The meaning of a liberal education
Date: 2025-03-25T00:00:00+00:00
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Title: The meaning of a liberal education

Author: Everett Dean Martin

Release date: March 25, 2025 [eBook #75711]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: W. W. Norton & Co, 1926

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75711

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION ***

THE MEANING OF
A LIBERAL EDUCATION

The People’s Institute
“Lectures-in-Print” Series

PSYCHOLOGY |

by Everett Dean Martin

$3.00

BEHAVIORISM |

by John B. Watson

$3.00

INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR |

by H. A. Overstreet

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INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY |

by Charles S. Myers

$2.50

THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION |

by Everett Dean Martin

$3.00

MODERN SCIENCE AND PEOPLE’S HEALTH |

Edited by Benjamin C. Gruenberg

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Other Volumes in Preparation

W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
70 Fifth Avenue     New York

THE MEANING OF
A LIBERAL EDUCATION

BY

EVERETT DEAN MARTIN

Director, The People’s Institute, New York
Lecturer, The New School for
Social Research

NEW YORK

W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, INC.

Publishers

Copyright, 1926
W·W·NORTON & COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

To her who lovingly gave me the first and most
important instruction, and inspired the
desire for scholarship,
MY MOTHER
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

PREFACE

Most books that deal with the subject of education, and there are many, are concerned with the training of the young. Much is said about educational methods but very little about content. There is discussion, also, of the effectiveness of institutions, schools and colleges, and the interest of the State in education. This book does not deal with such matters.

It is concerned with other problems. What is an educated person like? How does he differ from the uneducated? Does he think differently and, if so, why? We shall be empirical in our study. We shall study persons who are generally recognized as outstanding educated minds and ask what it is that characterizes them. Is an educated person one who is like Socrates, Erasmus, Montaigne, Goethe, Arnold, Santayana?

The theme of this book is that education is more than information, or skill, or propaganda. In each age education must take into account the conditions of that age. But the educated mind is not a mere creature of its own time. Education is emancipation from herd opinion, self-mastery, capacity for self-criticism, suspended judgment, and urbanity.

It is often believed that education, adult education in particular, is an avocation or an interest to occupy the individual in his leisure time, like music or stamp collecting. The work of The People’s Institute at Cooper Union, New York, where these lectures were given, is essentially that of adult education. I have tried to think through with those who attended the lectures what it is that for ten years we have been trying to achieve. Adult education is now becoming an important interest in American life, and the inquiry seems timely.

This book, then, contends that education is a spiritual revaluation of human life. Its task is to reorient the individual, to enable him to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, to place him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals. If education is not liberalizing, it is not education in the sense of the title of the book. I use the term “liberal” not in the political sense, as if it meant half measures, but in its original sense meaning by a liberal education the kind of education which sets the mind free from the servitude of the crowd and from vulgar self-interests. In this sense, education is simply philosophy at work. It is the search for the “good life.” Education is itself a way of living.

I have written the book not from the standpoint of the professional educator for whom education is frequently—if it be adult education—an enterprise designed for the uplift of other people, but from the standpoint of one who is concerned that his own education shall not stop in middle-life. No one is fit to be a teacher in whose own mental process education has ceased to go on. One is a student first and only incidentally a teacher. The best teacher is the seeker after truth amongst his students. Probably the most successful educator cannot tell what is the secret of his success in teaching. That which is important about the philosophy of education is not method but that background of knowledge which enables its possessor to judge what is worth knowing and doing.

Everett Dean Martin.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

| PREFACE | vii
I. | INTRODUCTION | 1
II. | LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS ANIMAL TRAINING | 23
III. | LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS PROPAGANDA | 45
IV. | LIBERAL EDUCATION VERSUS BOOK LEARNING | 66
V. | THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF DOUBT | 84
VI. | A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS | 107
VII. | THE FREE SPIRIT | 127
VIII. | THE APPRECIATION OF HUMAN WORTH | 146
IX. | EDUCATION AND WORK | 160
X. | EDUCATION AND MORALS | 180
XI. | THE CLASSICAL TRADITION: PLATO AND ARISTOTLE | 197
XII. | HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE | 220
XIII. | SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION: HUXLEY | 252
XIV. | THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE | 286
XV. | POSTSCRIPT—ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA | 308

THE MEANING OF
A LIBERAL EDUCATION

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

The evidence is unmistakable that there is an important change in the attitude of the public toward education. There is an increasingly general demand for it in some form or other. Everywhere and in all classes of society the interest in acquiring better knowledge is apparent.

In England and on the continent of Europe there are thousands of classes and groups patiently pursuing long and serious courses of study. American colleges and universities are crowded and many students are each year turned away. Vast and increasing numbers register annually for correspondence and university extension courses. The demand for more education is shown also in the increasing number of lecture courses, people’s colleges, and other centers of public discussion.

While people do not always know just what it is they demand and frequently the thing which they receive is not education, nevertheless there is a new and very wide-spread interest. This new interest shows itself not only in the increasing number of persons engaged in some kind of educational activity but also in the fact that people are beginning to see that education properly may be extended into adult life.

Until recently, people have thought of education as something for children, something which a man either got or missed in his early years, something which he generally forgot in his mature years. To the average person, education was a matter of fond memories or of unpleasant associations with teachers, school houses and experiences of childhood. The “highly” educated person was the exceptional person in the community, discussions of the philosophy of education did not appeal to a wide public interest. Now higher branches of learning are being pursued by numbers of people outside regular educational institutions. Something very significant is happening. Perhaps at no time since the thirteenth century has the desire for knowledge so nearly approached a mass movement.

Certain qualifications must however be made. While much of the demand for education is genuine and spontaneous, much of it is spurious, irrelevant, inconsequential. The increased attendance at school or university does not necessarily mean that more education is going on. It is frequently said that our colleges are crowded with inferior students. Athletics, fraternities, schools of business and the automobile tend to displace science and the classics. American youth has acquired its ideal of college life from the motion pictures. We should not infer from the large numbers engaged in adult education that democracy has suddenly decided to rid itself of intellectual shoddiness. If the advertisements of correspondence courses in self-improvement which regularly appear in the popular magazines are an indication of the instruction offered for sale, people might better spend their money for patent medicine or in having their fortunes told. At best adult education consists largely of brief courses of a vocational nature. Even worker’s education, a movement which has inspired hope in many liberals, may easily be over estimated. Much of it is little more than a recrudescence of antiquated radical propaganda, designed to enable the proletariat to “emancipate itself from the slavery of capitalism,” and to get it “ready for a millennial industrial democracy.” The initiative often comes not from studious minded workers, but from enthusiastic intellectuals and idealistic uplifters. The cultural gesture is often pathetic or comic. It is not uncommon for those who have completed the courses of study in a “workers” college to find themselves more unadjusted than they were before.

It is sought to make of adult education something which will broaden the interests and sympathies of people regardless of their daily occupation—or along with it—to lift men’s thought out of the monotony and drudgery which are the common lot, to free the mind from servitude and herd opinion, to train habits of judgment and of appreciation of value, to carry on the struggle for human excellence in our day and generation, to temper passion with wisdom, to dispel prejudice by better knowledge of self, to enlist all men, in the measure that they have capacity for it, in the achievement of civilization.

Adult education is a way of living which should be open to all who care for it for its own sake. It is not surprising that it frequently fails of its true aims. Education has always been regarded as a mere means to ends that have nothing to do with it. It is to be expected, therefore, that education in our day should be regarded primarily as a means of entrance to the already overcrowded professions, or to material gain or better social position. Doubtless it must remain so until the community becomes sufficiently civilized so that some degree of liberal education is the expected thing in all classes, an interest and a goal, a spiritual bond of union somewhat like the idea of catholic religion in the middle ages. This is an ideal which will not be realized by magic. There is no cheap popular substitute for education. Nor are we nearing the goal while as now almost anything passes for education.

Almost any method of salesmanship or trick of influencing people for any ends whatever is now “education.” Every one educates the public. It is marvelous how large a portion of the population of these states is qualified to instruct. Education has become the game men perpetually work to convert their neighbors. It is the cure for every social ill. How shall we put an end to the crime wave, abolish war, how to prevent social revolution,—or bring revolution about, how induce unwilling people to accept cheerfully the coercion of national prohibition or give lip service to some one’s favorite brand of patriotism? The answer is in all cases—education. If you are engaged in increasing the sale of a certain soap, in putting everyone on guard against that social disability of which one’s best friend will not tell him, if you can frighten a multitude with the danger of pyorrhea and thus increase your profit in tooth paste—all this is now called education.

Many see in the general movement for more education a great hope for humanity. It was the belief in its political benefits that led to the compulsory education of children in the nineteenth century. Men were sure that all that held the world back was ignorance. People would surely wish to have their ignorance removed. Remove it, teach men the laws of a reasonable and beneficent nature, and mankind in general would be wise and happy and good. Ingersoll used to rejoice whenever he visited a town where the schoolhouse was larger than the church.

As the humanitarians of the nineteenth century held that public school education must inevitably put an end to tyranny and superstition, so many of our contemporaries look upon adult education as the guarantor of a new and better civilization. There is to be an end of bigotry and partisan strife and of crowd hysteria and of the vulgarities which beset democracy. They see genius appreciated, a selection by the masses of a sincere and competent leadership. Men everywhere are to learn “not only how to make a living, but how to live.”

Finally, it is hoped that adult education will give us new methods and aims which will be carried back into our schools and colleges and transform them. A better informed adult population will naturally take a more active and intelligent interest in the education of youth. And when teachers try to instruct adults it will become necessary for them to make their teaching interesting and significant. The teachers will also learn something about life, gleaning sheaves of ripe wisdom out of the mature experience of their students; they will become better teachers. All this may or may not come to pass. The point of interest is that there is this tendency to make a gospel of education.

We Americans have a weakness for new gospels. They are a pleasant form of verbal exercise. Liberty, Democracy, Social Reform, the Cause of Labor, Psychoanalysis—all have been put to such evangelistic use. Now we are to become an educated nation by the simple process of everyone educating everyone else. Education is like reform, it is something which is always good for other people. There is much talk about adult education and there are many conferences. But I have not attended a conference for the discussion of this subject in which anyone spoke of adult education as his own pursuit of knowledge. And as with most gospels, we are in such a hurry to save souls that we would begin proclaiming the new salvation to the nation before pausing to find out what education is.

Education has one thing in common with religion. One must come to it with clean hands and a pure heart or one can never know the secret power of it. This is as true of a nation as of an individual. As a people we have certain traits which may be praiseworthy in themselves, but are distinctly hostile to the work of education. I will enumerate them and then briefly indicate their element of hostility. They are, first, our genius for organization; second, our well-known utilitarianism; third, our cleverness in finding shortcuts to the ends we seek; and fourth, our tendency to make propaganda.

The American way of doing things is to proceed to organize them. Our genius for organization is probably our most generally recognized national characteristic. It has given us such prestige as we enjoy among the nations of the earth. Ours is the land of the Woolworth Building, the Ford factories, the Anti-saloon League, Rotary, the Ku Klux Klan, and the college cheer leader. In organization there is power and there is efficiency, as seen in the success of our industries. Labor, politics, morals, religion, charity have all followed the same course. In fact a man gains recognition in this country only by virtue of his membership in some power-seeking group. He who remains unorganized is lost. And without a chairman, a committee, an executive secretary and a press agent no human interest can survive. We simply do not know what to do with it or how to think about it.

Organization, which is instrument or means, tends to become an end in itself. This is the fate of most organized causes; a movement arises with its standardized labels and values, its stereotyped mannerisms, its rigamarole. Success is estimated in terms of material effects, tangible results, numbers and power. The organizer takes precedence over those who possess the interest which it is his task to serve. When a man becomes a labor organizer, he stops work. Many university presidents are not themselves teachers or even scholars. They are good organizers, and with very much the same methods and standards of value one could as well organize a labor union or an insurance company. This is no criticism of the college president. His practical ability is requisite of modern conditions. But ways of thinking and of feeling are elusive and essentially personal, and when the attempt is made to institutionalize them they vanish and a lifeless imitation is substituted. You may as well try to organize the weather as to organize faith, hope and love. “Organized charity” is almost a contradiction in terms. Organized religion is a garden of artificial flowers, badly faded too. The spiritual life of the race was carefully weeded out long ago.

To know the effect of organization upon education, one need only attend a convention of the National Educational Association, or familiarize oneself with the public school system anywhere. The system supplants education. The present interest in adult education is in part a protest against the system. The thirst for knowledge is nowhere more genuine and healthy than in such groups as those which attend The People’s Institute of New York and other educational centers where learning is pursued with a minimum of organization. In such places people who desire further knowledge of some subject in which they are interested come together, voluntarily, and their only basis of association is their common intellectual interest. There is no cult or “movement”; there are no promoters for there is nothing to promote. There are no ulterior ends to serve and there are no outside influences or regulations save those necessary to insure honest scholarship and competent instruction. Many adult students would resent any attempt at further organization.

There is in existence at the present time a World Association for adult education, and there was recently formed an American Association. But these associations have no ambition to guide or control or to standardize. Nor are they equipped to do so. One of the greatest services that such an association, made up of teachers and students, could perform would be to work to prevent the diversion of the present interest in popular education to ends that are not educational.

“Adult Education” is becoming a slogan, a phrase to capitalize, a label to attach to various activities which have hitherto borne other brands,—Americanization for instance, or social work, or community organization, or reforms and propagandas of one sort or another. Much that is now labeled Adult Education has a curiously familiar look. There are faces one has seen before somewhere in other climes that then enjoyed the sunshine of popular interest. Praiseworthy enterprises no doubt, and not less praiseworthy is the somewhat tardy discovery that the organizers have all along been speaking the prose of adult education without knowing it.

The danger is that persons with long experience in promoting and administering many things may also conceive of each educational task as primarily one of organization. In a recent conference on adult education in a New England state, an enthusiastic public school administrator in a burst of oratory proposed that adult education be made compulsory. Another called attention to the appalling extent of illiteracy, particularly as regards the use of the English language, and urged that adult education be promoted as a preventive of crime. A third, a dean in an eastern college, insisted that adult education at once be departmentalized; graded, I suppose, into its primary, secondary, collegiate and post-graduate branches. Nothing has yet been said about an adult kindergarten, though doubtless many people could profit by attending such an institution. Perhaps the associated kindergartens have not yet discovered the fact that they also have been engaged in adult education.

We shall be disappointed if it is our hope to send the grown-up population of the country back to Public School to receive still more of the thing that caused many of them to leave. One of the leading educators in America recently asked a group of teachers whether any among them were so well satisfied with what they had accomplished in their own sphere that they could wish to extend their work through the adult years.

It is very difficult for the man of the system to think of education itself, he is too much preoccupied with gradations, requirements, discipline, reports, with seeing that a given minimum of identical work is done by all in a given time. He thinks in terms of buildings and equipment, submission to authority, conformity to herd opinion, service to the state. All or at least some of these things are necessary, but it is obvious that they do not constitute an education. This lesson America has got to learn. There can be no quantity production of the things of the spirit.

Another national trait which influences our education is our utilitarianism. I do not use this term in the sense that it was used by those philosophers who held the principle of the Greatest Happiness. I refer to that in us which is spoken of as “Yankee shrewdness.” Except in politics and religion, we are a sensible people. And by sensible I mean—and most Americans would agree—practical. We can be very efficient when we wish to,—that is, when there is anything to gain by it. We are straightforward, and except in matters concerning which we prefer to deceive ourselves, not easily taken in. Whatever we profess, we are born pragmatists. Our first question about anything is ‘what good is it’, that is, what use is it? We demand results and we get them. We get things done because our philosophy of life is one of action, and our prevailing ethical standard is one of service. In the solution of a practical problem, and most problems to which we give our attention are practical, we pride ourselves on our directness. We come to the point. We dispense with the unnecessary, the ornamental, the traditional. It is a valuable trait.

But things sometimes have meanings other than that of usefulness. There are values which can not be measured in terms of money or personal advantage, or of time lost or gained, or of industrial efficiency. Health for instance is good not merely because the healthy man can do more work; it is good for its own sake. Yet people are frequently advised to guard their health for strictly economic reasons, and practical people have the habit of showing us the cost of disease, presenting statistics of labor-time lost, estimating the loss to the community as so many thousands of dollars annually.

I have known people to take a like utilitarian view of human relationships, making friends for the sake of commercial and social advancement, furnishing their houses, selecting their motor cars and even their clothes with the view to keeping up their credit at the bank. Many a man openly says that he belongs to certain clubs, and sometimes one even joins a church, for business reasons. How much the practical man misses is evident from the fact that it never occurs to him that there are other reasons for doing these things.

Practical men love to philosophize about the value of education. When I was a student I once rode up to the college with a farmer who was passing the campus on his way home from town. He informed me in no uncertain terms that he had no use for that institution. It irritated him to see all those “young loafers” wasting their time learning Latin and Greek and lawn tennis. Not one of them, not even the faculty, knew how to do anything; he had recently tested them out. He had asked the professor of Greek how many feet of lumber could be sawed from a log twenty-three inches in diameter and twenty feet long, and the professor did not know.

The farmer’s point of view is now that of many modern institutions of learning. Educators are determined to give people the knowledge they need for success in life and work. Courses are offered in scenario writing, millinery, salesmanship. Whether courses are anywhere offered in paper hanging—with credit toward the bachelor’s degree, I do not know. But it is held that as thinking is really part of acting, only that knowledge is real which can be put in operation. There is a truth in this statement if one takes a sufficiently broad view of activity. But the tendency is to make an easy and crude distinction between knowledge which is useful, and that which is merely “ornamental.” This distinction does not always hold. Knowledge may be like art, it may have values which are more than use or ornamentation. Dr. Horace Kallen divides values into economic values and æsthetic values. Economic goods are those which are valuable because they are the means of getting some good other than themselves. Aesthetic goods are those which have value in themselves. Art is excellence. Education is the art of making living itself an art. It is the achievement of human excellence; it transcends both the useful and the ornamental. It is a way of life, just as truly as the religious life is a way of life, or the moral life, or the single life.

People motivated by a narrow utilitarianism do not really desire education. They are quite content with a vulgar substitute—if it pays. Education does not transform them; they tend to transform it after their own likeness. That many are seeking “education” from such motives is evident. One has only to study the advertising pages of the popular magazines to note the kind of appeal that is made to induce the ambitious to enroll in certain correspondence schools. The prospective student is given the promise that if he will subscribe for certain courses he may some day sit in the boss’s chair, and associate with the big men at the top who do real things. Usually there is an alluring picture of these big men at their desks, thinking great ideas; a picture which gives about the same notion of the lives of the successful as one sees in the motion pictures. Sometimes the picture is of two men one on either side of the manager’s desk. One stands meekly, hat in hand, dressed as a laborer. On his face are the marks of sorrow, humility, hunger. The other man has the look of the typical “go-getter.” The latter is seated; he is evidently giving an order. Such a picture is not intended to be a comment upon the inequalities of our industrial system. The reader is informed that both men started at the bottom, that one improved his mind and his opportunities, the other’s is a wasted life.

Such advertisements are typical, and are worthy of note because they indicate something of the nature of the prevailing American interest in education. Here is an illustration of a domestic scene: The man stands at the door dejected. He has just been discharged from his position, and has come home to tell his wife. She sympathetically replies that he ought long ago to have bought that course of lessons. Or she consoles him with the question, “Why is it that all the others have gone ahead and you have not?”

By contrast there is a series of invitations to enter the temple of knowledge in which a wife is portrayed leaning affectionately over her husband’s shoulder. He holds a pay envelope in his hand and says, “I am making real money now.” It is well, when telling people of the advantages of education, to give them an idea of the conversation which takes place in the homes of the cultured.

But that anyone should seriously enter upon a course of study of the world’s classics in order that he may impress people with his knowledge, appear genteel, make himself attractive to women or gain entrance to an exclusive social set, is, I believe, a distinctly modern contribution to educational theory. There recently came into my possession half a shelf of little old books bound in leather. They contain a translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, some novels of Fielding and Smollet, and a book or two of seventeenth century religious meditations. The volumes are discolored with age and are worn with much reading, broken bindings are carefully repaired with hand stitching and torn pages pasted together by someone who prized and reverenced their content. They are part of the small library of a New England farmer of the early years of the Republic, who read his books by his kitchen fireside when the day’s work was done, who lived with them for years, and found in them a perpetual source of interest and wisdom and a refuge in an existence of loneliness and toil. Imagine anyone trying to sell that man a work of art with the promise that a casual reading of it would enable him to appear more cultivated than he really was.

Today a much advertised and in fact admirable selection of classic literature is offered with precisely this appeal. A full page display appears in the Sunday papers depicting a gaudy dining-room with three people conventionally dressed for dinner seated at the table. There are two men and a beautiful woman. She is talking to the man on her right, and is evidently fascinated with his brilliant conversation. The man on the left sits dumb and miserable and unnoticed; he can not join in such sophisticated and scintillating discussion. We are informed that the poor man has neglected to read his fifteen minutes a day. It is to this sort of thing that popular utilitarianism, aided and appealed to by commercialism, would divert a hesitating interest in education.

Even in the best of educational institutions the utilitarian point of view with its emphasis upon a narrow efficiency has its dangers. It is the source of that specialization which crams the student’s head full of information concerning one subject, leaving him in ignorance of all else and hence unable to gain a proper perspective of the knowledge that he does possess.

In “Science and the Modern World,” Whitehead says

“The modern chemist is likely to be weak in zoölogy, weaker still in his general knowledge of the Elizabethan drama, and completely ignorant of the principles of rhythm in English versification. It is probably safe to ignore his knowledge of ancient history. Of course I am speaking of general tendencies; for chemists are no worse than engineers, or mathematicians, or classical scholars. Effective knowledge is professionalised knowledge, supported by a restricted acquaintance with useful subjects subservient to it.

This situation has its dangers. It produces minds in a groove. Each profession makes progress, but it is progress in its own groove. Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions. The groove prevents straying across country, and the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid. But there is no groove of abstraction which is adequate for the comprehension of human life....

The dangers arising from this aspect of professionalism are great, particularly in our democratic societies. The directive force of reason is weakened. The leading intellects lack balance. They see this set of circumstances, or that set; but not both sets together. The task of coordination is left to those who lack either the force or the character to succeed in some definite career.... The point is that the discoveries of the nineteenth century were in the direction of professionalism, so that we are left with no expansion of wisdom and with greater need of it. Wisdom is the fruit of a balanced development. It is this balanced growth of individuality which it should be the aim of education to secure.”

A philosophy which reduces learning to mere efficiency, makes of education only a means to something other than personal development. It sees each good as an economic good, a means only, making everything exist only for the sake of something else to be obtained. But there are goods which exist for their own sakes and one such good is human excellence.

In the words of Dr. L. P. Jacks, “The civilization of power aims at the exploitation of the world, which is thought of as a dead or mechanical thing, existing that men may exploit it. That of culture aims at the development of man, thought of as a citizen of a universe which can be loved, enjoyed and reverenced: education being the name of the process which leads him to love, enjoy and reverence it.”

Another and even more serious danger is our passion for shortcuts. Business prospers by rapid turnover. Practical men demand quick results. We are an impatient people, always in a hurry. We have not time for the tedious labor processes necessary to produce well-made articles of handicraft. Consequently we have learned to be satisfied with hastily and cheaply made commodities which somewhat resemble the real articles and will do just as well—for the time being. Why should we not buy cheap furniture, when we expect to move every first day of October? Why not wear garments made of shoddy, when everyone knows the fashions will change even before shoddy can be worn threadbare? Why erect buildings that will stand for centuries in cities where everything is torn-down and rebuilt in a decade, and even churches move about following the shifting elements of the population which constitute their membership? Just why we are all moving about in such a hurry no one knows. Some people think that this restless haste is progress. Whether it is or not, it is certainly modern.

But something of the shoddiness enters into the minds and hearts of men, when shortcuts are sought in matters of mental growth which are essentially processes of slow maturing. Education requires time. The only time wasted is that spent trying to save time. There should be no haste or crowding or cramming. Mastery of any subject requires years of familiarity with it. The formal training one receives in an institution is but the introduction. Most people never get beyond a mere bowing acquaintance with knowledge.

A prominent American manufacturer, so we are told, once made the statement that if he wished to know anything he would employ an expert to tell him about it in five minutes. Among workers in adult education there is a demand for easy text books, primers which will give to people in a few pages and in words of one syllable the essentials of philosophy, psychology, literature and natural science. Simple and clear statement is always desirable. No author really knows his subject matter until he can “talk United States” in presenting it. But that is another story. People who can read nothing more profound than the tabloid papers are a menace to education. They only retard the progress of any class they enter.

Yet there is a wide demand for tabloid information. We like outlines of history, psychology, philosophy; primers of relativity; ABC’s of atoms. Such books have value only for the student who after reading them consults the original sources. But what people want is education without effort, ready-made education. I recently saw an advertisement in which there was offered for sale “a whole library in one volume.” Another advertisement offers “The Essentials of a Liberal Education; Twenty Centuries of thought on your Library Shelf,”—one shelf is all that is required! And in addition the publishers will provide you with “easy reading courses.”

The following example is typical of what happens to education when wisdom lifteth up her voice in the street. A full page advertisement appears in a Sunday newspaper. There is a picture of two successful business men looking at a newspaper. The article which has caught their attention reads, “R. P. Clark Made President of Big Mercantile Corp. Began as Office Boy 21 years ago.” Here are a few lines quoted from their comments,

“That fellow amazes me! Do you remember when he first came to us as an office boy?... and all the other fellows had a head start on him with their college degrees. He must have found an unusual way to make up for his lack of schooling—he must have found a secret means of improving his chances both in business and society. Clark knew how tremendously he was handicapped by his lack of schooling and he determined to find a shortcut to education. And this he found in Elbert Hubbard’s Famous Scrapbook.”

There you have it. I have never seen a more complete statement of the average man’s idea of education. Mastery of the tricks which bring early success; belief that there is somewhere a secret magic, knowledge of which will immediately transform one’s personality;—the shortcut. No appreciation of the fact that it is never information which transforms a person, but the persistent effort put forth to acquire it. Education is on the air, in these enlightened times one can get it anywhere—like bootleg whiskey. It is proposed now to give adult education by radio. All you need do to achieve scholarship is to turn it on, close your eyes, and go to sleep. You can get it without effort, without knowing that you are getting it, or just who is educating you.

I mentioned earlier that one of the dangers to education in America is our weakness for propaganda. Few people know the difference between education and advertising. The latter is commonly spoken of as education by those engaged in it. I once knew an advertising manager for a fruit grower’s organization. He conceived a brilliant idea. Just as we have Health Week, Clean-Up Week, Fire Prevention Week, he arranged in various localities an Orange Eating Week. He told me that he could educate the public to eat as many oranges as he chose. Press agents are everywhere busy “educating the public” for all sorts of objects; to respect the rights of vested capital, to give money to build cathedrals, to vote a straight party ticket. I once attended a banquet given by an organization of manufacturers. There I met a splendid-looking elderly gentleman and was told that he was the attorney for the organization. As I had never before seen him, I inquired if he had offices in New York. My informant said, “Oh, no, he lives in Washington. His job is to educate Congress.”

In spite of all this popular interest, or perhaps because of it, the cause of education is in a bad way. It is dangerous to encourage people to think they are educated when they are not, or to believe they are acquiring it when they are in fact getting something else. Much that passes for adult education serves only to make people more superficial and opinionated than they were before. It is very doubtful if the general level of our intellectual life has been raised by such knowledge as the public has gained. The public can read and we have with us the Hearst papers and the tabloids. Literacy has placed the bulk of the population daily at the mercy of the propagandist and the press agent. With libraries and colleges and high schools everywhere, and after a century of science, vast sections of the population can be swept by such movements as the Ku Klux Klan and Fundamentalism. State after state prohibits the teaching in its schools of such scientific knowledge as will lead to a belief in evolution. Crazy reform, fantastic religious innovation, political foolishness and unbalanced partisanship may at any time sweep over the country. Intelligence in this country makes a poor showing in competition with quackery and complacent ignorance for popular leadership.

It is common to lay the blame for the present state of affairs at the door of the schools and colleges. Without doubt they must accept some measure of responsibility in the matter. In many instances the only alternative to a general slump in standards of scholarship has been a narrow academic pedantry. There has been much yielding to the pressure of popular prejudice, much display of conventional morality as a cover for second-rate educational activity. Faculties are well aware how little a student may know and get through college. The colleges themselves seem to have participated in the general cheapening of education by their generosity in granting honorary degrees. Almost any one who is successful in business or prominent in politics becomes a “Doctor.” Erasmus in the fifteenth century, even though he had already become probably the leading classical scholar of his times, studied and taught at Paris for nine years before he was granted his doctor’s degree. When the late Mr. Bryan threatened to print all his college degrees on his card, in answer to the repeated statement that he was an ignoramus, the joke was really on the colleges.

But too much is demanded of institutions of learning. Large numbers of students come to them with no background of cultural tradition, and they return to an environment which is distinctly hostile to intellectual pursuits. The public clamor that some one educate us in spite of ourselves is only another way of shouting, “We have piped unto you and ye have not danced.” The ultimate responsibility for the condition of education rests upon the average members of society, and it is reducible to a moral factor. Carlyle once said that people could only be taken in by quacks when they had a certain element of quackery in their own souls. When multitudes regard education merely as a shortcut to financial success, or as a device for appearing to be something they are not, or as an instrument for converting others to their own partisan beliefs, they will of course get the “education” they desire.

Once I thought that ignorance was an innocent thing, a sort of spiritual vacuum passively waiting to be filled with precious truths. Except in children ignorance is by no means an innocent thing. It is a very active element in human life. We must overcome strong resistances before we may begin to learn some things. We keep ourselves in ignorance because there are facts and truths whose existence we prefer not to admit. The man who strives to educate himself—and no one else can educate him—must win a certain victory over his own nature. He must learn to smile at his dear idols, analyze his every prejudice, scrap if necessary his fondest and most consoling belief, question his presuppositions, and take his chances with the truth. The greater the need of education, the stronger the resistance to it.

Whether the present increase of interest in education is to be an empty gesture depends upon whether the thing demanded is really education. There is no one right way, and certainly each age with its special needs and peculiar industrial and cultural environment should make its own contribution to educational achievement. But there is something which belongs to no special time and to all times, a way of approaching our tasks or valuing experiences. No one who is merely a creature of his own times is really educated. There is conceivable a world in which,—great as are the historical accidents that separate them—a Socrates, or a Plato, or a Cicero, or an Erasmus, a Voltaire, a Goethe, a Huxley would be at home. Much as they differ, there is yet something, which the educated have in common, a quality of spirit, something that may not be defined, but that right-minded people recognize. We shall strive from various avenues of approach to envisage it, for to miss it is to miss all. It is the meaning of a liberal education.

CHAPTER II
LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. ANIMAL TRAINING

In a sense no living person is yet educated, for the learning process is never completed. But there must come a time when the process results in some differences in behavior. Often these differences seem to be small and irrelevant, amounting merely to added social grace or more correct use of language. Something more than this must differentiate the educated from the uneducated or so much human energy would not be expended in the effort to get education.

When we inquire what the difference is, we find there is much confusion. In the process of education knowledge is acquired. Many a person’s education consists of what he has learned. May one possess much knowledge or information and remain uneducated? I know a physician who has great skill and wide professional information, yet he is essentially vulgar in his tastes and enjoyments and bigoted in his human relationships, and his judgments concerning most things are narrow and hasty and are determined largely by passion and prejudice. You feel that his learning has never become integrated with his personality. It is a property annexed to his estate over which he is an absentee landlord. It has made no changes in his general habits of thought and behavior.

There are people whom no one would think educated, who yet have an astounding amount of information. They know all about race horses, or bridge, or baseball scores, or stocks and bonds. Many have a knowledge of such things which may be greater both in range and accuracy than that which some professional scholars have of their special subjects.

Shall we say then that some kinds of knowledge have educational value and that others have not? But why should not all knowledge be equally education? Is there a psychological reason for the alleged difference or is the exclusion of some kinds of knowledge the result merely of a conventional attitude? Our discussion of education resolves itself into a philosophical problem.

The issue of practical education versus the so-called cultural comes up whenever people are interested in the subject. Partisans of the latter type of learning are inclined to look down upon the former. They say it is not education but only skill and efficiency. They hold that education is scholarship and properly has to do with such subjects as the classics, the humanities, philosophy, etc., which discipline the mind and ennoble the spirit. This is the traditional view.

Those who take the opposite view ask what earthly purpose can useless and sequestered learning serve? They are suspicious of education for “refinement” or the “genteel tradition.” Is it not the aim of the pursuit of knowledge to enable one to do something, to attain mastery, to equip the mind to function well in an environment which demands activity of us all? Is not anything well learned culture? An excellent statement of this point of view can be found in Huxley’s lectures on education.

There has been much discussion of this question in the universities and colleges. There are those who deplore the decline of interest in the classics and philosophy. They say that institutions of higher learning are becoming mere “intellectual cafeterias,” that the change from classical education to an elective system embracing all sorts of vocational courses is a distinct loss, inasmuch as the knowledge so acquired lacks coordination and balance, while specialization crowds out the general and cultural subjects that form the foundation of education.

On the other hand, why should not a University teach anything that people wish to know? There was once resistance to including the sciences, chemistry and physics and biology. The liberalizing effect and cultural value of these subjects is now recognized, and their usefulness is a social gain. Then why not domestic science, agriculture, mechanics, business methods? What is wrong with the schools of business at Harvard and Columbia?

A similar issue exists in secondary education. It is often said that high schools pay too much regard to college entrance requirements, since only a small portion of graduates expect to continue their education. The students have gained only a most superficial introduction to the classics and have learned nothing practical. Schools of trade, commerce, and of technology are increasing in number and the movement for such training is guided by principles of education very different from those of the classical tradition.

Those of us who are interested in adult education meet the same problem. Writing of worker’s education Dr. Horace M. Kallen says,

“... The complexity of the tasks of any union official has grown so great, their variety so considerable, that it is no longer possible for an official merely to pass from the worker’s bench to the official’s desk and completely discharge his duties.... Schools would have to be provided analogous to the schools of business administration maintained in the colleges.... Out of the instruction there would in the course of time emerge a communicable permanent record, on which the necessary accessories of books could be built. Such a school of officials would be a nucleus from which the educational process could ultimately radiate into every shop.

“Labor education would finally thus become conversant with control rather than escape. In such a conversancy more and more of the energies now seeking relief in the vapors of the social mechanisms of escape, would find satisfactory enchannelment in the technique of control.

“It is the essential function of labor education to envisage, to forecast and to enable this transition. The various arts would then develop no longer as compensations against, but as expressions and prophetic fulfillments, as criticisms and mitigations of, the processes of this movement; they too would more largely be coterminous with industrial life.”

Dr. Kallen would probably not go so far as to say that the sole aim of Labor Education is to equip the members of the working class with such knowledge as will enable them to master the industrial environment and change the social system. But there are those who hold such a view, just as there are those who hold that the worker should receive only such education as will make him a more competent workman. Both views, one held by extreme radicals, the other by conservative capitalists, have in common the belief that education for workers is purely practical training. “Cultural” subjects are sometimes studied, and there is a lively demand for them, but the tendency is to regard this interest as an “escape” from reality into a world of fanciful contemplation and mere verbal exercise. It is an intellectual luxury, a form of entertainment or inspiration to which a worker is entitled, but it is an interest which is a little under suspicion of being “bourgeois.”

Hence in all phases of education, this issue is debated. The issue is inevitable in a time like the present, with a classical tradition surviving in an industrial civilization. Have we any need in the modern world of cultural traditions which have their origin in antiquity? Should we or could we dispense with all educational values except those which are coterminous with the present industrial situation?

Wherever such an issue arises, I have learned to suspect both sides. As a rule both are based upon a common presupposition which is an error. Here the presupposition is that the important factor in education is the question what is to be taught, rather than the spirit of learning itself. Education is conceived of as knowledge acquired. Attention is fixed not on the learning process through which an individual becomes reoriented to his world, but upon the end result, something fixed and done, a certain amount of information stored up. Is this what we mean by learning? Is it receiving and memorizing a given something either cultural or practical? Or is it an adventure in any kind of truth-seeking which changes the quality of one’s future experience and enables one to behave not merely efficiently but wisely, with a broad view and a sympathetic understanding of the many ways in which men have striven to create meaning and value out of the possibilities of human life? If this last is correct, the real question is not what shall be learned but how and why and to what end. Is learning a venture in spiritual freedom that is humanism, or is it a routine process of animal training? Both cultural and practical knowledge may be reduced to animal training—and they generally are. It is there that the issue between them arises.

To my mind, an educated person is not merely one who can do something, whether it is giving a lecture on the poetry of Horace, running a train, trying a lawsuit, or repairing the plumbing. He is also one who knows the significance of what he does, and he is one who cannot and will not do certain things. He has acquired a set of values. He has a “yes” and a “no,” and they are his own. He knows why he behaves as he does. He has learned what to prefer, for he has lived in the presence of things that are preferable. I do not mean that he is merely trained in the conventions of polite society or the conformities of crowd morality. He will doubtless depart from both in many things. Whether he conforms or not, he has learned enough about human life on this planet to see his behavior in the light of a body of experience and the relation of his actions to situations as a whole. Such a person is acquiring a liberal education and it makes little difference whether he has been trained in philosophy or mechanics. He is being transformed from an automaton into a thinking being.

The antithesis of liberal education and practical training arises in part out of a misunderstanding on both sides of a principle stated in Aristotle’s “Politics.” In this book there is set forth the philosopher’s theory of education. He is seeking for his times just what our practical educators seek for ours—to train youth to deal masterfully with existing conditions. Unlike many moderns he sees that such training applies to the whole personality. This is evident for example in his discussion of music where he considers the general psychological effects of various kinds of rhythm.

There were three important facts in the environment of the Greek youth to which the educator had to assist the student to adapt himself. The way in which the intelligent person faced these facts was the meaning of liberal education in Aristotle’s time. There was first a psychological fact. Popular myth was ceasing to function as an explanation of the processes of nature and as a basis for the control of behavior. Fortunately for the Greeks, no priestly class had gained control of their spiritual life. Stories of the doings of the gods were coming to be regarded as mere poetry, in the modern sense of the term. Philosophers did not hesitate to subject religious beliefs to the judgment of reason. The assertion had been made that “Man is the measure of all things.” A spirit of intellectual freedom prevailed that was unique in ancient times, I might say in any time. There was a disposition to investigate, to classify natural phenomena, to speculate upon their nature and causes. Men were faced with the necessity of thinking their experience through to find meanings which elsewhere were a matter of myth and folkway. Thought must be clarified and made exact if behavior was to be guided by reason. Philosophy, which included the beginnings of science, and education were almost the same thing,—the search for the good life. I will discuss this point further in a later lecture.

The second fact concerning which the Greek youth must learn to behave intelligently was political in its nature. It was the existence of an aristocratic democracy in which as a citizen he must participate with important results for both himself and the state. The free citizen must have learned to judge what is good.

The third fact which challenged the educator was sociological; it was the existence of slavery. This institution, which in the end was one of the causes of the breakdown of ancient civilization, seemed to be perfectly natural to the philosopher. Aristotle thinks that some people are slavish by nature. He has no thought of educating such persons, though they may be trained to perform their tasks well. All should be so trained that they may live happily and well in the stations in life where they are. As most mechanical labor was performed by slaves, and by hirelings whose social status was not very different from that of the slave, the Greeks candidly despised mechanic arts. Knowledge of them was thought to be a slavish kind of skill. Aristotle likewise looked down upon trade and commerce as debasing the mind, just as hard labor was thought to demean the body. The free man must be so trained that his privileges, his leisure and authority over others would make for general human happiness. This education of the free man was called “Liberal Education.” It was the education of a leisure class. It was a training for leadership and responsibility: not a mere initiation into the idealogy of an exploiting class, together with the passwords current in exclusive circles. Neither did it mean—at least for the ancient Greek—the accumulation of dead and inconsequential knowledge the only purpose of which was a pedantic display of erudition. In ages that followed, the study of the classics tended to become something of this sort. But this tendency marked a decline, a loss of the spirit of liberal education as it had once existed. Athenian education, in spite of the institution of slavery, developed men of wisdom and nobility of spirit and civilization of interest in such numbers that ancient Greece became the pioneer of western civilization and has remained the inspiration and guide to men in most of their efforts to attain a life of reason and beauty.

The fact that the liberal tradition had its origin in a society in which slavery prevailed has left traces in education which persist even to the present time. It is one of the things that cause people to believe that there are different types of education proper to different social strata. Education becomes a mark of distinction. It is for the privileged few. It is itself a privilege and a kind of vested interest. There is a higher knowledge and a lower knowledge. In part this distinction goes back to primitive times. In early civilization, everyone learned to do everything which the people of the tribe could do. There was no specialization; all alike learned to fish, to hunt, to fight, to dance. The primitive magic was associated with every human interest and every form of activity, and for every type of performance there was a magic formula. In time it became the special function of the elders and medicine men to remember the formulae and pass them on to their successors. Knowledge of the formulae became the special privilege of the priestly class. Knowledge of labor processes remained with the mass. The former was higher knowledge and developed into ancient wisdom. In certain religions it led to an esoteric intellectualism. The distinction gains emphasis among peoples like the Hebrews, Moslems and Christians whose religion is the “Religion of the Book.” The “Higher Knowledge” is now a divine revelation preserved in the Sacred Book. With each of the peoples mentioned religious scholarship becomes the basis of all learning, and dominates education. Any accretions of general culture which are acquired and added to theology, become tinctured by it. A priestly tradition is mingled with the classic culture as the philosophy of Aristotle becomes elaborated first by the Arabs, and then by the Rabbis and Christian scholars of the Middle Ages. What Aristotle meant simply as the training of the free man in self-mastery, in time became a professionalized “higher learning,” a sequestered scholarship largely unrelated to the existing environment.

Mediæval education became scholasticism. It was still a higher knowledge set apart from other interests: it did not include proficiency in the arts of industry, but rather in book learning and in disputation. Liberal it was not, though it still in a sense had to do with leisure. The good life had become one of pious contemplation. Aristotle’s free citizen was displaced by the cenobite and the candidate for holy orders. The life of Reason became one of skill in the formal logic with which a given system of life and thought was elaborated. Scholastic education made possible a high type of scholarship; it carried very far its training in the subtleties of argument. But it exhausted itself in a world of abstractions which it mistook for realities. It was a discipline, not a voyage of discovery. It was a matter of routine learning by memorizing. Its aim was to mold the mind of the student to a fixed type. It placed him in an environment so manipulated as to determine his habits of thinking once for all, to give support to required beliefs. It was education by indoctrination. It developed a type of mind which could be depended on to do and say the expected thing on the expected occasion, one which would hold certain desired convictions and no others. For such an educational system, learning was accepting and retaining something provided in advance. In this sense it was passive. Mentality was the product of environment. Scholastic education though it dealt with “things of the spirit” was from one point of view “animal training.”

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the scholars of the Renaissance turned from theological education to human letters. A revival of interest in the literature of antiquity became a sort of passion. Those who sought through the study of Greek and Latin poets, essayists, and philosophers to revive the spirit of the lost pagan civilization were called Humanists. They had a philosophy of education very different from that of scholasticism which was at that time on the decline. There was the promise that education might again become liberal, in the sense I use the term. Wherever the “New Learning” was carried it had a liberalizing influence. It roused the hostility of “obscurantists” and created a jolly row in many institutions of learning. It awakened pagan ideas throughout Italy, even in high ecclesiastical circles. It was bringing “refinement” to France. It was receiving something of a triumph in Northern Europe under the leadership of Erasmus, when the Reformation again turned general interest to theology. What the result of this humanistic movement in education might have been had it gone on unchecked no one can say. No one now believes it could have been what its leaders expected. They tried to produce an imitation in their own times of the manners and ways of men who had lived centuries earlier in a wholly different environment. Such an attempt of course is futile. But it is conceivable that as larger and larger numbers of people achieved freedom in the modern world a liberal education might have done in our day what the Greeks sought to do in theirs—lay the foundations of freedom in a well-considered basis of philosophy. In that event the whole of modern education might have been vitalized by a cultural tradition which could take into account the conditions under which modern men live and work without degenerating into narrow utilitarianism and mere mechanical efficiency.

What chiefly survived from the Renaissance—at least in Protestant countries—is the traditional education, in which the ancient classics are taught as tedious drill in language with the aim of improving the student’s literary style, also of disciplining his soul by compelling him to do something disagreeable, and finally so that he may be able to repeat a few Latin or Greek phrases, remember the names of a few ancient writers and perhaps if he has been very diligent, retain a sufficient number of vague memory traces to enjoy a book like Professor Erskine’s “Private Life of Helen of Troy.”

But to call this liberal education requires both humor and imagination. Little attempt is made to get behind the language into literary appreciation, or back of the literature to the ways and values of ancient life and the wisdom of the ages, or to see the relation of such wisdom to the problems of living in the modern world. Traditional education has again become an artificial thing, aloof from reality, a higher knowledge set apart by itself. That is, if one may call it knowledge at all. Most college graduates after a few years do not remember enough Latin to enable them to translate their own diplomas, so badly are the classics taught, even as mere language drill.

Much of the spirit of scholasticism, though little of its thoroughness and subtlety, persisted in the later Protestantism. Its influence necessarily tended to make this teaching of the humanities formal and innocuous. After the Renaissance, members of the nobility and gentry, and later an increasing number of the middle class, sought higher education for its refining influence, as an adornment rather than as a way of life. The result is a culture that is for the most part external to the sphere of our activities and interests, something borrowed, not won; seldom an expression or valuation or glorification of modern life. This also is a routine and a moulding to type. It is again a form of animal training.

The development of science in the nineteenth century led to a demand for the education requisite for modern life. The application of science to industry created a new environment. New knowledge was required and new mental habits must be formed if there was to be effective control. Natural science gave men a new intellectual discipline and a new world-view. With it came a new hope for the race. Mankind need only learn the laws of nature and obey them to become wise and happy and good. The new knowledge dispelled ignorance and superstition and set the mind free. There was much criticism of traditional education, and much faith in the liberalizing effects of scientific training as well as in its practical results. Today scientific research occupies a most important place in education. In many colleges and universities it has almost supplanted the classical studies. No modern person can be really educated without some training in scientific methods.

But science also may become mere animal training. Each science is a profession, acquired as a technical training like learning a trade. Of things outside his own trade the scientist may be quite ignorant and lacking in curiosity. He is often unable to see the significance of his specialty for knowledge as a whole. Within his chosen field of study he may come to resent new discovery—especially if it fails to confirm some favorite theory. In some of the sciences, notably psychology, biology, medicine and the social sciences, there are intense partisan divisions, often rivalling in dogmatism and bitterness, those of theology. Each “school” develops its cult ideas, its jargon credo, and ritual. Herd opinion holds sway over scientists as over other men. Certain phrases and mannerisms are adopted, just as among Rotarians, because they show that one belongs to the crowd. The psychologist today, for instance, must boast his ignorance of philosophy and make a noise like a biologist. The advancement of knowledge is by no means the sole motive in scientific training; there is also much molding to type even though this latter objective is in conflict with the spirit of science itself.

Much contemporary educational philosophy is openly and avowedly a technique of animal training; so much so that it quite properly borrows its pedagogical principles from animal psychology. It would be difficult to over estimate the importance of animal experimentation for modern theories of education. Schools of education are deeply interested in the psychology of the learning process. Education is learning, and learning is habit formulation. Habits are the acquired modes of response of men and animals. They may be organized in the nervous tissue by any environmental factors which “condition” certain reflexes; that is, chain certain responses to given stimuli. It is possible for an animal experimenter or an educator of children to organize the environmental situation in such a manner that definite systems of desired responses may be regularly obtained whenever a stimulus of a certain kind is given. A simple and well-known experiment which will serve to explain what we mean by the conditioned reflex is that of Pavlov. A hungry dog when shown meat secretes saliva. At the time the dog sees the meat a bell is rung. This is repeated a number of times until the dog will secrete saliva at the sound of the bell, without the presence of the meat stimulus. The saliva response, induced by the bell stimulus, is the conditioned reflex.

It is said that all learning takes place after this fashion. An animal, a cat, may be placed in a cage, the door being so arranged that escape is possible only when the cat strikes a certain latch. After a period during which the cat makes all sorts of frantic random movements, the successful movement finally occurs and the cat escapes. The experiment is repeated and perhaps the period of futile activity will not be so long as at first. After a number of trials the cat will give up the random movements and at once unlock the door. The gradual shortening of the interval of time required for the desired response may be plotted. It is then called the animal’s “learning curve.”

Such curves may also be made of human learning processes. It is said that there is no essential difference between this animal learning and our own learning whether it be to swim or play tennis, or to memorize a poem, or solve a problem in algebra, or to master the technique of a profession. One’s education thus consists wholly of one’s organized systems of responses, or habit patterns. We speak of education as the development of personality. But from this point of view personality is nothing but the sum total of an individual’s conditioned reflexes:—that is, it is merely the manner in which the organism has been taught to work. One eminent Behaviorist among the psychologists compares personality to the running of a gas engine.

