Class J^ J $751 
 Book >-Ofo 
 
 GopyiightN'? 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSiT. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 TWELVE GATES: A Study in Catholicity 
 
THE MEANING 
 OF EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES H. SNOWDEN 
 
 Mm} 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI 
 
5^ 
 
 Copyright, 1921, by 
 JAMES H. SNOWDEN 
 
 OCI 26 1921 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 CIA630002 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 I. What is Education? 15 
 
 1. Its General Idea. 
 
 2. Education a Growth. 
 
 3. Is It Right to Cultivate the Self.? 
 
 n. Begins with the Body 23 
 
 1. The Body as the Physical Basis of 
 
 Life. 
 
 2. The Education of the Body. 
 
 ni. Development of the Intellect 31 
 
 1. Sense Perception. 
 
 2. Reasoning. 
 
 3. Mental Associations. 
 
 4. Memory. 
 
 5. The Subconsciousness. 
 
 6. Imagination. 
 
 7. The Workshop of the Mmd. 
 
 8. Knowledge and Intelligence. 
 
 IV. The Sensibilities 50 
 
 1. Kinds of Feelings. 
 
 2. Uses of the Feelings. 
 
 3. The Education of the Feelings. 
 
 V. The Training of the Will 56 
 
 1. The Attention. 
 
 2. Motives. 
 
 3. The Freedom of the Will. 
 
6 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VI. The Education of the Spirit 65 
 
 VII. Education as Habit 76 
 
 1. What Is Habit? 
 
 2. The Use of Habits. 
 
 3. Rules for Forming Habits: 
 
 (1) Begin with all your might. 
 
 (2) Never suffer an exception in 
 
 the practice of a habit. 
 
 (3) Seize the first opportunity to 
 
 act. 
 
 (4) Keep the faculty of effort 
 
 alive by gratuitous exer- 
 cise. 
 
 Vin. Education and Expression 87 
 
 IX. Education and Appreciation 92 
 
 X. Education and Efficiency 99 
 
 XI. Education and Life 104 
 
 Xn. Education and Service Ill 
 
 XIII. Education and Public Support 114 
 
 XIV. Education and Leadership 116 
 
Education commences at the mother*s knee, and 
 every word spoken within the hearsay of little chil- 
 dren tends toward the formation of character. — 
 Eosea Ballon. 
 
 Let the soldier be abroad if he will; he can do 
 nothing in this age. There is another personage 
 less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignifi- 
 cant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to 
 him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in 
 full military array. — Lord Brougham. 
 
 The true purpose of education is to cherish and 
 unfold the seed of immortality already sown within 
 us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities 
 of every kind with which the God who made us has 
 endowed us. — Mrs. Jameson. 
 
 Education elevates a man above the pressure of 
 material interests. It makes him superior to the 
 pleasures and the pains of a world which is but his 
 temporary home, filling his mind with higher sub- 
 jects than the occupations of life will themselves 
 provide him with. — James Anthony Froude. 
 
 Till we all attain unto a full-grown man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
 — Paid. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In beginning our study of the meaning 
 and value of education as one of the 
 chief goods of Hfe it is encouraging to 
 consider that there is enough of this kind 
 of wealth for us all. Few are the things 
 of which there is enough to go around. 
 There are not enough diamonds in all 
 the world to bedeck every bridal finger, 
 nor enough pearls to throw a string of 
 them around the neck of every queen of 
 beauty. There are not enough houses, 
 and there are not even enough clothes 
 for all the people in the world. 
 
 It is physically impossible for us all 
 to get rich, for if the total wealth of the 
 world were equally divided among all 
 its people, we would have only a few 
 dollars apiece. There are a hundred mil- 
 lions of us in this country, but only one 
 of us can be President of the United 
 States at the same time; and so very 
 many of us must do without that office — 
 at least for the present. In any empire 
 there is room for only one royal crown, 
 
 9 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 and any rival crown would be quickly 
 put down, though its suppression might 
 cost thousands of lives. 
 
 Material goods and external positions 
 are strictly limited in quantity at any 
 particular time, and whatever anyone 
 gets from the common stock leaves just 
 that much less for others. There is no 
 way of avoiding or thwarting this physical 
 fact and mathematical law, and this 
 unrelenting limitation is at the bottom 
 of much of the unrest and unhappiness 
 and strife and tragedy of our human 
 world. 
 
 But this principle does not apply to 
 mental and spiritual goods. When one 
 man discovers or develops a truth, he 
 does not leave that much less truth for 
 others; on the contrary, he enlarges the 
 field of truth for all other minds. Newton 
 in discovering the law of gravitation did 
 not thereby enrich only himself and im- 
 poverish others, but he enormously widened 
 the conceptions and multiplied the mental 
 wealth of the world. 
 
 Truth is of such a nature that it can- 
 not be shut up within a mind, but it must 
 be shared in order to possess it fully. 
 
 10 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 We do not know a truth clearly and vividly 
 until we impart it to others, for the very 
 process of teaching or telling it to others 
 clarifies and deepens and enriches it in 
 our own minds. For this reason the 
 teacher is always the best scholar in his 
 own class and is constantly learning more 
 than any other member. 
 
 Developed personality does not leave 
 less room for other persons, but makes 
 room for them and enables them to grow 
 up toward the same height of attain- 
 ment. Shakespeare, with his enormous 
 genius and gigantic strides, did not crowd 
 other dramatists off the stage; on the 
 contrary, he made room for them and 
 lifted them to a height they never would 
 have attained had it not been for his 
 contagious presence, for he inspired half a 
 dozen minor poets to write dramas that 
 can now with difficulty be distinguished 
 from his own. Every great man helps to 
 make other men around him great, and 
 instead of crowding smaller men out of 
 the world he causes them to grow to 
 taller stature. 
 
 Education belongs to this class of 
 mental and personal goods which are un- 
 
 11 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 limited in quantity and are multiplied for 
 others as each one acquires them for 
 himseK. An educated mind is a mental 
 infection in any community and imparts 
 s(ome of its own spirit of inquiry and 
 methods of sound thinking to other minds. 
 And truth, which is the field and suste- 
 nance of education, the bread on which 
 it feeds and by which it grows, is as wide 
 and unlimited as infinity and can be 
 stopped by no terminal until it impinges 
 on the frontiers of the universe and is 
 lost in the omniscience of God. 
 
 There is no danger, then, of the stock 
 of knowledge being cornered by any 
 monopoly or exhausted by any omnivorous 
 minds; the supply can never run short 
 for any of us, and we may set out on our 
 quest for education with the assurance 
 that we are aiming at no unattainable 
 ideal or visionary dream, but are turning 
 our feet into a path in which there is 
 room for us all and striving for a crown 
 we can all win and wear. 
 
 For education is as democratic as hu- 
 man nature itself. It is not a special 
 privilege of a few and does not constitute 
 an aristocracy of minds, but is the possi- 
 
 12 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 bility of all. The poorest peasant boy 
 can as surely attain unto it as the mil- 
 lionaire's heir or the king's son. Its 
 door will open to any sincere and earnest 
 knock and it asks for no golden key. 
 Lincoln got it with a pine torch as his 
 only light, and poverty cannot keep a 
 resolute soul from this wealth and king- 
 dom. 
 
 We are not, then, in this presentation 
 of the meaning and value of education 
 exciting false hopes in the minds of our 
 young people and starting them out on 
 a vain quest, but we are simply opening a 
 vision that may become the victory of 
 every one of them. 
 
 13 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 1. Its General Idea. The general idea 
 of education is the leading out (educere) 
 of our powers into full development. 
 "Education," says Ruskin, "is the leading 
 human souls to what is best, and the 
 making what is best out of them." 
 
 Various definitions of it have been offered 
 that are helpful. Plato said : "The purpose 
 of education is to give to the body and to 
 the soul all the beauty and all the perfec- 
 tion of which they are capable." John 
 Stuart Mill wrote: "Education includes 
 whatever we do for ourselves and whatever 
 is done for us by others for the express 
 purpose of bringing us nearer to the per- 
 fection of our nature." Herbert Spencer 
 said: "Education is the preparation for 
 complete hving." Ruskin wrote: "Educa- 
 tion is the leading human souls to what is 
 best, and the making what is best out of 
 them." 
 
 A recent psychological definition is: 
 15 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 "Education is the introduction of control 
 into experience." This is a suggestive 
 idea. Experience begins with the instinc- 
 tive urge and activity of all our faculties, 
 physical, mental and emotional, but if left 
 alone they are wild-growing powers like 
 weeds and run into all kinds of disorder. 
 They need stimulation, guidance, and dis- 
 cipline. Education imposes upon us from 
 without control that comes from the wider 
 and wiser experience of others, of parents, 
 teachers, schools, literature, and of the 
 race. If an infant were left to grow of 
 itself, cut off from its human kind, it would 
 hardly develop into a human being and, in 
 fact, it would quickly perish. But even if 
 it were fed and protected, it would grow 
 into only a half -human, half -animal crea- 
 ture: it is education that trains and dis- 
 cipHnes it into a person and perhaps pushes 
 it to the level and height of a supreme 
 thinker or powerful personality. 
 
 Huxley has given us a well-known de- 
 scription of education as follows: "That 
 man, I think, has had a liberal education 
 who has been so trained in youth that his 
 body is the ready servant of his will, 
 and does with ease and pleasure all the 
 
 16 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 work, as a mechanism, it is capable of; 
 whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic en- 
 gine, with all its parts of equal strength, 
 and in smooth working order; ready, like 
 a steam engine, to be turned to any kind 
 of work, and spin the gossamers as well 
 as forge the anchors of the mind; whose 
 mind is stored with knowledge of the 
 great fundamental truths of nature and 
 of the laws of her operations; one who, 
 no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, 
 but whose passions are trained to come 
 to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of 
 a tender conscience; who has learned to 
 love all beauty, whether of nature or of 
 art, to hate all vileness, and to respect 
 others as himself." 
 
 This is a comprehensive definition and 
 covers the whole man in body, mind, and 
 heart. Education means the process by 
 which this training is given, and it also 
 means the result of this process in a fully 
 developed personality. 
 
 The Christian ideal of the perfect man 
 as set forth in Scripture includes the same 
 elements: a pure, healthy body ("a temple 
 of the Holy Spirit"), disciplined into 
 servitude to the will ("I bring it into sub- 
 
 17 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 jection"), a developed mind, a noble 
 heart, and an obedient will, all combined 
 into symmetry and harmony, a full- 
 statured, broad-visioned man ("a full- 
 grown man") living in full fine relations 
 with men and with God and growing up 
 "unto the measure of the stature of the 
 fullness of Christ." 
 
 The educated man, then, is no narrow 
 or defective person that lacks any essen- 
 tial element of the strongest and finest 
 manhood. He has no right to be ill- 
 proportioned and misshapen, in any respect 
 unlovely and repellent, round and rich 
 on one side and shriveled and sour on 
 another; but in him all excellent human 
 qualities — the physical and the spiritual, 
 the intellectual and the emotional, the 
 passive and the active — should be com- 
 bined and blended into symmetry and 
 strength and fruitfulness. The highest 
 attainable perfection of personality is the 
 aim and end of education. 
 
 2. Education a Growth. Education is, 
 therefore, a growth. We are each one 
 born as a bundle of possibilities, a germ 
 that has in it the capacity of endless de- 
 velopment. An ignorant man is not yet 
 
 18 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 fully born, he is not yet unpacked; and 
 the whole process of education from in- 
 fancy to the end of life consists in un- 
 folding these latent faculties into full- 
 orbed development and power. 
 
 Education is not, therefore, a posses- 
 sion that can be inherited or bought or 
 obtained as a special privilege, but it 
 must be grown; it cannot be put on from 
 without, like a new coat, but it must 
 be developed from within. Everyone must 
 grow this stalk of wheat in his own patch 
 of ground, and this soil is his own soul. 
 
 Growth is a slow process and takes 
 time; and the slower the growth the hardier 
 and more valuable is the product. A 
 mushroom springs up in a night, but an 
 oak sinks its roots down into the soil 
 and grips the rocks and builds up its 
 trunk and throws out its branches through 
 the years, and it takes the giant Redwood 
 thirty centuries to push its top up three 
 or four hundred feet into the sun. A 
 solid education must strike its roots deep 
 and patiently grow up through many 
 years, and even all life, for its process is 
 never completed in this world. 
 
 Already we are being warned against 
 19 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 short-cuts to this attainment. Young 
 people are often impatient of slow processes 
 and want quick results; especially are they 
 eager to get to work and play their part 
 in life. But it is as foolish to rush into 
 life unprepared as it would be to begin 
 to build a house without first laying a 
 solid foundation or to attempt to sing 
 or to play a piano in public without first 
 learning how. 
 
 Many a person has stunted his personal 
 development and injured his whole future 
 by refusing to take time to get ready for 
 his lifework Such haste is waste which 
 strong crying and tears in after life can- 
 not make good. Jesus himself took 
 thirty years of preparation for only three 
 years of work, and we are following his 
 wisdom and patience when we take time 
 to get ready for our work. 
 
 S, Is It Right to Cultivate the Self? 
 We sometimes hear advice to the effect 
 that self-cultivation is wrong in theory 
 and bad in practice. Even so eminent 
 an educator as Woodrow Wilson is quoted 
 as saying, in an address to the National 
 Council of Boy Scouts, that "character is 
 a by-product," and that "a man who 
 
 W 
 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 
 
 devotes himself to the development of his 
 own character will succeed in nothing 
 except making a prig." 
 
 This is strange talk to come from a 
 schoolmaster, for is not the whole process 
 of education from the kindergarten to 
 the university a cultivation of the self? 
 Are we not to build up a good body, a 
 disciplined mind, and a noble heart? 
 Is not "a man to examine himself," and 
 see wherein he falls short and bring him- 
 self up to higher standards? Are we not 
 bidden to "love our neighbor as thyself"? 
 Unless we first cultivate the self we shall 
 have nothing of worth with which to love 
 and serve others. 
 
