Chapter VIII: Progress as Realization 243 (5)

We may say, then, that the state university represents (1) the completion of the democratic ideal of public education; (2) the unity of progress amidst diversity of view, and the mutual influence of the knowledge and power of the scholar and the ideals of the people; (3) the broad platform upon which the heterogeneous elements of the state may unite in the interest of higher education. It is understood, of course, that these three statements are not altogether mutually exclusive.

These views of the _raison d’être_ of the state university lead directly to the presentation in detail of some facts in its history and some of its aims, showing that its ideals are practicable.

The state university virtually, if not formally, is a part of the public-school system. As such it holds a peculiar and influential relation toward the public high schools. It furnishes teachers trained in the university in regular and pedagogical courses. It scrutinizes the courses of study and the character of the work, and formally approves the schools of standard merit. It helps in every prudent way the influence of the school with the community. By its friendly relation it may present freely the advantages of higher education and thus reach a large number who would otherwise rest at the goal of high-school graduation. In every state, through the agency of the university, the number of high schools is materially increased, and their standards, plan of organization, and methods are improved. Moreover, it gives the promise of something beyond that stimulates the efforts of pupils in every grade of work.

The connection between the high school and the university still gives rise to troublesome problems, not alone in this country. The ideals of the older American university are often at variance with the systematic development of education below the university and the demands of the people. The state university has come nearer than any other to the solution. While Harvard and Yale met the growing demands of science by establishing separate schools, Michigan introduced the scientific course into the college, making it rank with the classical. This plan, generally adopted by the state universities, places them nearly in line with the natural development of the public-school system. The state universities also show their regard for popular demand by admitting special students.

By offering free tuition, the state university reaches many who would otherwise fail to enjoy higher training. It tends to equalize the conditions for rich and poor in the struggle for the survival of the fittest.

The state university, as it develops and realizes its true function, must be thoroughly catholic in spirit, because it stands for humanity, truth, and progress. Nowhere is the professor or the scholar permitted to use such intellectual freedom as in the state university in Germany, and in the natural course of events the same freedom will be allowed in the United States. Not only will the free and inventive spirit become characteristic, but our Western universities, standing in the midst of the most advanced ideas of civilization, must furnish some of the most important contributions to the study of all social, economic, and ethical problems.

In the state universities the mental and moral atmosphere is healthful. A strong, honest manhood is cultivated. There all ideals are strongly maintained, not according to a particular creed, but with regard to all the implications of man’s higher nature. All influences tend to make citizens who are in harmony with the national spirit. An extended acquaintance with graduates of various state universities shows that, as a whole, they are broad-minded citizens, loyal to the public interest.

The relation of the religious denominations to the state university is one that commands serious attention. The university says to each class of people: “Here is an institution which is equally for the advantage of all—it is yours. Its platform, founded on ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness, is as broad as humanity. Since there must be diversity of religious views, establish your theological schools, halls, guilds, or professorships in the vicinity of the university, and, making use of what the state offers, supplement in your own way the work of the state.” The plan is in the highest degree economical; it combines unity of effort with variety of independent view; it makes the general good and the special interest mutually helpful. It is the plan of business common sense and of wise insight into the problems of the age. That the denominations—granting their point of view—should join their interest with that of the state university is shown also by the fact that often a given denomination finds more of its students there than at its church school.

Many state universities are beginning to receive private endowment. Every consideration of public interest in each state should turn the contributions for education toward the one great centre of learning. Very few states can support more than one such centre. Libraries, art collections, museums, laboratories, buildings, well-endowed chairs, beautiful grounds, should testify to the munificence of private wealth as well as to the benefactions of the state.

Speaking generally, the state universities have large incomes and good facilities. They require high standards for admission and graduation. Wherever feasible, they maintain professional schools and schools of applied science. They do this upon the theory that the state should both regulate and provide professional education in the interest of proper standards, and that, in the interest of the state and of the individual, such education should be made available to the sons of the poor. Every leading state university is developing a graduate school.

In the matter of electives, the state university occupies a middle ground. Yale and Princeton represent the conservative side, and Harvard and Stanford the liberal extreme. An examination of the curricula of ten leading state universities shows that the requirements for admission are definitely prescribed, although two or more courses are recognized; that about half the college studies are required, while the remaining half are offered as group or free electives. The state universities naturally show a tendency toward the German university system.