I will not enter upon a psychological discussion of this view of education, except to say that the method of animal training which is taken for granted is open to serious criticism. The theory proceeds on the assumption that insight into the situation is not necessary to learning. The cat in the cage hits upon the successful gesture as a matter of pure chance. After a number of experiments, each said to place the animal in an identical situation, the successful action becomes “over determined,” and fixed as a habit. It is doubtful whether such training is learning at all. The animal—and conceivably the human being—need never take in the situation. The successful art, the more this learning process is perfected, degenerates into a mere gesture, related to the event in a purely external and arbitrary manner. It is difficult to see how educational methods guided by such a theory could do much to train the student in habits of independent judgment.

Professor Wolfgang Köhler spent four years studying the intelligence of apes at the anthropoid station in Tenerife. His experiments with these animals followed a procedure quite the reverse of that we have been discussing. He arranged his experiments so that there could be no chance and no routine, so that the situation as a whole implied a definite action on the part of the animal, an action which would be natural to it once it gained insight into the situation. From simple tasks he moved to more complex ones, always keeping the moment of insight as the crucial factor in the experiment. An ape is placed in a cage and fruit is put outside beyond the animal’s reach. A stick has also been placed within reach. After vain attempts to reach the fruit with its hand, the ape suddenly sits quietly looking the situation over: it looks from the fruit to the stick, then seizes the latter and pulls in the fruit. Later the animal is required to choose between a long stick and a shorter one, then two sticks are put within reach which must be joined before success may be attained.

From such tasks the animal is led on to those which finally test the limitations of its insight. So far as I know no use has yet been made of such psychological study of animal learning by our educators. But if we must resort to animal psychology in order to understand the processes of human learning it would seem that Köhler’s methods would be more suggestive to the educator than those which assume that the learner is throughout an automaton without understanding.

The so-called “new psychology” has filled modern education with confusion. Fads and fancies of all sorts prevail, each with its psychological jargon. “Progressive” experimental schools everywhere give voice to “modern ideas.” In many such schools there is a minimum of discipline, pupils are encouraged to take the initiative in all things, to study what they like, and when they choose. Everything is made as easy and as interesting as possible, and there is much talk about permitting the student to express himself and develop his personality. So long as we confine our attention merely to the methods of teaching we have the impression that this “new” education is anything but standardized. We get a different impression when we turn to examine the ideals of scholarship, the valuations, and general outlook on life which the newer philosophy of education accepts uncritically. In fact very little thought is given to these matters. The prevailing interests and trends of a democratic, industrial age are taken as the ultimate criteria. It might almost be said that education has come to be regarded merely as a function of the environment.

Now it is one thing to train a mind to deal effectively with its environment and to achieve some value in the modifications which it makes in that environment. It is a different thing to hold that mind is the product of the environment. A well-known psychologist says that the aim of his science is to predict and control behavior. He offers us the conditioned reflex as the means to any desired result, and says that if he could have full control of the environment of a given number of children, he would permit some one to select by lot the future life and career of each child, and he would form the mind of each according to the chosen pattern. Our modern environmentalists have more in common with mediæval scholasticism than they think. The aim of both is to produce an individual who will react under all circumstances according to a prearranged pattern.

Scholasticism, as we have seen, consisted chiefly of memory drill and training in logic and disputation. Law and theology were sometimes studied, but proficiency in such subjects does not in itself mean that a man has acquired a liberal education. He may only have learned to do the conventional trick when the expected signal is given, much like a trained dog in a circus. The same must be said of much modern professional training. The scholastic spirit haunts the legal mind to this day. Also it is possible—perhaps usual—for one to study medicine, and never once get an idea of what medicine means to the scientist. Most people educated by school teachers and college professors are in fact trained in this way. Think of what passes for moral and religious training. With respect to the most important questions in life, people have been so “conditioned” that they do not try to solve problems as they arise, but to say and do the expected thing on occasion. I once heard a professor in a theological seminary instruct his class in the art of visiting the sick. The students were busy copying in their note books the speeches which it is correct for a pastor to make on such occasions. The following is typical of such instruction. “As you enter the sick-room it is well to say When God puts a man down on his back, it is so that he may look up into Heaven.”

In such habit formation, learning is mere repetition. There is nothing of independence of judgment, no reflection on ends, no development of the capacity to deal with new situations. The better one is trained the more automatic one’s behavior becomes. And here we see the limitations to much so-called practical education,—“education for work and for life.”

Yes, but do we live simply to do things and to serve, to perform, however well, the tasks required by our times? Is all the world a stage, and are men merely actors who have learned well or poorly the lines written for them by someone else or dictated by necessity? And is there to be no understanding of the meaning of the part we play, or of the drama as a whole? Is no one through his education to contribute something original to the drama of life?

It seems to me that the animal training theory rests upon two presuppositions, both of which are wrong. The first is that the mind consists of what it has learned, that is, that it is the product of environment. This is really not a psychological doctrine, but a metaphysical assumption. It is the mechanist theory; an idea which works well as scientific method, but which leads to false conclusions when taken as a description of ultimate reality.

The second presupposition is a by-product of present-day industrial democracy. It is that education is a means to efficient service, with its rewards, getting on, general prosperity, etc. But is industry the end and aim of our existence? It is said that man if he is to be happy must be able to express himself in his work. I would not dispute this statement, but it is important to consider what it is that finds expression in one’s work. If work, in addition to being the means to some material end or bodily good, is also to be a form of self-expression, then the point of interest is the kind of selfhood, or quality of experience expressed. Then work exists for education, not education for work.

Something is possible to mankind, which transcends work and by which work itself is valued. As mere craftsmen we lose the sense of what good workmanship is and become the blind slaves of necessity or of desire the moment that education ceases to be the goal of labor. I do not mean merely that we learn by doing. That is the way animals learn and it is all they learn. By repeated performance an individual learns how to do a task, but he does not thereby learn what to do, nor why it is done. Education has to do with insight, with valuing, with understanding, with the development of the power of discrimination, the ability to make choice amongst the possibilities of experience and to think and act in ways that distinguish men from animals and higher men from lower. The ancients thought of education as the attainment of the virtues, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice. It is the pursuit of that knowledge which gives self-mastery. It is an interest which is never exhausted, but grows always broader and richer. It consists not in learning tricks but in developing ourselves. It is a victory won in some secret chamber of the mind which gradually transforms the whole personality and reveals itself as an indefinable quality in every word and act. It is a spiritual awakening; and if this awakening does not come, a person is not being educated however much he knows. I think it is the inability to win this psychological victory, or the disinclination to make the effort necessary to it, that accounts for the fact that some people cannot be educated. Though the change in the quality of the personality is indefinable, it is a very concrete fact in human life. Its presence is evident in the work of writers as different otherwise as Sir Thomas More, Galsworthy, Anatole France, Jonathan Edwards, Henry Adams, etc. There is a quality of the educated mind which may best be described as a kind of sincerity, and conversely the outstanding trait of ignorance is that of clever insincerity. The pathetic thing about the wrongly educated,—those who are trained merely to produce an effect, or get results, is that in the deeper human relationships they seldom know what sincerity is. Education is the antithesis of vulgarity.

Directly and immediately, it is useless. It is a kind of living which is of value for its own sake, a personal achievement which possesses intrinsic worth. It is not for anything. To subject it to an ulterior end—citizenship, efficiency, the economic emancipation of the working class, increased income; or to educate people for “character,” or to perpetuate a religious faith, or any other purpose however good, is to make education a means to something quite irrelevant. Such misuse shows that people are not interested in their education but in something else. Education, the development of people, is not a means, it is itself the true end of civilization.

While education is not for anything, indirectly it improves everything that people do. Make education the aim and meaning of living, and all becomes different. Experience has a new center of gravity. Facts fall into new and more significant perspective. Objects, distinctions, relationships, qualities, are seen which before passed unnoticed. And as personality does not exist in a vacuum but in the relationships established between organism and environment, no improvement of it can fail to make itself felt in the quality of one’s work. Animal training may give one the means to make a living; liberal education gives living a meaning.

CHAPTER III
LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. PROPAGANDA

Whoever is concerned about his education should be on his guard against propaganda. He who assists in the education of another should be doubly cautious. The temptation to convert people to our own particular cause, movement or belief is almost irresistible. An epidemic itch for manipulating the public has infected the whole population. Perhaps never was the business of “selling” ideas and interests of all sorts so common a practice or so cleverly done. Press agents, publicity experts, advertisers and propagandists have become a pest. Much of the news is “treated” for interests which may or may not be disclosed. Militarists, pacifists, prohibitionists, birth controlists, social workers, business interests, anti-vivisectionists, radicals, reactionaries and all kinds of reformers insinuate themselves everywhere like crawling insects. Every legislative body is over-run with lobbyists. Every government, our own included, fights with propaganda as deadly as poison gas. Churches have reduced even the spreading of the gospel to the level of advertising. And to judge by the popularity of one of the vulgarest books ever written about the founder of Christianity, a large number of churchmen are happy to believe that Jesus Christ was the world’s greatest salesman and business executive!

It ought not to be necessary to say that propaganda is not education. But the confusion of the two is common. It is often very difficult to enlist the interest of people even in their own education if the propagandist motive is left out of it. I find that our students are often at first perplexed. They ask me, “What party or creed or social movement do you represent? What are you trying to convert us to?” I have even been asked why I lecture at all, if it is not my purpose to tell students what they should think and do. The idea of a course of study as an adventure in truth-seeking, an investigation deliberately planned without made-in-advance conclusions or ulterior aims, is difficult for many minds. If no partisan motive is apparent, students often suspect that there must be some dark and secret conspiracy. People like to have their instructors labeled and tagged. Otherwise they feel that they are not being given anything. They prefer to be told what to think.

And of course everyone wishes to tell his fellows what to think. The general interest in our neighbor’s “education” rather than our own is responsible for much of the present confusion of education with propaganda. This is especially true in the education of children. Scarcely one person in ten believes children should be told the truth. Children are credulous and easily acquire habits which become fixed for life: hence the tendency to take advantage of their innocence and while giving them the instruction which it is now recognized that society owes them, to add something which certain people wish them to believe when they grow up. Consequently there has hardly ever been a time when education was not to some extent diverted into propagandist channels. Governments and churches and ruling classes and commercial groups have always sought to get their hands on the institutions for the education of youth and utilize them for their own interests. The tendency is universal. Radicals denounce the Fundamentalists, the capitalists and the Catholic Church for doing this sort of thing, and then do the same thing themselves; as for example, in the revolutionary propaganda that sometimes passes as “worker’s education,” the socialist Sunday School, the system of public education in Soviet Russia.

The habit of speaking of propaganda as if it were education has grown with the activities of the advertising profession and other expert manufacturers of public opinion. Anyone with anything to sell “educates” the public to buy his product. The word is so commonly used for advertising that few question the legitimacy of such use. In fact the popularity of this use of the word education has a definite psychological cause. Many people would like to get their education by the easy method of reading subway advertisements. It is pleasant moreover to feel that we are being educated when we glance at the billboards on the way from New York to Philadelphia or look over the back pages in the Saturday Evening Post.

I once heard an editor of a farm journal boast that his paper had educated the housewives of his state to buy cereal in packages rather than in bulk. A recent well-written book on the psychology of advertising by a gentleman who styles himself a “Public Relations Counsel” explains the technique of making propaganda. The author refers to such propagandist efforts as education, and says that the difference between education and propaganda is this: when your side of the case is given publicity, that is education; when your opponent publishes his side, that is propaganda.

It is doubtful, however, if members of the advertising profession are the worst sinners in this respect. Nearly everyone with a cause to promote does the same. We often hear single-taxers, socialists, patriotic societies, or vegetarians, speak of their propaganda as education. In the report on the prohibition situation issued by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, the suggestion is made that there be a campaign of “education” in the interest of the enforcement of the Volstead Act.

Although the educator and the propagandist are both concerned with the dissemination of information, they have nothing else in common. They use contrary methods and they strive for opposite goals. The propagandist is interested in what people think; the educator in how they think. The propagandist has a definite aim. He strives to convert, to sell, to secure assent, to prove a case, to support one side of an issue. He is striving for an effect. He wishes people to come to a conclusion; to accept his case and close their minds and act. The educator strives for the open mind. He has no case to prove, which may not later be reversed. He is willing to reconsider, to be experimental, to hold his conclusions tentatively. The result for which he strives is a type of student who will not jump at the propagandist’s hasty conclusions or be taken in by his catchwords. To the one “learning” is passively accepting something; criticism of the matter offered is not encouraged. To the other, learning comes by examining. The propagandist need have no respect for the personalities of those he manipulates. The educator must respect his student, since the development of personality is his aim. In the end the question is whether people are to be used for purposes other than their own. This is the sole object of the propagandist; its successful achievement is the defeat of the educator.

Even in the service of a good cause, propaganda makes for superficiality in both him who gives and him who receives it. The convert has seen the light. He is on the right side. He need have no more doubts or hesitation. Curiosity and further speculation are no longer necessary. Reasoning henceforth can become special pleading—mere rationalization, an array of clever plausibilities designed to strengthen the faith and protect the devotee against the danger that he may change his mind. He now becomes a propagandist himself, a lay preacher as it were, whose mission in life is to convert and uplift others. He begins to harp on one string. In his eagerness to convince he resorts to the obvious, the thing said for effect. He is more concerned with the force of his arguments than with the accuracy of his statements. He is so busy with the general good that he neglects to purify himself. With unwashed hands he breaks his bread and serves it to his neighbors. I have seldom seen a person who has spent years making converts, who has not lost in intellectual integrity. Emerson noted this trait in the abolitionists of his day. It is a quality which world menders of all types have in common. Sooner or later the passion to convert, like any other passion over-indulged, warps the whole personality. The propagandist becomes intemperate. He loses something in delicacy and sense of humor. There is in his manner a mixture of emotion and coercion and a kind of slyness. Finally from much repetition of stock phrases the great cause itself becomes hackneyed and professionalized. Most of the messages which men would carry to the masses slip through the propagandists’ fingers and dribble out before they arrive at their destination.

I have tried to make clear the differences between propaganda and education. If I am correct, it follows that whenever the educator becomes a propagandist he gives up his proper function. I do not mean that a school teacher should not advocate political change or any other reform he chooses. He is a citizen as well as a teacher, and has the right to express his convictions, however unpopular they may be. But it is not as a teacher that he does so. Ordinarily the public insists that there are certain views that he may not express either in or outside his class-room. At the same time he is required to be the advocate of popular moral, religious and political prejudices, however erroneous he knows them to be. Public education suffers much from this lack of freedom, for it operates to keep independent minds out of the teaching profession. Unless any subject may be presented and every relevant fact discussed without fear or favor, the instruction offered students is a cheat.

It is however in the process of teaching itself that the spirit of the propagandist may supplant that of the educator. It is much easier to appeal to authority than to experiment, to command assent than to awaken curiosity, to tell the student what he must believe than to wait for the maturing of his judgment. There are five devices commonly in use among propagandists which may defeat the effort for a liberal education. They are the fixation of ideas by repetition, the trick of over-simplification, insinuation by appeal to prejudice, distortion of fact, and coercion.

Psychology has taught the advertising profession the selling power of mere monotonous repetition. At one of the stations of the Hudson Tube I counted five posters all displaying the same advertisement of a certain shaving cream. The advertiser had not leased so much space because of extravagance, nor was he afraid that people would fail to notice his advertisement if he displayed it on only one board. It was so large and vivid that the passerby could easily see it. His aim was to deepen the impression by repetition. For the same reason a flashing intermittent electric sign on which the same letters are illuminated again and again is more effective than one with a continuous light. Another example of this method is the poster containing the name of a popular cigarette together with the command, “Read this out loud.”

Advertisement of this nature makes no attempt to argue or explain or persuade, or to call attention to the merit of the article for sale. Many commodities in common use owe their popularity not to the fact that people are persuaded that they are superior to a rival but because a trade word has become fixed in memory through endless repetition.

A similar method is often used in selling ideas and movements. Santayana says, “A confused competition of propaganda is carried on by the most expert psychological methods—for instance, by always repeating a lie instead of retracting when it is exposed. A formula of this nature may not be a conscious lie, it need only be so fixed in the mind by long repetition that it becomes compulsive. The person who continues repeating it becomes unable to consider the facts which would contradict it.”

Thus the religious propagandist will continue repeating an obsolete dogma long after its untruth is a matter of common knowledge. The use which propagandists make of rumor is another example of this principle. During the war we saw much of this sort of thing. The wildest fabrications were accepted uncritically; when everyone was repeating them it seemed disloyal to question their bases of fact. In any political campaign the editorials and speeches are made up largely of repetitions. Popular moral ideas are psychologically similar; we call them platitudes. In fact public discussion which is mostly propaganda of one sort or another consists almost wholly of monotonous repetition. Anyone who has had experience with an open forum will, I think, agree with me that the discussion from the floor—and not unfrequently the platform also—shows an amazing monotony of repetition. I have known men for years to gain the recognition of the chair and repeat the same phrases night after night, no matter what was the subject under discussion. We love routine.

There is I believe less routine learning, less mere memory drill, in our schools now than in former years. I doubt if many students learn geography or history or the multiplication tables or Latin grammar in the manner I was made to learn these subjects. However, it is not in these subjects, which are at best the mere scaffolding of knowledge, that humdrum does the greatest harm. It is in its failure to stimulate genuine thinking about the important human interests that education commonly falls short of its liberalizing function. There is a dullness about sing-song repetition of the multiplication table or the recital of the names of the rivers of China, but it does not equal in monotony the uniformity with which college graduates will say the same things about politics, the protective tariff, the labor problem, the constitution of the United States, or the relation of commerce to culture. I recently heard a professor, who holds an important chair in one of our leading universities say that his institution strove not so much for scholarship as to develop a certain type of college man. No doubt he had in mind a desirable type of man, but any attempt to mould a group to a single form can succeed only at the expense of the individuality of the student. Moreover, such a goal naturally causes the authorities to adopt methods of drill and standardization. Whenever the aim of education is fixed in advance, it tends to propaganda and illiberalism.

The habit of repetition develops a credulous and incurious mind. It produces a type of person who not only accepts his beliefs second-hand, but also tends to over-simplify any subject under consideration, and so never get to the bottom of it as an educated mind should strive to do. It is very convenient to stop speculation with a half-true generalization stated as the conclusion of the whole matter. We love big words; catch phrases are easy to remember and to repeat. Moral and religious teachers know this, hence their use of aphorisms. One does not stop to analyze an aphorism; it is self-evident, final.

Propagandists and advertisers are also aware of this human trait, and they delight in making slogans for us. “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” “Children cry for it,” “Four out of five now lose,” are examples of a type of advertising familiar to all. Recently an effort was made in New York to check the “crime wave” with a slogan. A poster addressed to potential robbers was displayed in various parts of the city containing the words, “You can’t win.” A comparison of the number of convictions with the number of crimes of violence would seem to indicate that this slogan had about the same measure of truthfulness as most others.

Slogans used in commercial advertising are for the most part innocent enough. But there are slogans used in types of propaganda which are not innocent. I will discuss the distortion of fact later; my point is that the type of phrase-making we are discussing tends at best to close the mind. Every movement tends to dry up into a verbal cult with a fixed phraseology the repetition of which seems to satisfy the adherents’ hunger for truth. The thinking of most men consists of little more than the repetition of the phrases which characterize the group to which they belong. There are groups which regularly assemble to listen to their familiar verbal formulas repeated again and again, deriving much satisfaction from the time-worn phrases. Any deviation from regularity or omission of any part is resented in the same spirit that caused primitive men to hold that any deviation from the magic ritual was sinful. It was the observation of this wide-spread trait in many forms that led me to the conclusion that there is practically only one soap-box speech on socialism, one address on the principles of the single tax, one revival sermon, one type of campaign speech for each party. At least I find that most members of any movement all say the same thing. If one knows what kind of an “ist” a man happens to be and is familiar with the ritual of that “ism,” one can ordinarily predict what the man will say on any subject. Frequently propagandists do not recognize their own principles when they hear them stated in ordinary English.

And once the cult phrases are thoroughly learned it is very difficult for an individual to learn anything more. This is why the teaching of any subject should never be permitted to take on a set form, for cult ideas reduce an issue or situation to a statement so simple that it is a mere caricature. Subjects that require exhaustive analysis and deep meditation or much more information than anyone possesses are settled with amazing finality by oracular-minded people. How many matters of vital importance are met with such phrases as “One hundred percent American,” “My country right or wrong,” “Every Bolshevik should be stood up against a wall and shot,” “Plenty of room at the top,” “Reward of Merit,” “Progressive,” “Reactionary,” “The cure for democracy is more democracy,” “Let the people rule,” “Down with capitalist exploitation,” “Labor produces all wealth,” “The demon rum,” “Godless evolution.”

The habit which politicians, professional reformers and other propagandists have of appealing to popular prejudice in order to gain adherents is a well-known phenomenon of social psychology. Every political campaign is an orgy of this sort of thing. Mayor Hylan of New York, when his incompetence was exposed, diverted attention by denouncing the “interests.” In the same city a few years ago those who were opposed to modernizing the public school system stirred up a large section of the population with the assertion that the “Gary School” was a Steel Trust school. During the war men were elected to office not because of their record but according to how strenuously they professed their Americanism and denounced alleged pro-Germans and socialists. A “friend of the people” attacks Wall Street as a matter of course. Any man who questions the wisdom of the prohibition laws is immediately said to be in league with the “liquor interests.” In prohibition propaganda effective use was made of the fact that many brewers were of German descent. In the South the Ku Klux Klan is mainly anti-Negro, in the Middle West it is anti-Catholic. In the East it takes on an anti-Semitic coloring. It is by such appeals that multitudes are marshalled and led first in one direction and then in another, always to the temporary advantage of a group of leaders. Into all this an ulterior purpose, a quite personal interest is often insinuated. During the war I made a collection of advertisements in which all sorts of articles were urged upon the purchaser with the statement that in buying such goods the public was helping win the war.

It is obvious that whenever a crowd movement is created its propaganda has a marked illiberal influence upon institutions of learning. During the war public education in this country suffered seriously. A spirit of intolerance often wholly irrelevant to the winning of the war took possession of many educators. Eminent scientists lost their heads and ceased to behave with that good judgment which people expect of a scholar in a critical situation.

Such results of propaganda are not limited to times of warfare. I know a college where the work of every department was seriously disorganized for a semester by a religious revival in the town. The pressure of religious prejudices upon institutions of learning in this country is one of the most serious forces with which education has to contend. The hostility in the West and South toward the teaching of any other account of the origin of man than that contained in the book of Genesis, is not new. It is merely the giving of legislative support to religious dogma which strikes us as new. And that has also happened many times in history. Popular religion has always watched education with jealous eyes. However, there is one factor in the present Fundamentalist attack upon the theory of evolution which seems to have escaped general notice. There is revealed an attitude toward education in general which should give us concern because it seems to be held by many people who are not rural Fundamentalists. When those who conceived of teaching as imparting a doctrine—let us say of special creation or the authority of the Bible—found that students were being made acquainted with biological science and its various hypotheses regarding the evolution of species, they could not understand that science could be taught in any other spirit than that of theology. They still thought of teaching as imposing upon the uncritical student mind a system of belief, a rival creed but still something alleged to be a final truth, which must be accepted on authority. Persons who speak in this manner of teaching simply do not know what education is. How could a scientist go about teaching evolution in this way? Nobody but a propagandist ever teaches a theory. The scientific laboratory itself is a witness against such a philosophy of education. Here the student is exposed to the phenomena to be studied, and to the sources of information and is aided to discover the facts for himself and draw his own conclusions. Science learned by any other process is a mere pretense to knowledge. I suspect it was not the doctrine of evolution so much as permitting the student to draw his own conclusions from the facts that most disturbed the advocates of popular religious dogma. Yet few people saw the issue in this light. At the Dayton trial of the instructor who broke the statute passed by the legislature of Tennessee, chief emphasis seems to have been laid on the issue whether after all evolution is contrary to Genesis. Most people seem to have accepted without comment the Fundamentalist notion of what teaching is. The whole meaning of education is involved in this issue. Education is not the substitution of new creeds for old. Appeals to popular prejudice will continue to do harm to education so long as it is conceived of as “teaching” any beliefs whatsoever. As long as students are to be indoctrinated, naturally every group will wish its own propaganda taught.

In this connection I should say a word about adult education. Those engaged in this branch of instruction are loud in their criticism of the propaganda which passes for education in school and college. Many of them have turned to adult education in order to spread some propaganda of their own. Teachers in this field are constantly tempted to yield to the prejudices of their students in order to gain popularity and keep up attendance. Each type of institution or special group has its peculiar prejudices and will insist that the instruction given in its classes be so presented as to lend support to its interests and beliefs. Where churches maintain classes, adult education will tend to take on a certain color. It will assume another in the trade union, still another when the appeal is to radicals. We have already seen that a school of adult education may be in fact a socialist theological seminary. Many others merely provide continued employment for people who had been professional Americanization propagandists in the hectic years that followed the war.

A favorite method among propagandists is distortion of fact. It is difficult for anyone who takes an intensely partisan view of a situation to be honest with himself or careful about matters of fact. Respect for the truth is, I think, an acquired taste. And the propagandist is a special pleader. There is always the tendency to load the dice, to over-emphasize anything that lends support and to gloss over and explain away any fact that might weaken the case. Rumor, allegation, mere surmise, will, if it happens to be useful, to put out as fact established beyond the possibility of doubt. An excellent example of this practice is a statement recently issued by a committee of one of the large Protestant denominations attacking both the Governor of the State and the Mayor of New York. On the occasion of the latter’s visit to the South I quote a sentence or two.

“The South will be interested to know Mr. Walker’s connection with New York’s odorous prize-fighting game and with those elements in New York which are doing their best to murder American standards of morality.... Let it remember the propaganda which is systematically organized to incite to crime in the South and West in order that the prohibition law may be overthrown by these criminal activities.... Let it remember that Governor Smith and his friends were the first political group in America to introduce a religious issue into a convention of a political party, an atrocious thing to do in a country where all religions stand on the same basis.”

Note how the impression is given that the Mayor’s alleged sympathy with those who wish to repeal the Volstead Act is a connection with propaganda systematically organized to incite to crime and undermine American morals. The reference to Governor Smith is typical of much propaganda.

This method of championing causes is so common that it is almost impossible to get at the truth about any public question. I have very little interest in what is happening in Russia. If I had, I should not know what to believe. Spokesmen for both the Bolshevists and their enemies seem to be about equally unable to tell the truth.

The pursuit of knowledge is the pursuit of the truth about something, and since propaganda is not the pursuit of truth, its influence upon educational institutions is illustrated by many of the text books on American History in common use in the Public Schools. When attempts were made to write the account of the American Revolution with fairness to both sides and, in the light of established fact, certain over-patriotic propagandists became much excited and thought they had discovered a pro-British conspiracy to deliver this republic again into the clutches of the British monarchy.

Subject matter which is even remotely associated with popular dogmas of religion, morals, patriotism, is likely to be modified so as to appear to be in harmony with such dogmas when presented to students. Each religious sect has its own version of Church history. Radicals who wish to hold the environment—hence the present social system—responsible for human failure, are always inclined to accept uncritically the biological doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters. Patriotism makes it almost impossible for students anywhere to gain a correct knowledge of the history of their own country. The moral interest inevitably influences the study of literature. We have already discussed the teaching of the classics. Their educational value consists chiefly in opening windows upon a way of life very different from our own. It broadens our sympathy with all that is human to gain an understanding of men who were inspired by ideals often the contrary of those held sacred in our own parish. Yet it is just this educational value which is commonly lost in the teaching of the classics, especially in Puritanical communities. The least significant books of antiquity, writings like Caesar’s Commentaries and Cicero’s political orations, are often selected as required studies. It is not an accident that the works most commonly studied are those least shocking to conventionally minded people, not those which give the student the best account of ancient civilization. Likewise in the teaching of modern literature, there is so much expurgation, censorship, evasion, that most students get the impression that literature is produced by Sunday School teachers for the edification of very nice people. If, as many believe, it is best to protect younger students in this manner, I think they should at least be led to understand what is happening. Otherwise they are likely to leave school convinced that their own one-sided and somewhat infantile view of life and letters is the correct and only possible view and so influence the public authorities to enact legislation establishing censorships over literature and art, designed to impose their own limitations upon everyone.

Finally when opportunity is favorable or occasion requires it, most propagandists will resort to coercion. History has revealed this fact again and again. It has often been said that the martyrs of today are the persecutors of tomorrow. With the possibility of the seizure of power in sight, methods of moral suasion become irksome; they are too slow. Men must be forced to do what is good for them. Propaganda is designed to gather a crowd to the support of an idea. I have shown elsewhere that when the crowd mind appears any group will practice coercion if it can. Hardly a generation passed after the Edict of Milan, setting Christians free from persecution, before the Christians themselves practiced persecution. The French Revolution set up a guillotine in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. New England pilgrims of religious liberty persecuted Quakers and other “heretics.” Radicals proclaim their faith in industrial democracy, free speech, the brotherhood of man, and the Bolsheviks gain power by a coup d’etat, and hold it by means of a policy of terror. Santayana says that the many propagandas which today float in the blue sky of liberalism are only waiting to show their true colors and resort to open attack and that whoever is victorious will make an end of liberalism. When physical force is not in actual use, it hides just around the corner. In much moral suasion there is a note of intolerance and of invasion. The man who knows he is right puts you always on the defensive.

Even commercial advertising frequently reveals this spirit. Perhaps advertisers got the idea from the posters used by the government during the war. We all remember the commanding figure of Uncle Sam, finger pointed at our faces and beneath the figure the words, “You buy Liberty Bonds.” Many advertisements now seek to command in such a manner. We are ordered to buy this and that—not asked if we want it. Or our privacy is otherwise invaded. I recently saw on a subway platform an advertisement of soap which contained these words, “Are you clean or only nearly clean?”

When a crowd of world reformers becomes a crusade, men do not confine themselves to asking impertinent questions. They are not even deterred by constitutional guaranties of personal rights. The storm rages until it blows itself out and leaves behind only the debris of what before had been good feeling among men. When a crusade is on—and there are usually several going at the same time in a democracy like ours—educational institutions are pressed into its service, and are forced to take sides, or at best maintain a precarious middle of the road policy. This is not the task of those interested in education. They are not “in the middle of the road.” They are not on the trampled highway at all. Their task, while others are wrangling over unreal issues that today take their toll of life and tomorrow are forgotten, is to keep the lights of civilization burning, to humanize their own behavior with reasonableness and good taste.

As Emerson said, history has been mean: all nations have been mobs. The populace runs after this passing cause and that popular hero. To the populace your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standards. But there is a time in each man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better or for worse. All men preen themselves on the improvement of society and no man improves. Society never advances, it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society is a wave; the wave moves forward, but the water of which it is composed does not. Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.

Such a suggestion as this at once meets serious objection. It is contrary to the habits of this busybody age. Many will ask, how can we have done with propaganda? We live in the age of publicity and organization, of causes and needed reforms. Great movements challenge our complacency and invite our support. What, without these interests, could we live for? How could we accomplish anything for the common good? Is not the educated person as you depict him aloof and ineffective, a monastic sort of person who disdains the common ways and devotes his days to idle contemplation? And have you not yourself said again and again that intellect does not exist as a sequestered, inactive thing or end in itself, but that thinking is a part of doing? How then can intellect be trained in indifference to the affairs of men?

But I have not argued that one seclude himself. Is there nothing to occupy the modern man except to stuff himself with half-truths and regulate society? Does existence lose its value at the mere suggestion that man mind his own business? What I have said is that a person cannot educate himself by filling his head with propaganda.

I do think people of our age are too much devoted to causes and not enough to their own education. Perhaps I should say that people’s devotion to causes is too narrow, too impatient, too uncritical. Doubtless we should serve our cause better if we stopped to look before we leap. I am not sure that ignorance, however devoted and active, ever accomplishes much good for mankind.

I might ask in turn, do our propagandas often get the results expected? Look at pacifist propaganda, or the slogan about the war to end war, look at socialist propaganda today after a half century and more of it, consider prohibition. The intellectuals of our generation have exhausted themselves running after this and that new sociological magic. And there is a general feeling of frustration and futility. Where progress has been made in our times, it has been in matters that do not lend themselves easily to propaganda; success had been achieved in the arts and sciences. Intellect has failed when playing at leadership of social movements.

The ends sought by propaganda may be and often are good. But education is also an end. We are not required to occupy ourselves with any cause to the extent that we fail to educate ourselves. The first social obligation of any man is his own education. I am a mere muddler and a nuisance if I act on the principle that I have any obligations to society that go beyond my knowledge of means and ends and of good and evil. Social service should be a by-product of education. I do not imagine that Socrates or Erasmus sought education in order that they could be more useful to society. Social obligation or no social obligation, you and I have the right to such education as we have the native intelligence to acquire. We have that right because we are the kind of animals we are. No cause is more important than this. Let us serve where and when we can, but let us not surrender our mental integrity for any man’s sake.

CHAPTER IV
LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. BOOK LEARNING

Is education something one can “get” in an institution? We are seeking to discover what an educated person is like,—as Plato would say, to “find” the educated man. Whether the learning process takes place in an institution or out of it is from this point of view a matter of small interest. I should like to picture the liberally educated individual as a mellow amateur, competent and well-informed, but with all natural and human, wholly at ease with his knowledge and master of his technique; one whose thinking is play and whose mind does not squeak as it runs along. But there frequently appears in educational circles a professionalism that is rather formidable and terrifying. I do not mean the specialized knowledge requisite for the so-called learned professions. One may be highly trained professionally, and like William James and Mr. Justice Holmes, retain the spirit of the amateur always. By professionalism I mean a certain artificiality of manner, bookishness, over-strictness in regard to petty rules, a disposition to identify education with the display of just that knowledge which the educated are conventionally supposed to possess. Many people think of education as something “high-brow,” a fastidiousness which belongs to the élite. There are those who give the impression that education is a thing of books and schools and formalities; and that there is a recognized fraternity of the finished products of the system. As proof that one belongs to this fraternity there are degrees and credits which show that the candidate has passed certain examinations and has done a required amount of reading. We have seen that people may seek education because they hope it will give them a certain prestige. I once heard a man say, “I’d give ten thousand dollars if I only knew Greek.” I wondered why Greek had such value in his eyes. I learned that he had been in the company of two elderly men, one a clergyman and the other a physician. He was humiliated because of his ignorance when the two fell to discussing some Greek text reminiscent of college days. It never occurred to him that he could secure a few text books and acquire this coveted knowledge in his spare time whenever he chose to do so.

People persist in thinking that education comes to a man by virtue of his attendance at some place where it may be “got.” We frequently hear someone say, “I had so many years of Latin,” or “I took mathematics,” or “I did not get much history.” Formal education, which is book knowledge acquired in a school,—this possession which men measure and grade and standardize,—may or may not be an aid to general culture. The thing I mean by liberal education is too elusive for the man with the yard stick.

With the modern theories of learning there has come some difference of opinion regarding the educational value of books. Traditional education consisted almost wholly of book knowledge. Knowledge of the books written about a subject was rated as familiarity with the subject itself.

There is a recent tendency, both within and without institutions of learning, to skim over as many as possible of the latest books. This leaves little or no time for the great books, knowledge of which is essential to a liberal education. In the library of a very up-to-date writer on sociological and economic subjects, I did not find a single book, except a few school texts, written before nineteen hundred. Modern writers all seem to desire to express the movements of the day. But it is difficult to see how one’s judgment of the present can be very sound, if one has no background of the cultural traditions of the race. Ideas of life gained from an exclusive study of the present are necessarily second-rate. Professor John Erskine says, “To live only in the moment, to imagine only one’s own place was once thought to be the fate of the stupid. We have made it the ideal of education.... No college is liberal which trains its students to identify the excellent or the important exclusively with the contemporary.” He says that education should prejudice us in favor of authors who are wise, and that there have not been many great men nor many great ideas. One may acquire a liberal education from the reading of relatively few books. “The Student ... ought to know Hobbes; he ought to know Pascal, and Plato and Bacon and Homer, and Spinoza and Galileo, and Leonardo da Vinci.”

And I would add that anyone pursuing his education ought to know Erasmus and Montaigne, Butler’s “Hudibras,” and something of Hume, Voltaire, Anatole France, and the best of the classic poets. This is not a great deal of reading. It can moreover be done in a leisurely manner, and this is important. Our modern habit of cluttering up the mind with all sorts of second-rate, up-to-date printed matter accounts in part for the jumpiness and hectic quality of the modern spirit. No one seems to take time for quiet reflection any more. Everyone is too busy keeping up-to-date, gaining a superficial knowledge of the latest thing, and before we can pause to separate the true from the false in it, it is already out of date and something still more “modern” is the fashion.

There is a tendency among very modern educators to reduce book learning to a minimum. It is said that book knowledge is only hear-say, second-hand information. The student does not make a fact his own so long as he must take someone’s word for it. What books tell you prevents your finding out for yourself. You know an emotion only when you feel it, a fact when you deal with it, a truth when you discover it. “We learn by doing.” A leading progressive educator says, “The school of tomorrow is going to get away from mere reciting what has been got from books. That is, we are going to give up the notion that the school is the place where we assign certain set tasks and the child goes off and prepares those things and then comes back to convince us that he has done what was required.... In the school of the future, the child is going to live, really live. This means what he learns he learns because he needs it then and there.”

This rather extreme form of protest against formal book learning is really an attempt to correct the opposite extreme. We all know persons, conventionally educated, who substitute reading for living, and the book for reality. There are those who never talk about events or ideas, but always quote what some book says about them, as if they believed that work, love, joy, pain, became fit subjects of contemplation only in print. The world of actions and things gives way to a world of words only. Human existence becomes a sort of grown-up children’s game of authors. Education becomes an evasion of the challenge of real situations. Emotion and fancy are exhausted in doing nothing. It becomes preferable to read about things than to experience them. The individual thinks he has acquired wisdom; he merely has a taste for reading and a good memory.

In these days when educators are frantically striving to find some new method of teaching which will save democracy from mediocrity, it is the habit to blame the older education for any and all intellectual futility. I believe, however, that futile persons would be ineffective no matter what the method of instruction. The statement quoted above to the effect that in the schools of the future the children are going to live and are to stop reciting required lessons and learn what they need “here and now,” is a little like the platitude that one can learn more out of life than out of books, a saying which always flatters the illiterate. It seems to be thoroughly modern to believe that the best way to get an education is to stop studying and just live,—whatever that is.

I am of the opinion, however, that anyone who can learn from life can also learn from books without spoiling his mind. There is a difference between learning from books and merely learning to repeat passages from them, and I had thought that in really learning from books one was learning from life. Whether one can get more information from books than from things depends somewhat on the books, also what it is one wishes to learn, as well as one’s capacity to learn. Manipulation of objects—doing—has no more educational value than repeating words. Either may become a mere routine exercise. Education is the organization of knowledge into human excellence. It is not the mere possession of knowledge, but the ability to reflect upon it and grow in wisdom. It would seem that as few people acquire wisdom from practical experience as from books.

The high-school educated multitude, which prefers the radio to reading, finds the tales of classic literature tedious except when presented in the “movies,” reads history only in outline, and natural science only when popularized in a series of ABC books, is probably correct in its feeling that books cannot teach it much; and what it is learning from life is manifest in the sort of life it lives. The habit of reading good books, ability to know the good ones from the inferior, capacity to enjoy books for the beauty and wisdom that may be found in them, are essential parts of a liberal education. A school that implants good habits of discriminating reading in its students is a good school. One that fails to do this is a bad school. The modern educational system has taught the public to read,—and the public reads mostly trash.

That education in a so-called democracy may be official and professionalized and at the same time superficial and illiberal is manifest. Thomas Davidson, a pioneer teacher of adults in this country, expressed great hope in the promise of public education in America. But there is one fact about such intellectual life as there is in this country which seems to have escaped Davidson’s attention, I suppose because his own case was an exception. It is a fact which I believe may be one of the causes of the small influence which learning exerts in the daily life and thought and preferences of our people. Thousands of people say that their education is of no use to them in later years. It is an interest which they do not keep up but leave behind at the school-house door. They think that education belongs properly in the school, and except for some practical advantage most people seldom think of making any cultural achievement of their own outside the school. Most advance in scholarship in this country is the work of professionals, members of university faculties. Outside the institutions of learning, there is very little independent creative thought. Exception must be made of our literary men, but these too are professionals. There are almost no men of leisure who carry on the progress of civilization as educated amateurs. In this respect we are much like Germany before the war, where advance in scholarship was almost confined to the universities and the attempt was made to create knowledge by the machinery of organized research.

An example of the situation in our country is to be found in the fact that almost every member of the American Philosophical Association is a Ph.D. and a teacher of philosophy in a degree-granting institution. It might almost be said that philosophy, beyond the merest introduction to the subject, is studied in order that students may become teachers of still other teachers. I suspect that a similar situation exists in other learned societies. This confinement of scholarship to the professional student leaves the public without guidance and at the mercy of quacks. It causes a break between education and other interests which the public school strives in vain to bridge over, because in such a situation the school itself becomes official and sequestered. Thus education is constantly being done up in little packages and sent out from the places where it is grown, like the garden seeds which Congressmen used to send to their constituents and which nobody planted. Education does not take root because nobody plants it. People think that culture is the special function of the professional gardeners, and there are even educators who would be astonished and jealous if they saw anything but elementary scholarship growing at large outside their walls.

In this respect, it seems to me, Great Britain has had the advantage. Many of her greatest contributions to science and philosophy came from outside the regular university faculties. Such men as Hobbes, Milton, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Spencer, Mill and Darwin may have received conventional training, but they went out and did something with it afterwards. They helped create an ideal of the educated man which we have yet to gain. Hence Great Britain has had many amateur scholars who were also men of affairs, men like Mr. Balfour and the Haldanes, whose influence has helped keep education from being over-professionalized.

Some of the highest educational attainments in history have been reached without the setting up of any institution at all, in our sense of the term. Protagoras, Socrates, and Abelard simply gathered groups of fellow students about them who lived for years in their company, first as disciples then as assistants. Such education to be sure was for the selected few, but after a man had spent some time with his teacher, he acquired a philosophy which changed his way of life. The modern attempt to educate everyone really educates hardly anyone. The public school imparts a certain elementary instruction—in eight or ten years about as much as a normally intelligent youth could master in two years if he set his mind to it. In matters of taste and standards of value, public school education makes little difference; or in developing thirst for knowledge, tolerance, independence of judgment. The task of giving instruction to the youth of an entire community is so great that thoroughness is almost impossible. The task falls to the state, and the state is a vested interest and the protector of other vested interests, interests which are not always consistent with the desire for knowledge. There are factions in the community which the public authorities must conciliate. We have seen what can happen to the teaching of biology and history when such factions become organized to control the public education of a state. Public servants are nowhere eager to have education so free to pursue its proper function that there is developed an alert and critically minded public to whom they must justify certain of their practices. What the state desires of education is soldiers, reliable voters, law-abiding citizens, contented working men, prosperous traders. Hence a spirit of docility and credulity, often of timidity, prevails in the school.

Where there are large numbers in attendance, the individual student receives little personal attention. The education of backward students is sometimes given more consideration than that of the normally intelligent. The chief aim is to get the student through and pass him along to the next grade, and the pace at which the instructor moves is set by the mediocre. Whether this state of affairs will be remedied by the use of intelligence tests remains to be seen. At present mental measurement is a sort of fad. The system requires that all shall learn the same lesson in the same manner at the same time.

Standardization develops a kind of mass mind, which in mature years renders men very susceptible to crowd appeal. Learning imposed upon the student by the system is put on the outside like a mental uniform. Habits become stereotyped in the elementary, non-reflective aspects of behavior and knowledge. There is little in this to guide the student to the spiritual values of a liberal education. Most of those who pass through the system never know that such values exist.

The public school system is a great bureaucracy with autocracy at the top and deference to authority all the way down through the hierarchy of superintendents, principals, and instructors, to the students. The administrator holds dominion over the teacher. Little is left to personal initiative. Any system which requires little responsibility of its employees but much deference to petty authority in time comes to be filled with persons to whom such servitude is not irksome. Serious scholarship is rare. The teacher is not encouraged to independence of judgment concerning the subject which for years it is his work to teach. Teaching becomes a trade and is practised with as little intellectual interest as most trades. Other than idealizing the existing situation together with whatever persons or interests control the school system, little attention is given to the social setting into which the school sends its students when they leave.

Dr. Kallen says, “Free public education and private instruction purchasable at a price are both but the community’s device to meet present needs by transmitting the past unchanged. They provide a grammar of assent, not a logic of inquiry. The mental posture they habituate the youth in is not the posture of reflection. The mental posture they habituate the youth in is the posture of conformity. They require belief, not investigation. They impose reverence for the past and idealization of the present. They envision the future as a perpetuation of the past, not as a new creation of it. They are Main Street’s most powerful instrument of self-reproduction without variation.... They enable government both visible and invisible to continue by consent, for they forestall and inhibit in the citizens of the land the technique of doubt and dissent which is the necessary condition of good government and the true inwardness of that eternal vigilance so notoriously the price of liberty.”

Here and there, in spite of the system, someone gets his feet on the path which leads to liberal education. But in general it cannot be said that the public school has realized the dreams of those who in the early nineteenth century hoped that free universal education would place democratic institutions on the solid foundations of enlightened public opinion and general respect for truth. It was believed that the curse of ignorance would be removed; that humbug and insolence would be driven from the control of affairs; that labor would be ennobled by understanding, and freedom secured by the attainment of self-mastery. All were now to have access to scholarship; the precious wisdom of the great minds of all times, no longer the possession of the favored few, should be made to live in the daily experience of the nations.

We are not so utopian in our hopes for the future of society as were the Humanitarian idealists of the nineteenth century. Perhaps people have expected too much of public education and have required too little. We need not be astonished that the education of the public is committed to a system which becomes an end in itself; that is human. Nor need we be astonished that public education is administered and carried on by persons most of whom do not know what education is; that is the democratic way of dealing with public affairs. If you are to get your education, whoever you are you must not be content to let it be a public affair. You must make it your private affair.

Severe criticism of both the public school and the university is common. There is much talk about capitalistic influence, and the denial of academic freedom by prominent business men who contribute to endowments and constitute boards of trustees. In so far as this criticism comes from professional radical propagandists it need not be taken very seriously. Such persons merely want their own propaganda included in the curriculum. University presidents no doubt often play politics and do other things common to professional money-raisers. Faculties are often little more than pedantic trade unions, and if we are to judge the colleges of the country by the number of first-rate scholars who graduate from them or by the extent of their influences as a whole on the cultural standards of the country, we may well question whether higher education in America succeeds any better than the public school.

But I wonder why so much criticism is directed at trustees and faculties and so little at the students. The habit of constantly denouncing someone because we are not better educated is rather ludicrous. If our people really desire education they can have it. If I am dissatisfied with my ignorance, I may seek knowledge at any time, and no one else, in or out of college, can ever gain wisdom for me. Anyone who has kept up his interest in his education after graduation knows that what is learned in school and college is at best a small part of it—merely the beginning of an education. Anyone who does not continue his studies through the years of a busy life and thinks that the brief introduction to the tools of scholarship which he received in his adolescence is education, should apologize to his college, not criticize it. Granted that there is much bad teaching, there is more bad studying,—or I should say, hardly any studying at all. Professor James Harvey Robinson used to say, “A college is a place where there is much teaching and no learning.”

Is it not possible that a large portion of the population cannot be educated? Such persons are not all necessarily dull, they may be naturally uninterested in education, and it is likely that many enter institutions of learning with the mistaken notion that it is education they desire, when what they really want is success, a good time, and a little training in what they think are the manners and ways of speech of polite society. The finishing school once supplied this need; now the colleges have to do it.

The motives which lead people to seek college education divide the students into three types. First there are the few who love learning. The spirit which once caused groups of young men to follow Abelard or Erasmus still brings an occasional youth to college. Such students may need guidance, advice and the fellowship of mature scholars. It is not necessary to force them to study, or offer them “snap courses,” or cram them for examination. Much of the procedure and regulation—the regimentation common in institutions of learning—is unnecessary and sometimes harmful to them. Most of them would become educated persons even if they never saw a college class-room.

A second type of student attends college and university in large numbers. The motive is preparation for a professional career. Many of the best students belong to this type. Whether in addition to their professional training they ever gain a liberal education—we have seen that the two are not necessarily the same—will depend largely upon what they do after they get their degrees. If they then have an interest in educating themselves, their technical training ought to be an advantage, for most of them have learned how to study. But so much purely technical knowledge must be drilled into a man’s head that the student who is preparing for a degree in engineering, law, medicine or scientific research has very little time for anything else. Many of the most successful physicians, engineers and scientists need adult education quite as much as do ordinary working men.

The third type, the majority of undergraduate students, are for the most part pleasant young men and women of the upper middle class. Their parents are “putting them through college” because it is the expected thing to do. A man wishes to give his children every advantage. While a bachelor’s degree is not exactly a social necessity, there are many who would have something like an inferiority complex without it. I knew one family in New York City who almost went into mourning when the only son failed in his Harvard entrance examinations. Students of this type enjoy four happy years, largely at public expense, with other young people of their own age in an environment designed to keep them out of mischief. I have no doubt this grown-up kindergarten life is good for them; most of them seem to appreciate it. In later years they remain enthusiastically loyal to Alma Mater, coming back to football games and class reunions and contributing to the support of the college. As alumni their influence is not always on the side of progress in education, but perhaps they make up for this failure in other ways.