 True love of self is simply appreciating 
 and guarding and developing our own 
 worth and right and dignity, and such 
 self-love must precede and condition other 
 love, we must get a soul before we can 
 give any service. Of course we should 
 be on our guard against conceit and sel- 
 fishness and morbid self -consciousness; 
 and, of course, we can develop and culti- 
 vate the self only as we serve others, 
 for education is not an isolated personal 
 but a social process and attainment. 
 
 21 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 We can develop our own personality only 
 as we help to develop other persons; we 
 can get education only as we give it. 
 But this fact does not annul the com- 
 plementary fact that self -development has 
 its necessary place in our life and is our 
 primary duty. 
 
 22 
 
II 
 
 BEGINS WITH THE BODY 
 
 1. The Body as the Physical Basis of 
 Life. Education begins with the body, 
 for at bottom we are bone and blood 
 and brain. The body is the basis of 
 all our life, mental and moral as well as 
 physical. Body and soul are intimately 
 interwoven into a mystic unity, and 
 neither of these parts of our human per- 
 sonality can be complete without the 
 other. The body is the coarse material 
 stem on which blooms the fine blossom 
 of the spirit. And the breadth of the 
 brain has something to do with the width 
 of our thinking, and the volume and 
 warmth of the blood with the fervency of 
 the feelings and the force of the will. 
 
 Body and soul also constantly interact 
 and are mutually sensitive and sym- 
 pathetic to each other's condition and 
 operations. Every change in the body 
 instantly reports itself in the soul, and 
 every change in the soul at once affects 
 
 23 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 the body. The body sends every sensory 
 stimulus into the mind, and every thought 
 and feehng and volition expresses itself 
 through the body. The emotions paint 
 themselves on the face, a sense of shame 
 flooding it with scarlet, and fear blanch- 
 ing it white; and the will controls all the 
 voluntary muscles and through them acts 
 upon the world. 
 
 The body is thus a marvelous mechan- 
 ism which is the nimble servant of the 
 soul. Its hands and feet are the means 
 by which man takes hold of the world 
 and masters it, and his senses are so 
 many fine feelers with which he reaches 
 out and touches and interprets the world 
 at every point and even feels his way 
 out among the constellations to the most 
 distant star. 
 
 Not only is the body a wonderful ma- 
 chine, but it also makes machines which 
 are enormous extensions and reenforce- 
 ments and refinements of its powers. 
 Man's telescopes and microscopes are 
 gigantic eyes which penetrate the depths 
 of star spaces and peer down among 
 molecules and atoms. His control of 
 nature's energies enables him to pass with 
 
 24 
 
BEGINS WITH THE BODY 
 
 incredible speed across continents and 
 seas, to prowl around, like a terrible 
 shark, under the ocean; to take to the 
 air and outfly the eagle, and to transmit 
 his thoughts and the very tones of his 
 voice over continental distances as in- 
 stantaneously as the lightning's flash. 
 His dynamite and deadly gases enable 
 him to split open mountains and blast 
 with death every living thing over wide 
 areas of country, and his powerful ex- 
 plosives and great guns have extended 
 the reach of his arm to sixty miles and 
 multiplied the punch of his fist millions 
 of times. Humanity may well tremble at 
 the mere thought of what the next great 
 war may do; with airships loaded with 
 bombs that will blot out cities and de- 
 vastate countries. Man's wonderful and 
 ever-increasing dominion over the earth 
 and sea and air is the result of his mas- 
 tery and extension of his own body, and 
 there is no limit to this process. 
 
 2. The Education of the Body, No won- 
 der, then, that education should begin 
 with the body, and a sound mind in a 
 sound body must ever be the starting- 
 point and chief initial capital of an edu- 
 
 25 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 cated human being. Yet formerly the 
 body was not included in the scheme of 
 education and was not believed to have 
 any necessary part or right to share in 
 this process. It was thought, rather, to 
 be the right thing for a student to be a 
 pale-faced, hollow-chested, stoop-shoul- 
 dered creature, panting for breath, and 
 such things were almost taken to be signs 
 if not proofs of one's being a scholar; 
 but now they are only symptoms and 
 evidence of bad breeding and wrong 
 living. 
 
 It is now seen that a well-developed 
 body, symmetrical and strong, supple 
 and sinewy, with straight bones, hard 
 muscles, broad chest, rich blood, grace- 
 ful carriage, and trained skill, is a vital 
 part of education and lies at the founda- 
 tion of the whole business. This is the 
 meaning of the large place now given to 
 athletics in the schools and colleges. The 
 gymnasium now stands side by side with 
 the library, and athletics is required along 
 with mathematics and ethics. 
 
 Physical education should begin in in- 
 fancy and before birth — Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes said we should start with our 
 
 26 
 
BEGINS WITH THE BODY 
 
 grandmothers — and then should be con- 
 tinued through Hfe. It now begins in 
 the primary school with a physiological 
 and medical examination of the child. 
 Hair and scalp, eyes and ears, nose and 
 throat, heart and lungs, stomach and 
 liver, muscles and bones, every organ is 
 examined and defects are noted and 
 remedial action is taken. Inspection now 
 looks into the sanitary condition of the 
 school and sees that every window is in 
 the right place and every seat of the 
 right size and shape. The child is thus 
 given a chance to have a sound body, 
 and this greatly improves its chance of 
 having a sound mind. 
 
 We are now realizing that ill health is 
 a physical sin, if not personal, then 
 hereditary or social, and that to permit 
 a child to suffer from bad conditions is a 
 social sin against its body and soul. The 
 result is that our schools and colleges are 
 now turning out fewer anemic weaklings, 
 and more big, lusty fellows that have 
 some brawn and breath that can back 
 up their brains and carry them through 
 life and stand the pace of to-day. 
 
 The great war disclosed an unexpected 
 27 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 amount of physical deficiency and in- 
 efficiency in our American manhood. A 
 considerable proportion, sometimes half, 
 of our young men were rejected out- 
 right on physical grounds, and most of 
 them needed correction and reconstruc- 
 tion at many points. The results of mil- 
 itary training in the camps were surprising. 
 Many a boy that left his home stoop- 
 shouldered and hollow-chested and shuf- 
 fled along dragging his feet after him, 
 came back erect and full-chested, with 
 color in his cheek and sparkle in his eye, 
 and walked with a firm elastic step, so 
 that his whole personality had undergone 
 a marked transformation, and his very 
 appearance attracted the attention and 
 excited the wonder of his friends. The 
 discipline of six months had made a new 
 man of him 
 
 This bodily education is of fundamental 
 nature and value. Physical health is one 
 of our greatest national assets, immensely 
 outranking coal and iron. But we should 
 not wait for a war and military training 
 before we begin this discipline, but make 
 it a vital part of all our education from 
 infancy through the primary school up to 
 
 ^8 
 
BEGINS WITH THE BODY 
 
 the college and university. We are doing 
 this in an increasing degree, and this is 
 one of the chief improvements in our 
 modern education. 
 
 Physical education, while it should not 
 be overdone, and man should not be 
 treated as though he were only an animal, 
 thus has its rightful place in our educa- 
 tional life and has come to stay. Every- 
 one should have an elementary knowledge 
 of his body in all its organs and conditions 
 of health and should give it constant 
 attention. Anything that injures its fine 
 mechanism and delicate tissues is a physi- 
 cal sin, and all harmful indulgences should 
 be ruled out of life as so many sharp 
 knives and deadly poisons that cut and 
 destroy our vital organs. 
 
 Especially should everyone know and 
 obey the laws of health as to proper food 
 and air and sunshine and exercise and 
 sleep, work and play. There are billions 
 of cells in us, and when any of these are 
 permitted to become dormant and then 
 dead they are so much poisonous debris 
 in the system and are the seeds of disease 
 and death. There are simple exercises by 
 which one can daily stir into activity all 
 
 29 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 these cells and thus keep the whole body 
 alive and healthy. 
 
 And, of course, every one should train 
 his body into some kind of skill that is 
 useful in the way of productive work or 
 recreation or artistic expression and joy. 
 Skill in handcraft not only provides a 
 means of making- a living, but it also reacts 
 on the mind and develops in it a sense of 
 reality and practical efficiency that can 
 hardly otherwise be attained and that is of 
 high value in any field of life. "Health" 
 is only another spelling of "holiness" and 
 both are only variations of the word 
 "wholeness," and this fact is an indication 
 of how deep-seated and vital to our whole 
 welfare, physical and mental and spiritual, 
 is the education of the body and of what 
 constant attention and care we should give 
 to it. 
 
 30 
 
Ill 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
 INTELLECT 
 
 Th^- intellect is the knowing power of 
 the mind, and it unfolds into the faculties 
 or activities of sense perception, concepts, 
 reasoning, mental association, memory, 
 and imagination. 
 
 1. Sense Perception. Sense perception is 
 the consciousness of external objects when 
 the mind is stirred into activity by the 
 excitation of the senses. These are the 
 organs of sight, sound, smell, taste, and 
 touch, which are nerve ends differentiated 
 and adapted to receive various kinds of 
 sensory impressions. Each of these won- 
 derful organs sends its distinctive kind of 
 nerve wave or shock up to its special 
 center in the brain, which is thus a cen- 
 tral telephone exchange receiving and 
 sending messages from and to every part 
 of the world. 
 
 The mind now has the wonderful and 
 quite mysterious power of interpreting or 
 
 31 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 experiencing these molecular changes in 
 the brain as perceptions of the external 
 objects producing them. When two or 
 more perceptions arrive from the same 
 external object, as the color, odor, and 
 taste of an orange, these several percepts 
 combine into a unitary percept or con- 
 struct, which is the object as we know 
 it in the mind. When an individual per- 
 cept or construct, such as an apple, is 
 released from its local context in con- 
 sciousness and made to stand for or repre- 
 sent all apples, or the class or general 
 idea of an apple, it is then called a concept. 
 
 These percepts and concepts are the 
 representatives in our minds of the real- 
 ities of the objective world, and it is 
 therefore of the first importance that 
 they represent them accurately. They 
 are the constituent elements or cut stones 
 or pressed bricks out of which we build 
 our world. But if the bricks in a build- 
 ing, or even one brick, is of the wrong 
 size or shape or is warped, it may throw 
 the whole structure out of plumb and 
 may even endanger its stability. 
 
 We thus see the fundamental impor- 
 tance of forming correct percepts and con- 
 
 3£ 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 cepts. Any inaccuracy or error in them, 
 caused by inattention, ignorance, mental 
 blindness, self-interest, prejudice, or pas- 
 sion, will throw us out of gear and right 
 working relations with reality; it will 
 ramify and pervert all our ideas and plans; 
 and it may undermine and ruin our whole 
 structure of thought and life. 
 
 Keen and accurate senses are a high 
 attainment and are the basis of right 
 thinking and successful achievement in 
 every field. The way we see things de- 
 termines the way we say them, and thus 
 accurate observation is the foundation of 
 truth and truth-speaking. The way we 
 see and hear and touch things is also the 
 way we endeavor to control and use them; 
 and so if our observation of them is loose 
 and inaccurate and a misfit, we shall miss 
 connection with reality and wander around 
 blindly in the world. Trained senses are 
 of primary and immense importance as 
 the means of sound thinking and practical 
 mastery of things in life. 
 
 We should then give the greatest care 
 to the education of our senses. In seeing 
 things we should train our vision so that 
 we shall see clearly and correctly, and not 
 
 33 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 see blurred and blotted, distorted and per- 
 verted images of ^ them; and so with all 
 the other senses. In seeing accurately 
 the shape of a leaf or the color of a bit 
 of ribbon or the letters in a word or the 
 figures in a problem we may be deter- 
 mining something of far-reaching impor- 
 tance. 
 
 We should beware of mixing up our 
 subjective opinions and prejudices, and 
 especially our own interests and desires, 
 with objective reality, and thus shaping 
 and coloring it to suit our own ends. Of 
 course we must interpret things in the 
 light of our own knowledge, and this is 
 a reason why we should be constantly 
 stocking our minds with richer stores of 
 knowledge that we may ever see a richer 
 world. In a sense we make the things 
 we see, for we contribute to them the 
 contents of our own minds, so that we 
 see things not only as they are but also 
 as we are. 
 
 But this process does not justify us in 
 contributing any false color or element to 
 our perception. We might suppose that 
 as we all have the same senses we would 
 all see and hear the same things. But 
 
 34 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 this is not so. Our senses are subject to 
 growth and education, and we all see 
 things according to our own mental 
 development. In fact, everyone sees his 
 own world; and to one it may be a meager 
 and colorless world, and to another it is 
 something rich and splendid. 
 
 Just to perceive reality as it is: this is 
 the foundation of truth and honesty; it 
 goes deep into our character and success 
 in life; and we should give to it our ut- 
 most training and care. 
 
 2. Reasoning. The process by which the 
 mind works with its percepts and con- 
 cepts is its reasoning power. This con- 
 sists of comparing, discriminating, ana- 
 lyzing, and classifying its percepts and 
 concepts, or its images of objects and its 
 general ideas, so as to discern their rela- 
 tions, logically combine them into larger 
 units, trace their connections and especially 
 their causal links, and deduce their con- 
 sequences; and thus we build up our 
 knowledge into judgments and proposi- 
 tions and systems and draw practical 
 conclusions. 
 
 Thus starting with tiny visual images in 
 his eyes and percepts and concepts in his 
 
 35 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 mind, the astronomer combines these into 
 grand generalizations and constructs a 
 sublime system for the whole stupendous 
 heavens. Every other scientist in like 
 manner perceives and construes the facts 
 in his special field, and thus our knowledge 
 grows from more to more. Each one of 
 us thus reasons out his own conclusions 
 and plans and purposes and builds his 
 own world. 
 
