existing system where universal, unlimited suffrage and the party system
are firmly intrenched as opponents of vital reform, and where
representation and legislation take their indelible colour from these
unfortunate institutions. It must freely be admitted that there is no
chance of eliminating or recasting either one or the other by the
recognized methods of platform support and mass action through the
ballot. It comes in the end to a change of viewpoint and of heart on the
part of the individual. No party, no political leader would for a moment
endorse any one of the principles or methods I have suggested, for this
would be a suicidal act. The newspaper, irresponsible, anonymous,
directed by its advertizing interests or by those more sinister still,
yet for all that the factor that controls the opinions of those who hold
the balance of power in the community as it is now constituted, would
reject them with derision, while in themselves they are radically
opposed to the personal interests of the majority. The only hope of
lifting government to the level of dignity and capacity it should hold,
lies in the individual. It is necessary that we should see things
clearly, estimate conditions as they are, and think through to the end.
We do not do this. We admit, in a dull sort of way, that matters are not
as they should be, that legislation is generally silly and oppressive,
that taxation is excessive, that administration is wasteful and reckless
and incompetent, for we know these things by experience. We accept them,
however, with our national good-nature and easy tolerance, assuming that
they are inseparable from democratic government--as indeed they are, but
not for a moment does any large number think of questioning the
principle, or even the system, that must take the responsibility. When
disgust and indifference reach a certain point we stop voting, that is
all. At the last presidential election less than one half the qualified
voters took the trouble to cast their ballots, while in Boston (which is
no exception) it generally happens that at a municipal elections the
ballots cast are less than one-third the total electorate. I wonder how
many there are here today who have ever been to a ward meeting, or have
sat through a legislative session of a city government, as of Boston for
example, or have listened to the debates in a state house of
representatives, or analyzed the annual grist of legislative bills, or
have sat for an hour or two in the Senate or House at Washington. Such
an experience is, I assure you, illuminating, for it shows exactly why
popular government is what it is, while it forms an admirable basis for
a constructive revision of judgment as to the soundness of accepted
principles and the validity of accepted methods.
Our political attitude today is based on an inherited and automatic
acceptance of certain perfectly automatic formulae. We neither see
things clearly, estimate conditions as they are, nor think a proposition
through to the end: we are obsessed by old formulae, partisan "slogans"
and newspaper aphorisms; the which is both unworthy and perilous. Let us
see things clearly for a moment; if we do this anything is possible, no
matter how idealistic and apparently impracticable it may be. Is there
any one who would confess that character and intelligence are now a
helpless minority in this nation? Such an admission would be almost
constructive treason. The instinct of the majority is right, but it is
defective in will and it is subservient to base leadership, while its
power for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulae
that, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient,
or even true, and have become a clog and a stumbling block.
I may not have indicated better ideals or sounder methods of operation,
but the true ideals exist and it is not beyond our ability to discover a
better working system. Partisanship cannot reveal either one or the
other, nor are they the fruit of organization or the attribute of
political leadership. They belong to the common citizen, to you, to the
individual, and if once superstition is cast out and we fall back on
right reason and the eternal principles of the Christian ethic and the
Christian ideal, we shall not find them difficult of attainment; and
once attained they can be put in practice, for the ill thing exists only
on sufferance, the right thing establishes itself by force of its very
quality of right.
VI
THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION AND ART
When, as on occasion happens, some hostile criticism is leveled against
the civilization of modernism, or against some one of its many details,
the reply is ready, and the faultfinder is told that the defect, if it
exists, will in the end be obviated by the processes of popular
education. Pressed for more explicit details as to just what may be the
nature of this omnipotent and sovereign "education," the many champions
give various answer, depending more or less on the point of view and the
peculiar predilections of each, but the general principles are the same.
Education, they say, consist of two things; the formal practice and
training of the schools, and the experience that comes through the use
of certain public rights and privileges, such as the ballot, the holding
of office, service on juries, and through various experiences of the
practice of life, as the reading of newspapers (and perhaps books), the
activities of work, business and the professions, and personal
association with other men in social, craft, and professional clubs and
other organizations.
With the second category of education through experience we need not
deal at this time; it is a question by itself and of no mean quality;
the matter I would consider is the more formal and narrow one of
scholastic training in so far as it bears on the Great Peace that,
though perhaps after many days, must follow the Great War and the little
peace.
Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation through
education pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widest
possible extension of our public school system, with free state
universities and technical schools, and the extension of the educational
period, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial,
that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape.
