50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and are in daily conflict. Sometimes tliis conflict of ideals is be- 

 tween different schools of presumably the same grade and intent. 

 In one, manual training is followed as an educational process, and 

 in the other as an industrial end. The outer world if it be dis- 

 criminating enough to really get at what the schools are about 

 sees two institutions of similar name and curriculum, and inter- 

 prets the school according to the one it happens to visit. Very 

 frequently the conflict is a civil war, having its seat in one and 

 the same school, a part of the faculty working in one spirit and a 

 part in the other. But most perplexing of all, one sees the conflict 

 going on even in the same individual, the educational idea upper- 

 most at one moment, and the love of technical perfection dominant 

 at another. There are few teachers of manual training who do 

 not at some time find themselves dangling between these two 

 poles of thought. 



Now I am restating these opposing motives in the develop- 

 ment of the manual training idea at so much length and with so 

 much emphasis because this is to-day the vital issue in the whole 

 movement. And the restatement is the more necessary because 

 the direct work of teaching manual training must rest for some 

 time to come in the hands of men drawn from the artisan class 

 rather than from the cultured classes, and is, therefore, in the 

 greater danger of being regarded merely as the work of teaching 

 a handicraft. 



Moreover, this is only another aspect of the same issue which 

 is now at stake in the universities. One can not move in the inner 

 circles of collegiate life and thought without being constantly 

 aware of the fact that the old breach between the classical party, 

 the upholders of the humanities, and the newer faction represent- 

 ing the scientific and technical training, has never been closed. 

 However pronounced the amenities of daily intercourse, the an- 

 tagonism, at best, is only latent. When the wisdom and gracious- 

 ness of humanity were all stored up in Latin and Greek, it was a 

 prerequisite of culture to know these languages. It was early 

 discovered that the act of acquisition was itself a most helpful in- 

 tellectual gymnastic. The study thus came to have a dual value, 

 as an end in itself, and as of high disciplinary power. This is un- 

 deniable. It is quite as true to-day as it was a hundred years ago 

 when the classics were synonymous with culture. But the prob- 

 lem is now complicated by the necessary introduction of other 

 considerations. The humane spirit of Greece is reflected more or 

 less perfectly in the renascent spirit of modern times. The best 

 of Greece and Rome is a heritage already ours. Further, those 

 who would drink at the direct literary fountains can do so on 

 the average far more perfectly in the admirable translations now 

 available than in any translations they could make for themselves. 



