530  The  Significance  of  Education.  {A^JguJt^92irm' 
continuous  adjustment  of  internal  relations  to  external  relations,"  is 
much  more  widely  applicable  than  to  the  mere  functional  existence 
of  the  body,  for  it  applies  alike  to  the  mind  and  soul  of  man,  and  it 
is  the  great  and  transcendent  purpose  of  a  true  education  to  awaken 
the  mind  and  soul  and  to  bring  them  into  harmony  and  adjustment 
with  the  conditions  of  life. 
Education,  then,  is  not  mere  instruction  in  the  subjects  of  the 
school  or  college  curriculum,  whatever  they  may  be,  science,  the 
classics,  mathematics,  literature,  or  history.  These  in  proper  balance 
are  no  doubt,  in  some  measure  or  other,  the  legitimate  means  to  an 
end,  but  they  are  that  only  in  their  proper  function  as  factors  in  a 
combined  result  more  important  than  any  one  of  them.  And  just 
where  the  emphasis  in  subject  instruction  should  lie  I  do  not  know, 
and  the  schoolmen  themselves  who  are  most  directly  concerned  with 
this  phase  of  formal  education  are  by  no  means  agreed  as  to  what 
the  ultimate  worth  to  a  trained  mind  this  or  that  subject  should  be. 
The  field  is  so  broad  that  it  is  only  possible  to  delimit  and  choose, 
but  the  choice  need  not  necessarily  be  in  every  instance  the  same,  and 
doubtless  at  the  best,  and  whatever  has  been  chosen,  it  will  only  par- 
tially accomplish  its  object.  I  am  not  like  the  Scotchman  of  ancient 
memory  who  was  open  to  conviction,  but  would  like  to  see  the  man 
who  could  convince  him,  or  the  man  who  liked  any  color  so  long  as 
it  was  red.  My  own  preference  would  be  the  classics,  for  I  am  old- 
fashioned,  a  science,  because  I  believe  in  the  new,  English  languge 
and  literature,  a  modicum  of  mathematics  and  a  good  deal  of  his- 
tory, but  I  am  open  to  conviction  that  that  is  not  the  only  way  to 
state  the  case,  and  that  under  the  special  circumstances  at  hand  other 
subjects,  in  other  proportions,  might  be  selected  as  well. 
The  end,  however,  of  a  formal  education  is  clear.  It  is  so  to 
train  the  mind  and  the  soul  that  there  shall  be  a  foundation  at  least 
of  the  true  appreciation  of  the  values  of  the  things  of  life.  No  one 
is,  of  course,  educated  in  school  or  college,  for  education  never 
ceases,  now  or  at  any  time,  in  the  normal  existence  of  the  individual. 
The  student  in  the  story  that  I  have  always  considered  somewhat 
apocryphal  who  rushed  out  of  his  college  Commencement  waiving 
his  diploma  in  the  air  and  shouting:  "Thank  God,  I  am  educated!" 
was  entirely  too  sanguine  of  the  actual  result  that  had  been  attained 
even  by  a  college  course.  The  story  does  not  tell  of  his  future  his- 
tory, but  I  greatly  fear  that  it  was  one  of  disillusionment,  for  he 
surely  must  soon  have  realized  that  he  was  only  at  the  beginning  and 
not  the  end  of  an  unceasing  quest. 