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In America the college has been frankly maintained in accord with Platonic ideals. A full rounded manhood, drawing its power from each chief source of knowledge, and prepared in a general way for every practical activity, has been the aim. The American college is dear to the people, and it has done much to make strong men who have powerfully influenced the nation. There are, however, various tendencies which are likely to modify the whole organization of the American university, including that of the college.

The recent tendency toward free election, reaching even into the high school, is a subject of animated controversy. This tendency I have frequently discussed elsewhere, and must still maintain that, in its extreme form, it is irrational. One university of high standing makes it possible to enter its academic department and graduate without mathematics, science, or classics. This is an extreme that is not likely to be sanctioned by the educational world. If there is a human type with characteristics by which it is defined—characteristics which can be developed only by looking toward each field of knowledge—then a secondary and higher education which makes possible the entire omission of any important group of subjects is likely to prove a great wrong to the average student. According to some high educational authorities, no one can be called liberally educated who does not at least possess knowledge of (1) mathematics and science, (2) language and literature, (3) philosophy. Philosophy, as it was in Greece and as it is in Germany, may become a larger factor in our American education.

There is another tendency which is working toward an inevitable result. The average American student who desires higher or professional education will not spend four years in high school, four years in college, and three or four years in a graduate or professional school. There is a movement to shorten in some manner the whole course of education. Already many colleges and collegiate departments of universities offer electives that will count for one or two years of law, medicine, or theology. Already the _university system_ in the form of group electives is introduced into the last two years of college.

The outcome will probably be a gradual reorganization of the high-school studies and those of the first two or three years of college. The new curriculum should lay for the student a broad and firm foundation in knowledge and power for all subsequent aptitudes. Upon this should be built the graduate school, the professional school, and perhaps the school of technology. In this plan the American college need not be lost, for the bachelor’s degree could be granted for a given amount of work beyond the college in the graduate school. The claim that the student should begin university work almost anywhere along the line of education, before laying a complete foundation for a specialty, appears absurd. It may be added that only by partial reorganization of our educational system can the admission standard to the American professional school ever be made respectable.

The scientific spirit—the term is used in the broadest sense—in all investigation and instruction is a most encouraging feature of present tendencies. If the American professor cannot always be an original investigator, he may keep abreast of investigation and impart its inspiration to the student. To this end the _Lehrfreiheit_, freedom in teaching, is necessary. It is a sad comment that the spirit of the inquisition has recently appeared in a New England university. The professor’s thought must not be prescribed for him by any creed, religious, political, or scientific. Of course, he must stand on the safe foundation of the past—he is not expected to soar in a balloon or leap over a precipice. A recent work on “The Ideal of Universities” says: “We can distinguish four chief currents in the theology of the present era: (1) The Roman Catholic; (2) the Protestant; (3) that objective-historic theology which simply states the origin and development of the Christian doctrine; and (4) the inception of a theology based upon recognized facts of science, of human nature, and of history.” All philosophy of nature and of human nature must become truth-seeking—this is a mere truism. No philosophy or belief can afford to maintain any other attitude. Leaders in the orthodox churches are teaching us this fact by their bearing toward new conceptions. And we need have no fear of the outcome. The highest ideals and hopes of humanity will be confirmed by the most thorough investigation in which metaphysics shall use the contribution of every department of objective and subjective science. A course in theology, scientific theology, should be found in every university, including the state university—and some dare to think the latter is the place for it. The facts of man’s higher intellectual and emotional life are the most important data for investigation.

The doctrine of _Lernfreiheit_, the freedom of the student, unhappily has been ignorantly applied in this country. It may properly be employed for the German university student at the age of twenty to twenty-five, after his training in the gymnasium, but not to the American college student at the age of eighteen to twenty-two. In America it may apply to the students in the graduate school. Some American colleges have tried the extreme theory of mental and moral freedom for the college student, and have learned from an unsatisfactory experience the lesson of a wise conservatism.

The old struggle between science and the humanities still goes on. We must adopt a view of education which regards the nature of man and its adaptation to the whole environment, including its historical element. In a keen analysis of the _nature of things_ we shall not find Greek and Latin, but we shall find them historically in our language and literature, and in the generic concepts of our civilization. Hence they are a necessary part of any extended study of language, literature, or art.

