to convicted murderers. Equally foolish 
 parents had daily sacrificed themselves to spoil 
 the little angel, the "boss" of the household. Such 
 methods are grounded in naturalistic theory, so 
 prevalent during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries. Abstract democratic individualism 
 with its companions, soulless psychology and 
 conscienceless morality, has had its legitimate 
 fruits in social depravity. School punishments 
 have not escaped its influence. Laxity has put 
 a premium on human weaknesses; indulgence 
 has cheapened character; overvaluation of child- 
 hood has been undervaluation of manhood and 
 womanhood. 
 
 Fear as a motive to good conduct has been al- 
 most wholly banished from the school. It is bru- 
 tal; characteristic of savagery; fright distracts; 
 
 25 
 
and so the plaint runs on. If fear be the cause of 
 brutality, the trolley car is the cause of civiliza- 
 tion and the cart the cause of the horse. Savagery 
 is not altogether bad; civilized people have much 
 to learn. The doctrine of evolution, its corollary 
 the culture epoch theory, in brief the whole his- 
 torical standpoint emphasize the lesson we can 
 learn from primitive man. The child is the sav- 
 age in little. Between the character of a people 
 and the nature of their government a definite re- 
 lation exists, says John Stuart Mill. Absolute 
 democracy will not work in an American school- 
 room; absolute monarchy is far better. Children 
 need it; it is the better means to our end. Such 
 is the lesson history teaches. 
 
 "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; 
 but the rod of correction shall drive it far from 
 him." 
 
 Doubtless, there may be too much whipping. 
 It was a fault of the school of ye olden time. 
 Nearly every breach of discipline and even failure 
 in lessons was punished by flogging. We have 
 gone to the other extreme and abolished it. 
 Wisely? Let us see. Just as differences of char- 
 acter exist among different tribes of primitive 
 men, just so may we roughly classify the pupils 
 in the school-room. The few good boys behave 
 under any teacher; the indifferent "smile as the 
 wind sits"; the positively bad boys, few though 
 they be, are enough to keep the teacher's blood at 
 the boiling point and keep her from using gentle 
 methods with the other boys. Responsibility for 
 all is on the teacher's shoulders. To control 
 
 26 
 
those most in need of it, she must use moral sua- 
 sion, the very method least likely to prove effec- 
 tive with those whom science shows to be most 
 in need of methods more suitable to wild, savage 
 and vicious natures. If the older folks erred in 
 their indiscriminate use of whipping, so have the 
 newer in their indiscriminate rejection of it. 
 
 In the history of man conscious recognition of 
 the moral law has been comparatively late in 
 making its appearance as the guide to righteous- 
 ness; therefore as a rule it is comparatively late 
 in making its appearance in the history of the 
 individual. This truth of evolution proves the 
 error of moral suasion. Thus, too, as William T. 
 Harris shows, the child is nearest to nature; his 
 mind is "immediate (or potential)"; physical im- 
 pulses predominate; pains and pleasures are rul- 
 ing motives; muscular prowess is his ideal. Not 
 only such considerations, but facts drawn from 
 the history of education, lead Rosenkranz to 
 recommend corporal punishment for young chil- 
 dren. Strange indeed it is that a method so 
 nearly universal as corporal punishment should 
 have its historical importance entirely over- 
 looked! "In philosophy, all that is new was once 
 old; and all that was old in time assumes new 
 phases." It becomes our duty to discover the 
 new phase of corporal punishment suited to our 
 time. 
 
 A few determined bad pupils can make a 
 teacher's life a burden. Why not have corporal 
 punishment for them? "Ah," says one, "you will 
 degrade them." "The teacher," says another, 
 
 27 
 
"will abuse the privilege." Nevertheless, more 
 than one teacher has been degraded by the dis- 
 respect of authority shown by pupils that have 
 abused their liberties in the absence of punish- 
 ments adequate to restrain them. Choose be- 
 tween pupil and teacher. Which shall be de- 
 graded? Which upheld? Which abuse is the 
 worse? Which more likely to happen? 
 
 A pupil as faithful to his duty as the teacher 
 is to hers will not need a whipping. Nearly every 
 class has its degenerates. From their dis- 
 obedience in the first instance spring the disorder 
 for which the teacher is held responsible. Quell 
 that disorder. Stern measures are needed, espe- 
 cially when disobedience is willful. Give a teacher 
 the means, a variety of punishments. Then if she 
 fail, it will not be because of lack of means to 
 uphold her authority. That excuse would be 
 dead. 
 
 Not only has there been the anomaly of com- 
 pulsory education without compulsory obedi- 
 ence and without compulsory accommoda- 
 tions, but, with the raising of the standard for 
 the teacher and the increase in her responsibil- 
 ities, there has also come a decrease in her au- 
 thority. Over-worry not over-work becomes the 
 bane of teaching. External means for maintain- 
 ing order have been reduced and those remaining 
 in many cases are worthless by reason of pre- 
 vailing social conditions. The chief burden is 
 thereby thrown on the mind of the teacher. I 
 
ask not "Is this condition expedient, wise, ad- 
 visable?" but first and fundamentally, "Is it just? 
 Is it right?" 
 
 Corporal punishment has been abolished in 
 Philadelphia. But at what a cost! Study it out 
 and it becomes appalling. Nervous prostration 
 and other ills, with resulting doctor's bills; the 
 injury to the teacher's disposition and reputation; 
 the damage done to the good name of the school ; 
 waste of school supplies and destruction of school 
 property; sacrifice of lessons and the injustice 
 done to better pupils; friction with parents, and 
 worst of all, the weakening of character — all these 
 may grow out of the first acts of disorder that the 
 teacher can not check at once for the lack of 
 adequate and varied means to nip in the bud. 
 Must a teacher put up with an unruly pupil? Has 
 she the privilege of putting him out of the room? 
 Not always ; sometimes she is told to try to keep 
 him in until lessons are over before disciplining 
 him. Meanwhile the damage is being done; the 
 teacher's authority seems to lessen just in pro- 
 portion to the number of commands she gives to 
 such unruly pupils. Where the disorder is delib- 
 erate, aimed to annoy the teacher, the pupil gains 
 his point. A few such pupils have the teacher 
 at their mercy. The lessons are broken up. Or- 
 der becomes possible only at the expense of the 
 lessons. They must be neglected; order requires 
 all the teacher's attention. W'ho pays the piper? 
 
 Once upon a time a boy in school was guilty 
 of an act of very low vulgarity. He was instantly 
 sent home. After the parents had appealed to 
 
one of the authorities, the teacher received a note 
 from the same telling him to remember "he was 
 a boy once himself." This is no fairy story, e'en 
 though it starts like one. 
 
 "Honor thy father and thy mother." Has this 
 Commandment outlived its usefulness? If the 
 shameless acts of ill-breeding so noticeable in 
 some of our boys and girls are marks of honor, 
 I do not care to have any, at least, of that kind. 
 Inborn brazen audacity and perversity are inten- 
 sified by the license permitted under lax condi- 
 tions. "Cultivate a boy's good qualities; devote 
 all your attention to them and his bad ones will 
 die of starvation." Will they? Easier said than 
 done, for the claim ignores conditions outside of 
 school life that continually feed and develop the 
 bad. Read the fable of the farmer and the fox, 
 and learn. 
 
 A boy whose misconduct degrades the teacher 
 should be given a dose of his own medicine. 
 Does he like to fight and bully ? Whip him then; 
 it's better than a lecture. Can he not keep his 
 hands off other boys and their property? Tie his 
 hands and confiscate some of his own property. 
 It's better than moral suasion. Does he jump 
 out of his seat? Strap him down or let him stand 
 up out of the way as long as the teacher remains 
 standing. He'll be glad enough to stay in his 
 seat next day. As acts of disorder are closely 
 connected, going from bad to worse, it is essen- 
 tial to squelch them on their first appearance, 
 giving them no time to influence others by bad 
 example. 
 
 30 
 
Philadelphia has no corporal punishment and 
 that at a time when by very contrast it would be 
 most effective. Means of getting pleasure and of 
 avoiding and allaying pain have multiplied; pain 
 becomes looked upon as an absolute evil; chil- 
 dren's crying as a sign of pain must be stopped 
 at all costs; so children become pampered and 
 flattered until swelled heads become epidemic. 
 Counter irritation by means of the rod would re- 
 duce the swelling. Opponents of the rod miss its 
 historic meaning. The Church, the State and 
 the School are founded on authority. That au- 
 thority will remain rock-bottom,, absolutely es- 
 sential until people outgrow or outlive the need 
 of it. Visible signs — religious ceremonies, the 
 policeman and his club, the pedagogue and his 
 birch — are authority made manifest. More espe- 
 cially do these signs appeal to children and to 
 others in the symbolic stage of thinking. The 
 rod hanging over the teacher's blackboard and 
 the teacher's privilege of using it confer respect 
 by virtue of the hidden meaning. A burly ruffian 
 attempted to strike the little sheriff bent on ar- 
 resting him. "When you strike me, you strike 
 the whole State of Massachusetts!" exclaimed 
 the doughty officer, whereupon the ruffian col- 
 lapsed. Authority objectified in the principal 
 commands respect even of a disorderly class. 
 Even though whipping may be given only by a 
 person selected, yet the rod in each teacher's 
 room as the symbol of authority would have an 
 unconscious influence for good. 
 
 3i 
 
"Had I been whipped more when a boy, I 
 would be a better man now. Had my parents 
 overcome my willfulness, my position in the 
 world would now be better." Have you never 
 heard such testimony? Fear yet has its uses. 
 Two cases now in mind bear me out. The father 
 is feared, respected and obeyed; seldom whips 
 and never apologizes for it; the mother is loved 
 the more, but disrespected and disobeyed; whips 
 often, and apologizes for it afterward. In another 
 case the father is easy and has no control over the 
 child ; but the mother demands, requires and gets 
 obedience. Whatever be the theory, facts such 
 as these should be interpreted, not ignored. 
 
 Each teacher has a program for the day's work. 
 Allowing an hour for assembly, recesses and dis- 
 missals, four hours are left for actual teaching of 
 branches acquired. This is the main, positive 
 work of the teacher, her direct, immediate pur- 
 pose. Whatever be the end in view — moral char- 
 acter, mind-training or imparting knowledge — 
 whatever be the passive conditions — order, au- 
 thority or the state of society — nevertheless the 
 chief active work of the teacher is to teach les- 
 sons laid down in the program. Moral character 
 can not be taught ; it is partly a resultant of teach- 
 ing; it is the justification for education; it is the 
 ultimate end, education being one of the means. 
 Just as that end is more likely to be attained by 
 giving a maximum amount of time to actual 
 teaching of lessons, just so can that maximum be 
 best attained when its negative condition — order 
 — is guaranteed and made as nearly inviolate as 
 
 32 
 
possible. School programs rest on that idea; no 
 time is given for keeping order. Order is as- 
 sumed all the time. Such is the ideal. Really, 
 it is often interfered with and broken up. Lax 
 methods of punishment do not discourage inter- 
 ferences. As far as possible acts of disorder 
 should be settled in school and settled at once. Why ? 
 "Have we not suspension for unruly pupils?" 
 True; but its worth depends on fear of parents, 
 their ability ito control the child, the power of 
 social condemnation, the difficulty of getting the 
 pupil back, and the nature of the pupil himself. 
 Not one of these can be trusted. Some parents 
 have no control over their children. " Parents 
 are not good enough," says Herbert Spencer. 
 Many lack the education needed to "train up a 
 child in the way he should go." Business inter- 
 ests interfere with others. More still have no 
 knowledge of educational literature and know lit- 
 tle of the thousand and one trials thwarting the 
 teacher's purposes. Yet such folk will dic- 
 tate to a principal the way to run a school. How 
 devoutly I have wished they could try it for a 
 month! Not knowing the parent beforehand, 
 one cannot tell whether suspension will be good 
 or bad. Have you never seen a parent more un- 
 ruly than the child? When defended in wrong- 
 doing, the pupil returns as bad as ever and often 
 worse. What think you of a parent suggesting 
 a very hot place as the fitting abode for a teacher? 
 The more fractious pupils view the school in a 
 wrong light. Among them a suspended boy be- 
 comes more or less of a hero; the halo of notoriety 
 
 33 
 
delights him. He even enjoys being at liberty 
 to run the streets during his suspension and per- 
 haps expresses a willingness to risk another dose 
 of that pleasant medicine. Moreover, the great 
 world has its attractions and a desire to leave 
 school is engendered. Suspension of some boys 
 is but a means to realizing that desire. "I'll put 
 you to work, if you are again suspended," threat- 
 ens an angry parent, whereupon the heart of the 
 young hopeful (or rather hopeless) leaps for joy. 
 
 Suspension is not made public and parents are 
 thereby saved from the shame which publicity 
 would cause. Publicity, too, could not shame a 
 person of low character associating with birds of 
 the same feather, because they blame the school 
 and the teacher rather than themselves. The only 
 public opinion such folk care for does not con- 
 demn them. However, purely external consider- 
 ations may make suspension of some value in 
 hard cases. The parent, while upholding the 
 child, yet hates to visit the school for various 
 personal reasons not difficult to discover. Some 
 pains may be taken, therefore, to avoid a repeti- 
 tion. 
 
 Teachers are advised to use suspension only 
 as a last resort. Why? It is looked upon as a 
 reflection upon the teacher, evidence showing 
 inability to control the pupil. His absence de- 
 creases the percentage of attendance, for which 
 the teacher is held responsible. The school suf- 
 fers. Principals feel the resulting dishonor. 
 Friction with parents is unpleasant; valuable time 
 is lost. A pretty dilemma, forsooth! If the child 
 
 34 
 
is suspended, the school loses prestige; if not sus- 
 pended, he is a living menace to teacher and 
 classmates. 
 
 Used too often, suspension loses much of its 
 good effects. The pupil soon "learns the ropes" ; 
 getting back is easy. Its moral influence weakens 
 as it becomes indiscriminate. Considered per- 
 haps the most severe punishment except final ex- 
 pulsion, at times it degenerates into a cure-all 
 that cures little. Its frequency cheapens it; its 
 severity lessens by repetition; its intensity dimin- 
 ishes as more and more offences are made pun- 
 ishable by it. No agreement exists as to what 
 misconduct merits suspension. In the face of so 
 many adverse social conditions, we cherish it 
 still — almost the only remnant of the authority 
 that secures unity to school life. Forlorn hope! 
 Removing power from the school, placing the 
 culprit beyond its jurisdiction, throwing him 
 upon a sympathetic environment, leaving punish- 
 ment to the whims of parents, it loses its terror, 
 it dribbles away its value as an example to others, 
 it undermines the authority it aims to support. 
 Too much time intervenes between the offence 
 and the punishment; the effects are not visible to 
 others; even when punishment is inflicted at 
 home, the wrong-doer may deny it in the presence 
 of his classmates, who have no proof to the con- 
 trary. Strange! Backed up by a psychology 
 emphasizing correlation of activities, teachers 
 in presenting lessons are urged to reinforce oral 
 teaching* by pictures or diagrams appealing to 
 the eye, by objects and materials appealing to 
 
 35 
 
touch, yet in inflicting punishments, that same 
 psychological principle is conspicuous by its ab- 
 sence. 
 
 "A knife that won't cut is not much of a knife; 
 a class that won't class is not much of a class 
 and a member that won't member is not much 
 of a member," said a bright young Ph.D. Under 
 these forcible words is hidden a vital criticism ex- 
 posing the fundamental fallacy of present-day 
 practices — attempting to manage an essentially 
 socialistic institution on an individualistic basis. 
 Individualistic theory and practice growing out 
 of the impulses culminating in the French Revo- 
 lution were and are professedly a contradiction 
 of the State, whose authority in the School is 
 manifested by demanding respect for law and 
 subordination of individual inclinations to the 
 general welfare of the class. The School has sur- 
 vived not because of individualism but in spite 
 of it, and individualism can be of value only 
 when justified by the moral purpose implied in 
 the history of education — only when it has its 
 final ground, its reason for being in that which 
 it is not — only when it ceases to be individualism 
 as such. 
 
 Suspension has value as an act of authority 
 implying the right to exclude an individual that 
 does not conform to the school standard and 
 denying to that individual the right to an educa- 
 tion whenever that individual by his act violates 
 the conditions that validate the right to an edu- 
 cation for himself and others. The right of an in- 
 dividual to an education is thus not absolute but 
 
 36 
 
conditioned upon the security and integrity of 
 that right universalized. When a turbulent pupil 
 by his behavior robs others of the right to an 
 education, he thereby denies it to himself and his 
 act of self-alienation should bring retribution 
 upon his own head. 
 
 Detaining pupils after school has its value, too. 
 as an act of authority. Essentially grounded in 
 justice, a restriction on liberty for the violation 
 of law, it is none the less ineffective as a deter- 
 rent or reformatory measure. Ten or twenty 
 minutes detention is scarcely proportionate to 
 the evil resulting from even minor acts of mis- 
 conduct. Usually the same boys continually 
 need the detention; they become more or less 
 hardened to it. It is open to abuse by becoming 
 indiscriminate. At times it punishes the teacher 
 more than the pupils. Laxity is encouraged if 
 the teacher does not watch pupils detained and 
 the punishment becomes almost worthless. 
 Watching is not altogether a pleasant duty; the 
 time could be better spent. Under individual- 
 istic ideas, class detentions are utterly wrong and 
 good pupils often feel unfairly treated, discourag- 
 ing their good conduct. Yet under a social sys- 
 tem with social responsibility recognized, class 
 detentions are thoroughly right; they imply crit- 
 icism of the passivity of the good pupil in his fail- 
 ure to defend his rights by passing merited con- 
 demnation on evil-doess and by shaming them 
 into a better frame of mind on the playground 
 and elsewhere, neither associating with them nor 
 encouraging misconduct. Laughter on the part 
 
 37 
 
of good pupils, makes the bad more eager to 
 create "fun," so cruel to the teacher. Verily, 
 many a teacher is like charity; she "suffereth long 
 and is kind." Not long ago three young men 
 were going to night school evidently bent on in- 
 sulting the teacher. Said one, "If she brings me 
 up to apologize, I'll tell her to go to Iceland." 
 Would detention meet such a case as that? A 
 proper class spirit would make that kind of be- 
 havior impossible. 
 
 In full swing with prevailing theory, we hear it 
 said, "A noisy class is caused by a noisy teacher; 
 a quiet teacher makes a quiet class." Substitute 
 teachers are living contradictions of that dog- 
 ma. Did you never note the rejoicing of a class 
 of twelve-year-olds upon hearing of the absence 
 of the regular teacher? The noise of the class in 
 such a case often begins on the playground and in 
 the room ere the substitute has a chance to say 
 a word, noisy or quiet. Mere quietness of the 
 teacher is no guarantee of a quiet class. If one 
 be not convinced of the existence of that spirit 
 which views restraint as an evil and the teacher 
 as a lawful prey, let him associate not merely 
 with children, but with "old" boys; let him hear 
 their loud guffaws at the pranks played upon 
 their teachers and professors; let him read class 
 records describing mean actions positively in- 
 sulting to the older men that should have been 
 respected. If he be not convinced, then he is 
 scarcely open to conviction. 
 
 38 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 How? 
 
 Realize thoroughly the falsity of naturalism. 
 Give no theoretical or practical sanction to wrong 
 motives. Give wickedness no chance, give it no 
 right to a chance; failing that, as little chance as 
 posible. Grant a pupil no right to be interested in 
 doing evil, no right to torment teacher or class- 
 mates. Revive the conception of the school as a 
 social organism. Clearly unfold its meaning. 
 Mark off sharply the rights, duties and functions 
 of pupils, parents, teachers and authorities. For- 
 sake that misleading abstraction "the child" and 
 get nearer to the real, living, concrete child with 
 which we have to deal — a human being with de- 
 sires, feelings, volitions, with passions and weak- 
 nesses, but also with a moral law implicit within, 
 a universal nature uniting him with the Divine. 
 To bring those weaknesses under the sway of 
 moral law, to bring order and harmony out of the 
 chaos of struggling feelings is the ultimate duty 
 of education. Remember then a child is not as a 
 lump of clay easy to mold this way or that at the 
 mere will of the teacher; nor is the teacher a tire- 
 less engine, an everlasting machine, a senseless 
 automaton. No; but a real, living human being 
 too; yes, with rights and feelings and undertaking 
 sacred duties — duties that command respect of 
 the thoughtful man the world over; yet she must 
 
 39 
 
enter the school-room in America and worm her 
 way into the good graces of a child, "Yea, curb 
 and woo for leave to do him good." Woe unto 
 her that fails! 
 
 Meet the shady side of child nature with a va- 
 riety of punishments, discriminately used. As 
 far as possible guard the teacher against imposi- 
 tion. Demand obedience, compel obedience at 
 least to the point of non-interference, the indiffer- 
 ence point, passing which idleness, inattention 
 and indisposition become positive aggressions 
 on the rights of others. A pupil that still proves 
 unruly under such conditions is out of place in 
 a school-room. Put him out and keep him out. 
 Experience demonstrates the folly of giving trial 
 after trial to one deserving it not. Methods of 
 punishment have as their ideal their own aboli- 
 tion, aiming to produce a nature no longer in 
 need of them. Let that be borne in mind. 
 
 In giving more power and authority to the 
 school and to the teacher, less license and fewer 
 privileges should be given to pupils. Privileged 
 characters usually become a nuisance. Let priv- 
 ileges be granted seldom and then only to the 
 deserving. When abused, it is always in the 
 power of the teacher to recall them, giving pupils 
 no right to question her judgment or demand an 
 explanation. 
 
 Press, pulpit and school might co-operate to 
 raise the standard of intelligence and elevate 
 home life. More needful is it for parents to get 
 in touch with the institutional life of the school. 
 Meetings for parents point the right direction. 
 
 40 
 
I realize how little time folks have after work is 
 done, yet none the less many of them waste 
 golden hours talking nonsense, trash, gossip and 
 kindred frivolities, that might better be spent in 
 learning how to train children. When public 
 opinion is wrong, let the school be as firm as 
 Gibraltar, against which waves of incompetent 
 criticism dash in vain. 
 
 Unity of educational system is demanded by 
 our principle. Only with great danger can pri- 
 mary school be cut from grammar and grammar 
 from high schools. The end and beginning should 
 mutually determine each other. Thus grammar 
 school practice must be guided not for the bene- 
 fit of the pupils leaving at the close of the 
 grammar school course, but for the bene- 
 fit of those continuing on to the high schools. 
 Economic forces trench upon the province of the 
 school by drawing pupils away. Catering to 
 them, compromising with them, being guided 
 by them is utterly vicious, unless those forces be 
 ethically right and typical of what must be 
 through all eternity. Thus must the ideal social 
 state be our aim. 
 
 The plan submitted in this book has many ad- 
 vantages. Guided by a moral idealism empha- 
 sizing justice, it avoids the dangers of naturalism 
 and saves its good qualities. As the school and 
 teacher must take so much responsibility, so are 
 they given the implied authority commensurate 
 with their responsibility, thus enabling the school 
 to manage its own affairs, regulate its own disci- 
 pline without interference from those who should 
 
 4i 
 
be given no right to have opinions on subjects 
 they have never investigated. The specialization 
 of function and division of labor inherent in the 
 plan is distinctly an advance in method and in 
 line with the progress of economic science. 
 
 Having secured the negative conditions, the 
 fundamental requirements of teaching, the pos- 
 itive factors may be better developed allowing the 
 greatest freedom under law and a better kind 
 than before. Engendering respect for law and 
 authority, guarding the teacher against impo- 
 sition, it saves worry, makes better teaching pos- 
 sible, enabling those in power to hold a teacher 
 strictly accountable for the condition of the class 
 at the end of the term. Something surely would 
 be wrong with a teacher failing under such con- 
 ditions. 
 
 42 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 Teachers. 
 
 A wild, noisy, illiterate teacher is a contradic- 
 tion in terms. 
 