I am prepared, moreover, to say that the existence of hundreds of centers filled with such care-free young people may be a good thing for the country. They keep alive a tradition of good cheer and of man’s right to happiness in a country that is otherwise sordidly commercial. A leisure class is a social necessity for it serves as an example to other people showing them how to enjoy their idle hours. The English aristocracy with its horse races and other out-door sports has done much to make life interesting to all classes in that otherwise factory-ridden country, and its example has been followed by people in other lands. Now about the only leisure class we have in America is the undergraduate student body. A privileged class is always popular with the rest of the population in a normally constituted state. And so the whole country enjoys vicariously the amusements of its undergraduate boys and girls. The college youth with his automobile, his pipe, and his big fur coat is a favorite hero in the motion pictures. Moreover, the fact that the period of loafing is limited to four years is a blessing, for by taking turns a greater number may enjoy the privilege than the industry of the country could possibly support in permanent idleness.

But while all this may be good for the country, it is not very good for the colleges. It is bad for the morale of any institution to sail under false colors, and colleges are popularly supposed to be educational institutions. The college faculties themselves must to some extent share this popular delusion, or else they would not permit the public to go on believing it. The attempt to live up to this erroneous idea puts everybody under a strain, students and faculty alike, and is the one unpleasant thing about college life. Instructors are forever annoying the students, trying to get some work out of them. Attendance on classes is required, and a series of examinations is arranged which nobody enjoys and which do no good anyway. They only make it necessary to send an occasional student home, and then there are tears, other students are frightened and sometimes lose sleep cramming for the next examination, and the instructor loses popularity, especially if his course is an elective one.

It is among this type of undergraduates that “campus opinion” has its origin. Campus opinion is distinctly hostile to learning, and it holds sway over students with the same tenacity as other crowd ideas among the uneducated elements of the population. The student who takes his education seriously loses caste and is regarded as a joke. Few young people are sufficiently non-gregarious to stand out against the scornful laughter of their fellows.

What the average student gets from college, then, is an opportunity to complete his adolescence in an interesting and healthy environment, the experience of being away from home and on his own, and fraternity and club life—pleasant in itself—in which friendships are formed that last through life and are often useful business connections in after years. There is also athletics, through which the student may develop his muscles, gain the desirable moral quality of good sportsmanship, and satisfy any ambition he may have to become a college hero. One always becomes famous in college outside the class-room, never in it. Incidentally, if a student is naturally clever at picking up bits of information with a minimum of reading, he gains a bowing acquaintance with about as much knowledge as should be the possession of one with a fair secondary education. Finally, he forms certain habits and acquires certain manners and tastes which mould him to the type of the average college graduate, and goes out in the world to take his place in the social and business circles of his home town, where, if he should ever mention Aristotle, people would think he was crazy.

The college graduate can play a good game of tennis, wear his clothes well, talk about the latest novel, walk across a room with grace and dignity, and share the club opinions of his set, and there is nothing offensive in his table manners. I do not mean to underrate these accomplishments. The person who does not have them, however great his achievement in scholarship, is a boor, too lacking in sensitiveness to assimilate the knowledge he has stored in his head. But these are accomplishments that should be learned at home, as a matter of course; colleges ought not to be necessary for training of this sort.

Wherein the education of the average college graduate fails of its true ends is seen in what might be called the deeper things of the spirit. No profound intellectual passion has been awakened, no habit of independent judgment formed. The college man shares the usual popular prejudices of his community. He runs with the crowd after the hero of the hour, and shows the same lack of discrimination as do the uneducated. He votes the same party ticket, is intolerant along with his neighbors, and puts the same value on material success as do the illiterate. His education has made very little difference in his religious beliefs, his social philosophy, his ethical values, or his general outlook on the world. Like all opinionated and half-educated people, he jumps to hasty conclusions, believes what others believe, does things because others do them, worships the past, idealizes the present.

In contrast with this, let me quote a passage from John Stuart Mill. The author meant it to be a description of the scientist. It stands as a suggestion of what a liberally educated mind should be.

“To question all things;—never to turn away from any difficulty; to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism; letting no fallacy, or incoherence, or confusion of thought, step by unperceived; above all, to insist upon having the meaning of a word clearly understood before using it, and the meaning of a proposition before assenting to it;—these are the lessons we learn ‘from workers in Science.’ With all this vigorous management of the negative element, they inspire no scepticism about the reality of truth or indifference to its pursuit. The noblest enthusiasm, both for the search after truth and for applying it to its highest uses, pervades those writers.”

When all is said, the ignorance and folly of men are things that institutions cannot cure. Each must discover the path of wisdom for himself. One does not “get” an education anywhere. One becomes an educated person by virtue of patient study, quiet meditation, intellectual courage, and a life devoted to the discovery and service of truth.

CHAPTER V
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF DOUBT

The seventh book of Plato’s Republic begins with the Parable of the Cave. To show “how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened” the philosopher draws a picture of human beings living in an underground den, all of them from childhood chained with their backs to the light so that all they can see is moving shadows cast upon the opposite wall. This world of shadows is the system of popular beliefs. To these people “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadow of images.” Plato tells us to imagine what would happen if the prisoners were released and disabused of their error. If any one of them is suddenly compelled to turn and face the light, the glare blinds him and he suffers a sharp pain. If he is reluctantly dragged up into the outside world of sunlight he is at first dazzled. After he is accustomed to the new vision, all reality will appear different. He will see the difference between shadow and substance. He will know that popular belief is error. If now he should return, what a difference there would be between his new wisdom and that which in the den passed for wisdom! “And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows, and to remark which of them went before and which followed after, and which were together, and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think he would care for such honors and glories?—And if there were a contest and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den and while his eyes were yet weak,” we are told that he would fumble and be ridiculous, and men would say, “Up he went and down he came without his eyes,” and they would pass a law that no one should even think of ascending any more or try to release another and lead him up.

I will not discuss the metaphysical implications of this parable about which there is dispute. Plato says we shall not misapprehend him if we interpret this upward journey as education. Whoever would face the light must turn his back on the crowd and its shadows. He must climb into another world of values. The educated man thinks differently. His beliefs are different from those of the herd. He is being set free from its delusions, even from what it holds to be important. This is not because he wishes to be aloof or superior, but because he is gaining a different conception of what believing itself is. He has a new approach to things in general, new habits of judging. He is beginning to form his own judgments, and to judge is to weigh, to consider, to question, to seek evidence, to doubt.

Common men cherish their naïve faiths and ask no questions. They imagine that education is simply greater information of the same sort which they also possess in some measure, and that it is the part of wisdom to establish the reality of their shadows. They resent a wisdom which is different from their own and unsettles belief. He who acquires information without the will to doubt is a common man and his kind understand him. Hence men tend to display their information and conceal their education. However much a man may know, so long as he does not become re-oriented, the crowd does not suspect him, but admires his learning. He is like a former Mayor of New York in his high hat at the head of the Policeman’s Parade. The multitude used to stand with their mouths open gazing at him. Each in imagination saw in the exalted figure himself risen to a place of honor and success. So it is with the “brainy man.” The “lightening calculator” or the man who can recite from memory the population statistics of the cities of the United States is a museum wonder. But when it was announced in a New York theater that only twelve men could understand Einstein’s theory of relativity, I am told that the crowd hissed.

Information is a kind of skill. Everyone can possess this skill to the extent he chooses, and people do not resent an exhibition of unusual skill of such a nature. In America most men and boys have some measure of skill at the game of baseball, so this game is the popular national form of sport. The skillful professional ball-player is simply one of the common boyhood ideals realized. He differs from the spectators of the game in degree, but not in kind. He plays the same game they all played, and is the same sort of person they all were as boys—only more so. So with most kinds of information, the amount one may acquire makes only a quantitative difference, not a difference in kind. But as a man becomes educated he discovers that he is playing a new game; he is becoming a different kind of person, with different likes and dislikes, different interests, different ideals and faiths, and such beliefs as he has he holds differently.

What the multitude most fears in education is the danger that the crowd faith will be lost in the process. This fear is often justified. Old beliefs will be lost and they should be. The fear appears in consciousness as solicitude for the spiritual welfare of the person being educated. It is really anxiety over the menace of education to herd living and thinking. It is the function of education to lure the individual out of the pack and give him opportunity to know his own mind, a thing he can never do so long as he runs and barks and bites along with all the rest. To return to Plato’s figure, every person who climbs out of the cave not only loses his own faith in the reality of shadows but weakens the faith of those who remain behind. Cave men make strenuous efforts to resist education. Their common practice is to maintain their own systems of pseudo education in which no one is permitted to turn his eyes away from the wall.

Again, education has been likened to leaven. When it is honest it is very much like yeast. Before the culture is introduced the solution of ideas is in equilibrium. The mind has simply accepted what was poured into it by parents, teachers, priests, and politicians. In the solution there is reflected a compact, “still,” neatly ordered little system of knowledge. “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” Duty is clear, all is conventionally arranged, truth is eternal and logic can prove it. Human rights are decreed by the founders of the republic. The course of destiny is disclosed to reason and faith and the promise sealed in divine revelation. At this stage, most minds are carefully sealed up or a prophylactic is stirred in, for if those sugary solutions are exposed to a live spiritual culture they begin to “work.” Then they are spoiled for certain purposes. With the fermentation there is sometimes foam and gas; but a chemical change is taking place, brewing a mind with a “kick” in it. It is interesting that bread and wine and education are all made by a similar process; hence an educational Volsteadism has often been enforced so that many of the best minds have had to be “home brewed.”

Professor Dewey somewhere speaks of education as freeing the mind of “bunk.” It is a large task. No one wholly succeeds. I never saw a completely “debunked” individual. Strive as we may to eradicate it, there is always in our thinking an amount of error, of wish-fancy accepted as objective fact, of exaggeration, special pleading, self-justification. Many of our beliefs are not founded in reason at all, but are demanded by some unconscious and repressed impulse in our nature. Men make a virtue of their faith when in fact they are victims of it; they can no more help believing certain things than a neurotic can stop a compulsive habit.

It is said that it is easy to doubt and that to believe is an accomplishment. It is not so. It is easier to believe than to doubt. The things we must train ourselves to doubt are as a rule just the things we wish to believe. It is children and savages and the illiterate who have the most implicit faith. It is said that unbelief is sin. This is not so; it is nobler to doubt than to believe, for to doubt is often to take sides with fact against oneself. Nietzsche said that this trait is characteristic of “higher men.” It was Huxley, as I remember it, who considered that man could in nothing fall so low as when he deliberately took refuge in the absurd. Even with a rationalist like Huxley doubt is not merely a function of the intellect. Under certain circumstances it is a moral necessity.

The pursuit of knowledge is not the same, however, as scrupulous avoidance of error. He who strives to do his own thinking must accept responsibility for himself. He must expect that he will make mistakes. He may end in total failure. He must take his chances and be willing to pay the cost of his adventure. I know professional scholars who are so afraid they may write or say something which their colleagues will show to be wrong that they never express an opinion of their own or commit themselves to any downright statement. Such equivocation and qualifying—playing safe—is not what I mean by doubt. I do not mean merely that one should be always on guard against the possibility of error, but that one should learn to hold all one’s beliefs with a half-amused light-heartedness. Most minds are loaded down with the seriousness of their convictions. Solemnity in the presence of our eternal verities is awkwardness, and makes us always a little ridiculous, giving us the appearance of one about to shake hands with the President. Why not enjoy the humor of the situation? Our great truths may all the while be “spoofing” us. It will do no harm to give them a sly wink now and then.

Crowd men have no sense of humor. It is very difficult to educate solemn and opinionated people. Like Omar, they always come out by that same door wherein they went. I have known students to complete a course of study having learned nothing, because of their disinclination to consider any fact which might cause them to surrender some belief about religion or economic theory with which they entered. Whoever leaves an institution of learning with the same general outlook on life that he had when he first came might better have employed his time otherwise. He is not a student; he is a church-member.

A well-known reformer says in his autobiography that his education, to the present time, has been a long process of “un-learning.” The progressive disillusionment began in college when he was forced to abandon the religious dogmas of his childhood. It continued through a series of hard experiences and misdirected efforts to improve the world from each of which he reaped a harvest of doubt, leaving behind the exposure of one economic or sociological fallacy after another, until in the end he had left only his faith in Woodrow Wilson and in the proletariat. Then he lost Wilson.

Perhaps one who still has the proletariat is not utterly disillusioned. If the education continues that too may go the way of earlier beliefs. It is one thing to despair of a society only one section of which can stand the test of our idealism. It is quite another matter if one is led to re-examine one’s idealism. It is this latter kind of doubt which has the greater importance. The significant thing is not the particular belief which a man gives up or retains but the manner in which he believes what he does believe. Change the latter and you change a basic habit pattern; you change the man.

Not all scepticism has educational value. There is a kind of doubting which is merely the negative response of the unteachable, the suspiciousness of the wilfully ignorant, the refusal of the incurious to examine disturbing and challenging evidence. There are, as an eighteenth century philosopher said, minds that are moulded to the form of one idea. Many people, after they have accepted one idea, tame it and keep it as a sort of watchdog to frighten all other ideas away. This refusal to be convinced may appear to be scepticism; it is only stubbornness. The late Mr. Bryan and his followers were very sceptical of evolution. But this hostile attitude is very different from the scepticism of those scientists who hold that the theory is a mere working hypothesis which is yet to be confirmed. The scepticism of ignorance is motivated by the desire to save an old faith. Savages have been known to exhibit this incredulity toward certain aspects of our more advanced knowledge. If you were to tell the natives of Borneo that there is no dragon in the sky which eats up the moon during an eclipse, that there are no spirits and no magic, I imagine they would laugh in your face and think you a fool. Many a discovery and invention has been greeted by a grinning and incredulous public even in civilized society. The scepticism which has value is that which leads one on to further study and investigation. And it is characterized by intellectual modesty.

Philosophic doubt is not the pitiable condition of the soul that timid spirits imagine. It is not pessimism or cynicism, but a healthy and cheerful habit. It gives peace of mind. Men who stop pretending can sleep o’ nights. There is a certain scepticism which is in no sense the spirit that denies. It is a frank recognition of things as they come. It is almost a test of a man’s honesty, among those who have stopped to think about the nature and limitations of our knowledge. Certainly cultivated people do not exhibit the same degree of cock-sureness as do the ignorant. People think the old saying about “doubting the intelligence that doubts” is funny. Popular audiences will always laugh at it. But why not? It is a platitude that the more a man learns the more he realizes how little he knows. Existence is filled with inscrutable mystery. To none of the profound questions that we ask of it is there any final answer. We must be satisfied ultimately with surmise, with symbol and poetic fancy. Speculations about the soul, God, the ultimate nature of reality and the course of destiny, and as to whether existence has any meaning or purpose beyond our own, or whether our life itself is worthwhile—all these speculations and many others of similar nature lead to no conclusions in fact, and we return always to the point from which we started. The very terms in which we put such questions are often meaningless when closely examined by the intellect, and the answer to them is determined by our own moods.

There is a general belief that science can answer the riddle. But science is only one possible view of things, the one best adapted to the needs of creatures like ourselves. It cannot deal with questions of value. It can tell us how things operate, their relative mass and positions in space and time, but it cannot tell us what they are in themselves, nor why they exist nor anything about their goodness or beauty. The more exact scientific knowledge becomes, the more closely it approaches mathematics. Pure mathematics deals only with abstractions and logical relations and can dismiss the whole world of objects. Science presupposes the data of experience and the validity of its own logical principles. It substitutes its mechanized order of things for things as we experience them.

Human reasoning is partial in all its processes. We think successfully about things when we ignore all the aspects or qualities of them except those which are relevant to the purpose at hand. The H₂O-ness of water is no more the ultimate nature of water than is its wetness, or its thirst quenching quality. That it is H₂O is only one of the things that may be said about water. Now if we add together bits of one-sided and partial scientific knowledge, we do not thereby gain a sum total which is the equivalent of reality as a whole. We have a useful instrument for dealing with our environment, because in thought we have greatly simplified it by ignoring in each instance all that is irrelevant. But what we now have is a universe of discourse, a human construction which is what it is because we are always more interested in some aspects of things than in others.

All our ideas are views—they have been likened to snapshots. The world of which we are part is in flux. It comes to us as process, and our intellect does not grasp the movement any more than we can restore the movement of a man running by adding together a series of photographs. The movement always takes place between the pictures. Intellect is an instrument, not a mirror. Our world is not reducible to a form of thought, and when men speak of truth, reality, cause, substance, they are really only saying what they mean by certain words. The world, as James said, has its meanings for us because we are interested spectators, and so far as we can see none of these meanings are final. Whitehead and others have shown that some of the basic concepts of physical science which have held sway since the seventeenth century are now subject to revision. Santayana says that knowledge is faith—animal faith. It would be strange if it were otherwise, if hairy little creatures such we are, whose ancestors lived in trees and made queer guttural noises, should so organize human discourse as to be able to say the last word about reality as a whole. It is well that we should marvel at our achievements of knowledge, for they are man’s noblest work; but let us remember that human reason, itself a phase and part of the process of nature, can only view the whole process from its own partial standpoint, and that is enough unless we aspire to infallibility.

Man is a disputatious animal who loves to speak like Sir Oracle. Uneducated people, ashamed of their ignorance, commit themselves hastily and cling to their commitments, for to change one’s mind is an admission that one was mistaken. We wish to be vindicated as having all along been in the right. Hence it is more natural to contend for a principle than to test a hypothesis. The ego becomes identified with certain convictions. We feel ourselves personally injured if our convictions are subjected to criticism. We are not ordinarily grateful to the person who points out our errors and sets us right. But if our education is to proceed, we must get over our delusion of infallibility.

This fiction of infallibility is very common, and those who have not learned to doubt this fiction, who are sure that they have the truth and are on the side of the right are as a rule the more ignorant and provincial elements of the population. It is no accident that Fundamentalism, prohibition, and other forms of moral regulation exist in inverse ratio to urbanity and have their strongholds in rural communities. People to whom it never occurs to ask how they know so clearly they are right when better informed people have doubts on the subject, are the ones who naturally strive to coerce their neighbors. To many minds there are no social or moral problems. The answer is always known by the crusader. It is very simple. To him there can be no two opinions. The standards which prevail in his own parish, the self-expression of his own type, are the will of God. Principles of right and wrong are known immediately without reflection or regard to the situations where they are to be applied; they are revealed to conscience. “Right is right and wrong is wrong everywhere and forever the same!”

Men who hold such a view learn little from experience, and this is why crowds never change their minds. They have first to be disintegrated and a new crowd formed about new standards, because each crowd represents its will as a divine command, a matter of eternal principle.

To learn anything from experience it is necessary to take into account the results of our behavior. But when you do a thing merely because it is demanded by a universal principle which must be vindicated at all costs, or because it is a divine command to be carried out with unquestioning obedience, you need not consider the results. Hence you cannot be shown that you were mistaken. In this sense men’s gods and their a priori ideas have the function of preserving their fiction of infallibility. There always appears what Professor Overstreet calls the proclamation of “the One Right Way.” Differences of opinion are held to be not mere differences of point of view, but the difference between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil. Those who think differently are the wicked, the ungodly, the enemy. They must be convinced by being vanquished, silenced. Every knee must bow and every tongue confess. There is no longer a meeting of minds in the search for truth. The triumph of the Right is in the belief of the average man a knockout. There must be no compromise; any attitude other than intense partisanship is disloyalty. One in a discussion must line up for or against a proposition, take sides, have a ready answer for anything that the other side says, and be sure that nothing will cause one to modify one’s views. Is any one ever convinced by public debate? Or does one emerge from a church quarrel, a political campaign, a session of the legislature, a convention of a trade union with a broader outlook or better understanding?

The egotism of the ignorant keeps them in ignorance. There is an amusing notion that the masses are kept in ignorance by clever conspirators against freedom and progress. The average man’s reasoning consists chiefly of the repetition of cant phrases in support of preconceived ideas. He wishes to hear only what he can applaud, and he applauds what saves his face and puts his enemies to shame. Theological disputation has always been carried on in this spirit, and so have most popular discussions of morals, politics and economic problems.

Professor Overstreet says that this “One Right Way” attitude is essentially adolescent. This does not mean that it is essentially youthful. Adolescence is the period when there is normally an exaggerated emotional interest in the ego. A delayed adolescent type of mentality is common. Psychologists speak of it as narcissism,—a fixation of interest upon the idea of self. Among psychopathic individuals and also among crowds this narcissism is very dominant and leads to exaggerated notions of self-importance and to other fixed ideas. Inability to entertain any doubt of self becomes inability to question any idea which one would like to believe true. Hence the delusion of infallibility. I think that vast numbers of otherwise normal people are made susceptible to crowd thinking because they simply do not know that there are ways of life and thought different from their own which good people may and do honestly hold. Crowd appeal at once entrenches prejudice and flatters the ego, compensating it perhaps for any half-conscious feeling of inferiority it may have because for instance a man over-rates school education and “did not get it.”

It is interesting to note how this delusion of infallibility may often lead men to believe and assert the most incredible fabrications. I quote from a recent New York newspaper an exaggerated example which will illustrate what I mean.

“The League of Nations has been asked to do a lot of strange things by people all over the world, but it remained for a New York business man to request action on the most unusual topic of all. Announcement is made by the league secretariat that it has received a letter from the New Yorker declaring his opinion that ‘brain enslavement,’ otherwise known as spirit writing or receiving messages from the dead, is the cause of many evils. He said he wanted the league to stop this system all over the world, making the specific charge that the American courts of ‘so-called justice’ are controlled by the spirit movement.”

Note the last sentence; the “specific charge” is very typical. There is not the least notion that so sweeping an indictment should be supported by evidence. It must be so, for how can the alleged tolerant attitude of the courts be explained otherwise? An explanatory idea is asserted as an established fact. Here we have a mind incapable of entertaining doubt. As usual in unhealthy reasoning, the thinking in this case is a syllogism. Spiritualism is a form of brain enslavement which is the cause of wide-spread evil. All who do not sufficiently oppose it are controlled by it. The courts do not sufficiently resist it. Therefore the courts are controlled by the spirit movement. If the premises are true the conclusion of course follows logically. The trouble with diseased thinking is not its logic, but its inability to examine its premises in the light of fact. A healthy mind would doubt these premises before reaching such a ridiculous conclusion. Doubt makes for sanity.

I do not wish the force of this example to be lost. Most people will see it so long as we are talking about spirits, for there is much wholesome doubt about the doings of spirits. But let us substitute for spirits something else concerning which surmise commonly passes as established fact, and we have something very familiar. “The American courts are controlled by Wall Street,” or by the Catholic Church, or by British propagandists, or the attempt is being made by labor unions or by Communists. So it is with popular thinking on most subjects. Acquaintance with facts does not seem to be necessary for the formation of opinion. I can easily assert alleged facts on my own authority; it hurts my pride when I am asked for evidence. I once heard a fundamentalist preacher say that everyone who doubted the infallibility of the Bible merely sought an excuse for living a life of sin. Such statements must be true; they are so logical, moreover they justify a man in his fixed beliefs and put doubters always in the wrong. Many people even in their reading do little more than seek confirmation for notions founded on such thinking. The censorship of books is hardly necessary to keep people’s minds in the beaten path. Many people cannot read a book with which they do not agree. We disguise our infallibility under the infallibility of our favorite author. He becomes an authority. We read our own meanings into his text when necessary. We pick out the passages which support us and quote them on all occasions. For instance, a mind saturated with the teachings of Karl Marx will take in nothing else and will view every other author from the standpoint of his agreement with Marx. It is always so with the sectarian mind, whether in religion or in politics.

The sort of logic which we have just been considering leads men to assume extreme positions of all sorts. Opinionated and undisciplined minds always tend to carry an idea to extremes, to jump to a conclusion, to let enthusiasm carry belief beyond the limits of good judgment. This all or none attitude is supposed to be zeal in the service of principle. It is merely intemperance. Education strives for the virtue of temperance, and temperance—which among the uneducated becomes merely abstinence from the use of alcoholic beverages—is the avoidance of rash assertion, and of ill-considered and hasty inference. The temperate man stops to think. Careful thought seldom leads one wild. An educated mind is not so likely to “go off half-cocked.” It has fewer enthusiasms and so accumulates a reserve; a sense of the ridiculous helps it keep its balance.

Most men feel uncomfortable when they must hold their minds open and judgment in abeyance. Judgment suspended gives a feeling of unstable equilibrium, of tension; it is irksome like resistance to temptation. In addition to this discomfort in being unsettled, there is a disturbing feeling of insecurity in the thought that we live in a world in which certitude is rare and difficult. In many situations it is necessary to act before all the evidence is at hand. We must act on faith and take our chances. All men cherish their faiths, but few have the courage to act on faith. We naturally wish to feel ourselves more secure than we really are in a world where much is left to chance. A formula generally believed gives such a delusion of security. The greater the number of those who believe, the more convinced is the average man of the truth of the formula and the more safe he feels.

I think this wish to feel at home in the universe has inspired much of religion. It is also one of the reasons why, as older religions wane, each man must have his “cause,” his social gospel, his movement. These things afford a sense of comradeship in which there is safety. They give one “something to tie to,” something enduring to believe in. And as each cause or movement claims the future and looks forward to sure vindication and triumph, the future becomes predictable and congenial.

This search for an ideal security has had its influence on philosophy. Many philosophers, from the time of the ancient Greeks till now, have sought to construct systems of ideas, verbal forms in which in contemplation they could find refuge from the universal change in which all things come and pass away. Inasmuch as it is possible to think of an object or class and to mean the same even when the objects themselves are no longer present, a system of abstract and unusual universal ideas is set up and thought of as existing in itself, outside the process of time and change. The system of thought so conceived is held to be more enduring than the world of changing objects. The ideal world is then the real world. In it alone is knowledge of the Truth which abides forever. Such systems appear to me to be elaborate attempts to sustain a fictitious security by taking refuge from reality in a logical arrangement of man’s own empty forms of thought. From the point of view of education it should be said that such philosophies require much learning before one can understand them, but they tend to dogmatism and the closed mind.

A modern method of supporting the fiction of security—less austere and sophisticated than some of those of official philosophy—prevails among those who speak the language of science. It is known as mechanism. As scientific method, mechanism is indispensable. It is found by exact measurement and careful scrutiny that given two identical material situations, the same result will follow. There is a certain orderliness about the processes of nature, which if we ignore all else but the movement and masses and temporal and spatial relationships of particles of matter, lends itself to statement in mathematical terms. In this manner events are predictable with great accuracy. And now because it becomes possible for human reason to interpret facts of nature when they are thought of only with respect to mass, movement, position, it is held that nature itself is really nothing but mass, motion, position, etc. The laws and methods of interpretation are thought to constitute the nature of that which is interpreted. A method deliberately adopted in order to give a mathematically rational account of certain selected aspects of nature is now taken for a correct picture of ultimate reality. The reason which measures masses and distances believes it has discovered itself as the true nature of the thing measured. The universe is held to be at once like a machine, and at the same time essentially rational. Security is again grounded in forms of thought.

It is said that all futures are predictable by the new logic of science if we only knew enough about complex phenomena to be able to strip them down to that which can be expressed in mathematical terms. Of course no one professes to be able to calculate the curve of the whole, or to have worked out a quantitative statement of many of the phenomena of life. But it is a scientific faith that it might conceivably be done. This seems to me to be merely saying that we could reduce the universe to reason if we only could do it, which is tautology. I am not sure that a universe so reduced would be anything more than a bare system of thought about only one aspect of the universe. But scepticism here is as distasteful to many scientists as the scientists’ own scepticism is distasteful to theologians.

I am not asserting dogmatically that we cannot know truth or the nature of reality. I am not suggesting that we cannot be educated without ending in universal scepticism or agnostic negation. It seems to me that we have, or can have, such knowledge as will make our intellects fairly adequate instruments in the performance of their proper functions. But I do not see what such functioning has to do with ascribing finality to our beliefs or trying to legislate for all possible worlds. I am not suggesting an attitude of despair in the pursuit of truth, but am trying to state the very reason for any learning at all, for what is the use of it if we know it all before we start?

Education may not end in doubt, but it ends when a man stops doubting. But why speak of the end of a process that should continue through life? As I see it, the process is more often discontinued at the point of some fictitious certainty than in any moment of doubt. Doubt, the willingness to admit that conjecture is subject to revision, is a spur to learning. The recognition that our truths are not copies of eternal realities but are human creations designed to meet human needs, puts one in a teachable frame of mind. And the discovery that thinking may be creative makes intellectual activity interesting. Much has been written by indoctrinators about the wretchedness of the dogmatic sceptic. I wonder how these writers, themselves so innocent of doubt, know so much about him. I have never found such a man. I do not believe he ever existed. There are writers who question things that most men do not even know exist, compared with whom professional “freethinkers” are often naïve. But such writers are often gentle and cheerful spirits whose minds are not at all paralyzed by doubt, but are active, subtle, stimulating.

Humanity during the course of civilization has fixed certain habits, made certain discoveries, constructed certain systems of ordered knowledge by emphasizing the relevant and significant. There is little likelihood that the whole structure will come tumbling about our heads because somebody examines into its nature. In fact the highest achievement of civilization would appear to be a mind capable of understanding our human ways of thinking for what they are. But if our learning should cause us to abandon all our consoling beliefs and ideals and pet theories; if it should reveal human folly in our every great cause, and futility in our every scheme of social reconstruction, even then we cannot for such reasons shirk the task of educating ourselves. There would remain for each of us the ideal of what an educated mind might become; no knowledge could take from us the ideals of courage, of preserving our integrity, of standing undaunted before the challenge to our spirit.

Again a question arises similar to that we discussed at the close of the chapter on propaganda. Does not education, then, cause doubt and indifference so that the educated remain aloof and fail to take their share of social responsibility or participate in the activities of their times? Is it not the mass of “common people” therefore, and not the scholars, which accomplishes the overthrow of tyrannies and achieves progress? In a day when everybody is a professional or amateur reformer and people are led to believe that they can make their lives count only as they participate in some mass movement, it is natural that this question should present itself as we consider what education means.

History should aid us to an answer here. The author of “Our Times,” Mark Sullivan, after giving an account of the partisan strife and popular movements of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, suggests that perhaps all this expenditure of energy and intensity of enthusiasm was but part of the passing show and came to nothing, while the so-called leaders who seemed to be creating history were but the puppets of deeper and silent forces. He suggests that the enduring changes are those of science and the arts. I believe we have here one of the important lessons of history. Progress in civilization has been the work almost wholly of scientists, philosophers, artists, engineers, and unique individuals. The rest has been froth and foam, a struggle to liberate mankind from the clutches of its most recent liberators, crowd devouring crowd, mass movements marching to Utopia down blind alleys. Unfortunately there is some truth in the statement that the intelligence of the race has little influence upon mass movements. This is not because scholarship is aloof, however, so much as because the multitude in its enthusiasms does not heed the counsels of wisdom. When I become a zealot for a movement I lose my critical faculties. In exalting my cause I would persuade myself that my existence is of more importance to the world than it really is. No one so devoted and earnest could possibly be in the wrong, and in the righteousness of my cause, I have infallibility. What need have I of the wisdom that comes by taking thought when I have the truth by intuition and intensity of feeling?

If it is true that men can only be made to act under the lash of blind faith and enthusiasm, then the estate of man is a sorry one indeed. For most of the things done will end in tragic failure. It is only the conceit of ignorance to believe that the world can be straightened once for all by people who do not know what they are doing. Moreover, to say that ignorance is necessary to the accomplishment of good is to say, that ignorance is desirable and better for man than knowledge. There have been those who held such a view. Obscurantists always hold it. It is the philosophy of pessimism, and it is interesting to note that it is the believer and the devotee, the man of action and not the gentle doubter who finally ends in pessimism.

For want of intelligence the devotees of causes have been the mischief makers in all times. We cannot always know who does the most good in the world, but the evil that men do lives after them and it is sometimes possible to estimate the amount of harm done. Who has done the most harm in human history, the sceptics or the believers, the devotees of causes or the devotees of culture and urbanity? St. Bernard with his crusade, or Abelard with his doubts? The men who conducted the Inquisition, or the men who doubted the doctrine of the Trinity? Calvin and the obscurantists on both sides of the Reformation, or Erasmus and the Humanists? Cromwell and his Puritans or Voltaire and the Deists? Robespierre or Goethe?

The devotees to causes have kept human life in turmoil. If the immorality they would cure has slain its thousands, their “morality” has slain its tens of thousands. In most cases the strife has been useless and for causes that might have been won in other ways, really won. The devotee of a cause requires little provocation to practice persecution, and only the opportunity to play the tyrant.

Doubt not only has educational value: it preserves social sanity. I would suggest as part of everyone’s education the reading of such authors as Lucian, Epicurus, Abelard, Hobbes, Montaigne, Rabelais, Erasmus, Lessing, Voltaire, Hume and Anatole France. There is no blood on these men’s hands. They have quietly smiled in the face of bigotry and superstition. In their words there is laughter and there is light. Perhaps no one of them ever intended to be a liberator of mankind. They merely thought and spoke as free spirits, and their very presence puts sham and cant and unction and coercion and mistaken zeal to shame. They have done more for freedom and truth than all the armies of crusading devotees.

CHAPTER VI
A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS

William James said that wherever there is selection among alternatives there is mental life. Man is a choosing animal, and his choices determine both the ends sought and the means to be employed. We will not discuss the question whether our choices are spontaneous or are determined wholly or in part by environmental and hereditary factors. Whatever determines them, our habits of choosing,—the general character of the things we prefer,—reveal the kind of people we are. And as learning is not merely the acquiring of more and more information but is accompanied by a gradual transformation of habit systems, its progress is manifest not merely by what a man knows at any stage in his education, but also by the kind of issue that is real to him, the questions which he permits life to put to him, the sort of temptations he has to struggle to avoid, the kind of goods that are vital to him. When I was a boy my parents used to tell me, “A man is known by the company he keeps.” The saying, while designed to protect youth from the dangerous influence of evil companionship, is not wholly true. Many persons, from ambition or other motives, seek the society of persons unlike themselves. Those who are more gregarious than selective may exercise little choice among their associates. But ordinarily people like to be with their own kind. Criminals keep company with other criminals, golfers with other golfers, stamp collectors with others who have the same interest. We wish our friends to be interested in the things that interest us. Groups long associated tend to become homogeneous. When marked differences of taste and opinion develop, companions drift apart. Hence it is obvious that the company one keeps is determined in part by the dilemmas he keeps.

We do not normally keep the same set of dilemmas through life. Each stage of development presents new challenges, problems, alternatives; as we mature our habits of judgment change. We see things in a different light. What was once a matter of vital concern becomes a dead issue. Our interest is caught and our choice determined by aspects of situations to which we did not react at all at an earlier stage. We do not solve all the problems of any stage, but we outgrow them,—get over them.

Psychopathology today has much to say about the nature and sequence of the dilemmas which at any period haunt the mind of an individual. The matter is so important that I wonder more has not been made of it by those interested in education. The public, it seems, would have the educator fill the student’s head with useful information but expects the student to keep the same beliefs and general outlook on life that he had before. We speak of rising to a higher mental plane; this is little else than learning to wrestle with more and more significant problems. A little girl in her third summer says, “I’m a nice girl; I don’t bite sister now.” To bite or not to bite, to keep one’s self clean, to refrain from crying, are normally the dilemmas of early childhood. If they are not dead issues to a person twenty years old, they may be regarded as psychopathic symptoms. When a mature individual is found wrestling with impulses which should have been reduced to habit and dismissed from consciousness in earlier years, we have a phenomenon which psychologists call “regression,” or “fixation” of emotional interest in mental habits that are normally outgrown. Toward the tasks and situations of adult life, the individual strives to maintain an infantile attitude and hence fails to adjust himself. Sometimes the regression shows a preoccupation with infantile wishes, and sometimes with those of early adolescence; in any case there is struggle to maintain the inhibitions or the defenses which veil the inadequately repressed impulses.

The manner in which lessons learned from experience normally transform an impulse from its expression in very simple and crude dilemmas to its later and more subtle manifestations may be seen in the forms with which people exhibit and disguise their egoism during successive stages of development. When a very young child is beginning to discover himself and his little world, he finds his own body and its functions tremendously interesting. Soon he discovers that certain of his performances command attention. He learns to make use of such performances in order to get what he wants. He will exercise his power over parent or nurse by throwing his toys on the floor again and again and howling until some one picks them up. Long before he condescends to talk, he notices when people admire him and say complimentary things about him. A very young child will do little stunts by way of showing off, and will exhibit irritation if ignored or left alone. He cries out at any restraint upon his movements or resistance to his wishes.

The egoism of everyone retains something of the infantile quality. But family discipline, social experience, and the awakening of powers of observation and thought result in new forms of expression. This ego interest becomes associated with an ideal of self and its importance which the individual guards as his honor, his reputation. Every man is intent upon keeping up his feeling of self-importance; each feels that one so important deserves special consideration. Egoism in normal people becomes to some extent liberated from its infantile interests and is sublimated, that is, attached to ends that are socially permissible. The original impulse remains, but it wrestles with new problems. The wish to be admired is a factor in all ambition, also in romantic love. A love affair is even more a mutual admiration society than a phenomenon of sex interest. The impulse to command which in the nursery led the child to throw toys on the floor for others to pick up, later becomes a desire for leadership, a struggle for political power, a passion for manipulating or reforming others.

We also find the infantile egoism transferred to religion, where it plays an important part in adult life. Many of the very images and emotional attitudes of infancy may thus be kept alive. The believer may still feel that he is loved as the infant is loved by the parent,—loved now by the Heavenly Father. He may again feel that he can have what he desires by asking the father in prayer. Self-importance survives as belief in the immortality of the soul and as assurance of salvation. Thus with development and experience, the same ego interest becomes transformed in the tasks it progressively sets itself, and in widening the range of the ends for which it strives. Each stage of development presents its peculiar problems, its peculiar goods and evils, its possible alternative attitudes toward the values of experience. Therefore it ought to be quite as possible to determine a person’s mental age by noting the kind of things which satisfy his ego interest, as by any other device of mental measurement. In common practice this is the way in which we judge people.

A man stands revealed both by the things he strives to gain and by those he seeks to avoid. The thing that most easily shocks him is usually that which he himself is struggling to overcome. It represents something to which in his secret heart he can say neither yes nor no. His dilemma troubles him. He seeks to avoid the inner gnawing by carrying the fight into the open. He turns his personal conflict into the appearance of a public issue, and you then have the moral reformer. People who repeat scandal, demand laws for the censorship of books and plays, and search through literature intent upon deleting passages they think are obscene, are too much preoccupied with vice and obscenity. They are like those compulsion neurotics who spend their time writing alibis to prove their innocence of the crime they are constantly tempted to commit.

The thing a man must make an effort to conceal always betrays him. We all know the type of person who strives in all things to appear refined, who makes painful efforts for correct speech and proper manners. There are those who are seriously concerned about being in what they call society, and those who read books of etiquette and are disturbed by such important questions as whether when escorting a lady you should take her arm or let her take yours. And there is the man who signs his name with ornate flourish and tries to impress waiters and hotel servants with his importance, and there are the people who are much exercised over the forgiveness of their sins. All in one way or another place themselves on their own level.

The correlation between people’s material desires and their general intellectual interests is so universal that it is used as a guide in placing advertisements. There are “class” papers, each designed to appeal to readers who occupy a certain cultural stratum. The advertising appeals which such papers carry vary with the reading matter. The older, more literary magazines present a sharp contrast both in reading matter and in advertising to the newer fiction magazines. In the first group the essay predominates, with poetry and literary criticism, and only an occasional work of fiction. In the second group there is hardly anything but fiction, with possibly a brief hortatory editorial. Both types are evidently published to interest readers of average wealth. The number of advertisements of automobiles, real estate, and securities and other investments is in about the same proportion in both. But the former group, which is obviously designed to appeal to more thoughtful and intelligent readers, contains a larger number of pages given over to advertisements of books, schools, colleges, places of travel, works of art.

We need not discuss the cheaper fiction magazines. They are obviously prepared for a still different reading public. The public to which the better ones appeal is indicated by the dominant character of the advertising, which consists largely of aids to beauty and correspondence courses in self-improvement. The stories in such periodicals are as typical as the advertisements. Thus it is that in their daily preferences, as truly as in the greater issues of their lives, people select themselves and are segregated into classes, or spiritual types—types which may live in daily contact with one another, yet worlds apart.

Democracy strives to ignore the cultural differences among people. Education intensifies them. The attempt to place everyone on the same mediocre plane, even though it be a level considerably above the lowest, is not education; it is a kind of social work. Education means finding one’s own level. Like all progress it is qualitative and differentiating. Just as organic evolution is a process which can be measured only in the extent of the differences it has made between higher and more complex organisms and lower ones, so with education. It brings out distinctions of human worth, places people on the rounds of a ladder, the gradations of which are discernible in the kind of interests they have, in the quality of their choices, the perplexities they wrestle with and overcome, the tasks and issues they set themselves.

The general advance of civilization is in some respects like that of the individual. We may learn much about the general cultural attainment of any age by noting the issues that divided people at that time and the problems that troubled them. There are all sorts of “cultural lags” in the course of progress, but it helps us to estimate the general intellectual level Europe had attained at the close of the middle ages to learn that whole communities could be terribly disturbed over the question, “What is the evil omen of a comet which suddenly appears in the zenith?”—so disturbed indeed that on one occasion it is said popular pressure forced the Pope to go out and pronounce an official curse upon a comet and command it to leave the sky, which it did much to everybody’s peace of mind. Again, we can form something of an opinion of the mentality of an age in which there is general interest in such a question as “Shall a person accused of witchcraft be put to torture to compel him to testify against himself?” or, “How far may one walk on the Sabbath day without committing sin?” or “Does the doctrine of the rights of man apply to negro slaves?” or “Who amongst us has committed the unpardonable sin,” or “Will a child that dies without baptism go to Hell,” or, by way of illustrating something of the spirit of contemporary America, “Who’s your bootlegger?”

I have said that many of our dilemmas are not resolved, but are outgrown. This leads us to a further observation of their educational significance. Many of the issues which stir a community are insoluble because they rest upon presuppositions which are unsound and so long as the assumption remains unchallenged the issue will haunt men’s minds. When one goes back of the issue and sees the premises to be false, the whole wrangle becomes meaningless. The question about torturing people accused of witchcraft presupposes the superstition that it is possible for an individual to enter into a contract with the devil. Get rid of belief in devils and witch trials themselves cease. So the nightmare about the “damnation of babes” ceases to be a live issue for a mind that has become sufficiently civilized to have passed beyond the primitive man’s terror of Hell. And so I think it is with most popular beliefs and public issues and partisan conflicts, as well as with many of our private dilemmas. As stated they presuppose a disguised error, or are the fruit of factors that remain unconscious. So long as we accept the fatal assumption the issue is real to us. We are caught and held in the dilemma and our educational progress stops.

Progress in thinking, without which learning is mere repeating, comes by examining foundations. The educated mind differs from the uneducated in the insight which enables it to file a demurrer, dismiss the case, or restate it in terms that lead somewhere. It is in getting us over our dilemmas that education frees our minds.

It is often said that the aim of education is to equip the student with a set of principles and beliefs which will serve him through life. Yes, but principles are leading ideas. Their function is to lead us to correct conclusion and right action. They are instruments, not ends in themselves, and they must occasionally be re-tested. They are not final statements of the issues of living. Much misunderstanding and mental suffering—most of our false dilemmas—grow out of popular confusion about principles. Men feel that if they change their beliefs or arrive at unexpected conclusions or resolve their dilemmas away they are losing or compromising their principles. There is no sacrifice of principle in re-stating an issue as a result of better knowledge and insight. There is no defense of principle in a controversial spirit which cares more for partisan victory than for truthfulness. The level on which a controversy is waged is often a matter of greater importance than the victory of either side. If the victory of either means the triumph of the same irrational type of man, it makes little difference who wins. In most partisan and sectarian struggles the principle at stake—if any—is lost sight of in a mass of confusion. It frequently happens that both sides contend for the same “ideal” and base their contentions upon the same mistaken premises. In most cases men’s principles are little more than phrases which justify in their own minds their contentiousness and will to power.

An examination of its presuppositions may transform an issue into a very different sort of problem. There is, for instance, the controversy now raging in parts of America between religion and science. Many educated persons say there is no conflict between religion and science. In their own thought there may be none, because they do not mean by either of these terms what the man on the street means by them. To him religion is a system of dogma based upon divine revelation. He cannot conceive of religion without belief in the stories related in the Bible or belief in the teachings of his church. By belief he means the firm conviction that alleged historical events and miracles happened just as related. He conceives of science also as a body of doctrine according to which the specific teachings of religion are held to be untrue. Stated in these terms conflict is inevitable, a person who has scientific knowledge cannot be religious, and the issue must be fought to the end.

For the thinking mind the problem becomes a quite different one. Science is a method, not primarily a system of doctrine. It is a way of discovering truth which must be followed wherever it leads, and it presents us with the problem of how we are to value and interpret its discoveries. The problem presents itself differently from an ascending series of points of view.

A student who has grown up under traditional religious influences and has probably given the matter little thought, begins the study of natural science, biology or geology, let us say, and learns something of the evidence for the theory of evolution. He begins to speculate upon its implications. He may, as many do, strive in some manner to reconcile evolution with the account of creation set forth in the Bible. After further thought and study this simple device for reconciling science and religion may not satisfy him. He sees that something more than the reinterpretation of a text is necessary. He finds himself striving to reconcile two entirely different world-views. As a rational explanation of the world and its origin, religion is wholly incompatible with science. The student, considering that this is the function of religion, and finding that as a method of giving an account of natural processes religion fails, may discard it, and become an apostle of science, and an opponent of religion, save as a system of ethics. Persons who hold this rationalistic view of religion commonly try in turn to make a gospel of science. Religion is darkness; science is light. Religion enslaves; science liberates. Religion holds progress in check; science is the Religion of Humanity, and the triumph of Reason is the promise of the salvation of the world. This view was widely prevalent in the nineteenth century. It is the stage at which the average person with some knowledge of science breaks off and considers the problem settled. It is an honestly taken position, which often requires no small courage. I hope no one will think me an apologist for religion if I suggest that this is a rather innocent and unsophisticated attempt to solve the problem. It assumes that it is the proper function of religion to explain nature and improve the life of humanity. What a simple and straightforward affair the human spirit appears to be from this point of view. No subtle twistings and turnings, no hidden pitfalls, no twilight regions, no dark secrets.

Suppose now one were to cease expecting religion to do the explanatory task of science, and were also to cease trying to make a new religion of science, is it not likely that the conflict, or contrast, between the two might appear in altered perspective? It is possible to regard both scientific and religious concepts as symbols—figures of speech, each expressive of its exclusive values. In another study, I likened the difference between science and religion to that which exists between the two recognized symbols of the United States of America—the map and the flag. The former is the scientific symbol; it has to do with position, movement, measurement of distance. Maps exist for the intellectual and practical interest. The flag stands for the emotional interest; it has to do with certain historical associations, but is itself no guarantee of the accuracy of any historical tradition. It is poetry.

Once we grant that religion is poetry, a new set of problems emerges. Is the poetry good or bad? What valuations of the possibilities—or impossibilities—of experience are here expressed in these symbols? Which of my ideas about the world are maps and which are flags? Much of the popular conflict of religion and science arises out of general confusion on this point. A super-patriot might conceivably be such a worshipper of the flag that he would resent the disclosure of certain geographical or historical facts which would lead to revaluation of some of his emotional attitudes. Doubtless many Americans have an exaggerated and emotionally determined idea of the history if not of the geography of their country, yet it is unthinkable that they should confuse the flag with the map. But existence as a whole is not so easily surveyed, and such maps as we have of it often extend beyond the comprehension of the average man. In all lower approaches to the problem of religion, the flags which symbolize certain emotional appreciations of the universe are confused with maps of it. In his religion the average man is still an idolator, psychologically similiar to the poor heathen who cannot distinguish between his god and his wooden image. On the popular level, the conflict of religion and science is an elaborately rationalized struggle for supremacy by a type of mind which has not yet grasped the true inwardness of its emotional attitudes. While the consideration of the problem remains on this level, nothing is gained for education. There is mental grasp of the situation when the problem is re-stated in terms of the inwardness of religion and the objectivity of science. And it then becomes possible to form hypotheses which inspire further pursuit of knowledge. New knowledge leads to the better organization of knowledge previously acquired.

We have another familiar example of the educational value of displacing lower dilemmas by higher ones by examination of the presuppositions. For a generation and more many minds have been preoccupied with some aspect or other of the controversy between conservatism and radicalism. There have been so many varieties of opinion on both sides that it is impossible to make a clear-cut statement of the issue or to find any particular group or theory which is representative of either side. From the standpoint of the majority of the United States Senate, the followers of Mr. La Follette were dangerous radicals. From the standpoint of the communists these same La Follette men were conservatives, counter-revolutionaries. In general the conflict has been between those who are interested in preserving the present order of things intact together with its traditions, established institutions, privileges and inequalities, and those who favor some basic changes which they believe will remedy the situation. We will not discuss the merits of either side to this conflict. In some form or other it comes up repeatedly. It is a real issue, but the discussion of it may proceed on various levels of thought, and this fact has something to do with education. Intellectuals believe that their radicalism is the result of enlightenment, while their opponents believe that on the whole education makes for conservatism and that radicals are ignorant foreigners who have been misled by professional trouble makers. The present controversy is not conducive to education in any of its forms, or on either side. It tends to divert education from its true aims into partisan service, and to produce in both parties a fixed and unteachable type of mind. As the case is ordinarily presented, a stupid and panicky conservatism is faced by a superficial and equally intemperate radicalism.

