The School of the Future 103 



general. I once heard the president of an ex- 

 cellent literary college say that his institution 

 " educates men, not farmers and blacksmiths." 

 Most persons now think that a college may 

 educate farmers and blacksmiths to be men. 



The humanities. 



It is most curious that we should ever have 

 considered the concerns of men to be unworthy 

 of study until they had become centuries old 

 and had been more or less imperfectly embalmed 

 in tradition and literature. The most humaniz- 

 ing course of study is that which puts the man 

 into closest sympathy with the activities and 

 ideals of men in times past and in times present. 



We ought to recognize the transcendent 

 value of human experience as expressed in its 

 religions, its history, its art, and its literature, 

 and to make it the nucleating agency in the 

 educational system ; but it is just as fatal to 

 the highest scholarship and to the best intel- 

 lectual and spiritual development to have an 

 education exclusively in what we are in the 

 habit of calling the humanities as in what we 



