THE AIM OF MODERN EDUCATION. 495 



unless you offer at the same time some sufficient reason for walk- 

 ing ; and observe, please, the reason must be one that appeals to 

 him and not alone to you. It is his desire, not yours, that is go- 

 ing to make him stir himself. Is it not the same with a child and 

 his lessons ? It is quite as hopeless to ask a child to learn unless 

 you first see to it that he wants to learn. You may force him to 

 go through the motion of learning, just as it was possible to force 

 the apathetic man to go through the motion of walking, may even 

 force the child to memorize the lesson and recite it with verbal 

 accuracy, but it will be an awkward, ungracious act, and will do 

 the child injury rather than good. And the injury is of a very 

 positive kind. It drives another nail into the coffin of desire. By 

 so much is the emotional life of the child dead and are his intel- 

 lectual possibilities stunted. I am not speaking with picturesque 

 exaggeration when I tell you that in many a schoolroom where 

 this process of drilling children is being carried out, I experience 

 a distinct sensation of spiritual horror, a sense of intense darkness, 

 for I say to myself : Here is accomplished the death of the spirit ; 

 here are children growing each day more listless and apathetic, 

 not learning what we want them to learn, and losing in the vain 

 effort what no one can afford to lose — the joyous life of child- 

 hood, rich in strong feeling and high spirit, in itself an end of 

 beauty, and a source of perfect manhood and womanhood. In all 

 sincerity, it seems to me an evil greater by far than the evil com- 

 mitted by acknowledged thieves. It is a spiritual robbery, the 

 least endurable of all robberies. I have been often robbed. I 

 have been " held up " in Montana, and robbed by less direct 

 methods in other parts of the world. You have doubtless had 

 similar experiences. But these losses sink into absolute insignifi- 

 cance in comparison with the more dreadful losses inflicted by 

 poor teachers and guides. You have doubtless had similar expe- 

 riences. The reflection may be made without bitterness, but it 

 ought not to be made without bearing fruit of the most whole- 

 some sort in our own handling of that delicate bit of organism — 

 the mind of a child. 



What we must do, then, in educating children is first and fore- 

 most to give full and free play to the emotional life. We want 

 consciously and deliberately to encourage feeling and sentiment, 

 and to create the greatest possible number of wholesome desires. 

 This may sound to you like strange doctrine. It will, however, 

 bear your examination. It is easy to cultivate the emotional life 

 in children. All we have to do is not to suppress it. And yet 

 even this negative function, this clearing of the ground, requires 

 finesse on our part. What we want in children is totally uncon- 

 scious sentiment. Children who are well, children in whom the 

 pulse of life beats high and quick, are reservoirs of feeling, bits 



