THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 489 



basal enough. It does not sufficiently address itself to the ques- 

 tion of the sort of men and women we wish to produce. How to 

 get culture will depend upon what you mean by culture. And 

 this can not be stated once for all. It is a shifting ideal, growing 

 as the spirit of man grows. 



Perhaps we shall the sooner see our mark by first clearing the 

 ground a little, and disclaiming some of the ends proposed for 

 education. My own list of unadmitted ends is somewhat long. I 

 do not, for example, set as the object for education a good citizen, 

 a successful breadwinner, a wise father, an expert mechanic, an 

 adroit versifier, a keen lawyer, an eloquent preacher, a skillful 

 physician, a learned professor, a prosperous tradesman. Some of 

 these ends may be good enough in themselves. I do not discuss 

 the question. But they are not the proper end of education. And 

 they are not, because they are secondary, minor, special ends. 

 They are not the major ends in life, though they are often mis- 

 taken for such. We are pretty far from the mark when we mis- 

 take for education any training which has a partial and special 

 end in view. To erect any one of these ends into the end, and 

 declare it to be the goal of education, is to fall by the wayside, 

 and deliberately to turn one's face away from the New Jerusalem 

 of the Intellect. 



The end in education should be the major end. It should be 

 the very biggest thing in life, the most general and far-reaching 

 good the mind can formulate. We cheat ourselves, we cheat the 

 children, if we express the end in terms any less catholic than 

 this. It may include good citizenship, wise parenthood, successful 

 breadwinning, literary or technical skill, but it is not any one of 

 these things. The greatest thing in life is life — life in its fullness 

 and totality. It is this that education should set its face toward. 

 Its end should be wholeness, integrity, and nothing less than this. 

 It is false to its mission if it turn aside into any of the bypaths 

 of convenience, of industry, or even of accomplishment and eru- 

 dition. These are broad terms that I have been using and some- 

 what ambitious. But I can say no less than this and say what I 

 mean. Education has to do with the whole of life, with man, and 

 not with any one or any group of his petty activities. He must 

 take an acceptable part in the life of effort, and to do this he 

 must be prepared. There is a time when special technical train- 

 ing is advisable, when it is the proper usurper of the time ; but 

 this is quite secondary, a mere supplement to the main business 

 of education. It is a deplorable intrusion if it ever take the place 

 of education. There is a marked tendency in us all to get things 

 out of perspective, to specialize, to confound magnitudes, and, of 

 equal elements in a problem, to see one big and the other small. 

 We are prone to mistake the means for the end. 



VOL. XLIX. — 40 



