afford to speak disparagingly of Brot-studien and to advocate theories
of education which would sunder the school from practical life. An
education that unfits the pupil for bread-winning in case of necessity
cannot be too severely condemned; among other reasons, because it fails
to lay a proper foundation for the higher life. On the other hand, the
school that does not aim at something higher than dollars and cents
deserves equally severe condemnation; for that which makes life worth
living cannot be bought with money. If you are rich, you may buy a fine
house, but you cannot buy a happy home; that must be made,—_made_ by
you and by those who occupy it with you. With money you may rent a pew
in some fashionable church, but you cannot rent a good conscience,—that
depends upon your manner of living and dealing with others. Money will
enable you to buy a fine copy of Shakespeare, but it cannot purchase
for you the ability to appreciate a play of Shakespeare,—that is the
result of education. Wealth will enable you to cover the walls of your
costly mansion with beautiful pictures; and the sewing-girl, if she has
been properly taught in a public school, will get more enjoyment out of
them than can possibly be gotten by the sons and daughters of wealth and
luxury whose proper education has been neglected.
[Sidenote: Thinking God’s thoughts.]
[Sidenote: The objection.]
[Sidenote: True contentment.]
Plato wrote above the door of the academy, “Let no one enter here who
is destitute of geometry.” Why did he value geometry so highly? Not
merely as an introduction to the study of philosophy, for in one of
his dialogues he says, “God geometrizes.” He had an idea that a youth
in thinking the theorems of geometry is thinking divine thoughts. When
Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion, he exclaimed, in ecstasy,
“O God, I think thy thoughts after thee!” When a pupil learns to think
the thoughts which the Creator has put into the starry heavens above us
and into all nature about us, he is thinking God’s thoughts and tasting
the enjoyments of the higher life. When he is taught the right use of
books, and given access to a public library, he may acquire the power to
think the best thoughts of the best men at their best moments. In nature
study, in the reading lesson, in the teaching of science and literature,
the school fosters the higher life of the pupil by enabling him to think
God’s thoughts and man’s best thoughts as these are enshrined in creation
and in the humanities. The objection is sometimes heard that the school
makes the working-classes discontented with their lot. “Teach a man to
think,” says the opponent of universal education, “and you make him
dissatisfied with what he has and knows.” If the school fixes the eye
upon wealth, fame, glory, official position, and other things which can
be attained only by a few, and which, when sought as the chief end of
life, resemble the apples of the Dead Sea, turning to ashes on the lips
as soon as they are tasted, then, indeed, the school may doom its pupils
to a life of discontent and disappointment. But if the school fixes the
eye upon the things of the higher life, things which are within the reach
of every boy and girl at school, it lays the foundation for a contentment
far transcending the possibilities of a life that turns upon feasting,
office-holding, and the things that can be bought with money.
It must be admitted that the exercise of the higher powers carries with
it a certain feeling of discontent, but it is a feeling that conditions
true progress and is not doomed to ultimate disappointment. The true test
of what is preferable is the testimony of those who have knowledge of
both modes of existence. Who that knows both does not value the pleasures
of thinking above those of eating? Who would exchange the joy of doing
right for anything attainable by the man who, for the sake of success,
banishes ethics from his business or his politics? “Few human creatures,”
says Mill, “would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for
a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent
human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an
ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base,
even though he should be persuaded that the fool, or the dunce, or the
rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they with theirs.” “It is
better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to
be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the
pig is of a different opinion, it is only because they know only their
own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both
sides.” Who would not rather be an intelligent workingman seeking to
better his condition, than an ignoramus contented with little because he
knows nothing of the joys of the higher life?
[Sidenote: Life’s contradictions.]
[Sidenote: Tragedy and comedy.]
[Sidenote: Beauty.]
Life is full of contradictions and incongruities and disappointments.