 Mr. Emerson E. White gives an interesting 
 contrast of two classes. In the first, pupils 
 "walked heavily on the floor, lounged when re- 
 citing, handled books and slates noisily, and 
 otherwise kept up a din of poorly concealed dis- 
 order. There was, indeed, insubordination in 
 their look, voice and bearing." The teacher "was 
 earnest and determined, and his pupils seemed 
 equally so." In the other class, "pupils glided 
 noiselessly from seat to class; the books and 
 slates were handled carefully; and a quiet order, 
 born of affection and good will, pervaded the 
 room." 
 
 Mr. White explains this contrast as follows: 
 The teachers "had the same plan of marking, the 
 same system of reporting to parents, the same re- 
 wards for success in study and conduct, etc. 
 There was doubtless some difference in details, 
 and even in plans; but the real secret of the 
 marked contrast in their success was deeper than 
 method or system. It zuas in the teachers. One 
 failed because he had not in himself the elements 
 of control, and the other succeeded because she 
 possessed them." 
 
 43 
 
"And yet, how many teachers are looking for 
 the cause of their failure in discipline in external 
 conditions — in school furniture, in patrons and 
 home training, in principal or school director, 
 etc. — little realizing that there are teachers, wait- 
 ing to be called, it may be, who can step into their 
 places, and, under the same conditions, easily 
 change discord to harmony, and conflict to 
 peace." 
 
 The ethical value of Mr. White's "explana- 
 tion" depends upon the truth of naturalism which 
 has already been shown inadequate. Conditions 
 are assumed to be essentially just and right — 
 which they are not; whatever they be, it is the 
 teacher who must measure up to the conditions 
 and not the conditions that must be changed and 
 moralized — which ought to be done. Funda- 
 mentally, then, the battle rages about what is and 
 what ought to be — the real or the ideal. Mr. 
 White totally ignores the latter as far as "the 
 ought to be" is concerned, for present conditions 
 are accepted without criticism as needing no 
 change and perhaps eternal. 
 
 In his account Mr. White leaves out many es- 
 sential particulars. Does he tell us anything 
 against the moral character of the first teacher 
 outside of a mere generality? He says nothing to 
 indicate the inability of the first to teach. He ac- 
 cuses him of no breach of duty. As far as we 
 know, the first teacher was not noisy, illiterate 
 or ill-tempered. He may even have been kind 
 and loving, good-natured and brilliant. No 
 charge is brought against him for meanness, bad 
 
 44 
 
habits or disqualifications of any sort save "he 
 had not in himself the elements of control." 
 
 Investigation has discovered peoples whose 
 manners, customs and morals seem to us a topsy- 
 turvy nightmare. Every-day life discloses to us 
 examples showing that "one man's meat is an- 
 other man's poison." So pronounced is this rela- 
 tivity that it becomes difficult to lay down an ab- 
 solute rule for practical affairs. So entangled are 
 the activities entering into civilized life that Mr. 
 White's explanation is altogether too simple. 
 Recognizing as he does farther on in his book 
 how external methods may stimulate the activity 
 of children for good, he fails to see the darker 
 side of the picture. Thus he underestimates the 
 influence of external conditions for bad and 
 makes no allowance for the relativity of "elements 
 of control" to the conditions under which the 
 control is exercised. "Elements of control" 
 needed to-day may not be those needed 
 in the past or those needed in the fu- 
 ture. A static view, ignoring the past, making 
 no provision for the future, overlooking the eth- 
 ical ideals of justice and righteousness, is defi- 
 cient historically, unprogressive and utterly per- 
 verted. 
 
 "For in the isolated consciousness of the finite, 
 whether it be of ourselves as finite, or of any other 
 object, we are estranged from ourselves, blind to 
 our own real nature, and unconscious of that 
 which yet we imply in every word we say and 
 every action which we do. We are, above 
 all, in want of a Socrates to call our attention to 
 
 45 
 
the universal basis of our existence, and to force 
 us to understand ourselves.'' 
 
 What is implied in the act of teaching, in the 
 child 5 s act of going to school, in the child's dis- 
 obedience, in the teacher's efforts in discipline? 
 Does Mr. White read any meaning into the dis- 
 orderly conduct of the first class, except to blame 
 it on the teacher? Did he take the trouble to find 
 out whether or not any of the pupils entered that 
 class determined to have "fun" with the teacher? 
 Suppose the teacher went in with lessons pre- 
 pared, ready to do his duty. Suppose every pupil 
 did the same. Would disorder have followed? 
 Where, when and by whom was the first breach of 
 duty committed? Mr. White does not say. That 
 view which blames all on the teacher, that which 
 blames all on the pupil, that which blames all on 
 external conditions are alike false and alike true 
 — in part only. 
 
 Nor is it certain "that there are teachers wait- 
 ing to be called, it may be, who can step into their 
 places, and, under the same conditions, easily 
 change discord to harmony." The ease may be 
 more seeming than real. It is hard to fancy a 
 teacher that "easily" can do those things, unless 
 with exceptional pupils. To the outside observer 
 no strain may be apparent, but ask that teacher 
 at the end of the day whether there was not a 
 strain due to being continually alert, eyes and 
 ears ready to detect mischief. For certain, in a 
 large city it is an exceptional class that does not 
 put some such strain upon a teacher's mind. 
 Much of it is unjust; it requires the teacher to 
 
 46 
 
meet out of her subjective resources conditions 
 she had nothing to do in creating; forces and fac- 
 tors rooted in the past ere she was born. Sup- 
 pose in the teacher's life no Saturday, Sunday or 
 holidays intervened; how many of them could 
 stand the strain? 
 
 "The vital factor in a school is the teacher." 
 Yes; and for that reason she should be protected 
 from the injustices yet inherent in the struggle 
 for existence. Then with righteousness can the 
 misfits be weeded out. 
 
 Mr. White's "contrast" and "explanation" are 
 scarcely fundamental, scarcely large enough to 
 be typical of all cases of failing teachers. 
 
 "Study the individual child so as to better 
 adapt your methods of teaching and discipline." 
 Very good advice; but it has its limits. With 
 all the other things recommended to teachers, 
 remember that the teacher has the child at most 
 but a few years, not geologic epochs. What with 
 her day's work, preparation for future lessons, 
 reading up educational literature, perhaps belong- 
 ing to societies, attending meetings and lectures, 
 she has hands and mind quite full. What shall we 
 think of a principal advising his teachers to study 
 up at home methods for getting at unruly pupils? 
 Must she take the school home with her? Must 
 she be all teacher? Is there no time she can call 
 her own, except during sleep and perhaps not 
 always that? Must she twist and stretch school 
 methods this way and that, and worry and plan 
 to make them fit the exceptional or bad pupils? 
 That is one kind of child study. Under it all is 
 
 47 
 
the great question already suggested: How far 
 must the school standard be lowered to level 
 down to the bad pupil? How far must the pupil, 
 whoever he be, be made to level up to the school 
 standard? Choose. 
 
 Moreover, not much value is likely to be de- 
 rived from studying the child in isolation from 
 the multitudinous influences of heredity and en- 
 vironment. To get facts most helpful to us in 
 managing the bad boy would often require 
 methods likely to be deemed inquisitorial in a 
 free country. That democratic liberty of asso- 
 ciating with all kinds of folks is far from being 
 wholly good in its effects on the character of the 
 pupil. Cut off from these associations, studied 
 empirically like a chemical compound, child- 
 study gives little better than an "inventory of the 
 facts of mind." The real ethical value of such 
 facts is lost, unless they be interpreted in the light 
 of a rational historical development The ideal 
 meaning they have for us as moral beings must 
 be the essential basis and clearly conceived pur- 
 pose of our investigations. 
 
 "Current psychology, especially of the 'syn- 
 thetic' sort has erred and strayed from the way, 
 beyond anything possible to lost sheep, because 
 of the unclear or inadmissible metaphysical no- 
 tions with which it operates. We have, first, 
 an attempt to construe the mental life in terms of 
 mechanism or of the lower categories. This has 
 led to the most extraordinary mythology, in 
 which mental states are hypostasized, impossible 
 
 48 
 
dynamic relations feigned, logical identities mis- 
 taken for objective temporal identities; and then 
 the entire fiction, which exists only in and 
 through thought, is mistaken for the generator 
 of thought. Here again nothing but criticism 
 can aid us. We must inquire what our 'synthe- 
 sis' is to mean, and what are the factors which are 
 to be 'synthesized,' and what are the logical con- 
 ditions of such a synthesis. This inquiry can not 
 be dispensed with by issuing cards of questions 
 to nurses and young mothers, or by re-discover- 
 ing world-old items of knowledge by the easy 
 process of constructing new names for them. 
 The dictionary may be enriched in this way, and 
 charming stories gathered concerning the age 
 at which 'our little one began to take notice,' but 
 this journalistic method is more likely to con- 
 tribute to the 'gayety of nations' than to psycho- 
 logical insight." 
 
 None the less, child-study is valuable to the 
 teacher if she know how to interpret the results. 
 
 49 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 Various School Offences. 
 
 Teacher (during a lesson) — "Johnny, put down 
 your hand." Hand goes down. 
 
 Teacher (at dismissal) — "Now, Johnny, what 
 is it you wanted to say?" 
 
 Johnny — "Please, ma'am, I saw a tramp in the 
 hall walk away with your gold-handled um- 
 brella." 
 
 What a wealth of practical pedagogy is hidden 
 under that simple incident! Just as in a previous 
 chapter, order was shown to be the general con- 
 dition assumed, teaching the lessons the chief 
 active, particular work of the teacher, just so the 
 integrity of the lesson and the continuity of atten- 
 tion becomes the immediate purpose to be real- 
 ized. Preserve them, minimize interruptions, 
 economize time. The teacher lost her umbrella, 
 but she followed a sound pedagogic rule. 
 
 One can imagine a class in which pupils are 
 allowed to talk to each other at certain times, 
 and when commanded by the teacher, they stop 
 at once. But would it work well? Scarcely; for 
 it is quite likely to violate the rule just laid down. 
 Once grant pupils such a right, where will it end? 
 Would they talk only about lessons? Baseball 
 and football games are more interesting; so are 
 personalities. Are they to talk to teach each 
 
 50 
 
other. If so, are they fit for that work? I doubt 
 it. "Give him an inch, he'll take an ell." 
 
 Wise are they who forbid talking. One of the 
 most dangerous disorders in the school-room, it 
 is a tacit violation of authority and contrary to 
 the economics of education. It is most insid- 
 ious, so seemingly trifling, so easy to do, so hard 
 to stop, such a splendid foil for other disorders, 
 so provocative of other mischief. Not only 
 wearing upon the nerves and dividing the 
 teacher's attention, but also breeding disrespect 
 in other ways, it makes her task harder than ever. 
 Talking and its twin demon, calling out answers 
 and complaints, are a formidable pair. Much 
 less evil would it be, if evil it be at all, to gag the 
 habitual talker for a while at the beginning than 
 to risk the evils following some gentler course. 
 Standing in direct causal relation to the offence 
 and used at once, it more forcibly appeals to un- 
 derstanding and imagination than detention or 
 other deferred, inconsequent punishment. Cheat- 
 ing, quarreling, fighting, meddling, annoying 
 monitors and boys sent to the blackboards, are 
 often made possible by the habit of talking that 
 has fastened itself upon the class like an Old 
 Man of the Sea about the neck of Sinbad. Is it 
 not bad manners for a child to talk when the 
 teacher is talking? Would it be any too severe 
 to shame him as he has put indignity upon the 
 teacher? A certain class had a number of gum 
 chewers. The teacher said nothing, but kept 
 them after school; then calling in three other 
 teachers, said, "A chewing gum society is being 
 
 5i 
 
organized. Mary Jones has been elected pres- 
 ident because of her skill in chewing. Mary and 
 members, give us a specimen of your art. 
 Chew!" Each one had to do a share, unpleasant 
 as it was. Remarks were made by each teacher 
 on the impropriety of chewing, and thoroughly 
 shamed, the pupils w r ere given a lesson more ef- 
 fective than keeping them in or confiscating their 
 gum during school hours. Could any method be 
 invented for shaming talkative pupils into si- 
 lence? The whole school suffers; other teachers 
 receiving the talkative pupils at the end of the 
 term feel the burden. Bad enough is the waste of 
 time and neglect of lessons consequent on talk- 
 ing, but worst of all is the effect on the character 
 of the pupil. Take it all in all, occasional down- 
 right impudence is less demoralizing than habit- 
 ual talking. 
 
 Only one rule will work for getting paper off 
 the floor: Each pupil must be responsible for the 
 floor under and nearest his desk. The paper 
 ought not to be there. He is to pick it up not as 
 a punishment, but because the teacher says so 
 and for the sake of neatness and cleanliness ; not 
 because he has put it there, but just as one would 
 clean in front of his home. The teacher can 
 brook no reply, such as. "I did not put it there; 
 Willie Smith did it." Practically a criticism of 
 the teacher's judgment, it allows a pupil the right 
 to deny her authority and make a complaint 
 against a classmate, as if the teacher were there 
 to redress grievances, investigate charges and be a 
 servant at the beck of anyone choosing to use her 
 
 53 
 
for his personal welfare, the class to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. Such complaints create hard 
 feelings among pupils. Often, too, a pupil de- 
 nies putting paper on the floor when he himself 
 has done it unwittingly, and one of the most con- 
 temptible acts he can do is to sweep it about un- 
 der the desks of his neighbors, taking more trou- 
 ble than would suffice to pick it all up. 
 
 Missiles of many kinds are often thrown, 
 especially when the teacher is at the board or in 
 specting work in the class. Opportunities for 
 mischief offer. To reduce them, perhaps the 
 teacher stands sideways when writing on the 
 board and turns frequently, facing the class to 
 prevent mischief. Time is lost and the teacher's 
 work is less efficient by reason of the divided 
 attention and resulting mental strain. This and 
 many other disorders could be obviated were 
 there a watcher in each room relieving the 
 teacher of nearly all the strain of discipline and 
 thereby increasing her efficiency as a teacher. No 
 doubt there are objections to such a plan; but 
 merely in a hypothetical way let me ask, Is there 
 not more than one teacher in the United States 
 who would willingly pay for the services of such 
 a watcher, could she spare the necessary sum? 
 Acts of disorder unforeseen, or done behind the 
 teacher's back, growing by what they feed on, 
 may become so numerous that it is impossible for 
 one person to see and punish and eradicate them 
 all. 'Then let the teacher face the class all the 
 time, never going among the pupils." Ah, but 
 then she suffers the loss of board work and indi- 
 
 53 
 
vidual instruction, and her results fall below the 
 mark at the end of the term. It will never do to 
 forget how often disturbances are maliciously 
 planned to hurt pupils and teacher, or even to 
 create laughter enough to be enjoyable to all but 
 the teacher. 
 
 A pupil may be wiser in his knowledge of right 
 and wrong than we suppose. While he knows 
 the purpose of his attending school, the purpose 
 of the school, the requirements and some reasons 
 therefor, the effects of bad conduct and the ne- 
 cessity of punishment, yet in the class he finds it 
 hard to forget that he is a chum of 
 Frank Brown, friends with John and Harry 
 and Will. He does not rise above his 
 childhood. This he shows in passing notes, 
 using class time for personal purposes, using 
 classmates as individuals whose duty it is 
 to carry out his wishes. Writing and passing 
 notes is contradictory of the fundamental idea of 
 the school. The usUal secrecy observed proves the 
 child's knowledge of its wrong. He should for- 
 get his friends with their immediate personal re- 
 lations in his devotion to their higher interests 
 as his classmates. That is the ideal. 
 
 To sum up principles: Authority demands obe- 
 dience; its economic aspect requires a minimum 
 of interruptions ; socially, the individual must be 
 subordinated to the class; ethically, duty is the 
 supreme law for all. Violations, as such, point 
 to punishment as their legitimate development, 
 primarily for the sake of justice, secondarily to 
 guard the common rights of all which constitute 
 the only ground for giving the right to any. Thus 
 
 54 
 
the pupil's right to an education is not absolute, 
 but conditioned upon the foregoing principles. In 
 civil and criminal law, abuse of property rights 
 may justify confiscation of the property in the 
 higher interests of society. Just so may the 
 teacher appropriate the property of the pupil. A 
 ruler used as a drumstick thereby has its own 
 purpose contradicted and the owner may be held 
 to have forfeited his right to it. 
 
 The principles just stated throw light on the 
 question, How far should a teacher interfere in 
 the personal affairs of the pupils? Suppose, for 
 instance, Johnny says Frank struck him, what 
 shall the teacher do? Investigate it at once? 
 No; as teacher it becomes her duty to ignore the 
 complaint during the lesson, command order and 
 investigate, if at all, after school. From the 
 school standpoint both pupils are out of order; 
 their actions conflict with the fundamental ideas. 
 Cases may be so violent as to demand the sum- 
 mary ejection of both plaintiff and defendant 
 from the room. To give pupils a right to an im- 
 mediate hearing is dangerous. Where can we 
 draw the line? How many complaints can be 
 recognized? Some one will say, "That is an in- 
 justice to the pupil/' Is it? Well, any other plan 
 would be unjust to the teacher and to the thirty 
 or forty other pupils besides the culprits. More- 
 over, the injustice to the individual is but seem- 
 ing. It is but the strictest justice to him in con- 
 formity with his purpose as a pupil to deny him 
 the right to an immediate investigation of his 
 complaint during a lesson. 
 
 55 
 
Contrast these two plans : 
 
 A. During lessons a pupil has the right to 
 make a complaint and have an investigation 
 thereof. 
 
 B. No such right should be given to any pu- 
 
 P ii. 
 
 What follows from the first plan? 
 
 1. The pupil subverts his own function and 
 purpose as a pupil. 
 
 2. He has the right to break in upon the les- 
 sons at any time, upon a trumped-up charge 
 even. 
 
 3. The class becomes of less importance than 
 the individual. 
 
 4. It gives a pupil power over the teacher, who 
 must be at his service for personal reasons, as a 
 judge or arbitrator, and lowers her dignity and 
 lessens her authority. Her purpose as a teacher 
 is thus trenched upon. 
 
 5. During the investigation, what are the other 
 pupils doing? 
 
 6. It virtually puts the lessons at the mercy 
 of the pupil who may choose not to have them 
 and use a complaint to gain his point. 
 
 7. The bad habit generated weakens the pu- 
 pil's character. He becomes more at the mercy 
 of classmates who tease him for the purpose of 
 hearing him cry out. Adversity easily daunts 
 him. Self-control for better purposes lessens. 
 
 8. Carrying this analysis to its conclusion, it 
 finally gives the pupils the right to utterly destroy 
 the school system. 
 
 What will the second plan do? 
 
 56 
 
1. In general it avoids the dangers of the first. 
 
 2. It stimulates self-control and strengthens 
 character. 
 
 3. It is in complete harmony with the princi- 
 ples shown to be at the basis of education. 
 
 Enough has been said to show the method of 
 viewing and treating school offences. In order 
 to emphasize their almost infinite variety, let me 
 specify a few besides those already mentioned. 
 Many ways of teasing classmates — pulling their 
 hair, sticking pins in them, caricaturing them, 
 calling names, etc. — rolling marbles, kicking and 
 dropping objects on the floor, stamping, hum- 
 ming, cat-calls, whistling, throwing ink, disfig- 
 uring desks, walls, boards, books, misusing pen- 
 cils, rulers and other supplies, attracting the at- 
 tention of classmates by various devices, laziness 
 or disobedience showing itself in badly executed 
 drawings, reading novels or other inappropriate 
 material — all these offences may happen in a sin- 
 gle day, in the same room, and several may be 
 committed by the same pupil. For this variety 
 of disorders have we a commensurate variety of 
 punishment? Is it just to blame the teacher for 
 it all; is she really the cause of it; is she morally 
 responsible? 
 
 In view of what has been said, what kind of ad- 
 vice should be given to teachers? 
 
 The teacher's dignity and authority are of su 
 preme importance, absolutely essential. In or- 
 der to better secure them the following sugges- 
 tions are offered: 
 
 57 
 
Allow no familiarity. Let there be few privi- 
 leged characters, such as monitors, the fewer the 
 better. Keep each one as strictly as possible in 
 his place; give him no right to go into the supply 
 closets or meddle with the articles on your desk. 
 Avoid lowering yourself to their level by saying 
 "smart" things, creating laughter, and putting 
 yourself under obligation to them. A pupil is a 
 pupil, inferior; the teacher is teacher, superior; 
 he is not to speak to you without per- 
 mission. Allow no calling out, no talking, 
 no changing of seats without permission — 
 no criticism of your methods, whether implicit or 
 explicit. Interest yourself seldom in pupils' per- 
 sonal affairs, games, sports, quarrels and the like. 
 Allow no contradiction of what you say. Squelch 
 it at once. Much of a teacher's power comes 
 from keeping up her dignity; always appearing 
 to have reserve force, keeping each person at his 
 distance, her authority becomes feared and re- 
 spected partly by reason of its inscrutableness 
 to the pupils. That view which identifies fear of 
 authority with frightening a pupil out of his wits 
 is too absurd to need criticism. 
 
 Let the pupil feel his inferiority and he will re- 
 spect you. Give very few privileges and those 
 only to the most deserving, to those least likely 
 to abuse them. Do not argue with a child. Don't 
 assume that he has a right to an opinion on a 
 subject he has not investigated. Being a child, 
 the limitations of his mind prevent him from see- 
 ing the question in a broad and impartial survey. 
 
 58 
 
What you say to him should be as from a supe- 
 rior, not from an equal obliged to justify your 
 course by an argument. Ask him questions elic- 
 iting facts rather than for a description or theory 
 defending his misconduct. When a pupil is told 
 to get in order, he is to get in order, not give an 
 explanation why he got out of order. If he at- 
 tempts an explanation, check him at once, espe- 
 cially when he tries the "baby" act of cloaking 
 his own misconduct under that of another. 
 
 What offences should be overlooked? Taken 
 in the abstract, judged by mere size, there are 
 many; judged by tendency, habit, character and 
 ethical principle, there are few. Unless you wish 
 to put a premium on human frailties, overlook 
 as few as possible. A mistake on the side of 
 strictness is better than a mistake on the side of 
 leniency. Consider your position, relations to 
 the pupil, and your abilities, and then aim high. 
 Especially is a high standard both in work and 
 conduct to be put before advanced pupils. A 
 pupil after going to school six or seven years 
 should be familiar enough with school to know 
 what is expected of him. Yet do we not often 
 find large pupils as hard to manage as the smaller 
 ones? Is it because the older ones, while being 
 more nearly rational than younger ones, are also 
 more refined in trickery and less awed by author- 
 ity? 
 
 Reduce discipline to a minimum; keep teaching 
 at a maximum. Clearly understand the purpose 
 and importance of a lesson yourself. Select the 
 chief points and teach them thoroughly. Give a 
 
 59 
 
few important reasons; many reasons and illus- 
 trations confuse a child, who, as a rule, can not 
 discriminate sharply enough to give each its rela- 
 tive importance. Seldom allow a child to ask a 
 question during a lesson. Only where authority 
 is absolute and commands implicitly obeyed, can 
 a pupil as a general rule be permitted to question 
 the teacher. His questions are often personal, 
 beside the point or unimportant to class work; 
 they should be deferred until school work is fin- 
 ished. 
 
 Economy demands preparation for the day's 
 work, not only of lessons, but also of the details 
 of management. It would be well for a beginner 
 to have upon her desk a paper containing sug- 
 gestions to which to refer on entering the room, 
 such as: 
 
 Is the room properly ventilated? 
 
 Are ink-wells filled, slates clean, paper and 
 pencils ready? 
 
 Have I the necessary books within reach? 
 
 If at recess and dismissal there are a few spare 
 moments, have the pupils pick up the paper from 
 the floor and put it in the basket as they go out. 
 As the pupils come into the room, they are to go 
 to their desks, not wander about the room or 
 look out the windows. It is well to have them 
 occupy spare moments before school with prep- 
 aration of lessons. 
 
