THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING. 155 



human soul ; if duty consists in a daily death, in the ceaseless thwart- 

 ing of one's nature, in self-sacrifice in place of self-realization; if 

 Satan be the reality that God is, then I believe that the new educa- 

 tion is a sad mistake, a thing quite false, and that I could render best 

 service by presenting manual training pathologically as a thing to be 

 known in order to be avoided. 



In thus seeking the philosophy of the new education, we assur- 

 edly stand at the parting of the ways. It is useless to blink the 

 fact. Indeed, it is worse ; it is cowardly. Let us frankly admit it — 

 everything is involved. When you scrutinize your educational 

 creed, you scrutinize your religious creed, your ethical creed, and 

 your social creed as well. And until there is harmony among these, 

 until your religion and your ethics and your sociology have been 

 settled upon some rational basis, it is impossible for your education to 

 be other than a poor makeshift thing, like the work of the architect 

 and builder, showing an excess of action and a deficiency of thought. 



Until one makes such a thoroughgoing examination of one's 

 fundamental beliefs and reaches some degree of consistency, one can 

 not teach one's self, one can not direct the teaching work of others. 

 One can go through the emotions of teaching and can do infinite 

 harm. Do you remember the story of the man who led the little ones 

 astray, and the sad comment on his life — it were better that a mill- 

 stone had been hanged about his neck and he had been drowned in 

 the depths of the sea? It would be horrible in the end to feel that 

 these words applied to us. If you have not the time to make such an 

 examination, or, having attempted it, if you have not been able to 

 reach any broad and human philosophy of life, it were better not 

 to teach; it were better not to concern yourself with education; it 

 were better, like Thoreau, to go to raising beans, for this at least you 

 can do honestly. How can you hope to renovate others until you 

 have renovated yourself? 



As I see the matter, then, the philosophy of manual training, and 

 of the new education generally, is plainly monistic. It sees in man 

 not body and mind, with independent powers of action, and astonish- 

 ing possibilities for conflict, but the contrary, a unit organism, with 

 thinking and feeling among its essential characteristics quite as much 

 as extension and impenetrability. And this organism is a sensitive 

 one, responding to the stress and strain of desire and emotion, quite 

 as readily as to mechanical forces, to the push and pull of bodily con- 

 tact. What affects one aspect of this organism affects the other. If 

 you touch the body you touch the spirit. If you touch the spirit 

 you touch the body. One reacts on the other. The unfolding and 

 perfecting of the human spirit is the object of manual training, as it 

 is of all education. 