Over against these, the school, in its relation to the higher life,
has a duty to perform. For the discontent which springs from life’s
contradictions and incongruities a safety-valve has been given to man
in his ability to laugh. The person who never laughs is as one-sided
and abnormal as the person who never prays. The comic is now recognized
as one form of the beautiful, and the beautiful is closely allied
to the true and the good. Without going into the philosophy of this
matter, attention may be drawn to the fact that beauty has a home in the
domain of art, as well as of nature; that the queen of the fine arts is
poetry; that the greatest poet of all the ages was Shakespeare; that
Shakespeare’s literary genius reached its highest flights in tragedies
and comedies; that whilst tragedy and comedy are two forms of the
beautiful in art, comedy is the highest form of the comic, whilst tragedy
is the highest form of the sublime. In teaching us to appreciate the
plays of Shakespeare, the school not merely teaches us when to laugh
and when to weep, thereby furnishing the safety-valve to let off our
discontent and to reconcile us anew to our lot, but puts us in possession
of that which money cannot buy,—namely, the ability to appreciate the
beautiful in its subtlest and sublimest forms. Who owns the moonlit
skies, the millionaire or the poet? Who owns the hills and the valleys,
the streams and the mountains; he in whose name the deeds and mortgages
are recorded, or he whose soul can appreciate beauty and sublimity?
Beauty has a home in nature and in art. It is the province of the school
to put us in possession of the beautiful, the sublime, and the comic, for
these quite as much as the true and the good belong to the things of the
higher life.
[Sidenote: Faith, hope, and love.]
How about life’s disappointments? Higher than the life of thought is the
life of faith and hope and love,—higher, because these are rooted and
grounded in the life of thought, ripen above it as its highest fruitage
and efflorescence. The nineteenth century has been an age of faith. Every
scientific mind has profound faith in nature’s laws, in the universal
efficacy of truth; and, like Agassiz and Gray and Drummond, multitudes of
the best minds have made the step from faith in natural laws to faith in
the laws which govern the spiritual world.
The common people evince a faith almost bordering on credulity in the
readiness with which they accept the results of scientific research and
investigation. Faith lies at the basis of great achievements. Bismarck
declared that if he did not believe in the divine government of the
world, he would not serve his country another day. “Take away my faith,”
he exclaimed, “and you take away my country, too.” Whilst no religious
test can he applied to those who teach in our public schools, our best
people prefer teachers who have faith in the unseen to teachers who lack
faith in the truths of revelation. In ways that escape observation, the
spirit of faith passes from teacher to pupil, and gives the latter a
sense of something to live for and something to be achieved.
[Sidenote: Immortality.]
Faith begets hope. The hope of glory, of rewards in civil and military
life, of immortality on the pages of history, has stimulated to deeds
of heroism and self-sacrifice, and will continue to do so to the end
of time. The higher life knows of higher objects of hope than these.
Immortality on the pages of history is only an immortality in printer’s
ink. The true teacher wishes his pupils to cherish the hope of an
immortality far more real than an immortality in printer’s ink; he seeks
to implant in their hearts the hope of an immortal life in a world where
the soul shall be robed in a body like unto Christ’s risen body, which
Stephen saw in a vision of glory and Paul beheld in a manifestation of
overwhelming splendor.
[Sidenote: Love makes life worth living.]
That which makes life worth living is the life of love. In the thirteenth
chapter of First Corinthians, which is a poem, though lacking metre
and rhyme, Paul speaks of faith, hope, and charity, and says that, of
these three, the greatest is charity, or love, as the Revised Version
translates it. Faith shall be changed to sight, and hope to glad
fruition, but love shall abide forever. Throughout the ceaseless ages
of eternity, love of the truth, as it is, in Jesus,—yea, man’s love
for his Maker and his Saviour, and for the whole glorious company of
the redeemed,—will continue to glow and to grow, lifting the soul to
ever loftier heights of ecstasy and bliss. A foretaste of this ecstatic
bliss is possible in this life. Love of home and country, of kindred
and friends, of truth and righteousness, of beauty in all its forms,
of goodness of every kind, up to the highest forms of the good, gives
life on earth a heavenly charm. Even in this world, the love that binds
human hearts, that makes homes and brotherhoods, that issues in deeds of
kindness, friendship, and charity, is bringing more happiness to the race
than all other agencies combined.