 "My, my!" some one will exclaim. "What a 
 lot of things a teacher must be ready for! What 
 an awful mess to remember!" Yes, exactly so; 
 
 60 
 
and should they read a few more works on edu- 
 cation, attend a few lectures, talk with a few prin- 
 cipals, the methods, advice and "duties" recom- 
 mended become simply bewildering. The few 
 points specified herein are insignificant in com- 
 parison. 
 
 Will the teacher's mind ever be free from these 
 burdens? Certainly not so long as she bears 
 them patiently; not so long as present practices 
 are viewed as just and right; not so long as the 
 functions of discipline and teaching are concen- 
 trated in one person with little authority to carry 
 them out; not so long as the school is faithless to 
 its historic purpose and too much at the mercy 
 of the individualizing forces of industrial society. 
 To the rescue ! 
 
 One hundred years hence what meaning will 
 the historian read into our school life of to-day? 
 
 61 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 Conclusion. 
 
 "I am whatsoever is — whatsoever has been — 
 whatsoever shall be: and the veil which is over 
 my countenance no mortal hand has ever raised." 
 
 Man is the child of the past and the parent of 
 the future. Rambling now so long in the great 
 world, seeking outwardly for the "peace that 
 passeth understanding," he has ever failed 
 and is beginning to return upon himself to find 
 it in the innermost depths of his own soul. He 
 has swept the starry heavens with his telescope 
 and finds no end; he has looked into the abyss of 
 time and finds no end; high and low has he 
 sought with all eagerness to find God in the mere 
 world outside and has found Him not. Dwarfed 
 into insignificance by boundless space, hemmed 
 in by a life — "a narrow vale between the cold 
 and barren peaks of two eternities" — an atom in 
 the universe, a moment in the everlasting, he has 
 been appalled, terrified by the awe-inspiring mys- 
 teries crowding thick upon him and sees with 
 bitterness the wreck of the dearest hopes this 
 life held in store for him. Long enough in bond- 
 age to the hard fate from which there seemed no 
 escape, he is now rising in rebellion against a 
 sordid agnosticism, entrenching himself upon the 
 impregnable rock — Mind — the Mind which gives 
 
 62 
 
unity to all. In it do the infinites meet, the eter- 
 nities melt. In it history gets its meaning and 
 man his destiny. 
 
 Agnostic metaphysics has had fitting company 
 in social utilitarianism, hedonistic ethics, individ- 
 ualistic economics and soulless, empirical psychol- 
 ogy. Voices are raised against them and in no un- 
 certain tone demand a return to first principles. In 
 speculative philosophy the cry "Back to Kant" 
 has echoed and re-echoed along other lines. The 
 batteries of rationalism are beginning to rake 
 fore and aft with effect. Socialism is growing 
 apace. In France, Germany and Belgium it has 
 expressed itself in political parties of some im- 
 portance. The growing demand for municipal 
 ownership; agitation for single tax, for shorter 
 hours of work, for higher wages and reforms 
 too many to mention are evidences of its spirit. 
 Industrial organization, co-operative societies and 
 the trusts are important factors in the new move- 
 ment. Even millionaires are coming to recog- 
 nize a social responsibility in the use of wealth, 
 and strangest of all, individualist newspapers, in 
 emphasizing it, fail to see their own inconsist- 
 ency. Social and economic interpretations 
 throw new light upon old facts. Man has a so- 
 cial inheritance, a moral inheritance, an economic 
 inheritance as well as a physical and individual 
 inheritance. The historical method is revealing 
 its resources. Kant and Hegel through their dis- 
 ciples have been made to speak tolerably plain 
 English. Their influences for good have been 
 great; their efforts directed against agnosticism 
 
 63 
 
have been largely successful; their "souls are 
 marching on." 
 
 To the outcry against the baneful influences of 
 naturalism and agnosticism in these lines, I add 
 mine against their influences in school life. 
 Looking at man from the dawn of history to the 
 sunset of evolution, what a picture of despair they 
 paint ! 
 
 "O Priestess in the vaults of Death, 
 O sweet and bitter in a breath, 
 
 What whispers from thy lying lips? 
 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run.' ' : 
 
 Gazing with intent eyes and solemn thought 
 upon that earth you love so well, upon those 
 scenes that met your eyes morn after morn from 
 happy childhood's sport to manhood's stern real- 
 ities; upon those faces whose image is graven in 
 golden lines within your breast; thinking on 
 those dearest ties of all wherein are treasured 
 the hopes, ideals and aspirations of a sacred life 
 whose light has shed a cheering glow along the 
 thorny way and planted in your heart the hopes 
 of nobler, purer, holier life beyond this earthly 
 sphere — it dawns upon you that these bright 
 dreams are doomed to utter and inevitable disap- 
 pointment. In aeons to come those scenes fade 
 away, those faces disappear forever; all have van- 
 ished to return no more. The "voiceless dust" 
 hath claimed its own. Death reigns supreme. 
 
 The earth in its restless way shall move slower 
 and slower; the sun wanes dimmer and dimmer. 
 The pulse of life doth cease to beat in distant 
 worlds. Slower yet do the planets move; nearer, 
 
 64 
 
nearer to the sun the worlds approach drawn by 
 resistless gravitation, when of a sudden, with 
 mighty rush and roar, the whirling globes with 
 thunderous crash, ne'er heard by mortal ears, 
 do come together, and with growing heat intense, 
 the aggregated mass doth swell and swell, diffus- 
 ing over greater space a vaporous nebula. 
 
 And all for nothing — cosmic evolutions, a 
 swirling, lifeless mass of interacting molecules — 
 without a purpose, without a meaning, without a 
 God. 
 
 "Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 
 So careless of the single life; 
 
 '* 'So careful of the type?' but no. 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries, 'A thousand types are gone: 
 
 I care for nothing, all shall go. 
 
 " Thou makest thine appeal to me: 
 I bring to life, I bring to death : 
 The spirit does but mean the breath : 
 
 I know no more.' And he, shall he, 
 
 "Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, 
 Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
 Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 
 
 Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 
 
 65 
 
"Who trusted God was love indeed, 
 And love Creation's final law, — 
 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 
 With ravin, shriek'd against his creed, — 
 
 "Who loved, who suffer' d countless ills, 
 Who battled for the True, the Just, 
 Be blown about the desert dust, 
 
 Or seal'd within the iron hills? 
 
 "No more? A monster then, a dream, 
 A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
 That tear each other in their slime, 
 
 Were mellow music matched with him. 
 
 "O life as futile, then, as frail! 
 
 O for thy voice to soothe and bless! 
 
 What hope of answer, or redress? 
 Behind the veil, behind the veil." 
 
 That is the last word of naturalism. 
 
 66 
 
HERBERT SPENCER'S "EDUCATION/' 
 
 What knowledge is of most worth? is the ques- 
 tion discussed by Mr. Spencer in Chapter I. Un- 
 less we postulate a static unchanging form of 
 society, no absolute answer can be given. The 
 worth of knowledge is relative to the needs of 
 the people, their surroundings, their historic ori- 
 gin and position. Not one of these can be fixed 
 a priori and no particular form can be taken as 
 the society typical for all eternity. 
 
 ' r In order of time, decoration precedes dress" 
 (p. 5). Why does it? Why should it? We are 
 not told. Cases cited by Mr. Spencer to prove 
 his claims are taken chiefly from savage life. 
 
 1. Under such conditions the skin of the sav- 
 age serves the purposes of clothing. He is al- 
 ready dressed. Exposure to extremes of heat 
 and cold has habituated him to it. 2. Travelers 
 whose testimony is advanced infer the discomfort 
 of the savage because they would be uncomfor- 
 table under the same circumstances. The savage 
 is not uncomfortable, though the European 
 would be. 3. If anything, the savage views dec- 
 oration of more worth than what Mr. Spencer 
 calls "dress." From the savage's point of view 
 Mr. Spencer's implied criticism is of no worth. 
 So the savage, if wise enough, could turn Mr. 
 Spencer's argument against him, saying, "Do 
 without dress, harden yourself as I do. Such 
 would be immensely useful in saving time, labor 
 
 67 
 
and money. You have not shown your idea 
 superior to mine." 4. Admit the relativity of 
 knowledge and define dress in relation to its pur- 
 poses, then in any given tribe, dress precedes 
 ornament. 5. Among the Esquimaux does or- 
 nament precede dress? Are not the Jews to-day 
 more given to decoration than their ancestors 
 who lived in Judea in by-gone ages? Is the Ital- 
 ian woman of to-day less or more gaudy in dress 
 than the Roman matron "in the brave days 
 of old"? Are the Greeks to-day less orna- 
 mental in dress than when Socrates taught? 
 6. The prevalence of a desire for decora- 
 tion becomes on Mr. Spencer's theory a 
 test of advancement — in inverse ratio. Thus, 
 the gorgeous displays of millinery in our centres 
 of civilization are really relics of savagery 
 brought up to date. 7. Mr. Spencer fails to in- 
 corporate the universal demand for ornament 
 into a philosophy of aesthetics, thus missing its 
 deeper meaning. 8. Is it true of the animal 
 kingdom from which man is supposed to have 
 descended that decoration precedes dress? If 
 not true, why and how did man ever come to re- 
 verse the process? 9. The prevalence of orna- 
 ment depends on many conditions; but whatever 
 they be, on Mr. Spencer's philosophic theory it 
 is the fittest to survive and has not outlived its 
 usefulness. 
 
 "Among mental as among bodily acquisitions, 
 the ornamental comes before the useful. Not 
 only in times past, but almost as much in our 
 
own era, that knowledge which conduces to per- 
 sonal well-being has been postponed to that 
 which brings applause" (p. 6). It is a long, long 
 step from "decoration precedes dress" to the 
 "ornamental comes before the useful." No such 
 separation and opposition of the ornamental and 
 useful can be maintained. The ornamental came 
 into existence and persisted only as a useful ad- 
 junct in the struggle for life. Nor can Mr. Spen- 
 cer's fundamental ethical teaching cast any odium 
 on the ornamental, if the ornamental gave pleas- 
 ure to the person. Nor can it be admitted as 
 stated that "the ornamental comes before the 
 useful." Farther on in his book, he places first 
 "activities which directly minister to self- 
 preservation" as most useful and "knowledge im- 
 mediately conducive to self-preservation is of 
 primary importance." But if the ornamental so 
 overrides the useful, the race would long since 
 have been extinct. This puts Mr. Spencer in a di- 
 lemma. He would have to give up either his 
 theory of the ornamental and its opposition to 
 the useful or narrow the meaning of the term 
 useful so as to deprive it of its value as a strong 
 support to his wide philosophic theory. 
 
 He appeals to history. "In the Greek schools, 
 music, poetry, rhetoric and a philosophy which, 
 until Socrates taught, had but little bearing upon 
 action, were the dominant subjects; while knowl- 
 edge aiding the arts of life had a very subordinate 
 place" (p. 7). Mr. Spencer is probably trying to 
 read into the "arts of life" the meaning given 
 
 69 
 
them by the nineteenth century. Even an ama- 
 teur knows how profoundly the action of the 
 Greeks was affected by their schools and how in- 
 timately intertwined with and growing out of 
 their ideal of life. Nor can we expect otherwise 
 if we properly read the meaning of evolution. 
 Doubtless in those ancient days as in these mod- 
 ern ones, the confusion in the life of the practical 
 man arose from not consciously understanding 
 himself and acting on a consistent philosophy, or 
 rather from acting on all sorts of notions and 
 theories without searching for their philosophic 
 basis. 
 
 History shows extreme fluctuations in social 
 and moral conditions. Whether we view them 
 with Spencer as instances of the rhythm of 
 motion, or with Hegel as organic development — 
 thesis, antithesis, synthesis — yet it remains true 
 that the state of knowledge, the advancement of 
 learning, or the progress of the sciences, is not 
 the determining factor in morality. No neces- 
 sary connection exists between knowledge of 
 righteousness and doing right. At the dawn of 
 the twentieth century, it may be doubted whether 
 we with all our vast knowledge are really more 
 moral than people in the best periods of Greece 
 and Rome or in China or in ancient Israel. Af- 
 ter reaching a great and glorious eminence, both 
 Greece and Rome fell. Yet at that time their 
 knowledge was far superior to that of the heroic 
 age. The comparison of American with Athenian 
 life, made by Professor Fiske, a disciple of Spen- 
 cer, is not altogether favorable to Uncle Sam. 
 
 70 
 
It still is necessary to guard against the thief, 
 for he has grown wiser as well as the honest man. 
 In the preface to his "Principles of Ethics" Pro- 
 fessor Bowne says, "In the great bulk of duties 
 that make up life, men of good will can find their 
 way without a moral theory," and he might also 
 have added without that knowledge which to-day 
 is spoken of as scientific. This may be empha- 
 sized by examples taken from Mr. Spencer's 
 "Data of Ethics" and "Principles of Sociology"; 
 in both are mentioned certain peaceful tribes 
 among whom a high order of moral life prevails, 
 but certainly not a high order of scientific learn- 
 ing. 
 
 Had Mr. Spencer gone more deeply into the 
 history of education, he would have found exam- 
 ples contradicting his thesis — "the ornamental 
 comes before the useful." Even granting it true 
 of the schools of Athens, it is false of education 
 at Sparta. Education in ancient China, in Persia 
 and in Judea disprove that "knowledge aiding 
 the arts of life had a very subordinate place." If 
 I have read and heard aright, then China should 
 be a shining example of Mr. Spencer's utilitarian 
 agnosticism in practice. I can not say that I 
 have been impressed with the beauty of Chinese 
 art; can you? Yet the "arts of life" have re- 
 ceived much attention there, even to the point of 
 stagnation. Thus far Mr. Spencer's claim merits 
 the criticism of Professor Roscher on Carey's 
 "Past, Present and Future" — "It is rank with in- 
 exact science and unhistorical history." A wide 
 survey of life shows clearly that the practices of 
 
 7i 
 
a people can be understood only in the light of 
 their ideal as a family, tribe, city, state or nation ; 
 yet many a "practical" man is prone to deny the 
 existence of the ideal because he can not hear it 
 jingle like the dollars in his pocket or see it dan- 
 gle in front of his eyes like a jumping-jack on a 
 string. 
 
 It is too much to presume scientific knowledge 
 sufficient to satisfy all our needs. I can not see 
 how the knowledge that soap is made by the 
 chemical action of the natural fats and oils with 
 the alkalis is a whit better than the knowledge 
 that enables one to read the meaning of a pic- 
 ture or of a period of history. If this latter knowl- 
 edge be called scientific, the difficulty is not 
 solved but simply removed, for instead of a cri- 
 terion to decide between the scientific and non- 
 scientific, we would need one to decide between 
 the claims of the various sciences themselves, for 
 their range has been so widened as to include 
 what was not before considered scientific. As it 
 is, even now such a criterion is needed. Though 
 there may be scientific principles according to 
 which a picture is painted or a period of history 
 interpreted, it is not those principles that consti- 
 tute the chief interest of the picture or the period ; 
 nor is it the perception of those principles that 
 makes its meaning real for us as moral beings. 
 
 "Throughout his after-career a boy, in nine 
 cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to 
 no practical purposes" (p. 7). But (to use a 
 phrase of Mr. Spencer's) is this not due to "adap- 
 tation to environment"? If it gives pleasure to 
 
 72 
 
its possessor, how can it be bad? and if it give 
 pleasure, is it not useful, is it not practical? 
 Without asking how Mr. Spencer got his fig- 
 ures — "nine cases out of ten" — his condemnation 
 by no means applies only to students of Latin 
 and Greek. Of necessity many, many students 
 must apply their physics, chemistry, etc., to no 
 practical purpose. For practical purposes in this 
 world at least can not be determined beforehand 
 and it is consequently impossible for any student 
 to tell just what sciences and how much of each 
 he should require in his school life in order to 
 meet his particular practical purposes in later life. 
 Nor can Mr. Spencer's condemnation refer to 
 any defect in Latin and Greek. If it be wrong 
 to apply Latin and Greek to no practical purpose, 
 this counts against the motives of the learner, not 
 against the subjects ; and it does not matter what 
 be the subjects, the learner still must bear the 
 blame for not applying them to practical pur- 
 poses. Practical purposes are not their own jus- 
 tification. Many wicked purposes are intensely 
 practical and scientific knowledge at the com- 
 mand of a murderer may but make him more 
 skilful in doing the deed and covering up his 
 tracks afterward or in escaping the consequences 
 if caught. Scientific knowledge is by no means 
 free from the strictures which Mr. Spencer puts 
 on the classics. At the most he can claim they 
 have outlived their usefulness. They are yet 
 rather lively corpses. 
 
 School education should aim at practical pur- 
 poses — such is the implication of Mr. Spencer's 
 
 73 
 
theory, i. We are not agreed what practical 
 purposes are. 2. As before stated, they can not 
 be determined a priori, especially in a dynamic, 
 transitional form of society. 3. Consequently as 
 purposes are relative to the state of society, we 
 must have an eye to the probable future form. 
 4. Supposing we could adapt our school methods 
 to practical purposes, it has not been shown that 
 such would be wholly good. Our subordinating 
 the ideal to the practical might produce a sordid 
 stagnation. 5. If practical purposes mean money 
 getting, the "business of life," an emphatic pro- 
 test must be made against practical purposes. 
 6. There is a deeper unity of meaning in the his- 
 tory of education that overreaches the implied 
 separation between the practical and the ideal. 
 Among progressive nations I doubt whether Mr. 
 Spencer can find any instance of a system of edu- 
 cation holding its own for a long period of time, 
 based upon what he calls "practical purposes." 
 Every such instance if he could find any would 
 contradict his sweeping condemnation of past 
 practices. 
 
 "To prepare us for complete living is the func- 
 tion which education has to discharge" (p. 16). 
 Yes, but what is complete living? Is it more 
 than a mere generality? For the Buddhist it is 
 something far different from what it is for the 
 Christian; different for the monk and for the lib- 
 ertine; different for the philosopher and the dog- 
 catcher; different for the stoic and epicurean. 
 So runs the story; and each age gives its moral 
 meaning and philosophic setting to its practices. 
 
 74 
 
Even in these days in the centres of learning so 
 many are the clashing interests that members of 
 the same nation, citizens of the same city, nay, 
 even brothers of the same household, do not 
 agree what complete living is. Were we to agree 
 what constitutes complete living for the nineteenth 
 century we could scarcely expect agreement 
 upon the materials best fitted to meet it. Nor 
 would it of necessity be good, even could we do 
 so; for the nineteenth century is manifestly far 
 from perfection, and to wholly subordinate edu- 
 cation to complete living of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury type would be a gross wrong. 
 
 But Mr. Spencer answers his own question. 
 "The leading kinds of activity which constitute 
 human life . . . may be naturally arranged into : 
 i. Those activities which directly minister to 
 self-preservation; to those activities which, by 
 securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minis- 
 ter to self-preservation. 3. Those activities which 
 have for their end the rearing and disciplining 
 of offspring. 4. Those activities which are in- 
 volved in the maintenance of proper social and 
 political relations. 5. Those miscellaneous activ- 
 ities which make up the leisure part of life, de- 
 voted to the gratification of the tastes and feel- 
 ings." This he says "is something like the ra- 
 tional order of subordination. . . . We do not 
 mean to say that these divisions are definitely 
 separable. We do not deny that they are intri- 
 cately entangled with each other in such ways 
 that there can be no training for any that is not 
 in some measure a training for all." While thus 
 
 75 
 
recognizing the interrelations, of the activities of 
 life, Mr. Spencer unfortunately looks at them 
 through physical spectacles. The physical basis 
 of life is viewed of primary importance; he fails 
 to see that it has its meaning only in subordina- 
 tion to the moral. The activities, as he sees, do 
 not lie side by side; but he does not see that the 
 first two classes can be justified only as a means 
 to realize the higher ones. So I would call his 
 class not the rational, but the physical subordina- 
 tion; and his complete living is so complete that 
 it can include every thief, firebug, murderer and 
 every other form of wicked life within its scope. 
 For he has not defined complete living as morally 
 good or righteous living. Forms of life are them- 
 selves in need of a criticism. 
 
 Education securing self-preservation "is in 
 great part already provided for. . . . Nature 
 takes it into her own hands." Outside of this Mr. 
 Spencer leaves unanswered questions of great im- 
 portance to the teacher. He does not tell us 
 whether the time given to each class is to be pro- 
 portioned to its position in the scheme, to the 
 difficulty of acquiring the assigned knowledge or 
 the amount assigned. A principle of selection is 
 indicated when, in speaking of accomplishments, 
 the fine arts and "all those things which consti- 
 tute the efflorescence of civilization," he says, 
 "As they occupy the leisure part of life, so should 
 they occupy the leisure part of education." This 
 again takes life at present for granted as self- 
 sufficient and needing no further justification. 
 And again can Mr. Spencer be quoted against 
 
 76 
 
Mr. Spencer, for far from restricting the leisure 
 part, he has the rosiest outlook for its growth. 
 Listen. "We yield to none in the value we at- 
 tach to aesthetic culture and its pleasures. With- 
 out painting, sculpture, music, poetry and the 
 emotions produced by natural beauty of every 
 kind, life would lose half its charm. So far from 
 thinking that the training and gratification of the 
 tastes are unimportant, we believe the time will 
 come when they will occupy a much larger share 
 of human life than now." Ah, but Mr. Spencer, if 
 that be so, education can play but little part in 
 that glorious development for you have made its 
 chief purposes servants to the sordid things of 
 life. Why will it not become more servile? For 
 you tell us the keen competition of modern life 
 but few can bear without injury, that thousands 
 break down under the strain and that the strain 
 seems likely to increase (p. 239); and again (p. 
 283) "intenser competition taxes the energies and 
 abilities of every adult," the young must be sub- 
 jected to a more severe discipline than hereto- 
 fore. Why then will not the future see more and 
 more time and energies devoted to education 
 subserving the first two classes of activities? Mr. 
 Spencer's outlook is not so rosy, after all. Aes- 
 thetic education and the warm life of feeling will 
 be slowly frozen to death. 
 
 But taking him at his most cheerful word, 
 when shall it come to pass? "When the forces of 
 Nature have been fully conquered to man's use- — 
 when the means of production have been brought 
 to perfection — when labor has been economized 
 
 77 
 
to the highest degree — when education has been 
 so systematized that a preparation for the more 
 essential activities may be made with compara- 
 tive rapidity — and when, consequently, there is 
 a great increase of spare time; then will the poe- 
 try, both of Art and Nature, rightly fill a large 
 space in the minds of all." All Mr. Spencer's 
 conditions can be admitted without his conclu- 
 sion, "consequently, there is a great increase of 
 spare time." On the contrary, we can conceive 
 a state in which labor is economized and educa- 
 tion systematized with yet the masses a servile 
 lot toiling for the benefit of the few. No less a 
 philosopher than John Stuart Mill, with whom 
 Mr. Spencer once expressed himself most anx- 
 ious to be in agreement, has said that inventions 
 have not "lightened the toil of any human being," 
 and also that "they have enabled a greater num- 
 ber to live the same life of drudgery and impris- 
 onment." With all the external, material im- 
 provements there must go an improvement in 
 moral life. Not only must the forces of Nature 
 be conquered, but man's intense selfishness must 
 be controlled and made to minister unto the bet- 
 ter life. That universal nature in man linking 
 him with the Divine will demand its rights and 
 assert its primacy. Then and only then can 
 God's kingdom come on earth. 
 