This free, compulsory and universal education is assumed to be
scrupulously secular and hedged about with every safeguard against the
insidious encroachments of religion; it will aim to give a little
training in most of the sciences, and much in the practical necessities
of business life, as for example, stenography, book-keeping, advertising
and business science; it will cover a broad field of manual training
leading to "graduate courses" in special technical schools; the
"laboratory method" and "field practice" will be increasingly developed
and applied; Latin, Greek, logic and ancient history will be minimized
or done away with altogether, and modern languages, applied psychology
and contemporary history will be correspondingly emphasized. As for the
state university, it will allow the widest range of free electives, and
as an university it will aim to comprise within itself every possible
department of practical activity, such as business administration,
journalism, banking and finance, foreign trade, political science,
psycho-analysis, mining, sanitary engineering, veterinary surgery, as
well as law, medicine, agriculture, and civil and mechanical
engineering. I am curious to inquire at this time if education such as
this does, as a matter of fact, educate, and how far it my be relied
upon as a corrective for present defects in society; or rather, first of
all, whether education of this, or of any sort, may be looked on as a
sufficient saving force, and whether general education, instead of being
extended should not be curtailed, or rather safeguarded and restricted.
I have already tried to indicate, in my lecture on the Social Organism,
certain doubts that are now arising as to the prophylactic and
regenerative powers of education, whether this is based on the old
foundation of the Trivium and Quadrivium under the supreme dominion of
Theology, or on the new foundation of utilitarianism and applied science
under the dominion of scientific pedagogy. While the active-minded
portion of society believed ardently in progressive evolution, in the
sufficiency of the intellect, the inerrancy of the scientific method,
and the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics, this
supreme confidence in free, secular, compulsory education as the
cure-all of the profuse and pervasive ills of society was not only
natural but inevitable. I submit that experience has measurably modified
the situation, and that we are bound therefore to reconsider our earlier
persuasions in the light of somewhat revealing events.
We may admit that the system of modern education works measurably well
so far as intellectual training is concerned; _training_ as
distinguished from development. It works measurably well also in
preparing youth for participation in the life of applied science and for
making money in business and finance. Conscientious hard labour has been
given, and is being given, to making it more effective along these
lines, and almost every year some new scheme is brought forward
enthusiastically, tried out painstakingly, and then cast aside
ignominiously for some new and even more ingenious device. The amount of
education is enormous; the total of money spent on new foundations,
courses, buildings, equipment--on everything but the pay of the
teachers--is princely; the devotion of the teachers, themselves, in the
face of inadequate wages, is exemplary, and yet, somehow the results are
disappointing. The truth is, the development of _character_ is not in
proportion to the development of public and private education. The moral
standing of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; in
business, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards of
value have been confused, the line of demarcation between right and
wrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty,
service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controlling
motive, or at least the conscious aspiration, of active men.
This is not to say that these do not exist; the period that has seen the
retrogression has recorded also a reaction, and there are now perhaps
more who are fired by the ardent passion for active righteousness, than
for several generations, but the average is lower, for where, many times
in the past, there has been a broad, general average of decency, now the
disparity is great between the motives that drive society as a whole,
and its methods of operation, and the remnant that finds itself an
unimportant minority. Newspapers are perhaps hardly a fair criterion of
the moral status of a people--or of anything else for that matter--but
what they record, and the way they do it, is at least an indication of a
condition, and after every possible allowance has been made, what they
record is a very alarming standard of public and private morality, both
in the happenings themselves and in the fashion of their publicity.
No one would claim that the responsibility for this weakening of moral
standards rests predominantly on the shoulders of the educational system
of today; the causes lie far deeper than this, but the point I wish to
make is that the process has not been arrested by education, in spite of
its prevalence, and that therefore it is unwise to continue our
exclusive faith in its remedial offices. The faith was never well
founded. Education can do much, but what it does, or can do, is to
foster and develop _inherent possibilities,_ whether these are of
character, intelligence or aptitude: it cannot put into a boy or man
what was not there, _in posse,_ at birth, and humanly speaking, the
diversity of potential in any thousand units is limited only by the
number itself. Whether our present educational methods are those best
calculated to foster and develop these inherent possibilities, so varied
in nature and degree, is the question, and it is a question the answer
to which depends largely on whether we look on intelligence, capacity or
character as the thing of greatest moment. For those who believe that
character is the thing of paramount importance--amongst whom I count
myself--the answer must be in the negative.
Nor is an affirmative reply entirely assured when the question is asked
as to the results in the case of intellect and capacity. There are few
who would claim that in either of these directions the general standard
is now as high as it was, for example, in the last half of the last
century. The Great War brought to the front few personalities of the
first class, and the peace that has followed has an even less
distinguished record to date. We may say with truth, I think, that the
last ten years have provided greater issues, and smaller men to meet
them in the capacity of leaders, than any previous crisis of similar
moment. The art of leadership, and the fact of leadership, have been
lost, and without leadership any society, particularly a democracy, is
in danger of extinction.
