32 EDUCATION 



life, to heighten its power and quality, and he can do this only when 

 he himself is what he would help others become. 



A message of the nienteenth to the twentieth century is this: 

 " So mold public opinion that it shall lead the best men and women 

 to choose teaching as a vocation." Let the buildings be full of light 

 and pure air, let the classes be small, let the hours of study be few, 

 let the pupils gain knowledge as industriously as bees gather honey. 

 Let the atmosphere be that which only cheerful, strong, and loving 

 souls can create. There is nothing beautiful or fair but the mind 

 makes it so; and where there are luminous minds there will be will- 

 ing hearts, there will be interest, self-activity, and effort. The young 

 grow stupid with the dull, tired with the weary, heedless with the 

 indifferent. Their chief faculty is that of imitation and, if we would 

 educate, we must place in the midst of them those into whose like- 

 ness they will find it a delight and a blessing to grow. There is not 

 a pebble lying on unvisited shores but is held by indissoluble bonds 

 to the universe of matter and of spirit too; and there is no subject so 

 seemingly remote from human need but the right teacher will show 

 it to be near and akin to us. He will take the empty forms of thought 

 and fill them with truth as gracious as the presence of friends. To 

 know how to interest is the teacher's great secret. It is an open one. 

 If he himself is interesting, he will easily show that he is so, will hold 

 his pupils to his words and to their work. 



All our wisdom comes of experience, and our most fruitful ex- 

 perience is of noble personalities, whether in life or in literature; and 

 since the end of education is the acquirement of wisdom, its method 

 must be contact with teachers, acquaintance with whom is experience 

 of virtue and culture as bodied forth in men and women we may 

 rightly admire and love. 



The most important development of educational thought in the 

 nineteenth century was the fuller recognition of the principle that 

 education is a universal right, that consequently it is the duty of 

 society to provide the means of education for all, and that the one 

 indispensable and sufficient means is the personal influence of en- 

 lightened and loving teachers. From this sprang the irresistible 

 impulse to diffuse knowledge, to suffer none who might be taught to 

 know, to live and die in ignorance; from this arose systems of free 

 schools, made accessible to all; of this was born a truer appreciation 

 of the worth of the teacher's office, an increasing desire to induce 

 the ablest and the most sympathetic to assume it, to procure for 

 them the best culture, together with the discipline and training 

 needed to give them tact and skill in the performance of their work. 

 If the greatest minds of the nineteenth century gave most serious 

 thought to the subject of education, considering it from the points of 

 view of philosophy, of history, and of science, it was because the 



