The Teacher and the State 75 



prize-fights, police courts, and Barbary Coasts of San 

 Francisco the contents of San Francisco newspapers 

 than do the boys and girls of the high school, whose 

 reading has been otherwise directed and to whom we are 

 committing year by year the destinies of the republic. 



All such criticism is based upon an extremely narrow 

 view of what is practical. If that only is practical which 

 makes for toil and for the necessities of daily living, if 

 the needs of the boy and of the Jersey cow lie thus in 

 the same direction; then our problems of education be- 

 come simplified indeed. Men were once reckoned and 

 called cattle ; but it did not work. The French Revolu- 

 tion disposed forever of that idea. But any educational 

 theory which fails to take account of humanity in man, 

 which fails to reach human love and hope and aspira- 

 tion, which fails to make dominant the best that mankind 

 has thought and wrought, which fails to recognize the 

 light that is brighter than the arc, the light tha,t lit that 

 useful flame, but shall burn long after every carbon 

 point shall blacken in the glow of day any criticism 

 of any less scope than this is futile, worthless, meriting 

 consideration only as benevolence might seek to save the 

 critic himself. "I saw an angel standing in the sun!" 

 says the man of the Revelations. The old Scotch preacher 

 read it and exclaimed, "Ye can do little wi' that man 

 wha has seen an angel stan'in' in the sun," and he 

 knew whereof he spoke. The light of intelligence is 

 brighter than the sun. We know all about that luminous 

 sphere ; and even discount his radiance, as compared with 

 that of other stars, and boldly say at last that "one star 

 differeth from another star in glory. ' ' 