 What knowledge best meets the needs of the 
 five classes of activities? Mr. Spencer takes up 
 each and the answer every time is — Science. 
 "Not exhaustive cultivation in any one, su- 
 premely important though it may be — not even 
 
 78 
 
an exclusive attention to the two, three or four 
 divisions of greatest importance; but an atten- 
 tion to all — greatest where the value is greatest, 
 less where the value is less, least where the value 
 is least. For the average man . . . the desid- 
 eratum is a training that approaches nearest to 
 perfection in the things which most subserve 
 complete living, and falls more and more below 
 perfection in the things that have more and more 
 remote bearings on complete living" (p. 22). I 
 have already remarked the relativity of complete 
 living and its subordination to morality — right 
 living. Our attention must be directed not 
 merely to how much value we get, but also to 
 the kind of value. Thus for a young lady of to- 
 day, only elementary knowledge of mathematics 
 is needed, unless she choose some special posi- 
 tion. Value of a better kind would be derived 
 from good literature and the philosophy of his- 
 tory. Although both these fall outside of Mr. 
 Spencer's first two classes, their utility in broad- 
 ening the mind and improving character far ex- 
 ceeds that of mathematics. A man is not a mere 
 calculating machine, searching for cause and ef- 
 fect only in the material world ; but a person with 
 rights and feelings most precious to him in his 
 real, every-day life. Cause and effect in rights 
 and feelings have proved in history more import- 
 ant than the logic of mathematics. Great world 
 movements have been inspired chiefly by the 
 contact of living sympathies rather than by rea- 
 soning, though reason played its part in the 
 whole. Thus according to Lecky the decline of 
 
 79 
 
superstition and persecution was not so much 
 due to abstract arguments against them as to a 
 slow change in the mental attitude of the people, 
 a more or less unconscious influence of the Zeit- 
 geist. Even the wisest but dimly perceive the 
 meaning and importance of the great drama in 
 which they play the leading parts. 
 
 Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, so- 
 ciology, "the natural history of society," psychol- 
 ogy, physiology and the theory and practice of 
 education are the subjects in Mr. Spencer's cur- 
 riculum. He shows how the principles enter into 
 the various activities of life and underlie the arts. 
 He mentions the carpenter, surveyor, engineer, 
 architect and a host of others. Nearly all the 
 facts may be admitted and yet Mr. Spencer's in- 
 ferences may be denied as applied to the curricu- 
 lum of a public school. It is impossible to teach in 
 a public school all or even a few of the arts men- 
 tioned by Mr. Spencer; were it possible, it could 
 not be justified on the ground of utility, for but 
 very few of the multitude of facts would probably 
 ever be used to save life, to aid business or min- 
 ister to social life. Suppose we taught bridge- 
 building or the mechanics of engineering. How 
 often would we use the facts learned to tell the 
 strength of the bridges over which we traveled 
 or the safety of the curves around which our 
 train was whirling? Viewed from the side of the 
 facts of the various arts, Mr. Spencer's argu- 
 ment becomes merely a plea for special schools. 
 Now let us view it from the side of principles. 
 We are not to teach the arts in particular, but the 
 
 80 
 
principles which underlie them. But we now get 
 into trouble, for they must be taught inductively 
 and hence we must go to the facts and practices 
 of the art as a basis of the induction. Pupils 
 would be taught from machines, stoves, and a 
 multitude of scientific appliances. Now to teach 
 all these things would take perhaps a bit more 
 time than could be spared. But suppose they 
 have been taught. Mr. Spencer's chief justifica- 
 tion for them is their utility, their superior value 
 over others. A fallacy vitiates the argument. 
 Knowledge of principles does not insure, guaran- 
 tee or necessarily issue in use or application of 
 those principles. Scientific knowledge as well as 
 every other, suffers from the contingencies of life 
 and the weaknesses of human nature. Physio- 
 logical principles are tolerably well known 
 among educated people; we hear lots of talk 
 about following the laws of nature; but we read 
 a great deal more about cures for dyspepsia and 
 dozens of patent medicines for scores of ailments. 
 Newspaper advertisements thus furnish an a pos- 
 teriori basis for inferring some prevailing social 
 conditions. Mr. Spencer knows these facts, for 
 he says, "Men's necessities often compel them to 
 transgress." The cause is deeper rooted than 
 lack of knowledge of hygienic laws. 
 
 Every time a stone is thrown, every time a 
 step is taken, the laws of motion are implied and 
 applied, but it does not necessarily follow that 
 they will be better applied by a person because 
 he understands them. I cannot throw a ball any 
 better or walk to better advantage now that I 
 
 81 
 
know the laws of motion than when a boy when 
 I didn't know them. A course in military en- 
 gineering would scarcely enable a policeman to 
 shoot more accurately at a fleeing criminal. In 
 the most interesting field of life — our own per- 
 sonality in its relations to others — science is well- 
 nigh futile to give any law that will apply to every 
 case or even to a great number. A large part 
 of life seems doomed to rest upon empirical ex- 
 perience rather than upon conscious knowledge 
 of scientific laws. Scientific laws of some sort 
 may be found in all experience, but they deter- 
 mine very little for us. Determination rests 
 chiefly with the human will and that can not be 
 calculated beforehand. 
 
 Mr. Spencer distinguishes three values in 
 knowledge — intrinsic, quasi-intrinsic and con- 
 ventional. "Such facts as that sensations of 
 numbness and tingling commonly precede paral- 
 ysis, that the resistance of water to a body mov- 
 ing through it varies as the square of the velocity, 
 that chlorine is a disinfectant — these and the 
 truths of Science in general, are of intrinsic value : 
 they will bear on human conduct ten thousand 
 years hence as they do now" (p. 23). 1. Such 
 facts as bear directly on the conduct of any par- 
 ticular person can be learned by that person with- 
 out taking a course in the cognate science under- 
 lying the particular facts. Thus, the ordinary 
 man could become acquainted with the most im- 
 portant chemical facts bearing on his own af- 
 fairs without taking a course in chemistry. The 
 
 82 
 
multitude of facts I learned in a course in chem- 
 istry have proved of very little practical value, of 
 little utility, while the atomic theory, as a theory, 
 has had much more active influence on my con- 
 duct than any single fact in chemistry. In my 
 own case the value as discipline far outweighed 
 the value as "intrinsic" knowledge. 2. Mr. Spen- 
 cer makes universality and persistence in time 
 the criterion of the worth of knowledge. On 
 this count he should advocate ithe higher mathe- 
 matics as of supreme importance for practical 
 life. Yet surely for the mass of men to-day they 
 have very little effect directly upon conduct. 
 Their value as discipline is greater than their 
 value as knowledge. 3. Following Mr. Spen- 
 cer's method, metaphysics should occupy a prom- 
 inent place in his scheme. Metaphysics is 
 conspicuous by its absence. Yet it underlies all 
 the sciences, making them possible. Everything 
 we say and do may be traced to its root in meta- 
 physics. "Religion," says Schopenhauer, "is a 
 metaphysic of the common people." The con- 
 ception of ultimate purpose has had greater ef- 
 fect on conduct than that of proximate utility. 
 Indeed, proximate utility can be justified only on 
 grounds of ultimate purpose and may be shown 
 to have sprung from the metaphysical nature of 
 man. 4. The fundamental requisite for the exist- 
 ence of society is not scientific knowledge par 
 excellence, but mutual regard for rights. Civil 
 society as the "institute of rights" demands an 
 ethical basis first or scientific knowledge simply 
 will not develop, for that is possible only where 
 
 83 
 
society exists. We must not forget the millions 
 who exist with practically no developed scien- 
 tific knowledge, but yet hold together as socie- 
 ties and in many cases are happier than we, if 
 judged by quantity. On Mr. Spencer's ethical 
 philosophy they are nearer the ideal than we. 
 
 When Mr. Spencer demands a reform of indi- 
 vidualistic history and emphasizes the import- 
 ance of social history — "descriptive sociology," 
 "the natural history of society" — he comes peril- 
 ously near those German thinkers whose philos- 
 ophy he repudiates and makes a loophole 
 through which enter the classical languages he 
 had previously excluded. As his thought devel- 
 ops, he gets away from a narrow conception 
 of science, finally science becomes all-inclusive, 
 identical with philosophy. What is untrue is un- 
 scientific. In a scientific history Mr. Spencer 
 would have "all facts which help us to under- 
 stand how a nation has grown and organized 
 itself"; also "an account of its government. . . . 
 the structure, principles, methods, prejudices, 
 corruption, etc., which it exhibited; . . . the ec- 
 clesiastical government, . . . social observances, 
 . . . popular life out of doors and in doors, . . . 
 the relations of parents to children, the industrial 
 system, . . . the intellectual condition, . . . aes- 
 thetic culture, . . . and lastly, to connect the 
 whole, should be exhibited the morals, theoret- 
 ical and practical, of all classes" (pp. 59 to 61). 
 1. These would all be impossible without a 
 knowledge of the language and literature of the 
 people under consideration. 2. Language and 
 
 84 
 
literature express phases in the development of 
 a people as certainly as law, politics, religion, 
 science or architecture. 3. Mr. Spencer's exclu- 
 sion of language and literature is therefore purely 
 arbitrary: 4. Latin and Greek are all the more 
 necessary to "rational interpretation of social 
 phenomena" such as ours because so much in our 
 own has grown out of the life of the Greeks and 
 Romans. 5. Morals, Mr. Spencer recognizes 
 after all his praise of the physical, as necessary 
 ''to connect the whole." 6. The atomistic indi- 
 vidualism in the logical and psychological devel- 
 opment of his theory of evolution thus brings 
 about its own antithesis in his demand for social 
 history. 
 
 As Mr. Spencers general statement does not 
 keep out the classical languages let us pass to 
 his special reasons. "Supposing it true that clas- 
 sical education conduces to elegance and correct- 
 ness of style; it can not be said that elegance and 
 correctness of style are comparable in impor- 
 tance to a familiarity with the principles that 
 should guide the rearing of children. Grant that 
 the taste may be greatly improved by reading all 
 the poetry written in extinct languages; yet it is 
 not to be inferred that such improvement of taste 
 is equivalent in value to an acquaintance with 
 the laws of health" (p. 67). 1. Unless it be as- 
 sumed that the knowledge of the principles of 
 training and of the laws of health is to be used, 
 I fail to see its superiority over the classical learn- 
 ing. 2. On Mr. Spencer's own principles, the 
 
 85 
 
classical learning if used must be immensely su- 
 perior to the scientific which is not used. 3. 
 Much disagreement exists concerning the prin- 
 ciples which "should guide the rearing of chil- 
 dren" and "the laws of health" are by no means as 
 definite as might be imagined. Consequently, 
 even if put into practice bad results could follow. 
 4. There is no necessary antagonism between 
 classical learning and scientific; both exist to- 
 gether, as many a student can testify. Mr. Spen- 
 cer should not say much about the laws of health 
 as a large part of school education, because "that 
 all-important part which goes to secure direct 
 self-preservation, is in great part already pro- 
 vided for. Nature takes it into her own hands." 
 When a few pages farther on, he tells of the many 
 ways we may become ill or enfeebled, one is 
 tempted to ask, "What has become of Nature 
 with her safeguards?" Nature with a capital N 
 is a poor provider, it seems. 5. Granting the im- 
 portance of Mr. Spencer's claims, it does not fol- 
 low that the subjects mentioned can best be 
 taught by making them parts of the school curric- 
 ulum. Home influence should be the most pow- 
 erful in giving reality to the laws of health. It is 
 the exceptional pupil that of his own free will 
 puts in practice the hygienic rules learnt at 
 school. 6. Mr. Spencer judges classical learning 
 by its least important qualities. 
 
 "While language familiarizes with non-rational 
 relations, science familiarizes with rational rela- 
 tions. While the one exercises memory only, the 
 
 86 
 
other exercises both memory and understand- 
 ing" (p. 83). But Mr. Spencer here uses 
 "science" in its narrow sense. Thus used, he 
 must either exclude ethics, sociology and educa- 
 tion from the sciences or else include language 
 within them under sociology. For on the narrow 
 meaning, it has been seriously questioned 
 whether there are such sciences as ethics, sociol- 
 ogy and education ; while if they are sciences, as 
 Mr. Spencer says they are (in the wider sense), 
 then there is a science of language, and its rela- 
 tions are just as rational as any other within so- 
 ciology. For by rational relations Mr. Spencer 
 means "causal relations," "necessary relations" 
 and by non-rational relations he means "fortui- 
 tous relations," "accidental relations." Now I 
 submit that language as a part of sociology has 
 causal, necessary, rational relations to the nature 
 of the people whose language it is ; to their envi- 
 ronment, to emigration, to neighboring peoples, 
 to languages from which it grew, to art, law, pol- 
 itics, religion and literature of the people and 
 their historic epoch. I further submit that ac- 
 cording to Mr. Spencer's large "Synthetic Philos- 
 ophy" non-rational relations is a contradiction in 
 terms; that only causal relations can exist in any 
 and all departments of life; and that the differ- 
 ence between the necessary relations of mathe- 
 matics (with the sciences closest to it) and the 
 so-called "accidental" relations of ethics, sociol- 
 ogy and education is not and cannot be a differ- 
 ence in rationality, but only a difference in the 
 complexity of the relations and conditions under 
 
 87 
 
which the cause operates. For the sciences last 
 named deal with physical, chemical and mechan- 
 ical relations the same as mathematics, only more 
 complicated, that is, if we trust Mr. Spencer's 
 metaphysics; and if we trust his conception of 
 rational relations in his "Education," the sciences 
 all suffer as they get away from mathematics ; the 
 farther, the less rational they must become. 
 
 Nor can Mr Spencer's sharp separation of 
 memory and understanding be maintained. Facts 
 remembered must (in his psychology) be co- 
 ordinated according to some law, i. c, they must 
 be understood; and conversely we remember what 
 we understand. We cannot grant that language 
 of necessity "exercises memory only." Mr. Spen- 
 cer himst!f qualifies his charges by the words 
 "as ordinarily carried on" and the languages "as 
 commonly learned"; and he likewise qualifies his 
 praises of science by the words "when properly 
 taught they are understood" as causal relations. 
 So if we take Mr. Spencer at his word, the 
 sciences may be improperly taught and fail to 
 exercise the understanding. A young man who 
 remembered many facts of science did not re- 
 member how to use the facts when the occasion 
 required; if for nothing more worthy, he might 
 have used them to "show off" his learning as 
 well as if he had been a devoted student of the 
 classics. So Mr. Spencer leaves the question 
 open whether the languages if properly taught 
 might not exercise both memory and understand- 
 ing. His separation of the two seems to depend 
 on a faculty-psychology which considers mental 
 
activities independent units, mechanically sep- 
 arated like blocks of wood, or with an impassable 
 chasm between. This view is contradicted not 
 only by a true interpretation of evolution and by 
 the best parts of Mr. Spencer's social philosophy, 
 but also by the facts of common life. The struc- 
 ture of our language; the overlapping activities 
 classed by Mr. Spencer; the law of association 
 and of correlation in psychology; the futile at- 
 tempts to classify the sciences by sharply defining 
 the scope and method of each; and the inter- 
 changeability of general terms, like history of 
 philosophy, philosophy of history, science of psy- 
 chology, psychology of science — all these form a 
 basis for an a posteriori argument for the organic 
 unity of mind, a point on which Mr. Spencer's 
 philosophy is notoriously weak. 
 
 The opening sentences of his "First Princi- 
 ples" read. "We too often forget that not only is 
 there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very 
 generally a soul of truth in things erroneous. 
 While many admit the abstract probability that 
 a falsity has usually a nucleus of reality, few bear 
 this abstract probability in mind, when passing 
 judgment on the opinions of others." Mr. Spen- 
 cer, I fear, has missed the soul of truth in the clas- 
 sical learning. In his anxiety to do something 
 great for his favorite sciences, he fails to inquire 
 closely into the learning he opposes to them to 
 find "what there was in it which commended it 
 to men's minds." Language no less than science 
 springs from a common root in the mind of man. 
 Representing a great phase of his life it can claim 
 
 89 
 
a place in the curriculum as well as science. 
 Latin and Greek form epochs in the history of 
 languages and Rome and Greece in the history 
 of the world. No one that looks carefully can 
 deny the great influence those so-called dead lan- 
 guages and civilizations exert on our life to-day. 
 Being dead they yet speak. Law, art, language, 
 politics, literature, religion, philosophy, yea, even 
 the sciences, find the ancient civilizations throw- 
 ing light upon them. He that believes our life can 
 be understood only in the light of its history thus 
 has strong reasons for studying the classics of 
 Greece and Rome, and without denying science 
 a place, and an honorable place too, in the cur- 
 riculum. Science as a phase in the history of our 
 civilization can not be denied its rights. But it 
 must also recognize its limits; for elated with its 
 great successes in the nineteenth century it has 
 become not only dogmatic, but hogmatic, having 
 shown a disposition to claim everything in sight. 
 Mr. Spencer has but half the truth in his re- 
 marks on painting. "In painting, the necessity 
 for scientific knowledge, empirical if not rational, 
 is still more conspicuous. In what consists the 
 grotesqueness of Chinese pictures, unless in their 
 utter disregard of the law of appearances — in their 
 absurd linear perspective, and their want of aerial 
 perspective?" (p. 70). The primary purpose of 
 painting is not to teach scientific laws, but to 
 arouse feelings and in the highest sense to arouse 
 feelings of a moral and religious character. Cer- 
 tainly, to do this involves some degree of scien- 
 tific knowledge, or following scientific laws; but 
 
 90 
 
these are only the means, not the end, for when 
 the end becomes such that neglect of scientific 
 laws is necessary, the laws are straightway 
 neglected. For example, in comic art success de- 
 pends upon a degree of exaggeration, violating 
 scientific laws. Doubtless, some aspects of truth 
 may be found in such, but other aspects are ig- 
 nored. Even in serious work certain aspects are 
 neglected for the sake of the artist's purpose. 
 From the purely physical scientific point of view, 
 details in the foreground and background should 
 receive as much attention as other things in the 
 foreground and background. But the real artist 
 does not paint every pore, every blemish or every 
 detail he sees in his subjects. Yet a scrupulous 
 regard for pure science would impel him to do so. 
 The essential characteristic of a picture is the 
 meaning. If that be well conveyed, from the 
 artistic standpoint it is good art; but from the 
 ethical standpoint the meaning must be moral, 
 it must appeal to the better nature of the specta- 
 tors. Chinese art, grotesque as it is, would be 
 successful if it were meant to be grotesque. That 
 some part of truth is there, I do not deny; nor 
 do I deny that such truth is scientific in the wider 
 sense. But I do say that in order to concentrate 
 attention on the chief aspects of the truth he 
 is representing, the painter must neglect minor 
 aspects. Though he may be scientific in the best 
 sense, he is unscientific in the lower sense in so 
 far as he neglects those minor aspects; and I 
 gladly admit that Mr. Spencer identifying truth 
 and science can say that my argument only 
 
 9i 
 
proves his own case, but in the restricted sense of 
 the term scientific, his own arguments are self- 
 contradictory and carried to their logical conclu- 
 sion would subordinate imagination and its pro- 
 ducts to physical sciences. Santa Claus and 
 fairies would cease to have a meaning in the 
 training of childhood. Thomas Gradgrind would 
 be supreme in education. 
 
 "Not only, however, for intellectual discipline 
 is science the best; but also for moral discipline" 
 (p. 84). Mr. Spencer proves (?) his case by first 
 assaulting the learning of the classics. The pu- 
 pil's "constant attitude of mind is that of sub- 
 mission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary 
 result is a tendency to accept without inquiry 
 whatever is established." Now science may be 
 taught in the same way and secondly in learning 
 the classics there is no need of an attitude of 
 submission or of its so-called necessary result, 
 for the rule in the grammar can be reached in- 
 ductively from instances of it no less than can a 
 scientific law, or given the rule, it can be verified 
 by appeal to the language no less than a 
 scientific law. Moreover, Mr. Spencer's reasons 
 at this point would count against English 
 grammar, French grammar, and the others 
 as well as against Greek and Latin. I 
 do not see why the following sentence 
 can not be applied to language as well as to 
 science: "Its truths are not accepted upon au- 
 thority alone; but all are at liberty to test them 
 — nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to 
 think out his own conclusions." Nor has science 
 
 92 
 
historically proved to be always a bulwark of mo- 
 rality; indeed, I have more than once heard it 
 used to justify immorality and put a premium on 
 human weaknesses. Mr. Spencer's hedonistic 
 ethics with its emphasis of the pleasurable can 
 scarcely be freed from the charge. In moral dis- 
 cipline the essential requirement is respect for 
 rights — self-respect and respect for others — "Be 
 a person and respect others as persons" — "Let 
 your act be such that you can will it to become 
 a universal law." Science has no monopoly on 
 that discipline. From the study of science, says 
 Mr. Spencer, "there flows that independence 
 which is a most valuable element in character." 
 But character is not necessarily good and inde- 
 pendence may characterize the criminal as well 
 as the law-abiding citizen. The thief is independ- 
 ent of the temptations of goodness, but is a 
 slave to the temptations of wickedness. Good in- 
 deed is the man that has attained a much better 
 kind of independence — freedom from evil. No 
 shame, but an honor is it to him to acknowledge 
 his dependence on goodness; and if the libertine 
 reproaches him with being a slave to goodness, 
 how much worse a slave is that same libertine to 
 the animal that lords it over his own soul ! Nor 
 has science any exclusive claim to the exercise of 
 "perseverance and sincerity." Both of these 
 may be directed to bad ends. Does not Mr. Spen- 
 cer tell us of the Turcoman who is so sincere in 
 his stealing that every year he makes a pilgrim- 
 age to the tomb of some noted robber? One 
 needs only to study a little criminology to learn 
 
 93 
 
how persevering are the inhabitants of Sing Sing, 
 Cherry Hill and Moyamensing. Individualizing 
 independence is one of the worst foes of a good 
 home life and a high moral character. 
 
 "The discipline of science is superior to that of 
 our ordinary education, because of the religious 
 culture that it gives" (p. 85). One may admit 
 that science may be religious, but it is not neces- 
 sarily so. On the contrary, it has at times been 
 irreligious, as Mr. Spencer recognizes, but he 
 calls that "the science that is current" and op- 
 poses to it "true science that has passed beyond 
 the superficial into the profound." This looks 
 dangerously like metaphysics, which Mr. Spencer 
 forgot to put in his curriculum. But at the time 
 Mr. Spencer wrote (1861) there was good cause 
 for thinking science irreligious; it was antagonis- 
 tic not only "to the superstitions that pass under 
 the name of religion/' but in being handmaid 
 to an agnostic metaphysics, was attacking the 
 very fundamental basis of religion, both theoret- 
 ical and practical. Mr. Spencer's agnosticism 
 leaves no room for "divinely-ordained methods," 
 for "a beneficent order of things," for the writing 
 of "the finger of God upon the strata of the 
 Earth" — no room or speaking "teleologically," 
 for making assertions about the Absolute and its 
 relations to men and the world. But all these 
 find a place in "Education." Under an agnostic 
 theory, religious feelings would starve to death 
 and religious theory be a cobweb of pretentious 
 humbug. 
 
 94 
 
"Devotion to science is a tacit worship — a tacit 
 worship of worth in the things studied; and by 
 implication in their Cause. It is not a mere lip- 
 homage, but homage expressed in actions — not a 
 professed respect, but a respect proved by the 
 sacrifice of time, thought and labor." Then, too, 
 science "generates a profound respect for, and 
 an implicit faith in, those uniform laws which 
 underlie all things" (p. 87). Here appears again 
 the defect of studying things rather than persons. 
 If a grocer jumps away from his counter to avoid 
 having his toe crushed by a falling weight, is this 
 not a "tacit worship" according to Mr. Spencer? 
 It is "expressed in actions" and evidences a "pro- 
 found respect for and implicit faith in those uni- 
 form laws which underlie all things." The gro- 
 cer is familiar enough with the phenomena of 
 gravitation and of masses in motion (to say noth- 
 ing of the nature of the toe) to let them influence 
 his conduct, even though he may not know 
 G = ^gp With Mr. Spencer's external stand- 
 ard everyone is religious. Every one does much 
 as the grocer; a thief may study various things, 
 thereby testifying to their worth and by implica- 
 tion thus worshiping their Cause. Likewise the 
 cannibal who eats his captured enemy and sacri- 
 fices time, thought and labor to prepare him for 
 the cauldron. On Mr. Spencer's scientific 
 theory, with cause and effect universal, every 
 such fact is scientific, every one follows some nat- 
 ural law. Death is a scientific fact; it is not un- 
 natural for a person to be ill; it is impossible to 
 act on other than some natural law. Consequently 
 
 95 
 
as all of us so act, and such action expresses reli- 
 gious homage, we are therefore all religious. For 
 all we know, when we worship the Unknowable, 
 we may be worshiping something utterly bad. 
 Between facts about things and facts about per- 
 sons and nations, Mr. Spencer seems rather to 
 choose the former, while he swerves so much as 
 to give us practically no ideal for which to work. 
 For it is in ideal personality, *. e. God, that things 
 get their purpose and a religion that sacrifices 
 human personality to things and to a philosophic 
 abstraction, i. e. the Unknowable, can never per- 
 manently satisfy either the head or the heart. 
 