The problem cannot be discussed intelligently, nor can the consideration of it lead to increase of knowledge, until its presuppositions are critically examined, and the whole matter is re-stated in more intelligible terms. It is these presuppositions to which I wish to call attention, for without them the controversy could not have arisen in its present forms. Although there is a great variety of these forms, the same presuppositions are common to all and are usually accepted without question by both sides. The disposition to go back and question the presuppositions is evidence that education is going on. We have some such evidence in recent years for many have modified their positions in regard to various aspects of the social problem.

More attention has been given to the changes of view among radicals than to those which have taken place among conservatives. Since events of recent years have greatly encouraged self-expression on the part of misinformed noisy extremists who appoint themselves spokesmen of the latter group, we sometimes get the impression that conservatives learn nothing. But I incline to the opinion that there has been perhaps an equal proportion of learning by the more thoughtful minority on both sides of the controversy.

Among radicals modification of views has occurred sufficiently to arouse general interest in the questions “What has become of the pre-war liberals?” “What has happened to radicalism?” A former member of the radical group some years ago wrote a book entitled “Tired Radicals,” in which he adopted the usual view that the change of outlook among radicals was the result of the loss of energy and enthusiasm which comes with middle age. But if radicalism were merely a form of youthful enthusiasm, I believe the movement would be more wide-spread than it has ever been in America. The suggestion is worth considering that in some cases the change of views might indicate that the individual has learned something. By learning I mean the better grasp of the subject which comes when one examines the presuppositions of both sides. Conversely, those who have not examined their presuppositions during the last twenty years have learned nothing. They continue talking, but they are addressing a generation that is past and gone. Anachronisms of this sort are common occurrences among conservatives. They occur with equal frequency among radicals. And when a man whose education has stopped leaves the radical movement and joins the opposition, he frequently shows himself to be not an aging prophet who has lost his enthusiasms, but the same intensely opinionated and militant person he was before.

When, therefore, I suggest that a change of attitude toward the social question may be indicative of learning, I do not mean to imply that it is the function of education to turn radicals into conservatives. Rather its function is to give the men on each side a different mental outlook. Back of the controversy as it has existed in our times there is a certain presupposed philosophy which is passing away as education increases, and its passing modifies the thinking of persons on both sides. Humanism in education is supplanting the older Humanitarianism. Interest in cultural values is supplanting the earlier naturalism. Rousseau and Bentham and Comte and D. F. Strauss and William Morris are making way for the coming social psychologists. Social philosophy becomes analytical. The sweeping generalizations of Marx and the day dreams of Bellamy begin to have interest chiefly for the historical student. Democratic dogma, little questioned in the nineteenth century, is now subjected to criticism. A different intellectual spirit is abroad which necessarily modifies the general outlook of those who share in it.

Let us note more specifically some of the presuppositions behind the Radical-Conservative dilemma. There is the Humanitarian doctrine that man is naturally good and daily growing better. All that is needed for his perfection is freedom or opportunity. This assumption is common to both parties, one holding that such opportunity is under the present system granted to all who wish to take advantage of it, the other that under the present system opportunity is granted only to the privileged few and denied to the toiling masses, who are kept down in wage slavery. All the evils of human life are attributed to the present system. Remove the evil system and everybody will be good and happy. There is much talk about “the emancipation of labor.” Both sides assume that social justice is possible, each maintaining that its own triumph is the triumph of justice. And both sides are disposed to estimate the values of civilization and the meaning of personal success in terms of material possession. The good life is the life of the man with plenty of money. We hear much of the materialism and the dominance of business interests today. Everyone is urged to get ahead. A man measures his worth by the amount of his income. Conservatives can see no ground for dissatisfaction with a system which makes for unusual prosperity. Radicals deny that prosperity is universal, say that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, interpret all history in terms of the struggle for wealth, and spread before the masses the promise of abundance with a minimum of toil. On both sides we find that easy optimism which is said to be characteristic of half-educated minds. It is assumed that the evils of the world are only superficial, that they are contingent upon purely environmental factors, and can be removed by legislation or by mass action. Progress is assured. No one doubts that a prosperous and happy life is possible to all if only wealth were properly distributed. As the control of affairs passes more and more completely into plebeian hands and as the tastes and dilemmas of mediocrity come to set standards of value, the world is supposed to be getting better.

This questionable assumption leads to distortion of fact by both parties, and must continue to do so as long as the controversy is kept on this level. I wonder what would happen if instead of merely drawing hasty inferences from these naïve assumptions, it should become the practice to examine them. Perhaps the issue might be re-stated in more significant terms. But what concerns us at present is not the social problem as such, but the fact that the attempt to clear up the intellectual muddle about it means that education is going on.

A glance at the nature of the presuppositions we have been discussing will help us to understand why it is that they are so seldom examined. They flatter. Apart from their radical or conservative implications, such ideas are congenial to the average man. They pat him on the back. It is no small satisfaction to believe that the environment is responsible for all human ills, that evil may easily be removed by mass action; that given material abundance, the good life follows automatically; that distinctions among men are reducible to economic factors; that the supremacy of our own type is the goal of progress. I believe that the level at which one’s education stops, the particular set of dilemmas in which one’s mind becomes fixed is usually determined by some self-satisfying assumption. If my ego can remain elated over the possession of an automobile, or the right to vote, or the belief that I and my kind are or ought to be socially superior, or because I can play the saxophone, or am able to resist the temptation to pick pockets, the problems which have live interest for me will be the problems which lie on these levels. I recently talked with a man who was quite pleased with himself because for some years he had not been in jail. He frequently compared the advantages and disadvantages of life “on the inside” and “on the outside.” To his mind all days and all people were thought of as “inside” or “outside,” a point of view which I imagine few people linger over or find personally gratifying. But the virtues men pride themselves on are as a rule those which compensate them for the particular vices to which they are tempted.

The house I live in had for a number of years been rented to an elderly Scotch woman who kept it as a “rooming house.” When she moved out she said to me, “I hear you are going to do this house over and make it your own home. Some day you may be sitting here and thinking, ‘What use to go on in this house of mine?’ It’ll be a satisfaction to you to know that you are in a respectable place. Never once in all the years that I rented out furnished rooms did the patrol wagon have to back up to this door at midnight.”

The things which people find consoling both reveal and determine the plane on which their thinking takes place. I have heard a young man say with a note of defiance, “Yes, sir, I’m a single-taxer and I’m proud of it.” So involved is the ego in our dilemmas that we often require the assistance of a specialist in getting over them. Psychoanalysts whose task is chiefly that of helping people face certain facts about themselves, speak of their work as re-education. In a sense all education is re-education, the untying of the knots in which our self esteem in its defense has entangled itself. Perhaps nothing is so effective a bar to education as intellectual immodesty. A man’s education stops at the point where he becomes incapable of self-criticism. And because egotism is always a bit ridiculous, the conceited mind protects itself from criticism by making its interests sublime. In the presence of the sublime, laughter is taboo. The subject concerning which man has lost his sense of humor is just the subject concerning which criticism leads to self-criticism. There are persons who cannot take a joke about “The Grand Old Party,” or the Government at Washington, or the teachings of Karl Marx. Recently a group of church men publicly denounced the New York newspapers because of their humorous remarks about prohibition. Once when I was asked for a definition of a radical I seriously offended a prominent socialist with the innocent remark that a radical is a man who loves Labor and hates work.

Lack of humor is always evidence of unteachableness. Ignorance is pompous. The holy tone with which people proclaim their convictions is uncivilized. When the American people are better educated, there will be less solemn pantomime in the land. We could not with straight faces indulge ourselves in the hysterical reforms, the bitter partisanships, religious fanaticism and race prejudice which at present show how seriously we take ourselves. Education should help people make an art of living, and the art of living, like all arts, is play. Learn to play with your ideals, even with your sublimities, and you will break the hold upon you of many a crude and hampering dilemma.

CHAPTER VII
THE FREE SPIRIT

Freedom is not as precious to the members of this postwar generation as it was to some of their ancestors. The nation which once followed the leadership of Mazzini and Garibaldi now suffers a dictatorship with apparently little protest. In England, the stronghold of liberalism, a conservative government places a censorship upon the words of the man who is probably that country’s best-known writer. Socialism has its beginnings in that passion for freedom and humanity which inspired the youth of the early nineteenth century and ends at Moscow with a constitution from which even a Bill of Rights is omitted. In America we now see that democracy does not guarantee liberty. The government shows decreasing respect for the immunities of the individual. Crowd movements spread intolerance and are ever demanding more strict regulation in matters of personal conduct and private judgment. One frequently hears the remark, “The talk about personal liberty is disgusting nonsense.”

There are various reasons for this change of spirit. The individual rather willingly permits himself to be transformed from a private person to a numerical unit in his group or mass because as part of a public he gains power through the force of numbers. Individualism in a society in which every one is chiefly interested in industrial competition tends to become little more than the stock argument of those who wish to defend economic privilege. Other privileges are lost sight of in a standardized world. Moreover, as people begin to see that freedom is not something with which all men are equally endowed by their creator, but is achieved in varying degree, there is a tendency to minimize its importance. We are naturally somewhat suspicious of the freedom of others. Those who themselves have little capacity for it would impose their own limitations upon all others. From childhood onward we wish to be able to do what we see others doing. When this is impossible, there is a tendency to restrain them from doing what we cannot do. Masterful spirits grant themselves privileges which may appear wicked to the crowd. The free mind allows too much. When on the other hand a person who has not attained some degree of mastery declares his independence, we do not speak of him as free, we say that he “takes liberties.”

Thus where the ideals of the educated mind prevail there is a general gain in freedom through increase in mastery. Where the ideals of the ignorant and wrongly educated predominate, there is a decline in freedom and an increase in the disposition to take liberties. It is the custom today to rule out of the consideration of values any reference to the things of the mind, and to try to ground all values, freedom included, on a strictly economic and legal foundation, as if they were produced by and existed only for a brainless and impersonal equilibrium of social forces. We are beginning to see that for a people which loses sight of the inwardness of the sources of freedom, constitutional guarantees do not long guarantee, and each power-seeking group begins to take liberties with the organized life of the community. The so-called liberalism of those modern writers who make apology for this sort of thing has in it little of the spirit of liberal education. It is rather the plebeianization of scholarship. I as a liberal am not obliged to throw my hat in the air over each degradation of value that marks the triumphant progress of democracy.

It is the ideal of the educated man, not the demands of the crowd which is the best guarantee of freedom. I believe we are chiefly indebted to this ideal for such freedom as we enjoy. Education when it is genuine must for its own sake move in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom. It must wander where truth leads the way. It must attain independence of judgment and a certain decent privacy for contemplation. It is in itself freedom from servitude and from routine. It broadens one’s interests and hence one’s sympathetic understanding of others. Nothing human is alien to it. The educated mind, having business of its own, minds its own business. Hence it grows in tolerance. Freedom is always freedom for something,—freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom from meddlesome interference, freedom from the crushing weight of authority and tradition, freedom in matters of religious belief. Every such freedom is largely the result of the influence of education, and each exists in any community in inverse ratio to its ignorance and provincialism.

The classical tradition has its origin, as we saw, in the efforts of Greek philosophers to teach free men the essentials of the good life. It has by no means remained true to its ideal, but each rediscovery of its meaning has had a liberalizing effect. The modern sense of the worth of the individual—which is only recently on the decline—and the humanist philosophy of education alike show the influence of the Renaissance. The eighteenth century, stilted and formal as it was, could with some justification call itself the age of the Enlightenment. It was the age of Voltaire, the age of great educational advance. It was also the age from which we derive most of our pronouncements about liberty and the rights of man. I would almost go so far as to say that when education is not liberalizing, it is not really education but is a highly systematized species of propaganda. This liberalizing quality is so essential to education, and is so clearly a way of the spiritual life, that its presence determines the genuineness of any movement or philosophy that may bear the name Liberalism.

The term “free spirit” has been so frequently abused, that I hesitate to use it. It suggests Rousseau’s Emile, educated to obey only the benign laws of nature and his own impulses. “He follows no formula, yields neither to authority nor to example, and neither acts nor speaks save as it seems best to him.” One thinks of such phrases as Max Stirner’s “Ego and His Own,” or Whitman’s “Spontaneous Me,” or “The Beautiful Soul” of nineteenth century Romanticism. One is reminded of the young woman from Nebraska who came to live in Greenwich Village, New York City, and said her soul felt as if it had taken off its shoes and stockings. The cult of spiritual freedom had quite a vogue in New York a few years ago. I believe it originated in the Latin Quarter of Paris. The devotee of it displayed his free spirit by wearing a flowing tie and corduroy trousers, by his obvious disdain of barbershops and laundries, by his talk which was mostly about sex, socialism and the new art, and by his general air of lassitude and disillusionment.

I believe that this pose, together with much of the sentimental liberalism which passes for “emancipation” among intellectuals, may be traced back to Jean Jacques Rousseau. Nearly all the basic ideas of contemporary liberalism as well as those of the “newer education” frequently associated with the liberal movement, may be found in the writings of Rousseau. It is amusing to hear liberals proclaim these old ideas as if they were the most advanced theories of life and education. And you have but to compare Rousseau with Erasmus or Voltaire or Huxley to see how far away he is from the spirit of liberal education. The latter is tender-hearted and hard-headed. Rousseau is soft-headed and hard-hearted. An emotional egoism feeds on dreams of social revolt and of an idyllic return to nature. Rousseau hates civilization, with its duties and responsibilities. He becomes romantic and sentimental about Nature. His ideal of the free man is Robinson Crusoe. “We are born sensible.” “The natural man is complete in himself; he is the numerical unit, the absolute whole, who is related only to himself or to his fellow-man. Civilized man is but a fractional unit.” “Civilized man is born, lives and dies in a state of slavery. At his birth he is stitched in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed in a coffin, and as long as he preserves the human form he is fettered by our institutions.” Hence if you would educate, “Observe nature and follow the route which she traces for you.” “All wickedness comes from weakness. A child is bad only because he is weak; make him strong and he will be good.” “Keep the child dependent on things alone, and you will have followed the order of nature in his education.” “Do not let him know what obedience is when he acts, nor what control is when others act for him. Equally in his actions and in yours let him feel his liberty.”

“O men, be humane; it is your foremost duty.... Why would you take from those little innocents the enjoyment of a time so short and of a good so precious which they cannot abuse? Why would you fill with bitterness and sorrow those early years so rapidly passing, which will no more return to them than to you? Fathers, do you know the moment when death awaits your children? Do not prepare for yourselves regrets by taking from them the few moments which nature has given them.”

“The only habit which a child should be allowed to form is to contract no habit whatsoever.”

“It is absolutely certain that the learned societies of Europe are but so many public schools of falsehood; and very surely there are more errors in the Academy of Sciences than in the whole tribe of Hurons.”

“Happy the people among whom one can be good without effort and just without virtue.”

I trust that these passages selected almost at random from Rousseau’s treatise on education, “Emile,” do not give a wholly unfair impression of this author’s philosophy of life. Man in the state of nature is wise and good. Civilization has corrupted him by enslaving him. If he does evil it is not because he is bad, but because he is weak. We should not hang the criminal but blame the society which made him what he is.

The proper function of education is to enable the individual—the little innocent—to grow up naturally without discipline, without forming any habits, never sacrificing present enjoyment to future knowledge, inspired always by the ideal of that happy state in which one may be good without effort. The ideal education therefore is the life of the North American aborigine or what Rousseau imagined such a life to be. Freedom here is the return to nature.

From the times of Hobbes and of Montaigne onward there seems to have been a growing interest in “Man in the state of nature.” But whereas with most writers this interest was largely a matter of theory and speculation, with Rousseau man in the state of nature becomes an ideal, a norm.

It would appear that in this dream of the return to nature, there is symbolized an infantile wish to escape from the tasks and responsibilities and restraints of adult life. Psychologists speak of such an “infantile return” as regression. This regressive ideal of freedom is a very different thing from the liberalizing influence of education as I understand it. I have characterized education as a victory won over one’s wish-fancies and childish egoism, as the lifting of the problems of life to higher and more significant dilemmas, as the attainment of mastery. A humanistic liberalism seeks freedom as broadmindedness; it strives for a highly civilized, urbane and sophisticated state of mind in which insight is deepened and interest is widened. Rousseauian liberalism seeks freedom in relaxation of effort, in denial of the claims of civilization, in the idealization of nature and of primitive man.

Many persons who today style themselves liberals are of the Rousseauian type. There are those who proudly call themselves rebels. A certain naturalism is carried to the point of hostility to form as such and to orderliness of any sort. There is frequently a disdain of “respectability,” and a tendency to play the intellectual vagabond. I think this is one reason why certain liberals are much taken with modern imitations of the primitive in art. The element of regression which characterizes the paintings and sculpture of certain “rebels” is patent to the psychologist. Many of these works of art closely resemble the typical drawings of dementia praecox patients. In dementia, regression, or infantile return, is complete and final. The patient is free from a disturbing world, having returned to precisely the “sensibility,” as Rousseau terms it, with which he was born.

Utopian schemes of social reconstruction, and the notion that merely changing the present system would put an end once for all to human misery, are in many cases disguised forms of the wish to return to childhood and thus escape the vicissitudes of adult life in civilized society. The burden of our industrial civilization is so great that it is no wonder many should take this path of escape. However, the utopian fantasy is by no means confined to those who have the hardest struggle. And there can be no objection to it when it inspires well-considered efforts for social improvement. There is a type of “liberal” however, who regards the attempt to solve any concrete problem of civilization as a compromise of his idealism.

Another aspect of the philosophy of Rousseau has influenced contemporary liberalism with somewhat paradoxical results. The basis of that happy state in which one may be just without virtue is elaborated in “The Social Contract.” Rousseau was not the first to hold the contract theory of organized society. Both Hobbes and Locke made use of this idea. But with Rousseau it becomes a doctrine with distinctly illiberal implications. The argument is somewhat as follows:

Man finds it impossible to continue in the blissful state of nature. In order to preserve their freedom, men voluntarily enter into a mutual agreement, according to which each gives over his individual sovereignty and receives back an equal portion of the common will, leaving him as free as he was before. Thus there comes into being a collective sovereign power. All others are of course usurpations and are destructive of freedom. This new sovereign can do no wrong, there is no need to protect the individual against it because it is made up precisely of the wills of all individuals, and the people will not do injury to themselves since each seeks happiness. Such sovereignty, which is really the absolute dominion of the mass over its members, can neither be delegated nor divided, and its exercise is liberty.

But is it? This tree is known by the fruit it bears. Notice that for purposes of this theory, all aspects of the individual will are now denied except those which may be pooled into a sort of group will and drawn out again in equal and identical portions for all men. That is, society is transformed from a plurality of individuals to the unity of a mass. Man acting as a mass unit takes precedence in all things over man acting as a private person. Privacy is gone. Liberty is not personal independence, but the freedom of the group to do what it wills unchecked. Mass action can do no wrong. According to the logic of this view no proper bounds may be set to the rule of “the people,” except such as the sovereign will itself chooses to set. Accordingly, liberty becomes the rule of all over each in any matter whatsoever concerning which neighbors choose to restrain or meddle with one another. This means that myself as person must in all things take orders from that attenuated public-meeting self of me and of other men which we have each received in equal portion from the mass will. Everything unique in me is whittled away from this mass-self and I count only by virtue of my membership as a numerical unit of the group. And now since any check or hindrance to the sovereignty of the mass is seen as an unjustifiable restriction upon its liberty, there is a tendency to extend the tyranny of the mass to every possible human concern. The demand for liberty is no longer the assertion of the right of private judgment for those capable of exercising it; it is “Let the people rule.” No wonder men come to distinguish between personal liberty and the rights of The People. The idolatry of the mass turns freedom inside out.

So much for theory. In common practice each majority tends to regard itself as the sovereign will and play the tyrant, all in the name of liberty. Each militant minority and struggle group in society seeks by hook or crook to capture the machinery of law and force its will upon the public, and in the effort to make its own group will the sovereign will, the members of each group persuade themselves that in thus resisting restraint upon their particular mass movement they are fighting for liberty. A spirit of factiousness spreads through the community, restriction and regulation increase and multiply, all in the exercise of crowd-liberty. If your crowd is now in possession of social power, you are called a conservative. If it is still struggling to make its will supreme, you may call yourself a liberal. It is an ironical turn of history that brings it about that many restrictions upon the freedom of the individual are advocated in the name of liberalism. Liberalism shades off into a form of radicalism which would set up a dictatorship to accomplish its ends. Many people use the terms interchangeably. Radicals in recent years, as the illiberal aims of the movement unmask themselves, tend to repudiate the name liberal, and to denounce the liberal as one who having started out along a certain road, hesitates or turns back at the last minute. Such liberalism finds itself in the difficult position of having proposed measures which it hesitated to carry out. It is embarrassed by its own radical offspring.

Such liberalism has little in common with that which is the aim of liberal education. As it appears in contemporary America, it is a sort of abortive mass movement caused by the mingling of two social philosophies which for want of better terms I will call the Lockean and the Rousseauian traditions.

John Locke wrote his essay on Government at the close of the seventeenth century. This book together with his “Essay on the Human Understanding,” did much to shape the thinking of the eighteenth century, and made a strong impression upon Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Jefferson and other leaders of the American Revolution. The “self-evident truths” set forth in our Declaration of Independence clearly reveal this influence. I do not wish to imply that Locke was the author of American liberalism. He merely has his place in a tradition which goes back to Magna Charta and is essentially British. The quarrel between the colonies and the ministers of King George was a phase of the greater struggle between Parliament and the crown. For centuries the Englishman has stood up for his individual rights, has stubbornly resisted any attempt of the sovereign to invade his privacy or to seize his property without his consent. The Englishman is naturally jealous of his government. He looks upon it with suspicion and seeks to limit its exercise of power. He gives it no peace until it guarantees him security from interference with his personal freedom. Jefferson’s remark that that government is best which governs least is typical of the spirit of British liberalism. It was this spirit which inspired the revolt of the Puritans against both the King and the Church. The same sentiment is expressed in the petition of Rights which was presented to the throne about the time that Locke wrote the essay on government. And it was in this same spirit that the founders of the Republic framed the Constitution of the United States. They rather grudgingly granted the government certain specific powers, and sought by means of various checks and balances to limit the exercise of them. Even then the public was so alive to the dangers of the new sovereignty that it refused to adopt the constitution until it was amended by the addition of the Bill of Rights.

There were added to this assertion of the inalienable rights of the individual in opposition to the sovereign power the deeper sense of the importance of the individual gained in the Reformation, and the insistence upon the right and duty of exercising private judgment which came with the rationalism of the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century, with its “appeal to reason” in opposition to the authority of priest and Bible, was in fact an intellectual declaration of independence which became for educated minds an essential part of the liberal tradition. Liberalism owes much to the Deists and men like Hume. It is not a mere coincidence that a large number of the leaders of the American Revolution were “freethinkers.” Thus liberalism became something more than a political movement. It became a philosophy of personal liberty, of independence of authority, of tolerance. The rights which the liberal claimed for himself he was—at least in theory—willing to grant to others. He took the side of the “under dog.” The tradition is best represented in England by such men as Priestley, Martineau, Kingsley, Cobden, Bright, Morley, J. S. Mill, Huxley, and in America by Paine, Jefferson, Channing, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Lincoln, and Ingersoll.

The decline of liberalism to the level of Bryanism, the betrayal by “One Hundred Percent Americanism” of the spirit in which the Republic was founded, the spread of bigotry among the masses, the prevailing partisan spirit and the illiberalism of professed “liberals,” the changing of our constitution from a guarantee of personal liberty to the authorization of Federal interference with the daily habits and customs of the individual—these are not matters for which we may hold recent immigrants responsible. They are, I regret to say, symptomatic of tendencies which are most commonly manifest among Americans of British descent. They show how far the spirit of a nation may drift in one hundred and fifty years when it renounces its intellectual leadership.

Liberalism as a political movement was early divorced from liberalism as an intellectual movement. The former became Andrew Jacksonism, “shirt-sleeve democracy,” free-soil-ism, abolitionism, populism, the Single Tax movement, opposition to big business, Progressiveism. Ever since the time of the settlement of New England the pioneer and frontiersman, the “debtor class,” the town laborer and the farmer, have had to carry on a struggle against the “money powers” of the large industrial centers. The conflict of “the poor against the rich”—generally characterized by a demand for governmental regulation of industry and cheap money—reached its culmination in the “Free Silver” issue of 1896. Of this “battle for humanity,” the author of “Our Times” quotes William Allen White.

“It was a fanaticism like the Crusades. Indeed, the delusion that was working on the people took the form of religious frenzy. Sacred hymns were torn from their pious tunes to give place to words which deified the cause and made gold—and all its symbols, capital, wealth, plutocracy—diabolical. At night, from ten thousand little white schoolhouse windows, lights twinkled back vain hope to the stars. For the thousands who assembled under the schoolhouse lamps believed that when their legislature met and their governor was elected, the millennium would come by proclamation. They sang their barbaric songs in unrhythmic jargon, with something of the same mad faith that inspired the martyrs going to the stake. Far into the night the voices rose—women’s voices, children’s voices, the voices of old men, of youths and of maidens, rose on the ebbing prairie breezes, as the crusaders of the revolution rode home, praising the people’s will as though it were God’s will, and cursing wealth for its iniquity. It was a season of shibboleths and fetiches and slogans. Reason slept; and the passions—jealousy, covetousness, hatred—ran amuck; and whoever would check them was crucified in public contumely.”

The demand for governmental regulation has been on the increase since 1896 and has almost worked a revolution in our form of government. I will not discuss the degree to which such an extension of the powers of the central government is desirable. I am aware of the fact that the motive is largely that of protecting the economic independence of the average individual. The point I wish to make is that the methods advocated reveal the change that has come over liberalism. Notwithstanding Jefferson’s statement about the government which governed least, the extensions of the powers of government have not ever been limited to matters industrial, and we find men calling themselves liberals accepting all sorts of restrictions upon their liberty without complaint. Liberalism has taken on a partisan spirit with all the intolerance, hysteria, and coerciveness that usually characterizes crowd movements. The same elements that voted “liberal” with Mr. Bryan thirty years ago, later supported Bryan the fundamentalist, and today are staunch prohibitionists. I cannot help feeling that something of the fundamentalist was lurking under the skin of the American liberal all along. The tradition of personal independence derived from our British ancestors had about reached this stage of decline, when efforts were made to supplant it with a very different type of liberalism from continental Europe.

The “old liberalism” was in theory individualistic; the “new liberalism” was socialistic. It brought with it such ideas as “the class struggle,” “mass action,” the “cooperative commonwealth.” Freedom was to be gained for all in the form of the “emancipation” of the working class. Youthful intellectuals idealized the proletariat, organized socialist locals, talked about the “materialist interpretation of history,” denounced “the capitalists,” addressed one another as “comrade,” closed their letters to one another with the words, “Yours for the Revolution,” and a few took the trouble to study the writings of Karl Marx. The old liberalism was seen as mere “bourgeois idealogy,” mental slavery, a system of ideas fabricated by the master class in order to keep the working class in perpetual wage slavery. The new liberal felt himself intellectually emancipated. If he was very, very liberal, he styled himself a radical. The movement reached its maximum strength about the year 1910, and then began to decline. It appealed to some who had been liberals of the older American type, but the response of labor was negligible. Radicalism professed to be a spontaneous revolt of oppressed working people. In fact it was a cult, with its dogmas about labor, which existed chiefly among middle-class intellectuals. Its leaders—and it consisted mostly of leaders with very little rank and file—were seldom working men.

Although its economic creed is the product of the nineteenth century, a study of the history of this movement would show it to be in direct line of descent from Rousseau. Many of the basic ideas are distinctly Rousseauian. Civilization, which Rousseau hated, is now the wicked capitalist system. There is the same emphasis on the collective will, on mass action, on the idea of revolution, the same belief that The People is the only rightful sovereign, that society exists by virtue of a sort of covenant among men which can be altered at will, and that universal happiness may be attained by changing the system which is responsible for all misery and misbehavior.

Radicalism, carried to its logical conclusion, is Communism, in which there is no pretense of liberalism, no place for freedom. It has greatest appeal for a type of mind which is by nature doctrinaire and inelastic, and its propaganda tends to fixed opinion and to illiberalism. A generation ago Nietzsche said of it,

“In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of this name: a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt.... Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the levellers, these wrongly named free spirits—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its modern ideas: all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honorable conduct ought to be denied; only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost all human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for everyone.”

The word liberal is commonly associated with that extension of democracy which the crowd thinks is progress. If you favor this progress, you are said to be a liberal. If you doubt that it is progress you are thought to oppose progress as such and so are a conservative. If the progress of democracy were accompanied by a corresponding advance of culture and gain in wisdom and broadmindedness, this use of the term liberal would be appropriate.

Men become free only as they achieve self-government. I take it that a man governs himself to the degree that he acts upon his own judgment. Freedom thus presupposes first that people are capable of judging things for themselves, and second, that they are permitted to do so. If the progress of democracy resulted in fewer laws and wiser laws, we should in time have self-government. But the reverse is the case: the extension of democracy brings about an extension of the powers of government and the multiplication of foolish laws. It does not follow that people’s judgment is improved because they can vote about more and more things. Nor is there any assurance that they will not begin voting about things that are none of their business and thus destroy the right of private judgment, which is the exercise of freedom. You do not decide things for yourself when everything is submitted to a referendum or regulated by the legislature. If the people or their representatives should vote to establish a censorship of books, or to prohibit smoking tobacco, or to compel church attendance on Sunday, that would be democracy; but it would not be a gain for freedom. Self-government is impossible when every private matter is turned into a public question. Men with third-rate minds—and there are enough of them once they get together to constitute a solid majority—shrink from the responsibility of exercising private judgment, but are prepared and eager to decide any matter whatsoever once it becomes a public issue. They are, moreover, disinclined to allow a large measure of personal freedom to one another or to any one. Self-government in a democracy therefore means not private judgment but national independence, universal franchise, and no constitutional restraints upon the will of the majority. In common practice, “liberty” is the legally recognized right of the crowd to tell the individual what he may not do in matters which concern only himself. Any man has liberty when he has a voice in the government of the land. He has freedom when he governs himself. His freedom may be prevented either by lack of judgment or by outside interference. The effect of education in the community is to improve judgment and lessen outside interference with the exercise of it. Properly defined, a liberal is a person who strives for precisely these results. Liberalism, in this sense, and education are the same.

I said that a man is free when he acts according to his own judgment. This does not mean that the free man is able to choose anything he wishes. Necessity constrains him just as it does the unfree. It means, however, that his assent or dissent in any matter follows from his personal insight into the implications of the situation. He does the required thing even when he does not like it, because he has the intelligence to see that it is required under the circumstances. He is not compelled to take some other person’s word as to what is required. He is free not only because he is independent of the will of another in reaching his decision, but primarily because he knows what he is doing and why he does it.

There is a very old, extra-canonical legend according to which the Lord Jesus, passing by, saw a man digging in the field on the Sabbath day, and he said to the man, “If thou knowest what thou doest, blesséd art thou; if thou knowest not, curséd art thou.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE APPRECIATION OF HUMAN WORTH

I have a number of neighbors whose sons and daughters are at present suffering the agony of preparation for college. What a nightmare it is possible to make of education! Three or four years of attendance at expensive private schools where the sole aim seems to be to get the student through his college entrance examinations with a passing grade. Students terrified, parents anxiously awaiting reports of work done or not done, teachers tired out, one student fails in his Latin, another in algebra, a third is sent home because of loss of interest in study, and there are tears, family conferences, special tutors, reviews and memory drills in vacation time, until finally the student “gets through” and drops the subject, his interest in it dead.

I am not one of those who believe that education may be achieved without effort. But study is not work only, it is also a form a enjoyment. There are many things which it is a delight to know, not because such knowledge is useful or is required for a passing grade, but because it is an aid to the appreciation of value. It is fun.

There are people who attend concerts from a sense of duty, striving thereby to improve their souls, but it is possible to listen to music with no other motive than the wish to enjoy it. It is the person who enjoys music who in the end becomes the discriminating listener. The same is true of the reading of books. William James once said the classics are necessary to education because knowledge of them makes us “connoisseurs of human excellence.” Literature has a charm which is often lost when it is made “required reading.”

An intelligent boy of seventeen who was having difficulty with his school work recently said to me, “I think it is because I really am not interested, and the things I wish to know they do not teach in our school because the colleges will not give credit for them.” When I asked him what study would interest him, he replied that he thought he would like to try philosophy and requested me to suggest a good book for a beginner, declaring that he intended to take up this study in addition to his school work.

I have no doubt that had he made this request of one of his instructors he would have been told that he had better spend his time preparing his lessons. But I took a chance that his interest might be genuine, and told him that I thought he would find Plato’s “Republic” a good introduction to Philosophy, and suggested that he read the first four books. During the previous semester he had been permitted to drop one of his courses because reading was “too great a strain upon his eyes.” When I next saw the boy I inquired how he had got on with the “Republic.” He said, “Why, I found it so exciting that I did not stop at the end of the first four books, but read all ten.” When I asked him what he found interesting in the dialogues, he said, “I do not understand many of the conclusions they reached, but I enjoyed listening in on those conversations. They are so logical, and I liked the way Socrates leads the others along, springs surprises on them, and makes them see what they mean by what they say. I begin to see what the difference is between thinking and just talking—and many passages were beautiful also.” For the first time in his life, he had realized that the pursuit of knowledge could be an interesting adventure. Moreover, his parents told me that he had shown improvement in his regular studies.

When the ancients said that knowledge is knowledge of the good, they meant in part that with the increase of knowledge comes better discrimination. If education is for anything it is that we learn to choose the good. By the “good” I do not mean good in general, or good as an abstraction of philosophical discourse, nor the conventionally good. I mean any excellence whatsoever. In order to see and appreciate excellence, you must yourself have struggled for it. He who has never striven to surpass himself, surrounds himself with the shoddy, the second-rate, the cheap. In matters of taste, of sentiment, of good workmanship, he cannot distinguish between that which is genuine and that which is imitation. In matters of taste there is much that is purely arbitrary and conventional, so that what is good taste in one age may be bad taste in another. Nevertheless, there is a psychological soundness in our use of the word taste to designate certain judgments of worth. It implies some degree of self-restraint, a sensitiveness to subtle stimuli which comes with the habit of giving attention to minute differences of quality. In contrast, animals which gulp down their food hastily and in great quantities do not pause to taste it. Similarly, the mind which has not disciplined itself “swallows things whole,” as we say. It is not disturbed by the incongruous or the hideous. It is sensitive only to coarser stimuli: it prefers the hackneyed, the raucous, the loud and flashy.

I once knew a church in a small town which worshipped in a plain rectangular old building with colonial windows. When a rival denomination erected a monstrous building with a huge circular stained-glass window facing the street, the group which worshipped in the old structure became dissatisfied. After much difficulty in securing the money, a committee was sent to a near-by city and purchased a quantity of gaudily-colored translucent paper similar to that one used occasionally to see on the front door of a saloon. This paper the congregation proudly pasted on its colonial window panes.

The architecture of the average church in this country and the hymns the people sing are much better indications of the level of their spiritual life than are the creeds they profess. The general cultural level of the population is revealed by the style of houses men build, the kind of furniture with which they surround themselves, the type of motion picture which becomes popular, the magazines on the news stands, the character of the journals which have the largest circulation, the “song hits” of the day, the programs which are broadcast for the radio. These things all have spiritual significance, they indicate a prevailing type of reaction toward all the values of experience.

The public is curiously indifferent to the lack of genuineness of sentiment; “hocum” and bathos; deliberate and obvious counterfeits of emotional reactions characterize practically every appeal to the general public. Think of the popularity of a play like “Abie’s Irish Rose,” or of that, a generation ago, of a song like “After the Ball,” or of a book like “The Man Nobody Knows.” Think of the typical Chautauqua lecture or political address. Think of the notorious insincerity of the motion pictures. People ask, “What is the matter with the movies?” The answer is, the audience. Half-educated people do not seem to be sensitive to the difference either between good and bad workmanship or between artistic sincerity and insincerity. Standards of value, in all the older forms of art, have been set by the knowing ones. The artist was obliged to submit his creation to the criticism of persons who had some background of tradition and general knowledge. With the quantity production methods of the motion pictures, it becomes possible for the first time to make the man on the street the critic, on whose judgment depends survival, and as the New Testament says, “By what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” In selecting our preferences we pass judgment on ourselves.

The multitude dupes itself with its desire to get something for nothing; hence its love of the miraculous. All appeals to it are thus over-capitalized, and made to appear grand and glorious. Shirking the effort necessary for real achievement leads to the preference of quackery. There is a story that a physician who had yielded to the temptation to make easy money by advertising himself as the discoverer of a magic remedy for disease, received a call from a former friend and colleague who disapproved of the practice. When the visitor sought to persuade him that such methods would not pay, the other stepped to the window and said, “Come now, look with me at the faces of the people passing along the street; how many of them do you think would become your patients and how many mine?” I am told by a professor of biology who gives a pre-medical course in a Western university that less than a third of the cases of sickness in the country are treated by reputable members of the medical profession.

I have been somewhat interested in the popularization of psychology. On the occasion of a visit to a great public library, I was assured by the librarian that there was a tremendous popular demand for books which deal with the subject of psychology. I was shown a section in which these books were kept so that they would be easily accessible. The greater number were written by persons who had no knowledge of the subject. They were utterly misleading. Psychology was commonly presented as a wonderful, easily practiced device for performing miracles, a system of secret formulae for curing disease, for getting into harmony with the divine source of all being, for manipulating the “subconscious” in ways that assured peace, prosperity, self-mastery, and power over others. I think it is a conservative statement to say that nine-tenths of the stuff that bears the name “Psychology” in popular magazines devoted to the subject, in widely advertised books, in lectures and correspondence courses in self-improvement, is pure charlatanism and sleight-of-hand arranged for those who wish to indulge themselves in systematic self-deception. It is not mere lack of information which causes people to prefer the cheap. With respect to the things of the mind, people have various standards of living.

A teacher of economics says that by a person’s standard of living we mean to designate those things which he insists upon having even if it is necessary to give up marriage and parenthood to possess them. However much people may desire and strive for comfort and abundance, from the standpoint of economics, those who marry and beget children in poverty have a low standard of living. Hence the standard is not directly a function of the amount of per capita wealth, but is psychologically determined. And the standard often applies to other things besides material possession. Persons who have a high standard are often poor. They might easily turn their efforts to the acquiring of wealth, but they will deprive themselves and postpone marriage for the sake of some cultural interest, education, a scholarly or literary career. They will go without a motor car in order to have money to buy books. It would be interesting to make a comparative study of the families of college professors and certain groups of artisans, who have about the same income as that of the average professor, in order to see which type had the greater number of children, and which sent the greater number of their young people to college, also which possessed the greater number of automobiles or radios. Thus the standard of living applies not to what one wishes to possess, but to what one is willing to pay for a certain kind of living. It has to do with quality, not mere quantity. This principle applies to intellectual standards of value. People are content with the second-rate because it is easier.

With learning there comes a new reverence. Perhaps I might speak of it as the educated man’s faith. Respect for the excellent is possible only to a mind which has learned to recognize distinctions of worth. An undiscriminating multitude clings to its idols or substitutes new idolatries for old precisely because it is blind to those differences of value which constitute the meaning of existence for mankind. People seek something “given” to believe in, some universal formula of salvation, because they are unable to distinguish the relative worth of concrete experiences actual or possible. Those who shrink from the responsibility of their own yes or no take refuge in an imaginary cosmic yes and no. But ground your faith in the difference between the better and the worse, and you have a faith which grows stronger with the increase of knowledge. All other “faiths” grow weaker because they are substitutes and evasions, futile attempts to possess value without the exercise of discrimination.

If existence as a whole has a purpose or a universal meaning, I do not see how our minds could know it, or what use it could ever be to the mind that grasped it. I have tried to show that our thoughts and beliefs are human ways, that our thinking is partial. As James said, all meanings depend upon the fact that we are “interested spectators” and prefer some things to others. Aside from our human interests and preferences, everything being so far as we can see equally inevitable, has the same degree of existence, or right to be, and all is equally important. Nothing then has any special importance. And if nothing is important, nothing has any meaning. It might be said that each thing has meaning for the whole. But since the whole lies beyond our ken, such a statement does not help us much. The world of meanings and of truths therefore does not have an independent existence but is related to our preferences and is a human creation. I am not, however, at present concerned with the problem of the meaning of truth. Truth is itself a value. I am trying to state a simple creed by which a man may best order his life and discover that which an intelligent mind may reverence. It is, “I believe in the distinction of worth.”

The loss of belief in distinction turns both society and the world of values upside down. It is symptomatic of the dominance of mediocrity. With the degradation of power there is a corresponding degradation of value. The power which rules the modern world is the power of numbers. Many will say it is the power of money. This too is a numerical force, having nothing to do with quality or the discrimination of value: the possession of money does not as such lift the possessor out of the mass. There is much talk about the conflict of the masses with the capitalists, but since on both sides the struggle is one for economic advantage rather than for spiritual value, it may be regarded merely as the conflict between successful and unsuccessful mass units over a common interest. Money power and the power of numbers are not really a confrontation of contrasting valuations of the possibilities of experience. On both sides the conflict is waged on about the same level and for identical ends. Capitalism is not really the foe of democracy, it is democracy’s first-born child. The self-made successful business man is the “success” in democratic society, its ideal. He is what the mass as a whole strives to become. Some people think this is individualism. Infrequently it is, usually it is not. Dollars still are numbered, and money power is the power of numbers. Its power is the same as concentrated mass power, since it is of this same order. We speak of “amassing” money. The mass idea and the ideals of the mass prevail all round. Capitalism holds sway by virtue of its mass appeal, and by virtue of the fact that the capitalist is the realization of the average man’s ambition. The mass because it is powerful and can grant or withold favors, lords it over the realm of values. Emphasis is laid upon that which produces an identical type of reaction in a maximum number of people. The commonplace is rated high because it is the average.

The rare, the unique, the excellent, cannot be syndicated and drops out of consideration. The standards which prevail are those of undifferentiated men. Mass appeal asserts the equal importance of all individuals, as if a man’s worth consisted in his mere “number-oneness.” This is the democratic dogma of equality. Critics of the dogma frequently say that it represents the foolish attempt to declare all men equal in all respects. I doubt this. It seems to me that this dogma is perfectly correct so far as it goes. It declares all men to be equal before the law. And law is no respecter of persons, hence all men are equal before that which does not respect their personalities. Which is to say that all men are equal in one respect—that each is a numerical unit when he is considered as a member of the mass. It is not denied that men may be unequal in other respects. The point is that these “other respects” do not get a hearing. But the only recognition of the individual that amounts to anything is that which recognizes the differences of one from another.

When we emphasize excellence, good workmanship, sincerity, ability, virtue, wisdom, we have in mind matters concerning which the differences among men are the differences between superiority and inferiority. Hence discrimination of value is recognition of distinctions of worth among men. Lose sight of distinctions of worth—of the very desirability of distinction as a social good—and all values decline to the level of mediocrity.

In the supremacy of man as mass the mediocre man, he who in all things corresponds to type, and is most reducible to average, is King. For him books and journals are published; clergymen and editors speak for him and say what they think he believes; laws are made in his interest. Programs for the radio and motion pictures are made to please him. His dilemmas are held up as the dilemmas of every one. His goods become the standards to which all are expected to conform. He has purchasing power and he has votes. He can make and unmake heroes. He determines the direction of the course of events in his day and generation. Society moves in the direction of the type of man about whom there is most general concern, the man whose preferences set the pace.

The goal set by “modern ideas” would seem to be not the attainment of a higher level of values, not greater personal worth among men, but the more complete supremacy of man as mass. Recognition of personal worth is discouraged, for it necessitates the admission that some persons are by nature, or as a result of effort, superior to others. Such an admission is contrary to the idealization of the mass, which is the worship of the power of numbers. Personal distinction is frowned upon and discounted. Differences of superiority or inferiority are, if grudgingly admitted, said to be the result not of difference in native endowment or of individual achievement, but mere products of environment. Hence human excellence is an accident.

There is a wide-spread tendency to minimize and deny the significance of personality. An advanced school of psychology holds that belief in the existence of personality is a superstition. Personality is simply the way the nervous organization works and is similar to the running of a gas engine. Any hereditary differences of capacity or of teachableness are negligible. All individual traits are reducible to conditioned reflexes which are what they are because of the coincidence of certain stimuli. I am what I am because somebody co-operating with the environment conditioned me in this way. I have absolutely nothing to do with the matter. Consciousness, interest, attention, will, have no place in this psychology. The same may be said of all attempts to explain the phenomena of life in mechanistic terms. Historic movements are explained as if individuals had nothing to do with them. Social change is said to be the product of impersonal economic forces, and progress the result of mass action. Thus the Great Man at best only represents the mass tendencies of his times. Even for discoveries in science and creative achievement in the arts, the mass is given credit although it may have resisted these things when they were new.

I believe that such attempts to depersonalize humanity are consciously or unconsciously motivated by the wish to avoid the recognition of the possibility of superiority in an age when the values of civilization are largely committed to the tender custody of man acting as mass in the struggle for power. Whether distinctions of worth are recognized or not, deny that they may exist, deny that men may have greater or less worth in themselves, and human achievement becomes merely the attainment of bodily comfort, or social power, or satisfaction of egoistic desires. There are many who would hold that such is the case. But our existence is not measured by what we can get or what we can do, but by what with our getting and doing we may become. Mankind differs from other animals not merely in getting and doing, man is himself different, and is more than they. It is in this that his evolution is seen. The same is true of the individuals in the mass; some are more in themselves than others. So obvious a truth would never require statement except in a standardized, crowd-manipulating age in which there is much that encourages the inferior to abound.

I am not suggesting that we devise some plan for picking out all the superior individuals for preferment and honor, or that we weed out the inferior ones by some process of elimination, or that the educated man should or could pose as a superior person. He who must make an effort to exhibit any excellence has attained little of it. If the world is spiritually right side up, people will be selected by the standards of value that prevail. When you buy a newspaper, vote a party ticket, go to a theatre, listen to a lecture, read a book, express a moral sentiment or show any preference whatever, you are doing more than just that thing. Our daily choices determine what we ourselves become, and they do something else also; the total of them has survival value for some particular type of man. We are thus daily deciding whose dilemmas shall determine the quality of living, and what kind of human life is to be lived on this planet, and who shall thrive and who shall perish.

Human progress is not something we achieve directly by joining a movement and forcing our convictions upon others. It is something we help determine every day in the choices we make. The elements of it come like the variations which appear in the structure of plants and animals. And as Darwin said it is the function of the environment, in causing modifications of species, to select certain variants for survival and to eliminate others; so also in the progress of civilization do our daily preferences operate. Natural selection and primitive custom operate blindly and automatically and without reason. It is because education improves judgment and the appreciation of value that Thomas Davidson spoke of it as “conscious evolution.”

The education of a people at any time is its answer to the riddle of life. This answer is more than giving an account of the processes of nature; it is the opening and closing of doors upon the possibilities of experience—and upon various human types. Thus education is selective. It is the sifting out of the relative worth of men. It finds the significance of living to be the struggle for excellence. Its goal is a higher type of living man and woman. Its great task therefore, in the modern world, is the reassertion of the inequalities which mass appeal ignores, the rediscovery for the modern spirit of the distinction between superiority and inferiority. It is impossible to lift any mind from a lower to a higher plane when that which distinguishes one plane from another is obliterated by placing all on a level. Appreciation of distinctions of worth is an essential of a liberal education, as it is of the whole spiritual life of man.

CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION AND WORK

In the closing sentence of the preceding chapter, I used the words “spiritual life.” Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that I did not have in mind anything vaguely metaphysical, supernatural or mystical. I meant the phrase to designate a hierarchy of values which is possible to an organism capable of exercising choice among its experiences. It is in the sense that it deals with qualities and their relative importance that education may be said to be spiritual, spiritual in a purely naturalistic sense. It is the ordering of interests and habit patterns so that behavior is characterized by a tone and a significance that it would not otherwise possess.

There are those who write and speak of education as if the mind and its ideas existed in a world apart from the world of things. It is possible for a man to pursue his studies in complete isolation from the world about him. But as mental life is possible only in response to some environment, such pursuit of learning merely substitutes an artificial and sequestered environment for the actual one. If the meanings and values disclosed in this artificial environment remain permanently different from those which might be realized in the world of our daily tasks and relationships, such education is merely an elaborate escape from reality. The educated mind responds to our common world. It differs from the uneducated mind not in that it responds to a different set of situations, but in that it responds with a different system of values. Education is not so much a special interest separated from other interests as it is a method of transforming all our interests.

It ought to have something of importance to do with work, since most people are engaged in some form of work most of their time. And when in an industrial age like the present, the whole life of society revolves about the system of production of wealth, it is impossible to precede with education and ignore the challenge to it of our industrialism. It may not be the task of education to provide a solution of the labor problem. But education certainly fails of its function when men are unable to retain its values while struggling with such problems.

