THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING. 783 



himself a year. This meant six-iifty-seconds of his time. He was 

 satisfied with very little — with less, perhaps, than was quite wise. If 

 we more than double his figures, and remember that co-operative 

 labor is far more productive than Thoreau's solitary hoeing, we may 

 agree that one quarter of the waking life must go for bread. But 

 we have still a large margin. If we allow the full measure of life, 

 say fourscore years, one quarter of it would be just twenty years. A 

 man working full time from his twentieth to his fortieth year ought 

 still to preserve both his youth and old age from industrialism. Or 

 working industrially for half the day, which would perhaps be wiser, 

 his term of industrial service would stretch from twenty to sixty years 

 of age, and would still leave the extremes of life free for preparation 

 and reflection. I believe this to be a complete answer to the objec- 

 tion, and I have an unquestioning faith that society will some time, 

 when its conscience is aroused, limit its industrialism to the years of 

 maturity and of strength, and will not bind its burdens upon tender 

 childhood and infirm old age. 



But the answer, I said, is twofold. You may not share the social 

 optimism that I have been setting forth. The second answer is quite 

 as complete as the first, and is applicable to society as it is, or even to 

 a society still more selfish and unchristian. The second answer is that, 

 no matter when interrupted, a rational scheme of organic education is 

 still the best that could have been given up to that time, and for its 

 justification does not need academic completeness. I may say, in 

 passing, that this is not true of the present curriculum. While the 

 schools under the present lowly evolved social conditions must teach 

 in a measure as if each utterance were to be their last, much of the 

 work must, nevertheless, depend for its value upon a reasonable de- 

 gree of completeness. This is particularly true of classical lines of 

 study. Even in Germany, where the classics have a hold far ahead 

 of anything they have here, educational philosophers are urging with 

 increasing insistence that the main value of classical study lies in 

 the content and only incidentally in the discipline. And you may 

 know that in obedience to this thought the study of Greek is being 

 urged more than that of Latin because the Greek ideals of literature 

 and art and morals and life are so immensely superior to the Roman. 



This thought, carried to its extreme, will of course land us in 

 the position of the scientific humanists — if I may so name my own 

 party — who bring to the study of classical writers an almost passion- 

 ate devotion, but who study them solely for their content, and there- 

 fore in translation, in their own modern mother tongue, be it English 

 or German or Erench. 



A child can not enter into Greek as literature with less than from 

 four to six years' study. If this be interrupted, the discipline of course 



