DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL IDEAS 29 



What higher wisdom on this subject have we than Plato's when he 

 says that the training which aims at the acquisition of wealth or 

 bodily strength or mere cleverness, apart from intelligence and justice, 

 is mean and illiberal and not worthy to be called education? But 

 the pagan ideal was aristocratic ; it was that of the freeborn dominat- 

 ing slaves, whose nature was supposed to be servile and incapable 

 of true culture. It considered but a class and ignored humanity. 

 Christ is the first humanitarian, and from Him and His followers the 

 world has received its faith in the brotherhood of men and in the 

 right of all to liberty and opportunity; and hence we call our civil- 

 ization not Grecian or Roman, but Christian. It has sprung from 

 the enthusiasm for humanity, the fire which Christ kindled, to burn 

 the dividing and imprisoning walls, that all men and women might 

 have unimpeded access to the truth and freedom which make right 

 life possible. It is to Him, and not to the philosophers of Greece, 

 nor to the calculating moralists of Rome, that we owe our faith in 

 the Father in heaven and in the divine rights of man; His child, which 

 is the master light of all our seeing, and the fundamental principle 

 of our life, individual and social. This principle lies at the core of 

 modern consciousness, even in the minds of those who doubt or 

 deny; and from it our civilization, if it is to advance and endure, 

 must develop, as of it belief in democracy and in the need of popular 

 education is born. 



The unprecedented expansion and diffusion of life and knowledge 

 which took place in the last century are not a creation, but a develop- 

 ment. That past still keeps us company, and what has been makes 

 what is. He who first lit a fire, he who first used it to cook food or 

 to render metal malleable, made a forward step with which all the 

 advancing races have kept and still keep pace. We do not owe to 

 the nineteenth century the alphabet or Arabic numerals, or architect- 

 ure or painting, or sculpture or music, or poetry or eloquence; we 

 do not owe to it the mariner's compass or the telescope, or the Coper- 

 nican astronomy or the printing-press, or gunpowder or the circum- 

 navigation of the Cape of Good Hope, or the discovery of America 

 or the steam-engine. We do not owe to it philosophy or science or 

 true religion, or the doctrine of political liberty or of equal rights; 

 nor do we owe to it the principles of the theory and practice of edu- 

 cation. It was an era of culmination, in which the tree of life flowered 

 and bore more bountiful fruit; but it could not have flourished at all 

 had not its roots been struck deep into the soil of the past which the 

 labors of countless generations had tilled and made fertile. It was 

 an age of progress because there had been progress from the begin- 

 ning. 



It did not create the home or civil society, or the state, or the 

 church, or the school, or any of the institutions that educate. It was 