 Having judged Mr. Spencer piecemeal, let us 
 now look at him in the light of history, trying to 
 discover the soul of truth in his work. I like to 
 think of him as a mode of that Unknowable about 
 which he knows so much. The particular mode 
 of which he is a representative is nineteenth cen- 
 tury naturalism, utilitarianism and industrialism 
 with its ideal of individual competiton. His 
 sweeping condemnation of the past and underval- 
 uation of authority is strongly reminiscent of the 
 philosophers of the French Revolution. His ag- 
 nosticism develops from the same faulty ab- 
 straction as Kant's Ding-an-Sich. The absolute 
 and irreconcilable separation of subject and ob- 
 ject in "First Principles" has a fitting parallel in 
 "Education" in the antagonism of the useful and 
 ornamental, and of the sciences and the classics. 
 His empiricism in psychology is a continuation of 
 the traditional English method of Hobbes, Locke 
 and Hume, while his individualism in political 
 
 96 
 
economy follows the orthodox political economy 
 of Smith, Malthus and Ricardo. His naturalism 
 and hedonism have their immediate roots in the 
 French Revolution. The emphasis put on the 
 pleasurable in his ethical philosophy is reflected 
 in the methods recommended by him in "Educa- 
 tion," particularly in Chapter II. 
 
 "Mr. Spencer's 'Education' as a polemic," says 
 Professor Francis Burke Brandt, "is a decided 
 success, but it is neither a science nor philosophy 
 of education." Much that Mr. Spencer argued 
 for has been brought to pass and we can already 
 see its results. As a reaction against the over- 
 dose of classical learning in England at the time 
 he wrote, his work had a beneficial effect, but he 
 has swung too far to the other extreme and as 
 can be proved from the history of education, his 
 charges against the past have no such universal 
 validity as might be imagined. The Copernican 
 system of astronomy was originated by a monk 
 who certainly knew a bit of mathematics, and 
 Kepler discovered his laws on a metaphysical 
 belief in a mathematical harmony underlying na- 
 ture, while Kant, the great German philosopher, 
 in some measure anticipated Laplace's nebular 
 theory. Leibnitz, Descartes, Newton and Sir 
 William Hamilton have made notable contribu- 
 tions to mathematics. All these men were brought 
 up under the classical system repudiated by Mr. 
 Spencer. While it is possible they accomplished 
 their work in spite of their classics, it would be 
 a quite difficult point to prove and at any rate 
 shows there is no necessary antagonism between 
 
 97 
 
science and the classics. One need not delve 
 deeply into the history of education to prove that 
 as a rule astronomy and mathematics have from 
 time immemorial occupied an honorable place in 
 the curriculum. 
 
 Many of the particular charges Mr. Spencer 
 brings against parents and social observances 
 are true, but they do not follow from his philo- 
 sophic or educational theory. Parents doubtless 
 are often ignorant and make many blunders in 
 consequence, yet I know more than one parent 
 who commits the blunders mentioned by Mr. 
 Spencer because of trying to put Mr. Spencer's 
 ethical hedonism into practice. The pleasure of 
 the child becomes a chief aim; accordingly he 
 gets an exaggerated idea of his own importance 
 and the reaction against the exaggeration leads 
 the parent also into exaggeration. Thus in the 
 domain of human actions science can not guaran- 
 tee results. It works on the hypothetical syllo- 
 gism, "If such and such and so and so be the case 
 then perhaps this, that or the other will follow." 
 Now at the dawn of the twentieth century let 
 each one ask, Has science made me more truth- 
 ful, more honest, more sincere, more dutiful as 
 husband, wife, father, mother or friend? Has it 
 made me more respectful of the rights of others 
 and kept me a better citizen? In consequence of 
 science, am I a better man or woman than I was 
 yesterday, last week, last month, last year? In 
 consequence of science, is the city, state or na- 
 tion more moral than at any period of history? 
 Are there fewer frauds and liars pro rata in the 
 
 98 
 
business world than ever before? Is science to 
 be praised for the works of art that delight and 
 instruct us? Shall we thank science for giving 
 us a new Mint? Shall we blame the classics for 
 the ugly, smoky piles of brick factories amid 
 which it has been placed? And finally, has science 
 made us a more religious people? 
 
 The great question, What knowledge is of 
 most worth? is but a part of the greater one, 
 What is the worth of life? At one blow could the 
 pessimist shatter the whole structure reared by 
 Mr. Spencer. We can fancy him saying, "Mr. 
 Spencer, your whole system presupposes life is 
 worth living and aims to continue the ills and ir- 
 rationality inherent in life itself. As intelligence 
 increases, we become more susceptible to pain 
 and misery. Relief can be permanent only when 
 comes the will to live no more. Unless your sys- 
 tem makes people realize the utter futility of life 
 and show them utter oblivion as the cure for all 
 their woes, it receives my unqualified condem- 
 nation. You have not proved but dogmatically 
 have taken for granted the foundation upon 
 which your system rests." 
 
 Now I'll venture a bit of a prophecy. Love, 
 science and competition have been overdone in 
 this nineteenth century and the reaction against 
 them is already on. In that reaction, love, 
 science and competition will have their limits 
 and purposes more clearly defined. Like most 
 reactions, it will swing a bit too far, perhaps tak- 
 ing up and over-developing socialism or some 
 other element that has not yet appeared clearly 
 
 8 L.ofC. 99 
 
enough to have its importance recognized. 
 Against that over-development will come an op- 
 posite reaction whose specific nature I do not 
 presume to foresee. 
 
 As has already been said, science as an import- 
 ant phase in which man's mind manifests itself 
 deserves a place in the curriculum; but being 
 only one and not all phases, it can not justly de- 
 mand the whole program. No object of the ex- 
 ternal world can permanently satisfy man's long- 
 ings, for no such object embraces within it truth, 
 beauty and moral goodness. Science in the re- 
 stricted meaning, applying only to external 
 things, to the soulless world, finds itself unable 
 to meet the needs of soulful creatures. Science 
 in the larger sense comes near to man, however, 
 and when truth, beauty and moral goodness meet 
 in human personality, the ideal comes nearest 
 realization on this earthly sphere. Science in the 
 larger sense dealing with human personality 
 passes then beyond the finite, for it becomes 
 necessary to deal with the infinite in man that 
 links him with the Divine. With science culmi- 
 nating in the science of religion, every need of 
 man therein finds satisfaction. 
 
 ioo 
 
THE SCHOOL AND THE CRIMINAL. 
 
 The evolution of wickedness is a fascinating- 
 study. The thief keeps pace with the detective. 
 Progress (development, civilization) does not 
 constitute its own justification. What crimes are 
 committed in its name! Its vices are carried 
 among the uncivilized and its virtues often left 
 at home by the inhabitants of the barracks and 
 forecastle, who are its chief representatives. 
 Crime flourishes in the great centres of learning 
 and refinement. Yet the means of education 
 have wondrously grown. Not only the public 
 school, but the press, the pulpit, societies, free 
 lecturships and free libraries have helped to 
 spread knowledge. But in spite of the deluge, 
 the volcanoes of crime refuse to be put out. Is 
 the school to blame? 
 
 Pouring knowledge into a black sheep does 
 not whiten the knowledge or the sheep. His pur- 
 poses run counter; increased knowledge becomes 
 a more powerful tool to realize those purposes. 
 His fall from grace is greater, because he "sins 
 against the light." Knowledge of money-mak- 
 ing need not mean a full pocket-book; neither 
 need knowledge of righteousness issue in right 
 conduct. How many pupils practice the hygienic 
 laws they learn in school? How many teach- 
 ers? Thus a fundamental fallacy vitiates the ar- 
 guments of those blaming the school for failing 
 to make bad folks good by knowledge. Moral 
 
 IOI 
 
goodness may exist without extensive knowl- 
 edge. Doubtless discipline in study and order in 
 school train character. But what kind of char- 
 acter? If the evil-will already exist, they may 
 make it more determined and methodical. Char- 
 acter manifests itself in different ways under 
 changing conditions. School life is scarcely rich 
 enough to give thorough guidance to character, 
 making it able to triumph over a great world bris- 
 tling with temptations. A good reputation 
 gained at school is no guarantee of an upright 
 character after school is over. Discipline at 
 school may have its purpose defeated by lax so- 
 cial conditions. Reaction against restraint may 
 therefore be intensified by very contrast. Who 
 has not seen pupils let out of school cut up antics 
 perhaps best paralleled by the ecstatic delight of 
 mules freed from the noisome darkness of a coal 
 mine? School does not create the will it aims to 
 shape. It can receive neither merit for the good 
 nor blame for the bad inherent in racial, social 
 and individual heredity, save as it has already 
 indirectly influenced them. Limited on the side 
 both of knowledge and of discipline, neverthe- 
 less the school can be held responsible for its 
 wrong theories and methods putting a premium 
 on human frailties; for too much readiness to 
 adapt itself to new conditions without criticism 
 or investigation of their moral import; and for 
 failure to protect the deserving from the result- 
 ing evils. 
 
 Sweeping charges against the school lose 
 much of their force, because the school is but one 
 
 102 
 
of the ''institutions that educate." Is our society 
 worth preserving? Grant it and the home be- 
 comes its strongest bulwark; its purity, sanctity 
 and integrity become of the first importance. 
 Church, State and School may supplement the 
 work of a good home, but they cannot replace it. 
 But the castle has been assailed from "turret to 
 foundation-stone" and the school has been indi- 
 rectly crippled. 
 
 "The greatest thing in the world is to have a 
 good time" is a popular dogma. It needs prov- 
 ing, as the good time often turns out to be any- 
 thing but good. Innumerable clubs with innu- 
 merable attractions demand our attention. Or- 
 ganization run mad becomes a besetting sin. 
 Home life suffers. Animalistic ethics corrupt its 
 purity, agnostic and materialistic philosophy 
 desecrate its sanctity, commercial utilitarianism 
 shatters its integrity. "Every man is free to do 
 that which he wills, provided he infringes not the 
 equal freedom of any other man." This is Mr. 
 Spencer's law of equal freedom; equal license 
 would be a more fitting name. One may will lots 
 of evil, pleasing and otherwise, without prevent- 
 ing another from doing the same. But Mr. Spen- 
 cer has a large following in these days. Uncle Sam 
 is disgraced by lax divorce laws. A newspaper 
 recently mentioned profanity as our most pop- 
 ular sin. An I-don't-care-I-do-as-I-please spirit 
 springs from individualism. Socialism long since 
 has denied the right of property in land and the 
 instruments of production (tools). Social dis- 
 content is widespread. Disrespect for authority 
 
 103 
 
is engendered partly by its abuse, partly by lack 
 of legitimate enforcement, partly by reaction 
 against its restraints. Caricatures, not always 
 elevating, are freely published in the newspapers 
 and they are not by any means the worst stuff 
 finding a place in the press. Cheap literature of 
 the most degrading kind can be bought openly, 
 even by children. Art has not always been the 
 handmaiden of virtue. Greed for gold does much 
 to sway the destinies of nations. Commercialism 
 makes heavy demands upon home life. Father 
 pays his taxes and supposedly escapes the obli- 
 gation to teach and encourage his children. 
 Work done, he would like the rest of the time to 
 himself. He has been free in giving his rights 
 into the keeping of rogues, and long-suffering 
 under misrule. The best children at school make 
 virtually no effort to protect their right to an 
 education from the aggressions of the more un- 
 ruly. How's that for Yankee pluck? But the 
 older folks are not such shining examples, after 
 all, and the value of an education not so self- 
 evident to them as we may imagine. Knowledge 
 may show us ways to avoid the legitimate conse- 
 quences of our wrong-doing and a variety of in- 
 terests increase the scope of crime and the am- 
 bition of the criminal. 
 
 Home life, industrial life, jural life and religious 
 life are historically prior to school life as we 
 know it. Those explaining crime by blaming it 
 on the school have put the cart before the horse. 
 Cutting the school away from its roots in real 
 life, attempting to judge it by itself, they are 
 
 104 
 
morally color-blind, historically cross-eyed and 
 victims of their own abstractions. The organic 
 growth of the school from the past simply cannot 
 be ignored without danger. The facts prove it. 
 
 Is all this fight against spectres of our own 
 imagination? Others are in the same boat, and if 
 nothing more is gained, perhaps we may read 
 Poe's tales with less terror and face ithe problems 
 of life with more determined courage. 
 
 Is the school to blame for crime? Not much. 
 
 105 
 
SCHOOL SUPPLIES. 
 
 Enormous sums of money are wasted by the 
 destruction of supplies put in the hands of the 
 pupils. Books that would last five or six years be- 
 come fit for the retired list in five or six months. 
 Pencils are cut to pieces, rulers get broken, pens 
 are stolen, good paper thrown away, and so the 
 waste goes merrily on. Who is responsible? The 
 teacher? Then make her pay for it. The pupils 
 and the parents? Then they must take the con- 
 sequences. The purpose of the book is known, 
 the aim of the school is known, the place and 
 functions of pupil and parent are known. Viola- 
 tions of these should be minimized. A boy gets 
 a new history in September; the following June, 
 the back is hanging off, several pages are torn, 
 some smeared, sticky and perhaps disfigured by 
 sundry pictures and remarks. Shall it be replaced 
 by his parents or shall the boy be excused and 
 the book thrown away? "Replace it," say you? 
 Now see them shirk responsibility. "The baby 
 tore the back, somebody else the pages, his little 
 cousin smeared it, and Willie Green, a friend, 
 drew the pictures." Green, too, would be the au- 
 thorities if any such excuses were accepted. Es- 
 sentially the book has its function, purpose and 
 reason for being as a text-book on history. It is 
 not a plaything, nor a tablet, not even a towel, 
 neither a sketch-book nor note-book. A history 
 so used is misused, a contradiction in terms, on 
 
 106 
 
the road to perdition. How much liberty shall a 
 pupil take with a book? None at all beyond that 
 necessary to realize the purpose for which the 
 book is created. In demanding such responsibil- 
 ity from parents, the school is protecting not only 
 itself, but also the tax-payers who stand the ex- 
 pense. Short-sighted folk looking only to their 
 immediate gain fail to see the enormous loss re- 
 sulting from encouragement given thereto by ac- 
 cepting all sorts of excuses to shirk responsibil- 
 ity. A higher not a lower standard is needed. 
 
 Why not uproot the whole paternal system? 
 Why not go back to the "good old days" when 
 the parent had to supply the books needed by his 
 children? Easier said than done, for reasons too 
 many to mention. To combine the advantages of 
 our present method of giving supplies with the 
 responsibility of the old, and with plans to avoid 
 the disadvantages of both, seems the most prom- 
 ising solution of the difficulty. I leave this to 
 further investigation. 
 
 Supplies, such as books, pencils, rulers and 
 penholders, last longer if the teacher puts the 
 name of the pupil thereon. It tends to fix indi- 
 vidual responsibility and to identify lost property. 
 It were foolish to require a teacher to examine 
 books, etc., every day; time would not permit it, 
 even were there no other objection. Mere lapse 
 of time never gives a pupil the privilege to misuse 
 a book or other supplies, even if his father does 
 pay taxes, which is evidence of responsibility, not 
 abolition of it. 
 
 107 
 
DARWINISM AND THE TEACHER. 
 
 Natural selection is unmoral. The struggle for 
 life bristles with injustices. The survival of the 
 fittest is not a moral law. Conditions are ele- 
 gantly understood, uncritically taken for granted. 
 The late J. J. Ingalls was fond of quoting, "The 
 race is to the swift and the battle to the strong." 
 But neither race nor battle is "on the square." 
 In the game of life some players have loaded dice. 
 Plants and animals exterminate those less favor- 
 ably fixed. The fittest survive. That same code 
 has been applied to the real life of men and given 
 an ethical value undeserved. The result has been 
 disastrously dehumanizing. Sweat-shops, foul 
 factories and dens of iniquity receive a justifica- 
 tion, 
 
 The fittest survive. Fittest for what? For the 
 conditions. What conditions? Natural condi- 
 tions. Darwin's law has no business to say more. 
 Specify its meaning and it begs the whole ques- 
 tion — a truism, a tautology. Why? Because the 
 fact of survival is made the test of fitness. Nat- 
 ural selection does not create the materials and 
 fundamental conditions necessary for its own 
 working. Thoughtless folk would have it cover 
 the whole gamut of being, forgetting that it is 
 natural selection and as such has no better stand- 
 ing until it prove itself moral selection. It de- 
 serves not our approval. 
 
 What has this to do with the teacher? 
 
 1 08 
 
Let us dream a bit. Fancy a teacher in his 
 class. How orderly! How interesting the les- 
 son! What a successful teacher! Nevertheless 
 he is a wicked man. — 'The dream changes. An- 
 other teacher appears. Disorder reigns, lessons 
 can not be taught, well-prepared and doubtless 
 interesting though they be. Nevertheless that 
 teacher's character is unimpeachable. But what 
 an unsuccessful teacher! "Cast him into outer 
 darkness!" — The fittest has survived. Do you 
 hear a still small voice saying, "Ought it to be 
 so?" 
 
 Wake up! 
 
 iog 
 
HARMONY vs. LINE OF LEAST RESIST- 
 ANCE. 
 
 To produce harmony of the faculties or equal 
 development of the mental powers. — Take eight 
 years of arithmetic for reasoning, five years of 
 history and six years of geography for the mem- 
 ory, eight years of drawing and music for the 
 imagination, four years of physiology for the 
 judgment, language and reading will do for al- 
 most anything, add a few et ceteras for possible 
 omissions. Take pupils for granted. Flavor with 
 interest and serve. 
 
 Such a recipe may legitimately follow from a 
 kind of psychology much in favor since John 
 Locke made famous the tabula rasa. Mental 
 powers are viewed in an external or mechanical 
 way. The harmony spoken of may fittingly be 
 like so much hash or mince-meat; or be produced 
 as if faculties were like so many blocks of wood 
 to be geometrically designed or so many chords 
 to be struck on a piano. Criticism has always 
 shown such analogies inadequate jto characterize 
 mind. Mind is unique, in a class by itself, and 
 nothing taken from the non-mental world can 
 ever truly represent that unique unity that diver- 
 sifies itself in a multiciplicity of powers. Mind 
 is the only adequate type of mind. A mechanical 
 harmony is therefore impossible from the nature 
 of the case. What then can be meant by har- 
 mony of the faculties? 
 
 no 
 
1. Let it mean internal, subjective harmony — 
 no conflict existing among the powers. Then 
 perhaps the finest example of harmony is the 
 glutted pig. In the human realm a crazy man al- 
 ways fancying himself Napoleon or Shakespeare 
 or Caesar, or anyone living in a world of his own 
 creations, may be said to have an internal har- 
 mony of the faculties. Even as I write, a child 
 playing happily near by seems to be possessed of 
 a harmony that his elders have outgrown. Why, 
 too, cannot a thief possess an internal harmony 
 of faculties? So it seems there may be different 
 kinds of harmony subjectively considered and 
 the abstract claim in education for imparting 
 such knowledge as will give equal development 
 of the faculties has given no criterion for prefer- 
 ring one sort of harmony rather than another. 
 
 2. Let it mean harmony of the^subjective with 
 the objective, so that the powers or faculties 
 adjust themselves to existing external conditions. 
 This view is extreme realism and is objection- 
 able as a form of externalism. Perhaps the best 
 examples of it are fellows of the sordid, practical 
 type, ready for everything that turns up, "smiling 
 as the wind sits," ever on the lookout for himself, 
 regardless of ethical principles. Having brought 
 external conditions into the discussion, the pre- 
 ceding sentence prompts an interesting question : 
 Are external conditions all ethical, and if not, 
 should we purchase harmony at the cost of mo- 
 rality? 
 
 3. A third kind of harmony may be illustrated 
 by those' believing in a low kind of don't-worry 
 
 in 
 
philosophy. They combine the subjective satis- 
 faction of the first with the sordid selfishness of 
 the second. Good, bad or indifferent conditions 
 do not upset their harmony. They get through 
 life rather than live through it. Right or wrong 
 gives them no occasion for worry; nor does 
 death, sickness or injury of a friend or relative. 
 Such people have not been the ones that have im- 
 proved the world, and when such a person does 
 wrong, I heartily wish his conscience to worry 
 him into a better frame of mind. Vain wish if 
 he has stifled the still small voice within! 
 
 Harmony of the faculties does not constitute 
 its own justification. Harmony is a fine, pretty 
 word; but actual harmony may be bad, "a league 
 with death and covenant with hell." The three 
 kinds of harmony named contain no principle of 
 selection. Not one of them is concerned with the 
 ethical purpose which should be made the only 
 possible ground for the existence of a faculty. 
 Things as they are, powers as they now exist are 
 taken for granted. No subordination to duty is 
 noticeable. Faculties are abstracted, cut off from 
 real facts, as if, regardless of functions and social 
 ideals, they had some intrinsic value. Harmony 
 may even be a fiction like the economic man; 
 but it is viewed as somehow a good in itself. But 
 surely it is not self-evident; for the existence of 
 complete harmony — the cessation of all strife in 
 the mind — may be but the sign of moral death 
 and intellectual stagnation, a sign that the animal 
 has conquered the man; while strife may be the 
 
sign of advancement, of a courageous determina- 
 tion to master the animal and enthrone the man. 
 Reason and imagination need not be on good 
 terms in any individual. Perception and mem- 
 ory get into disputes, and sensation is often any- 
 thing but friendly with intuition. Is harmony 
 possible and what kind of harmony will it be? 
 
 The three kinds of harmony tabulated above all 
 err in ignoring ethical purpose and in making no 
 provision for growth toward the better; as a fact 
 we have seen them make progress backward and 
 downward. No new impulse can enter the sacred 
 harmony, for that is forbidden by the individual- 
 izing psychology upon which it rests. Now the 
 objector may say, "There is nothing in the con- 
 ceptions of harmony excluding the ethical factor 
 and certain faculties may get more work to do 
 or become more important without ruining the 
 harmony just as we may put more apple or rai- 
 sins in the mince-meat or more potatoes in the 
 hash without spoiling them." In reply: i. While 
 there is nothing in the conceptions of harmony 
 excluding the ethical factor, there is nothing in- 
 cluding it. It ought to be there as absolutely es- 
 sential and no place has been made for it in the 
 claim for harmony. 2. The conceptions are a bit 
 too much like hash and mince-meat. Such psy- 
 chology, true to its ideas, allows no real growth, 
 but only aggregation, addition in kind to what is 
 already there. 3. The mechanical separation of 
 the faculties gives no test for telling that one is 
 
 113 
 
any more important than any other or for esti- 
 mating the worth of the work done by any of 
 them. 
 
 Further to clear the way let us ask, What kind 
 of a world would it be, composed of folk with 
 harmonious faculties? A trifle mixed, some- 
 what confused, as we already know. One man's 
 harmony need not agree with another's except in 
 name. Each one of us in our life has sometime 
 experienced both strife and peace within. But 
 other things equal, as a companion give me the 
 man with some strife within his soul rather than 
 the fellow completely satisfied with himself. Not 
 only then may one's purposes get twisted, but the 
 harmonies of different persons may and do get 
 fighting with each other, as, for example, the 
 practical man and the dreamer. Yet in spite of 
 these quarrels, there must be a great deal of har- 
 mony at bottom or society would simply commit 
 suicide. History shows us great periods of peace 
 as well as of war and philosophy reveals the fun- 
 damental basis upon which both peace and war 
 are possible in a social organism. When that 
 fundamental basis is attacked society itself be- 
 comes impossible and dissolves into an individ- 
 ualistic anarchy with the appetites and passions 
 of the lower man enthroned as authority. Such 
 was the Reign of Terror in France. The attack 
 on basic authority put a worse one in its stead 
 until basic authority, gathering power, regained 
 the mastery. Authority of some sort is a basic, 
 inescapable fact. But we speak of it at times 
 as being misused. People rebel against it. In 
 
 114 
 
their reaction they often war against the good as 
 well as the bad in the authority. But it all has 
 a meaning — the State as "the institute of rights" 
 is morally responsible for its acts. It cannot 
 overturn its own ethical and religious founda- 
 tion. 
 
