978 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 



been selected and organized into unity by 

 a dominant purpose. It is no easy task to 

 unify often divergent and coniiieting im- 

 pulses, habits, memories and ideals into a 

 harmonious hierarchy of aims. But such 

 singleness of ideal and eifort creates 

 power. The man of purpose is not to be 

 resisted. Every instinct and habit, every 

 picture of the mind, every effort of the 

 will, every emotion, fits into his scheme 

 of things. He never wanders from the 

 path which leads toward the end he has 

 set up. He turns every opportunity to 

 account. He foresees problems and is pre- 

 pared to meet them. He confronts diffi- 

 culties undaunted. He is master of a com- 

 pany ever devoted and responsive to com- 

 mand. The world submits to great men 

 of single aim. 



Education seeks just this unification of 

 personality. Plato's philosopher was he 

 in whose life reason aided by will kept 

 appetite and passion in servitude to the 

 higher aims of life. Sir Richard Jebb 

 tells us that 



Education consists in organizing the resoui'ces 

 of the human being. It seeks to give him powers 

 which shall fit him for his social and physical 

 world. . . . The educated person is able to deal 

 with circumstances in which he has never been 

 placed before. He is so because he has acquired 

 general conceptions. His imagination, his judg- 

 ment, his powers of intelligent sympathy, have 

 been developed. 



The ideal personality, then, includes 

 many selves organized by a masterful pur- 

 pose and unified by a spirit of harmony. 



In many ways a human group, a family, 

 a community, an institution, a nation, is 

 like a personality. Hobbes saw the state 

 as a vast Leviathan. Comte conceived 

 humanity as an on-going continuous life 

 which sweeps through the centuries. 

 Bluntschli endows political society with 

 the characteristics of a person. Contem- 

 porary philosophers attribute to society 



the mental and moral traits of a vast 

 super-man. The analogy is not wholly 

 fanciful. Just as purpose unifies the indi- 

 vidual, so a common aim gives the human 

 group a sense of solidarity. Social con- 

 sciousness is the well-worn term for this 

 thrill of comradeship. The sense of team 

 play that makes the eleven or the nine an 

 efficient unit gives us the type. Each indi- 

 vidual sees the group as a whole, is aware 

 of his own relation to it, knows that his 

 fellows share his feeling, and counts upon 

 them to act promptly for a common end. 

 A group which can not control its members 

 and rallj^ them in loyalty to a single aim 

 lacks solidarity and effectiveness. 



So, too, a large inclusive group like the 

 nation must subordinate the minor groups 

 that make it up, must rally them to the 

 service of the whole, must provide the 

 ideals and the plans for gaining a na- 

 tional end. The story of modern Ger- 

 many is eloquent of imperial purpose and 

 of aims unswervingly pursued. Contrast 

 the broken, humiliated German states after 

 the battle of Jena with the unified, efficient 

 triumphant empire of to-day. The names 

 of von Stein, von Moltke and Bismarck 

 spell purpose and policy, far-seeing, states- 

 manlike, remorselessly followed. These 

 aims seem like vast independent forces, 

 molding men and institutions to their 

 service. Schools, army discipline, scien- 

 tific research, technical skill, commercial 

 resourcefulness, governmental efficiency, 

 social legislation, are all well considered 

 parts of one comprehensive, far-reaching 

 national program. Against such a power 

 a disorganized, untrained and undisci- 

 plined nation is impotent. The law of 

 unification through purpose holds good 

 whether the units be the impulses, 

 thoughts and feelings of the individual, 

 or the persons and groups that make up 

 a great people. As we classify the powers 