 The judgments we form in our minds 
 by our reasoning are the real tools with 
 which we work, the hands and feet with 
 which we actually take hold of the world 
 and move and mold it to our purposes. 
 It is, therefore, of primary importance 
 that we learn to reason correctly and 
 work out right judgments, for a wrong 
 judgment is a broken rail or an unbridged 
 chasm in our track that will inevitably 
 throw us into the ditch. 
 
 The reason one man succeeds and an- 
 other fails generally is that the successful 
 man forms right judgments that run 
 before him like a steel track to carry him 
 with safety and certainty to his objective, 
 whereas the unsuccessful man forms un- 
 sound and visionary plans that go to 
 
 36 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 pieces on the rocks of reality. Education 
 at bottom is thus good judgment, or 
 common sense raised to its highest power, 
 and we must develop and exercise this 
 power or our doom will be upon us. 
 
 3. Mental Associations. Association of 
 ideas is the tendency they have of cling- 
 ing together so that when one arises in 
 the mind it brings others with it. It is 
 our constant familiar experience that one 
 object or idea suggests another. The 
 sight of a raincloud suggests the idea of 
 an umbrella, and this idea may suggest 
 the fact that the one we have was bor- 
 rowed from a neighbor, possibly without 
 his consent or knowledge. The sight of a 
 little lock of hair or a glimpse of the 
 old home crowds the mind with a thou- 
 sand fond recollections too deep for tears. 
 When any idea enters the mind it quickly 
 draws to itself a cluster of associations, 
 as when a magnet is thrust into a keg of 
 nails it comes out thickly incrusted with 
 the bits of iron. 
 
 These associations often seem accidental 
 and whimsical, but they are really gov- 
 erned by beautiful laws that spin threads 
 of connection between ideas that at first 
 
 37 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 seem to have no possible relation. The 
 most common of these laws are contiguity 
 in time and place, similarity and contrast, 
 and causal connection. Objects and ideas 
 that have been experienced together once 
 are apt to appear together again, and any 
 object tends to suggest its likeness or 
 contrast, or cause or consequence. 
 
 Every object and idea and word is 
 surrounded with a fringe or atmosphere of 
 associations, and as every mind has its 
 own stock of knowledge, words and ideas 
 have very different meanings and sug- 
 gestions for different minds. The idea of 
 a prison has a vastly different connotation 
 or meaning for a convict than for one 
 who has never been inside prison walls, 
 or the word "music" for the musician 
 than for one without musical training or 
 sense. These associations give breadth 
 and depth and wealth of meaning to words 
 and objects as the overtones in music 
 give character and richness to musical 
 notes. 
 
 It is the number and variety of the 
 associations with which our minds are 
 stored that constitute the width and 
 wealth and power of our mental life. 
 
 38 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 Every mind organizes around an idea its 
 entire contents. It perceives every new 
 trutli in the light of and brings it into 
 relation with its existing knowledge, a 
 process which is called apperception. 
 
 One mark of a* man of genius is the 
 immense range and variety of his asso- 
 ciations by which he calls the whole world 
 so far as he knows it to his aid to illustrate 
 and illuminate his ideas; and the poverty 
 and impotence of an ignorant or feeble 
 mind is the meagerness of it^ associations. 
 Multiply your associations, store your 
 mind with large stocks of facts and ideas 
 through observation and reading, and you 
 will thus have a reservoir in your mind 
 that you can tap on any subject and draw 
 forth streams of thought and power. 
 This is one result and value of education. 
 
 4. Memory. Memory is the conserving 
 power of the mind, its capacity to store 
 up and retain and recall its experiences. 
 It is the treasure house of life in which 
 all its past is packed away and out of 
 which our associations emerge; it is the 
 thread of continuity that binds all our 
 days together into conscious unity. With- 
 out the power of memory we would not 
 
 39 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 be conscious of our past and would not 
 even know ourselves as identical persons 
 from day to day. It is thus the spinal 
 column of personality. 
 
 While memory is not the highest power 
 of the mind and is related to conservation 
 rather than to initiative and progress, yet 
 it is fundamental and enters vitally into 
 our whole life. Its cardinal virtues are 
 quick reception, vivid impression, tenacity 
 of retention, and readiness of recall, and 
 it thus puts our whole stock of knowledge 
 and experience at our fingers' ends. It 
 should be disciplined and strengthened in 
 early life and trained into an expert 
 librarian and ready servant that will on 
 demand produce any fact or idea from the 
 stack room and pigeon-holes of the mind. 
 
 5. The Subconsciousness. The subcon- 
 sciousness is that part of our mental life 
 that lies below the threshold of con- 
 sciousness. The conscious mind is subject 
 to great fluctuations in its volume and 
 level, and from the heights of intense and 
 glowing thought and feeling it sinks down 
 through dullness and drowsiness and sleep 
 into a state of inactivity of which no 
 memory remains. Memory has its store- 
 
 40 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 house in this deep. All our mental asso- 
 ciations and past experiences and habits 
 and instincts are packed away in its 
 receptacles and emerge at call from these 
 hidden chambers in this underground 
 world of the soul. 
 
 There is reason to think that this sub- 
 conscious life of the soul is large compared 1 
 with its conscious life. As seven eighths of 
 an iceberg is under the surface of the sea, 
 so the greater part of our life is submerged 
 in these depths. This is the night life of 
 the soul, full of shadows and ghosts and 
 stars. 
 
 The subconsciousness plays a part of 
 immense importance in our life. All our 
 past and even our heredity and racial 
 ancestry are sleeping in these deep cham- 
 bers so that nothing is ever lost out of 
 our life. Up out of this huge cellar come 
 swarming through its trapdoors and back 
 stairways of memory and association the 
 experiences of the past to reenforce the 
 present. Suggestion has the power of 
 tapping this subterranean reservoir and 
 letting it gush up in jets of thought and 
 feeling. 
 
 Everything we put into our souls will 
 41 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 sooner or later come out of them. Long 
 years afterward on the most unexpected 
 occasion and in the most startKng ways, 
 "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles 
 long ago" will come thronging up out of 
 this dark chamber to strengthen and com- 
 fort us, or, like ghosts out of their graves, 
 to trouble and plague us. The admonition 
 of psychology and education at this point 
 is, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; 
 for out of it are the issues of life." 
 
 6. Imagination. Imagination is the pic- 
 ture-making power of the mind. It begins 
 with memory images, which are bits of 
 imagination, and it constructs images or 
 pictures of objects and scenes from the 
 stores of memory. 
 
 A deeper use of the imagination is its 
 power of realizing objects that lie beyond 
 the immediate range of the senses and 
 contact of the mind with reality. It is 
 the mental process by which we translate 
 symbols, such as words and mathematical 
 signs which only stand for things, into 
 the meaning and power of the things 
 themselves. Thus in studying geography 
 and history the mind has certain informa- 
 tion about places and events that are not 
 
 42 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 immediately before it: imagination takes 
 these statements, which are Kttle more 
 than symbols, and translates them into 
 images which we see almost or altogether 
 as vividly as though the realities them- 
 selves were present to us; it clothes these 
 skeletons with flesh and blood so that 
 they breathe and move. 
 
 Knowledge is never digested and assim- 
 ilated into our thought and experience, it 
 never becomes alive and moves us, until 
 we thus turn it into pictures or vivid 
 images that may be as vital and vigorous 
 as the living realities. In all our studies 
 we should visualize our knowledge and 
 turn it into living experience. 
 
 A still higher activity of this faculty 
 is the creative imagination which con- 
 structs pictures, plans, ideals, and visions 
 of its own; and thus 
 
 "... bodies forth the forms of things unknown. 
 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 It is the creative imagination th^t pro- 
 duces all the glories of literature and art 
 and all the great achievements of men. 
 Men of genius are eminently the chil- 
 43 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 dren of their imagination; they see visions 
 that unveil the beauty of the world. A 
 poet sees fairy fancies and grand cathedrals 
 of poetic thought, and, with his "eye 
 in a fine frenzy rolling," he puts them 
 into immortal lines. The painter sees in 
 the gallery of his imagination a picture 
 of fair features and glowing colors and 
 deep meaning, and his brush copies it 
 on canvas. A sculptor sees an angel in 
 a block of marble, and his chisel sets it 
 free until it begins to breathe. A musician 
 hears in the chamber of his heart sweet 
 strains and grand harmonies, and he 
 flings them out through his voice or his 
 instrument upon the air. It is by the 
 same power that we frame our plans and 
 purposes, set up our ideals, and see 
 visions which we then strive to realize in 
 conduct and character. 
 
 Imagination, then, is no visionary and 
 vain exercise of the mind. It is true there 
 is a form of this faculty, the fancy, that 
 does cut loose from sober reality and soars 
 off on a light and airy wing; and such 
 imagination may lead us into daydreaming 
 in an unreal world; and when this is in- 
 dulged in to excess it is apt to become 
 
 44 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 unwholesome and harmful, weakening the 
 will for common work and breeding dis- 
 content. 
 
 But imagination proper is the most 
 powerful creative faculty of the mind. 
 It is by this power that man dreams 
 dreams and that over his path hover 
 visions that coax and woo him on to 
 larger and lovelier things. He follows 
 their gleam, he hitches his wagons to 
 their stars and rises from common dusty 
 roads to celestial highways. 
 
 The world has learned to beware of how 
 it stands in the way of imagination: that 
 invisible impalpable power may have in it 
 more than ten thousand bayonets or a 
 million tons of dynamite and may crush 
 mountains, shape the centuries, and create 
 a new world. 
 
 7. The Workshop of the Mind. We have 
 thus looked into the workshop of the 
 mind and noted the mental machinery by 
 which it turns out the products of thought. 
 The senses perceive the objective world, 
 reasoning combines percepts into judg- 
 ments, association enriches any object 
 in the consciousness by causing all affil- 
 iated ideas to flock around it, memory 
 
 45 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 conserves the experiences of life and 
 stores them away in the subconsciousness, 
 and imagination paints pictures in the 
 mind and creates new ideals which lift 
 life to higher levels. 
 
 It is the work of education to develop 
 and train all of these intellectual faculties 
 into full maturity and skill. This is done 
 through the courses of study in the 
 schools and by the exercise of the mind by 
 the student in mastering these subjects. 
 The mind grows by use just as do the 
 muscles of the body, and knowledge is the 
 mental food that feeds and develops it. 
 
 All the faculties of the mind have an 
 affinity and craving for truth, and they 
 have an enormous capacity and appetite 
 for it which can never be satisfied. The 
 human mind is omnivorous and will 
 ravage all fields of truth and eat up the 
 earth and sun and stars. The student 
 must whet up his mental appetite and 
 devour great quantities of facts and ideas 
 and thus feed his mind on the most 
 liberal diet. 
 
 But even more important than acquir- 
 ing large stocks of knowledge is the de- 
 veloping of his power to digest and assim- 
 
 46 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 ilate facts and ideas into his own experience 
 so that his knowledge will not be the 
 second-hand contents of other men's minds 
 and of his memory, but the first-hand 
 products of his own mental activities. 
 Memory may be only a pipe tapping and 
 draining off other men's reservoirs of 
 knowledge, but reasoning is a fountain 
 within the mind ever springing up in 
 new ideas of its own. 
 
 To this discipline of the mind the 
 student must give his patient study 
 through months and years. If the work 
 is a drudgery to him, he must endeavor 
 to kindle his interest in it so that it will 
 become his delight. If he will hold his 
 mind on a subject, it will begin, under 
 the play of mental association, to gleam 
 with light and to develop new points of 
 interest until it will become the glowing 
 focus and hot spot in his consciousness 
 and may become his enthusiasm and pas- 
 sion. Mental power is a long and slow 
 growth, and he who would acquire it 
 must pay its price in toil. There is no 
 royal road or short-cut to education, and 
 only by becoming a slave to its demands 
 can one become its master. 
 
 47 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 8. Knowledge and Intelligence. We may 
 note, in leaving this part of our subject, 
 the important distinction between knowl- 
 edge and intelligence. We are apt to 
 confuse the two and to think that one 
 who has his mind and memory stored with 
 large funds of knowledge is necessarily an 
 educated person; but such a person may 
 have very little education or mental power, 
 just as a furnace may be crammed with 
 fuel and yet contain little fire and heat: 
 in fact, the fuel may only smother the fire; 
 or the mind may be stuffed with knowl- 
 edge as the stomach may be overloaded 
 with food while it has little digestive 
 power. 
 
 Knowledge is information: intelligence 
 is developed and disciplined mind. Knowl- 
 edge is a possession : intelligence is a power. 
 Knowledge does not necessarily produce 
 or imply intelligence: intelligence produces 
 knowledge. Knowledge is static and pas- 
 sive: intelligence is dynamic and active. 
 Knowledge receives: intelligence creates. 
 Knowledge handles the old and familiar 
 and is disconcerted with the new: intel- 
 ligence is stimulated by the new and 
 meets and masters novel situations and 
 
 48 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT 
 
 problems. Knowledge drills, and intelli- 
 gence thrills. Knowledge is useful and 
 necessary, great widths and immense 
 stores of it in the mind by so much en- 
 large and enrich life, but intelligence is 
 the principal thing, for only intelligence 
 is power, and with all our getting in edu- 
 cation we should develop intelligence. 
 
 49 
 
IV 
 
 THE SENSIBILITIES 
 
 The sensibility is the power of the soul 
 to experience feeling, or a state of excite- 
 ment. The feelings are an infinite com- 
 plex, shading into one another like the 
 evanescent hues of a sunset, and they do 
 not admit of such exact analysis and 
 classification as the faculties of the in- 
 tellect. They fall, however, into several 
 broad classes. 
 