 Still further to clear the way let us look into the 
 expression "equal development of the faculties." 
 First of all there can be no mathematical equal- 
 ity, and I can see no virtue in equality per se. 
 Even supposing equality to be good, how can it 
 be maintained? Will not changes upset the 
 equality? Nor can we determine a priori any^ 
 absolute, material equality. A man that can 
 cook a dinner, sail a vessel, run an engine, man- 
 age an army and write a treatise on metaphysics 
 may be said to possess an equal development of 
 the faculties. But even here equality does not 
 justify itself, for his skill in cooking might be 
 used to disguise a poison, his vessel might be 
 used for piracy, his engine to escape with booty, 
 the army might be fighting for pay in a bad 
 cause, and his metaphysics used to uphold sin. 
 Now in what sense can "equal" be applied to the 
 faculties? How are the various faculties of the 
 "all-round" man equal? Surely only in a figura- 
 tive sense, meaning that they are well adapted 
 for their purposes, fitted to realize the ends for 
 which they aim; and secondly, the "all-round" 
 man with his so-called equality must be "square," 
 t. e., moral. 
 
 Analysis has thus far brought us to the con- 
 ception of purpose as inseparably connected with 
 
 115 
 
the faculties. A faculty apart from its purpose 
 is an abstraction; apart from its moral purpose 
 it has no justification. This, true of one faculty, 
 is true of all and true of any harmony predicated 
 of them. Now we are ready for a constructive ef- 
 fort. 
 
 The only harmony worthy of the name is a 
 harmony of the lower faculties with the higher. 
 The higher faculties direct, control and limit the 
 tendencies of the lower. The lower are therefore 
 conceived as subordinate, as getting their mean- 
 ing and function only in relation to the higher 
 which explain and reconcile them. Moral free- 
 dom and moral purpose thus determine the scope 
 of the appetites, of the faculties of perception, 
 reasoning and imagination. The difference be- 
 tween the freedom prescribed by morality and 
 that of the appetites is the difference between 
 "eating to live" and "living to eat." In another 
 way this difference is emphasized in Milton's 
 apostrophe to wedded love. In nothing short of 
 heaven, however, can the ideal harmony be real- 
 ized in its complete theoretical and practical ra- 
 tionality. For man as finite finds exercise for his 
 powers only within a limited and imperfect en- 
 vironment, while his higher aims are infinite and 
 incapable of finding satisfaction therein. Con- 
 sequently even if, subjectively considered, he at- 
 tains a harmony guided by moral purpose, yet on 
 the practical side, i. e., as an active will express- 
 ing itself in conduct, it must contain an element 
 
 116 
 
of strife because of an unmoral or immoral en- 
 vironment under whose conditions that will must 
 act if it acts at all. 
 
 The conception of an ideal social state on 
 earth comes nearest to giving scope for "a har- 
 monious development of all the faculties." Gen- 
 eral tendencies toward that state already exist. 
 I. Most important is the checking and obliterat- 
 ing of personal evil-will by positive punishments ; 
 and guiding and enlightening the good-will by 
 positive encouragements. 2. Chances for 
 evil, i. c, wicked temptations, are to be 
 reduced to a minimum by good people co- 
 operating, taking precautions to prevent the 
 evil will from realizing its purposes. Thus, 
 when we delegate our rights into the keeping 
 of some one else, let us take some precautions 
 to prevent their abuse ; and if he to whom we del- 
 egate them has high moral character he will not 
 only recognize the justice of our precautions, but 
 also will voluntarily offer to take precautions 
 both to strengthen his own good will and to sat- 
 isfy us of the goodness of his intentions. A case 
 suggests itself: A, B and C have certain dealings. 
 A and B have mutual rights and duties, but their 
 relation to C is largely accidental, i. e., one that 
 can be broken without harm. B speaks to C 
 of a transaction in which A's rights are neces- 
 sarily involved. C suggests completing the 
 transaction and B consents. Trouble resulted 
 from B and C ignoring A's rights in the case. B 
 had a bad motive in the transaction, C supposed 
 the contrary. Both A and C were deceived by 
 
 117 
 
B. B ought to have protected A's rights, but 
 would not, and C did not think it necessary. C, 
 however, had encouraged B and smoothed the 
 way to the transaction. Now had C taken pre- 
 caution to protect himself from the possible bad 
 motive, and, as it turned out, also actual bad mo- 
 tive of B, or had he been thoughtful enough of A 
 to have protected him from B's betrayal, all the 
 trouble could have been avoided by a few words 
 or a simple reference of the matter to A. The 
 mutual confidence established by such a plan 
 would have well repaid the effort. Besides that, 
 B's bad motive would have been discouraged and 
 C would not have become an accessory to the 
 betrayal. In large stores precautions are taken, 
 as, for example, by a checking system, to reduce 
 the chances of theft to a minimum. Fire-proof 
 dwellings decrease the scope of arson. 3. As far 
 as possible, natural conditions must be moralized 
 and made servants to man. Control of wind 
 power and water power are examples of this; in 
 the economic sphere the tendency to substitute 
 more equitable exchanges for the natural system 
 of driving a good bargain, i. e., "skinning the 
 other fellow." 
 
 Even in such an ideal state as that sketched 
 by Edward Bellamy, quarrels and personal spites 
 could exist. While we can grant Mr. Bellamy 
 true in much that he claims about our economic 
 system being the cause and condition of discord, 
 nevertheless we are still in the realm of the hu- 
 man will. Far from being the only cause of the 
 evil will, economic conditions are themselves a 
 
 118 
 
lesult of the greater human will. Consequently 
 the removal of evil economic conditions will not 
 of necessity obliterate the other modes in which 
 the evil will is wont to express itself. Allowing 
 then for the possible existence of the evil will in 
 our ideal earthly state (perhaps through atavism), 
 there will yet be death and accidents and mis- 
 takes in judgment. To suppose the opposite 
 would make man omniscient. We need not 
 speculate which will come first — the omniscience 
 of man on earth or the extinction of life thereon. 
 Now for a summary of results : 
 
 1. A fundamental moral order is at the basis 
 of society. 
 
 2. While it is a presupposition of social exist- 
 ence under which faculties of the mind exist, yet 
 it is also the goal toward which the faculties 
 should be directed in their efforts to harmonize. 
 A complete, conscious realization of the moral 
 order is the ideal that guides their harmony. 
 
 3. Heaven alone completely fulfils the ideal, 
 while a perfect social state comes nearest a possi- 
 ble realization on earth. 
 
 An objector may say, "You have not deter- 
 mined the particular content of your moral har- 
 mony. You do not tell what acts are moral. 
 Then, too, each age has put a somewhat different 
 content into the moral form. Besides, when you 
 have obliterated evil, the race will die of inan- 
 ition, for the lack of something to do." Fully to 
 answer these objections would require a moral 
 philosophy but brief reply is here given: 1. It is 
 something to have established a moral order as 
 
 119 
 
the only basis on which society is possible. Our 
 critic admits that much. 2. If the critic means 
 what he says, and I assume him sincere, that 
 constitutes some content for the moral ideal. 
 Telling the truth and honesty are already there. 
 As a fact, in the greater part of our doings the 
 moral content is already known. It is in the ex- 
 ceptional cases that one can not tell what his duty 
 is, perhaps owing to their great complexity or 
 singularity. The objection is parallel to one 
 made to zoology. To be consistent, one would 
 refuse to call a lobster an animal because some 
 forms of life occupied the borderland between 
 the animal and vegetable. Possessing some 
 characteristics of both made it doubtful whether 
 the forms were really animals or vegetables. For 
 the same reason, I might argue that I cannot calf 
 my critic a living being because the living shades 
 off so gradually into the non-living that one can- 
 not tell where the living ends and non-living be- 
 gins. Having argued my critic out of living, I 
 might conveniently bury him. But let us look 
 more closely at his argument. 3. "Not only does 
 the moral shade off into the immoral so grad- 
 ually that they can't be distinguished, but each 
 age gives a somewhat different content to the 
 moral form." But no age completely demolishes 
 either the moral form or the best part of its con- 
 tent whatever it adds to or subtracts from it. It 
 were folly to attempt what so many wise men 
 have failed to do — to foresee the particular ways 
 in which future ages shall manifest their spirit. 
 
 120 
 
Theft, murder, lying and treason have been 
 rather steadily condemned among civilized races. 
 While my critic might point to tribes in which 
 each of those crimes is practiced, and upheld by 
 the sentiment of the people, he then has to prove, 
 (a) that the crimes named were committed by 
 members of the tribe against one another, (b) 
 that the tribe still held together and why it did so, 
 (c) that their practices and opinions are at least 
 as good as ours. Until these be proved, his il- 
 lustration has no bearing on the case. 4. My 
 critic does not act on his own theory. If he can 
 not distinguish the good from the evil, then he 
 has no business to tell us what will happen to the 
 race when evil is obliterated. Whatever truth 
 there is in his objection is based on an abstract 
 view of good and evil. Goodness is so simple in 
 this view that living would become monotonous 
 were there no evil to contrast with it. It is a 
 false view. There is a great deal of variety in 
 goodness even now, apart from positive evil. Just 
 so in our ideal social state with no positive evil, 
 there would be a multitude of ways for doing 
 good, and increasing the good already in exist- 
 ence, enough variety, in fact, to give spice to 
 the most exacting. Good and evil as names 
 would doubtless exist as a logical contrast neces- 
 sary to give them meaning, just as something 
 and nothing, existence and non-existence, sense 
 and nonsense. But as a real contrast necessary to 
 life and appreciation, there need be no more ma- 
 terial content to evil than there is to the term 
 nothing. For if the contrast of contraries 
 
 121 
 
is necessary to life and appreciation, a person 
 continually living in a temperature of 90 would 
 never feel hot, because he never felt cold. No 
 one could feel pleased, unless he had before been 
 pained. The best way to enjoy a beautiful gem 
 of music would be to stop at a boiler shop on the 
 way to the opera, and to appreciate a bath one 
 would do well to roll about in the gutter before- 
 hand. To turn it about, the thief to appreciate 
 his theft should be honest for a while, the tramp 
 to appreciate his dirt should get washed now and 
 then, and so on. Instead of this contrast of con- 
 traries being necessary, there could be, as before 
 shown, contrast enough in either term of the 
 pair. If not, no final reconciliation between good 
 and evil is possible. 
 
 No one can tell how much perception, judg- 
 ment, memory, imagination, reasoning, etc., it 
 takes to produce harmony of the faculties, 
 whether now or in the ideal social state. They 
 can not be measured by the quart, gallon, by the 
 yard or year. Only a faulty psychology backed 
 up by figures of speech could ever suppose the 
 powers of the mind subject to quantitative deter- 
 mination (by the "how much") or magically 
 brought into an equilibrium like a see-saw. A 
 faculty, it was stated, could be defined only in re- 
 lation to its purpose. Even then no one can tell 
 how much purpose is necessary to produce har- 
 mony. In the discussion of subjective harmony, 
 many purposes of various importance were found 
 to be consistent with harmony. Subjective in- 
 completeness needing a criterion was referred to 
 
 122 
 
a moral order to which it must conform in order 
 to be justified. The ideal social state furnishes 
 us with a clue to a new factor in the harmony. 
 Let us apply it to the school. 
 
 A school professing to turn out pupils with a 
 complete harmony does an injury. If any pupil 
 possess it he is either in the class of dreamers 
 ignoring the real world or of the sordid practical 
 fellows, all worldly. For a school that does its 
 duty well will introduce strife into the harmony. 
 No matter how complete his subjective harmony 
 may be, the pupil nevertheless has a quarrel with 
 the imperfections of the world and the school 
 should not forget it. The infinite side of his na- 
 ture demands it. If the ideal social state be an 
 aim, even though we can but approximately real- 
 ize it, then the incorporation of an element of dis- 
 cord into the harmony is absolutely necessary; 
 for that element of discord means advancement. 
 True, it is but the means to the final end, yet so 
 long as our finite imperfection lasts, so long 
 should the strife last. So long shall we have 
 something worth fighting for, something worth 
 living for. To give up the fight now will be spir- 
 itual stagnation. To state it in a paradox, the 
 best kind of harmony and subjective satisfaction 
 is that which contains discord and dissatisfaction 
 with the wickedness of self and the world. 
 
 To apply results: I. No matter what we teach 
 or how much we teach, the harmony of the facul- 
 ties defined merely in relation to abstract pur- 
 pose can not be determined beforehand and 
 
 123 
 
stands in no necessary relation to so much arith- 
 metic, so much geography, etc., just because they 
 may consist with many kinds of harmony. 2. As 
 there may exist many purposes in the world 
 without conflicting there is no need of absolute 
 uniformity in the minds of any two pupils; that 
 is to say, subjectively considered, the great dif- 
 ferences between pupils may all conform to the 
 teacher's purpose; perception or reasoning may 
 become more important than imagination or 
 imagination may become more valuable than rea- 
 soning without breaking up the internal harmony 
 of the faculties or thwarting the teacher's pur- 
 pose. Some degree of specialization is thus pro- 
 vided for and development is given its function. 
 Only in one respect can the teacher demand ab- 
 solute uniformity — whatever be the faculties of 
 the pupil they must conform to the moral order 
 typified by the school. Whatever be the sub- 
 jective harmony of any pupil, it must be subor- 
 dinated to moral purpose as long as he remains 
 a pupil. No pupil can be given a right to do 
 wrong. 3. The school is to give the pupil ideals, 
 or as otherwise stated, to introduce strife into the 
 harmony. Then extremes are avoided — unfitness 
 for the real world and complete slavery to it. 
 Bread and butter philosophy has lately been dic- 
 tating a bit too much. 4. Training of the lower 
 faculties is scarcely to be considered an end in 
 itself; only as it ministers to the higher end can 
 it be justified, for the lower faculties receive their 
 
 124 
 
meaning and explanation only in the higher. 5. 
 We found harmony to be justified only as con- 
 formity to moral purpose; equal or harmonious 
 development to mean well fitted to realize that 
 purpose; we found material equality an erro- 
 neous conception to apply to the faculties, and 
 purposes in their relations to the life of any indi- 
 vidual to be indeterminate; consequently the 
 school can not guarantee its results. After doing 
 its whole duty, it can not tell what use the pupils 
 will make of their harmony in after-life. They 
 may become immoral; they may, on the other 
 hand, guide it along moral lines unforeseen by 
 the school. With all the advantages given by his 
 education, John may become a rogue; Frank 
 may become a great arithmetician, devoting his 
 life to the study, without spoiling his harmony 
 and conforming to moral purpose, even though 
 he use but little his faculty of perception through 
 touch and use a great deal his faculty of abstract 
 reasoning. But the school can guarantee none 
 of these results. It can say, "Both John and 
 Frank did well in school. No violation of moral 
 purpose was tolerated. We did our whole duty 
 by them and they did theirs. Other things equal, 
 we send them out into the world with the prob- 
 ability that they will do their duty in the world 
 also." 
 
 "It is no longer possible to guide school work 
 by the needs of the child as an individual," is the 
 complaint voiced by a Philadelphia newspaper. 
 Similar to this we have more than once heard, 
 "The child should be educated along his line of 
 
 125 
 
least resistance." The harmony theory assumed 
 that there is a number of faculties needing to be 
 brought out of confusion into "harmonious de- 
 velopment." According to the least resistance 
 theory, such harmony is not desirable. Natural 
 aptitudes for particular activities should be 
 strengthened, not sacrificed to harmony. Thus 
 are the two theories contradictory. Both spring 
 from a mechanical, individualizing psychology; 
 the one thinks harmony a good in itself, the other 
 thinks specialization a good in itself; the one 
 would feed every faculty alike for each is assumed 
 equally important, the other would select one 
 faculty or a few as being most important accord- 
 ing to the individual and give all attention along 
 the special line. 
 
 The contradiction between the two theories 
 disappears when we go from the mechanical to 
 the organic standpoint. A man may be a special- 
 ist and yet have what is frequently called a well- 
 balanced mind. Nearly every reader knows some 
 such persons. Perhaps many a reader has some 
 specialty which has not interfered with the har- 
 mony of his faculties. But specialization no less 
 than harmony must be subordinate to moral law. 
 In itself the line of least resistance carries no eth- 
 ical justification. A person's line of least resist- 
 ance might point downward, consisting of an 
 aptitude not desirable, e. g. } a tendency to lie or 
 steal and so be subversive to morality. The same 
 truth may be seen from another side. Abstractly 
 considered, one man's line of least resistance is as 
 good as another's. This indifference leaves no 
 
 126 
 
room for ethical principles. Just so it assumes 
 an innate goodness in qualities naturally belong- 
 ing to a person. This naturalism (what is natural 
 is good) has been sufficiently dealt with else- 
 where. So no justification can be given for an 
 aptitude that is bad and none for developing an 
 aptitude natural or otherwise, if better ones have 
 to be sacrificed. Had education always been di- 
 rected toward developing a pupil along his line of 
 least resistance as it existed, what kind of a world 
 would this be now? An unproved assumption is 
 beneath the line of least resistance theory, 
 namely, the line of least resistance is so distrib- 
 uted among the people of the world, that were 
 each one developed along that line a good result 
 would be produced and possible overdevelop- 
 ment would be counterbalanced when the whole 
 race was taken into account. This looks danger- 
 ously like a pre-established harmony, though one 
 would scarcely expect the ghost of Leibnitz to be 
 lurking about the arguments of an empirical psy- 
 chology. 
 
 The least resistance theory would more likely 
 sacrifice social welfare to personal caprices and 
 give a death-blow to the public school. Would it 
 not lead to private tutoring? Each particular 
 child in order to be developed along his line of 
 least resistance should have a particular tutor 
 whose line of least resistance would be his ability 
 to teach that particular child. We are still in the 
 realm of the human will and no mathematical de- 
 termination of the line of least resistance would 
 be possible. Even if determined some other way 
 
 127 
 
no guarantee could be given that it would remain 
 the line of least resistance through life. Carried 
 to its extreme it would fit a man only to fit in a 
 special place. The testimony of the history of ed- 
 ucation negatives subordination to the line of 
 least resistance as found existing. That testimony 
 establishes the primacy of the human will and if 
 it means anything, man has recognized a moral 
 obligation in education, the obligation to make 
 the natural line of least resistance become a moral 
 line of least resistance. 
 
 A school may develop a pupil along his line of 
 least resistance not because it is the line, but be- 
 cause it conforms to the purpose of the school. 
 To illustrate: A pupil with a talent for drawing 
 is encouraged by the praises bestowed on his 
 work; adequate scope is afforded by the period 
 alloted to drawing in the program. But cer- 
 tainly it is not the duty of a public school teacher 
 as such, to provide special work for that pupil or 
 to make the program conform to him. In so far 
 as that talented pupil needs special work is a mat- 
 ter for special schools, for his parents and for 
 himself after he has performed his duty as a pub- 
 lic school pupil. During school hours he can not 
 be permitted to draw when he should be reading 
 or studying geography or history. Try to apply 
 the line of least resistance theory to public school 
 work; apply it to every pupil; apply it to every 
 teacher — how much public school would be left? 
 If the talented pupil's aptitude is caricature, no 
 allowance can be made for it unless it is provided 
 for in the school program. Imagine, however, 
 
 128 
 
a school that recognized the right of such a pupil 
 to caricature his classmates. You doubtless see 
 how it conflicts with the fundamental principles 
 upon which school work is based. If carpentry 
 or blacksmithing is not taught in a public school, 
 pupils whose line of least resistance is along those 
 lines can expect to have no provision made for 
 them. How absurd, too, would it be to encour- 
 age a pupil whose line of least resistance con- 
 sisted in inventing excuses for lateness, truancy 
 and bad conduct. 
 
 In response to the demand for utility and spe- 
 cialization certain special schools have sprung up. 
 These have their functions and are not necessarily 
 bad. They may, however, conflict with the pur- 
 poses of the other schools, as is the case in Phil- 
 adelphia. I have in mind two schools which 
 upon certain afternoons each week draw upon 
 the regular schools for pupils. Such pupils lose 
 the regular school work for what they aim to 
 gain by the special school work. I am concerned 
 but little with the particular acts and results 
 therein involved, but rather with the principles 
 implied and acted on. The schools are part of 
 the public school system. In one the pupils are 
 taught drawing, clay-modeling and wood-carv- 
 ing; in the other, elementary manual training is 
 the purpose. 
 
 As stated, chosen pupils lose the afternoon ses- 
 sion of the regular school; they are not counted 
 absent, however, if they attend the special school. 
 Now what is implied in this differentiation? Is 
 the principle on which it is based a good one? 
 
 129 
 
Out of a grammar school of 400 pupils 
 let us say about 25 pupils are absent 
 one afternoon a week to go to the 
 special school. Unless the special school 
 give the pupil more value for his afternoon 
 than is given by the regular school, they are en- 
 tirely without justification. But if the pupil does 
 get more in one afternoon at the special school 
 than he gets in one afternoon at the regular 
 school, why should he not get more in five after- 
 noons at the special school than in five at the 
 regular school? The special school is an implicit 
 criticism of the regular school; it implies that the 
 regular school is not meeting the needs of the 
 pupils whom it sends to the special school. By 
 definition special schools would have a different 
 purpose from the regular school. Chosen pupils 
 are given a right to absent themselves from the 
 regular school in order to attend a special school 
 whose purpose it is to meet the needs which the 
 regular school does not. What are those needs? 
 Who are the pupils? What further follows from 
 the principle which opposes the purpose of the 
 special school to the purpose of the public school? 
 
 1. Suppose any pupil of the regular school may 
 go to the special school. Say three are selected 
 at random out of a class of forty pupils or say the 
 first three that apply for the privilege. Now if 
 thus it be a matter of indifference to the author- 
 ities, why would not the entire class get more 
 value at the special school than at the regular 
 school? If right one afternoon a week, why not 
 all? Should one say there are not special schools 
 
 130 
 
enough, the answer is easy — if they be right, they 
 ought to be established in sufficient numbers. 
 Under our first supposition, as the special school 
 meets the needs of all the pupils, then the regular 
 school does not, as it is defined as not meeting 
 the needs which the special school satisfies. The 
 moral purpose of the regular school thus fails to 
 justify itself in comparison with that of the spe- 
 cial school. This first view gives no principle of 
 selection among pupils. If one has the right, so 
 have all. The special school suits any. To claim 
 that honor, the special school must aim to give 
 a broad culture appropriate to a great phase of 
 thought and activity represented by the subjects 
 it teaches. But when it reaches that stage, it has 
 brought about its own contradiction, for it ceases 
 to be special and takes on a function appropriate 
 to the regular school. Will the logic of history 
 bring about a union of the two, by the special 
 school being indissolubly linked with the regular 
 school by a unity of purpose? Will we come to 
 see that its scope can not be sharply limited and 
 its purpose viewed as indifferent or even opposed 
 to that of the regular school, as we have come to 
 see the interdependence of universal and partic- 
 ular, and the futility of sundering the sciences 
 from metaphysics? If so, then branches taught 
 in the special school will come to be viewed as 
 part of a greater whole. The special school will 
 get its philosophic setting apart from which it 
 can not be understood. Pupils taught therein 
 and taught properly will thus be required to 
 know not merely the special branches, but also 
 
the general knowledge co-ordinating them with 
 a theory of life. The artist of to-day clearly to 
 understand his function and the condition of art 
 of his own time must really study art in history, 
 why certain types appeared during certain 
 epochs, the causes and conditions making them 
 possible and leading to their downfall. But to 
 know these is to study the ethics, political econ- 
 omy and religion of bygone ages, in short, a 
 philosophy of history. 
 
