I'APERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 77 



But we are making mightj^ strides toward this goal in 

 these later days as false conceptions of democracy be- 

 come evident in American politics. We have too much 

 government by feeling, too little expertness of leadership, 

 and too little of what Tarde speaks of as "government 

 by thought". It is no accident that Thomas Jefferson, 

 the great exponent of democracy, was the father of the 

 public school system from i^rimary grades through the 

 university. He saw the relation of "genius" and its 

 training by the state to the kind of democracy that Anglo- 

 Saxons would finally accept. In proposing in 1776 this 

 educational system which we now have, he insisted that it 

 was poor social economy to exhaust the resources of the 

 state in educating the mediocre at the expense of the 

 gifted. Genius was too important an asset to democracy 

 to be neglected for the mass. In a letter to J. C. Cabell, 

 Jefferson speaks of having written Adams of his propo- 

 sal for "culling from every condition of our people the 

 natural aristocracy of talent and virtue and of preparing 

 it by education at the public expense for the care of pub- 

 lic interests". 



Jefferson did not think with some of us that grouping 

 in schools on the basis of abilities and attainment was 

 undemocratic. He did not make that error in judgment 

 even in the day when few went to colleges, when the col- 

 lege was highly selective, at a time when he could not fore- 

 see the hordes of students pouring out of the "grammar 

 schools" (high schools, as we now call them) and demand- 

 ing of society "What n^xt?". It is apparent that he re- 

 pudiated the theory of laissez-faire that a good man will 

 rise to the top in the educative process, and if he does 

 not, so miich the better for society. He feared the leveling 

 process and recognized that ability does not guarantee at- 

 tainment or right leadership in either school or society. 

 A fundamental knowledge of human nature led him to 

 anticipate modern psychology^ in holding that good taste, 

 ideals, right habits of thinking or working with the mind 

 presupposed brains, but also presupposed initiative, pro- 

 longed effort, persistence, hierarchies of mental as well 

 as physical habits, and those "moral" traits of industry, 

 integrity, courage, tact, co-operation, etc. If we are to 