“The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the whole world dies
With the setting sun.
“The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
But the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.”
[Sidenote: Thinking and living.]
The school makes possible the higher life when it teaches the pupil to
think. Right thinking puts intelligence into the labor of his hands,
increases his earning-power, lays the foundation for his physical
well-being, and lifts him above an existence that is a mere struggle
for bread. It promotes the higher life by teaching him to think God’s
thoughts, as enshrined in all His works, and the best thoughts of the
best men, as embodied in literature and the humanities. It fits the
pupil for complete living by developing in him the power to appreciate
the beautiful in nature and art, power to think the true and to will the
good, power to live the life of thought, and faith, and hope, and love.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] For brevity’s sake the phrase, thinking in things, is preferred to
the more accurate but less convenient expression, thinking in the images
of things.
[2] Psychopannychism denotes the doctrine that the soul falls asleep at
death, not to awaken until the resurrection.
[3] For this incident the writer is indebted to Superintendent L. H.
Jones, of Cleveland, Ohio.
[4] “Lessons in Psychology,” pages 260-267.
[5] See “How London Lives,” Thomas Nelson & Sons, London.
[6] “Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was at one time in Prague assistant to
the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. Unlike Tycho, Kepler had no talent for
observation and experimentation. But he was a great thinker, and excelled
as a mathematician. He absorbed Copernican ideas, and early grappled with
the problem of determining the real paths of the planets. In his first
attempts he worked on the dreams of the Pythagoreans concerning figure
and number. Intercourse with Tycho led him to reject such mysticism and
to study on the planets recorded by his master. He took the planet Mars,
and found that no combinations of circles would give a path which could
be reconciled with the observations. In one case the difference between
the observed and his computed values was eight minutes, and he knew that
so accurate an observer as Tycho could not make an error so great. He
tried an oval orbit for Mars, and rejected it; he tried an ellipse, and
it fitted. Thus, after more than four years of assiduous computation, and
after trying nineteen imaginary paths, and rejecting each because it was
inconsistent with observation, Kepler in 1618 discovered the truth. An
ellipse! Why did he not think of it before? What a simple matter—after
the puzzle is once solved! He worked out what are known as Kepler’s
laws, which accorded with observation, but conflicted with the Ptolemaic
hypothesis. Thus the old system was logically overthrown. But not until
after a bitter struggle between science and theology did the new system
find general acceptation.”—Cajori’s “History of Physics,” pages 29, 30.
[7] Young’s “The Sun,” pages 43, 44, second edition.
[8] Young’s “Astronomy,” page 174.
[9] Now the well-known Lord Kelvin.
[10] “Actinism,” by Professor Charles F. Himes, pages 18, 19.
[11] Dr. Morrell’s “Elements of Psychology,” quoted by Galloway in
“Education, Scientific and Technical,” page 165.
[12] Quoted by Galloway in “Education, Scientific and Technical,” pages
116, 117.
[13] Hinsdale’s “The Language Arts,” pages 17, 18.
[14] Mr. Smiles, “Life of Stephenson,” third edition, page 474, tells
how George Stephenson, arguing one evening on the coal question with
Dr. Buckland, was quite unable to make good his case. The next morning
he talked over the matter with Sir W. Follett, and that illustrious
advocate, from the materials supplied by the practical knowledge of
Stephenson, was able easily to discomfit the learned dean. Quoted by A.
S. Wilkins’s “Cicero de Oratore,” page 105, second edition.
[15] Phelps’s “Men and Books,” page 303.
[16] Lowell’s “Books and Libraries,” pages 88-90, vol. vi., _Riverside
Edition_.
[17] Phelps’s “Men and Books,” pages 105, 106.
[18] Ibid., page 124.
[19] N. Porter’s “Books and Reading,” page 57.
[20] Charles F. Himes’s “Actinism,” pages 5, 6.
[21] Jevons’s “Principles of Science,” pages 399, 400.
[22] “Talks on Psychology,” page 34.
[23] “Psychologic Foundations of Education,” pages 177, 178.