 1. Kinds of Feelings. Sensations are 
 feelings caused by direct physical action 
 on the nerves. They include, first, the 
 excitations of the senses. The degree of 
 feeling in the senses varies, being very 
 slight in normal sight and most pro- 
 nounced in touch. Besides the senses, 
 there are numberless organic feelings 
 throughout the body. Every sensory 
 nerve in the body is sensitive to irrita- 
 tion and is ready to respond with its 
 peculiar feeling. 
 
 A second general class of feelings are 
 50 
 
THE SENSIBILITIES 
 
 the emotions, which are feeKngs caused by 
 the presentation to the mind of an object 
 or idea. The sight of an enemy may 
 throw the soul into a violent state of fear, 
 and of a friend may kindle it into a glow 
 of love or joy. Every object or idea tends 
 to produce its own peculiar feeling, and 
 there may thus be as many shades of 
 emotion as there are objects; but they 
 fall into a few general classes, such as 
 fear and hope, hatred and love, joy and 
 sorrow, antipathy and sympathy, the 
 sublime and the ridiculous, aspiration and 
 reverence, and these may range in degree 
 from a mere tendency or slight stir of 
 feeling to the greatest intensity. 
 
 Feelings have a pain or pleasure tone, 
 which is often their most distinctive and 
 compelling characteristic. Every feeling, 
 whether of sensation or emotion, has this 
 quality. The physical sensations are at- 
 tended with the pains and pleasures of 
 the senses and appetites or organic feel- 
 ings, and a mere idea may flood the soul 
 with pleasure or send flames of agony 
 leaping through it. All of our feelings may 
 be arranged and marshaled under these 
 two master captains of the soul. 
 
 51 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 Every person also has a prevailing 
 emotional tone or disposition which is a 
 native inheritance and is persistent through 
 life, though subject to some control and 
 slow modification by the will. A tem- 
 perament is the emotional pitch to which 
 one is keyed and is the tonic note of all 
 his music. It is the sounding-board 
 which gives quality to all his moods, as 
 sanguine or phlegmatic, choleric or mel- 
 ancholy. It is an emotional lens that 
 gives character and color to all his expe- 
 riences. All our mental states sift through 
 our peculiar temperament, as light through 
 a stained-glass window, and are tinged 
 with its hues. 
 
 2. Uses of the Feelings. The broad use 
 of the feelings is to promote the volume 
 and value of life and give it interest and 
 motive. Pleasure attends and stimulates 
 such activities of body and mind as in 
 the long run are conducive to life, and 
 pain accompanies such activities as in 
 like manner injure or hinder it. 
 
 It is the feelings that give us a sense 
 of the value of objects. Pure intellect 
 perceives facts and relations, but not 
 worths. One object is as truly a part 
 
 52 
 
THE SENSIBILITIES 
 
 of reality as another, and the intellect 
 thinks only in terms of factual existence 
 and not of value. But the interest of 
 life resides in our feelings. It is not until 
 our ideas strike these mystic strings and 
 wake them into music or discord that 
 they excite our interest. The feelings are 
 like the box of the violin or the sounding- 
 board of the piano: the strings would give 
 forth only thin and insignificant tones 
 if they were not reenforced by these 
 resonators which sympathetically catch up 
 their vibrations and give them volume 
 and depth, richness and sweetness. And 
 so out of our feelings arise the joys and 
 sorrows, the triumphs and tragedies of 
 life. 
 
 The feelings are also the immediate 
 motives that move the will. There is no 
 tendency for the will to act until the 
 feelings pour their flood upon it as a 
 stream upon a wheel, or as steam into 
 the cylinder upon the piston that drives 
 the engine. Objects and ideas generate 
 feelings of sensation and emotion, and 
 these accumulate volume and pressure 
 until they overcome the inertia or inde- 
 cision or opposition of the will and push 
 
 53 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 it into action or explode it as a spark 
 explodes powder. Pain and pleasure espe- 
 cially are imperious forces tbat move the 
 will and guide and govern life. 
 
 3. The Education of the Feelings. The 
 feelings are subject to development and 
 control, refinement and enrichment as are 
 our other mental faculties. The emotions 
 are generated and governed by our ideas, 
 and our ideas are largely subject to our 
 control, and thus we can select and in- 
 tensify and control our emotions. By 
 suppressing and starving unworthy feel- 
 ings and stimulating and feeding good 
 ones we can slowly acquire a wholesome 
 and happy, unselfish and noble emotional 
 disposition. 
 
 Reading literature charged with pure 
 and deep emotion is a good education 
 for the feelings. It develops them in 
 strength and sensitiveness and trains them 
 in that delicacy and refinement which we 
 call taste and which is the mark of cul- 
 ture and fine character. We can also 
 develop proper feelings by practice and 
 drill them into the heart as habits. 
 
 Less attention has been given in educa- 
 tion to the feelings than to the intellect, 
 
 54 
 
THE SENSIBILITIES 
 
 and yet they are a deeply vital part of 
 character and life. The lack of fine feel- 
 ings is likely to indicate selfishness and 
 boorishness, and no one can be counted 
 educated who does not have this part 
 of his nature richly developed and properly 
 trained. 
 
 55 
 
V 
 THE TRAINING OF THE WILL 
 
 The will is the power of the soul to 
 control itself in its thoughts and feelings, 
 decisions and actions. The whole con- 
 sciousness is a stream of activity, sinking 
 into the subconscious deeps in sleep and 
 then rising into a tumultuous torrent and 
 overflowing the banks of the soul. 
 
 This stream, however, is not an un- 
 governable flood, sweeping everything be- 
 fore it, on which the will floats as a 
 helpless log or drifts as a boat without 
 engine or rudder. The will has a large 
 control over the stream and flood; it 
 has a rudder in its hand and an engine 
 in its boat by which it can steer and 
 drive it in any direction to its own self- 
 chosen destination. 
 
 1. The Attention, The will first exer- 
 cises its power in attention. As the 
 word means, this is a "stretching" or 
 striving of the mind toward an object. 
 The mind can pick out any particular 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL 
 
 object or idea from among the swarms of 
 ideas in the consciousness and concentrate 
 its attention upon it, while other ideas are 
 crowded into the background. 
 
 Once the attention is fixed on an ob- 
 ject a wonderful process sets in. The 
 associations of the mind begin to grav- 
 itate to the central object in an increasing 
 mass. At the same time these associated 
 ideas kindle their appropriate emotions, 
 and thus add their fuel and fire to the 
 central mass and turn it into a blazing 
 heap that becomes the burning focus of 
 consciousness. The attention is thus like 
 a searchlight which can be swung around 
 over a city or landscape at night and 
 wherever it stops there the spot on which 
 it rests becomes visible and brightly 
 luminous, while other parts of the land- 
 scape fall back into the night. Wherever 
 the attention is stopped and held in the 
 field of consciousness, that becomes the 
 glowing center of the mind. 
 
 Now, this act of attention is the primary 
 power of the mind and goes far toward 
 measuring one's whole mental ability. 
 Really, the only thing we can do with 
 our mind is to hold it on an object until 
 
 57 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 our associations gather around it and pour 
 their fuel upon it and set it on fire. The 
 student should give his utmost endeavor 
 to developing his attention so that it will 
 tenaciously hold his mind on a subject 
 and not let it constantly wander off, 
 perhaps with the fool's eyes, to the ends 
 of the earth. "This one thing I do" 
 should be our determination. 
 
 We cannot force ourselves to do a 
 thing by a sheer act of will: we can only 
 hold our attention on it until it grows and 
 generates enough interest and feeling by 
 its own associations to set the will in 
 action. The self-control by which the 
 w^ill can concentrate the mind on a sub- 
 ject and stick to it is the root of educa- 
 tion and of personality; and education 
 should aim to develop and discipline this 
 primary power of attention. 
 
 2. Motives. This brings us to the fact, 
 familiar in our experience, that the will 
 is not an arbitrary action of the mind, 
 but a rational process, taking place under 
 the play of motives. A motive is any 
 influence tending to move the mind, and 
 motives are of several kinds. 
 
 The first motives are instincts. An 
 58 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL 
 
 instinct is that which instigates or "stings" 
 us into action, as the word means. It is 
 an inherited constitutional tendency to 
 act in a certain way when the appro- 
 priate condition or stimulus is present. 
 It is a reflex response, a latent impulse 
 or coiled-up spring ready to act as soon 
 as it is released. 
 
 The important fact about instincts is 
 that they express and satisfy the funda- 
 mental needs of life by their automatic 
 action. They urge us into action along 
 the line of these necessities before we are 
 able to reason them out and consciously 
 supply their demands. It is imperative 
 that we should eat and sleep and work 
 and play, and nature does not wait for 
 us to find out these needs and discover 
 and supply the means of satisfying them, 
 but it has put springs within us which 
 are released at the touch of the proper 
 natural stimuli and push us into action 
 before we reflect on the process. Yet in 
 time these instincts emerge into the field 
 of consciousness and reason, and then 
 they are subject to and often need 
 enlightenment and education and control. 
 
 Next, ideas of action are incipient mo- 
 59 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 tives. The moment we think of an action 
 we experience an inclination to do that 
 thing, as when we look down from a 
 height the idea of jumping down suggests 
 itself and we then feel an impulse to give 
 way to the idea. Ideas become proper 
 motives only when they are duly con- 
 sidered and accepted. 
 
 Our conscious desires and ends are our 
 proper motives. A desire is a complex 
 mental state consisting of an idea and a 
 feeling, an idea of an end or object to 
 be attained and a feeling of craving for 
 it, or, it may be, antipathy to it. Desires 
 cover the whole field of life, embracing 
 the infinite manifold of our cravings. 
 The two master desires are for the pos- 
 session and enjoyment of good and for 
 escape from evil, these corresponding with 
 the two primary feelings and forces of 
 pleasure and pain. 
 
 These motives are subject to growth. 
 They may appear in the mind as mere 
 sparks of light or germs of perception and 
 desire, but as the mind dwells on them 
 associations begin to deepen and enrich 
 and intensify them and thus they grow 
 into a luminous center that fills the whole 
 
 60 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL 
 
 soul with light and heat and drives the 
 will into action. Our motives are thus 
 subject to education and control. 
 
 3. TJie Freedom of the Will. This leads 
 us to the important point of the freedom 
 of the will or of the soul. Motives are 
 not forces thrust upon us from without, 
 but they grow up within and are our 
 own children. They are not only born 
 of our own nature, but they are subject 
 to our deliberation and selection. They 
 compete for our approval, but they do 
 not compel it. We consider and weigh 
 and evaluate them and choose them ac- 
 cording to our own standards. 
 
 We not only choose, but we make our 
 own motives and determine their weight, 
 for it is in our own power to strengthen 
 or weaken them by increasing or de- 
 creasing their associations so that they 
 grow into overmastering heat and power 
 or wither in.to paleness and impotency. 
 We can feed a motive into fatness and 
 lusty strength, or we can starve and 
 strangle it to death; and in this power 
 lies the very core and certainty of our 
 freedom and responsibility. 
 
 The will is thus the captain of the soul 
 61 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 and the crown of its sovereignty, pregnant 
 with victory and glory or defeat and 
 shame. It builds man's world, tossing 
 mountains out of his path and creating 
 a vast splendid civilization, carves char- 
 acter and determines destiny; and every 
 man, however humble and bound in by 
 circumstance, is, not a wind-blown bub- 
 ble on the sea or atom in the storm of 
 the world, 
 
 "But this main miracle, that thou art thou, 
 With power on thine own act and on the world.'* 
 
 It is, therefore, one of the chief aims 
 and ends of education to develop and 
 train the will into self-control in the power 
 of attention, in the proper evaluation and 
 selection of its motives, and in the in- 
 tensification of them so that they will 
 act with decisive force. Such a will is the 
 real measure of a man. A strong will 
 is not to be confused with a wayward, 
 willful, selfish, and passionate will, for 
 these traits are the marks of a weak will. 
 A man in convulsions is not a strong 
 man though it may take ten men to hold 
 him: he is the strong man who can hold 
 himself. "He that is slow to anger is 
 
 62 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE WILL 
 
 better than the mighty; and he that 
 ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a 
 city." 
 
 The three fundamental faculties of the 
 soul, as we have now seen, are intellect, 
 sensibility, and will. This is their logical 
 order of action, though they are inter- 
 blended and simultaneous in their activ- 
 ities, one of them usually being dominant 
 at a time in consciousness. 
 
 The human soul is thus a three-cycle 
 engine. In normal behavior intellect acts 
 first and produces thought; thought kin- 
 dles feeling; and feeling moves the will. 
 The action of the will results and rests 
 in a state of satisfaction, which is the 
 end of the particular movement. But this 
 state or end at once suggests or stirs 
 another movement of the intellect, and 
 then the process begins all over again; 
 and thus the mind keeps turning through 
 its cycle and runs its endless round. 
 
 The observance of this order is of the 
 first importance in education and in life. 
 The rational way of controlling ourselves 
 and achieving our ends, developing our 
 personality into full-grown maturity, and 
 building our character and determining 
 
 63 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 our destiny is to choose and develop the 
 proper ideas and ideals, which are then 
 to be enriched and intensified until they 
 generate the appropriate feelings and mo- 
 tives, which will then determine and drive 
 the will into action. Our responsibility 
 roots back in our ideas and begins with 
 our primary attention by which we make 
 our decisive choices. 
 
 64 
 
VI 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 If education were to stop with the body 
 and the mind, it would have reached a 
 considerable height, but not a summit 
 with a clear sky over it and stars shining 
 high above it. It would still be a build- 
 ing that had a good foundation but had 
 not risen above the second or third story. 
 It would only be a hut squat on the 
 ground that could not house a lofty human 
 spirit. 
 
