THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL IDEAS IN THE 



NINETEENTH CENTURY 



BY JOHN LANCASTER SPALDING 



[John Lancaster Spalding, Roman Catholic Bishop of Peoria since 1877, Peoria, 

 Illinois, b. Lebanon, Kentucky, June 2, 1840. B.A. Mt. St. Mary's College, 

 1859; S.T.L. University of Louvain, 1864; LL.D. Columbia University; 

 ibid. Western Reserve University. Author of Life of Archbishop Spalding; 

 Essays and Reviews; Lectures and Discourses; Education and Higher Life; 

 Means and Ends of Education; Opportunity; Religion and Agnosticism; Things 

 of the Mind; God and the Soul; and many noted works on religion.] 



THE history of the education of a people or an age is the history 

 of its civilization, of its intellectual, moral, and religious life, its 

 material progress being incidental and subordinate. 



Intelligence, virtue, and industry give man power over himself 

 and all things; and it is education that makes him intelligent, 

 virtuous, and industrious. The riches of nature and the wealth of 

 human life are inexhaustible, but only those whom education stimu- 

 lates to persevering self-activity make them their own. The con- 

 trolling idea of the nineteenth century in philosophy and science 

 is that of organic unity, implying a world-wide process of develop- 

 ment. Hence the point of view is that of history. To understand 

 what anything is, it is necessary to know how it has come to be what 

 it is; for whatever exists is the outcome of an evolution which reaches 

 back indefinitely to ultimate origins. To perceive all the facts in 

 this process is to see things as they are. This principle is of universal 

 validity, and its application to all the subjects and interests to which 

 the mind can turn made possible the marvelous achievements of the 

 last century, during which mankind grew in knowledge and in power 

 more than in the whole historic past. The secret and the law of 

 progress had been discovered. Heaven and earth have become what 

 they are. All things are interdependent, and God reveals himself as 

 his work is unfolded in the mind of man and in nature. 



In learning to know how things have become what they are, we 

 have gained insight into methods by which they may be made better 

 than they are. In our hands a key has been placed which opens 

 doors that from the beginning had shut man out of Nature's most 

 richly stored treasure-house. The subconscious efforts to advance, 

 determined by the instinctive love of life, by a still increasing crav- 

 ing for the sensation of life, became, in the nineteenth century, the 

 deliberate purpose, not of individuals merely, but of whole peoples. 

 What the multitudes had for ages felt, they now became able to think. 

 The self-activity which in earlier times had manifested itself in 

 exceptional minds and in isolated groups now stirred the masses. 