Here again one cannot charge education with our lack of men of
character, intelligence and capacity to lead; as before, the causes lie
far deeper, but the almost fatal absence at this time of the
personalities of such force and power that they can captain society in
its hours of danger from war or peace, must give us some basis for
estimating the efficiency of our educational theory and practice, and
again raise doubts as to whether here also we shall be well advised if
we rely exclusively upon it as the ultimate saviour of society, while we
are bound to ask whether its methods, even of developing intelligence
and capacity, are the best that can be devised.
Another point worth considering is this. So long as we could lay the
flattering unction to our souls that acquired characteristics were
heritable, and that therefore if an outcast from Posen, migrating to
America, had taken advantage of his new opportunities and so had
developed his character-potential, amassed money and acquired a measure
of education and culture, he would automatically transmit something of
this to his offspring, who would start so much the further forward and
would tend normally to still greater advance, and so on _ad infinitum,_
so long we were justified in enforcing the widest measure of education
on all and sundry, and in waiting in hope for a future when the
cumulative process should have accomplished its perfect work. Now,
however, we are told that this hope is vain, that acquired
characteristics are not transmitted by heredity, and that the old
folk-proverb "it is only three generations between shirtsleeves and
shirtsleeves," is perhaps more scientifically exact than the
evolutionary dictum of the nineteenth century. Which is what experience
and history have been teaching, lo, these many years.
The question then seems to divide itself into three parts; (a) are we
justified in pinning our faith in ultimate social salvation to free,
secular, and compulsory education carried to the furthest possible
limits; (b) if not, then what precisely is the function of formal
education; and (c) this being determined, is our present method
adequate, and if not how should it be modified?
It is unwise to speak dogmatically along any of these lines, they are
too blurred and uncertain. I can only express an individual opinion.
It seems to me that life unvaryingly testifies to the extreme disparity
of potential in individuals and in families and in racial strains,
though in the two latter the difference is not necessarily absolute and
permanent, but variable in point of both time and degree. In individuals
the limit of this potentiality is inherent, and it can neither be
completely inhibited by adverse education and environment nor measurably
extended by favourable education and environment. Characteristics
acquired _outside_ inherent limitations are personal and non-heritable,
however intimately they may have become a part of the individual
himself.
If this is true, then the question of education becomes personal also;
that is to say, we educate for the individual, and with an eye to the
part he himself is to play in society. We do not look for cumulative
results but in a sense deal with each personality in regard to itself
alone. I think this has a bearing both on the extent to which education
should be enforced and on the quality and method of education itself,
and though the contention will receive little but ridicule, I am bound
to say that I hold that _general_ education should be reduced in
quantity and considerably changed in nature.
If the limit of development is substantially determined in each
individual and cannot be extended by human agencies (I say "human"
because God in His wisdom and by His power can raise up a prophet or a
saint out of the lowest depths, and frequently does so), then the
quantity and extent of general education should be determined not by a
period of years and the facilities offered by a government liberal in
its expenditures, but entirely by the demonstrated or indicated capacity
of the individual. Our educational system should, so far as it is free
and compulsory, normally end with the high school grade. Free college,
university and technical training should not be provided, except for
those who had given unmistakable evidences that they could, and probably
would, use it to advantage. This would be provided for by
non-competitive scholarships, limited in number only by the number of
capable candidates, and determination of this capacity would be, not on
the basis of test examinations, but on an average record covering a
considerable period of time. It is doubtful if even these scholarships
should be wholly free; some responsibility should be recognized, for a
good half of the value of a thing (perhaps all its value) lies in
working for it. A grant without service, a favour accepted without
obligations, privilege without function, both cheapen and degrade.
Let us now turn to the second question, i.e., what precisely is the
function of formal education. For my own part I can answer this in a
sentence. It is primarily the fostering and development of the
character-potential inherent in each individual. In this process
intellectual training and expansion and the furthering of natural
aptitude have a part, but this is secondary to the major object which is
the development of character.
This is not in accordance with the practice or the theory of recent
times, and in this fact lies one of the prime causes of failure. The one
thing man exists to accomplish is character; not worldly success and
eminence in any line, not the conquest of nature (though some have held
otherwise), not even "adaptation to environment" in the _argot_ of last
century science, but _character;_ the assimilation and fixing in
personality of high and noble qualities of thought and deed, the
furtherance, in a word, of the eternal sacramental process of redemption
of matter through the operation of spiritual forces. Without this,
social and political systems, imperial dominion, wealth and power, a
favourable balance of trade avail nothing; with it, forms and methods
and the enginery of living will look out for themselves. And yet this
thing which comprises "the whole duty of man" has, of late, fallen into
a singular disregard, while the constructive forces that count have
either been discredited and largely abandoned, as in the case of
religion, or, like education, turned into other channels or reversed
altogether, as has happened with the idea and practice of obedience,
discipline, self-denial, duty, honour and unselfishness; surely the most
fantastic issue of the era of enlightenment, of liberty and of freedom
of conscience.