 Without the higher life to control and 
 inspire the lower life, education is only a 
 danger, and may be a curse. It is then 
 only a sharp and powerful tool which a 
 bad man can use as skillfully and effi- 
 ciently^ as a good man. There are uni- 
 versity-trained bank embezzlers and bur- 
 glars as well as college-trained bank cashiers 
 and presidents. Such an educated man 
 may be an educated monster, a very 
 devil of cunning and selfish and malignant 
 power. 
 
 65. 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 Education divorced from conscience and 
 character lay at the root of the material- 
 ism and militarism of Germany and 
 helped to lead her into the unspeakable 
 crime and ruin of the Great War. A 
 godless education is the curse of any 
 nation that nurses this viper in its bosom. 
 
 The faculties of conscience and faith, 
 of right character and conduct, of right- 
 eousness and reverence, are as much 
 involved and as rightfully have a share 
 in the process of education as the organs 
 of the body and the faculties of the mind. 
 The heart is biologically older than the 
 brain and has deeper and more vital 
 needs and aspirations. The deep instincts 
 and mystic feelings of the heart are vastly 
 more important in governing our char- 
 acter and conduct than is our thinking; 
 for life is immensely more than logic and 
 it is surprising how little part our reason- 
 ing really plays in our practical decisions 
 and conduct. 
 
 Plants and trees blossom at the top, 
 and so does the human spirit. In its 
 moral and spiritual nature it flowers out 
 into its finest and richest life. This 
 nature, then, ought not to be neglected 
 
 66 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 while the lower nature is being developed, 
 but the spirit also is to be cultivated and 
 enriched. 
 
 Developed conscience i's sensitiveness to 
 right and wrong, with a resolute determina- 
 tion and habit of spurning the wrong and 
 following the right. It is an intensely 
 social sense, having due and strict regard 
 to the rights and interests and welfare of 
 others. It crystallizes its decisions and 
 principles into habits and dispositions 
 which become the permanent states of 
 the soul out of which all its actions 
 spring. It subordinates appetite and pas- 
 sion and self-interest to its decision and 
 control. Conscience thus comes to its 
 splendid coronation and is clothed and 
 crowned with royal rights and power. 
 
 Religion is our conscious relation to 
 God. All men sustain constant and intimate 
 unconscious relations to God, as in him they 
 necessarily live and move and have their 
 being. They can no more escape this 
 relation than they could slip out of the 
 grip of gravitation ^or fly above the 
 limit of the atmosphere. "All things are 
 naked and laid open before the eyes of 
 Him with whom we have to do," or "with 
 
 67 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 whom we do business." All men are 
 constantly doing business with God. Only 
 when this relation emerges in the field 
 of our conscious life and becomes obedi- 
 ence and fellowship does it become religion. 
 
 All things run up to God for their 
 final explanation and completion. "We 
 cannot study a snowflake profoundly," 
 says Professor Tyndall, "without being 
 led back step by step to the sun." Strange 
 that the great thinker did not see that 
 another step would lead us up to God; 
 for "the loaf" takes us back logically, as 
 well as poetically in Dr. Maltbie D. Bab- 
 cock's verse, through the snowy flour and 
 the mill and the wheat and the shower 
 and the sun up to "the Father's will." 
 
 The human spirit calls for the Father 
 of Spirits as the earth calls for the sky, 
 the flower for the sun, and the child for 
 the father. Human life is fragmentary 
 and meaningless and hopeless until it is 
 filled with the fullness of God. "O God," 
 cried Augustine, "thou hast i^ade us for 
 thyself, and we cannot rest until we rest 
 in thee." 
 
 Religion, then, is not an unnecessary 
 and redundant addition to our life, a 
 
 68 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 traditional dogma that has now become an 
 outworn superstition and wearisome bur- 
 den, but it is just our life itself developed 
 to its full completion and finest fruitage 
 and blessedness. So far from being in- 
 congruous with or unrelated to our edu- 
 cation, it is education carried to its 
 highest power. 
 
 Education is a poor and pitiful thing 
 when it merely develops the body and 
 the mind and leaves the spirit starved and 
 stunted. Only these spiritual ideals and 
 divine influences can raise our life out of 
 the dust and lift it star ward. They will 
 complete and crown all other results of 
 education and round it out toward the 
 perfect man. 
 
 To get education we must go to the 
 masters who have it and can impart it. 
 Personality is ever produced by person- 
 ality. It cannot grow in isolation, but 
 must unfold in a social atmosphere in 
 which like begets like. Education is pre- 
 eminently a matter qf personal contact 
 and contagion, and the higher it rises 
 the more is it subject to this law. 
 
 Religious education must be obtained 
 from religious teachers. Christian parents 
 
 69 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 and the ministers and teachers of rehgion 
 can impart it in some degree, the prophets 
 and apostles of the Bible, being men of 
 religious genius touched with divine light 
 and fire, can impart it in a greater degree, 
 but the master Teacher stands in a class 
 by himself, "a Teacher come from God," 
 and "He that cometh from above is 
 above all." 
 
 Jesus speaks as the Son of God with 
 power on earth to forgive sin and cleanse 
 us from all unrighteousness and draw us 
 into full fellowship with the Father. All 
 who come to him in faith and obedience 
 shall be renewed in their hearts and slowly 
 fashioned into his likeness until they "attain 
 unto a full-grown man, unto the measure 
 of the stature of the fullness of Christ." 
 
 Spiritual education also uses means, 
 books and schools and exercises. The 
 Bible is a great textbook, a mass of re- 
 ligious literature that stands incomparable 
 and supreme among all the sacred books 
 of the world, full of light caught by 
 prophets and apostles who stood on 
 mountain peaks of inspiration close to 
 God. It is saturated with the religious 
 experience of a race that was gifted with 
 
 70 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 spiritual genius which was illuminated 
 and kindled into splendor by the Spirit 
 of God. Altogether it is the greatest 
 educational book in the world. Its words 
 are spirit and life, and to read and absorb 
 and assimilate it is to grow in grace toward 
 the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
 
 The Christian home, with its religious 
 training and example and atmosphere, 
 must ever be a primary center and means 
 of Christian education, and the church is 
 the school of religion where we come into 
 the companionship of common study and 
 prayer, and thus gain its mutual help and 
 inspiration. And the Christian graces, 
 like the mental faculties, must be de- 
 veloped and disciplined by constant prac- 
 tice and service until they are wrought 
 into habit and disposition in which they 
 act spontaneously and are crystallized into 
 Christian character. 
 
 The Christian school as truly has its 
 proper place in our educational system as 
 have the Christian hdme and the church. 
 The teacher stands next to the parent 
 in vital closeness and touch to the child 
 and student and insensibly imparts moral 
 and spiritual influences to the soul. A 
 
 71 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 Christian teacher, by the unconscious in- 
 fluence of his example, without ever say- 
 ing a formal word on the subject, can yet 
 lead scholars into the Christian life. 
 
 We cannot introduce religious instruc- 
 tion into the public school supported by 
 public taxation, but we have a right to 
 demand and see that the teachers are of 
 Christian character and influence and that 
 the atmosphere of the school is friendly 
 to religious faith and life. A teacher of 
 irreligious and skeptical worldly spirit in 
 the schoolroom is a contagious danger to 
 the scholars. An agnostic, sneering pro- 
 fessor in a university can infect the whole 
 atmosphere of his room with the germs 
 of materialism and irreligion. Most of 
 the teachers in our public schools and 
 professors in our universities are men and 
 women of Christian faith and character 
 and influence, and these are the saving 
 salt of these institutions. 
 
 But because religious principles cannot 
 be expressly taught in public schools it is 
 necessary that we should have distinctively 
 Christian colleges. These are usually 
 denominational schools, either in origin 
 and control or else in spirit, and they have 
 
 72 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 played and still play a large and vital 
 part in our educational life. While they 
 are necessarily connected more or less 
 formally with particular denominations, 
 yet they are as a class quite unsectarian 
 in spirit and are equally open to youth of 
 all religious communions. They are also 
 smaller colleges than the great institu- 
 tions, and in this they offer the advantage 
 of closer work and sympathy between the 
 professors and students. These institu- 
 tions should be loyally sustained by their 
 denominational supporters and by the 
 public at large, for they are fountains of 
 the most vital education; and our young 
 people in choosing their schools should 
 consider their claims and advantages. 
 
 A full-grown personality! This is the 
 aim and the ideal of education, even as 
 outlined and so admirably described by 
 Huxley; not a stunted and dwarfed, ill- 
 proportioned, one-sided and misshapen hu- 
 man being, but one that stands full and 
 finished at every point; not an over- 
 developed, lusty body with an ignorant 
 mind, or a powerful and polished intellect 
 with a feeble conscience and low ideals 
 and selfish passions, without God and 
 
 73 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 without hope in the world; but with all 
 powers — physical, intellectual, and spir- 
 itual — developed into symmetrical and per- 
 fect personality. 
 
 Yet personality contains other elements 
 than bodily vigor, developed intellect, 
 regulated feelings, disciplined will, and 
 religious character and life. It is these 
 plus an atmospheric envelope, an elusive 
 spirit that cannot be caught and defined. 
 A strong or rich or fine personality has 
 something about it that escapes our 
 grasp and may be inexplicable to us and 
 even to the person himself. 
 
 Some of these atmospheric elements are 
 a sincere sense of truth, a texture of 
 reality in the soul free from affectation, 
 insincerity, deception, or falsity; deep 
 convictions that are immovable roots out 
 of which the whole character and life 
 spring; unity of the soul in which all 
 elements, and especially all discordant 
 factors, are fused into one molten foun- 
 tain and stream; unconsciousness of self, 
 for self-consciousness distracts the unity 
 and spoils the beauty of the soul, and 
 unconsciousness of self is the final touch 
 of perfection; a lively sense of interest in 
 
 74 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 human life in all its forms; effervescent 
 feelings, broad and fluent sympathies, un- 
 affected unselfishness, a sense of humor, 
 kindness and courtesy, grace and charm of 
 manner — these and other elements in 
 varying degrees and combinations blend 
 and melt into that subtle atmosphere that 
 surrounds a strong and fine personality, 
 and contain its secret. While these elusive 
 ingredients that constitute the overplus 
 and delicate aroma of personality are not 
 under the direct control of the will, yet 
 they can be reached indirectly and thus 
 can be cultivated. 
 
 This ideal should be the aim of educa- 
 tion as it is of religion, and should be 
 pursued through all its grades, from the 
 primary school up through the university. 
 The ideal school will do something for 
 the body, for the intellect, and for the 
 heart, giving each its due proportion and 
 emphasis; and the student and every one 
 should be on his guard against a one- 
 sided or stunted growth, and should strive 
 to keep all his faculties growing together 
 that he may obtain a symmetrical educa- 
 tion and attain unto a full-grown per- 
 sonality and a full-orbed life. 
 
 75 
 
VII 
 EDUCATION AS HABIT 
 
 We are highly plastic beings, and one 
 object of education is to mold us into a 
 system of good habits. 
 
 1. What Is a Habit ? A habit is an 
 acquired fixed way of acting. Anything, 
 having acted in a certain way once, tends 
 to act in that same way again. A piece 
 of paper folded on a line forms a crease 
 along which it folds more easily a second 
 time; and all material substances are 
 subject to this law. A new machine runs 
 more smoothly after it has been in use 
 for a time, and a suit of clothes grows to 
 fit the figure and thus becomes more 
 comfortable. 
 
 Organic beings are more pliant than 
 inorganic substances and quickly wear 
 grooves of action. The human body is 
 highly impressionable and easily molded 
 into habits. Muscles and nerves, having 
 acted in one way once, tend to repeat 
 the action, which in time grows auto- 
 
 76 
 
EDUCATION AS HABIT 
 
 matic. It is thus we learn to walk, speak, 
 attend to our work, and carry on all the 
 routine affairs of life. 
 
 Ideas, having been associated once, tend 
 to cling together, and memory is a matter 
 of habit. Judgments tend to repeat them- 
 selves and grow into fixed opinions or 
 beliefs or prejudices. When we feel in 
 a certain way once the same feeling on a 
 similar excitation stirs the soul, and thus 
 emotional habits are formed. The will 
 wears itself into grooves of action along 
 which it slips in unconscious smoothness 
 and ease. Moral and spiritual experiences 
 are repeated and thus character grows. 
 "A character," said John Stuart Mill, 
 "is a completely fashioned will." 
 
 Under this law of habit the whole body 
 and soul are plowed and grooved into a 
 system of habits by the automatic action 
 of which we live. By far the greater part 
 of all our activities, language, learning, 
 conduct and character, work and worship, 
 becomes cast ^nd cooled in the mold of 
 habit. Mental activities not only repeat 
 themselves in habits, but also, like seeds, 
 bring forth a multiplied harvest. This 
 law has been expressed in the familiar 
 
 77 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 saying, "Sow a thought and reap a deed; 
 sow a deed and reap a habit; sow a habit 
 and reap a character; sow a character and 
 reap a destiny." 
 
 2. The Use of Habits, The law of habit 
 is of tremendous importance in Kfe. It 
 trains us into regular, easy, and accurate 
 ways of doing things, releases us from 
 debate and hesitation, effort and worry, 
 sets us free to attend to novel situations, 
 and lubricates life into delightful smooth- 
 ness and liberty and joy. 
 
 Its results are seen in the skill and 
 often the marvelous perfection with which 
 we learn to do our work. The pianist 
 strikes the keys of the instrument with 
 a rapidity the eye cannot follow and yet 
 no finger ever misses a key. At first these 
 movements are made with awkward and 
 painful effort and are attended with notes 
 or noises that no one wants to hear; but 
 perfection is reached through the long- 
 continued practice by which the muscles 
 and nerves are trained into automatic 
 action. 
 