[24] Latham, “Action of Examinations,” pages 229, 230.
[25] Maudsley’s “Physiology of the Mind,” page 518.
[26] Annotations on Bacon’s Essay “Of Studies.”
[27] Hamerton’s “Intellectual Life,” page 125.
[28] John xii. 24, Revised Version.
[29] F. Galton’s “Inquiries into Human Faculty,” pages 100, 101.
[30] F. Galton’s “Inquiries into Human Faculty,” pages 113, 114.
[31] James Freeman Clarke’s “Self-Culture,” page 183.
[32] Bain’s “The Emotion and the Will,” page 29.
[33] James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., pages 243, 244.
[34] James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., page 253
[35] Huxley’s “Discourses, Biological and Geological Essays,” pages vi,
vii.
[36] James’s “Psychology,” vol. i., page 264. Of Charles Darwin’s habits
of reading, his son says, “I have often heard him say that he got a kind
of satisfaction in reading articles which (according to himself) he could
not understand. I wish I could reproduce the manner in which he would
laugh at himself for it.” Of his scientific reading, this son writes as
follows: “Much of his scientific reading was in German, and this was
a great labor to him; in reading a book after him, I was often struck
at seeing, from the pencil-marks made each day where he left off, how
little he could read at a time. He used to call German the ‘Verdammte,’
pronounced as if in English. He was especially indignant with Germans,
because he was convinced that they could write simply if they chose, and
often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand for writing German which was as clear as
French.”—“Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” vol. i., page 103.
[37] Locke’s “Human Understanding,” vol. ii., page 85.
[38] Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind,” Fourth Problem, pages 474, 475.
[39] Lewes’s “Problems of Life and Mind,” Fourth Problem, pages 475-477.
[40] Bautain’s “Art of Extempore Speaking,” pages 68, 69.
[41] “Autobiography,” page 80.
[42] “Men and Books,” pages 221, 222.
[43] “In the name, then, of a sound condition of mind and body, and
in the confident hope of obtaining both for France, I call on our
people to imitate the people of the United States of North America
by making the art of reading aloud the very corner-stone of public
education.”—Legouvé’s “Art of Reading,” page 145.
[44] Clifford’s “Essays,” page 88.
[45] Clifford’s “Essays,” page 87. Thus the movements of Sirius led
astronomers (Peters and Auwers) to infer the existence of a satellite,
which was subsequently discovered by Alvan Clark & Son through the
eighteen-inch glass which they were completing for the Chicago
Observatory. Similarly, Professor Wright, of Oberlin, carefully studied
the Trenton deposits and their relations to the terrace and gravel
deposits to the westward, and predicted that similar paleolithic
implements would be found in Ohio. Two years afterwards Dr. Mertz
found, eight feet below the surface, a true paleolith of black flint at
Madisonville, in the Little Miami Valley. Other instances of scientific
prediction will occur to the reader.
[46] “Essay on the Human Understanding,” Book IV., Chapter I.
[47] Compayre’s “History of Pedagogy,” page 437, American translation.
[48] “There can be no doubt that Newton was an alchemist, and that he
often labored night and day at alchemical experiments. But in trying to
discover the secret by which gross metals might be rendered noble his
lofty powers of deductive investigation were wholly useless. Deprived of
all guiding clues, his experiments were like those of all the alchemists,
purely haphazard and tentative. While his hypothetical and deductive
investigations have given us a true system of the universe, and opened
the way for almost all the great branches of natural philosophy, the
whole results of his tentative experiments are comprehended in a few
happy guesses, given in his celebrated ‘Queries.’”—Jevons’s “Principles
of Science,” pages 505, 506.
[49] “The Senses and the Intellect,” pages 488-524.
[50] Max Müller’s “Science of Thought,” page 605.
[51] Page 402.
[52] Page 6.
[53] Darwin’s “Autobiography,” page 81.
[54] For this incident the writer is indebted to Dr. A. E. Winship.
[55] “Mental Physiology,” page 389.
[56] Crooker’s “Student in American Life,” pages 23, 28.