74 EDUCATIONAL THEORY 



peculiar to any other institution. What effect on this movement the 

 rising power of industrial organization will have is problematical. 

 It is not unlikely that in some ways the educational demands of 

 industrial institutions may be thrust in between those of church 

 and state. Knowledge of industrial and commercial history is in- 

 creasingly needed for an understanding of educational movements, 

 now barely begun, which loom large in our future. 



In the mean time, the institutions of education have been passing 

 through a notable internal development. Education has come to be 

 regarded as itself a centre of manifold but unified interests; it has 

 become conscious of a far-reaching mission; already it has its own 

 highly-developed ideals, traditions, and loyalties. Such sentiments 

 were abroad in the early universities. With the upgrowth of pro- 

 vision for universal elementary instruction, educational systems 

 commonly appeared in two grades or divisions, pursuing somewhat 

 diverse ends, and with a considerable rift between them. More 

 recently this divergence has been disappearing. Universities and 

 lower schools have drawn nearer to each other; university ideals 

 have come to animate schools of every kind and grade; the ideals of 

 popular and technical education in turn have influenced the universi- 

 ties ; the manifold institutions of education have, in a word, become 

 knit together in spiritual unity, making in effect one great world- 

 institution. And this has ceased to be a merely subordinate and 

 tributary institution. It has virtually taken its place alongside of 

 the other great human institutions as one of the cardinal concerns 

 of human society. 



No one could hope to characterize in a paragraph the informing 

 spirit and ideals of this great institution of education in its modern 

 development. But some brief indication of its nature should be 

 attempted. Its first principle would seem to be that of free service 

 of the commonwealth. This is the familiar principle of " academic 

 freedom; " only it is now seen that such freedom cannot permanently 

 be the prerogative of a single and separate division of our educational 

 system, as of a university, but must inhere in educational institutions 

 as such. This free school is closely allied with a free press, free 

 science, and free art; its rise is closely connected with the wide 

 dissemination of modern vernacular literatures and the wide accept- 

 ance of modern natural science, and it is coming in halting and 

 uncertain fashion to show some connection with modern art other 

 than literary art. In its relations with modern science it 

 tends to spread abroad some measure of that spirit of suspended 

 judgment and impartial acquiescence in the teachings of objective 

 evidence which belong to that science at its best. In its relations 

 with art it tends to promote that self-restraint which belongs to the 

 truly artistic achievement of every age. In some degree it furthers, 