 At the same time habits take over 
 these acquired activities and release the 
 attention and all the faculties of the mind 
 
 78 
 
EDUCATION AS HABIT 
 
 and organs of the body to do other work. 
 We thus walk without paying any atten- 
 tion to our steps. If we had to think 
 about every step and calculate the prob- 
 lem of maintaining our balance, we could 
 not do anything else; but we hand the 
 whole matter of walking over to habit 
 and give our eyes and mind to other 
 things. This is an enormous economy of 
 our time and attention and enables us 
 to do many things at once, while we 
 give our conscious attention and effort to 
 novel situations and complex problems 
 constantly arising which habit cannot 
 solve. 
 
 Habit thus enables us to capitalize our 
 past actions and acquired skill in an in- 
 vested fund of autonomy that carries on 
 the general work of life. It is "the enor- 
 mous flywheel of society, its most precious 
 conservative agent." 
 
 Good habits are steel tracks on which 
 we can drive ourselves with speed and 
 safety, or they are grooves in which our 
 life slips with unconscious smoothness. 
 They are the means of our liberty, giving 
 to life its freest movement and fullest 
 joy. On the other hand, evil habits are 
 
 79 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 chains that bind us and at last become 
 bondage and bitterness from which strong 
 crying and tears cannot release us. 
 
 We do not do a thing well until we do 
 it without thinking how. No one is a 
 good mechanic who must think about 
 how to hold his tools; and no one has 
 good manners who is thinking about his 
 manners. Not until the hand has for- 
 gotten the painstaking processes by which 
 it was trained does it have perfect skill. 
 The musician must practice long that 
 he may play without practice. So a 
 mental principle or a Christian grace has 
 not been thoroughly wrought into us until 
 it acts unconsciously. Must an honest 
 man try to be honest? No, he* will be 
 honest without trying. 
 
 "Boy," said a slave buyer to a black 
 boy on the auction block in the slave 
 market of a Southern city in the old days, 
 "if I buy you, will you be honest?" 
 
 "Sir," said the boy, "I shall be honest 
 whether you buy me or not." 
 
 Beneath the black skin of that slave 
 boy beat an honest heart whose honesty 
 was ingrained and automatic and did not 
 depend for its action on any external 
 
 80 
 
EDUCATION AS HABIT 
 
 condition or even on any conscious 
 effort. 
 
 Conscience ought to act without being 
 asked, or our thinking about it. When a 
 man must keep working with his stomach 
 and lungs and Kver he has a poor set of 
 vital organs; the healthy man does not 
 know that he has any insides. So when we 
 must keep working with our virtues and 
 must prod them into action they have 
 not yet been educated into the perfection 
 in which they will act spontaneously. 
 
 It is true that we can reach such per- 
 fection only through long discipline. We 
 must try hard that we may do without 
 trying. Moses "wist not that his face 
 shone." He was filled with the glory of 
 God and then he forgot himself. He did 
 not know that his face shone, but others 
 knew it. When through the discipline of 
 education and divine grace we attain to 
 any degree of perfection of personality, we 
 do not need to tell others of it: they will 
 find it out. * 
 
 3. Rules for Forming Habits. Professor 
 William James has a chapter in his Princi- 
 ples of Psychology on "Habit" which is a 
 classic on the subject. He lays down four 
 
 81 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 rules for forming habits, which we here 
 condense and state in nontechnical, popu- 
 lar language: 
 
 (1) The first rule is: Begin with all 
 your might. When we start on any line 
 of conduct with half-hearted decision and 
 effort, timidity and hesitation, we are not 
 likely to go far: hindrances will easily 
 discourage us and turn us back. But 
 when we feel the importance of the new 
 course of action and concentrate our 
 energies upon it we are likely to start off 
 with such decision and momentum as will 
 carry us through. 
 
 There are two ways of going in swim- 
 ming. One way is to creep down into the 
 cold water an inch at a time and every 
 inch a shiver. The other way is just to 
 leap in in one plunge. This concentrates 
 all the slow successive shivers into one 
 intense and glorious shock. It is then all 
 over, and how splendid it is as one comes 
 up all aglow with vitality and vigor. Some 
 young people start to school or enter the 
 Christian life an inch at a time, but the 
 way to begin is to take one decisive 
 plunge. Settle the matter once for all, 
 burn your bridges behind you, and take 
 
 82 
 
EDUCATION AS HABIT 
 
 a step from which you will not turn 
 back. 
 
 In further elucidation of this rule Pro- 
 fessor James says: "Accumulate all the 
 possible circumstances which shall reen- 
 force the right motives; put yourself 
 assiduously in conditions that encourage 
 the new way; make engagements incom- 
 patible with the old; take a public pledge, 
 if the case allows; in short, envelope your 
 resolution with every aid you know." 
 These subsidiary rules admit of easy 
 translation into the terms of any par- 
 ticular habit or line of conduct. For 
 example, in entering the Christian life 
 they mean that we should intensify the 
 motives for this life, go to church, and 
 make a public confession of faith. 
 
 (2) The second rule is: Never suffer an 
 exception in the practice of the new habit 
 until it is thoroughly established. Each 
 lapse is like letting drop a ball of string 
 which one is carefully winding up; a single 
 slip undoes more than 'many turns will 
 wind again. 
 
 A rule given to public speakers is : "Dash 
 cold water on your throat every morning 
 when you wash, for three hundred and 
 
 83 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 sixty-five, not three hundred and sixty- 
 four, mornings in the year." There are 
 many habits to which this rule applies 
 without exception. Truth, honesty, pur- 
 ity, patience, kindness, love — we are to 
 practice these virtues always and every- 
 where, "for three hundred and sixty-five, 
 not three hundred and sixty-four, morn- 
 ings in the year." One single exception in 
 these things drops our ball and unwinds 
 more than we can wind back in many 
 turns. 
 
 Rubinstein said that if he omitted his 
 piano practice one day, he noticed it; if 
 for two days, the critics noticed it; if for 
 three days, the public noticed it. We can 
 keep ourselves in fine tune and up to 
 concert pitch in all our habits only by 
 not omitting their practice in a single 
 instance. 
 
 (3) The third rule is: Seize the first 
 opportunity to act on every resolution you 
 make. This warns us against feeling 
 emotions and making resolutions without 
 turning them into conduct. Such wasted 
 emotions weaken us and wither our sensi- 
 bilities and make it more difficult for us 
 to feel and act the next time. Some 
 
 84 
 
EDUCATION AS HABIT 
 
 people like to indulge in emotion as a 
 sentimental luxury. They even like to 
 cry — when it does not cost them anything 
 in the way of sympathy and service. 
 
 "The habit of excessive novel-reading 
 and theater-going," says our psychologist, 
 "will produce true monsters in this line. 
 The weeping of a Russian lady over the 
 fictitious personages in the play, while her 
 coachman is freezing to death on his seat 
 outside, is the sort of thing that every- 
 where happens on a less glaring scale." 
 "There is no more contemptible type of 
 human character," he further says, "than 
 that of a nerveless sentimentalist or 
 dreamer, who spends his life in a welter- 
 ing sea of sensibility, but never does a 
 concrete manly deed." 
 
 Act! act! is the urgent admonition of 
 this rule. 
 
 (4) The fourth rule is: Keep the faculty 
 of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous 
 exercise every day. That is, be systemat- 
 ically ascetic and heroic in little un- 
 necessary points, practice your habit on 
 the margin of effort where it begins to 
 pinch as drudgery. 
 
 Professor James ingeniously likens such 
 85 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 asceticism to "the insurance which a 
 man pays on his house and goods. The 
 tax does him no good at the time, and 
 possibly may never bring him a return. 
 But if the fire does come, his having paid 
 it will be his salvation from ruin. So 
 with the man who has daily inured him- 
 self to habits of concentrated attention, 
 energetic volition, and self-denial in un- 
 necessary things. He will stand like a 
 tower when everything rocks around him, 
 and when his softer fellow-mortals are 
 winnowed like chaff in the blast." 
 
 This rule warns us against indulgence in 
 relaxing our habit after we have acquired 
 it. We must keep our habit in condition 
 as the athlete keeps himself in fine fettle 
 by gratuitous exercise every day. 
 
 These are the rules of a master psy- 
 chologist, who says their "ethical implica- 
 tions are numerous and momentous." 
 They apply to our whole system of habits 
 — physical, mental and spiritual — and they 
 will develop in us such habits as will 
 make our life regular and certain, smooth 
 and delightful, masterful and fruitful. 
 
 86 
 
VIII 
 EDUCATION AND EXPRESSION 
 
 Education develops the power of ex- 
 pression. A mind shut up within itself, 
 however splendidly it may be endowed 
 or richly stored with knowledge, is yet 
 a dead sea into which many streams run 
 but out of which nothing comes. While 
 no mind can be wholly self-contained, 
 and every mind must find some expres- 
 sion, yet even educated minds differ 
 enormously at this point. A mind of 
 comparatively meager resources may out- 
 strip one of larger and richer mental life, 
 because it has freer channels through 
 which it can pour itself in forceful streams 
 to drive the machinery of the world or to 
 fertilize the fields of life. 
 
 Language is one of the most important 
 means of mental expression, and is a vital 
 part of education. A word is a symbol 
 that expresses and transmits thought, the 
 sign of an idea, the bridge that connects 
 one mind with another, a telegraphic or 
 
 87 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 telephonic wire that discharges the contents 
 of one mind into another. It is a winged 
 idea which flies from one mind to another 
 and there unloads its burden of meaning; 
 it is a crystallized thought, which, being 
 transported from one mind to another, 
 dissolves back into its original thought so 
 that the two minds are saturated with 
 the same meaning, or they think as one. 
 
 Words are plastic and iridescent to ex- 
 press all the shapes and shades of thought. 
 They are clean-cut, like sharply minted 
 coins, with clearness and precision, or they 
 are multilated and muffled with vagueness 
 and obscurity. They gleam and sparkle 
 with cheerfulness and wit, or they are 
 heavy and depressing with dullness and 
 stupidity. They are icy cold with haughti- 
 ness, or warm with sympathy. They shoot 
 to their mark as poison-tipped arrows, 
 hissing with hate, or they breathe tender 
 and ardent love. They speak poniards, 
 and every syllable is a stab, or they drop 
 dew and honey. They can forge ponder- 
 ous anchor chains of thought, or spin the 
 most delicate silken threads of sentiment. 
 
 They weave the web of our common 
 conversation, transact all our business, 
 
 88 
 
EDUCATION AND EXPRESSION 
 
 write our newspapers and books, and pro- 
 duce all the glories of our literature. They 
 furnish the novelist with the colors for 
 his pictures of life, the poet with the 
 airy draperies for his dreams, and the 
 orator with the majesty and music of his 
 eloquence. 
 
 Words have in them the promise and 
 potency of all life. They are big with 
 the issues of time and eternity. They 
 have kindled wars and slain empires, and 
 they have been the white-winged angels 
 of peace. A single word has saved a soul 
 or broken a heart. 
 
 There is no use in seeing things unless 
 we can say them; and we do not really 
 know more than we can say. Style is not 
 thought, but it is the door that sets it 
 free, or the dress that makes it attractive, 
 or the power that drives it home. Knowl- 
 edge is steel in the bar; forceful expression 
 is the same steel in the keen polished 
 blade. Knowledge is electricity stored up 
 in the battery; vivid expression is the 
 bright, swift flash. ^ Knowledge is the 
 bullet; style is the powder that sends it 
 to its mark. 
 
 Wonderful is the power of a striking 
 89 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 sentence; phrases have made history. To 
 be able to put a thought into forceful 
 statement, apt phrase, or brilliant epigram 
 is often to carry conviction and win the 
 day. 
 
 Some of the primary virtues of good 
 style are clearness, conciseness, simplicity, 
 directness, purity, force, and finish. Such 
 a style costs time and unwearied practice 
 and patience, but it is one of the most 
 powerful tools of life, one of the finest of 
 accomplishments, and is one of the high- 
 est products of education. 
 
 "The greatest thing the human soul 
 ever does," says Ruskin, "is to see a 
 thing and then tell in a plain way what it 
 saw." We may not think that he told 
 us anything in a plain style in his pages 
 of gold incrusted with gems, but then 
 he did tell us in a plain way what he 
 saw. And former President Eliot says 
 that if there be any one mark of educa- 
 tion, it is the ability to express one's 
 thoughts in clear and accurate language. 
 Choice diction is a fine art and a beau- 
 tiful accomplishment. Words fitly spoken 
 are like apples of gold in baskets of silver. 
 
 This is a faculty and a grace that every- 
 90 
 
EDUCATION AND EXPRESSION 
 
 one can in some degree acquire, and to 
 few subjects should students give more 
 effort and assiduity as they persistently 
 endeavor to discover its principles and 
 master its art. The practical value of 
 their education will in no small degree be 
 measured by their proficiency at this 
 point. 
 
 91 
 
IX 
 
 EDUCATION AND APPRECIATION 
 
 How big is your world? We might think 
 that we all see the same stars and that one 
 man's world is just as large as another's. 
 But not so: everyone's world is bounded 
 by his knowledge and insight and every- 
 one sees and lives in his own world. The 
 ox has eyes as good as ours, but its world 
 is confined to its pasture field and feed 
 trough and never gets outside of this little 
 horizon. Some human beings are yet in 
 the bovine stage of existence. 
 
 The scientific man lives in an immensely 
 larger world than even the average edu- 
 cated person, because he has penetrated 
 farther into the spaces and recesses and 
 mysteries of nature. "When Alfred Rus- 
 sel Wallace," we read, "was gathering in 
 South America his botanical and zoological 
 specimens, the natives of the Amazon 
 Valley thought him mad. He paid them 
 handsomely to catch creatures for which 
 they could discover no use at all. To 
 
 92 
 
EDUCATION AND APPRECIATION 
 
 him the great forests of BoKvia and 
 Brazil were aHve with sensation. They 
 fascinated and enthralled him. But the 
 black men could not understand it. They 
 saw no reason for his rapture. Yet his 
 wonder was not the outcome of ignorance; 
 it was the outcome of knowledge." 
 