 2. Suppose the special school gets only pupils 
 bright in the branches taught therein. These pu- 
 pils, it assumes, should be developed along their 
 line of least resistance. That course, it thinks, 
 will be better for the pupil and the world; other- 
 wise it would be indefensible. But it can not be 
 proved beforehand whether the pupil and the 
 world are really better. It is quite possible to 
 conceive a pupil whose line of least resistance, 
 while not immoral, may yet be such as to lead to 
 a mere subjective harmony and produce lunacy; 
 and in the world there might be too many spe- 
 cialists. But if we have a special school for those 
 bright in drawing, clay-modeling, wood-carving, 
 carpentry or blacksmithing, why should we not 
 have a special school for the pupil with a special 
 taste for history, language, music or mathemat- 
 ics? If the line of least resistance be good, why 
 not let everyone enjoy it? The legitimate conse- 
 quence is the extension of the special school, be- 
 cause in allowing it to take the pupil from the 
 regular school one afternoon a week, we have 
 
 132 
 
given special needs of pupils the right to be rec- 
 ognized as the guide of school practice. 
 
 This second view closely corresponds to the 
 utilitarian view of Mr. Spencer. Special schools 
 teach practical arts, useful in business, giving 
 knowledge supposedly favorable to money-get- 
 ting and aiding to procure the necessaries of life. 
 On this ground, special schools can be justified 
 only if the majority of pupils in after-life do 
 really use the knowledge to make a living. Only 
 the statistician could give us data for deciding 
 this part of the question. In the absence of data 
 we refrain from expressing an opinion. 
 
 The fundamental assumption on which this 
 view rests is — what is useful is good. Should 
 that principle be made the guide of school prac- 
 tice? In the narrow sense of the word, utility 
 can not be made the guide of school practice, 
 has already been pointed out, bad uses of things 
 and of knowledge are possible. Even within 
 moral lines there are so many useful things to be 
 attended to that mere utility gives us no ground 
 for preferring one rather than another. Thus 
 were we referred to a criterion of purposes and 
 found that on the whole the regular school system 
 embodied the correct principles — culture and dis- 
 cipline as the chief guides. Mere utility was sub- 
 ordinate. In the highest sense of the word, util- 
 ity becomes identical with culture and discipline, 
 but then it is not the guide because it is utility, 
 but because it conforms to the higher guides with 
 which it has become identical. If mere utility 
 should be supreme, what a transformation it 
 
 133 
 
would work in the curriculum! Pupils would be 
 taught subjects wholly conformable to some art 
 or trade or department of the commercial world. 
 This would necessitate special schools altogether. 
 Ordinary folk by using their eyes a little can see 
 for themselves how numerous are dry goods 
 stores, grocery stores and saloons. Why not 
 have a special school for each of the correspond- 
 ing occupations? How probably useful it would 
 be! Why not at the beginning educate Johnny 
 for a coal dealer, Frank for an engineer, William 
 for a broker, and so on? Such a plan sounds the 
 death knell of the regular school because the 
 regular school is opposed to mere utility. 
 
 3. Suppose the special school gets only those 
 pupils deficient in the branches taught therein. 
 Harmony is here assumed to be desirable, some- 
 what after the fashion of the deacon's master- 
 piece: 
 
 "Fur," said the Deacon, "it's mighty plain 
 
 Thut the weakes' place must stan' the strain; 
 'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 
 Is only jest 
 T' make that place as strong as the rest." 
 
 Faulty psychology is at the bottom of this 
 view. Thus, deficiency in drawing would indi- 
 cate an ill-balanced mind. If Johnny be weak in 
 arithmetic, it would mean a corresponding weak- 
 ness in the mental power which arithmetic is sup- 
 posed to train. Hence the inference — develop a 
 pupil's weak powers. But this assumes a certain 
 balance of powers as normal. Thus stated, this 
 view is open to objections made against abstract 
 
 134 
 
harmony and mechanical psychology. A pupil 
 may be a poor arithmetician without being defi- 
 cient in reasoning power other than the kind 
 which arithmetic is supposed to train. The same 
 argument works as well for any special kind of 
 subject and any special kind of corresponding 
 mental power. For there is no such absolute re- 
 lation between the two as mechanical psychology 
 presupposes. 
 
 If a special school is established for pupils de- 
 ficient in drawing, clay-modeling, wood-carving 
 and carpentry, why not a special school for pupils 
 deficient in arithmetic, music, history or geogra- 
 phy? Where will this specializing process end? 
 Why not carry it even within the special schools 
 already established? Why have a regular school 
 at all? Can a regular school be justified if the 
 special weaknesses of the pupil be the guide of 
 his course of study ? No ; for a regular school as 
 such is guided not by the child's needs as an indi- 
 vidual, but by his needs as a pupil, as a member 
 of a class, a part of an organism — school, city and 
 nation. Whatever be his special weaknesses, 
 they cannot become the guide of our general 
 school practices; only his weaknesses as a pupil 
 can do that. Consequently the school can say, 
 "Whatever be your special needs, we can de- 
 mand that your weaknesses measure up at least 
 to our standard. Our standard is graded on gen- 
 eral deficiencies of human nature, on the needs of 
 the child as a pupil. Your special scrength may 
 carry you above the standard, your special weak- 
 nesses may keep you below it. But the regular 
 
 135 
 
school is obliged neither to create opportunities 
 to make your strength greater nor to lower its 
 standard to the level of your weaknesses." 
 
 Now this third view in approximating the con- 
 ception of harmony and antagonizing the line of 
 least resistance, approximates the conception of 
 culture and antagonizes that of mere utility. Thus 
 the special school might justify itself because of 
 the culture it gives in overcoming weaknesses. 
 But so does the regular school overcome weak- 
 nesses. On this ground we get back to our old 
 question, Which culture is worth more, that of 
 the special school or of the regular school? An 
 identity of purpose is recognized, namely, cul- 
 ture. But what kind? When the special school 
 gives the same kind of culture as the regular 
 school, when it gives a greater value than the reg- 
 ular school, the special school will cease to be spe- 
 cial. As long as it remains special, its purpose 
 must be subordinate or supplementary to that of 
 the regular school and it should not be permitted 
 to take time which has been set upon as properly 
 belonging to the regular school. When the spe- 
 cial school does take the pupil from the regular 
 school at a time when he ought to be at the reg- 
 ular school, there is violated the rights and du- 
 ties which, we have elsewhere claimed, answer 
 the question, What is it really to be a pupil? 
 
 The state establishes special schools; parents 
 allow their children to attend; the children are 
 willing; the special school authorities are anxious 
 to get them; and the regular school authorities 
 sanction it. A determined opposition on the part 
 
 136 
 
of any of these would cure the ills resulting from 
 splitting up the time. Certainly the State could 
 abolish the special school; but this is scarcely de- 
 sirable. We decidedly do not agree with those 
 extreme individualists who would reduce the 
 functions of the State to zero, for then the State 
 would have charge of no educational institutions 
 at all. Grant the State the right to establish gen- 
 eral schools and it looks as if we have given it 
 the right to establish special schools also. We 
 are not at present interested in the question 
 whether this is not a step toward socialism. We 
 do insist, however, upon having as clear a 
 definition as possible of the respective limits and 
 functions of the special and general school. 
 
 As the special schools mentioned are situated 
 at some distance from the regular school, some 
 parents might object to sending their children to 
 the special school on account of the extra time, 
 labor, expense and exposure; but I have never 
 heard of a special school suffering much in those 
 ways. Parents can scarcely be expected to solve 
 the problems of the school. When they have 
 solved the problems of the home, they will have 
 done much indirectly to solve the problems of the 
 school. Nor can we expect much help from the 
 pupils. Some few of them may refuse to go to 
 the special school. Usually there are always 
 enough willing to go. There may also be much 
 question whether the pupil should be given the 
 right to decide for himself concerning his attend- 
 ance at the special school. Is the pupil fit to pass 
 judgment upon his own needs and abilities? Even 
 
 137 
 
if so, does not his judgment have to be submitted 
 to the approval of the school authorities? 
 
 As the authorities of the special school can 
 scarcely be expected to limit their purposes, only 
 the authorities of the general school are left. 
 Upon them is the chief responsibility. Whether 
 the bright pupils or dull ones are selected, final 
 decision should rest with the authorities. If pu- 
 pils must be taken from the regular school during 
 school hours, let it be conditional — if any pupil 
 fails to keep up with the work of the regular 
 school, he will be forthwith deprived of the priv- 
 ilege of attending the special school. Authorities 
 may, of course, be pardoned if now and then they 
 make an unintentional mistake, such as sending 
 a pupil undeserving the privilege. Care is needed 
 in selecting pupils and extra work is put upon the 
 teachers. Such pupils must be kept track of, not 
 only to find out whether they abuse their priv- 
 ileges, but also to see whether they keep up with 
 their classmates and make up what they really 
 do lose when away. Once in a while they may 
 disturb the class in the regular school, as on a 
 one-session day, when they leave the room an 
 hour earlier than the rest so that they may get 
 to the special school on time. Their absence if 
 the class is small is not as encouraging as their 
 presence would be to the other pupils. In any 
 case, a distinction is created within the class and 
 at present a distinction whose meaning is not 
 altogether good. 
 
 In the end, all things considered, the best cul- 
 ture and the highest utility are identical. In that 
 
 138 
 
highest sense, utility comprehends past, present 
 and future; in a word, it becomes inseparable 
 from final purpose. Mere utility appearing his- 
 torically as a foe to teleology, in the end will be- 
 come its steadfast friend. 
 
 Throughout this book I have ventured to urge 
 a return to first principles. In common with other 
 departments of literature, works on education 
 are almost innumerable, and in the enormous 
 mass of methods recommended for this, that or 
 the other reason, first principles are apt to be 
 buried out of sight. Nor can we forget the vague 
 character of education as a science by reason of 
 its recency and the complicated data with which 
 it deals. In the words of Professor Knight, "Cer- 
 tainly we at present stand upon a small (occa- 
 sionally sunlit) promontory, stretching out from 
 the land of primal mystery whence we came, into 
 the ocean of a still vaster ignorance, over which 
 we must set out; and to many minds there is an 
 equal fascination in the girdle of darkness, and 
 in the zone of light." 
 
 i39 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 Historical Developments. 
 
 Influence of the French Revolution — Both good and 
 bad — The fundamental assumption — Disproof of it — 
 Evolution of man — Unique meaning of childhood to- 
 day. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 Evolution and School Method. 
 
 Schopenhauer and Leibnitz on the goodness of the 
 world — Subordination of natural to moral necessary 
 — Danger in any other plan — What kind of freedom? 
 — Evolution needs a new interpretation — What is 
 the child? — What is the adult? — The teacher is a 
 better being than the child according to evolution. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 The Child vs. The Teacher. 
 
 Some reminiscences — The teacher responsible for 
 everything accordingly — Child worship in school — 
 Some misfit children — Loss caused thereby — Prof. 
 
 140 
 
Schoenrich on American children — Relativity of re- 
 spect — Nature of authority — Duty of pupil — Pesta- 
 lozzi — Plan indicating remedies needed. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 The Futility of Reasoning. 
 
 weaken authority — Appealing to honor, duty un- 
 satisfactory — Love, kindness and interest are not 
 cure-alls — Preparation of lessons — How the teacher 
 may be at the mercy of the pupil. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Punishments. 
 
 Nature of crime and punishment according to Hegel 
 — Laxity in respect for law — Fear as a motive to 
 good conduct — Whipping — Its adaptation to certain 
 pupils — Its historic function overlooked — Cost of 
 abolishing varied means of punishment — Church, State 
 and School founded on authority — Teaching lessons 
 the chief active work of the teacher — Acts of dis- 
 order should be settled in school and at once — 
 Suspension — Its disadvantages — A relic of greater au- 
 thority — Detention after school — An act of authority 
 — Its disadvantages — What causes a quiet class ? 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 How? 
 
 No theoretical or practical justification to naturalism 
 — Co-operation by all hands — Efficient and varied 
 
 141 
 
punishments — Unity of educational system demanded 
 — Advantages of these recommendations. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 Teachers. 
 
 Mr. White's explanation of the failure of teachers — 
 Criticism thereof — Meaning of attending school — 
 Child-study. 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 Various School Offenses. 
 
 The test — Talking in school— Paper on the floor- 
 Throwing — One way of obviating difficulties — Have 
 a watcher in the room — Too much for one person — 
 Subordination of individual to the class is the ideal 
 — Summary of principles — Should the teacher inter- 
 fere with personal affairs of pupils — Two plans con- 
 trasted — Some advice — How long? 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Man, the world and God — Return to first principles — 
 Evidences of the return — The last word of natur- 
 alism. 
 
 Herbert Spencer' s • « Education. ' ' 
 
 What knowledge is of most worth ? — Does decoration 
 precede dress ? — Does the ornamental come before the 
 useful ? — Mr. Spencer* s claims false — Disproved by 
 
 142 
 
history of education and rest on shallow philosophy — 
 Scientific knowledge not enough to meet all our 
 needs — Mr. Spencer' s ethics used against his condem 
 nation of the classics — His criticisms not characteristic 
 of classical knowledge alone, but apply as well to 
 scientific — Practical purposes can not be made the 
 aim of the school — What is complete living ? — Five 
 classes of activities constituting complete living — 
 Too complete as forms of life are themselves in 
 need of criticism — Mr. Spencer' s rosy outlook not so 
 rosy after all — Less selfishness as well as economic 
 improvement needed — Science the cure-all — What 
 kind of value we get in science — Subjects in Mr. 
 Spencer's curriculum — Fallacy that knowledge of a 
 fact issues in use of the fact — Scientific laws and 
 principles formal, determination resting with human 
 will — Mere utility of a fact does not necessarily imply 
 a need to know its cognate science — Intrinsic value 
 of knowledge criticised — Metaphysics should be put 
 in the curriculum — Society on an ethical not a 
 scientific basis (in the narrow sense) — Mr. Spencer's 
 claim for descriptive sociology opens the door to the 
 languages he excluded — " Science" used in two senses, 
 broad and narrow — Separation between memory and 
 understanding can not be maintained — Misses the 
 "soul of truth'' in his opponents' claims — Science 
 and language have a common root — Painting — Moral 
 value of the sciences — Science has no monopoly on 
 moral discipline — Ditto religious discipline — Mr. 
 Spencer a representative of 19th century individualism 
 and typical of the empirical method of English phi- 
 losophy — Fruits of Mr. Spencer's " Education " — His 
 charges against the past too sweeping — Charges 
 against parents — Mr. Spencer's question part of a 
 
 143 
 
greater one — A pessimistic criticism — A prophecy — 
 Summary. 
 
 The School and the Criminal. 
 
 The flood of knowledge has not put out the volcanoes 
 of crime — Knowledge of righteousness need not issue 
 in right conduct — School does not create the will it 
 aims to shape — Where the school is to blame — School 
 crippled by lax social conditions and attacks upon 
 home, property and authority — A false view of the 
 school — School but little to blame for crime. 
 
 School Supplies. 
 
 Waste entailed — Who shall replace misused books — A 
 higher standard needed. 
 
 Darwinism and the Teacher. 
 
 Natural selection unmoral — Its false application to life 
 in general — To the teacher in particular — Result. 
 
 Harmony vs. Line of Least Resistance. 
 
 A recipe — A false analogy — Three kinds of harmony 
 illustrated — Harmony not its own justification — Error 
 in the three kinds — Ethical purpose left out — A sup- 
 posed criticism answered — Equal development of the 
 faculties — Its meaning — A summary of results — Re- 
 construction — Lower faculties subordinated to higher 
 in a unity aiming to realize a moral purpose — The 
 ideal social state — Edward Bellamy's mistake — Sum- 
 mary — Criticism of objections — Pure subjective har- 
 mony incomplete points to a moral order as an objec- 
 tive correlate, while the ideal social state demands the 
 
 144 
 
embodiment of strife into the harmony as a factor 
 making for improvement — Results applied to the 
 school — 
 Specialization along the line of least resistance — Springs 
 from false psychology — Specialization must be subor- 
 dinated to moral law — Its philosophic assumption — 
 What specialization means when applied to pupils — 
 Certain special schools — The principles upon which 
 they work — Criticism thereof — Responsibility for 
 special schools — In the end culture and utility are 
 identical — Return to first principles — Vague character 
 of the science of education. 
 
 145 
 
SOME APPROPRIATE QUOTATIONS. 
 
 Special acknowledgment is here made of the 
 personal permission given by Prof. Robert Ellis 
 Thompson to use material selected from his 
 "Elements of Political Economy" and 'The Di- 
 vine Order of Human Society." Written per- 
 mission has been given by Professors Royce, Ely 
 and Watson to use selections from the works of 
 which they are respectively the authors. Charles 
 Scribner's Sons, Scott, Foresman and Company. 
 D. Appleton and Company and the American 
 Book Company have given permission to use 
 selections from books published by them and 
 mentioned herein. 
 
 Authors quoted herein are not to be viewed as 
 responsible for my opinions, though I must 
 gratefully acknowledge the help I gained from 
 their works. 
 
 Our science considers man as existing in 
 society; we find him, indeed, nowhere else. The 
 old lawyers and political philosophers talked of 
 a state of nature, a condition of savage isolation, 
 out of which men emerged by the social contract 
 through which society was first constituted. But 
 no one else has any news from that country. — 
 Prof. R. E. Thompson's "Political Economy," 
 p. 13. See also pages 17 to 20 and 223. (Porter 
 & Coates.) 
 
 The history of human economy is the story of 
 man's transition from the savage's subjection to 
 
 146 
 
nature, to the citizen's mastery of her forces. — 
 Ibid., p. 29. 
 
 Natural rights of individuals have no existence 
 in any real sense except in society itself, and 
 wherever the well-being of society demands it, 
 they must give way. — Ibid., p. 224. 
 
 There is in man a higher or spiritual nature 
 which education is to awaken into life and call 
 forth into activity and vigor; while there is also 
 in man a lower or animal nature by which he 
 must not be governed and which must be 
 brought under restraint and discipline. — Ibid., p. 
 368. 
 
 Less can be said for the quality than for the 
 quantity of the education given by the public 
 schools. Indeed we cannot too heartily recog- 
 nize the fact that education is yet in an experi- 
 mental stage among us, and that beyond the 
 clear duty of teaching a few of the first and plain- 
 est elements of learning, everything else is open 
 to question . . . Education has been talked of 
 as if there were something magical in the contact 
 of a young mind with a series of school books 
 and of teachers. But the magical results have 
 not been forthcoming. — Ibid., p. 373. 
 
 It is universally acknowledged that our pres- 
 ent curriculum, if not already badly congested, is 
 likely soon to become so. Subject after sub- 
 ject has been added, not from any demonstrated 
 pedagogical need, but in obedience to popular 
 demands or to the professional zeal of specialists. 
 —Prof. DeGarmo's "Herbart and the Herbart- 
 ians," pp. 117-118. (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 
 
 147 
 
Now, if there is any such thing as a good old 
 way in nature or in society, the man has never yet 
 appeared who discovered it. There is none. — 
 Prof. R. T. Ely's "Introduction to Political 
 Economy," p. 35. (Hunt & Eaton, 1889.) Prof. 
 Ely has informed me that a new edition of this 
 work is soon to appear. 
 
 The contradiction between things as they are 
 and our social ideal is painful. — Ibid., p. 65. 
 
 Economic freedom must be regarded as 
 merely relative. It has been absolute only in that 
 condition of anarchy in which savages have lived 
 previous to organized government. — Ibid., p. 71. 
 
 Freedom is negative. . . . Absence of re- 
 straint in itself can hardly be called a good in 
 itself. It may be a curse or a blessing. . . . 
 Children are not fit for it, because under the con- 
 trolling influence of a higher authority their de- 
 velopment can be better secured. — Ibid., p. 74. 
 
 Philosophers of the latter part of the eigh- 
 teenth century assumed the natural equality of 
 all men, and held that oppressive inequalities 
 were the result of legal institutions. It has be- 
 come evident, however, that their assumptions 
 were not valid. — Ibid., p. yj. 
 
 When we come to speak of the disadvantages 
 of the modern system of freedom, that is to say, 
 of competition, it occurs to us that the moral 
 atmosphere of a race-course is not a wholesome 
 one. — Ibid., p. 83. 
 
 Elsewhere Prof. Ely states that our return in 
 political economy is in some important ways a 
 
 148 
 
return to the ideas of Aristotle. In his "Politics" 
 Aristotle says, "Man is naturally a political ani- 
 mal. . . . For man, as in his condition of com- 
 plete development, i. e., in the State, he is the 
 noblest of all animals, so apart from law and 
 justice he is the vilest of all." — Pages 5 and 7 of 
 Welldon's translation. (Macmillan & Co.) 
 
 Prof. Adamson summarizes Fichte's opinion 
 of his own time : The age appeared to him, in its 
 lack of devotion to general interests, in its cold 
 individualism, mechanical statecraft and selfish 
 morality, the condition of completed sinfulness. — 
 "Fichte," p. 80. (Wm. Blackwood & Sons.) 
 
 1. Coming from the hand of the Author of all 
 things, everything is good; in the hands of man, 
 everything degenerates. — Rousseau's "Emile." 
 (D. C. Heath & Co.) 
 
 2. Let us follow nature, who has given shame 
 to man for his scourge, and let the heaviest part 
 of the punishment be the infamy attending it. — 
 Montesquieu's "The Spirit of Laws." 
 
 3. The source of man's unhappiness is his 
 ignorance of nature. — "The System of Nature" 
 by Mirabaud (Baron d'Holbach). 
 
 4. The remedies for these evils must be sought 
 in nature herself. — Ibid. 
 
 5. Man never deceives himself but when he 
 neglects to return back to nature to consult her 
 laws, to call experience to his aid. — Ibid. 
 
 These five quotations show the extent to 
 which nature worship was carried toward the end 
 of the eighteenth century. Our own Thomas 
 Jefferson was greatly influenced by their ideas. 
 
 149 
 
He thought government a necessary evil and 
 therefore the best government was that which 
 governed least. Shelley's "Queen Mab" embodies 
 these thoughts in poetical form, containing un- 
 stinted praise for "unerring nature" and un- 
 merciful denunciations of kings, priests and law- 
 yers. Great as Herbert Spencer undoubtedly is, 
 yet how thoroughly he seems under the notion 
 that what is natural, is good, especially in his 
 "Education," chapter III, though that fiction was 
 certainly old enough to die long before Mr. 
 Spencer wrote. The notion was popular among 
 the Stoics for we find Marcus Aurelius writing, 
 "Nothing is evil that is according to nature," 
 though with the Stoic, nature gets a deeper 
 meaning than Mr. Spencer gives it, for it is not 
 merely a world of order, but one governed by 
 reason. — R. L. 
 
 For a masterly criticism of the notion of a 
 social contract see Prof. John Watson's "He- 
 donistic Theories," especially the chapter on 
 Hobbes. 
 
 What are these natural laws of the socio-econ- 
 omic organism? Let some one enumerate them. 
 —Prof. R. T. Ely's "Introduction to Political 
 Economy," p. 124. (Hunt & Eaton.) 
 
 The multitude of machines of human invention 
 owe all their value to the laws of nature, but 
 those laws alone would never have produced one 
 of them. — Prof. Borden P. Bowne's "Meta- 
 physics," p. 269. (American Book Co.) For a 
 detailed discussion of the metaphysical notions 
 
 150 
 
underlying the conception of nature, see same 
 work, chapter IV. See also J. S. Mill's "Three 
 Essays on Religion." 
 
