374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



effort, therefore, on the part of the schools has uniformly been to 

 enable the child, when grown to manhood, to successfully guard 

 his own interests and secure his personal ends. There has been 

 no general or continued effort to so train and so develop him that 

 he will contribute to the welfare of society. The result has been 

 to center and to fasten his attention upon his personal interests, 

 and to cultivate in him selfishness instead of an altruistic spirit, 

 which is the truly social spirit, and which alone will produce 

 harmony among the classes now in collision. Why has the child 

 been taught to read, to write, to cipher ? Primarily because a 

 knowledge of these has seemed to be absolutely essential in 

 securing his so-called rights among his fellows. Only recently 

 has his relation to society been seriously considered. His ethical 

 side is now demanding cultivation more loudly than ever. So far 

 as education is purely intellectual, it only trains him for a fiercer 

 part in the great human struggle for personal ends, and tends to 

 diminish the severity of that struggle in such degree only as 

 purely intellectual culture indirectly contributes to the ethical, 

 through attention to subjects related to the ethical. 



Back of all social discontent, back of all forms in which it ap- 

 pears, we find the primary cause of social disorders in the pres- 

 ence of erroneous ideas among men, particularly the presence of 

 erroneous notions concerning the relations which exist among 

 men. There are certain fundamental ideas upon which the social 

 edifice is built — pivotal ideas about which the social world turns. 

 In each of these ten thousand others germinate; and the ten thou- 

 sand are wrong if the one is wrong. The following are examples 

 of these erroneous, fundamental, pivotal ideas, which have be- 

 come stock notions of the people : Caesars and Napoleons are civ- 

 ilizers ; royalty is related to the gods ; the Creator made some to 

 be served, others to serve; legality is justice; standard belief is 

 more important than standard character ; morality divorced from 

 religion is dangerous. Any social structure founded upon such 

 ideas alone is a monstrosity. To-day we stand face to face with 

 the fact that these very ideas, and others like unto them, form a 

 very large part — entirely too large a part — of the foundation of 

 modern society. 



All existing governments and all other institutions have been 

 at some time simply abstract ideas in somebody's brain, and after- 

 ward have become concrete realities ; right ideas giving birth to 

 right institutions, wrong ones to wrong institutions. This same 

 relation of cause and effect which exists between ideas and insti- 

 tutions, exists also between ideas and the character of individuals, 

 and between ideas and the character of the relations which exist 

 among individuals. Just so far as individual character and ex- 

 isting relations among men are right, they are the product of 