People rarely behave like educated human beings when they are confronted by an economic issue. Liberality of outlook, tolerance, temperance of judgment, self-control, ability to see when one is making oneself ridiculous, respect for the truth, are not often found on either side of an industrial conflict. Fantastic notions of the relation of education to work abound because there is much confusion about the meaning and value of work for human personality. Labor is at the same time idealized and despised.

Ruskin, Carlyle, and many humanitarians have held labor to be most praiseworthy. Work is a blessing, in it are peace of mind and self-respect. Work is noble, and it ennobles him who does it. A contemporary writer on the subject of education warns us that the hand may not be “dishonored with impunity.” By dishonored he means that hand work may be considered inferior to brain work to the extent that there is great disparity between the rewards. Distinction has been made between work of hand and work of brain. The former is real work. Once in a parade of working men in Pittsburgh, I saw on a banner carried at the head of a column of metal workers, these words in very large capitals, We Work. The implication was that some others, slightly to their discredit, did not really work. From the idealization of work to the idealization of the worker is a logical step. The working class, a class which in earlier centuries was looked upon as the despised “proletariat,” attained a new status in nineteenth century thought. Men began to look to labor as the one class capable of righting the age-long wrongs of humanity, and to believe the control of society by organized labor to be the only means to the establishment of peace and justice. Most of the writers who praised labor were themselves members of the so-called leisure class. A few like Tolstoi vainly tried to support themselves by manual toil. Many who wrote convincingly of the blessings of labor did not personally avail themselves of its ennobling advantages. In the earlier humanitarian sentiment of the nobility of labor, the worker was envisaged as a free and independent person in whose wholesome activity there was healthfulness. Good workmanship commanded general respect and revealed the dignity of labor. There were simplicity and grandeur in the primitive act of a man eating his bread in the sweat of his brow. He who lived close to earth gained something of the silent, calm majesty of nature. Able to cope with natural forces and giving mankind as good as he received, he need ask favor of no man.

Rousseau says, “Outside of society, an isolated man, owing nothing to any one, has a right to live as he pleases; but in society, where he necessarily lives at the expense of others, he owes them in labor the price of his support; to this there is no exception. To work, then, is a duty indispensable to social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen is a knave.

“Now of all the occupations which can furnish subsistence to man, that which approaches nearest to the state of Nature is manual labor; of all the conditions the most independent of fortune and of men, is that of the artisan. The artisan depends only on his labor. He is free—as free as the husbandman is a slave; for the latter is dependent on his field, whose harvest is at the discretion of others. The enemy, the prince, a powerful neighbor, may take away from him this field; on account of it he may be harassed in a thousand ways; but wherever there is a purpose to harass the artisan, his baggage is soon ready; he folds his arms and walks off. Still, agriculture is the first employment of man; it is the most honorable, the most useful, and consequently the most noble that he can practice. I do not tell Emile to learn agriculture, for he knows it. All rustic employments are familiar to him; it is with them that he began, and to them he will ever be returning. I say to him, then, Cultivate the heritage of your fathers. But if you lose this heritage, or if you have none, what are you to do? Learn a trade.... I wish to give him a rank which he cannot lose, a rank which will honor him as long as he lives. I wish to raise him to the state of manhood; and whatever you may say of it, he will have fewer equals by this title than by all those which he will derive from you.... It is important to learn a trade, less for the sake of knowing the trade than for overcoming the prejudices which despise it. You say you will never be compelled to work for a living. Ah, so much the worse—so much the worse for you! But never mind; do not work from necessity, but work for glory....

“You enter the first shop whose trade you have learned: ‘Foreman, I am in need of employment.’ ‘Fellow-workman, stand there and go to work.’ Before noon comes you have earned your dinner, and if you are diligent and frugal, before the week has passed you will have the wherewithal to live for another week; you will have lived a free, healthy, true, industrious and just man. It is not to lose one’s time to gain it in this way.”

Here as always Rousseau is romantic. This is all very beautiful—until you try it. I am inclined to think that most men who entertain this view have never worked for a living. The happy few amongst the toilers of earth may here and there have enjoyed this independence. It is certainly not the experience of the rank and file in our present industrial system. With the development of the system, and the consequent organization of labor, the idealization of work is supplanted by the idealization of the labor movement and its aims. In the writings of Marx, labor as work is represented merely as so much homogeneous effort-filled time which is measured and reckoned in strictly numerical terms, as if its qualitative or personal elements could be ignored or were non-existent. Skill and artistic genius are represented as the mere telescoping or contraction of a number of labor-time units into a given period—a speeding up, as it were, not something inherently superior in kind. This point of view might satisfy one who was concerned only with the number of hours of employment and indifferent to what he did or how he did it. But it takes little account of that pride in achievement without which those who assert the dignity of labor are making a virtue of necessity.

Marxians assert with much truth that pride in achievement is crushed by the methods of machine production and by the exploitation of labor under a system of “wage slavery.” But this is to abandon the older idealization of work and of workmanship. Labor is now viewed realistically as an irksome servitude. Marxians argue that labor creates all wealth and is therefore justly entitled to it all. It is beside our point to enter into a discussion of this proposition. I am merely seeking to show that in this philosophy, emphasis is shifted from the idealization of work to the idealization of the labor movement itself. A Marxian could agree with Aristotle that mechanical toil is debasing, only he would add “under the present system.” Emancipate labor, give it its rights, reward it justly and force all to do their share of it, and then work will be ennobling. Which is to say, work will be ennobling only in an ideal society. This position is an attempt to restore with one hand what is taken away with the other. Work is robbed of its dignity when excellence in it is not thought worthy of consideration, when superiority of workmanship is represented merely as a greater quantity of abstract labor-time. Advocates of the cause of labor do not say much about the distinction between superior and inferior workmanship. And here we have an example of the mass-psychology of which I spoke earlier. In the degree that you consider men as mass, you ignore individual worth.

There has been a slight tendency to regard labor as an instinct. The impulse to work is of course a universal human trait. Work is normal, natural, right, and those who have no desire for it are going contrary to the demands of human nature. Some such position as this is taken by Mr. Veblin in his delightful satire, “The Instinct of Workmanship.” The author of this book holds with McDougall that man has an instinct to work, but that unfortunately the instinct has been corrupted. This corruption began in primitive times with elders, medicine men and warriors. And throughout historic time, with each succeeding privileged class, human nature has become steadily more perverted and abject, until this instinct reaches its final stage of corruption in the present capitalist system. Thus a last count is added to the indictment of capitalism. It has corrupted labor’s instinct of workmanship.

I have never known whether Mr. Veblin meant his humor to be taken seriously, or intended his book to be a subtle thrust at the theologians. His argument may be regarded as a clever parody of the doctrine of the fall of man in Adam’s sin, with the consequent curse upon all the descendants of our first parent. In any case, his contention adds somewhat to the confusion as to the true significance of labor. I have not found evidence to prove that man has an instinct of workmanship. Hence the relation of education to work is not that of the rational control of instinct, for if the knowledge of simple labor processes were innate, men would not even need “practical” education in them.

Not all men have held a high opinion of labor. Nietzsche says work is a disgrace. There are doubtless many people who secretly agree with him. I have known working men who suffered from an “inferiority complex.” It is possible that the protest of labor is not wholly against injustice, but is in part a protest against the feeling of inferiority. It is not uncommon to find young people who are ashamed to work. It is not only among the rich and privileged that we find those who look down on labor. The same attitude exists in all classes, for much the same reason that the majority of people despise the poor and emulate the rich. Work has in the past been the lot of the slave. Most men are at present driven to labor by necessity, and many entertain the hope of escaping from the necessity as soon as possible.

We have even Biblical authority for this attitude. The punishment of Adam for his act of disobedience is a life of labor. Henceforth he must earn his living, tilling the ground and eating his bread in the sweat of his brow—in other words, labor is a curse. And so it is regarded by the law of the land. When a man is convicted of a crime the court sentences him to prison and to “hard labor”—until such time as he is pardoned and may return to his career of crime and life of leisure.

It is interesting to note the place assigned to work by the Hebrew and Christian religions which, having their origin in the folkways and the daydreams of the masses, are very sympathetic to the poor toilers of earth. Yet we are told that to keep the Sabbath holy, the day must not be defiled with labor. There is no mention of the blessedness of labor in the Beatitudes; the command to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field which toil not neither do they spin and yet are clothed and fed, reveals a spirit very remote from that of industry. Heaven is thought of as a place of eternal rest.

A similar popular valuation of labor is revealed in the myths of antiquity. The gods do not work. Vulcan, the exception to this rule, is always made to appear ridiculous among the gods; they are said to laugh at his awkwardness. The “labors” of Hercules are not really toil but exhibitions of miraculous strength. For the most part in the legends which have expressed the wish-fancies of mankind, the hero does everything but work; he fights, makes love, kills dragons, goes on strange voyages, wins a kingdom, in fact, his adventures may be interpreted as symbolic expressions of the wish of mankind to escape the common burden of toil.

I think, moreover, men belittle their work when they accept the broad distinction between the “brain” worker and the “hand” worker. Psychologists say that thinking is as truly bodily activity as is any other form of labor, and there is very little so-called work that does not require thought. There is every conceivable gradation from that labor which is almost wholly routine, to that which consists of nothing but solving problems. No one knows the point where labor ceases to be brain work and becomes manual. The world’s work requires of men many kinds of activity, some of great importance, some of little. There is no use either of idealizing it or in despising it. Men do their work because they have to and are neither noble nor ignoble because of it.

The problem is how can I in my situation make my position a place where a man has really lived and toiled and thought and realized values through his effort, and has not permitted himself to become an automaton or a fool. The labor problem however tends to become one primarily not of the significance of work at all, but of improving the material conditions of those who toil. This latter problem is wholly justifiable. But because of the prevailing mental confusion about labor itself, it is generally assumed that if a man works he should receive a different sort of “education” from that of other educated people, and that his training should be the means to ends that have little to do with interest in education as such.

There are those who always view the education of workers strictly from the standpoint of its value for social security. Just as a well-known statistician not long ago advised the American investor to support the Church, whether or not he agreed with its doctrines, because the influence of the Church upon the masses, he said, was on the side of invested capital, so there are those who believe that giving educational opportunity to working men is a sort of premium paid upon a general policy of social insurance.

The fear of the menace of labor often inspires efforts for the education of workers in the hope that with better knowledge labor will become safe and sane. There is a wide-spread belief that education like religion is a conservative influence. If working men were only better informed they would have a more sympathetic understanding of the intentions of their employers; they would show some appreciation of their economic opportunities under our free institutions; they would know better than to go on strike, or listen to their union leaders, or dally with socialistic ideas. Perhaps so, but I have yet to see an educational effort which was consciously directed to these ends that was either sincere or intellectually respectable.

From a wholly different point of view, the relation of education to work would seem to present no problem at all. Work itself is said to be the only genuine method of education. A popular writer who holds advanced ideas on this subject, says that the four years at college are wasted, that “as early as fifteen or sixteen a youth should be brought into contact with realities and kept in contact with realities from that age on. That does not mean that he will make an end of learning then, but only that he will henceforth go on learning—and continue learning for the rest of his life—in relation not to the ‘subjects’ of a curriculum, but to the realities he is attacking.” In this passage one detects the odor of Rousseau. We discussed this theory when we were considering liberal education as animal training. At best it is but half true. If learning necessarily came from contact with realities, every one would be educated. But there is no assurance that people will see the significance of the realities they “attack.” The importance of experimental study is not a new discovery. Science has long employed the laboratory method. And even laboratory work, work done in an environment which is carefully arranged to stimulate discovery, does not always develop habits of independent judgment.

The notion that experience is necessarily the best teacher is popular. The newspapers encourage it. If a man makes a success in business, interviewers seek his opinion on every conceivable subject. In worker’s classes there is occasionally a student who has no doubt that his experience in the shop is a better education than that which people get from books. Such students do not as a rule gain much from study, for no matter what subject is under discussion, they always know more about it than the instructor.

Experience as such teaches just what is experienced and nothing more. Few minds are able to reflect judiciously upon experience or to draw correct conclusions from it. Labor is something that can be known only by one who has experienced it, and this experience is important for anyone who desires a broad knowledge of human life. But it is with work as it is with travel: each is an aid to education only as it quickens insight. The man on the Bowery who boasts that he has traveled over America from coast to coast may really never have left the Bowery; in each place he has visited, he finds himself in the same sort of lodging house, in the same environment, among the same sort of companions, all with the same interests.

So with many kinds of work. Much of it is mere routine. He who from day to day does the same thing, until he is able to perform the movements with a minimum of effort and attention, is certainly acquiring a habit, but we have seen that not all habit formation is education. Those who work with certain kinds of machinery frequently complain of the monotony of their work. I think that one of the serious objections to such work is that it has so little educational value. Perhaps this objection may be offset by the fact that machine production makes possible a shortening of the working day and hence gives the worker more leisure time. Some think that adult education is important because it gives people something to do in their unemployed hours. But people do not always improve their minds during the time when they are free from labor, and many whose work is routine, possess by nature or develop routine habits of mind which interfere with their education. They become victims of fixed ideas, of slogans and catchwords.

Perhaps the nearest approach to a real integration of education and work is vocational training. This is the “education” which most people seek. Universities offer an increasing number of courses in practical subjects such as engineering, mining, business methods. Various trades are taught in public schools. By far the greater number of courses offered to adult students are sold with the promise that they will increase the purchaser’s efficiency and “put more pay in his envelope.” I have already discussed this useful knowledge. Both the individual and society profit by it. And in addition to its practical advantages, there is a sincerity and lack of pretense about such education which distinguish it from much of the traditional education. It must be thorough or it cannot meet the test of practical experience. If men learned mechanics with no more thoroughness than that which characterizes the study of the classics, the country would go into bankruptcy.

But as I have tried to show, this training for practical efficiency is too narrow. It does not necessarily widen the student’s interests or deepen his insight or improve his judgment concerning matters that lie outside the range of his technical information. Advocates of this type of education often become partisan and declare that it alone is education.

It is doubtless too soon to speculate upon the effects of our new policy of reducing immigration to the point where it is almost negligible. Whether the effect is to intensify competition among working people, or to lessen it because of a labor shortage, in either case the result is obvious. Somebody must do the actual work of the country. We shall soon have a working class in America that is more than one generation old. That is, we are now for the first time in our history tending toward a relatively fixed and permanent working class. The various national strains in it will be held together long enough to become acquainted with one another, long enough to find more in common than a common opposition to capital, long enough to develop a working class tradition which is American. Workers will not only strive individually to become middle class; they will be obliged to improve their condition as a class. To the economic struggle there will be added efforts for culture. Many workers are already beginning to seek education as an aid to a more satisfactory and less sordid existence while working at their tasks. Sooner or later education must cease to be the distinguishing mark of a privileged class, or a device which aids a man to the goal of his ambition; it must become a universal practice of learning how to live like a civilized being in any occupation.

I have said that people’s ideas of the relation of education to work are for the most part confused and fantastic, and that among the causes of this confusion was a misconception of the meaning of labor. We saw that the older romantic idealization of labor gives way to the idealization of Labor not as work but as an organized movement. There are “friends of Labor” who think of workers’ education as class education. And by class education they do not mean the extension of the opportunity for liberal education to people who toil for their daily bread. They are not interested in liberal education, any more than they are interested in work. They wish working men to be given such instruction as will be useful in the “class struggle.” Labor is to have its own kind of education.

It is said that educators are but the retainers, the “high-brow” policemen of the vested interests and must always teach what the masters require. The educators’ task is to train the masses to be more productive and willing servants of the masters, to train the sons of the owners in the idealogy so that they may work it to advantage, to mould them to the type of the most successful and provide them with the insignia and passwords of culture which will show that they belong to the fraternity of the privileged. Traditional education, being nothing but a weapon of the ruling class, is not for the workers. The workers are now passing through a period of discipline which is preparing them to be the future masters of the world. As the old education was for the old master class, the new must likewise be the ideology of the future master class, the organized proletariat. The workers must educate themselves, for any education that capitalists provide for them will be the capitalist education which enslaves the worker. The new education in proletarian ideals must be wholly different from the past. Its aim is not to provide useless and ornamental knowledge, or escapes and consolations, but to equip labor to emancipate itself from the rule of capital and to conquer and control industrial society. Thus labor education is sometimes little more than old fashioned radical propaganda. Where this is not the case, workers may still be urged to the pursuit of knowledge by militant appeal. The following is quoted from a bulletin issued by a state director of labor education in the West:

“He (the worker) lives in a society committed to the practice of buying his labor cheap and selling its product dear, to the theory that property is sacred and life of little value. In support of this position toward labor, the press, the pulpit, and too often the school lend their aid....

“All this passion for justice will accomplish nothing, believe me, unless you get knowledge. You may be strong and clamorous, you may win a victory, you may effect a revolution, but you will be trodden down again under the feet of knowledge unless you get it for yourselves. Even if you should win that victory, you will be trodden down again under the feet of knowledge if you leave knowledge in the hands of privilege, because knowledge will always win over ignorance.”

If as an individual a man is interested in his education only in so far as it may be to his economic advantage, we regard him as a rather stupid materialist. It is no less stupidly materialistic to urge a class to seek knowledge merely for the sake of a common economic advantage. As a rule, ignorant men place a strictly material valuation upon education. If education is nothing but the training of certain groups of animals in the best methods for taking material advantage of one another, it makes little difference which group wins in the class struggle. This theory means that the belief that education can make a difference in the kind of living is a delusion, and that the only significant differences in human life are the results of economic forces.

Have we, in the notion of a special type of education for the working class, a correct view of the relation between education and work? Let us admit for the sake of argument, that traditional education is class education, elaborated in the interest of the dominant elements in society. Even then it might have a function other than that of an aid to systematic exploitation. It might serve as a guide to the use of leisure time. It might aid men in discriminating between ends which were worthy of effort and those which were not. It might be necessary for the development of personality, and to enable people to discover that which would give some intelligible meaning to their existence. Hitherto the privilege of the fortunate few, it might conceivably be a good which may now be the possession of the many.

I cannot see that the interests I have just mentioned are necessarily those of any particular class. And it would seem that insofar as traditional education has failed, the failure has been the result of subordinating these very universal human interests to the special economic advantages of a particular class. Along with the class spirit, irrelevant factors enter into education. Education becomes illiberal and propagandist, a drill in herd opinion. Prejudice is not removed; it is intensified. A spirit of intolerance is bred concerning anything which might effect class interest.

And now it is argued that since liberal education has been spoiled by one class in making it the servant of its class interests, the working class is justified in again spoiling it for its own special interests. If men prefer a substitute to the real thing, it is their own affair. But a person is either being educated or he is not, and whether he is or not is a matter quite independent of his particular occupation. Of course a man’s education will make a difference in the spirit in which he works and in the quality of his workmanship, for it changes the man. If traditional education is unfit for the working man, it is not fit for anyone. I can see no reason why economic differences should be made the basis of cultural differences. The knowledge that has value should be accessible to all regardless of their economic interests, or the profession they practice. If a bad education should not be given to a worker, it is not because he is a working man but because he is a man. Anything that it is good for one class to know is good for another. A banker may appreciate Shakespeare’s sonnets, so may a tailor; but there is not one Shakespeare for the first and another Shakespeare for the second. If biology is worth knowing, its value is not changed because a machinist studies it. If a philosophy is true, it is true for the man who can understand it, whether he be a railroad president or a coal miner. There is no proletarian arithmetic or capitalist algebra or Marxian astronomy.

To be sure, a worker’s education should take account of the economic situations in his environment. So should the education of all men. It is sometimes said that within the ranks of labor there is a new civilization in the making. Working men are said to have ideals and standards, an ethic and culture of their own which are now manifest as working class “idealogy.” I have not noticed it. From the time I was a small boy, I have had somewhat unusual opportunities to know the labor movement, and during the last twenty years have sought to make a psychological study of it. The “labor point of view” is commonly that which propagandists wish the worker to have. In America the “revolutionary class-conscious proletariat” exists only on paper. If we consider the ideals, habits and ambitions of working people, it is difficult to conclude that they form a culture group apart. The working man votes for Al Smith and Calvin Coolidge, dresses like the grocer and the bank clerk, drives a motor car if he can afford it, reads the popular journals, has about the same ideas of patriotism, morals, government, and success in life as his employer, and tends in every way to become more and more “middle class.”

Suppose the change contemplated by many radicals should occur and that there should be a “social revolution.” What of the education of workers then? The worker would still spend his days at the machine or bench. Is it not conceivable that men might then in their pursuit of knowledge have some interests other than the economic? Under no system should people permit their entire personalities to be drawn into and used up by industry. Industry is a means, not an end. It is in its proper place when it makes possible the achievement of culture. As a man becomes educated, he should learn so far as circumstances permit, to put his work in its proper place. The relation of education to work is no different from its relation to all the interests and activities and demands which life makes of us. A community may be said to have a culture only when all men—each in his own way,—cooperate in the realization of certain values, which give to all their actions and strivings a perspective, an order, a meaning. It is in this sense that Europe in the thirteenth century may be said to have had a culture. In discussing the cultural values of any period of history, there is danger of over-simplification. The picture which I have of that century may not be historically correct, but it will serve to illustrate my point. Catholic Christianity at the close of the Middle Ages possessed a set of values which entered into everything that people did or thought and gave it meaning. The secular did not really exist for the men of that age. All work was religious work. Everywhere there was ceremony, the shrine, sacredness. The fields were blessed before plowing; harvest was a gay religious festival. Every labor process and every station in society was brought to the service of the common ideal, and from it gained added significance. For it the peasant tilled the ground, its themes were the inspiration of the sculptor, the painter, the musician, the builder. In the service of this valuation of the experiences of life the King ruled, the soldier fought, the monk said his prayers, the philosopher meditated.

The cultural ideal of an age is revealed in the type of man for whom the people have greatest reverence. Such a man is the meaning of living for the men of that age. Inquire of the thirteenth century in whom is its ideal realized, and the answer is clear. It is realized in the saints. I do not mean to suggest that everybody in those days was saintly. But there was common agreement that human life existed for the achievement of sainthood. People achieved it in varying degrees and by methods which appear strange to us of the twentieth century. But all men hoped to achieve it in the next world if not in this. The existence of the saints in Heaven was a storehouse of merit upon which all could draw. And one living saint was held to be enough to justify the existence of an entire age.

I trust it is not necessary for me to add that the saint is not my ideal of the meaning of life. Ideals of asceticism and other-worldliness have no interest for me. But I wonder what would happen if people should “go in” for education with the unanimity of agreement as to its value that they once showed with regard to religion. I hesitate to make the suggestion lest I appear to suggest something solemn, sanctimonious, pious and official. We have enough of that sort of thing now among professional educators.

If instead of the attainment of sainthood the attainment of wisdom could be made the commonly accepted goal and meaning of the activities of modern men, we should again have a culture in which industry would take its proper place. We have for it now no other goal than the making of money, and hence industry runs amuck while the spirit of commercialism crushes out all our values. We keep the wheels going round, but the quality of living and the meaning of our work decline. Cooperation in the service of the ideal gives way to a competitive struggle for material possession and power and our lives are used up in making a living. Only the peoples that have achieved a culture have a goal for which to labor.

CHAPTER X
EDUCATION AND MORALS

The source of much of our interest in public education is concern for our neighbors’ morals. This is doubtless why in America we commonly think of adult education as something which should exist for other people rather than for ourselves. We are a nation of moral reformers. Education is often proposed as an alternative to moral legislation. There is an increasing demand for more effective moral education in the public schools.

When the educator becomes an “uplifter” the moral interest is always a little forced and education suffers. Moral enthusiasm, when it is enthusiasm for the good of others, tends to make of education a species of organized charity. Seek education for yourself and it is the search for the good life. From ancient times men have sought knowledge that they might become better judges of good and evil. To one who is seeking to know what is good, all popular moral conventions, taboos, and alleged divine commandments become proper subjects of study, criticism and possible revaluation. Moral education is not mere drill in the ways of the herd. The good man’s first duty, as Professor Erskine says, is to be intelligent. Good intentions alone do not enable a man to judge wisely or behave well. The prevailing idea that one can be at the same time good and stupid has strongly influenced our education. Moral education becomes moralizing. The phrase “ethical culture” is either tautological or it is a contradiction in terms.

If we were each more genuinely interested in our education there would be much less talk about morality and less occasion for such talk. The moralist is as a rule the person with a lower middle-class mind, who insists upon calling general attention to his own dilemmas. Mediocrity makes parade of virtue a claim to superiority, presenting a picture of itself as the likeness of the good man. Goodness is defined in negative terms. The good man is he who observes the “thou shalt not,” not he who can do the rare and difficult thing. It is in the localities where there is least artistic appreciation or intellectual curiosity or cosmopolitan spirit, the places where people have nothing with which to occupy their minds, that we find the strongholds of “morality.” Where education prevails, people learn to behave themselves as a matter of wisdom and good taste. Those who are sufficiently practiced in the art of living to be able to observe the common decencies without always “watching their step,” may sometimes look up from the ground and take a broader view.

Much of the ethical instruction which is given in school is both bad education and bad morals. Those colleges in which there is most talk about “education for character” are as a rule those which most patently fail as educational institutions. The instructor tends to “protest too much.” The attitude of authority discourages the spirit of search and criticism. Popular prejudice is intrenched. Non-essentials are over-emphasized. Crowd-mindedness, rather than independence of judgment, prevails. Every crowd persuades itself that it is vindicating the right and justifies its behavior with fine moral sentiments. The student in school is made susceptible to catchwords and is prepared to become the typical crowd man of the future. To this end he is given “ideals,” that is, he is taught to worship certain words such as “justice,” “purity,” “brotherly love.” Instead of learning to enquire what such words mean when applied to concrete situations, he is led to believe that he possesses the realities for which they stand when he has an attitude of adoration for the words. Henceforth, he can, without using his brains, be always right even in matters where he knows nothing, by the trick of seeing in each practical problem a moral issue. It is in this manner that the majority is always right in a democracy. If you question its wisdom, you are put in the position of one who attacks its moral ideals. From the first day in school on, the child is drilled in cant and in deference to prevailing public opinion. He is brought up in an atmosphere of sex morality by a stupid and shame-faced policy of expurgation and censorship, the assumption being that apparent ignorance is “purity.” A student in a woman’s college preparing to become a teacher of English literature, elected a course in the eighteenth century novel, and after listening to the lectures, she felt it her duty to look over some of the books. Unable to find the works of Fielding in the library, she inquired of the instructor where she could secure a copy of “Tom Jones.” The instructor replied, “Heavens, child, you are not going to read it!” This is perhaps an extreme case, but it illustrates much of the influence of morals upon the education of the young.

Is the student to acquire the virtue of patriotism? Then he is not to be shown the full force of the example of those who have resisted tyranny, but must have his head filled with a glorified version of his country’s history. Is he to learn respect for law? He is not equipped with principles which enable him to discriminate between wise and foolish legislation. His teachers and preachers tell him that law is divine and must be obeyed because it is the law. After three generations and more of such education, we have a population in which moral independence is decidedly on the wane. The statute book, not private judgment, becomes the guide to conduct, and the Federal courts the safeguard to morals. Open protest against official invasion of individual rights gives way to furtiveness and evasion. Moral training which does not encourage critical examination of popular ideas of what is right and good, does not tend to make men better, but only of one mind.

Popular suspicion of intelligence and the belief that one may be good and do right without it, is carried over into the field of education. Moral education becomes a special kind of education. It is thought that there is a “moral knowledge” which is different from other knowledge. The attempt is made to train character as if character did not include intelligence. Education, then, intent upon character, distrusts intelligence. The moral interest results in routine drill in current precepts and values, not in the awakening of moral responsibility. Professor Dewey says,

“Morals are often thought to be an affair with which ordinary knowledge has nothing to do. Moral knowledge is thought to be a thing apart, and conscience is thought of as something radically different from consciousness. This separation, if valid, is of special significance for education. Moral education in school is practically hopeless when we set up the development of character as a supreme end, and at the same time treat the acquiring of knowledge and the development of understanding, which of necessity occupy the chief part of school time, as having nothing to do with character. On such a basis, moral education is inevitably reduced to some kind of catechetical instruction, or lessons about morals. Lessons ‘about morals’ signify as a matter of course lessons in what other people think about virtues and duties. It amounts to something only in the degree in which pupils happen to be already animated by a sympathetic and dignified regard for the sentiments of others. Without such a regard, it has no more influence on character than information about the mountains of Asia: with a servile regard, it increases dependence upon others, and throws upon those in authority the responsibility for conduct. As a matter of fact, direct instruction in morals has been effective only in social groups where it was a part of the authoritative control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as such but the reënforcement of it by the whole régime of which it was an incident made it effective. To attempt to get similar results from lessons about morals in a democratic society is to rely upon sentimental magic.”

I do not see how it is possible to isolate moral education as a special discipline and have either a liberal education or a sound sense of moral values.

In institutions of higher learning, “Moral Philosophy” or the “Science of Ethics” is sometimes thought to be training in morals. It is so only to the extent that such study is itself good education. I find that many students have the same experience that I had with my college course in Ethics. I took up the study believing that at last I should learn what is right and how to do it. I soon discovered that I had entered upon the driest and least practical course of study offered in the college. Insofar as I could see there was nothing in Ethics that I could turn to for advice about any of the problems of my own conduct. I understand that in some institutions the students’ demand for advice has resulted in courses of ethics which consist of case studies. No doubt the opinions of the students and the instructor concerning certain hypothetical dilemmas of conduct are very interesting. But as Plato would say, such study is made up of “opinion,” not “knowledge.” It is doubtful if such discourse ever results in modifying behavior.

“Pure” ethics consists of a priori arguments about the teachings of philosophy concerning such abstract concepts as the moral judgment, the nature of the Good, the idea of Duty in general, not of my particular duties. Such study may be good training in logic, but it has no more to do with conduct than has formal logic, and not as much as mathematics, for one may apply the principles of mathematics to concrete problems. Perhaps the greatest gain for the student from such study is the discovery that philosophers do not agree upon any one system of morals, and that in strict logic we do not know what we mean by our moral generalizations. The more universal an ethical concept is, the more it exists wholly within and for reason, the less is it a deduction from experience and the less use is it as a guide to behavior. Ethics, as moral philosophy, is not a descriptive study of the customs and practices of people, or of what things men in diverse times and places have held to be good or evil, right or wrong; this is anthropology. It is not the study of the mental processes of judging or of forming habits or of that quality of actual experience which men call good; this is psychology. Ethics, moreover, is not a scientific study of the means of accomplishing any good whatsoever; for this at once leads out of pure ethics into economics, mechanics, medicine, etc. Pure ethics is pure logic applied to ultimate concepts about morality in general. It is the “formulation of the Good as it would hold for all possible worlds,” a kind of speculation or contemplation. Its good does not exist in experience anywhere; it is metaphysical and exists only for philosophizing. Hence ethic, strictly speaking, is concerned with ends not with means, and the ends are not experienced, they are only thought about. As an example of such an approach to morals, there is Kant’s Categorical Imperative, from the consideration of which everything concrete, empirical, personal is removed.

I quote some typical passages from the discussion of the teaching of ethics in a contemporary Journal of Philosophy,

“The task of moral philosophy is, by analysis of the moral judgments men actually make, to arrive at clear notions about obligation, rights, good, punishment and the like. And the point of honor, the chastity of the philosopher’s mind, should be never to suffer his genuine moral judgments to be warped in deference to his theory. For that is to poison the wells of truth. All that is valuable in ethics is formal....

“Finally, it may be asked, has then moral philosophy no practical value? I think its prime value is purely speculative,—the supreme interest of the topic for thoughtful minds and its importance for metaphysics. But, like everything else, it has its effects. I think it is, when studied in its purity, an unrivalled mental training. I believe that the more (apart from casuistry) we reflect on the nature of the moral law the more we are likely to reverence it. And lastly I think that nearly every human being does and must to some extent philosophize. We are all apt to form crude principles, as that morality consists in keeping the law, or obeying the ten commandments, or realizing our selves, or seeking the common good. And then we are apt pendantically and priggishly to distort our genuine moral judgments in accordance with these inadequate generalizations. Moral philosophy criticizes such formulas and shows that they are either untrue or circular. Either self-realization means realizing the right part of the self or it is not always right. Promoting the “common good” either means bringing about those satisfactions which moral reason judges ought to be brought about (e. g., those which are just or of a higher value) or it is not always right. And so a truer moral philosophy releases us from the false dogmatisms which may, though usually they do not, corrupt our practise....

“On the other hand, members of my class actually approached me, as if I were a father-confessor, for the solution of special problems in conduct!”

In the following quotation from the same Journal, a different view is expressed. The author believes that ethics is sometimes concerned with the practical problems of conduct, but admits that this inclusion of practical interests results in some ambiguity and confusion.

“Conceding that there is a science of ethics that does not teach us either to be good or that we ought to be good any more than logic teaches us how to think or that we ought to think, or esthetics teaches us how to appreciate beauty and that we ought to love it, there yet remains the question, is there a legitimate place in philosophical education for a science of ethics which frankly does not disclaim a “practical” interest? Is there a science of ethics that is “practical” in something more than the Protagorean sense of supplying instruction in “how to manage our homes in the best way, and to be able to speak and act the best in public life?” (Such instruction might well encourage sophistry and the casuistry of which Professor Carritt speaks.) Is there, in other words, a science of ethics which is “practical,” not in the sense of telling the pupil what moral decisions to make, but in cultivating the ἔρως φιλοσοφίας which would render possible well-considered choices? If there is not a place for such a science, it seems hardly forthright or consistent to perpetuate the ambiguity. If there is a legitimate place for it, it is the duty of moral philosophers to terminate the present ambiguity by explaining it. We can scarcely afford to laugh at or deny it.”

The relation of morals to education is to be found neither in special discipline and habit formation in the effort for character apart from intelligence, nor in drill in the logic of an a priori science. When moral training is made a special interest set off from other aims of education, it defeats itself. There is no such thing as a moral good separate from other goods. A moral good is simply the best choice among the conflicting goods of experience, actual or possible. As James said, the good is that which satisfies a desire. A priori, every desire should be satisfied, since considered in itself it is a demand for a satisfaction. But since desires are in conflict, choice is necessary. The good deed is the right thing to do, or the right way of doing it. All education if it is really education is moral education. It is because people do not grasp this fact that futile efforts at special moral training are made in which the connections with education are artificial and extraneous. Thus the pursuit of knowledge is shorn of its significance for conduct, and morals is divorced from intelligence. As Professor Dewey says,

“A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture, social efficiency, are moral traits—marks of a person who is a worthy member of that society which it is the business of education to further. There is an old saying to the effect that it is not enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something. The something for which a man must be good is capacity to live as a social member so that what he gets from living with others balances with what he contributes. What he gets and gives as a human being, a being with desires, emotions, and ideas, is not external possessions, but a widening and deepening of conscious life—a more intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of meanings. What he materially receives and gives is at most opportunities and means for the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither giving nor taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in space, like the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline, culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share in such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means to such a life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such education is the essence of morals.”

Moral behavior is not only social. It is also intelligent behavior. An act has moral significance when the performance shows insight into the situation. An action done under compulsion or without understanding has no moral value. A machine may behave very correctly but it is not a moral being. An act has moral meaning to just the extent that its author grasps the implications of the situation in which he must act and is guided by consideration of the results. An act is judged, not as moralists would have it, merely by the intention, but by its results. It is the aim of education to develop the insight and foresight and breadth of vision which make it possible for an individual to take responsibility for the results of his behavior. The greater the intelligence, the more nearly does the consideration of an act approach the estimate of the total result. Thus the aims of education and morals are the same;—the good life in so far as it may be attained by intelligent choice and behavior.

Men have long sought to reconcile the true and the good. But what they have sought to reconcile were as a rule mere ideas about the true and the good. It is not as logical abstractions that the true and the good are one, but in the recognition that the really wise act is the good deed. It is in this sense that wisdom is virtue—in the sense that virtue is wisdom. But the objection will be made that educated men are sometimes clever rascals who are only the more evil for all their knowledge. I do not think I beg the question when I say that such men are not wise but merely clever. Nor do I mean that good conduct is merely a matter of reasoning and calculating. No one denies that desire and instinct and purpose are involved. But if I am not mistaken it is generally recognized that education and morals alike have something to do with training and controlling these aspects of human nature. Intelligence is not mere intellect. It is the whole man wisely directing himself with respect to his environment and its alternatives.

From one age or locality to another fashions in behavior patterns change. These fashions seem to be important at the time they hold sway. People confuse them with morals. Efforts are sometimes made by reformers to introduce innovations similar to those which designers of clothing each season create in haberdashery. A liberal journal in New York recently published a series of articles dealing with “The New Morality.” But morality is neither new nor old. Rules of conduct which can be made mere matters of style are applicable chiefly to actions the results of which are unimportant. Such rules have really very little moral value. They constitute, however, the customs or folkways which prevail at a given time. Conformity in such matters is required by the herd. Often this requirement is the only reason for observing certain rules; the opposite course would be just as good. It is with respect to such matters that education has the effect of liberating the individual and improving morals. It breaks the hold of the taboo, makes it possible to discriminate between the important and the unimportant and leads to the formation of principles based upon consideration of the results of behavior. The differences in conduct that count are those between stupid deeds and well-considered deeds. Intelligence takes into account the fact that no action of man can be isolated and judged apart from its place in the social environment, and its effects both for the author and for his human relationships. Long ago Aristotle showed that each of our virtues unless intelligently exercised tends to extreme and to become a vice. A virtue is what it does, not what it feels like to its possessor. Much is said today about the necessity of loyalty. There can be no social stability without it; but there is probably no more serious social menace than unintelligent loyalty.

Men persist in ascribing to their moral principles a sanctity, a sublimity, which makes them appear to have an independent and eternal existence and to be ends in themselves. I believe this to be a superstition. In what respect is a moral principle more to be reverenced than a principle of mechanics? To worship Duty in general is simply to make a god out of a human generalization. The “rightness” about which men grow eloquent exists simply as the implications of the concrete situation in which an act is performed. As the ability to grasp such implications improves, principles of conduct are employed which are relevant to the situation. I spoke of insight into the situation toward which action is taken as being alike essential to education and to the moral judgment. He whose conduct is regulated by his own insight and by principles which are relevant to the situation at hand is a morally responsible being, and to the degree that a man assumes responsibility for his conduct, he reveals the quality of his education. Those who seek to avoid responsibility substitute for their own insight rules of behavior which have as their basis something that lies outside the demands of the situation where the behavior takes place. Judge your conduct by this other, outside something and ignore the lessons written in the results of your deed, and you cease to learn anything from your behavior; your education in this direction has come to a stop.

Education frequently comes to such a halt when moral teaching is carried on as part of religious instruction. There is a common belief that religion is the real basis of morals. I think this belief has its source in the fact that religious institutions in the past, being by nature conservative, have sought to perpetuate the folkways. The church is a form of social organization and has its own interest in maintaining among its members certain standards of behavior. Often it has been the only existing agency for the instruction of the young. Most religious systems carry with them certain commandments and precepts the keeping of which they secure by means of promises of future reward or threats of punishment. Since both the precepts and the religious beliefs and ceremonies have evolved together out of primitive man’s ideas of divine authorship and authority, men do not see that the basis of morals lies in social necessity—the need for mutual adjustment among men. The church’s preëmption of the field of morals is allowed to stand long after its squatter rights in other fields—art industry, science, etc.—have been challenged. We forget that religion was once thought to be the basis of all the interests of civilization, so that naturally the moral interest came under its sway.

It is obvious that every society, whatever be its religion, must develop its moral codes as men learn to live together. In the community everyone is part of the environment of everyone else, and each must adjust himself to such a human environment. Adjustment is impossible if there is no order in the environment. Hence from the beginning certain habits and customs have existed which make it possible for men to predict to some extent what their neighbors will do. These habits and customs are the primitive morals which it is the task of wisdom to inquire into and revalue and gradually improve or discard, and substitute intelligently considered means and ends.

When moral precepts are presented in the form of divine commandments, morality is merely obedience; it consists in keeping the commandments, not in acting according to the demands of the situation. The problems of the control of behavior are solved in advance, and the solutions learned by repetition and memory drill. If I act in strict obedience to a divine command, the results of my deed are not my affair. The responsibility for the result is upon the deity. I can ignore, in fact, should ignore, the lessons of experience and of conduct. The commandment does not require of me any insight into the situations in which I act. I have no moral responsibility. People whose conduct is guided by such morality have committed many outrageous deeds and have with good conscience closed their eyes to the terrible consequences of their behavior. From the standpoint of their education, they are children; they have never yet attained the age of moral responsibility. It is in matters of moral education that the infantile attitude of mind which religion preserves in the adult life of the race becomes a serious obstacle to a liberal education.

Again there is a tendency to disregard the consequences of my acts if I seek, as many moderns do, to make a religion of morality itself. It is often said, religion is a life, the religious man is the good man. “My religion is the Golden Rule,” or some other rule. It all depends on what you mean. If you mean that in a vague sort of way you try to be good and that a certain moral earnestness is religion enough for you, very well, but you have not said much. Thomas Paine said, “To do good is my religion.” But I am not sure he added much to his good will by styling it a religion. He might as well have said, “I desire very much to do good.” So do all right-minded people, the difficulty comes when we try to find out what specifically we mean by doing good.

Again it is said there is “salvation by character,” but one does not possess a character. One either is or is not a character. One does not become a character as a result of routine moralizing or of mere conformity to conventional standards. President Wilson is quoted as saying, “There is no more priggish business in the world than the development of one’s character.” Run away from the man who would be good to you in order to develop his character. Do the thing that in your best judgment is the thing to do under the existing circumstances, do it as well as you can, watch what happens and learn your lesson from it, and if you are a character you will not go far wrong.

In all behavior, he who takes responsibility takes chances. There are those who demand moral certainty. They imagine an absolute good, a universal principle of right and duty, to be the elemental law of the universe. Duty is sublime, the Moral Law is God. People persuade themselves that their adoration of this impersonal god develops in them the “moral will,” when in fact its function is to provide them with a fictitious sense of security. I think the ethical philosophy of Kant is motivated by this wish for security, rather than by an interest in morals as such. He seeks a good which is to be possessed merely by thinking it, a maxim which is universally valid. But if I have such a maxim, assuming that it can be made applicable to any concrete problem of conduct, then all I need consider is whether I have acted according to the rule. Here again I need not be concerned about the results of my behavior. It is not the consequences of my act that show it to be right or wrong. My deed is right if it is the act of the moral will.

Another method of escaping moral responsibility is to run with the crowd. The crowd never considers consequences; it is bent upon vindicating its principles at any cost. It is anonymous; in it the individual may not be held to account. The crowd is not the same as the multitude; it is a distinct phenomena of social psychology. We all have in our natures certain anti-social impulses. The crowd is a sort of pseudo-social environment in which these impulses are not inhibited but are indulged with mutual moral approval. All crowds profess to be devoted to some moral ideal. Their moral idealism is mere self-justification and pretext for letting oneself go. It is a weapon useful in partisan strife; it puts the opposition in the wrong and justifies hostility. Hence public questions tend to become moral issues, and the attempt to understand the situation gives way to righteous indignation toward anyone who witholds approval of the crowd’s aims and methods.

And the crowd strives to hold its members in line. Conformity to its ways and standards is required of all, and becomes an end in itself. One does things because others do them. The crowd man is shocked by the unconventional because it is unusual. His ideas of right and wrong, which he thinks he has by a priori intuition or moral sense, are merely those which prevail in his set or parish. The average man’s conscience, which seems to him to be an infallible moral guide and which he holds to be sacred and personal, is little more than a reflection of herd opinion. And as men become marshalled in the mass movements of present-day society, they tend more and more to submit the control of conduct to the “public conscience” and to leave less and less to private judgment. There is no judgment but private judgment. The public conscience is a creature of emotional instability. It is characterized by periodic obsessions similar to those of mania. It will remain utterly indifferent to glaring evil and every appeal to it is unheeded; then all of a sudden perhaps over a trifle, or an unconfirmed rumor, it is stirred to the highest pitch of excitement. It has a “cause” and for a time is occupied with nothing else. All realities are thrown out of perspective. The cause is vindicated regardless of consequences; it is carried triumphant at the head of a procession of human wreckage, bitterness and folly. As soon as the mischief is complete, the cause is abandoned. Men begin to “come to,” and public conscience sleeps until the next episodic attack.

It is precisely in regard to matters which most deeply stir the public conscience that the educated man will be on his guard. He will not be easily bullied into surrendering his private judgment to public opinion. He will not permit the big words of herd morality to scare him away from the consideration of cold facts. Before a man can think for himself, he must have learned to think at all. There is only one sound method of moral education. It is in teaching people to think.

CHAPTER XI
THE CLASSICAL TRADITION—PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

The classical tradition in education is one of the ironies of history. That pedants should have succeeded in making this tradition into a mere convention is almost incredible. In the poetry, drama and philosophy which we have inherited from ancient Athens there is a spirit of youth, of freedom, of inquiry, of adventure. In the estimation of Egypt or of India, the culture of Greece was parvenu. The striking thing about the Greek spirit is its humanism, its lack of priestly tradition, its independence of religious authority. The men of the fifth century before Christianity were creators, not imitators. They were following many lines of inquiry for the first time, unhampered by the prestige of orthodoxy. A noisy populace could condemn the philosopher but could not secure his deference to its beliefs. No idea, no institution was so venerable or sacred as to escape critical examination. The practice of examining all things was the method of education; its aim was the life of Reason. There was no official instruction, no established truth, no traditionally recognized knowledge. Student and teacher together pursued wisdom not as scribes and custodians of ancient and hallowed doctrine, but rather in the spirit of those who enter upon a voyage of new discovery. Such is the spirit of the classical tradition and no education is liberal which loses that spirit.

If we wish to know the meaning of a liberal education, we should turn to those in whose lives and thoughts it was a living reality. I do not believe that the student who grasps the significance of Plato’s Apology, or the Phædo, or the Republic, can ever after be quite the same. I once overheard a group of sophomores discussing the relative greatness of various historical characters. Each had his favorite hero, a conqueror, a statesman, an orator. One of the boys, who I afterwards learned had discovered Plato’s dialogues for himself, said, “You fellows are just repeating what you have heard people say or have read in your history books. You’ll never know what a great man is till you know Socrates. I think he was the greatest man who ever lived.” I saw in his face a look of quiet earnestness which I have never forgotten. Something was happening in that boy’s thinking. He was living through an educational experience.

To the question what is an educated person like, one answer is, he is like Socrates, or like Plato. Whitman said, “I and my kind do not convince by argument; we convince by our presence.” In the Dialogues there is a presence. Here the personality of a great genius stands revealed. You really come to know Socrates. In his company you cannot fail to delight in his humor, his brilliant flashes of insight, the subtlety and tenacity and wide sweep of his thought, his daring, his unfailing reasonableness, his candor and freedom of spirit. Whether this personality is the Socrates of history or a creation of Plato’s genius or a mixture of both is a matter that need not concern us at present. Our aim is to “find” the educated man. Here by common agreement is the supreme type.

Outside the Dialogues and a few such sources of information as the writing of Xenophon, we know little that is authentic about Socrates. Before Socrates there had been much speculation about natural phenomena and the laws which govern the universe. Philosophers had begun to seek naturalistic rather than mythological explanations of the world of objects. This scientific interest was genuine, but the Greeks lacked a logic of scientific method. Before man may think correctly, understand his world or live wisely he must develop habits of exact thinking; he must know what he means by what he says. He must examine his own sentiments and beliefs, and presuppositions.

As an educator Socrates was positively revolutionary, subversive, disconcerting. He stands out in sharp contrast to the other great teachers of antiquity, and to most of those who have lived after him. He gives mankind an entirely different idea of what education is. He pursues knowledge; the others proclaim it. Unlike the philosophers of India and Egypt or the prophets of Judea, Socrates has no gospel, no creed, no made-in-advance message, no “thus saith the Lord,” no system of “truth.” Others indoctrinate; Socrates proclaims his ignorance. He is not a sceptic, for he believes that knowledge is not only possible, but that men possess it, though they seldom make use of that which they possess. Although not a sceptic, Socrates is decidedly an agnostic. He shows popular ideas to be ignorance, mere opinion. Living at a time when even the intelligent few had hardly begun to question traditional illusions, he did not seek to lure his students back to acquiescence to authority, but to develop a technique for testing all things. To use a modern colloquialism, Socrates simply strove to “debunk” the minds of his students. He tried to aid Athenian youths to understand themselves, to think their way to some degree of freedom and mastery, to ground their ideas of virtue, justice, government, in well-considered reason, to gain temperance of judgment, to re-examine what they thought they knew and see if it were knowledge or only opinion. And his was no mere idle curiosity, but a serious and courageous facing of the elemental problems of human living. He set the precedent for all subsequent liberal education.

The herd loves nothing so little as the Socratic dealing with its opinions. Such questioning is a challenge to popular faiths; it demands that men reorient their minds to the values of experience. It arouses in the opinionated the unwelcome suspicion that possibly they may be deceiving themselves. It carries with it the suggestion that those who uncritically accept dogma and custom are possibly intellectually less alert than the critically minded few. It gives the hint that conformity and moral earnestness are not enough for the good life and that those who lay claim to ideas they have not thought out are a little ridiculous. Every man who rises out of crowd-mindedness into independent thinking weakens to that extent the faith of the crowd in itself, and puts it on the defensive. Aristophanes gained popularity in Athenian democracy by holding up the figure of Socrates to ridicule. And when Socrates’ challenge could no longer be met with laughter, the Fundamentalists of his day condemned the old philosopher to death on the charge that he was corrupting the youth. As Woodrow Wilson once said, “The human race has inexhaustible resources for resisting the introduction of knowledge.”

