OUTLINES FROM THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 223 



having body, mind and spirit. Why should we, in educating him, 

 take least thought for the flower ? Why should we take less thought 

 for the flower than for the roots ? Because without the roots there 

 can be no flower? But so also tcilh the roots it may chance that 

 there shall be no flower. There is many a splendid body with soul 

 so small that Omniscience scarce could And it. If we look primarily 

 to the roots, think constantly of the roots, make the roots uppermost 

 in all endeavor, we shall develop roots and nothing else. Existence is, 

 indeed, a struggle. Shall we not, then, educate men for their imme- 

 diate task ? Most certainly. Shall we forget, or put at all into the 

 background, the fact that men have a spiritual nature, and that in 

 this lies their highest and fullest measure of being? This, to some, 

 may savor of cant and of the seminaries. Let it, however, be settled, 

 apart from sects or creeds, whether there are such excellences as sin- 

 cerity, purity, truthfulness, self-forgetfulness in the desire to be and 

 to do good. Let it also be settled in what relation these stand to 

 the other excellences of man's nature. Let it be seen whether they 

 are not supreme in the sense of making up his worth, in the sense, 

 that is, of giving value to all his other attainments, physical and 

 intellectual. These important matters being settled in the affirma- 

 tive, as very many would settle them even in our so-called material- 

 istic age, education would at least proceed in a different spirit. While 

 it would not be the business of education to make men and women 

 good, it would be impossible to call those educated who had never so 

 much as thought on goodness, or never considered themselves in the 

 light of their highest possibilities and duties. 



With respect to the subject-matter of education Mr. Spencer offers 

 this delicious bit of satire : " Men who would blush if caught saying 

 Iphigenia instead of Iphigenia show not the slightest shame in con- 

 fessing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are located, 

 what are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of pul- 

 sation, or how the lungs are inflated." This sentence may be turned 

 about and made to utter truth as follows : Men who would blush in 

 not knowing where the Eustachian tubes are located, what are the 

 actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of pulsation, or 

 how the lungs are inflated, show not the slightest shame, not the 

 very slightest shame, in confessing that they do not know when Plato 

 lived or what he thought, when Goethe lived or what he thought, 

 when Angelo lived or what he wrought. The entire duty of man is 

 not to locate the Eustachian tubes. The entire duty of man is not to 

 know the actions of the spinal cord, or how the lungs are inflated — 

 not one particle more than it is his entire duty to say Iphigenia. It 

 is not ichat a man knows, but how he knows what he knows, that de- 

 termines the character of his education. This thought, in the writer's 

 opinion, is fundamental. To lead up to it and to give it full emphasis 

 has been the special object of all remarks here made upon Mr. Spen- 