As a matter of fact character, as the chief end of man and the sole
guaranty of a decent society, has been neglected; it was not disregarded
by any conscious process, but the headlong events that have followed
since the fifteenth century have steadily distorted our judgment and
confused our standards of value even to reversal. By an imperceptible
process other matters have come to engage our interest and control our
action, until at last we are confronted by the nemesis of our own
unwisdom, and we entertain the threat of a dissolving civilization just
because the forces we have engendered or set loose have not been curbed
or directed by that vigorous and potent personal character informing a
people and a society, that we had forgot in our haste and that alone
could give us safety.
Formal education is but one of the factors that may be employed towards
the development of character; you cannot so easily separate one force in
life from another, assigning a specific duty here, a definite task
there. That is one of the weaknesses of our time, the water-tight
compartment plan of high specialization, the cellular theory of
efficiency. Life must be seen as a whole, organized as a whole, lived as
a whole. Every thought, every emotion, every action, works for the
building or the unbuilding of character, and this synthesis of living
must be reestablished before we can hope for social regeneration.
Nevertheless formal education may be made a powerful factor, even now,
and not only in this one specific direction, but through this, for the
accomplishing of that unification of life that already is indicated as
the next great task that is set before us; and this brings me to a
consideration of the last of the questions I have proposed for answer,
viz.: is our present system of education adequate to the sufficient
development of character, and if not, how should it be modified?
I do not think it adequate, and experience seems to me to prove the
point. It has not maintained the sturdy if sometimes acutely unpleasant
character of the New England stock, or the strong and handsome character
of the race that dwelt in the thirteen original colonies as this
manifested itself well into the last century, and it has, in general,
bred no new thing in the millions of immigrants and their descendants
who have flooded the country since 1840 and from whom the public schools
and some of the colleges are largely recruited. It is not a question of
expanded brain power or applied aptitude, but of character, and here
there is a larger measure of failure than we had a right to expect. And
yet, had we this right? The avowed object of formal education is mental
and vocational training, and by no stretch of the imagination can we
hold these to be synonymous with character. We have dealt with and
through one thing alone, and that is the intellect, whereas character is
rather the product of emotions judiciously stimulated, balanced (not
controlled) by intellect, and applied through active and varied
experience. Deliberately have we cut out every emotional and spiritual
factor; not only religion and the fine arts, but also the studies, and
the methods of study, and the type of text-books, that might have helped
in the process of spiritual and emotional development. We have
eliminated Latin and Greek, or taught them as a branch of philology; we
have made English a technical exercise in analysis and composition,
disregarding the moral and spiritual significance of the works of the
great masters of English; we minimize ancient history and concentrate on
European history since the French Revolution, and on the history of the
United States, and because of the sensitiveness of our endless variety
of religionists (pro forma) text books are written which leave religion
out of history altogether--and frequently economics and politics as well
when these cannot be made to square with popular convictions; philosophy
and logic are already pretty well discarded, except for special
electives and post-graduate courses, and as for art in its multifarious
forms we know it not, unless it be in the rudimentary and devitalized
form of free-hand drawing and occasional concerted singing. The only
thing that is left in the line of emotional stimulus is competitive
athletics, and for this reason I sometimes think it one of the most
valuable factors in public education. It has, however, another function,
and that is the coordination of training and life; it is in a sense an
_école d'application,_ and through it the student, for once in a way,
tries out his acquired mental equipment and his expanding character--as
well as his physical prowess--against the circumstances of active
vitality. It is just this sort of thing that for so long made the
"public schools" of England, however limited or defective may have been
the curriculum, a vital force in the development of British character.
At best, however, this seems to me but an indifferent substitute, an
inadequate "extra," doing limitedly the real work of education by
indirection. What we need (granting my assumption of character as the
_terminus ad quem_) is an educational system so recast that the formal
studies and the collateral influences and the school life shall be more
coordinated in themselves and with life, and that the resulting stimulus
shall be equally operative along intellectual, emotional and creative
lines.
It is sufficiently easy to make suggestions as to how this is to be
accomplished, to lay out programmes and lay down curricula, but here as
elsewhere this does not amount to much; the change must come and the
institutions develop as the result of the operations of life. If we can
change our view of the object of education, the very force of life,
working through experience, will adequately determine the forms. It is
not therefore as a meticulous and mechanical system that I make the
following suggestions as to certain desirable changes, but rather to
indicate more exactly what I mean by a scheme of education that will
work primarily towards the development of character.