How the influence of Socrates survives in the work of his pupil Plato every school boy knows. It is also a matter of common knowledge that in the beautiful dialogues which Plato wrote many years after his master’s death, the figure of Socrates becomes little more at times than a vehicle of the author’s own thought. But not every one thinks of the dialogues as primarily a record of a great work of adult education. The Socratic method of education is retained by Plato, but he modifies the objectives. Plato has something to “teach.” Knowledge is still found by the method of clarifying men’s thinking. But if men are to live the life of reason, their knowledge must give them a definite outlook on life. Plato seeks something to tie to. He is occupied with the search for reality, “pure being.” His interest in mathematics leads him to attempt to construe the world according to principles of abstract thought. The world of ideas is seen to be the ultimate reality, the world of objects is but a manifestation,—as James put it, but a “stereotyped copy of the deluxe edition” which exists in the eternal. Hence knowledge is not only clear thinking; to know is to possess reality. The real world consists of form, of idea, of universal and abstract principle. Education becomes philosophic contemplation of the ideas of the good, the true, the beautiful. A Francis Bacon or an Isaac Newton in Plato’s situation would doubtless have developed a logic of science. Plato elaborates a metaphysic. But it would be an error to suppose that Plato is occupied merely with meditation upon the transcendental. All knowledge is one. The truth, of which the mind bears witness to itself, must ultimately prevail in the affairs of men. The idea of the good must take the place of the old mythology. Wisdom is virtue. The people are enemies of the truth and hate philosophy largely because they have never known “a human being who in word and work is perfectly moulded as far as he can be into the likeness of virtue—such a man ruling a city which bears the same image.” Of existing states, “not one of them is worthy of the philosophic nature.”

“But no one is satisfied with the appearance of good,—the reality is what they seek; in the case of good, appearance is despised by everyone.”

“Of this then, which every soul of man pursues and makes the end of all his actions, having a presentiment that there is such an end and yet hesitating because neither knowing the nature nor having the same assurance of this as of other things, and therefore losing whatever good there is in other things—of a principle such and so great as this ought the best men in our State, to whom everything is entrusted, to be in the darkness of ignorance?”

Thus Plato’s greatest dialogue, “The Republic,” interweaves the speculative with the practical; it is at once a treatise on reality and appearance, an inquiry into the nature of the good, an elaboration of the abstract principle of justice into the constitution of an ideal aristocratic republic, and a philosophy of education.

Jowett, in his introduction to the third edition to the English translation of this dialogue, says,

“The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated at secondhand’ (Symp. 215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been anticipated in a dream by him.”

“The Republic” begins with a discussion of justice. It is agreed that justice is virtue and wisdom, and injustice is vice and ignorance. Justice is the virtue both of an individual and of a state. In order to discover the nature of this virtue, the author proceeds to “create in idea a State.” The state must be protected from evil, it must have guardians. The guardians need to have both natural gifts and the qualities of a philosopher. The good watchdog must be able to distinguish between the face of the friend and that of the foe. “And must not an animal be a lover of learning who distinguishes what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance?”

“When we have found the desired natures, and now that we have found them, how are they to be educated? Is not this an inquiry which may be expected to throw light on the greater inquiry which is our final end—How do justice and injustice grow up in States?”

Justice, he says, is each man doing his own business and not being a busybody. One should practice the thing to which his nature is best adapted. Justice is harmony, and harmony in the State is like harmony in the nature of the individual. Intelligence must direct and control the emotions, and the movements of the body. Hence in the just State, men are to be divided into classes according to their degree of native superiority.

This is not an easy task, for men will not easily be persuaded to accept such distinctions of worth among themselves.

“How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods ... just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?”

“Well then, I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction, which I propose to communicate gradually, first to the rulers, then to the soldiers, and lastly to the people. They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers....

“‘Citizens,’ we shall say to them in our tale, ‘you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. But as all are of the same original stock, a golden parent will sometimes have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims as a first principle to the rulers, and above all else, that there is nothing which they should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such good guardians, as of the purity of the race. They should observe what elements mingle in their offspring; for if the son of a golden or silver parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye of the ruler must not be pitiful towards the child because he has to descend in the scale and become a husbandman or artisan, just as there may be sons of artisans who having an admixture of gold or silver in them are raised to honour, and become guardians or auxiliaries. For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed.’”

Plato’s ideal state is thus an aristocracy of intelligence and of virtue. There must be selection of those who are to rule. A series of tests is proposed. Those selected must have shown greatest eagerness to do what is good for their country. The youth are to be subjected to various trials, toils, pains, conflicts, to determine whether they can be forced to change their opinions by suffering pain, or by the influence of enchantments, or the lure of pleasure, or as a result of fear. Only those who come out of the trials victorious are to be made rulers.

Their education is to be a rigid discipline, and it is to continue as long as they live. Along with the tests which they must endure, the young are to grow up in a healthy environment, and in an atmosphere of simplicity. First a censorship is established to guard them against evil influences. Only authorized tales are to be told them. Erroneous representation of the gods is forbidden. As the young cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal, the state is to determine the general forms in which the poets may cast their tales. Mothers may not frighten children with myths. The Gods must never be represented as the authors of evil. Nor may one be allowed to say that wicked men are often happy and the good miserable. Elsewhere Plato says that no one shall be permitted to travel abroad until he reaches the age of forty. When he comes home he must tell the youth that the institutions of other states are inferior to their own. If any man blasphemes, he is to be put in the reformatory for five years. If in the end he remains unrepentant he is to be put to death.

Plato requires that the young receive training in gymnastics and music before entering upon the study of philosophy. Certain kinds of music they may not be allowed to hear. Flute players are not to be admitted to Plato’s state. Those who are clever at pantomime are to be exiled. The theater is frowned upon, for the guardians must not be trained to be imitators. Certainly they may not learn to imitate any kind of illiberalism or baseness. In their acting they may not imitate slaves, nor bad men, nor madmen, nor the neighing of horses, the bellowing of bulls, nor the roll of thunder; nor may they represent smiths, boatswains, or other artificers. And they may not play the part of a woman old or young quarreling with her husband, or in conceit of her happiness or when she is in affliction or sorrow or weeping—“and certainly not one who is in sickness, love, or labor.”

There must be temperance and order and not too much laughter. There must be no sensuality and coarseness. There will be no need of lawyers and physicians. “There can be no more disgraceful state of education than this; that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also those who profess to have had a liberal education.”

Thus would Plato direct the early education of the guardians of the state. He has much more to say about protecting them from what he regards as dangerous influences than about the subject matter in which they are to be trained. His guardians are to become noble men; they are not to be imitators or trained animals or exploiters or traders. It is often said by those who believe in the materialist conception of history that education is an instrument for exploitation by the ruling class. In Plato’s state education is a mark of privilege, but his ideal nobleman is a communist. He must not touch silver or gold; he must live like a Spartan. He may call nothing his own, neither house nor wife nor child. The rulers are to be philosophers, and philosophers, kings.

Hence the education of later life is the pursuit of philosophy. It is knowledge of the idea of the good. True knowledge is drawn from within, it is the turning of the eyes toward the light shed by the world of the Idea, the spiritual world. It is the awakening of memories of ideas seen by the soul of an earlier existence. Our world of concrete objects and of sense experience cannot give this knowledge. Education deals almost wholly with abstractions and with universals, and its method is dialectic.

I think that much of the illiberalism of Plato grows out of his theory of knowledge. To him as to Socrates, knowledge is of universals. Mere awareness of concrete objects we will agree is not knowledge. If we only knew unrelated things—just one thing and then another, as we have them in sense experience, we could have knowledge of them but not about them. It is the knowledge about things that gives the world its meanings. Much of the significance of things depends upon how we conceive their relations. Every concept is an abstraction; it signifies not some concrete fact, but a class or a common quality which inheres in a number of objects. So the Greeks sought to find concepts which would not be self-contradictory and would hold for all of the class to which they were applied, and for nothing else. The Greeks did not seek accurate information concerning facts. They believed they had exact knowledge when they had discovered just what they meant by any concept. They had almost no experimental science. They had begun to be deeply interested in the phenomena of nature but their interest was largely speculative as yet. If they had possessed the modern scientific laboratory their knowledge could still have been abstract but it would have remained knowledge about nature. Knowledge would have increased as men carefully observed objects, classified them, studied their relations and made note of the changes which take place under fixed conditions. By the method of forming hypotheses and then trying to verify them by fact, knowledge could have been at once both of the universal and of the concrete. It would have been recognized all along that universals are merely descriptive terms signifying common properties and that they do not stand for realities which are independent of or outside the several individual objects in which these properties are found. With Socrates, I believe, knowledge is about universals, but he is primarily concerned with attaining clear and workable abstractions, that is, he is interested chiefly in sharpening the instruments of thinking.

With Plato the interest in ideas is very different. He is a mathematician. He is fascinated with ideas of number and of geometrical form. Mathematics to many minds seems to consist of a world of pure reason which is more permanent than the world of things. Philosophers before Plato had wrestled with the problem of change. Existence was seen to be a stream in which everything is carried along toward its inevitable destruction. Every object at any moment is but the cross-section of the process of its becoming something different. Our bodies grow and perish, so also does all pass away. The rivers run to the sea, the plants die, the temples of the gods crumble. Even the mountains are but waves on the surface of a sea of time into which all things sink and are lost forever. How can the temporary objects which whirl past in the course of their transformation be said really to exist? Existence surely must be endurance.

I think that Plato, like many thinkers since, saw the terrifying significance of the flow of things and sought security and “reality” in something permanent outside the process of change. What was more natural than that he should turn to the realm of abstract thought? The objects we perceive change, but a concept always means the same. The world may pass away, things may each turn into other things, as water into vapor and fire to smoke and the body to dust, but two and two are still four, and the sum of the angles of a triangle remains constant. Hence above and behind the world of objects there is a world of ideas into which the teeth of time cannot gnaw.

You have only to believe that ideas have an existence independent of the minds which think them and all is transformed. Instantly you step out of Time into Eternity; form without content; number without things to be counted; common properties of objects stripped of the objects in which such properties inhere; the forms of logical discourse, minus the things talked about and the talkers as well; goodness, without anything in particular to be good; beauty in general, independent of any concrete beautiful thing, truth universal and absolute and outside experience. All this is now the real world, and the world of troublesome, fleeting objects becomes a shadow and a delusion. Knowledge is knowledge of the “real.” In other words, knowledge is about itself. The more abstract and universal an idea is the more reality it has. The mind persuades itself that it possesses Being, Motion, the Good and the Beautiful merely by the magic of thinking about them in abstract terms. The universe is transformed into an ordered system of postulates and verbal exercises. Education now is something more than the clarification of concepts; it is initiation into the superworld of eternal verities.

It is not my purpose to attempt a discussion of Platonic Idealism. It has fascinated many of the most subtle minds of the race down to our own times. It is the foundation of much Christian theology. Its re-affirmation at the time of the Renaissance has brought with it the restatement of many problems which must be considered in the course of one’s education. My point is that Plato with all his genius contributed to the tradition of liberal education a system of values very different from the humanism and agnosticism of Socrates. His influence has often tended to make the aim of education mere intellectuality, rather than intelligent grappling with the problems of living, and to transform the search for the good life into a flight from the realities of experience.

Go one step further and you land in ascetic mysticism. The Soul, the Knower, is no more at home in the world of objects than is the philosopher in the market place. It belongs to the spiritual world, the higher realms of Being, in which ideas are forever pure and free of distortion by matter. In the Phædo, Plato says that if we are to have pure knowledge, the soul must be quit of the body which ever thwarts it. Body and soul belong to different worlds. Plato thus prepares the way for St. Paul and his doctrine that the spirit lusteth against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit, and that to be present in the body is to be absent from the Lord.

If matter is corruption and mankind is during life chained to the material body, human nature ceases to be trustworthy. Plato’s distrust of human nature bears fruit some centuries later in the statement that the natural man is sin and death, and in the doctrine of regeneration. And unregenerate man is prone to error. Knowledge of the truth comes by divine revelation and is to be sustained by infallible authority. Dissent is heresy; assent may be required in the interest of salvation. We have not yet reached the position of Tertullian, “I believe that which is absurd,” but Platonism is headed in that direction. Knowledge which feeds on itself in the end eats itself up.

But there is in Plato something of far greater educational importance than any metaphysic or theory of knowledge. When James said that in the study of the classics one learns to recognize human excellence, I wonder if he had Plato in mind. I have no doubt that Nietzsche was thinking of him when he turned to philosophy for an answer to his question, “what is noble?” One who deliberately strives to imitate the manners and acquire the virtues of noble spirits, is a prig and a clown. But unless education ennobles the mind, one becomes only a well-informed cad. Nietzsche’s catalogue of noble traits is a little absurd. We learn what is noble only when we see it. And efforts at education “for character” are little more than cheap conventional substitutes for such excellence. But there is a loftiness and sweep in Plato’s thought which are more than genius; a graciousness which is more than skill; a sincerity which is more than moral earnestness. He has wrestled with the most searching problems that existence presents to the mind of man, problems which each must face and to which he must give his answer if ever he is to become a master spirit. Would you know what nobility of mind is? Study Plato.

The tradition of liberal education is a golden thread woven into the fabric of civilization. Viewed in the perspective of history, the thread is often broken. It is worked into various patterns according to the divergent interests of successive ages, each pattern expressive of the values and meanings which men once held important. The patterns, whether lovely or grotesque, whether they are woven in or are merely appliqué, are the creations of the time. The thread belongs to all times, and whether for this tradition we are more indebted to Plato than to Aristotle is a question we leave to those who are interested in the history of education. We are seeking to know what the tradition is.

I recently heard a teacher of philosophy say, “Aristotle is dead.” His influence has died many times since the early death of his pupil, the Macedonian conqueror, left the philosopher to the tender mercies of a suspicious Athens. It would seem that the interest in Aristotle dies, only to reappear subsequently in new configurations. He has something that we always come back to when sanity returns after an epoch of exaggeration and over-emphasis. If Socrates is critical intelligence, and Plato nobility of spirit, Aristotle is sanity. All three are essentials of liberal education.

One can hardly over-rate the extent of Aristotle’s influence upon the education of western Europe. For many centuries men spoke of him as “The Philosopher,” drilled their minds in his logic, added little to his metaphysics, his natural philosophy, his principles of ethics and politics. Three periods of intellectual awakening may be attributed largely to the revival of interest in his writings—that of Rome at the time of Cicero, whose education and philosophy was essentially Aristotelian; that of the brilliant Arabic culture which preceded the Crusades; and that of the scholastic education of western Europe, at the close of the Middle Ages. In the last, Aristotle’s teaching was very much distorted as a result of theological interest and of ignorance of the Greek language; and his hold upon education had with much difficulty to be broken before men could turn their attention to the study of nature or develop a logic of science. Aristotle could not have anticipated that his authority would one day become an obstacle to the study of nature. He himself was the great naturalist of his age. His extensive work of research and classification of natural phenomena remained unequalled until modern times. Had the Greeks not despised mechanics, Aristotle might have possessed the necessary instruments for scientific experiment, and our knowledge of nature might have been centuries ahead of where it is today.

Unlike Plato, his former master, Aristotle did not displace the world of objects by a world of abstract thought. He seems to have held that universals are real, but only as an account of the order which prevails in the world. His logic is primarily instrumental. His whole philosophy is an attempt at well-ordered common sense.

The “Politics” and “Ethics” contain Aristotle’s philosophy of education. It is the task of the legislator to consider how his citizens may be good men. This is also the task of the educator. Goodness is not represented as obedience to divine commands. Neither is its aim that of securing reward in a future life. The aim of goodness is the good life, and the good life is the happy life, the life that is lived well. Such a life requires certain material goods, also friendships, health, good looks, leisure and aretè. There is no word in English which is the exact equivalent of aretè. It is often translated virtue, or excellence. But Aristotle has in mind a definite quality of excellence, which includes distinction, good breeding, self-command, wisdom, balance and poise, and equanimity in all things. Aretè is the art of living.

Nothing could be farther from Aristotle’s thought than that education should become a separate interest or pursuit of a knowledge that has nothing to do with the kind of life a man leads. To his mind the central question for education is, what sort of man is it most desirable that one should become. Moderns may justly criticise him because he omits any reference to work, other than to say that it is debasing. His philosophy of education is that of a leisure class. And since work makes up the greater portion of most men’s experience in life, it may be said that Aristotle would train men to possess the subjective qualities of virtue only, and without reference to their tasks and duties. It cannot be denied that his theory of education has often been so employed. I have already discussed at some length the relation of education to work. While Aristotle, like others of his time, looks down upon labor, it does not follow that a man is necessarily shut off from the good life as Aristotle depicts it merely because he earns his own bread. Let us say that Aristotle is in error when he says that work is debasing. We may still hold that if his “good life” is good at all, it is good for the man who works for his living. My point is that this philosophy of education is not unrelated to the ordinary affairs of life, but that it points out those habits which best enable one to turn such affairs to value and to happy use.

Aristotle has set forth his idea of the good man in no uncertain terms. The good is not Plato’s absolute or ideal good—good in general; it is happiness. It is to be attained not merely by philosophical speculation, but by “an energy of the soul according to reason,” by well-considered habits of choosing. Happiness is the aim of all knowledge and of every act. But the educated do not agree with the vulgar as to what it is. The latter believe it to be the accident of good fortune. The former hold that it is the result of virtue. Virtues are praiseworthy habits. “Virtue” therefore is a habit accompanied with deliberate preference, in the relative mean defined by reason, and as the prudent man would define it, “It is the mean state between two vices, one in excess, the other in defect. Temperance and courage are destroyed both by the excess and the defect, but are preserved by the mean. Virtues are neither passions nor capacities.” They are not mere moral enthusiasms nor any subjective state of mind. Wisdom and deliberation are required for virtue. The good man is the educated man.

Education is not merely the teaching of morals, or the laying down rules for behavior. The virtuous habits are not acquired by rote nor exercised automatically. The habit of virtue is that of appropriate response to the situation, the response which is right because “nothing may be” taken away from it nor added to it without causing it to tend toward vicious excess or defect. There must be discrimination or one will go to extreme. Courage is not mere bravery; it is that well-considered “mean state” between fear and over-confidence. Aristotle quotes Socrates to the effect that courage is a “kind of science.”

The temperate man does not feel desire “except in moderation, nor more than he ought, nor in any case improperly.” He does not desire things which are dishonorable or beyond his means. He is in the mean in all things, his desires are “according to the suggestions of right reason.” Liberality is the mean between prodigality and stinginess. It is not virtuous to give unless one gives wisely. “The liberal man therefore will give for the sake of the honorable, and he will give properly for he will give to proper objects, in proper quantities, at proper times, and his giving will have all the other qualities of right giving, and he will do this pleasantly and without pain; for that which is done according to virtue is pleasant.”... “But if it should happen to a liberal man to spend in a manner inconsistent with propriety and what is honorable, he will feel pain, but only moderately and as he ought, for it is characteristic of virtue to feel pleasure and pain at proper objects, and in a proper manner.”

Magnanimity is a virtue if accompanied by intelligence. The magnanimous are concerned with honor. He who being really worthy, estimates his own worth highly, is magnanimous. He whose worth is low and who estimates it lowly is not magnanimous, but modest. He who estimates his worth lightly when he is really unworthy is vain. He who estimates it less highly than it deserves is “little-minded.” In good or bad fortune, the magnanimous will behave with moderation, he will not be too much delighted with success nor too much grieved at failure. He must take more care for truth than for the good opinion of men. He will not be servile, for all flatterers are mercenary and low-minded. He will not be given to the habit of too much admiring the great, nor will he be fond of talking about himself or about other people; he will not recollect injuries, nor be over-anxious, nor disposed to praise or blame. “The step of the magnanimous man is slow, his voice deep and his language steady: for he who only feels anxiety about a few things is not apt to be in a hurry: and he who thinks highly of nothing is not vehement and shrillness and quickness of speaking arise from these things.... But vain men are foolish and ignorant of themselves ... little-mindedness is more opposed to magnanimity than vanity, for it is oftener found and is worse.” Hence a just appreciation of one’s worth—knowledge of self, as Socrates would have said—is essential to Aristotle’s ideal man.

Furthermore, meekness is a virtue only when it is a sign of intelligence. “He who feels anger on proper occasions, at proper persons, and besides in a proper manner, at proper times, and for a proper length of time is an object of praise.” The meek man is not carried away by passion. He who is excessively sensitive to anger is irascible. He who is unsensitive is a fool.

Even the virtue of truthfulness must be exercised in moderation and with good judgment. The excess of it is arrogance, the defect is cunning or false modesty. Wit is also a virtue; the excess, Aristotle says, is buffoonery or sarcasm, the defect is clownishness.

Justice is discussed in a manner quite different from that of Plato. The problem of universal justice is dismissed, and justice is considered in relation to various transactions between man and man. Hence the necessity of defining “right reason.” Aristotle turns to a discussion of Prudence, Intelligence, Deliberation, Wisdom. He says, “It is not sufficient to know the theory of virtue,”—the end is in “practical matters.” Aristotle holds the relation of morals to education is much the same as that which we found it to be in the preceding chapter. Mere precept and example are not enough; there must be general culture, and education should extend throughout a lifetime.

“But reasoning and teaching, it is to be feared, will not avail in every case, but the mind of the hearer must be previously cultivated by habits to feel pleasure and aversion properly just as the soil must be which nourishes the seed. For he who lives in obedience to passion would not listen to reasoning which turns him away from it: nay more, he would not understand it. And how is it possible to change the convictions of such a man as this? On the whole, it appears that passion does not submit to reasoning, but to force....

“Perhaps it is not sufficient that we should meet with good education when young: but since when we arrive at manhood we ought also study and practice what we have learnt we should require laws also for this purpose.”

Aristotle discusses the desirability of public education. He thinks that first men must become fitted for the duties of the legislator. And since, he says, all previous writers have discussed the subject of politics without scientific examination of the subject, he proposes to undertake such an examination for himself.

Let us note that neither Plato nor Aristotle when considering the good life, thinks that the individual may attain it in isolation. It is not merely a quality of the soul, but has to do with all of one’s human relationships. Aristotle says that it is very difficult for the young to receive a good education under a bad government. He would seem to make the state and the laws a means to education. And it is the aim of both the state and education to enable the citizen to live happily. Education is training in wisdom and virtue, and the exercise of these is freedom. Those who are incapable of education are slaves by nature; those who obey only passion and abstain from vicious things not because they are disgraceful but for fear of punishment, cannot be reasoned with; they must be restrained by force. Education is liberal in that it enables a man to govern himself.

In comparison with Plato, Aristotle appears prosaic, worldly, and lacking in charm and humor. Much that he says appears to us platitudinous, for the same reason that the woman found Shakespeare’s dramas full of familiar quotations. We forget how subversive of convention and dogma it is to found the good life in the life of reason. Aristotle has passed by mythology and tradition and the sanctions of religion and has achieved a purely secular guide to conduct. He has made freedom and happiness the goal of virtue and education, and has done this without descending to utilitarianism. He has made right reason the standard of life and has at the same time given to the standard an æsthetic valuation. He has linked education with conduct, and suggested a moral training which gives human nature credit for some degree of intelligence. Aristotle is no longer “the Philosopher.” Education in the modern world is necessarily set to tasks very different from those of ancient Greece. But the good life is still the goal, and Aristotle’s good man has remained one of the ideals of liberal education.

CHAPTER XII
HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE

Each man’s education is a unique achievement. There are as many kinds of education as there are kinds of men. In every educated mind there is a mixture of temperament and learning, a selection and emphasis, an elusive quality like that which haunts a work of art. We may recognize this elusive something but we cannot define it or describe it. Such words as wisdom, virtue, independence of judgment, freedom, cannot give us the meaning of education. We must know the educated man. If you read and understand Erasmus of Rotterdam, you will see what education is better than if you read all the books written about theories of education. A liberally educated person is like Erasmus.

I do not mean that Erasmus is the only type of educated mind, or that the educated man is like him in all respects. Certainly I would not suggest that one living in the twentieth century should strive to imitate a scholar who lived in the fifteenth. Change of environment calls for a different response. But there are certain constant factors. New modes of response may be necessary in order to recreate the values which men of other times discovered, values the loss of which in our times would cheapen our whole existence. If this were not so there would be no point in trying to learn anything from men of other times. There are those who have such faith in the infallibility of contemporary opinion that they are convinced the past has nothing to teach us. The ways of the present are “progress,” and progress is its own criterion of the good and needs no other guide than the interests of the hour. Such persons are usually to be found cheering for “the latest thing.” As a rule they are people without background or reserve. We live in the present, to be sure. But if we are really to live in it and are not content merely to act a part in the passing show, we must consider the values which are at issue in the responses we make. To that end there is enlightenment in knowing the values for which other men of other times struggled. The kind of living we are to achieve with our environment is not determined by the environment itself, but by the kind of men and women we are—by what we bring to our environment from the widest possible knowledge of what is worth doing. Men like Erasmus and Montaigne lived better lives than most of their contemporaries because of the wisdom of the ages that was in them. It may be said that other men in their times also shared this ancient knowledge, for was not The Revival of Learning at its height? Many did and were better men for it. Many were fascinated by the Renaissance who merely shared its externalities but did not thereby become wiser men; they remained creatures of their own times. It became “the latest thing” to ape the ancients without understanding them. Among obscurantists, and fanatics and corruptionists, Erasmus and Montaigne lived like educated men.

At the close of the fifteenth century, it was said, “Whatever is artistic, finished, learned and wise is called Erasmian.” It is difficult to speak of Erasmus except in terms of the superlative. The most broadly educated man of his times, he was not only the representative scholar of his generation; he remains an example to us all of the truly civilized man. His polished wit, his humanity, his gentle irony, his unfailing reasonableness, his ability to see through cant and superstition, his philosophic calm in the midst of intense partisan strife, his good taste and sense of proportion: these qualities of mind belong to no one age, they are the constants of which I spoke a moment ago; they are the essentials of a civilized attitude toward life in any age. Without them man is a barbarian.

The Great Humanist saw as no one else did the spiritual significance of the revival of learning, and he came to represent all that was best in it. Scholarship to him was more than erudition and pedantry and literary style. He found in classic literature a window opening upon a new vision of the meaning and possibilities of living. He became the champion of a new way of life and thought. Past and present met and mingled in his thought and became a new life of reason. “He quietly stepped out of medievalism,” the first modern man, the forerunner of Descartes and Voltaire.

In a time when all human interests were submerged in religion, Erasmus sought to humanize the Church, and leave it an international fellowship of culture, free of dogma and superstition. He turns from knowledge of divine things to human letters as the guide to living, and from blind faith to reason. The Gospel becomes for him the “philosophy of Christ.” With equal impartiality he could translate the mocking dialogues of Lucian and provide the coming Reformation with its first standard Greek text of the New Testament. His boldness in omitting passages from this latter work, which he found not to be authentic, and his occasional unconventional commentary on the text brought him under the suspicion of being at heart a sceptic and a heretic.

With bigotry and persecution almost universal all around him, Erasmus taught tolerance, moderation, respect for truth. In a splendid biographical study, Professor Preserved Smith says that Erasmus’s “Colloquies” did more for the spread of liberal ideas than any book of the sixteenth century. Another historian says, “Almost all the liberating ideas on which the international culture of the present rests, are present in germ in his thought.”

The continent of Europe in the year fifteen hundred was culturally far inferior to Asia. Compared to the civilization of Greece and Rome, all Christendom was barbarian. The wave of interest in education which in the thirteenth century had caused the universities to become crowded, while it had not passed, had subsided into a dull scholastic dialectic. Education had little effect upon the life of the masses or their rulers. In Italy art and letters were breaking away from religious tradition, but the new spirit which prevailed at Florence, Padua, and Rome had little sway north of the Alps. Mediæval Christianity had reached its culmination and was in a period of moral and intellectual decline. Thoughtful men everywhere were dissatisfied. The time was soon to come when this dissatisfaction could no longer be held in restraint, when throughout a century of bloodshed, civil war, and violence and hatred such as Europe had never known, the Church would be torn asunder and anarchy and terror reign until modern nationalism and industrialism could painfully emerge from the smouldering ruins.

It is said that when Leo X ascended the Papal throne, there was placed above his head in Latin the inscription, “Nunc tempora Pallas habet,”—Now Athene reigns. Not many years were to pass before the sacred walls, which had under the Pontificate of his predecessor been decorated by Michelangelo and Raphael, were to echo the sound of church bells ringing out the tidings of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. Soon all over Europe the floodgates would be open and Christendom would be inundated by torrents of fury. Soon in defense of the sacred Gospel, Christians would tear at Christians’ throats. With instruments of iron, tongues would be wrenched from the mouths of men and women, eyes gouged from their sockets, limbs broken on the rack. The bed of torture and the heap of burning faggots would become commonplace spectacles for the public to gaze upon. For a hundred years and more Europe was to be ablaze with war on every hand, until it should sink exhausted by the mutual destruction of Christian armies into almost unimaginable misery and poverty. And this struggle which was destined to breed hatreds and sectarian divisions lasting even till today, might have been avoided, probably could have been averted, could the spirit of Erasmus have prevailed. Protestants hold the Catholics responsible for the horrors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Catholics hold the Protestants responsible. Both were equally guilty, for they were equally ignorant and barbarous and deluded with superstition. This is the kind of thing that happens and always will happen when ignorance breaks loose in the world. Then in the general madness even learned men like Melanchthon and Œcolampadius and the Medicis lose their poise and become partisans.

Erasmus during the most trying time kept his sanity. And both sides denounced him bitterly. He was accused of taking a cowardly middle of the road position. What neither group of militant partisans could see was that Erasmus, far from being in the middle of the road, was not on their wretched highway at all. He remained true to the issue for which he had struggled from the first. Erasmus saw that what was wrong with Europe, indeed what really gave rise to the abuses of mediæval society, was barbarism sanctioned by religious superstition. He knew that vice and folly and brutality and hypocrisy were not to be removed by religious warfare, but rather deepened. He saw the same spirit of doctrinaire scholasticism, the same intolerance and cruelty and pious ignorance on both sides of the coming controversy. He knew that conditions could be improved only when the leading minds of contemporary Europe could acquire the decencies which characterize the liberally educated of all times. Whether history has vindicated Erasmus in this conviction of his is a matter concerning which opinions differ. I think it has. Such liberty and cultural progress as the modern world enjoys it would seem to have derived from the Erasmian tradition, not that of Luther, Calvin or Wesley. Protestantism without the humanism of Erasmus is Fundamentalism. And conversely, Paris and Vienna and Munich are nominally Catholic, but they have known the influence of Erasmus and Voltaire to a degree that many Protestant communities have not known such influence, and so far as the advance of civilization is concerned, I think that life in such localities will compare rather favorably with that of certain strictly Protestant communities. I believe that those movements of the present day which have greatest spiritual significance and value—modernism in religion, liberalism in education, the dawning recognition of the necessity of intelligence and of individual responsibility in matters of belief and conduct, efforts for the humanization of industry and the state—are but the belated resumption of the humanizing work begun in northern Europe by Erasmus and others and broken off by the Reformation. From this point of view the Reformation is not the continuation of the Renaissance, but would appear to have been something of a bourgeois reaction against it.

Long before the storm broke, Erasmus was carrying on a brave work against ignorance and obscurantism. In our times, we have seen something of the conflict of science with theology. This issue is tame in comparison with the conflict of theology with Humanism which occupied scholars at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is difficult for us now to imagine that there could be bitter opposition to the teaching of the Latin and Greek literatures. The issue is blurred for us. Theologians are less acrimonious than they once were, and Scholasticism has long been on the decline. The classics moreover, are taught in such a manner that few students see the deep spiritual chasm which separates the Christian approach to life from that of the Latin and Greek poets and philosophers. It was pretty well recognized on both sides of the dispute that the ancients were pagans, rank heathen. Those who opposed these unchristian writers did so for much the same reason that early Christians in the second century had assailed “the present evil world” and all its works.

In Italy the Renaissance tended for a time to take on a definitely pagan aspect. Imitation of the ancients became a rather ridiculous gesture, and the fad was often carried to extremes which were little less than childish. Cardinals assumed the speech and manners of ancient Roman senators. Sermons were preached in sonorous Ciceronian style. In certain quarters Christ was identified with Apollo, and God the Father with Jupiter. Nuns were spoken of as “vestal virgins,” and painters and sculptors created figures of Mars and Venus and mingled these and other heathen idols with the images of the saints.

The apparent sympathy of high ecclesiastical personages with such goings on was one of the causes of the hostility to the Papacy which later swept over northern Europe.

The sanity of Erasmus saved him and helped save the revival of learning from such superficiality. He found in Humanism a balanced and serious wisdom which he strove to combine with the Christian philosophy of life. The synthesis he achieved was not a new system of theology; it was the gradual merging of an older outlook upon life into a new outlook, a transformation of intellectual interests. Professor Smith quotes a passage which indicates something of Erasmus’s position regarding the classics. That this literature was pagan he well knew, but its paganism did not to his mind exclude it from the spiritual life of mankind. He says of an essay of Cicero’s, “A heathen wrote this to heathen and yet his moral principles have justice, sincerity, truth, fidelity to nature; nothing false or careless is in them.” “When I read certain passages of these great men, ... I can hardly refrain from saying, ‘St. Socrates, pray for me.’”

Erasmus found himself the leader of Humanism as an educational movement. He stated the issue in precisely the terms that gave sincere and intelligent men a new vision of the spiritual life. And he did it with such a wealth of learning, such reasonableness, such unanswerable irony and wit that his name became the symbol of the new scholarship. His books had a larger circulation than those of any other writer of his generation. And as for many years he travelled about Europe, moving from one center of learning to another, his coming was hailed with triumph. Scholars everywhere attended him, sat at his feet, took up the cause he championed. The Humanists were winning victory after victory and could look forward to the triumph of their movement in the education of western Europe. How rapidly the spread and advance of culture might have proceeded or what directions it might have taken if men’s thoughts had not been turned again to theological controversy and to bitter warfare, no one can say. Perhaps the masses were not prepared to accept or tolerate so sudden a change as that for which Erasmus strove, for Humanism was a much more radical departure from the mental habits and standards of value of the Middle Ages than was Protestantism. The leaders of the Renaissance did not accept the Reformation because they regarded it as a backward step. Perhaps they had themselves gone too far ahead. Perhaps the representation of the good man as the intelligent man, an ancient Greek idea which the Humanists revived, will always be offensive to the masses. Erasmus seemed—he still seems to many—to have lacked moral earnestness. He generated light and what mankind wants is heat. At any rate, the masses in the nations where the new scholarship was being carried, showed that they did not want the pagan wisdom. Instead they suddenly became possessed with a longing for the primitive faith of the first Christian century, or what they thought was that faith. They followed the leader who gave them not insight, but a moral issue.

Both Luther and Erasmus had visited Rome. Each was impressed by the “sight of antique monuments.” Each saw evidence of the corruption and veniality which along with luxury surrounded the gay Papal court. Luther later spoke of Rome as the “sink of every abomination,” a conviction which doubtless had much to do with determining the course of events which led to his break with Papal authority.

Of the effect of all this on the mind of Erasmus, we have the record in a book, one of the great classics of literature, “In Praise of Folly.” In the letter of dedication to his friend Sir Thomas More, Erasmus says that in his late travels from Italy, that he might not trifle away his time in the rehearsal of old wives’ fables, he began reflecting upon his past studies, and thought it good to divert himself by drawing up a “panegyrick upon Folly.” He suggests that this trifling may be a whet to more serious thought and that “comical matters may be so treated of, as that a reader of ordinary sense may possibly thence reap more advantage than from some more big and stately argument.” He hints that he does not wish to be so carping that he will fail to instruct, and says that he who points indifferently at all, can hardly be accused of being angry with any one man or one vice. And he wonders at the “tender humor” of an age in which some are so “preposterously devout that they would sooner wink at the greatest affront against our Saviour, than be content that a prince or a pope should be nettled with the least joke or gird, especially in what relates to their ordinary customs.”

Here we have the characteristic reactions of two contrasting types of men who probably can never understand each other. To Luther the vices of Rome are sin; to Erasmus they are folly. The one is filled with moral indignation at the iniquity of the world, and rushes into the fray to stamp it out, puts it on the defensive, attacks it in its stronghold. The other makes iniquity ridiculous, renders it defenseless by laughing away its pretexts at justification, showing it to itself as folly and reminding all men that their foolishness may be removed only by wisdom. No doubt without more moral indignation in the world than Erasmus seems to have shown there would be too easy tolerance of abuse. On the other hand, without his insight and scepticism and irony, indignation turns to malice, men lose their perspective, and their power of self-criticism; they become so intent upon the struggle for righteousness that they forget what they are struggling for, and when the great cause finally triumphs, it carries to victory the same old iniquities in new dress.

It is evident from a reading of “In Praise of Folly” that Erasmus’ thought made deeper inroads into the very spirit of Mediæval thought and religion than did Luther’s moral indignation. It undermined many things that the Reformer left standing. “In Praise of Folly” was written eight years before Luther’s break with the Pope, and it reveals a mind emancipated from much more than the Papacy. The man who could write this satire must have regarded the Reformation as a quarrel which dealt with only the surface of the problem. I do not wonder that later both Catholics and Protestants considered him a sceptic. It is my belief that he was too sceptical to become greatly excited about the Reformation. He is impressed with the whole stupid comedy of the life about him.

Knowledge of this book should be part of every man’s education. It has much more than a historical interest for the modern student. In form it is an oration which Folly delivers in praise of herself. She makes a good case; perhaps too good a case. Folly says that however slightly she is esteemed in the common vogue of the world—being often decried even by those who are themselves the greatest fools—yet she is the deity who really rules the world and is the source of most men’s happiness. “At first sight of me you all unmask and appear in more lively colors.”

Without Folly society would go to pieces. Indeed no one would ever be born, for would women ever have children or marry except for Folly? And except for Folly marriages would be few and divorces many. How could the government exist without Folly? Have not wise legislators in all times recognized the necessity of fooling the people? After showing how Folly reigns in the arts and the professions, and how each nation has its pet folly and self-conceit, the speaker sums up, “I am so communicative and bountiful as to let no particular person pass without some token of my favor, whereas other deities bestow gifts sparingly and to their elects only.”

Let us note this reference to Folly as “deity.” Does Erasmus mean to imply that Folly is the deity that mankind really worships and has been worshipping all the while? He makes Folly say,

“Well, but there are none (say you) build any altars, or dedicate any temple to Folly. I admire (as I have before intimated) that the world should be so wretchedly ungrateful. But I am so good natured as to pass by and pardon this seeming affront, though indeed the charge thereof, as unnecessary, may well be saved; for to what purpose should I demand the sacrifice of frankincense, cakes, goats, and swine, since all persons everywhere pay me that more acceptable service, which all divines agree to be more effectual and meritorious, namely, an imitation of my communicable attributes?... Farther, why should I desire a temple, since the whole world is but one ample continued choir, entirely dedicated to my use and service? Nor do I want worshippers at any place where the earth wants not inhabitants. And as to the manner of my worship, I am not yet so irrecoverably foolish, as to be prayed to by proxy, and to have my honour intermediately bestowed upon images and pictures, which quite subvert the true end of religion....”

But Folly has not time to recount all the foolishness of the ignorant, neither is it necessary. She confines herself to the follies of those who make pretense of wisdom. Of these the theologians doubtless “least like to be reminded of their dependence upon Folly,” but in evidence of this fact,

“They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexander did the Gordian knot; they will thunder out so many rattling terms as shall fright an adversary into conviction. They are exquisitely dexterous in unfolding the most intricate mysteries; they will tell you to a tittle all the successive proceedings of omnipotence in the creation of the universe; they will explain the precise manner of original sin being derived from our first parents; they will satisfy you in what manner, by what degrees, and in how long a time our Saviour was conceived in the Virgin’s womb, and demonstrate in the consecrated wafer how accidents may subsist without a subject. Nay, these are accounted trivial, easy questions; they have yet far greater difficulties behind, which nothwithstanding they solve with as much expedition as the former; ... whether Christ, as a son, bears a double specifically distinct relation to God the Father, and his virgin mother? whether this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second? whether God, who took our nature upon him in the form of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone? and were it so possible that the Godhead had appeared in any shape of an inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel? or how have been nailed to the cross? whether if St. Peter had celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread would have been transsubstantiated into the same body that remained on the tree?”

“Further, does any one appear a candidate for any ecclesiastical dignity, why an ass or a plough jobber shall sooner gain it than a wise man.”...

“All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their delivery the very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are these gestures? What heights and falls in their voice? What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making of mouths, and apes’ faces, and distorting of their countenance; and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by tradition to one another. The manner of it I may adventure thus farther to enlarge upon. First, in a kind of mockery they implore the divine assistance, which they borrowed from the solemn custom of the poets....

“Now as to the popes of Rome, who pretend themselves Christ’s vicars, if they would but imitate his exemplary life, in the being employed in an unintermitted course of preaching; in the being attended with poverty, nakedness, hunger, and a contempt of this world; if they did but consider the import of the word pope, which signifies a father; or if they did but practice their surname of most holy, what order or degrees of men would be in a worse condition? There would be then no such vigorous making of parties, and buying of votes, in the conclave upon a vacancy of that see: and those who by bribery, or other indirect courses, should get themselves elected, would never secure their sitting firm in the chair by pistol, poison, force of violence. How much of their pleasure would be abated if they were but endowed with one dram of wisdom? Wisdom, did I say? Nay, with one grain of that salt which our Saviour bid them not lose the savour of. All their riches, all their honour, their jurisdictions, their Peter’s patrimony, their offices, their dispensations, their licences, their indulgences, their long train and attendants, (see in how short a compass I have abbreviated all their marketing of religion;) in a word, all their perquisities would be forfeited and lost.”...

Finally, after quoting many passages in praise of Folly and of foolish actions and foolish persons which occur in his precious classic literature, Erasmus does a surprising thing. At the time this book was written those who later were to become the Reformers were already disposed to appeal to the Bible as an infallible authority equal to, if not above, that of the Church. That Erasmus placed the Holy Scriptures in the same category as other ancient literature is indicated by his free and easy treatment of it. He humorously quotes many passages to prove that the Bible actually enjoins men to practice folly and eschew wisdom. Were not our first parents expelled from Eden in punishment for the sin of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge? He does not even spare the New Testament.

“Now therefore I return to St. Paul, who uses these expressions ‘Ye suffer fools gladly,’ applying it to himself; and again, ‘As a fool receive me,’ and ‘That which I speak, I speak not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly’; and in another place, ‘We are fools for Christ’s sake.’ See how these commendations of Folly are equal to the author of them, both great and sacred. The same holy person does yet enjoin and command the being a fool, as a virtue of all others most requisite and necessary: for, says he, ‘If any man seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.’...

“Nor may this seem strange in comparison to what is yet farther delivered by St. Paul, who adventures to attribute something of Folly even to the all-wise God himself, ‘The foolishness of God (says he) is wiser than men’ ... wherein is to be understood that other passage of St. Paul, ‘The preaching of the cross to them that perish, is foolishness.’ But why do I put myself to the trouble of citing so many proofs, since this one may suffice for all, namely, that in those mystical psalms wherein David represents the type of Christ, it is there acknowledged by our Saviour, in way of confession, that even he himself was guilty of Folly; ‘thou (says he) O God knowest my foolishness?’ Nor is it without some reason that fools for their plainness and sincerity of heart have always been most acceptable to God Almighty.... So our Saviour in like manner dislikes and condemns the wise and crafty, as St. Paul does expressly declare in these words, ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world’; and again, ‘it pleased God by foolishness to save the world’; implying that by wisdom it could never have been saved. Nay, God himself testifies as much when he speaks by the mouth of his prophet, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nought the understanding of the learned.’ Again, our Saviour does solemnly return his Father thanks for that he had ‘hidden the mysteries of salvation from the wise, and revealed them to babes,’ i. e. to fools.”

The book ends with these words, “I hate a pot-companion with a good memory: so indeed I hate a hearer that will carry anything away with him. Wherefore in short, farewell: be jolly, live long, drink deep, ye most illustrious votaries of Folly.”

It is said that Luther was repelled by this book. I do not wonder. Erasmus would seem to be as far removed from the spirit of Protestantism as from that of mediæval Catholicism. Has Erasmus, perhaps without wholly realizing the fact himself, stepped quite outside the traditional Christian system of beliefs and values into a world-view which is partly that of the ancient philosophies and partly that of the eighteenth century Rationalist? I do not know. He is certainly a liberal in matters of religion, but unlike our contemporary liberals, he shows little interest in natural science.

He was severely criticised for refusing to participate in the Reformation on the side of the Reformers. The following bits of correspondence which I quote from Professor Smith’s biography indicate the esteem in which he and Luther finally held each other. Luther wrote about the year 1524:

“Since we see that the Lord has not given you courage and sense to assail those monsters openly and confidently with us, we are not the men to expect what is beyond your power and measure.... We only fear that you may be induced by our enemies to fall upon our doctrine with some publication, in which case we should be obliged to resist you to your face.... Hitherto I have controlled my pen as often as you prick me, and have written in letters to friends, which you have seen, that I would control it until you publish something openly. For although you will not side with us, and although you injure and make skeptical many pious men by your impiety and hypocrisy, yet I cannot and do not accuse you of willful obstinancy.... We have fought long enough; we must take care not to eat each other up. This would be a terrible catastrophe, as neither of us wishes to harm religion, and without judging each other both may do good.”

Erasmus wrote to his friend, Everard,

“With what odium Luther burdens the cause of learning and that of Christianity! As far as he can he involves all men in his business. Everyone confessed that the Church suffered under the tyranny of certain men, and many were taking counsel to remedy this state of affairs. Now this man has arisen to treat the matter in such a way that he fastens the yoke on us more firmly, and that no one dares to defend even what he has said well. Six months ago I warned him to beware of hatred. ‘The Babylonian Captivity’ (a bitter treatise which Luther wrote) has alienated many from him, and he daily puts forth more atrocious things.”

And again to Luther, in reply to a very unkind letter,

“Your letter was delivered to me late and had it come on time it would not have moved me.... The whole world knows your nature, according to which you have guided your pen against no one more bitterly and, what is more detestable, more maliciously than against me.... The same admirable ferocity which you formerly used against Cochlaeus and against Fisher, who provoked you to it by reviling, you now use against my book in spite of its courtesy. How do your scurrilous charges that I am an atheist, an Epicurean, and a skeptic help the argument?... It terribly pains me, as it must all good men, that your arrogant, insolent, rebellious nature has set the world in arms.... You treat the Evangelic cause so as to confound together all things sacred and profane as if it were your chief aim to prevent the tempest from ever becoming calm, while it is my greatest desire that it should die down.... I should wish you a better disposition were you not so marvelously satisfied with the one you have. Wish me any curse you will except your temper, unless the Lord change it for you.”

Much has been made of the following “damning” admission:

“Would that some ‘deus ex machina’ might make a happy ending for this drama so inauspiciously begun by Luther! He himself gives his enemies the dart by which they transfix him, and acts as if he did not wish to be saved, though frequently warned by me and by his friends to tone down the sharpness of his style.... I cannot sufficiently wonder at the spirit in which he has written. Certainly he has loaded the cultivators of literature with heavy odium. Many of his teachings and admonitions were splendid, but would that he had not vitiated these good things by mixing intolerable evils! If he had written all things piously, yet I should not have courage to risk my life for the truth. All men have not strength for martyrdom. I fear least, if any tumult should arise, I should imitate Peter (in denying the Lord).”

It is doubtful if Erasmus meant this confession of weakness to be taken literally. Cowards are not often so honest with themselves, nor do they make such candid revelations of their fears, but rather affect a show of bravery so long as it is possible to disguise their weakness of character. Had Erasmus been less strong, he would have yielded to pressure, joined the reformers and sought refuge among them. Instead, he stood against the crowd, knowing well that although he might decline to join the ranks of Luther, there was no refuge for him amongst the churchmen whom he had been attacking for many years. He did not betray his own cause, the Renaissance, but remained true to it in opposition to bigotry and ignorance on both sides of the controversy. In support of the revival of learning he was courageous enough. Surrounded as he was by madness, he conceived it to be the task of the wise man to keep his balance and work for peace and sanity.

I believe this to be the first social task of the educated. Could a Socrates, or a Seneca, or Cicero have returned to life in the year 1525, it is difficult to imagine that he would have pursued a course very different from that Erasmus pursued. A man’s intellectual integrity does not require that he take sides when he believes that neither side has the truth. I believe Erasmus took the longer view, for today we find Humanism gradually supplanting orthodoxy among educated Protestants, and I have no doubt that something similar is taking place in Catholic centers of culture. The liberal Catholic and the liberal Protestant are more nearly of one mind than is either of them with the Fundamentalist in his own sect. And they are each nearer to Erasmus. Erasmus did not suffer martyrdom, neither did he make martyrs of those who opposed him. Persecution and martyrdom are the first things that the uneducated think of in any social crisis. The masses are prepared to make any conflict the occasion of both, and with only the vaguest idea of what the killing is all about. If there were more men like Erasmus there would be less occasion for such practices. His is the cause which will never triumph by force.

