MENTAL DISCIPLINE IN EDUCATION. 701 



its work, and which contains at best but the literature, philosophy^ 

 and fables of a past age. 



I do not mean to disparage language as a means of influencing 

 action and recording thought ; but why spend years in the study of 

 languages which we never use to influence action or record thought, 

 under the plea that this study disciplines the mind for useful work ? 

 Can useless work produce useful habits ? It must not be forgotten, 

 however, that the power of language is greatest where there is least 

 knowledge. It is not difiicult to show that the influence of oratory 

 declines as intelligence increases. Men seldom engage in oratory 

 where positive knowledge leaves no play for the imagination. In- 

 deed, science is constantly devising plans to avoid the verbiage of 

 ordinary statement ; hence the mathematics. The same general truth 

 appears in the proverb, " A word to the wise. " The very word 

 "demagogue" is a warning that we should beware of the specious 

 arts of the orator. Language presupposes thought ; a community of 

 language presupposes a community of thought and experience. 

 While correct thinking may exist without correct speaking, it needs 

 but the observation of every day to show that correct and truthful 

 speaking never can exist without correct thinking. 



It is pertinent to inquire here by what discipline society has pro- 

 gressed toward the most excellent things. Undoubtedly by the dis- 

 cipline of experience, or it might be called the discipline of environ- 

 ments. Men have not marked out the course of human progress, nor 

 have they, to any considerable extent, been able to forecast it. Two 

 thousand years ago, who would have believed that the northern bar- 

 barians would surpass Greece and Rome ? 



We cannot go back to the ultimate cause, and tell why one class 

 of the human family should progress and another retrograde or re- 

 main stationary. We may point out some of the conditions of prog- 

 ress ; but the germ of that progress we do not know. We may 

 believe that the best organized and most intelligent communities, by 

 resulting strength, overcome the more poorly organized and less in- 

 telligent. We still ask. How came these communities better organ- 

 ized ? Why did not this organization occur a thousand years earlier 

 or a thousand years later ? We reply, the conditions were not favor- 

 able. What do we mean when we say the conditions were not favor- 

 able ? We mean that there is a certain correspondence or relation 

 between human activities and outlying natural forces. These corre- 

 spondences and relations are the problems of progress. As yet, we 

 can do little toward their solution. 



This much we observe, that in all progress discipline has not been 

 an end but an incident of study. The discipline was attained by man 

 m studying his environments and in altering his relation to those en- 

 vironments. Further, men attained a comparatively high state of 

 mental discipline before schools existed at all. 