 The artist sees a world of beauty to 
 which other eyes may be blind. When 
 Turner showed one of his sunsets to a 
 friend and the friend remarked that he 
 had never seen such a sunset, the painter 
 replied, "Don't you wish you could. ^" 
 Ruskin, illustrating Turner's range of 
 interest, says of him: "One hour he is 
 interested in a gust of wind blowing away 
 an old woman's cap; the next he is paint- 
 ing the Fifth Plague of Egypt. A soldier's 
 wife resting by the roadside is not be- 
 neath his sympathy; Rizpah watching the 
 dead bodies of her sons not above it. 
 Nothing can possibly be so mean that 
 it will not interest his whole mind and 
 carry away his wholQ heart." As every- 
 one sees his own world, the size of the 
 world that is seen depends on the size 
 of the mind that is seeing. 
 
 Education enlarges and enriches our 
 93 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 appreciation and enjoyment of the world. 
 It broadens the mind so as to bring it 
 into contact with the world at multiplied 
 points. The undeveloped man touches it 
 at only a few points, mostly those of his 
 physical appetites and needs. As the 
 mind unfolds it begins to throw out its 
 awakened faculties, like so many sensitive 
 antennae or tentacles, to lay hold of the 
 world, embrace the globe and reach out 
 among the stars until they impinge on the 
 outmost rim of the universe. 
 
 All the senses are to be trained and 
 refined to perceive the wealth of interest 
 and beauty in the world to which the 
 undeveloped mind is blind. Nature then 
 discloses wonders that were never dreamed 
 of before. Earth and sea and sky become 
 a grand picture language that are ever 
 eloquent in thought and replete with 
 beauty; blossom and bird, grain of sand 
 and stupendous starry constellation are 
 crammed with interest and mystery, fas- 
 cination and entertainment. 
 
 Science and literature and art are vast 
 worlds of the purest enjoyment. The 
 educated mind sees the world through the 
 eyes of the men of genius who have un- 
 
 94 
 
EDUCATION AND APPRECIATION 
 
 veiled and glorified it and beholds it 
 suffused with many-colored splendor. It 
 possesses all things through the owner- 
 ship of appreciation, and can say with 
 Emerson : 
 
 "I am owner of the sphere, 
 Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
 Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain; 
 Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 
 
 Education makes us rich in inner re- 
 sources. It fits up and furnishes the mind 
 as a home and library that contains the 
 means of its own contentment and satis- 
 faction. It makes us our own best com- 
 pany so that we can have a good time 
 with ourselves. "The world is too much 
 with us," so that we are too dependent 
 on its scenes and excitements. Some 
 people are always craving a crowd, itch- 
 ing for a new thrill. Left alone, they 
 are instantly discontented and miserable. 
 They have no inner resources and must 
 seek diversion and ei^tertainment outside 
 of themselves. 
 
 Education releases us from the tyranny 
 of the external world and enlarges our 
 inner world of freedom. It brings us into 
 
 95 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 full possession of ourselves and then we 
 have found our richest and most abiding 
 wealth and worth. The degree of one's 
 real education is measured by the width 
 and depth and delicacy of its appreciations. 
 A narrow and barren mind has few 
 interests and enjoyments, and a mind of 
 broad education lives in a large and 
 wealthy world. Our real treasures must 
 ever be within, and we should strive to 
 deepen and enrich our minds so that we 
 shall be largely independent of the world 
 and careless of its vicissitudes. Jesus told 
 his wondering disciples that he had meat 
 to eat that they knew not. Especially 
 does true education enable us to appre- 
 ciate relative values in the moral and 
 spiritual field so as to put first things 
 first and be rich in the things of the spirit. 
 Human life is growing increasingly com- 
 plex and rich. The savage lives close to 
 the ground on roots and in caves and has 
 few wants and aspirations and enjoyments 
 beyond elementary physical needs. Our 
 civilization has built around us an enor- 
 mously wider and loftier world of physical 
 and intellectual and social and spiritual 
 needs and world-wide interests. We now 
 
 96 
 
EDUCATION AND APPRECIATION 
 
 have countless possibilities of satisfac- 
 tion of which primitive people never 
 dreamed. Mere physical subsistence has 
 become the smallest part of our Ufe. 
 We live in the spirit more than in the 
 flesh and have affinities with the bound- 
 less worlds of science and literature and 
 art, of business and trade and travel, of 
 national and international affairs, of hu- 
 manity and of the outmost circle of the 
 heavens. "To me as Antoninus," said the 
 Emperor Marcus Aurelius, "my city is 
 Rome, but as man it is the universe." 
 
 Blind eyes and deaf ears may be in 
 the presence of the most splendid visions 
 of beauty and the grandest symphonies of 
 music and see and hear no more of these 
 wonders than an ox or an oyster. So 
 may we live in our grand world and be 
 blind and deaf if our mental and spiritual 
 faculties are not awakened and trained to 
 perceive and enjoy it. A broadly de- 
 veloped and richly stored mind lives in 
 a vastly bigger and better world than a 
 narrow, meager mind'^ because it has more 
 soul to see with. We should get educa- 
 tion above all other getting in order that 
 we may be born into our great modem 
 
 97 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 world, move in its cosmic currents, sit 
 in its grand amphitheater, and see and 
 appreciate all that is going on, and thus 
 enter into our splendid birthright and 
 opportunity. 
 
 98 
 
X 
 
 EDUCATION AND EFFICIENCY 
 
 What use is education? Perhaps a few 
 people still think it is of no practical 
 use or importance after it has passed the 
 common-school grade, and may believe 
 it is only a fashionable fad or luxury of 
 the rich. Others think it is only a way 
 of escaping work and being able to wear 
 white collars and cuffs; and still others 
 may consider it as the means of getting 
 and holding some genteel and easy job 
 of standing behind a counter or clerking 
 in a bank. 
 
 Such ideas, of course, are mere prejudice 
 and blindness. Education is developed 
 manhood, disciplined personality, and this 
 is the necessary condition of all worthy 
 life. Education does not train our youth 
 away from practical life and honest hard 
 work, but trains them for work. Any 
 sort of work, even digging a ditch in a 
 street or field, requires some degree of 
 knowledge and skill; and as work grows 
 
 99 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 more complicated and finer it calls for 
 larger knowledge and higher skill. 
 
 It will not be affirmed that no one can 
 achieve success in the various fields of 
 life without the education that is ob- 
 tained in the higher schools. Occasionally 
 there turns up a self-educated man, such 
 as Herbert Spencer who has never at- 
 tended a university or college, and yet 
 attains eminence as a scholar or in some 
 other line. But such men are exceptional 
 in ability or in diligence, and even they 
 might have reached fuller development 
 and greater power if they had gone through 
 the schools. Even Herbert Spencer would 
 have had a more symmetrical education 
 and a more catholic mind, and probably 
 would have been a sounder thinker, if 
 he had had a university training. 
 
 The chief advantage of a school is its 
 atmosphere and associations. It is con- 
 tagious in its mental and social life. 
 There is little education in a book, at 
 least for youth, because a book has no 
 personality; and it is personality that is 
 power in education, so that Mark Hopkins 
 on one end of a log and a student on the 
 other constitute a university. We send 
 
 100 
 
EDUCATION AND EFFICIENCY 
 
 our children and youth to school and 
 college that they may be immersed in its 
 intellectual and social life and come into 
 contact with inspiring personalities, and 
 then they may absorb the vital spirit of 
 education, that subtle element that we 
 call culture, through the very pores of 
 their skin. 
 
 Such education fits one for his work in 
 life whatever it may be. It puts him in 
 possession of himself. It develops him 
 into a disciplined mind that can thread 
 its way through any subject, sift and 
 arrange its facts into order, and put them 
 together in sound judgments by which he 
 can achieve his ends. Education is trained 
 ability that can quickly see what is to be 
 done and how to do it, and such ability 
 rapidly pushes to the front and wins in 
 any field. 
 
 The world is becoming more and more 
 specialized in all its fields of labor, com- 
 petition is growing keener and standards 
 are rising higher, and as a result the 
 workers of to-day and^to-morrow must be 
 more highly trained and more eflScient 
 than the workers of yesterday. No one 
 can hope to be successful as a lawyer or 
 
 101 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 physician or minister or editor or engineer 
 to-day who is not equipped with a first- 
 class general and professional education. 
 The medical education of yesterday is 
 now so antiquated that it would not per- 
 mit one to pass an examination for en- 
 trance to a medical college. The same 
 fact is true of all other old-time learned 
 professions, and besides these many new 
 professions and technical callings have 
 come into our modern world that demand 
 a high degree of special training. 
 
 Applied science is the mother of in- 
 vention and progress and is constantly 
 devising better means and methods of 
 agriculture and manufacture and trans- 
 portation, and is thus lifting the world 
 far above the physical condition of prim- 
 itive people. It is the general intelligence 
 in the community that enables men to 
 learn and carry on the complex mechanical 
 processes of our industrial world. Ignorant 
 men simply could not make and manage 
 these machines; and if we shut off the 
 light of education, these great industrial 
 plants would wither as vegetable plants 
 droop and die in a drought. To maintain 
 and improve our intricate material civil- 
 
 102 
 
EDUCATION AND EFFICIENCY 
 
 ization we must keep up our educational 
 institutions, that they may send out 
 their stimulating light and irrigating 
 streams. 
 
 Many of our business men now have a 
 college education, and a man has no 
 chance for even entering the learned and 
 technical professions without thorough 
 preparation. The parents of the rising 
 generation should see this, and young 
 people should see it for themselves, and 
 they should press with eager feet into all 
 the avenues of education from the primary 
 school up to the higher institutions. It 
 is not being maintained or implied that all 
 young people can or should endeavor to 
 go to college and a professional school, but 
 such education is the necessary condition 
 of service in these higher fields. 
 
 103 
 
XI 
 
 EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 Education not only imparts efficiency 
 in technical work but it also fits one for 
 living in all human relations. We must 
 beware of materializing education into a 
 mere means of making money or winning 
 success in life. This is to turn its light 
 into darkness, and then how great is that 
 darkness! Then a man sees in a field 
 only so much corn and pork, in a forest 
 only so much lumber, and in a mountain 
 only so much coal and pig iron; worse 
 than this, he may use his education only 
 to get these resources and products away 
 from their owners without proper com- 
 pensation. But life is more than meat, 
 and the body than raiment, and while 
 education does produce material goods in 
 greater abundance and finer quality, yet 
 it does infinitely more than answer for us 
 the questions. What shall we eat.^ and 
 What shall we drink .^^ and Wherewithal 
 shall we be clothed.^ 
 
 104 
 
EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 There are two extreme theories of the 
 nature and object of education. The one 
 is the view once popularly entertained 
 that education is a special privilege and 
 artificial distinction, marking a man as 
 belonging to a favored class and separating 
 him from common work and life. The 
 college graduate was viewed as a man 
 apart, who was not expected to take 
 a hand in the rough work of the world. 
 He was pale of face, with a scholar's 
 stooped shoulders and unsoiled and un- 
 calloused hands. Formerly when a boy 
 came back to the farm or village from 
 college with the mysterious sheepskin of 
 a diploma which seemed to be charged 
 with magic charm and power, he was 
 regarded as a kind of superior if not sacred 
 being, who was idolized by his family, 
 treated with obsequious deference by the 
 community, and was not expected by any- 
 body to do any work. 
 
 College courses were also shaped along 
 the lines of preparation for the learned 
 professions and a scholar's secluded life, 
 and ancient languages, mathematics and 
 philosophy were the principal studies in 
 the curriculum in which there were no 
 
 105 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 options, while the more practical subjects 
 of modern languages and applied science 
 were given small room and welcome and 
 were rather regarded as intruders from 
 the workaday world. This was the purely 
 cultural theory of education. 
 
 Extremes beget extremes, and reaction 
 is now swinging to the opposite pole at 
 which the disposition and often the prac- 
 tice is to cut out cultural studies and put 
 the emphasis on utilitarian subjects. Al- 
 ready Greek and Latin have been cast 
 out bodily from many colleges and uni- 
 versities and are no longer required either 
 for entrance or graduation. Every study 
 now must show that it bears on practical 
 life, which means business and money- 
 making. 
 
 A college graduate on this theory of 
 education need not know any other lan- 
 guage than his native tongue, unless he 
 wants to use it in the markets of the 
 world. He need not know mathematics 
 beyond the range of his practical computa- 
 tions in figuring out his profits and income 
 tax. He is not expected to know much 
 about philosophy, but he must be able to 
 analyze pig iron or know how to cure 
 
 106 
 
EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 pickles. He may know little about the 
 soul, or whether he has a soul, but he 
 must know all about soils. The pressure 
 away from cultural education toward 
 utilitarian and technical training for busi- 
 ness is gaining in popular urgency, and 
 the extent to which even our older univer- 
 sities have yielded to this demand is 
 causing serious concern to our conservative 
 educators. 
 
 There is truth in each of these ex- 
 tremes, and the truth as usual lies between 
 and combines the true elements of both. 
 The true view of education is that it is 
 not a means of separating a man from 
 his fellow men by an artificial and 
 sacrosanct distinction, but of uniting him 
 more intimately and usefully with them; 
 and it is not simply or chiefly a means of 
 making a living but a means of making 
 a worthy life. 
 