Humanism, which in the Italian Renaissance was something of a parvenu effort at culture, comes to its maturity with Montaigne. It is an educational experience lived through, a wisdom grown into, as Montaigne says, with everything in its season. Montaigne’s mind is stored with the fruits of the wisdom of all historic times. He quotes the ancients as only Erasmus could, yet he is never an imitator or copier. His is one of the most original minds in literature, and his originality increases as he grows older and has time to think. It is very different from the rebelliousness of certain contemporary radicals, whose liberalism might be characterized as retarded adolescence.

A contemporary critic says of him, “Montaigne ... was one of the most civilized men of whom we have any record: his intellectual curiosity was matched by his magnanimity. He hated cruelty, prejudice, violence and stupidity: his love of life was so great that it illumined every object in the world of sense and in the world of thought. His style was so original that his remarks on little things have outlived thousands of works dealing soberly with portentous ideas. He could write on trivial themes without becoming trivial.”

Like Erasmus, he has a delicious sense of humor in which there is no bitterness. He is so accustomed to ideas that he can play with them. He can smile at his own weaknesses, and discuss every question with open mind and with that “kindly irony which is perhaps the ripest of all moods in which poor humanity can look at itself.” But Erasmus was the professional scholar, and we think of him always moving in circles where learning is of special interest. One does not think of educational institutions when one reads Montaigne’s essays, but of the educated man himself. He is the learned layman, the amateur whose learning is assimilated with all the interests of the daily routine of living. He is not “taken in” by his culture so as to make it an end in itself. He says,

“I labor not to be beloved more and esteemed better being dead than alive.... If I were one of those to whom the world may be indebted for praise, I would quit it for one moytie, on condition it would pay me before hand.... I make no account of goods which I could not employ to the use of my life. Such as I am, so I would not be elsewhere than on paper. Mine art and industry have been employed to make myself of some worth; my study and endeavor to doe, and not to write. I have applied all my skill and devoire to frame my life. Lo—heere mine occupation and my work. I am a less maker of books than of anything else.... Whosoever hath any worth in him, let him shew it in his behaviour, manners and ordinary discourses; be it to treat of love or of quarrels; of sport and play or bed-matters, at board or elsewhere; or be it in the conduct of his own affairs or private household matters.... Demand a Spartan whether he would rather be a cunning Rhethorician, then an excellent souldier; nay, were I asked, I wuld say a good Cooke, had I not some one to serve me. Good Lord—how I would hate such a commendation, to be a sufficient man in writing and a foolish, shallow-headed braine or coxcombe in all things else.”

He ridicules those who strive to make a show of learning and “alledge Plato and Saint Thomas for things which the first man they meete would decide as well.... Such learning as could not enter into their middle hath staid on their tongues.”

“Being young I studied for ostentation; then a little to enoble myselfe and become wiser; now for delight and recreation, never for gaine. A vaine conceit and lavish humour I had after this kinde of stuffe; not only to provide for my need, but some what further to adorne and embellish my selfe withall; I have since partlie left it.”

He loves Letters but does not worship them. He remains a little surprised and amused at his own bits of wisdom and does not quite know how he came into the company of the philosophers.

“Nothing may be spoken so absurdly but that it is spoken by some of the philosophers. And therefore do I suffer my humors or caprices more freely to pass in publike. For as much as though they are borne with, and of me, and without any patterne; well I wot, they will be found to have relation to some ancient humour, and some shall be found, that will both know and tell whence, and of whom I have borrowed them. My customes are naturall; when I contrived them, I called not for the help of any discipline: And weake and faint as they were, when I have had a desire to expresse them, and to make them appeare to the world a little more comely and decent, I have somewhat endevoured to aide them with discourse, and assist them with examples. I have wondred at my selfe, that by mere chance I have met with them, agreeing and sutable to so many ancient examples and Philosophicall discourses. What regiment my life was of, I never knew nor learned but after it was much worne and spent. A new figure: An unpremeditated Philosopher and a casuall.”

It is this unostentatious, unpremeditated, casual and chatty quality of Montaigne’s writing that reveals the genuineness of his education. A present-day critic would lead us to believe that he kept a note book and patiently copied out of his classics the passages which he might use as illustrations. In a characteristic bit of humor at his own expense, Montaigne seems to justify this idea that he was a mere compiler of other men’s thoughts.

“We labor and toyle and plod to fill the memorie and leave both understanding and conscience empty. Even as birds flutter and skip from field to field to peck up corn or any grain and without tasting the same carrie it in their bills therewith to feed their little ones: so doe our pedants glean and pick learning from books and never lodge it further than their lips only to disgorge and cast it to the wind. It is strange how filthy sottishness takes hold of mine example. Is not that which I do in the greatest part of this composition all one and self same thing? I am forever here and there picking and culling from this and that book the sentences that please me, not to keepe them (for I have no store house to reserve them in) but to transport them into this: where to say truth, they are no more mine than in their first place.”

But it is obvious that these essays were not the product of a mind which worked in such a sophomoric manner as this. Montaigne’s mind is saturated with “ancient humor.” There is no pretense or conscious effort to appear erudite. While many other Renaissance scholars were writing in Latin and affecting a Ciceronian style, Montaigne wrote in French. He is, I believe, the creator of the essay as a form of literary expression, a style which is more free and informal than the conventional forms of his day.

A man who spent his days in seclusion in his library in the tower of his castle, he writes not of books but of every conceivable human interest and commonplace reality. His wisdom turns to such considerations as, “By diverse means men come to a like end.” “How the soul dischargeth her passions upon false objects.” “Whether the captaine of a place besieged ought to sally forth to parley.” He writes of “Idleness,” of “Liars,” or “Virtue,” of “Drunkenness,” of “Exercise or Practice,” of “Profit and Honesty,” of “Repenting,” of “Coaches,” of “The Verses of Virgil,” of “Vanity,” of “The affection of fathers to their Children,” of “Seneca” and “Plutarch” and “Julius Caesar.” Always his interest is in human experience. Shrewd personal observations are mingled with stories from antiquity and quaint philosophic maxims in a mind which is at once mature and inquisitive, loquacious and sceptical, candidly self-revealing, without pretention, equally at home among books and things. Let those who object to the teaching of the classics on the ground that they tend to a “separation of education from life” go back and re-read Montaigne.

Although the two were by temperament very different, Montaigne would have pleased Erasmus. His education and philosophy of life were very much the type that Erasmus strove to encourage. When Montaigne was born, in 1533, the influence of the Renaissance had already made itself felt in France. He was three years old when Erasmus died. But his casual mention of “The Adages” and “Colloquies” of Erasmus would indicate that sometime in his youth these books formed part of his education. His knowledge of Greek and Latin began at a very early period in his life. It is said that when he was a mere infant his father placed him in the home of a neighboring scholar so that he would grow up with the same familiarity with these languages as with his mother tongue. He entered what was called a “college” at the age of six. It was, I suppose, a preparatory school. It must have come under the influence of the revival of learning for it had on its faculty some of the ablest scholars in France at that time. At the age of thirteen he entered a university to study Law, took his degree at twenty, and at twenty-one was appointed councilor for the Parliament of Bordeaux. He seems to have had some military experience also, and to have spent some gay years at court.

When he was thirty-nine years old he inherited the estate and castle of Montaigne near Bordeaux. He married, and except for the few years, when against his inclination he served as Mayor of Bordeaux, he spent the remainder of his days in private life, looking after his estate and enjoying hours of unbroken meditation in his tower library, reading his Horace and Plutarch and the ancient poets and philosophers generally. He says he was not a great reader, but that he liked to have his books about him. He especially enjoyed the privacy of his library, from which, he gives us to understand, his wife and the rest of the household were excluded.

Montaigne began writing brief essays when he was forty-five years old, not at first for publication but rather so that he might present a true picture of himself to his family and friends. The writing evidently amused him for as the years passed the essays grew longer and their content more serious.

If we are to see the full significance of the essays as the revelation of an achievement in education—and that is our present interest in them—we must remember what was happening in the world at the time they were written. The struggle of the Reformation was in full swing. Montaigne’s lifetime coincides with what was doubtless the most bitter and acrimonious period of that religious conflict. Everywhere there was persecution, riot, intrigue, retaliation; men seemed to have lost utterly the liberal spirit of the Renaissance and to have forgotten that there was such a virtue as tolerance.

Montaigne was an exception. It is said that during the years of bloodshed in France, his castle was never fortified, nor closed, and that both Catholics and Protestants were welcome there. The battle does not disturb Montaigne’s equanimity, nor warp his judgment; it remains to him a little more than a fight in the street. I should like to call attention to this indifference to the great mass movement of the times, for there are those who contend that philosophy, art and letters are but the by-products of such movements. At a time when nearly every one is eaten up with partisan zeal, Montaigne hardly mentions the Reformation. He says, “I perswade you, in your opinions and discourses, as much as in your custom, and in every other thing, to use moderation and temperance, and avoid all newfangled inventions and strangenesses. All extravagant wais displease me.”

While others are resorting to torture and massacre for the sake of a faith which they do not question, Montaigne quietly retires and has time to see when he is making himself ridiculous.

“It is not long since I retired my selfe unto mine owne house, with full purpose, as much as lay in me, not to trouble myselfe with any businesse, but solitarily and quietly to weare out the remainder of my wellnigh spent life: when me thought I could doe my spirit no greater favor than to give him the full scope of idlenesse, and entertaine him as best he pleased, and withall to settle himselfe as best he liked: which I hoped he might, now being by time become more settled and ripe, accomplish very easily: but I finde

‘... evermore idlenesse

Doth wavering mindes addresse.’

That contrariwise, playing the skittish and loose broken jade, he takes a hundred times more cariere and libertie unto himselfe than he did for others: and begets in me so many extravagant chimeraes and fantastical monsters, so orderless, and without any reason, one huddled upon the other, that at leisure to view the foolishnesse and monstrous strangeness of them, I have begun to keep a register of them, hoping, if I live, one day to make him ashamed and blush at himselfe.”

Toward the multitude and its judgments of value he is indifferent,

“Our soule must play her part, but inwardly, within our selves, where no eyes shine but ours: ... not for any advantage but for the gracefulness of honestie itselfe. This benefit is much greater, and more worthie to be wished and hoped, then honor and glory, which is naught but a favorable judgment that is made of us.... Is it reason to make the life of a wise man depend on the judgment of fooles? Nothing is so incomprehensible to be just waied as the mindes of the multitude....

“... In this breathie confusion of brutes and frothy chaos of reports and of vulgar opinions which still push us on, no good can be established. Let us not propose so fleeting and so wavering an end unto ourselves. Let us constantly follow reason: And let the vulgar approbation follow us that way, if it please. Of the many thousands of worthie, valiant men which fifteen hundred years since [the day of Juvenal] have died in France with their weapons in their hands, not one in a hundred have come to our knowledge.... It shall be much, if a hundred years hence the civil warres which lately we have had in France be but remembered in grosse.”

Yes, the multitude may follow if it pleases; Montaigne will not urge it. He may remind it that in a few years its cause may be forgotten. But how free he is from the righteous indignation and vindictiveness and factiousness which everywhere storm about him. He has that urbanity of which I spoke, and the serenity of one who has learned to laugh at his own prejudices.

“Surely, man is a wonderful, vaine, divers and wavering subject: it is very hard to ground any directly constant and uniforme judgment upon him.”

His wisdom leads him to see not only the folly of mankind, but also his own folly and weakness, which he does not strive to conceal, but relates with amusing candor.

“I have, a kind of raving, fanciful behavior that retireth well into myselfe: and on the other side a grosse and childish ignorance of many ordinary things: by means of which two qualities I have in my daies committed five or six as sottish trickes as any one whatsoever: which to my derogration may be reported....

“For my part, I may in generall wish to be other than I am: I may condenme and mislike my universall forme: I may beseech God to grant me an undefiled reformation and excuse my natural weaknesse: but me seemeth I ought to tearme this repentance, no more than the displeasure of being neither an Angell nor Cato....

“When I consult with my age of my youthe’s proceedings, I finde that commonly (according to my opinion) I managed them in order. This is all my resistance is able to perform. I flatter not myselfe: in like circumstances I should be ever the same. It is not a spot, but a whole dye that staynes mee. I acknowledge no repentence (that) is superficiall, meane, and ceremonious.

“Crosses and afflictions (works of penance) make me doe nothing but curse them. They are for people that cannot be arroused but by the whip.... The happy life (in my opinion, not as said Antisthenes, the happy death,) is it that makes man’s happinesse in this world.

“I have not preposterously busied myselfe to tie the taile of a Philosopher unto the head and bodie of a varlet: nor that this paultrie end, should disavow and belie the fairest soundest and longest part of my life. I will present myselfe and make a generall muster of my whole, everywhere uniformally. Were I to live againe, it should be as I have already lived. I neither deplore the past, nor dread what is to come.”

The man who can speak so of himself is not likely to hold up any universal standard of faith or practice. He is not the man with the message for humanity, as were the Reformers and their enemies in the church. He is not a partisan because he has gone beyond such dilemmas. His knowledge of many books and of many and diverse explantations of the riddle of life and many kinds of goods and evils has made him see that there is no “one right way.” Reason has often been opposed to faith. Montaigne sees that reason too is faith, and faith all too human. There can be no finality.

I suspect that his tolerance and aloofness during the Reformation in France were the result of a point of view somewhat similar to that of Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise,” and his story of the three rings. No one possessed the original, which was supposed to entitle the owner to the ancestral blessing and inheritance. All, like all religions, were counterfeits of the lost article.

Montaigne gives his ideas of religion and philosophy in the longest of his essays, “An Apologie of Raymond Sebond.” He says that his father once requested him to translate a book on natural Theology by an unknown Spanish writer of this name. His remarks reveal the extent to which his mind is freed from both rationalism and religious dogmatism.

“We should accompany our faith with all the reason we possess: yet always with this proviso, that we think it does not depend on us, and that all our strength and arguments can never attain to so supernaturall and divine a knowledge.”

His remarkable detachment is seen in the following. He says that the best test of Verity is the practice of virtue.

“And therefore was our good Saint Lewis in the right, when that Tartan King who was to become a Christian intended to come to Lions to kisse the Pope’s feet, and there to view the sanctitie he hoped to find in our lives and manners, instantly to divert him from it fearing lest our dissolute manners and licentious kind of life might scandalize him and so alter his opinion foreconceived of so sacred a religion. How be it the contrary happened to another who for the same effect being come to Rome, and there viewing the dissoluteness of the prelates and people of those days, was so much more confirmed in our religion, considering with himselfe what force and divinity it must of consequence have since it was able, amidst so many corruptions and so viciously poluted hands to maintain her dignitie and splendor....

“Our zeale worketh wonders when ever it secondeth our inclination toward hatred, cruelitie, ambition, avarice, detraction or rebellion.... Among other discommodities of our nature this is one, there is darkness in our minds, and in us not only necessity of erring but love of errors.... Presumption is our naturall and originall infirmitie. Of all creatures, man is the most miserable and fraile, and therewithall the proudest and disdainfullest ... he ascribeth divine conditions unto himselfe that he selecteth and separateth himselfe from out the ranke of other creatures.... By what comparison from them to us doth he conclude the brutishness he ascribeth unto them? When I am playing with my cat who knows whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I in gaming with her? We entertain one another with mutuall apish tricks.”

“We understand them (the beasts) no more than they us. By the same reason may they as well esteem us Beasts, as we them. It is no great marvell if we understand them not: no more doe we understand the Cornish, the Welch, or Irish.”

He is persuaded he says, that if anyone who has pursued knowledge will “speak in conscience, he will confess that all the benefit he hath gotten by so tedious a pursuit, hath been that he hath learned to know his own weaknesse.”

“My profession is not to know the truth nor to attaine it. I rather open than discover things. The wisest that ever was, being demanded what he knew, answered that he knew nothing.”

He speaks with approval of the doubters, the Phyrronians who “but desire to be contradicted, thereby to engender doubt and suspense of judgment which is their end and drift.” Thus these men have attained the condition of a quiet and contented life, exempted from the agitations which beset ourselves because we imagine we have a certainty and a knowledge that we do not possess.

After all “that ignorance which knoweth and condemneth itselfe,” is not absolute ignorance. Montaigne seems to hold that it is the best we may attain and that in knowing and condemning our ignorance we may avoid much of the misery and mischief we inflict upon ourselves and one another. The fears and revenge and jealousies and partisan strife and rebellion and envy and immoderate desires which everywhere he finds about him all proceed, he thinks, from presumptuous ignorance which does not know itself to be ignorance. In the midst of theological disputation he smilingly reminds his neighbors that as,

“Xenophanes said pleasantly that if beastes frame any gods unto themselves (as likely it is they doe) they surely frame them like unto themselves and glorifie themselves as we do. For what may not a Goose say this? All parts of the world behold me, the earth serveth me to tread upon, the sunne to give me light, the starres to inspire me with influence: this commodity I have of the winds, and this benefit of the waters: there is nothing that this world’s vault doth so favorably looke upon as me selfe: I am the favorite of nature. Is it not man that careth for me, that keepeth me, and serveth me? For me it is he soweth and reapeth and grindeth. If he eat me, so doth man feede on his fellow, and so doe I on the wormes that consume and eat him.”

“I commend the Milesian wench who seeing Thales the Philosoper continually amusing hemselfe in the contemplation of heaven’s wide bounding vault and ever holding his eyes aloft, laid something in his way to make him stumble, thereby to warne and put him in minde that he should not amuse his thoughts about matters above the clouds before he had provided for and well considered those at his feet. Verily she advised him well, and it better became him rather to looke to himselfe than to gaze on heaven.”

“The wisest judging of heaven is not to judge of it at all.” His own modest answer to the riddle of existence in contrast to those who would “turne and winde God Almighty according to their own measure,” is “Que scay-je?”—What do I know?

Montaigne is not a hard and soulless sceptic. He is a well poised, modest thinker and an honest man. He is not a denier, but one whose mind is free from cant, humbug, pretentiousness. Historically he is one of the links between the best in modern education and the questioning Socrates whom he knew and loved. I trust that in presenting the Humanist tradition in this concrete manner, I have been able to suggest something of its spirit. It has a necessary place in liberal education because it helps liberate the mind from the clutches of opinionated ignorance, from the follies which prevail as truth in our own age, and from conceit and vanity to which our human nature is ever prone.

CHAPTER XIII
SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION—HUXLEY

When the ancient Humanist, Protagoras, said, “Man is the measure of all things,” he probably did not mean that all things may be measured by man, for in his following sentence he is sceptical of our knowledge of many things. He meant rather that all our measurements are human. This independence of supernaturalism was not always characteristic of educated minds of antiquity, but it is one of the distinguishing features of the educational tradition which we have derived from Greece and Rome. Thus Aristotle would establish ethics in the life of reason. This same naturalistic bias also inspires those early attempts at science which were broken off under the influence of Christianity.

The Renaissance was accompanied by a re-awakened interest in nature, and in human nature as part of nature as a whole. The trend toward naturalism is seen in art, in the resumption of scientific research and experimentation, and in the effort to supplant scholastic theology by the study of human letters. To Da Vinci, for instance, science, art, and letters were but the varied aspects of the same cultural awakening. But for the greater number of those who felt the influence of the Renaissance, science and letters became quite separate interests. The new learning of the Humanists was almost exclusively a literary scholarship. Erasmus and his followers had very little interest in natural science. They found in classic literature a body of mature wisdom ready to hand. Science on the contrary, was obliged to begin de novo, and slowly construct its instruments of thought, building, gradually a new system of knowledge. The brunt of the conflict with scholastic education fell upon the humanists. The real renaissance of science did not take place until the seventeenth century.

Meanwhile the Reformation had caused a revival of religious interest, and in Protestant countries like England, and later America, the influence of religion upon higher learning remained powerful. It permitted the classical tradition to survive in letter rather than in spirit. The naturalistic implications of the classics were ignored; commentators whenever possible read into the texts the conventional beliefs and sentiments of Protestantism. Humanism became “traditional education,” a new scholasticism, formal and innocuous, a mark of intellectual respectability, a “refining” influence, an embroidery of familiar quotation in the speech of parsons and country squires.

Successive generations of grown-up schoolboys in Gothic halls, laboriously translated, over and over again, hackneyed passages from a literature that in the fifteenth century had been carried about like the fire of Prometheus, kindling defiance to Heaven all over Europe. Often men could think of no better reason for the study of the ancient classics than that in the tedium and monotony of language drill there was a “discipline” which was good for the soul. The student’s attention was centered upon the niceties of construction and upon the task of memorizing rules of grammar and a vocabulary, all stuffed into his head in the most artificial manner conceivable. He was not likely to be puzzled over the discovery that there might be something spiritually irreconcilable between Lucretius and the Thirty Nine Articles, or between the dialectic of Socrates and the Westminster confession of faith.

There is a world of difference between this denatured Humanism and that of Erasmus or Montaigne. That this traditional education made for polish and good breeding cannot be denied. Neither, I think, can it be denied that there was something sterile and illiberal in Protestant-classical education. It is significant that both the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the progress of science in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries took place chiefly outside the established universities and sometimes in spite of their opposition.

I do not see how the situation could well have been otherwise. In the first place the older Humanists themselves dealt the naturalism of the ancients and such of it as was again coming to life a severe blow when they championed letters and remained indifferent to science. In the second place, the Reformation quite side-tracked the revival of learning, superseded it, and took over into its own service only so much of it as it found congenial to its religious interests. It was a mass movement, an attempt at a restatement of Christianity in terms of the philosophy of the common man, a philosophy to which the questioning, enlightened common sense and worldly wisdom of a Montaigne, a Voltaire or a Hume is never very congenial. Santayana says, “The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot do without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.

“Of this homely philosophy the tender cuticle is religious belief; really the least vital and most arbitrary part of human opinion, the outer ring, as it were, of the fortifications of prejudice, but for that very reason the most jealously defended; since it is on being attacked there, at the least defensible point, that rage and alarm at being attacked at all are first aroused in the citadel. People are not naturally sceptics, wondering if a single one of their intellectual habits can be reasonably preserved; they are dogmatists angrily confident of maintaining them all. Integral minds, pupils of a single coherent tradition, regard their religion, whatever it may be, as certain, as sublime, and as the only rational basis of morality and policy. Yet in fact religious belief is terribly precarious, partly because it is arbitrary, so that in the next tribe or in the next century it will wear quite a different form; and partly because, when genuine, it is spontaneous and continually remodelled, like poetry, in the heart that gives it birth. A man of the world soon learns to discredit established religions on account of their variety and absurdity, although he may good-naturedly continue to conform to his own; and a mystic before long begins fervently to condemn current dogmas, on account of his own different inspiration. Without philosophical criticism, therefore, mere experience and good sense suggest that all positive religions are false, or at least (which is enough for my present purpose) that they are all fantastic and insecure.”

Speaking of the Reformation and its relation to science, Whitehead says, “We cannot look upon it as introducing a new principle into human life.” Perhaps he is inclined to over-emphasize the assertions of the Reformers that they were only restoring what had been forgotten. But he says, “It is quite otherwise with the rise of modern science. In every way it contrasts with the contemporary religious movement. The Reformation was a popular uprising and for a century and a half drenched Europe in blood. The beginnings of the scientific movement were confined to a minority among the intellectual élite.”

It is doubtless because the Humanists remained relatively indifferent to science, that its early struggles with theology were comparatively mild. It was permitted to make remarkable progress in the seventeenth century without raising an issue too great for its strength. It is interesting to note that when in the nineteenth century the conflict of natural science with theology became acute, science was at the same time engaged in a struggle for recognition by the official educational system in which the classical tradition held sway.

The outstanding public champion of science in this conflict was Thomas H. Huxley. He could say of university education in England in the year 1868, that the colleges no longer promoted research in science, and were hardly more than “boarding schools for bigger boys.” Once they had been homes for the life study of the most abstruse and important branches of knowledge.

“I believe there can be no doubt that the foreigner who should wish to become acquainted with the scientific, or the literary, activity of modern England, would simply lose his time and his pains if he visited our universities with that object.

“The countrymen of Grote and of Mill, of Faraday, of Robert Brown, of Lyell, and Darwin, to go no further back than the contemporaries of men of middle age, can afford to smile at such a suggestion. England can show now, and she has been able to show in every generation since civilization spread over the West, individual men who hold their own against the world, and keep alive the old tradition of her intellectual eminence.

“But in the majority of cases, these men are what they are in virtue of their native intellectual force, and of a strength of character which will not recognise impediments. They are not trained in the courts of the Temple of Science, but storm the walls of that edifice in all sorts of irregular ways, and with much loss of time and power, in order to obtain their legitimate positions.

“Our universities not only do not encourage such men; do not offer them positions, in which it should be their highest duty to do, thoroughly, that which they are most capable of doing; but, as far as possible, university training shuts out of the minds of those among them, who are subjected to it, the prospect that there is anything in the world for which they are specially fitted.—Imagine the success of the attempt to still the intellectual hunger of any of the men I have mentioned, by putting before him, as the object of existence, the successful mimicry of the measure of a Greek song, or the roll of Ciceronian prose!”

Twelve years later Huxley was still waging his contest for the admission of science to the curricula of school and college against an opposition the obstinacy of which is a little difficult for us today to understand.

“For I hold very strongly by two convictions—The first is, that neither the discipline nor the subject-matter of classical education is of such direct value to the student of physical science as to justify the expenditure of valuable time upon either; and the second is, that for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education.

“I need hardly point out to you that these opinions, especially the latter, are diametrically opposed to those of the great majority of educated Englishmen, influenced as they are by school and university traditions. In their belief, culture is obtainable only by a liberal education; and a liberal education is synonymous, not merely with education and instruction in literature, but in one particular form of literature, namely, that of Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold that the man who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is educated; while he who is versed in other branches of knowledge, however deeply, is a more or less respectable specialist, not admissable into the cultured caste. The stamp of the educated man, the University degree, is not for him.”

“The representatives of the Humanists, in the nineteenth century, take their stand upon classical education as the sole avenue to culture, as firmly as if we were still in the age of Renascence. Yet, surely, the present intellectual relations of the modern and the ancient worlds are profoundly different from those which obtained three centuries ago. Leaving aside the existence of a great and characteristic modern literature, of modern painting, and, especially of modern music, there is one feature of the present state of the civilized world which separates it more widely from the Renascence, than the Renascence was separated from the middle ages.

“This distinctive character of our own times lies in the vast and constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge. Not only is our daily life shaped by it, not only does the prosperity of millions of men depend upon it, but our whole theory of life has long been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the general conceptions of the universe, which have been forced upon us by physical science.”

“The scientist, no longer disposed to remain on the defensive with the usual apology for science, carries the battle into the opposing camp and indicts the opposition, with some justice I think, for its failure even when judged by its own traditional standards of education.

“There is no great force in the tu quoque argument, or else the advocates of scientific education might fairly enough retort upon the modern Humanists that they may be learned specialists, but that they possess no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as deserves the name of culture. And, indeed, if we were disposed to be cruel, we might urge that the Humanists have brought this reproach upon themselves, not because they are too full of the spirit of the ancient Greek, but because they lack it.

“The period of the Renascence is commonly called that of the “Revival of Letters,” as if the influences then brought to bear upon the mind of Western Europe had been wholly exhausted in the field of literature. I think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival of science, effected by the same agency, although less conspicuous, was not less momentous....

“We cannot know all the best thoughts and sayings of the Greeks unless we know what they thought about natural phenomena. We cannot fully apprehend their criticism of life unless we understand the extent to which that criticism was affected by scientific conceptions. We falsely pretend to be the inheritors of their culture, unless we are penetrated, as the best minds among them were, with an unhesitating faith that the free employment of reason, in accordance with scientific method, is the sole method of reaching truth.

“Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our modern Humanists to the possession of the monopoly of culture and to the exclusive inheritance of the spirit of antiquity must be abated, if not abandoned.”

Huxley was one of the few educators of his time who ought to have seen clearly that in the education of the ancients there was no conflict of interest between science and letters; the two were one in the naturalistic minds of the Greeks. He is aware of the fact that both science and letters were revived by the Renaissance, but it would seem that he permits his zeal in the cause of scientific training to force him at times into a rather one-sided and partisan position.

“But for those who mean to make science their serious occupation; or who intend to follow the profession of medicine; or who have to enter early upon the business of life; for all these, in my opinion, classical education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see ‘mere literary education and instruction’ shut out from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason’s College, seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering of Latin and Greek....”

“The great peculiarity of scientific training, that in virtue of which it cannot be replaced by any other discipline whatsoever, is this bringing of the mind directly into contact with fact, and practising the intellect in the completest form of induction; that is to say, in drawing conclusions from particular facts made known by immediate observation of nature.”

The struggle for recognition of the liberalizing educational value of science was carried to successful issue in the nineteenth century. In backward communities, Fundamentalism still sets its face against certain of the anti-supernaturalist implications of science, and it is always possible that if at any time the populace now dazzled by the “wonders” of science, should suspect the full meaning of the world-view which science would substitute for the older anthropomorphic ideas about the universe, there may be a wide-spread popular reaction against it in the name of religion. But at present in educational institutions generally, scientific courses tend to predominate over the classical. Most of the struggles for “academic freedom” and most of the live problems in education revolve about the teaching of the sciences. A vastly greater number of minds are today set free from dogma and superstition and childish deference to authority by methods of scientific research than by the study of the classics. The latter is on the decline and I suppose must continue to be so until Humanism again possesses that vitality and naturalism, and independence of judgment which men had when the Greeks set out to discover the Good Life.

Dewey says that without initiation into the scientific spirit one is not in possession of the best tools which humanity has so far devised for effectively directed reflection. In it may be realized that desire for exact knowledge as different from mere opinion which the ancients sought. It tests all things in the light of experiment and by appeal to cold objective fact. It is often said that science is Reason in contrast with Faith. Certainly the scientist cannot in his research permit himself to be swayed by religious belief and remain scientific. He must accept no conclusion on authority or because he wishes to believe it. But the scientific mind is not, as a matter of fact, as strictly rationalistic as was the scholastic mind. The logic of the latter is a formal vindication of The Truth conceived in advance of knowledge of fact. The reasoning of the former proceeds by a succession of shrewd guesses which are held to be mere hypothesis until verified by the facts. This necessity of holding judgment in abeyance, and of being willing to discard any belief or postulate that may not be confirmed by objective reality, has the greatest educational value. In spite of the everlasting deceitfulness and conceit of human nature and notwithstanding the fact that pompous ignorance and fraud are often palmed off upon the public as scientific knowledge, I should say, precisely because of these things, training in scientific methods is the best device available to the educator for instilling into the human mind some measure of respect for truth.

To this end Huxley would introduce scientific experimentation into the elementary school and would establish “scientific Sunday schools,”

“Would there really be anything wrong in using part of Sunday for the purpose of instructing those who have no other leisure, in a knowledge of the phenomena of Nature, and of man’s relation to Nature?

“I should like to see a scientific Sunday-school in every parish, not for the purpose of superseding any existing means of teaching the people the things that are for their good, but side by side with them. I cannot but think that there is room for all of us to work in helping to bridge over the great abyss of ignorance which lies at our feet.

“And if any of the ecclesiastical persons to whom I have referred object that they find it derogatory to the honour of the God whom they worship, to awaken the minds of the young to the infinite wonder and majesty of the works which they proclaim His, and to teach them those laws which must needs be His laws, and therefore of all things needful for man to know—I can only recommend them to be let blood and put on low diet. There must be something very wrong going on in the instrument of logic if it turns out such conclusions from such premises.”

There is an intellectual cleanness, something downright and honest about the scientific pursuit of knowledge, and this uncompromising mental integrity characterizes everything that Huxley said and did. There is nothing shifty in a mind trained as his was. His is like a cool north breeze on one of those clear summer days that sometimes follow a period of sultriness, fog and rain. If things are a little too sharply outlined, they are at least recognized for what they are. No evasive mistiness obscures the landscape. To Huxley the foundation of morality is to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence. He held that the lowest depths to which the human race could fall—after knowing what science now reveals of nature—would be to go back and deceive itself with comforting fictions. You will remember his correspondence with Kingsley when death had entered his home. The grief-stricken Huxley refused the consolations of a faith in which he could not whole-heartedly believe. Like Socrates and Montaigne and many educated men today, Huxley was candidly agnostic with respect to matters which lie beyond the radius of human knowledge.

Huxley was a determinist, but it is doubtful if he was a materialist. At least he held to a materialism which in one sense might be reconciled with a form of idealism. In the address in honor of Joseph Priestley he said,

“Without containing much that will be new to the readers or Hobbs, Spinoza, Collins, Hume, and Hartley, and indeed, while making no pretensions to originality, Priestley’s ‘Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit,’ and his ‘Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated,’ are among the most powerful, clear, and unflinching expositions of materialism and necessarianism which exist in the English language, and are still well worth reading.

“Priestley denied the freedom of the will in the sense of its self-determination; he denied the existence of a soul distinct from the body; and as a natural consequence, he denied the natural immortality of man.

“In relation to these matters English opinion a century ago was very much what it is now.

“A man may be a necessarian without incurring graver reproach than that implied in being called a gloomy fanatic, necessarianism, though very shocking, having a note of Calvinistic orthodoxy; but, if a man is a materialist; or, if good authorities say he is and must be so, in spite of his assertion to the contrary; or, if he acknowledge himself unable to see good reasons for believing in the natural immortality of man, respectable folks look upon him as an unsafe neighbour of a cashbox, as an actual or potential sensualist, the more virtuous in outward seeming, the more certainly loaded with secret ‘grave personal sins.’

“... I must confess that what interests me most about Priestley’s materialism, is the evidence that he saw dimly the seed of destruction which such materialism carries within its own bosom. In the course of his reading for his ‘History of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours,’ he had come upon the speculations of Boscovich and Michell, and had been led to admit the sufficiently obvious truth that our knowledge of matter is a knowledge of its properties; and that of its substance—if it have a substance—we know nothing. And this led to the further admission that, so far as we can know, there may be no difference between the substance of matter and the substance of spirit (‘Disquisitions, p. 16’). A step farther would have shown Priestley that his materialism was, essentially, very little different from the Idealism of his contemporary, the Bishop of Cloyne.”

Perhaps William James may have had Huxley or his type in mind when he wrote his famous passage about learning “to stand this universe.” Yet I suspect that Huxley’s universe was more simple and benevolent, more naïvely conceived than was that of James. Huxley was to the end a rationalist, and lived and worked in a period when Nature was thought to be essentially reasonable. Man need only learn the laws of nature and obey them to become wise and happy and good. The aim of education was to acquaint the student with the laws of nature.

“Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this....

“Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don’t you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check?

“Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated—without haste, but without remorse.

“My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking friend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win—and I should accept it as an image of human life....

“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 work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, 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 a knowledge of the great and 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.

“Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter.”

But surely liberal education is more than becoming the mouthpiece of a benevolent nature. It seems to me that Huxley omits one of the essentials. Just as the nineteenth century Humanists, because of their neglect of science, possessed only a distorted and one-sided view of Humanist education, so it would seem to me that nineteenth century science in its opposition to traditional education, failed to see that science is itself a part of Humanism. It is not merely the discovery of given “Laws” which exist independently in a benevolent and rational universe. It is the observation of certain relationships and recurrences and the statement of these things in general terms that will give them significance for human beings. What nature is aside from the fact that we are interested spectators does not concern us. Science grows out of the fact that we are more interested in some things than in others. It is a human achievement; it is one of the answers that mankind gives to the riddle of existence. It is not existence which gives that answer, it is man. And education must not only seek knowledge of the facts of nature, but having obtained such knowledge, must try to understand what to do about it. Now that we understand our natural environment, what kind of life can we best achieve with it? What valuations have men put upon deeds and things? What values is it possible to achieve? Our education is not done when we have learned Nature’s yes and no; we have our own yes and no to give.

Scientists quietly observing certain aspects of reality—those which lend themselves to knowing as a specialized undertaking—are happy to find that their abstract conceptions mutually imply and support one another in an ordered system of knowledge. Their own reason which they are thus able to impose upon nature, they believe they have discovered in nature itself. Hence nature appears to be more ordered than it really is, and to be essentially reasonable and beneficent. Compare Huxley’s picture of nature as a beneficent mother of whom the educated mind “makes the best, and she of him,” he “her conscious self, her minister and interpreter,” with William James’ statement about “this partially hospitable and ‘stepmotherly’ world of ours.” The latter is surely the more profound and correct view. Water is not only H₂O, it may drown you or quench your thirst. Fire is not merely a process of oxidation, it is hot. It may be your willing servant, or your relentless enemy. The modification of species which nineteenth century scientists held to be the outcome of natural selection is not what natural selection means to the organisms which experienced it. To them it is a relentless struggle for a precarious and fleeting existence in which satisfactions and victories are mingled with terror and starvation and agony. And man placed in the midst of such a world seeks education not only that he may interpret its happenings to an intelligence which is part of the natural process, but that he may select wisely among the alternatives which Nature presents to him, lift himself above chaos and the slime, and achieve an existence that, at least while it lasts, has some significance and quality of decency and worth.

It is to this end that science is education; a true Humanism is impossible without it. Such a Humanism is as anti-supernaturalistic as determinism. But it is naturalism with mankind, however, not merely pictured as a passive resultant of natural forces, but actively selecting and creating value. As Huxley himself says, its aim is to provide criteria for a “criticism of life.”

“Moreover this scientific ‘criticism of life’ presents itself to us with different credentials from any other. It appeals not to authority, nor to what anybody may have thought or said, but to nature. It admits that all our interpretations of natural fact are more or less imperfect and symbolic, and bids the learner seek for the truth not among words but among things. It warns us that the assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime.”

He saw a new culture in process of development, one which would enlist the whole spiritual life of mankind,

“The scenes are shifting the great theatre of the world. The act which commenced with the Protestant Reformation is nearly played out, and a wider and deeper change than that effected three centuries ago—a reformation, or rather a revolution of thought, the extremes of which are represented by the intellectual heirs of John of Leyden and of Ignatius Loyola, rather than by those of Luther and of Leo—is waiting to come on, nay, visible behind the scenes to those who have good eyes. Men are beginning, once more, to awake to the fact that matters of belief and of speculation are of absolutely infinite practical importance; and are drawing off from that sunny country ‘where it is always afternoon’—the sleepy hollow of broad indifferentism—to range themselves under their natural banners. Change is in the air. It is whirling feather-heads into all sorts of eccentric orbits, and filling the steadiest with a sense of insecurity. It insists on reopening all questions and asking all institutions, however venerable, by what right they exist, and whether they are, or are not, in harmony with the real or supposed wants of mankind.”

Huxley’s services to education were more than his struggle for the recognition of the educational value of science. His own contributions to the science of biology and his able championing of the case which Darwin had made in favor of the hypotheses of evolution did much to place the biological sciences in their present position of preëminence and to aid in placing both education and modern thought upon the basis of a philosophy of evolution.

After receiving his degree in medicine, Huxley was appointed to the position of assistant surgeon in the British navy. As he cruised about on the war-ship ‘Rattlesnake,’ he began his studies of marine animals. Darwin, you will remember, had also spent long months on southern seas as government naturalist assigned to the Beagle. During the years that followed each had risen to a high position as a British scientist, conducting research, publishing papers, making new discoveries, all of which contributed to make the nineteenth century, as John Fiske said, “the century of science.”

During the years when Darwin was patiently elaborating the theory of “descent with modification” which was destined within his own lifetime to bring about a revolutionary transformation in the philosophy of nature, Huxley did much to organize the science of Biology as a definite branch of natural history. His great energy and industry, his passion for exact knowledge and his genius for clear and comprehensive statement made him one of the outstanding scientists of England. As professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, and later in the Royal College of Surgeons, and as publicist and member of numerous commissions on science and education, he was in a position to throw a tremendous weight of influence to the support of his convictions, should he be drawn into a scientific controversy.

When in 1859 Darwin published the “Origin of Species,” Huxley was one of the small group of eminent scientists whose favorable judgment Darwin felt would be necessary if the theory of natural selection were to command the attention of the scientific world. Darwin did not invent the doctrine of evolution. This idea had from time to time suggested itself to men’s minds whenever a naturalistic account of creation was attempted. The increase of knowledge of comparative anatomy, of geology and of zoölogy, and the discovery of certain structural likenesses and differences among both living organisms and the fossil remains which were found in the several layers of the earth’s surface, could not fail to suggest to many minds the thought that perhaps all forms of life might be related in one comprehensive evolutionary process. Although the evidence against the dogma of special creation was rapidly accumulating, no valid explanation had been found. Lamarcks’ theory that the structural modifications which characterize the various species of organisms were the result of effort and use and of special energizing and development of various organs, was under discussion. The theory did not, however, interest Huxley, because it implied that modifications which occurred as a result of effort and use could be inherited, a belief for which there was not sufficient evidence.

Darwin’s book put the whole problem in a new light, and stated the hypotheses of organic evolution as an alternative to “special creation” in terms which were comprehensible to a mind trained in natural science. Heretofore a mysterious principle of development had been substituted for a miracle of creation. Darwin did not invoke any such principle but with good scientific logic sought his explanation of the origin of species in the casual connections among observable facts.

It is not my purpose now to enter upon a discussion of Darwinism, or its present status in biology, a general understanding of which I think should be part of the education of a modern man. I suspect that many moderns who “believe in evolution” merely cherish a popular faith in some mystical law of unusual progress, such as is expressed in the verse, “Some call it evolution and some God.”

Huxley was uncompromisingly opposed to all such romantic theologizing in science. He was moreover, aware, as Darwin himself was, of the difficulties of Darwin’s theory. But he grasped the significance of what Darwin had done and saw the ground upon which he had placed the discussion of the problem, and he held that in the main Darwin was correct. Gracefully and courageously he took his stand at Darwin’s side. In various addresses, essays, books, he drew upon his extensive knowledge for evidence in support of the theory. In “Man’s Place in Nature” he uncompromisingly placed the origin and development of the human race within the process of the evolution of animal organisms. He did not remain indifferent to the storm of ecclesiastical indignation and popular abuse and ridicule with which a grateful humanity greeted the most important scientific discovery of the century. He accepted the challenge, and during the decades that followed 1860 he was probably the outstanding champion in England, not only of evolution, but of science itself. In 1925, upon the centennial of his birth, his grandson, Julian Huxley wrote,

“Of the general truth of the evolutionary hypothesis, its enormous value to biology, and the necessary reorientation which it would give to the general current of thought, he had no doubts; nor did he spare himself in the cause. It is sometimes as well, in these easier-going and theologically more tolerant days, when we are reaping what he and others like him sowed, and may sometimes be tempted to think of his criticism as essentially destructive, to remember what power of inertia, what violence of the odium theologicum there was in the opposition. ‘Professor Huxley’ became a sort of bogy in orthodox lower middle-class families, almost as ‘Boney’ had done for the nation in earlier days. He was attacked as irreligious, immoral, unscrupulous, on the platform, in the press, by letter. That sort of opposition cannot be persuaded; it must die out or be destroyed.”

The scholar confronted by the fury and stupidity of the mob, and counted a fool for his pains when he strives to induce it to listen to reason, has often turned aside in disgust. Henceforth he will write and speak for the learned few. Let the masses, who think that a scientific demonstration may be satisfactorily refuted with derision and slander, consume themselves in their own ignorance. They have made it clear that learning is not for such as they. In the Theatetus Plato tells us of the discomfiture of the philosopher in the marketplace. As “the rabble” is in all times heedless or hostile to reason, there has often developed the idea that any belief that is popular is thereby shown to be untrue and vulgar. Cato at once became suspicious of himself when any utterance of his met with applause. Among would-be educated minds this suspicion becomes a cult. Anything is “refined” and true to the extent that it is unpopular—and for the reason that it is not shared by the many. Today this attitude—which is really intellectual snobbishness—gains plausibility from the fact that much of the popularization of science is base caricature and misrepresentation.

It is obvious that the wider the circulation of pseudo-science, the greater is the need of genuine instruction in the elements of science and of general culture. I can see no other way by which modern learning or modern civilization may be sustained. The man on the street has power to determine which values shall survive in our common life, and which shall perish, to a degree that he never had before. He exercises this influence upon our culture in many ways both direct and indirect, and his sway is not likely to be diminished in an industrial society which increasingly tends to give social power to the various groups which compose it in direct proportion to their numerical strength.

Moreover, it is not likely that a strictly esoteric intellectualism can survive at all, much less attain that leadership which is the proper function of intelligence in human affairs in a world organized as ours is. As I have said before, our intellectual hold upon reality, even for the best trained minds, is more precarious than we think. A slight general shifting of emotional interest or of perspective—the spread, let us suppose, of Fundamentalism through lower middle class minds generally,—a sudden spasm of popular disillusionment regarding the “wonders” of science or of hostility toward scientific methods which are ever upsetting the consolations of faith,—might conceivably occur at any time, and bring the beginning of the end of all that scholars have struggled for since the Renaissance. If as Huxley said, the epoch which began with the Reformation is about played out, it is not by any means a foregone conclusion what the sequel is to be. If science and letters are to join forces in the achievement of a truly Humanist culture, this culture must be rooted in the life and thought of the community. It will not likely be again a fifteenth century Italian mimicry of the age of Cicero; neither can it support itself like a bridge over an illiterate and enslaved populace, after the fashion of ancient Athenian Humanism. This modern public can read, it is very vociferous, it has votes and purchasing power and it pays to flatter it. But there is in the modern public a small and growing minority, scattered throughout all classes in the community, who honestly desire knowledge of science and the humanities.

Professional scholarship has in the example of Huxley a splendid precedent for any attempts it may care to make to ally itself with this teachable minority. I once invited a neighboring biologist to participate with other research scholars, in a course of lectures at Cooper Union on scientific methods. He declined, because he believed that a scientist who lectured to popular audiences cheapened his reputation. I wondered if he had forgotten the great service to science rendered by Huxley, who did not think it beneath the dignity of one who was perhaps the leading biologist of England to wage the struggle for scientific advance in the presence of a public which was much less trained in the principles of natural science than the people who regularly attend the lectures at Cooper Union.

Huxley seemed to believe that the outcome of the struggle of evolution against popular ignorance and superstition was inseparable from the fate of science itself. He set himself to make knowledge of the principles of science universal. He did a work of adult education that has not been surpassed in modern times. If today there is greater freedom for scientific research and teaching, and in general a more liberal and tolerant attitude on the part of official and popular religion toward scientific discovery, our generation is in no small measure indebted to Huxley.

In reply to the commonly expressed fear that liberal education may give us a type of mind which is sceptical and ineffective, I offer Huxley. The educated man may not perhaps take sides on the ever recurrent question who is to profit at another’s expense, nor easily give his devotion to the particular Utopian scheme of social reorganization which happens to be the fashion of the reformers of his day. But if he is like Huxley, he will be alert enough when he finds that intellectual integrity and cultural progress are at stake. Like Erasmus, Huxley survives in the philosophy of modern education as a symbol of enlightenment in its struggle against obscurantism. Both insist upon the recognition of the value of one aspect of a developing educational tradition which has its origin in ancient Greece, and is in sharp contrast both with popular opinion and with mediæval scholasticism. As I have indicated, it was unfortunate that these two educational interests did not develop out of the Renaissance, as one, for a well-rounded Humanism is an integration of both. Erasmus champions the cause of “human letters” and in the end classical education degenerates into a species of Protestant scholasticism. Huxley champions science, but is unable to liberate science itself from a mechanistic philosophy which became associated with it two centuries earlier. The struggle of science with theology was but a continuation of the spirit of the Renaissance. The struggle of science against an entrenched classical tradition meant that the Renaissance had become divided against itself. This dualism is reflected in science down to the present time. It is revealed in Huxley’s type of agnosticism, which is really naïve in comparison with the sophisticated, mellow scepticism of Montaigne or Hume, or in our own day with that of Mr. Santayana, who sees that all knowledge is faith.

It was not so with Huxley; about the finality of the knowledge that can be brought within the scope of scientific method he had no doubt whatever. Of other knowledge he is sceptical because of want of evidence. This is courageous and honest, and, from the standpoint of the struggle in which science was then engaged with theological rationalism, the issue cannot be compromised without the surrender of science to superstition. Although Huxley is an evolutionist and clearly sees that human intelligence is part of the behavior of an organism which is itself a cross-section as it were of a process of nature, he seems to hold that morality and truth are absolute and eternal principles which exist outside the process and constitute the very basis of existence. Reason which knows these eternal principles and in which they inhere, must then also exist outside the process. But we have seen that reason is a function of the behavior of an animal. Huxley is thus a Rationalist; as much so as any Scholastic. The body of scientific knowledge which we possess is the revelation of the true nature of the facts which we experienced. It is the intellectual equivalent of reality.

But is scientific knowledge knowledge of facts taken in their wholeness, or is it in each instance knowledge of some special aspect of the facts—fact reduced to abstract quality, to number and point in space and to a multiple of smaller and “more real” units all conceived in logical relationship rather than as experienced? Suppose we should say that scientific ideas do not exist independent of the minds that think them, are not equivalents of independent truths which reason discovers, but are the devices which an unusually intelligent animal constructs out of the many kinds of relationships it is able to notice amongst the objects which interest it.

