DEPARTMENT REPORTS. 71 



But the English work does for the student far more than this. It 

 takes him up, so to speak, into a high mountain and spreads before him 

 as a promised land the glorious panorama of human ideals, aspiration, 

 and achievement. It broadens his range of mental vision. It places 

 his whole life on a higher plane. It leads him to feel a noble shame 

 for the petty and the base, and stimulates all the generous and holy 

 impulses of his nature. It enables him to distinguish mere shallow 

 frothing and tinsel glitter from the serene and enduring splendor of 

 great thought. It makes him the master of himself, calm and sure of 

 footing amid the turmoil and confusion of a thousand conflicting cries. 

 He is no longer the mere puppet of environment, of party, of the ebb 

 and flow of popular thought. To a larger degree, in my opinion, than 

 any other subject, the study of literature moulds and beautifies the 

 character. 



In this discussion I do not mean to claim all intellectual training 

 and all moral value for the subjects of my department. That would 

 be absurd. The highest intellectual strength is requisite for coping 

 with the problems of science; and I am well aware that all science, 

 when properly taught, emphasizes the value of absolute truth, and 

 trains to perseverance, system, economy — indeed, as I have elsewhere 

 expressed it, there is no subject or occupation which, pursued with 

 vigilant mind and broad, thorough-going interest, does not train the 

 faculties of mind and heart, and does not in a truly noble sense, edu- 

 cate. At the same time I do maintain that, in the M. A. C. system of 

 education, our department and that of History and Political Science 

 represent in a peculiar sense the knowledge of man and society as 

 opposed to nature, notwithstanding the fact that man himself, his 

 institutions and his achievements, constitute only a broader Natural 

 History; and that, as man's differentiation from the lower animals and 

 his progress and development have proceeded mainly along intellectual 

 and moral lines, the study of this moral and intellectual development 

 and its products must influence most directly and powerfully the young 

 man's modes of thought and motives for action. If such be the case, 

 surely there can be no question of the supreme value of such a factor 

 in education. In no system can it be regarded as an interloper, but in 

 all it becomes an imperative necessity. Omit it and you have the mere 

 specialist, — brilliant possibly, but not the man our world of today 

 needs. In too many cases, even with our best and wisest effort in train- 

 ing, the mere expert has become a freebooter, rendered more powerful, 

 by the education which the State has bestowed, to rob and pillage the 

 social organization that gave him his strength. 



It may be urged that, while our work is important as stated, it should 

 be accomplished in the preparatory school or the high school. That it 

 is done no one familiar with school matters will maintain. But the 

 stronger and more pregnant answer is, that to expect the high school to 

 do more than make a beginning of such work, broad, deep, and high 

 as it is, is absurd; and that, too, through no fault of the high school. 

 No one expects the high school to finish the subject of Botany, or to 

 treat it in a manner even remotely satisfactory for a college man. The 

 college itself is far from exhausting any phase of the subject. Why, 

 then, should it be imagined that the subject of expression, or that of 

 literature, can be any more adequately treated in the high school, or 