 Besides that which really is, reflection must 
 have reference to that which ought to be. . . . 
 That much which actually happens ought not to 
 happen, has been the common belief of mankind 
 in all ages. Nor does that skilful apologizing for 
 the laws of physical and psychical existence, 
 which the scientific spirit affects, succeed in driv- 
 ing this belief from the human mind. On the 
 contrary, so confident do men in general con- 
 tinue, of their ability to distinguish the sphere of 
 actuality from the sphere of the ideal, that they 
 without hesitation pronounce judgment against 
 Nature herself. — Prof. G. T. Ladd's "Introduc- 
 tion to Philosophy," p. 288. (Chas. Scribner's 
 Sons.) See same writer's "Philosophy of Mind" 
 for a strong argument against "psychology with- 
 out a soul." Also Prof. Bowne's "Metaphysics," 
 
 P. 348. 
 
 The fiction of the political writers of the last 
 century concerning an original social compact 
 whereby society was first constituted is utterly 
 groundless. — Prof. Bowne's "Principles of 
 Ethics," p. 251. (Am. Book Co.) 
 
 Subordination to the common good is not a 
 necessary evil; in its idea it is not an evil at all, 
 but an incarnation of beneficent righteousness. — 
 Ibid., p. 252. 
 
 Ethics can recognize no arbitrary, irrational 
 and immoral freedom on the part of any one. It 
 
 151 
 
is ethically absurd to set up a claim to a right to 
 do wrong. — Ibid., p. 256. 
 
 When we follow the doctrine of evolution to 
 its economical, ethical and political conclusions, 
 we find it teaching freedom of contract and free- 
 dom of trade in economics, but denying freedom 
 of the will in ethics; condemning the individual 
 to inactivity in self-improvement but urging him 
 to activity in self-indulgence; demonstrating that 
 man's will is the slave of the greater inclination, 
 but anathematizing the attempts of government 
 to control this inclination. So that its teaching 
 may be summed up in this: In industry or the 
 struggle for wealth, absolute freedom ; in govern- 
 ment or social regulations, the most freedom 
 possible; but in ethics or the struggle for self- 
 improvement, no freedom whatever. There is a 
 suspicious inconsistency about this teaching, 
 which is conspicuous in the fruit it bears; for its 
 chief apostle, starting from this theory of evolu- 
 tion, has demonstrated the wickedness of free 
 hospitals, free libraries and free schools. — Prof. 
 Edmond Kelly's "Justus-" 
 
 Speaking of children's home training given by 
 the mother, Herbert Spencer says, "Deeds which 
 she thinks it desirable to encourage, she gets 
 performed by threats and bribes, or by exciting a 
 desire for applause: considering little what the 
 inward motive may be, so long as the outward 
 conduct conforms : and thus cultivating hypocrisy 
 and fear and selfishness, in place of good feeling. 
 While insisting on truthfulness she constantly 
 sets an example of untruth, by threatening 
 
 152 
 
penalties which she does not inflict." — Chapter I, 
 "Education." 
 
 The decline of authority, whether papal, philo- 
 sophic, kingly or tutorial, is essentially one phe- 
 nomenon. — Ibid., chap. II. 
 
 The suppression of every error is commonly 
 followed by a temporary ascendancy of the con- 
 trary one. . . . As, further it usually happens, 
 that after one of these reactions the next advance 
 is achieved by co-ordinating the antagonist 
 errors. — Ibid., chap. II. 
 
 The education of the child must accord both 
 in mode and arrangement with the education of 
 mankind as considered historically. — Ibid., chap. 
 II. 
 
 There is much reason to doubt whether Mr. 
 Spencer adequately interprets the meaning of the 
 foregoing sentence. — R. L. 
 
 Do not expect from a child any great amount 
 of moral goodness. During early years every 
 civilized man passes through that phase of char- 
 acter exhibited by the barbarous race from which 
 he is descended. — Ibid., chap. III. 
 
 Hence the tendencies to cruelty, to thieving, 
 to lying, so general among children. . . . The 
 popular idea that children are 'innocent' ... is 
 totally false in so far as it refers to evil impulses. 
 —Ibid., chap. III. 
 
 No punishment, then, can be justified unless it 
 be essentially just. If society defends itself the 
 defence must be just. The root idea of punish- 
 ment, then, is retribution; and any attempt to 
 escape it only the more certainly brings us back 
 
 153 
 
to it. — Prof. Bowne's "Principles of Ethics," p. 
 274. (Am. Book Co.) 
 
 We are not concerned to save the lives of 
 assassins if thereby the lives of honest men are 
 directly or indirectly imperilled. — Ibid., p. 276. 
 
 Social interests and those of the law-abiding 
 citizen are first. . . . We must be on our guard 
 against the snivelling of the sentimentalist and 
 the scruples of the closet moralist. — Ibid., pp. 
 277-278. 
 
 Besides the knowledge we have of Tightness 
 and wrongness as qualities of actions, we have 
 the knowledge of duty, obligation or oughtness, 
 as a condition of personal activity. The general 
 conception of obligation is subjection of person- 
 ality to moral law. The measure of this obliga- 
 tion is therefore found in the full application of 
 the whole law to the whole life. — Prof. Henry 
 Calderwood's "Handbook of Moral Philosophy," 
 p. 88. (Macmillan & Co.) 
 
 The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal 
 was never yet occupied by man. — Carlyle's 
 "Sartor Resartus." 
 
 American and English ideas of education are 
 now unquestionably adjusted to a theory of mind 
 that regards our mental constitution from aggre- 
 gative rather than from organic standpoints. The 
 mind, according to this theory, is an aggregation 
 of faculties; it is the sum of what we call sense- 
 perception, memory, imagination, reason, feeling, 
 choice, volition and the like. — Prof. DeGarmo's 
 "Herbart and the Herbartians," p. 23. (Chas. 
 Scribner's Sons.) 
 
 i54 
 
Psychology is too frequently only an inventory 
 of certain so-called "faculties of the mind," such 
 as the five senses, imagination, conception, rea- 
 soning, etc. — Preface to Dr. Wm. T. Harris's 
 "Psychologic Foundations of Education." (D. 
 Appleton and Co.) 
 
 Psychology recommended for teachers has 
 been mostly of an individualistic character, the 
 principle of participation in spiritual life being 
 ignored. Hence all allusion to the psychology of 
 society, of nations, of institutions, and especially 
 of art and religion, has been omitted. — Ibid., 
 preface. 
 
 He that spareth the rod hateth his own son: 
 but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. — 
 Proverbs, xiii, 24. 
 
 Chasten thy son while yet there is hope and let 
 not thy soul spare for his crying. — Ibid., xix, 
 18. 
 
 Even a child is known by his doings whether 
 his work be pure, and whether it be right. — Ibid., 
 xx, 11. 
 
 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; 
 but the rod of correction shall drive it far from 
 him. — Ibid., xxii, 15. 
 
 Withhold not correction from the child ; for u 
 thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die. 
 
 Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt 
 deliver his soul from hell. — Ibid., xxiii, 13, 14. 
 
 The rod and reproof give wisdom. — Ibid., 
 xxix, 15. 
 
 On corporal punishments, see Rosenkranz's 
 "Philosophy of Education," pp. 40-42. 
 
 i55 
 
According to the school laws of Pennsylvania, 
 "The teacher should govern his school by ap- 
 peals to the reason and better feelings of his 
 pupils if possible. But a teacher in the common 
 schools stands in place of a parent to a pupil, and 
 may administer correction to him under the same 
 restrictions as in the case of a parent. 
 
 "The right of a teacher to inflict such punish- 
 ment is founded upon the necessity of the case 
 and not upon statute. It is absolutely necessary 
 that good order should be maintained in the 
 schools, and that all proper rules, regulations and 
 commands of the teacher should be strictly and 
 promptly obeyed. Hence a necessity exists for 
 sufficient power to enforce this duty, and therefor 
 it is held that the teacher may inflict such rea- 
 sonable corporal punishment upon the pupil as 
 the parent might inflict for a similar cause." — 
 Page 137, "School Laws and Decisions," issue 
 of 1899. 
 
 All instruction starts from the inequality be- 
 tween those who possess knowledge and ability 
 and those who have not yet obtained them. — 
 Rosenkranz's "Philosophy of Education," p. 
 186. (D. Appleton & Co.) 
 
 A mental feeling connecting itself with pure" 
 idea of duty is the essence of Conscience; though 
 in that complex phenomenon as it actually exists, 
 the simple fact is in general all encrusted over 
 with collateral associations, derived from sym- 
 pathy, from love and still more from fear. — J. S. 
 Mill's "Utilitarianism." 
 
 156 
 
It is the duty of parents to preserve their child ; 
 it is also their duty to spare and favor its free- 
 dom; hence in so far as the latter might hurt the 
 former, it is their duty to subordinate the child's 
 freedom to their highest end in the child. — 
 Fichte's "Science of Ethics," p. 350. Trans- 
 lated by A. E. Kroeger. (D. Appleton and Co.) 
 
 It is the duty of the parents to restrict the free- 
 dom of the children, in so far as its use might be 
 injurious to their education. — Ibid., p. 352. 
 
 If no other means can be found to subject 
 children to the end of education than compulsion, 
 the parents have the right of compulsion. — Ibid., 
 
 P- 352. 
 
 It is a very false maxim, which, like various 
 other evils, we owe to a prevailing eudacmonism 
 that we should make our children do our behests 
 through rational argument and according to their 
 own insight. Besides other reasons of its wrong- 
 ness, it involves, moreover the absurdity of as- 
 suming that the child has a good deal more rea- 
 son than we have ourselves; since even grown 
 persons act mostly from inclinations and not 
 from rational grounds. — Ibid., p. 354. 
 
 All men who know themselves are conscious 
 that this tendency (to degenerate), deep-rooted 
 and active, exists within their nature. Theologi- 
 cally, it is described as a gravitation, a bias 
 toward evil. The Bible view is that man is con- 
 ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. And ex- 
 perience tells him that he will shape himself into 
 further sin and ever deepening iniquity without 
 the smallest effort, without the least intending it, 
 
 i57 
 
and in the most natural way in the world if he 
 simply let his life run. — Sir Henry Drummond's 
 "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," p. 91. 
 (Altemus.) 
 
 There is a natural principle in man lowering 
 him, deadening him, pulling him down by inches 
 to the mere animal plane, blinding reason, sear- 
 ing conscience, paralyzing will. — Ibid., p. 96. 
 
 Proved by results, it is surely already decided 
 that on merely natural lines moral perfection is 
 unattainable. — Ibid., p. 361. 
 
 The lesson of evolution, at first thought to be 
 the apotheosis of anarchic, individualistic com- 
 petition, is now recognized to be quite the con- 
 trary. — Webb's "Socialism in England," p. 82. 
 (Swan, Sonnenschein.) 
 
 Speaking of the age of which "John Wesley, 
 Adam JSmith and Jean Jacques Rousseau were 
 the prophets," Prof. Robert Ellis Thompson 
 says, "It has left us a harvest of priceless results. 
 But it always was an exaggeration, — a presenta- 
 tion of half a truth as though it were the whole 
 truth. Like all exaggerations it has produced an 
 equal reaction, and we are now in the rebound of 
 that movement." — Page 8, "The Divine Order of 
 Human Society." 
 
 There is certainly much in modern fatherhood 
 which must fail to interpret God to the child, but 
 fail in the opposite direction. We live in an age 
 and a land of indulgence. ... In such a time 
 over-indulgence, first of self and then of those for 
 whom we are responsible, becomes a besetting 
 sin. Children are allowed to have their own way, 
 
 158 
 
without much reference to what kind of a way it 
 is. Their every wish is indulged, even when 
 good taste, or the comfort of others, or the child's 
 own welfare must be sacrificed. It is so much 
 easier to give in than refuse; and so we take 
 credit for kindness to them, where in truth we 
 are kind only to ourselves. The effect of this is 
 seen in the manners before it is visible in the 
 morals of the young. European observers are 
 kind enough to say that the American traveler 
 generally is a tolerable sort of a person, but that 
 his children are the most intolerable torments to 
 be found in the European resorts. — Ibid., pp. 
 
 73> 74- 
 
 Nor is it only the family that suffers through 
 the abandonment of parental authority. Social 
 discipline is corrupted at its very fountain-head. 
 That reverence for authority which is funda- 
 mental to all society can be taught only at home. 
 — Ibid., p. j6. 
 
 There are things a father can teach his child as 
 no other human being can teach them, because 
 he is invested naturally with an authority which 
 he cannot delegate and which the best teachers 
 can possess only to a limited extent. — Ibid., p. 
 
 77- 
 
 There are, I think, clear indications that the 
 reign of agnosticism is almost over. — Prof. John 
 Watson's "The Problem of Hegel," Philosophi- 
 cal Review, Vol. IV, p. 353. 
 
 The optimism which shuts its eyes to the 
 misery and wickedness of the world was to him 
 (Jesus) a false and delusive creed. The wretch- 
 
 1.59 
 
edness and evil of man were only too palpable. — 
 Prof. John Watson's "Christiantv and Idealism," 
 p. 77. (The Macmillan Co.) 
 
 Thus God works not upon but through the 
 things which have come from His hands. Nature 
 is not a dead machine, wielded by the hands of 
 omnipotence, but it is instinct with that eternal 
 principle which exhibits itself in the ever-recur- 
 ring cycle of changes, inorganic and organic. — 
 Ibid., p. 90. 
 
 The false principle must show its bitter fruits, 
 and must accomplish its perfect work before it 
 completely reveals its true nature. Hence, the 
 more it outwardly triumphs and shows its evil 
 nature, the more surely is the way prepared for 
 its final overthrow. — Ibid., p. 93. 
 
 Social progress means a checking of the cos- 
 mic process at every step and the substitution for 
 it of another, which may be called the ethical 
 process; the end of which is not the survival of 
 those who happen to be fittest, in respect of the 
 whole of the conditions which exist, but of those 
 which are ethically the best. — Quoted from Hux- 
 ley's ''Evolution and Morality" by Professor 
 Watson who says, "These are perhaps the wisest, 
 as they are almost the latest, words which Hux- 
 ley ever wrote." — See "Christianity and Ideal- 
 ism," p. 242. 
 
 From the evolutionist point of view the mean- 
 ing of the earlier stages must be interpreted in 
 the light of the final stage, for it is only in the 
 final stage that realty as a whole reveals what it 
 truly is. — Ibid., p. 253. 
 
 160 
 
The cosmopolitanism of the last century (18th) 
 carried the abstract assertion of the equality of 
 men to the paradox that civilization itself is a 
 moral disadvantage, and that the genuine voice 
 of humanity is to be heard only from the natural 
 man, 'the noble savage.' — Prof. Edward Caird's 
 ''Evolution of Religion," p. 18, Vol. I. (Mac- 
 millan & Co.) 
 
 It is this impulse to revivify and reconstruct 
 the facts, — to make the past into a living present, 
 while yet we understand its inner meaning in a 
 way in which the present can never be under- 
 stood by those who live in it, — it is this that char- 
 acterizes the modern scientific spirit and differ- 
 entiates it so completely from a mere casual and 
 external curiosity. — Ibid., p. 20. 
 
 The life of Nature and of all things and beings 
 that belong to the realm of Nature is a purely 
 immediate or objective life; at best it is a life 
 which contains only faint foreshadowings of the 
 self-activity that belongs to the realm of spirit. — 
 Rev. John Caird's "Introduction to the Phil- 
 osophy of Religion," p. 248. (Macmillan & Co.) 
 
 It is the essential characteristic of a spiritual 
 self-conscious being that the opposition between 
 itself and the world, and between its empirical 
 and its ideal existence, is a conscious opposition, 
 and that the conflict by which it develops itself 
 is not the conflict of one blind force with other 
 blind forces, but the deeper strife of impulse with 
 reason, the inward war with self which is possible 
 only for a nature allied on the one side to that 
 
 161 
 
which is universal and infinite, on the other con- 
 trolled by the brute force of instinct and ap- 
 petite. — Ibid., pp. 249, 250. 
 
 Moral and spiritual perfection does not and 
 cannot come to us by nature, but only as the 
 result of struggle and self-conquest. ... It is in 
 the reaction against nature that the higher life of 
 morality and religion is developed. — Ibid, p. 252. 
 
 In one sense the members of the social organ- 
 ism in which I live, the institutions, the civil and 
 political organization of the community to which 
 I belong, are outside and independent of me, and 
 there are certain duties and obligations which 
 they authoritatively impose on me. They con- 
 stitute a moral order, an external or objective 
 morality, to which I must submit. But, in an- 
 other sense they are not foreign to me, they are 
 more truly me than my private self. — Ibid., p. 
 264. 
 
 The life of duty does, and must bring us to 
 self-harmony. ... It is only in beginning to live 
 the higher life that we become aware of the bond- 
 age which the lower imposes on us. — Ibid., p. 
 268. 
 
 Wherever science deals with phenomena, 
 which instead of being constant or ever-recurring 
 are the manifestations of a process of develop- 
 ment, there it is impossible to understand the 
 present without reference to the past. — Ibid., p. 
 292. 
 
 Of man above all other beings it is true that to 
 know what he is, we must know what he has 
 been. — Ibid., p. 294. See also pp. 298-300. 
 
 162 
 
Nothing in the world is intelligible apart from 
 its history, and man must be of all things the 
 least so, because he is of all things the most com- 
 plex, variable and richly endowed. — Prof. Robeit 
 Flint's "Philosophy of History," p. i. (Charles 
 Scribner's Sons.) 
 
 For a concise and interesting statement of the 
 nature and function of history, see Prof. Morris's 
 "Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of His- 
 tory," pp. 111-136. 
 
 The unsatisfying nature of a life of mere pleas- 
 ure and worldliness is well portrayed in Sir 
 Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Buddha is 
 kept in a veritable palace of pleasures, but after 
 a time they pall on him and he longs to escape, 
 which having been accomplished he searches for 
 everlasting truth. His labors were rewarded. 
 His infinite nature received its own. Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson in "Rasselas" gives us a similar picture 
 except that he reaches a "conclusion in which 
 nothing is concluded." Some of the most beau- 
 tiful lines ever written may be found in "Ecclesi- 
 astes," concerning the vanity of a life of mere 
 pleasure. — R. L. 
 
 It is enough at present to point out what all 
 the strongest of human souls have observed and 
 reported as a fact of experience; namely, that 
 through the endurance and the conquest over its 
 own internal ills the spirit wins its best conscio-. 
 fulfilment. . . . For tragedy wins our interest by 
 making us suffer, and yet consent to endure, not 
 the tragic hero's suffering, but our own, for the 
 sake of the spiritual beauty that we thereby learn 
 
 163 
 
to contemplate. Courage is glorious, because it 
 involves a conquest over our own conscious 
 shrinking in the presence of danger. Who fears 
 not knows not conscious courage. Endurance 
 is noble, because it includes a voluntary defeat of 
 our own unwillingness to endure. And, in gen- 
 eral, every form of more complex rational life 
 means a triumph over ourselves whereby alone 
 we win ourselves. Whoever has not faced prob- 
 lems as problems, mysteries as mysteries, defeats 
 as defeats, knows not what that completer pos- 
 session of his own life means which is the out- 
 come and also the present experience of triumph 
 in the midst of finitude and disaster. For in the 
 victorious warfare with finitude consists the per- 
 fection of spirit. — Prof. Josiah Royce's "The 
 World and the Individual," pp. 381, 382. (The 
 Macmillan Co.) 
 
 Oh! we're sunk enough here, God knows! but 
 not quite so sunk that moments, 
 
 Sure though seldom, are denied us, when the 
 spirit's true endowments 
 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise 
 it if pursuing 
 
 Or the right way or the wrong way, to its tri- 
 umph or undoing. 
 
 — Browning's "Christina." 
 
 It seems too much like a fate, indeed! 
 Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed. 
 But what if I fail of my purpose here? 
 It is but to "keep the nerves at strain, 
 
 164 
 
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, 
 And baffled, get up and begin again, — 
 
 So the chase takes up one's life, that's all. 
 While, look but once from your farthest bound 
 At me so deep in the dust and dark, 
 No sooner the old hope goes to the ground 
 Than a new one straight to the self-same mark, 
 I shape me. 
 
 — Browning's "Life in a Love." 
 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
 forebore, 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
 peers, 
 The heroes of old, 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears, 
 
 Of pain, darkness and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
 — Browning's "Prospice." 
 
 In the "Last of the Barons" Bulwer thus de- 
 scribes the contents of Book Sixth: "Wherein 
 are opened some glimpses of the fate, below, 
 that attends those who are better than others, 
 and those who desire to make others better. 
 Love, demagogy and science equally offspring 
 of the same prolific delusion — viz., that mean 
 souls, (the earth's majority) are worth the hope 
 and the agony of noble souls, the everlastingly 
 suffering and aspiring few." 
 
 165 
 
REFERENCES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3. " Nature as positive observation," etc. Mallock's 
 " Is Life Worth Living?" 
 
 5. " From the homogeneous to the heterogeneous." 
 See Spencer's "First Principles," Chap. XVII. 
 
 7. "Man was formerly little less than an angel," 
 Cf. with Schurman's "Agnosticism and Religion," 
 Chap. I. 
 
 "Not Spirits, yet to Heavenly Spirits bright 
 Little inferior." " Paradise Lost," Book IV. 
 
 7. "The ape and tiger." Tennyson's "In Memoriam,' 
 CXVII. 
 
 12. "The American child is the terror," etc. Prof. R. 
 E. Thompson. 
 
 14. Pestalozzi, like Shelley, came to see the mistakes 
 of the naturalistic beliefs of his earlier life. The 
 French Revolution showed him that evil grew out 
 of man's character rather than out of institutions. 
 11 He learned the great truth that in the absence of 
 external impediments man is even less, than under 
 pressure, disposed to seek his own moral and in- 
 tellectual improvement." Pestalozzi enthusiasts 
 are referred to "Educational Foundations" for 
 February, 1901. 
 
 21. "We must have order or we cannot teach." 
 James L. Hughes's "How to Keep Order." 
 
 22. Same work referred to. 
 
 24. "We are compelled to say," etc. Prof. G. S. 
 Morris's "Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of 
 History." (Scott, Foresman and Co., Chicago.) 
 
 166 
 
26. J. S. Mill. "Three Essays on Representative 
 Government. ' ' 
 
 27. Wm, T. Harris. Rosenkranz's "Phil, of Edu- 
 cation," p. 27. 
 
 27. "In philosophy, all that is new was once old." 
 Prof. Knight's "Hume." (J. B. Lippincott.) 
 
 33. " Parents are not good enough." Spencer's Edu- 
 cation, Chap. III. 
 
 36. "A knife that won't cut," etc. Dr. Oscar Gerson. 
 
 43,44. Quotations from White's "School Manage- 
 ment," pp. 17-19. 
 
 45. " For in the isolated consciousness of the finite," 
 etc. Prof. E. Caird' s "Evolution of Religion," 
 Vol. I., p. 102. 
 
 47. "The vital factor in the school is the teacher." 
 White's "School Management," p. 19. 
 
 48. "Inventory of the facts of mind." See p. 155. 
 
 48. " Current psychology," etc. Prof. Bowne's " Met- 
 aphysics," preface, p. vii. 
 
 62. "I am whatsoever is." etc. Inscription on the 
 temple of Isis. 
 
 64, 65. Poetry from " In Memoriam." 
 
 71. " It is rank with inexact science," etc. Quoted 
 by Prof. Walker, "Political Economy," p. 400. 
 Pages referred to in Spencer's "Education" cor- 
 respond to the numbering found in Burt' s or Alli- 
 son' s edition of " Education." 
 
 167 
 
79- Lecky. " History ot Rationalism in Europe." 
 
 1 10. John Locke was not the first to consider the mind 
 as a tabula rasa. It is at least as old as Aristotle. 
 
 1 16. Milton's apostrophe to wedded love — "Paradise 
 Lost," Book IV. 
 
 134. "The Deacon's Masterpiece," by Holmes. 
 
 139. "Certainly we at present stand," etc. Prof. 
 Knight's " Philosophy of the Beautiful," preface. 
 
 168 
 
jane * i5 . X^O i 
 

 ore 
 
 
 .0*5;' 
 
 
 
 
 
 "&*M\ <? 
 
 
isS" w^<H& * '4^b»*o?^\ o "Jagg" UJ^iT^ ^'t&gv 
 Bfy H'"hNf f °rl ^wd o'-Fomc 6 ^ Tar 
 
 cr. 
 
 
 tt °.