From this point of view, the one most consistent, I believe, with a biology and a psychology which must take evolution into account, scientific ideas are seen to be humanly created symbols, not cerebral photographs of the ultimate nature of things. Why should the ultimate nature of a lobster be the fact that a morphologist discovers it to be an “articulate,” anymore than that I discover that it turns red when put in boiling water? Scientific ideas are instruments. Abstraction and classification are in a sense labor-saving devices, according to which we may hold that what is true for one object or event is true for all of its kind.

But the success of our thinking depends upon which of these many aspects and relationships we observe and hence how we classify them. All aspects and relationships are equally true, as James said, if true at all. Correct thinking is the thinking which seizes upon those which are relevant to our interest and purpose. And the interest and purpose are human, not inherent in the world of things. Hence the order science finds in nature is not given; it is the order of human thought itself. Thus science also is “human letters.”

The humanist, or organic, view of the world of science differentiates the twentieth century philosophy of nature from the mechanistic philosophy of earlier science. Mechanism, which is faith that the universe is reducible to Reason is, I hold, a survival from the old religious dualism, according to which matter and spirit were separate entities each belonging to its own world of phenomenon. The existence of Reason as an entity in itself could be taken for granted, because Reason belonged to the realm of spirit or mind, which though it existed outside the material order of being, had yet established this order in conformity to Reason.

Huxley’s agnosticism properly denies that man can have knowledge of this world of spirit, yet retains from that realm the principle of reason which it re-discovers in the world of material phenomena. Hence Huxley was more religious than he knew. It is not the agnostic who is the non-religious man, but the naïve realist who sees every fact and situation uncolored by fancy or theory or illusion. For such a mind, spiritual values do not exist. This kind of materialism is a different thing from philosophical materialism, which is very theoretical and fanciful. There are persons who approach this naïve realism, but I doubt if anyone is wholly lacking in poetry and fancy. Certainly Huxley was not.

Ordinarily we see our environment in a perspective of wish-fancy and traditional myth and magic. To more logical minds the world of objects is colored by the “sentiment of Rationality.” The universe appears to them to be governed, not by an indulgent or harsh imaginary Father, but by a principle of Reason. In each case, the fiction of security gives the feeling of salvation. In a wholly rational universe salvation is explanation. Everything is reasonable, hence right, if only we could explain it and show its place in the whole. Nineteenth century science could conceive of the world order as a mechanism and believe that it had passed from faith to knowledge in its agnosticism of the things of the spirit, but as Whitehead says, “the faith in the possibility of science generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.”

The conflict in the nineteenth century on behalf of science has effected education in various ways. It has not emptied the churches, but it has had a marked liberalizing influence, causing various groups of believers to seek to modify the public expressions of their faith in the light of modern knowledge. It has given the average educated person of today a very different conception of his world from that commonly held a century ago. It has to some extent revived the Socratic insistence upon clear and accurate thinking as the first requirement of an educated mind. It has brought a greater degree of objectivity and wholesomeness of outlook to bear upon the formation of the mental habits of students. It is by its insistence upon the biological point of view, causing marked changes in men’s ideas of human nature and society, gradually turning their thought away from the political dogma of the eighteenth century to a less doctrinaire social philosophy.

On the other side, it may be said to be in part responsible for the over-specialization common in our educational institutions. It has left on the mind of the public the impression that science is a new kind of magic, sometimes actually augmenting the general credulity and gullibility. Almost any sort of nonsense may now find space in the columns of the Sunday papers and pass current with the assertion that it is “scientific.” Minds stuffed with a smattering of science may be just as opinionated as minds stuffed with a smattering of theology.

A result which could perhaps not have been foreseen in 1875—and which I believe twentieth century science is destined to remedy—grew out of the one-sidedness of the Humanism of Huxley and others of his day which I have discussed. The scientific interest tended to have a mechanizing influence upon all life and culture, to ignore and sometimes deny all values which resisted laboratory methods. And having reduced all possible phenomena of life to a statement of the movements of particles of matter which were said to underlie and cause all else, this purposeless correlation of matter, space and movement expressed in mathematical formulae was frequently given out as the true picture of the nature of all existence—human life included.

Biologists and psychologists often have resorted to rather amusing gestures and have deliberately ignored possible lines of inquiry in order to imitate as closely as possible the physicists and the astronomers. Just as matter was thought to consist of combinations of atoms, so living organisms consisted of cells, and complex acts of behavior were seen to consist of combinations of simple reflexes. The cell and the reflex, being the irreducible minimum of physiology and of psychology, were said to be the realities which constituted the nature of the organism and its acts. All phenomena of life were but combinations of these elemental realities. Find the smallest particles in the combination, show how by a mechanical principle they are inevitably placed in certain temporal and spacial and other quantitative relationships, and behold, science has led you to Reality. All this seemed to be very certain in the nineteenth century; it alone was knowledge, all else was mere opinion and error.

Professor Whitehead says, “But the progress of biology and psychology has probably been checked by the uncritical assumption of half-truths. If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations....

“There persists, however, throughout the whole period the fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread throughout space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism.’”

“The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable foundations of physics have broken up: also for the first time physiology is asserting itself as an effective body of knowledge, as distinct from a scrap-heap. The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?”

It is this disposition to find the real nature of the facts in the smallest homogeneous particles, in other words, “atomism,” which science in the twentieth century modifies. The parts themselves, considered without regard to their position in the whole event, are nothing. The reality is the organism, the situation as a whole. The unity of a tree is very different from that of a machine, and even physicists are beginning to suspect that they also deal with the former kind of unity. The effect of this change of view upon education is difficult to predict. I believe there are indications of a better synthesis of science with general culture than that which obtained in Huxley’s time. And as science modifies its mechanistic presuppositions, there will doubtless be an increase of the importance of philosophy in education, less pretense at finality, greater intellectual modesty and more general appreciation of human worth than is possible when educational philosophy is under the sway of a scientific dogma which dehumanizes the individual, reduces him to atoms, and regards him as a machine.

The recognition of the probability that much even of our established scientific knowledge is a human convention, should have a liberalizing effect upon the education of the present generation. Compare the assurance of Huxley with the following passages which I quote from the writings of Bertrand Russell, the first from his book on “Relativity,” and the second from the closing words of “The ABC of Atoms.”

“What we know about the physical world, I repeat, is much more abstract than was formerly supposed. Between bodies there are occurrences, such as light waves; of the laws of these occurrences, we know something—just as much as can be expressed in mathematical formulae—but of their nature we know nothing. Of the bodies themselves, as we saw in the preceding chapter, we know so little that we cannot even be sure that they are anything: they may be merely groups of events in other places, those events which we should naturally regard as their effects.... Perhaps an illustration may make the matter clear. Between a piece of orchestral music as played, and the same piece of music as printed in the score, there is a certain resemblance, which may be described as a resemblance in structure. The resemblance is of such a sort that, when you know the rules, you can infer the music from the score or the score from the music. But suppose you had been stone deaf from birth, but had lived among musical people. You could understand, if you had learned to speak and to do lip-reading, that the musical scores represented something quite different from themselves in intrinsic quality, though similar in structure. The value of music would be completely unimaginable to you, but you could infer all its mathematical characteristics, since they are the same as those of the score. Now our knowledge of nature is something like this. We can read the scores, and infer just so much as our stone-deaf person could have inferred about music. But we have not the advantages which he derived from association with musical people. We cannot know whether the music represented by the scores is beautiful or hideous; perhaps, in the last analysis, we cannot be quite sure that the scores represent anything but themselves.”

“The theory of relativity has shown that most of traditional dynamics, which was supposed to contain scientific laws, really consisted of conventions as to measurement, and was strictly analogous to the ‘great law’ that there are always three feet to a yard. In particular, this applies to the conservation of energy. This makes it plausible to suppose that every apparent law of nature which strikes us as reasonable is not really a law of nature, but a concealed convention, plastered on to nature by our love of what we, in our arrogance, choose to consider rational. Eddington hints that a real law of nature is likely to stand out by the fact that it appears to us irrational, since in that case it is less likely that we have invented it to satisfy our intellectual taste. And from this point of view he inclines to the belief that the quantum-principle is the first real law of nature that has been discovered in physics.

“This raises a somewhat important question: Is the world ‘rational,’ i. e., such as to conform to our intellectual habits? Or is it ‘irrational,’ i. e., not such as we should have made it if we had been in the position of the Creator? I do not propose to suggest an answer to this question.”

No, we do not know whether the world is such as we would have made it if we had been in the position of the Creator. But it is possible for us to gain some intelligent idea of what we can and should make of our world so far as lies within our human power and understanding. Throughout all historic times men have striven to attain that insight, discrimination and foreknowledge which would enable them to become “legislators of values”—to give their existence quality and their experiences an order of preference that would lend beauty and harmony and some permanence to the half-chaotic stream of events and objects which swept through their lives. This is the aim of the pursuit of knowledge. It is to give to existence an “order of rank.” What if the order be a human one? General coöperation in its development is what we mean by culture. And education is not mere perpetuation of the order of the past. The hierarchy of values must be constantly recreated if it is to survive. Knowledge of the past is the inspiration to such creative effort and knowledge of nature is a guide to it. A generation ago William James, whose philosophy of science was thoroughly Humanistic, suggested that the fascination of the pursuit of knowledge was that we might thus be in at the places where truth is actually in the making, and that we should never know what sort of world this would be “till the last man’s vote is in and counted.” What we are to make of this unfinished world depends largely upon the power and wisdom and appreciation of value which we may attain through our education.

CHAPTER XIV
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

Finally, with what appraisement may the seeker for knowledge view education itself? In the course of our study we have cast aside numerous idols and comforting fictions. We have seen that in the process of a liberal education old dilemmas are outgrown; that the habit is formed of questioning all things; that the educated mind becomes capable of amused self-criticism, attains urbanity of spirit and tolerant scepticism of the crowd and its partisan controversies, and with civilized resignation learns that it may not possess finality in matters of truth and right, but that a man must order his life according to the wisest discrimination of value of which he is capable.

Now, I believe, the wise man will pursue his education always viewing it with a certain light-heartedness and detachment. Wisdom itself will not be taken too seriously by one who sees that in the best of it there is an entertaining amount of human folly. Like Falstaff’s confession, “I am not much better than one of the wicked,” Socrates, the wisest, knows he is not much better than one of the foolish. People who solemnly try to improve their minds, with groanings of the spirit that cannot be uttered, determined to reach some cultural “Pike’s peak or bust,” do not often become educated; they become intellectual bores.

Education is a way of living, but it is never a substitute for life. Rational living does not mean that interest, feeling, love, respect, practical achievement, do not count, or that in the end education should make of life a mere knowledge affair. One does not pursue scholarship merely for the sake of philosophical contemplation, or as an intellectual trick. And there is no magic about education, but plain common sense. I think we may safely say that a life guided by reason and good taste is better than one enslaved to tradition, tabu, narrow utilitarianism, conventionalism and passion. But surely education is not a hair shirt to be worn in order to discipline the spirit and achieve the modern idea of salvation. Neither is it something to be attained by practicing before the mirror. It is nothing ostentatious. Nor is it to be made a cult of. It does not work miracles, nor can it create out of airy nothingness an intelligence that does not exist.

I think much of the criticism of education that one frequently hears these days grows out of an exaggerated notion of the transformation which some people expect a few years of education to work. I know a number of college graduates who are very bitter in their criticism of college education, protesting that they did not learn anything that did them any good. Perhaps they expected too much for the amount of effort put forth and tried to do too great a business on a small intellectual capital. Or perhaps such criticism is in part a pose; in certain circles it is now “the thing.”

An article which recently appeared in a student’s journal is typical of this attitude toward College education. The writer asks, “Are the American colleges worth their keep?” They have not, he says, given to the nation the trained leadership which we had the right to expect of them. Enter any University Club and you will find yourself far removed from that intellectual atmosphere which should be characteristic of education in a great democracy. Few college men may be found fighting on the side of social justice. Few have the courage to deviate in any way from the totums and tabus of a plutocratic, materialistic society. Few have any very different ideas from those of their chauffeurs of what constitutes success in life. Men’s colleges are no different from girl’s finishing schools; they are not educational institutions, but exist merely to impart information of the ways and manners of upper-class society. Instructors are devitalized, for none but a devitalized person could endure the system. Trustees have the habit of judging colleges by the same standards they apply to business, yet judged even by such standards, the author thinks higher education is a failure. If Mr. Henry Ford turned out motor cars as bad as the products the colleges turn out, he would soon be bankrupt!

In so far as such sweeping indictments are inspired by a feeling of antipathy toward the so-called upper classes, it is not necessary for us to discuss them. But I think that criticisms of this sort also reveal a tendency to expect too much of education. We become more charitable when we pause to consider how small a part, even at best, intelligence plays in the control of human behavior. We have seen what Erasmus thought about this subject. Most of those who call attention to the general lack of intelligence, draw a distinction between the amount of it in existence and the amount in common use. This is a democratic view of the matter. It flatters the average man if you tell him that he possesses more intelligence than he is using. A more correct view is perhaps that of Freud, who says that most of us in modern civilization are living “psychologically beyond our means.”

A good example of this democratic view may be found in a discussion of “Intelligence in Our Time,” by a very able professor in one of the Eastern colleges. “The general state of intelligence in our time is of the strangest. It is richly and splendidly equipped and it is tragically unsuccessful,—unsuccessful, that is, in the conduct of life, both personal and social.” You may test it, broadly speaking, by the troubles of the world. “One of the foremost failures of human intelligence is not to remember its own importance.” In other words, I suppose we haven’t enough intelligence to use our intelligence. We live in “a sea of loose and floating ideas, more of them produced daily, and no clearly recognized way of deciding, to the coercion of all trained minds, which is right.... When people go wrong in reasoning they usually do so in obvious ways, by violating obvious rules.” Intelligence has its standards, but does not enforce them; it “lacks confidence in itself.... On most important subjects opinions differ. In each case something else appears as more important than intelligence, something else has the right of way.”

In other words, we know better than to believe and behave as we do most of the time. But I doubt if this unfortunate state of man is a peculiarity of our times. I suspect that there has long been more knowledge than intelligence in the world. The difficulty is that we frequently do not know how to use the knowledge we possess, for to use knowledge well requires wisdom, and no one can give us wisdom. I can see no gain in condemning the human race for not using its intelligence. I suspect that the beliefs we entertain and the deeds we perform or leave undone are the best measure of the intelligence we possess. Let us each own up to a certain native stupidity and deceitfulness of heart which no amount of education can wholly cure or even successfully disguise. The admission will to some extent save us from that childish pride of intellect which is a common affliction of those who “go in” for education.

Sometimes pride of intellect disguises itself with a holy tone and reverential mien, as if education were a very solemn affair. When I was a school boy, there was in our town a woman librarian who presided over our little public library with deadly seriousness. She filled the place with a crushing and awesome silence, as with reverential whispers she quietly moved on tiptoe among the books like one ministering in the house of the dead. I have known people to behave in this spirit toward literature. I have seen school teachers and professors take such an attitude toward education. It characterizes the average baccalaureate address and is discernible in much that is said and written about education. I know several “prophets” of adult education who succeed in giving a similar impression. Their very souls creak under the weight of the world-mending “spiritual values” of adult education. If people will take their education as hard as the Kantians take morality, they are welcome to their “sublimities.” There are minds which seem to have been formed only for the service of the sublime and do not work well except when closeted in its presence. But I would rather dwell in the tents of the wicked than be a door-keeper in such a house of serious thinkers. Extravagant claims for education lead to pretense, to painful efforts at keeping up appearances, to exposure and ultimate disillusionment.

Several times in history there has occurred a wide-spread reaction against education, followed by a long period of decline of interest in it. Usually such reactions have taken the form of a revival of religion and have followed upon a period of general intellectual awakening. The Augustan age is followed by primitive Christianity, the Renaissance by the Reformation, the eighteenth century, the age of “the Enlightenment,” by those distinctly anti-intellectualist movements, the Revival, the Revolution and Romanticism. May not one of the causes of such reactions be the fact that people have been led to expect too much of the prevailing education? Men for a time believe that education will disclose some wonderful secret which is about to transform the world, and when they find that the learned doctors do not reveal the secret because they have none to reveal, and that the world does not at once proceed to transform itself, they turn from learning to religion where the secret is kept from the wise and revealed unto babes. No one is more concerned than I that the interest in education be as wide-spread and as genuine as possible. But I would not force its growth lest we get all foliage and no fruit. It is better that in its due season the tree be known by the fruit it bears.

Just as some believe that education is a sort of gospel, there are others who contend that knowledge makes for unhappiness. One evening at an informal dinner in New York a small group of thoughtful people, all of middle age, were discussing in a rather desultory manner the education of the younger generation. Suddenly the conversation became serious. One of the women said, “They are hard, disillusioned young realists. What else could we expect? It is the result of the education we are giving them. They know too much.” She continued, “I wish, though I do not see how it could have been done, that we could have retained the simple beliefs of our parents. It was very comforting to believe those things. It seems to me that everything I learn robs me of some consoling ideal and makes the world appear cruel and terrible.”

To the question, what shall we put in the place of the old faiths which education leads us to doubt, there is perhaps no other answer than that we shall exchange an infantile mentality for a mature one. Most people will agree that it is better to grow up, but as to whether we are happier without our childish illusions, opinions differ.

Much of the tenderness which people show for small children is a mixture of pity and envy. The other day I saw a business man about fifty years old gaze long and wistfully at an infant playing with his toys. He said as he turned away, “I wish I could remember what it feels like to be his age. Can you imagine what this world must look like to him?” There is my own small son who is now just learning to stand on his feet and speak a word or two. How trusting and sweet he is. He is not afraid of any one or any thing. No one would of course wish him to live always surrounded only by pretty pictures and parental kindness. But it is easy to understand how one in moments of weariness and doubt might envy him his brief day of blessed ignorance. Think of it, he does not even know that people have to work, and that it is the common lot of mankind both to endure and inflict suffering. He does not suspect the existence of such things as hospitals, slaughter houses, war, slums, jails, policemen or Congress. He does not know that he is not immortal, or that he must ever part with those he loves. He must know these things since they exist, and must learn about many other facts equally hard to endure. And as he grows up I want him to learn to cut his way through the fictions with which men strive to disguise the significance of many painful realities from which there is no escape.

Such is knowledge, and such is the price we pay for it. One reason why mankind persistently resists the introduction of knowledge is the disinclination to pay the price. It is not altogether easy, as James said, to “stand this universe.” The longing for the irresponsibility of childhood is very common among mankind, and it gives rise to many comforting fictions which yield reluctantly to knowledge of fact. The general attitude toward wisdom has in it always a touch of the dread of the unknown. There is a very old legend that our first parents were expelled from paradise after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Even our boasted practical knowledge of nature and of mechanics can hardly be said to be an unmixed blessing. We are not quite so utopian in our enthusiasm over applied science as we were twenty years ago. I once burst into eloquence with an entertaining peroration something like the following: “Everywhere as science displaces the hallowed survivals of primitive magic and superstition, man emerges from darkness with dignity and freedom in his bearing and titanic power in his hands. The great friend for whom humanity has waited is the quiet man in the laboratory amongst his test tubes and apparatus. What kings could not command, nor priests call down from an unanswering heaven, he can command and bring into being to enrich the heritage of happiness for all. The earth blossoms for science. Where the medicine man in the desert once vainly prayed for rain, science digs an irrigation ditch and waste lands turn into fields of grain. Since the beginning of time men have cringed in the shadow of death as the specter of plague walked in their midst heedless of the prayers of faith. Science offers no sacrifice to propitiate revengeful gods: it drains the swamps: it resorts to such mundane devices as screens, vaccine and the quarantine, and for the first time in all history the human race is freed of its most terrifying scourge. Science has drawn the nations together as its lines of mechanical communication have annihilated the spacial distances which have hitherto isolated man from man. It has lightened the burden of toil and has multiplied the productive force of labor a hundredfold. It has lengthened the span of the average human life by nearly a decade.

“And with what a wealth of unforeseen goods it has supplied us, motor cars, and aëroplanes, and talking machines, and a countless variety of new chemical products. What indeed can we not achieve with its aid; we can send our messages around the world, dig the Panama Canal, throw a dam across the Mississippi and turn the wheels and light the homes of distant cities. We can make the lightning our household servant, we can fly through the clouds, we can weigh distant suns, and by throwing their light waves through a spectroscope, analyze them chemically and tell whether they are composed of gas or solid matter and whether they are moving towards us or receding. As science is giving us mastery over nature, why should it not likewise give man control over his own nature? The existence in a scientific age of poverty and crime and injustice and corruption is an anachronism. Human reason has at last decided to make itself at home and put the house of life in order, and all nature smilingly welcomes it. It is flushed with success and well it may be, for in it is the promise of the final triumph of man on the earth.”

We are not so sanguine now. We have seen the destructive uses to which scientific knowledge may be put in warfare. We are not so hopeful about the easy control of human nature by means of it. It cannot be said that there has been a general gain in intelligence, corresponding to the increase of specialized scientific knowledge. The disturbing thought has been expressed that the tremendous power of the engines created by applied science for our generation is something like dangerous explosives in the hands of young children. We are like passengers on a steamship speeding through fog with an empty pilot house.

We move swiftly from one place to another, but it is doubtful if we find more happiness or good when we reach our destination, or if we behave more wisely than do men who know nothing of the fruits of science. Those who are acquainted with China, a country in which a vast population has maintained the oldest civilization extant without any science at all, say that the cultural level of that nation has not been raised by the occasional importation of western methods of sanitation, military science, electric lights and chewing gum.

Medical research has saved the lives of countless numbers of children, so that infant mortality is negligible now as compared with that of the ages that had no science. I am sure no one would wish to give up such a splendid application of modern knowledge to human welfare. Yet even this has its price. There are biologists who doubt if the amount of human suffering has been so greatly reduced as we at first supposed. They say that many physically unfit persons are thus preserved, only to suffer in later life, and that the survival to maturity, of such poorly equipped organisms and their reproduction lowers the quality of the racial stock of the nation. This is an extreme position and is perhaps a premature conclusion, but it illustrates my point that at best our modern knowledge may not be had without paying some price for it.

Theoretical knowledge of nature may be said to be no less costly than applied science. In the sixteenth century man could without fear of contradiction proclaim the earth to be the center of the Universe and his own welfare and salvation the purpose of creation. Every step in the progress of science from Newton to Einstein has tended to rebuke the egotism of man—unless perchance he could find compensation in the fact that he is a creature who has the intellectual courage to saw off the bough of sustaining belief that he is sitting on. Early astronomy revealed to man that his earth, far from being “the Center” was but a perishable and relatively very small kind of moon whirling about a slowing cooling sun, by no means the best of a galaxy of bigger and brighter suns all moving by necessity through freezing space in utter indifference to the inhabitants of this little planet. Chemistry showed man that his glowing life was a molecular process. Physics taught him that all change and movement were but the redistribution of a meaningless and purposeless energy the quantity of which remained forever constant. Geology reminded him that he was but a newcomer among the forms of life which had lived and left their remains in the crust of the earth. Biology revealed to him his kinship with other animals and his lowly origin. Psychology sought to find his soul, and gave up the search, finding it easier to account for his behavior in terms of animal impulse and reflex action. Anthropology discovered for him the origin of his cherished beliefs in the customs of primitive man. Sociology reduced his individual existence to that of a statistical unit in the mass.

It now appears probable that science may abandon in time its traditional mechanistic conceptions of the cosmos and of life, but there is little likelihood that such a change of outlook will restore man to the place in nature which he once thought he occupied. Nor may we expect it to envisage for him a world more conducive to his wishes than that pictured by the science of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it is possible that he may have to learn to live without even those fictions of security which were features of the older rationalism of science.

Now I have tried to state the situation in its bold harshness, for the educated mind today must know all this and must wrestle with it. The knowledge cannot of itself lead to happiness, nor do I think that it necessarily leads to unhappiness. All depends upon what we are able to make of our existence in such a world. Although we possess different and more precise instruments of knowledge, I do not think this is the first time that thoughtful minds have seen through popular fancy and the shows of things. I believe wise men of all times have suspected that existence is different from what people naïvely imagine it to be. And it is precisely because they wrestled with such suspicions, asked, “what then?”, and have sought to give their existence some meaning and worth, that their words are precious. Now that education is general, and vast numbers seek it, it is well to remind ourselves that no one of us can really find wisdom until he has alone struggled for value with destiny and naked fact.

The fear that most men cannot do this, and that they will turn aside with some substitute for knowledge or with that “little learning which is a dangerous thing” has led some writers, wrongly I think, to question that any good may come of universal education. This esoteric point of view is dramatically stated by Dostoevsky in “The Brothers Karamazov,” in the person of the Grand Inquisitor who rebukes the Christ on the occasion of his return to Seville to comfort the victims of the Inquisition. The Inquisitor tells the Christ that he has demanded too much of mankind. What the masses need is not freedom of the spirit, but mystery, miracle, and authority; someone to take their bread from their hands, bless it and give it back to them; someone who will permit them to sin, and take the responsibility on his own soul, someone who will guard the secret and deceive mankind every step of the way as he leads it down to death. The old Inquisitor says to the Christ, “If at the last day you condemn me, I will defy you to your face, for I too have eaten bitter roots in the wilderness.”

Nietzsche in his lectures on “The Future of our Educational Institutions” at Bâle, takes a similar position. Nietzsche believed that to the degree that education is extended it is weakened and minimized. The masses think they can reach at a single bound what the wise man has had to win for himself only after long and determined struggles to live like a philosopher.

“And do you not fear that solitude will wreak its vengeance upon you? Just try living the life of a hermit of culture. One must be blessed with overflowing wealth in order to live for the good of all on one’s own resources! Extraordinary youngsters! They felt it incumbent upon them to imitate what is precisely most difficult and most high,—what is possible only to the master, when they, above all, should know how difficult and dangerous this is, and how many excellent gifts may be ruined by attempting it!... No one would strive to attain to culture if he knew how incredibly small the number of really cultured people actually is, and can ever be.”

“... those blatant heralds of educational needs, when examined at close quarters, are suddenly seen to be transformed into zealous, yea, fanatical opponents of true culture, i. e., all those who hold fast to the aristocratic nature of the mind; for, at bottom, they regard as their goal the emancipation of the masses from the mastery of the great few; they seek to overthrow the most sacred hierarchy in the kingdom of the intellect—the servitude of the masses, their submissive obedience, their instinct of loyalty to the rule of genius.... The education of the masses cannot, therefore, be our aim; but rather the education of a few picked men for great and lasting works. We well know that a just posterity judges the collective intellectual state of a time only by those few great and lonely figures of the period.... What is called the ‘education of the masses’ cannot be accomplished except with difficulty; and even if a system of universal compulsory education be applied, they can only be reached outwardly....

“We know, however, what the aspiration is of those who would disturb the healthy slumber of the people, and continually call out to them: ‘Keep your eyes open! Be sensible! Be wise!’ we know the aim of those who profess to satisfy excessive educational requirements by means of an extraordinary increase in the number of educational institutions and the conceited tribe of teachers originated thereby. These very people, using these very means, are fighting against the natural hierarchy in the realm of the intellect, and destroying the roots of all those noble and sublime plastic forces which have their material origin in the unconsciousness of the people.”

“This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on the throne of the present. It endeavors either to bring the leaders down to the level of its own servitude or else to cast them out altogether.”

Whether Nietzsche’s theories of education were derived from his political philosophy, or the reverse, I do not know. We are not, however, interested in discussing political and sociological theories. The point is that Nietzsche held that education is difficult and dangerous, and that only the rare, strong, courageous spirits may attain it. The many really do not want education at all, he thinks, but only that cheaper knowledge which will give them success and enable them to take their places in the rank and file; seeking such education the herd tramples culture under foot, like cattle in growing corn when the fences are down. Difficult and dangerous as knowledge is, it is to Nietzsche the most precious possession of man. All his writing on this subject is a warning cry that the cultural values of civilization are in danger of being lost in an education for democracy. I think he had a real issue, although I wish he had possessed more self-control in arguing his case; he had always something of the intemperance and over-excited gestures of a religious evangelist or soap-box orator.

A much more sane statement of the true aims of education in conflict with Philistinism is that of Matthew Arnold. I hesitate to mention Arnold because those who are still guilty of the errors he exposed will say he was a Victorian, and how could his ideas of education have any value for a progressive twentieth century population? I doubt if many men of today, advocates of advanced theories of education included, are as far removed from the vulgarities and pseudo-culture of the Victorian age as Arnold was. Like Nietzsche, he holds that the multitude gives evidence that it does not really want education. Unlike Nietzsche, he does not think that knowledge is some grim secret which only a few heroic supermen may attain. The fruits of knowledge are not merely ideas about life and reality which men may or may not believe in, but are to be known in the quality of life and thought which characterize the educated mind.

Arnold’s phrase “sweetness and light” is a little suggestive of a Unitarian sermon, or of some cult of the “higher life.” It is obvious that if a man deliberately set out to drill his soul in the ways of sweetness and light he might become a very lady-like individual; he would not necessarily become an educated person. All such deliberate efforts at self-improvement, if they are not characterized by a sentimental insincerity which is content with imitation and appearance, are at least a little like the effort of Benjamin Franklin to school himself in the moral virtues, who, finding the task too great, decided that he could best gain proficiency by practicing his desired virtues one at a time.

You may rest assured that Arnold had nothing of this sort in mind, much as he seems at one time to have admired the wisdom of Franklin. He meant that certain mental traits are sufficiently characteristic of educated minds generally to be the distinguishing marks which differentiate them from the uneducated. To be sure, it is a thankless task to call attention to such traits, and no one who does it may expect to be very popular, but sometimes, when the culture of a nation is in danger, it has to be done. Arnold has in mind characters like Socrates, Erasmus, Montaigne—no muddle-headed, opinionated or narrow-minded men, but men who had attained clarity of thought and the insight which pierces the glamour of things and the follies of men, and yet could speak and write without bitterness or rancor or malice.

“Here culture goes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived by us.

“If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances,—it is clear that culture, instead of being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very important function to fulfill for mankind. And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole civilisation is, to a much greater degree than the civilisation of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But above all in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because here that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance.... So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and are likely to long have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as friends and benefactors....

“Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve; but always in machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but machinery? what are railroads but machinery? what is wealth but machinery? what are, even, religious organisations but machinery? Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious ends in themselves, and therefore had some of the characters of perfection indisputably joined to them.... But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that....

“The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says, ‘Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voices; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?’”

As Nietzsche sees that education must struggle for its values if it is to survive in a democracy, Arnold is equally aware of its conflict with middle-class English Puritanism. He will give the Puritan credit for his moral earnestness, but—

“the Puritan’s ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers’ voyage, they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil,—souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane, were eminent,—accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! In the same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true goal.”

Of the relation of education to the growing power of nineteenth century democracy, Arnold says,

“Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the future.... Culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism,—its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract system. Culture is always assigning to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their friends like.”

The following is as truly the problem of education today as it was on the day it was written, and the answer that our generation gives to the problem will determine the whole quality of the fruit of knowledge for our lives.

“... Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. Our religious and political organisations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely,—nourished, and not bound by them.

“The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanise it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious.... And why? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence.”

The human race has demonstrated how it can get along without knowledge; it has not on any general scale demonstrated how it can get along with knowledge. Ignorance and vulgarity have amazing survival value in human society. Knowledge has its dangers. One may lose one’s faith in the pursuit of it or expend much effort, and never attain it; and, what is worse, never know that one has not attained it. Or having gained some bit of knowledge, one may not store it up as final truth and abide with it, but having seen must pass on to other knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge is an open road.

All, or nearly all, who have pursued knowledge will say that such a pursuit is a great adventure. It is an adventure which never goes stale, nor loses its lure, nor grows old, and there are indirect results of such an adventure which cannot be measured. Just as he who has traveled in many lands returns and views his home with new eyes never really having seen it before, so he who follows knowledge in time sees the things about him in new light. They have a richer meaning and better perspective for they have a wider reference.

What might happen if a considerable portion of the population should, or could, become devoted to education in the way that men have engaged themselves in religion, war, and commerce, we perhaps can never know. Men have been converted to religion and have “back-slid” or have outgrown their faith. Men have gaily marched off to war and before the conflict ended have grown sick of it. Men have given up commerce, finding that it does not satisfy some deep longing in their natures. Most of those who begin their education leave off before they learn what it is about. But the few who have remained to taste the fruit of knowledge as a rule become addicted to it, and never leave off, being never satisfied with what they have yet attained. If for eating this fruit they find themselves outside the paradise of childish innocence and popular belief, they do by their bearing give us the impression that the experience is worth its cost. It is only the half-educated, those who would follow wisdom and at the same time look back over their shoulders casting longing glances at comforting ignorance, unable to say farewell, who dwell upon the painfulness of knowledge. I have the suspicion that those who wear a long face as if they knew some dreadful secret that would break the heart of the world if the rest of mankind knew it, are men who find in the Byronic attitude a convenient way of convincing themselves that they are intellectual heroes. Or they are romanticists who enjoy the sorrows of Werther.

For the encouragement of those who might wish to continue their education or assist in the education of another, I have tried to present certain historical examples of men who have attained wisdom. They are brave men and true; they do not make us ashamed of our race. It is a pleasure to try to understand such minds, and I trust that in these times when every fence is down and there are in the field of education many strange animals and much shouting and confusion, we may have been able to gain something, from turning our attention to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Erasmus and Montaigne and Huxley and Nietzsche and Arnold, that will help us to see the meaning of education. But we can never be sure whether we like its fruits until we taste them.

CHAPTER XV—POSTSCRIPT
ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA

When the European universities were established in the late Middle Ages, they were not, like our modern American colleges, super-high-schools. It was not their primary purpose to give to undergraduates and aspiring professional students a maximum fund of information during a brief period of residence. There were many thousands of such students, but the college or university was in a real sense an institution for adult education. It was a place of residence for mature scholars, a center where such men could pursue their studies and live the life of education, just as in the monasteries men could live the “religious” life. The teaching which went on in these universities was in a sense a secondary activity.

Among the many changes which have occurred in life and education since the thirteenth century, that represented by Goethe’s “Faust” has special interest for us. The modern man attempts to live the life of the spirit outside the cloister. In this respect we are, as I have said, more like the ancient Athenians who formed themselves into little groups and attached themselves as disciples to their teacher for an indefinite period of time. We may easily imagine the students and friends of Socrates continuing with him for years their philosophical inquiries, while at the same time engaged in the conduct of their duties as citizens and householders. Both Plato and Aristotle, as we have seen, thought of education in this way. It was an interest which as a matter of course extended into adult life. This continued emphasis upon the education of the mature mind is important, for it is in contrast with much modern thought on the subject. Modern educators are chiefly interested in the problems of teaching children.

But there is a still more significant fact about such adult education as we may have today which necessarily differentiates it from both the thirteenth century and the ancients. The average mature individual, is not like the ancient Greek student, a member of the leisure class, nor may he like the mediæval scholar retreat to a cloister. He must earn his living and seek education during his leisure time. To be sure, the formal and professional education of our time has still the advantages of a certain privilege and seclusion. Adult education must necessarily proceed without these valuable aids to learning. In earlier ages it was generally believed that education could not be achieved without these advantages. Modern men insist that the spiritual values of life be realized not in contemplative aloofness but in the life of activity. They also demand a satisfactory existence for as many people as possible; hence all are to have opportunity to share in the cultural goods of civilization. Education is made universal and, below a certain age, compulsory. But it is obvious that unless education is to remain the privilege of a few professionally trained scholars, large numbers of people must be given the facilities for continued study after school or college days are passed.

In other words, the aim of adult education is the cultivated amateur. I have tried to show that this is precisely the aim of all liberal education. Learning which is discontinued when one leaves school has been for the most part wasted effort. Education is not culture unless outside college halls it is a permanent and wide-spread interest which makes a difference in the tastes and habits of thought of the community. We have seen that Huxley deplored the fact that much of the intellectual leadership of Victorian England was found outside the university faculties. While this may have been a just criticism of the universities, it was a sign of intellectual vigor in the nation. Education may be said to be achieving its purposes in a nation to the extent that quiet reflection supplants superficial cleverness, and that minds with patience and grace and breadth of outlook, with indifference to fads and catchwords and with respect for excellence, supplant the “go-getter,” the “movie-fan,” the worshipper of Mammon, the sensation monger and the narrow sectarian.

The extent to which our education is a reality in the life of this Republic is almost daily brought to our attention. A very small percentage of the population spends four years at college, during which time most of it retains very much the same general habit patterns and beliefs and outlook on life that it had when it entered. After graduation, students bring home little cultural interest or added civic virtue. They for the most part vote the regular party ticket, support a church in which they happen to have been brought up, play golf, dance to jazz music, talk prohibition and drink synthetic gin, repeat the shibboleths of the group in which they grew to maturity, and make money.

A small minority of students attend post-graduate schools, become research scholars, and within the radius of their special branch of study often reach high proficiency and unequalled scholarship. In the universities of New York City are gathered many of the most eminent scholars in America. But it must be said that very little educational influence passes over the chasm which separates our professionalized education from the man in the street. Today a mob is moved to tears of a patriotic fervor and to murderous indignation at the sight of a woman removing from the front of her property some faded red, white and blue bunting which had been hung up by a tenant for the occasion of a street festival some days previous; tomorrow an empty-pated multitude tries to break into an undertaker’s establishment and tramples hysterical women under foot in the effort to view the body of a deceased motion picture actor; and anon half the city runs oggling and open-mouthed after a young woman who can swim across the English Channel.

Without background or tradition other than folkway and a perishing ancient dogma, and with quantity production methods devised to pamper to its fancy, this multitude tends to cheapen the quality of everything it comes near, while it parades its material prosperity before the world as evidence of superior American virtue. Education has not yet taken root in our soil. It is a potted plant, like those little evergreen trees which may be seen growing in painted tubs on the stoops of New York houses. Such ancestral systems for valuing experience and controlling behavior as people brought to this country were mostly cast aside in the process of Americanization; the swift tempo of industrialism supplanted the slow process of spiritual maturing, and a newspaper-fashioned public opinion became the dominant cultural force for the country at large.

We do not know at present whether the alleged general interest in adult education is evidence of a spontaneous and growing desire for knowledge, or is something promoted, worked up by interests which would “educate the masses” in order to attain certain economic ends, individual or social. Nearly three million persons are said to be annually enrolled for various courses of study outside the resident classes of established institutions of learning. Undoubtedly a great variety of motives prompts these hundreds of thousands of people to take up the task of study. But wide-spread as this interest is, popularization of knowledge is not the same as the humanization of knowledge. We have seen how the values of religion may decline into empty caricatures of the spiritual life amongst certain popular sects.

Those engaged in the work of adult education, often fear that the movement may become standardized after the fashion of the public school system. Is it possible to keep up the standards without resorting to the mechanical uniformity we commonly call standardization? I think this is possible only if we are guided by a philosophy of liberal education. Lose sight of such a philosophy and adult education becomes a confusion of tongues. In such confusion there is of course freedom from uniformity, yet there may be much standardization; each educational cult may easily degenerate into a doctrinaire, misguided sect. If I am correct in holding that the aim of liberal education is to produce the cultivated amateur, who possesses in general the mental traits which in the preceding chapters of this book we have seen to characterize the liberally educated mind, we have in the pursuit of such a goal the very thing that will save adult education from degenerating, like Protestantism, into a conflict of narrow orthodoxies. Without such a goal, any passing fancy or popular prejudice, however ungrounded in philosophy, may come to serve as a dominant ideal of education. Adult education then becomes the means to every sort of propaganda and personal ambition.

One educator of adults conducts short-time “institutes” for farmers in which during a period of two or three weeks instruction is given in such subjects as the fertilization of the soil, rotation of crops, marketing, and the elements of bookkeeping. Others offer instruction to industrial workers which will improve their efficiency and deepen their loyalty to the company. Others teach various trades and professions. Much of the Americanization propaganda which gave employment to uplifters during the years following the war is now called adult education. There is a group of very serious idealists who believe that by means of adult education they may initiate working people into the “proletarian culture of the future,” and arm the working class with the necessary weapons for a social revolution. Others would conduct schools in which young people may be trained to become professional labor leaders. To still others the task of adult education is very clear and simple: it is nothing else than the transformation of our entire civilization by the method of leading people back to nature and enabling them to express their emotions, to which end classes in appreciation and self-expression are organized, and students are sent out after two or three months of such training prepared to teach the emotional awakening to others.

Adult education thus becomes a matter of slogans. Each educator is sure he has it and can give the formula. It is that “every man be given opportunity to think for himself,” or it is to give people “a new and modern world view,” or to help people “get out of the ruts in which they find themselves,” or to enable one to “evaluate his experience,” or it is “an adventure in independence.”

Many of these things may be very desirable, but are they education? Taken together, they reveal something of the confusion which always results when men try to find their standards of value in the passing interests of the hour. Adult education is a democratic movement and hence tends to make the desires and ideals of the uneducated rather than those of the educated its standards and aims. The idea sometimes prevails in education, just as it has prevailed in religion and in politics, that if only the masses may emancipate themselves from the past and start all over again, setting up their own values, there will necessarily be great improvement. Hence Labor, for instance, is to have “its own education,” whatever that is. To be sure, every person, be he a laborer or anyone else, must in the end educate himself, and perhaps the masses in insisting upon their own values and ideals can make no worse business of their education than when they are “given” the education which someone equally uneducated and materialistic thinks is good for them.

It is obvious that the methods of adult education must be different from those in common use in teaching children. The instructor cannot compel attendance; he cannot require submission to his authority; he must realize that he is among people who, though they have not his special knowledge, have yet each his own experience, and he must see the relations of his knowledge to such experience; and in fact he must make himself a student with the others. Now because the methods differ from those of formal education, people frequently infer that the aim also is different. There are many things which would seem to lead to such an inference.

In the first place, in all education, attention is focused almost exclusively upon methods of teaching rather than upon the question, “what is an educated person?” Again many of those who are interested in adult education both as instructors or as students have grown up in an environment of traditional education, they have seen the futility and meaninglessness of much that passes for education in the schools and colleges, and are often moved to protest against the system and all its works. I have tried to show that the failure of formal education is the result of the fact that educators frequently do not know what liberal education is. But many people who are irritated with the school system seem never to have raised the question whether what is taught in school is liberal education. They assume that it is what it appears to be, and hence, instead of seeking the meaning of liberal education, they turn away and strive to set up a hastily considered educational aim of their own.

Finally, adult students are sometimes very opinionated—especially when they first come to class. Often they have violent prejudices and are extremely “advanced.” Such minds are very much creatures of the popular movement of the hour. The educator, if he is to keep his hold upon these persons, must gain their favor and sustain their interest. The easiest way to gain and keep a following is to make concession to popular prejudice. Classes in adult education, like the reading public, wish to be told what they would like to regard as true. One of the great “truths” for which they often seek support is the belief that the increasing or anticipated supremacy of the mass is “progress.” Men wish adult education to be modern, to reflect current thought and present-day tendencies. In an earlier chapter I tried to show how much of the popular thought that men believe very advanced is really unrecognized Rousseauism. Often the idea of a new start in education is only a survival of Rousseau’s revolt against civilization. Since the influence of Rousseau serves always to rationalize any plebeian wish-fancy whatsoever, it is not surprising that it should sometimes appear to set the goal of adult education. To the degree that the desire for education is genuine and spontaneous, the demand will naturally be for what people think, is education.

But in spite of all the chaos and confusion as to aims, adult education, when the initiative comes from people who are hungry for knowledge, even though they do not know what education is, shows more promise than when the initiative comes from the professional school teacher. In the former case, there is some likelihood that someone will stumble upon the meaning of a liberal education. As a form of protest against the established educational system, I think adult education is a wholesome movement. The school authorities frequently show an interest in this new thirst for knowledge which is met with suspicion. I do not wonder. They have not shown themselves so uniformly successful in the training of youth that they are justified in seeking to extend their machinery over adult efforts for knowledge. Much that school superintendents regard as adult education is really only elementary education, primary instruction offered to adults. The surest way to defeat learning is to place it in charge of those whose own education has stopped. Their influence is everywhere to divert this mature interest in learning to the only ends such professional educators know; service to the state, conformity and routine, material advancement and industrial efficiency, the uplift of the masses.

In the words of a great educator of the nineteenth century, we should “inquire whether it is the masses alone who need a reformed and improved education.” Adult education is not something to be “given” to the masses, while college education may be kept for the sons of privilege. There is no such thing as “mass education.” Throughout the mass of mankind, college graduates included, there are scattered here and there persons who can learn something and have the desire to continue learning. It is as important for us to consider for whom adult educational opportunities should exist as it is to consider what education is. Such opportunities are for people who are worth educating.

Adult education is selective. Its aim is not to provide a slight increase of information and a few noble sentiments for the rank and file, but to select out of the undifferentiated mass those who are naturally capable of becoming something more than automatons. These need no credits or examinations or promise of diplomas to spur them to intellectual effort. They would gain wisdom if there were no educational institutions, or classes, or lectures. But they need advice and the fellowship of other studious minds, for they are often lonely. Very few even professional students can easily carry on their studies when isolated from their kind. Hence the existence of universities. The rush and racket of our industrial civilization are so great that there is need to establish for those whose minds can rise above it, an environment where thought is leisurely and where people may be found who have had learning long enough to be at home with it. The isolated student, like the person learning to swim, makes much needless effort. He tries to stuff his head with learning. He needs time to meditate upon what he learns, talk about it, assimilate it, see its relations to his knowledge and experience as a whole. I believe this to be the value of group discussion, where there is a real meeting of minds. I do not, however, as some seem to do, believe that a company of uninformed people talking nonsense are necessarily engaged in a work of mutual education. It is not as groups that men may attain wisdom. With all the aid possible from others, education is necessarily an individual achievement.

We need adult education not because it is a path to some Utopia, or imaginary triumph of the masses, or because it will add to the contentment of the poor, or improve their morals and their industrial efficiency, or raise the tone of politics. We need adult education for the same reason that we need any education at all. From the beginning of time men of a certain type have sought such knowledge of the riddle of existence as would make some measure of excellence possible to man. The result of all their striving is a vast body of knowledge which is the heritage of the men and women of our time. To share in the possession of this knowledge and to work for its improvement and increase is to men and women of a certain type simply to attain to their true human estate. They desire education because that is the kind of animal they happen to be. Such persons are different from the common lot. It is not that they may possess some secret information which the others may not have. They have a different goal.

Such decency and tolerance and good sense and genuine idealism as exist in the midst of general human folly are largely the indirect results of the efforts of these men and women for knowledge and wisdom. Society as a whole is the gainer for their education. To the end that such minds may find themselves, together with the work and the adventure which are their destiny, the widest possible efforts at general education should be made. It is because of what people are in themselves and may become, not because of something they may get, that liberal education is the duty of man. What Huxley said of England in 1868 is true for America today:

“a few voices are lifted up in favour of the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that it is as true now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of knowledge.”

THE END

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Transcriber’s note

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Spelling was standardized except for quotes. Hyphenation was standardized where appropriate.

The following changes were made:

Page 37: “Pavlow. A hungry dog” | “Pavlov. A hungry dog”
Page 54: “information that anyone” | “information than anyone”
Page 76: “in the early nineteeth” | “in the early nineteenth”
Page 88: “Nietsche said that” | “Nietzsche said that”
Page 123: “it not the social problem” | “is not the social problem”
Page 130: “Max Sterner’s “Ego”” | “Max Stirner’s “Ego””
Page 137: “it hestitated to carry” | “it hesitated to carry”
Page 141: “organized soicalist locals” | “organized socialist locals”
Page 142: “sort of convenant among” | “sort of covenant among”
Page 176: “its value it not” | “its value is not”
Page 176: “a philosophy it true” | “a philosophy is true”
Page 198: “creation of Plato’s genuis” | “creation of Plato’s genius”
Page 199: “to aquiescence to authority” | “to acquiescence to authority”
Page 224: “Michaelangelo and Raphael” | “Michelangelo and Raphael”
Page 224: “Melanchthon and Œcolampadus” | “Melanchthon and Œcolampadius”
Page 239: “matched by his magnaminity” | “matched by his magnanimity”
Page 253: “fire of Promethus” | “fire of Prometheus”
Page 256: “believe there an be” | “believe there can be”
Page 304: “system-makers and sytems” | “system-makers and systems”
Page 304: “destiny then their friends” | “destiny than their friends”
Page 306: “a covenient way” | “a convenient way”

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Table of Contents

- THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS
- CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

- CHAPTER II LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. ANIMAL TRAINING

- CHAPTER III LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. PROPAGANDA

- CHAPTER IV LIBERAL EDUCATION VS. BOOK LEARNING

- CHAPTER V THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF DOUBT

- CHAPTER VI A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE DILEMMAS HE KEEPS

- CHAPTER VII THE FREE SPIRIT

- CHAPTER VIII THE APPRECIATION OF HUMAN WORTH

- CHAPTER IX EDUCATION AND WORK

- CHAPTER X EDUCATION AND MORALS

- CHAPTER XI THE CLASSICAL TRADITION—PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

- CHAPTER XII HUMANISM: ERASMUS AND MONTAIGNE

- CHAPTER XIII SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION—HUXLEY

- CHAPTER XIV THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

- CHAPTER XV—POSTSCRIPT ADULT EDUCATION IN AMERICA

- Announcing THE NEW SCIENCE SERIES
- Transcriber’s note
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE