xxvi NATURE-STUDY. 



tective methods. Yet strange to say, such stress is laid 

 upon our loyalty to our national home. One has only 

 to run over the pages of the average school history to 

 see the prominence given in description and illustration 

 to wars, to great generals, and to monuments that com- 

 memorate battle fields. All these things, essential as 

 they are, are but the outcome of the real patriotism, 

 methods of protecting the country to be loved. 



In so far as civil history has to do with the individual, 

 it is too much a matter of dominance over others, of 

 stern ambition and of leadership. Civil history takes 

 part in the pernicious sentiment taught in too many 

 schools and in the life outside of the schools, and which 

 may be expressed in the common saying, "There's room 

 at the top." This common saying that so often passes 

 as the expression of a truth, is nearer a fallacy. There 

 is no room at the top. In matters financial, there is no 

 room at the top. We cannot all wear a silk hat, carry a 

 gold-headed cane, have a big bank account, play golf and 

 ride in the latest style of automobile. Those things must 

 always be limited to the few. It is a lie to say that there 

 is room at the top. The top itself is now already over- 

 crowded. Just at the present time true educators every- 

 where are working and crying out against the pernicious, 

 yes, even dangerous tendency to laud the aristocrasy of 

 wealth, and to decry the dignity of labor. Many a child 

 in our schools is studying with the one idea that he can 

 get to the top ; that he may be some great person ; may 

 escape from manual labor, and get a living by his wits. 

 Civil history as frequently taught adds fuel to the flame. 

 It says, "Here was a great general, a great president that 

 began life in a humble way and of lowly parentage, who 

 has now come to some great thing." Civil history for- 