 / The educated man is not by his educa- 
 tion set apart from or unfitted for human 
 society and service; if that were its nature \j 
 and effect, the less of it the better. Edu- 
 cation is not an easy way of escaping work 
 and living without perspiration. It is not 
 synonymous with starched linen and a 
 
 107 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 silk hat. Even the white necktie has lost 
 its significance and is almost as likely to 
 be worn by a gambling sportsman as by a 
 minister. ^ 
 
 The educated man is by his education 
 all the more a man, developed and full- 
 grown in all his faculties, fitting into 
 human society in all its relations and the 
 more efficiently filling his place and doing 
 his work in the world. He has wider 
 visions and more fluent sympathies so 
 that he is able to enter into other men's 
 conditions and needs and rights more 
 fully and helpfully. Instead of being 
 narrow-minded and lopsided by reason of 
 his education, he is more of an all-around 
 man,full-orbed in his human nature and life. 
 
 It goes without saying that there is 
 truth in the utilitarian theory of educa- 
 tion. Preparation must precede practice 
 in every field. We are not born with 
 skill, but only with the possibility of it 
 in germinal faculties that may be un- 
 folded and trained into skill. No one can 
 offhand run a locomotive, or perform a 
 surgical operation, or preach a sermon, 
 or play a piano. We cannot extemporize 
 a wheatfield. 
 
 108 
 
 ^ 
 
 .j^ 
 
EDUCATION AND LIFE 
 
 But, on the other hand, there is a vital 
 truth in the cultural theory of education. 
 Preparation for any work must be broader 
 than the work itself. One cannot become 
 a good lawyer or physician or minister 
 by rigidly confining his preparation to law 
 or medicine or theology; he must have a 
 broad knowledge of other subjects for 
 efficient service in these fields. Even a 
 mechanic needs to know more than simple 
 acquaintance with the tools and materials 
 with which he works. To do what one 
 does well he must know more than he 
 does. Whatever enlarges the mind and 
 enriches the emotions and disciplines the 
 will prepares for better work in any field. 
 
 This is why young men now go to 
 college to prepare for any line of work as 
 well as for the learned professions. All 
 knowledge is related, and Greek and 
 Latin, logic and philosophy are not remote 
 from and useless in the practical affairs 
 of life, but contribute to that general 
 training and broad thinking that are the 
 basis and means of success in any field 
 of service. 
 
 The old education aimed at general 
 culture, and so far it was right; but it 
 
 109 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 went too far in separating culture from 
 life. The new education is in danger of 
 going too far in the opposite direction of 
 divorcing life from culture. We must 
 keep the two together and make them 
 help each other and round out life into 
 its full-orbed sphere. '' Living is the chief 
 duty of life, and education is to enable 
 us to do this chief thing better and raise 
 it to its highest level of fullness and 
 efficiency. » 
 
 110 
 
XII 
 EDUCATION AND SERVICE 
 
 All these powers of education should 
 run up into service. A highly complicated 
 and costly mechanism, such as a watch 
 or a locomotive, should pay for itself in 
 work done. The more expensive it is 
 the more work it should do. An educated 
 personality is a very expensive product; 
 society has taxed itself heavily to pro- 
 duce it, and therefore it should justify 
 itself in service rendered. It is deep 
 selfishness and base ingratitude for one 
 to acquire an education that equips him 
 with large powers and then turn them 
 to purely personal ends, such as money- 
 making or pleasure-seeking, or to mere 
 aesthetic culture, or to gilded ease and 
 idleness. 
 
 Education that simply lets one slip 
 through the world so as to escape pro- 
 ductive work and avoid one's share of 
 responsibility for the world's welfare is a 
 blight to the community and to the soul 
 
 111 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 itself. This turns the soul into a sponge 
 that sucks up everything around it, in- 
 stead of making it a fountain that sends 
 forth refreshing streams. The educated 
 man is that much more of a man and 
 should be of that much more use to the 
 world. His eye should be clearer to see 
 human needs and his heart kinder and his 
 hand abler to meet them. His shoulder 
 should be the stronger and the readier 
 to go under the burdens of his fellow 
 men and to help carry the load of the 
 world's need. His presence should be so 
 much wisdom and inspiration and cheer 
 in his own circle and in the community. 
 The wider his education, the stronger 
 and richer his personality, the wider and 
 deeper should be his sympathy and service 
 and sacrifice. Much has been given to 
 the educated man and woman, and of 
 them is much justly required. 
 
 The educated man and woman enter 
 the world as so much leaven to impart 
 the contagion of higher life to others. 
 They go out as light-givers and light- 
 reflectors to radiate and diffuse light 
 through the whole community. It is 
 highly important that we should have 
 
 112 
 
EDUCATION AND SERVICE 
 
 professionally educated people among us, 
 but it is more important that we have 
 general intelligence and ethical character 
 diffused through the whole mass of society. 
 
 The mountain ranges and peaks must 
 send their waters down to irrigate the 
 plains, or their value vanishes. So the 
 social value of professional scholars con- 
 sists of their power to stimulate and enrich 
 the common people. 
 
 It is not the direct light of the sun 
 that fills our homes and illuminates the 
 world, but the sunlight as it is reflected 
 and diffused everywhere by the countless 
 particles in the air. Educated people have 
 freely received light, and now they should 
 freely give it. For them to receive the 
 light of education and then refuse or fail 
 to impart it to others would be as selfish 
 as if they, having found their place in 
 the sun, were then to try to crowd others 
 out of its light, or were to try to absorb 
 all its light and shut it off from the rest 
 of the world. We get this light that we 
 may give it; and, in fact, giving it is the 
 best way of getting it, and in this field 
 it is literally and abundantly more blessed 
 to give than to receive. 
 
 113 
 
XIII 
 
 EDUCATION AND PUBLIC 
 SUPPORT 
 
 The social blessing of education is the 
 reason it should and does receive public 
 support from the common school up 
 through the high school to the college and 
 university. Some people may look on this 
 support as a way of taxing the many in 
 the interest of the few, but this is a short- 
 sighted view. Our schools of all grades 
 are fountains of intelligence that pour 
 their streams out over our whole human 
 world as the clouds shed their rain over 
 all the hills and valleys. Shut them up or 
 curtail them by withholding public sup- 
 port, and we would dry up or diminish 
 these streams at their source, and then 
 all our life would wither in the drought 
 and blight. 
 
 We owe it not only to our children and 
 to all our youth, but also to ourselves to 
 keep these sources of education well sup- 
 plied. In hardly any other way than by 
 
 114 
 
EDUCATION AND PUBLIC SUPPORT 
 
 these taxes does our money do so much 
 good for us and for our human kind, and 
 to cut off this support would be to save 
 a few dollars at the expense of personal 
 and public disaster. No one is so unin- 
 telligent as not to see the use of the 
 clouds in the atmosphere and the sun in 
 the sky. Everybody ought to have the 
 discernment to see that our schools are 
 clouds full of rain and suns radiating light, 
 and be glad to contribute to their support. 
 Our higher institutions of learning are 
 almost without exception in pressing need 
 of larger endowments, and they make a 
 strong appeal to men of vision that have 
 means to aid them. Such gifts are a wise 
 investment that will long serve the world. 
 
 115 
 
XIV 
 
 EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 The great men of the world are its 
 makers. They create history. They are 
 the mountain ranges and peaks that de- 
 termine the course of rivers, carve the 
 continents, build the plains and sow them 
 with wheatfields and orchards and cities. 
 Cut them down to the level of common 
 men, and the whole history of the world 
 would be altered and dislocated. Abraham 
 and Moses, Isaiah and Paul, Alexander and 
 Csesar, Plato and Socrates, Confucius and 
 Buddha, Shakespeare and Milton, Wash- 
 ington and Lincoln, Newton and Darwin 
 — how would the course of history have 
 been changed and the level of the world 
 lowered if these great personalities and 
 creative geniuses had not upheaved the 
 continents and pushed up the peaks of 
 civilization! From the slopes and sum- 
 mits of their thoughts and deeds have 
 descended streams that have cut the 
 channels of history and watered the plains 
 
 116 
 
EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 of the world. And who can calculate the 
 enormous and infinite loss to the world 
 were Christ stricken from the centuries! 
 
 War that strips off all our illusions 
 and uncovers things down to their naked 
 reality is a terribly severe teacher of the 
 necessity of competent leadership. Lin- 
 coln was handicapped through three years 
 of failure in the Civil War until he found 
 "a man that would fight." He found 
 Grant, and then that dogged fighter 
 forged the scattered links of the Union 
 armies into a continuous iron ring around 
 Richmond that soon forced its surrender 
 and the collapse of the Confederacy. 
 
 The Great War taught the same lesson 
 on a colossal scale. The Allies muddled 
 through three years of mistakes and dis- 
 asters with divided generalship and isolated 
 armies and broken fronts. At last the 
 necessity of dire extremity and imminent 
 ruin forced unity of action under a single 
 head, and almost from the day that all 
 armies along all fronts were placed under 
 the supreme command of Foch, the Ger- 
 mans were checked and then turned back 
 and kept on retreat until they were beaten 
 to their knees, begging for mercy. 
 
 117 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 This man, however, was no accident or 
 favorite of fortune. He did not get his 
 place by seeking it, much less by political 
 favoritism or wire-pulling, but he was 
 the product of long and severe prepara- 
 tion. From youth he had been a student 
 of military affairs, for years he was a 
 professor of tactics in a government mil- 
 itary college, he had been tried out in 
 the arduous school of experience on the 
 field of battle, and so at last he stood 
 forth by the principle of natural selection 
 as the one man fitted for and equal to 
 the great place and mighty work that fell 
 to him in a supreme hour and crisis and 
 agony in the history of the world. 
 
 But not only are these overtowering 
 personalities the makers of the world, but 
 so also in a lesser degree are all those 
 who are called to places of leadership 
 among us. The statesmen of any coun- 
 try to-day hold its destinies in their hands. 
 The captains of industry are the builders 
 of our great business enterprises, and 
 without their leadership these vast com- 
 binations of capital and labor would go 
 to pieces. The newspaper editor wields 
 an enormous influence in shaping and 
 
 118 
 
EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 coloring as well as disseminating informa- 
 tion and in determining public opinion. 
 The lawyer leads in his field, the physician 
 in the hospital, and the minister in the 
 pulpit. Quiet thinkers in their university 
 chairs and investigators in their observa- 
 tories and laboratories are leaders in the 
 fields of widening knowledge and are 
 thereby molding the thoughts of millions 
 of men and of coming generations. Every 
 city or community or country is largely 
 what its leaders have made it. Bolshevism 
 began by murdering its "intelligensia," 6t 
 its intellectual and ruling classes, and then 
 came swift-footed anarchy and chaos and 
 night. 
 
 The fields of leadership have multiplied 
 in our day, and demand thorough prep- 
 aration as never before. No one is born 
 with a birthright of leadership since kings 
 have so generally gone out of business; 
 and even kings must get ready for their 
 office through long and arduous prepara- 
 tion. Rarely is leadership the result of 
 mere favor or fortune. Young men in 
 beginning their work often look up to the 
 men in high places and wonder how they 
 got there; and they are apt to think that 
 
 119 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 these successful men were boosted into 
 their positions by powerful friends or by- 
 some kind of "influence," or that they 
 climbed up by cunning arts and intrigue. 
 And so they are in danger of setting about 
 seeking and getting such places by illegit- 
 imate means. 
 
 It is not to be denied that there is some 
 measure of good fortune in such success 
 and that influence does often put men in 
 desirable places. But let no young man 
 count on these things. Few are the men 
 in high positions who got there by such 
 means. Washington was not an accident 
 in his day, and Lincoln was not picked 
 out and put in his place by partisan 
 politics. Great men have blazed their 
 own way to fortune and left footsteps 
 behind them for us to follow. Worthy 
 leadership cannot be inherited or bought 
 or got by influence, but must be won by 
 rising on the arduous steps of deeds done. 
 
 Education is the necessary preparation 
 for leadership in our day. An ignorant 
 man can only follow the leader or boss 
 and do the lowest work in the world. 
 Even to be a good farmer or mechanic 
 now demands trained intelligence, and 
 
 120 
 
EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP 
 
 young men go through the high school 
 and the college to follow these callings. 
 Much more does it require a high degree 
 of preparation to be fitted for leadership 
 in teaching, journalism, engineering, large 
 business management, as well as in law, 
 medicine, and the ministry. 
 
 The ministry especially calls for men of 
 large ability and clear vision and ample 
 equipment of expert knowledge and skill 
 to lead the Christian forces of this age in 
 the immense task of working out the 
 social gospel and building the kingdom 
 of God in the world. 
 
 Let no one be so shallow and conceited 
 as to think that he can succeed in any of 
 these specialized fields without proper 
 training, and if he is so ill-advised and 
 foolish as to try it, failure is his sure 
 fate. It is no longer respectable or lawful 
 to attempt professional work without a 
 professional diploma. The price is high, 
 but the privilege and the reward are great. 
 
 Never did the world demand such high 
 leadership as it must have to-day. It 
 now lies shattered at our feet by the war^ 
 and upon us is thrown the gigantic task 
 of rebuilding it into a better world. We 
 
 121 
 
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 
 
 ought to be glad that we are alive in this 
 great day and have a part in this immense 
 work, "dwelling in a grand and awful 
 time, in an age on ages telling," when 
 simply "to be living is sublime." It gives 
 us something great and worth while to 
 live for, and it will help to make us great 
 if we throw ourselves into it with utmost 
 devotion. But only competent leaders 
 can guide and inspire this work, and only 
 those who have native abilities which 
 they have developed and trained to their 
 utmost powers can be such leaders. Let 
 our youth get ready for their task. 
 
 **God give us men. A time like this demands 
 Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready 
 
 hands. 
 Men whom the lust of office does not kill! 
 Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy! 
 Men who possess opinions and a will! 
 Men who can stand before a demagogue 
 And damn his treacherous flattering without wink- 
 ing. 
 Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 
 In public duty and in private thinking." 
 
 122 
 
l.S'^'^Y O"^ CONGRESS 
 
 019 811 520 4