152 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



departures, teachers with their own particular methods and special 

 ends. I should be the last to disparage this attempt at originality, 

 for out of it in the end some good will come. But when I look upon 

 it, and upon its first harvests, I am constantly reminded of some wise 

 words of Arnold's — words to the effect that not alone must we live 

 up to the light that is in us, but as well must we see to it that the light 

 be not darkness. These are simple, homely words, but if they once 

 lay hold upon your spirit, they have a compelling force that is im- 

 perative. 



It is not uncharitable, I think, to say that much of this educa- 

 tional activity is one-sided. Analyze it for a moment. Here is a 

 man who has looked so long and so steadily upon the function of 

 government that he has lost all sense of proportion. The giant 

 apparition of the State has obscured the other sides of life, and has 

 come to occupy the whole field of vision. He sees in men only 

 citizens, and in children only possible citizens. The one study is 

 civics, and education groups itself around that. Here is another 

 man, upon whom the bread-and-butter study has made a too deep 

 impression. When he reflects upon life, the pale and haggard faces 

 of the poor stare at him, and their thin and ragged garments flutter in 

 the wind of his imagination. In the rich city of ]!^ew York a woman 

 died of hunger. It is horrible. The daily loaf stands out in large 

 dimensions and obscures the rest of life. The one study becomes 

 for him the bread-and-butter study, and education gives place to in- 

 dustrial training. Here is still another man who has busied himself 

 with questions of rent and wages, profit and loss, currency and land, 

 free trade and protection, until these tools of social life become for 

 him the life itself, and the great issue — it seems a sacrilege to say it — • 

 is plainly economic. And another, who sees in trade and shopkeep- 

 ing the blood of life, and would make arithmetic and bookkeeping 

 and business practice the food of children. Or another, who is im- 

 pressed with numbers, and who believes that New York and Chicago 

 are great cities because of their millions of people. To him children 

 are socially interesting as future mothers and fathers. His cry is the 

 vainest of all. It is the race. ISTor should I omit in even so partial 

 a survey that large group of men and women who rightly hold the 

 achievements of the human spirit to be very precious, but who see, 

 unfortunately, in the vehicle which brings these records from the 

 past into the present — that is to say, in language — a thing as worship- 

 ful as the achievements themselves. Are we to forget that Thu- 

 cydides and Zenophon were soldiers, that Goethe was a chancellor, 

 and Shakespeare an actor; that all the men and women who have re- 

 ported the spirit worthily have been men and women who have 

 tasted life, and have had something to report ? Are we to forget that 