We do not believe that the practical tendency of American education will destroy our reverence for what the Germans call the _philosophical faculty_ in the university. The liberal arts, including pure science, are the gems of human culture, and are given a high value even in the imagination of the ignorant. The editor of “The Cosmopolitan” draws a bold and somewhat original outline for modern education, and it is in many ways suggestive. But the author overlooks what every true scholar knows, that thorough scientific knowledge of principles must remain the fundamental work of education and the substantial ground of progress in civilization. A university course may not consist chiefly of lectures upon prudential maxims, such as all must learn partly from experience. Such a theory would award the palm, not to Socrates, but to the Sophists. The truth in all the clamor for practical work in the college is that the culture studies must be vivified by closer relation to the real world and to modern life.

Little has been said of what is called the graduate school. Germany credits us with eleven institutions that have either reached the standard of a genuine university or are rapidly approaching it. Of these eleven, five are state universities. This estimate, of course, is made in accord with the plan and standard of the German university. It appears certain that in time the name university in America will be applied only to those institutions which maintain the graduate school and raise the dignity of the professional schools. The university system will develop freely in this country only after a somewhat important reorganization of our higher education. The line must be drawn more sharply between foundation education and university work, the whole period of education must be somewhat shortened, and, in most of our universities, the graduate faculty must be strengthened. That these changes will be wrought, and that we shall have a rapid development of the genuine university is certain. Much is to be expected from our higher scholarship in many lines of investigation. In America, men are solving problems the existence of which has only been dimly conceived by the masses of people in the Old World. Inspired by our advanced conceptions of government and society, and by the free, inventive, truth-seeking spirit characteristic of our people, the American scholar will make leading contributions to the world’s literature of sociology, politics, and science. And when the spirit of reality, now superficial, gains a deeper insight into the nature of things, America may yet lead the world in those investigations which belong to the sphere of philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Read at the National Council of Education, Milwaukee, July 6, 1897. This is one of three papers on “University Ideals” there presented, the other two representing respectively Princeton and Leland Stanford, Jr. The author was requested to write on “State University Ideals.”

GENERAL EDUCATION PRACTICAL.

The possibilities of education depend upon inborn capacities, but the unfolding of them is education. A man of large capacity, born among savages, remains a savage, an Arab is a Mohammedan, an Englishman is a Christian, a child among thieves is a thief, a child in a home of culture imbibes refinement and truth. Tennyson, in the interior of Africa, would not have developed his exquisite rhyme and rhythm, metaphor and verse, and polish and sparkle of expression, would not have conceived thoughts that penetrate the earth and the nature of man, and shoot upward to the quivering stars; he would have mused under his palm tree, and have fed, perhaps somewhat daintily, upon unlucky missionaries. An African of natural ability in the homes of Massachusetts, under the influence of Harvard, would become a man of vigorous thought and fine feeling, possibly of genius.

Since education is so potent, what shall the nature of it be? Shall knowledge of mountain and forest and the seasons, and the common sense that grows from experience, and the practical power to read and compute be sufficient? If all minds were equal, if the stores of wisdom were valueless, if special investigators found nothing worth revealing, if thoughts of master minds did not inspire, if men, like brutes, were governed by instincts and had no possibilities beyond a certain physical skill, the education of nature might suffice.

This is a practical age, and no picture too bright can be drawn of the advantages of a high material civilization for bettering the condition of all classes of men. The necessity of being an active factor in the world of usefulness cannot be too strongly urged. But our material progress is dependent upon soul activity. This activity is nourished by general education. Soul activity finds expression in a thousand practical ways. We educate highly that the man may have more power, that he may have many resources, that he may do better what he has to do, and may not be dependent on one means of support or one set of conditions. It is not so much labor with the hands as intelligent directive power which is needed, and this power is largely derived from general education. Intelligent men are intelligent laborers. An educated man will learn more quickly, work more successfully, and attain a higher standard than the ignorant artisan. Theory teaches and practice proves that in business and manual pursuits educated men bring an intelligence to their work and accomplish results impossible for the ignorant man; that, as a class, they average high in all practical activities. There should be no haste to enter a trade. Life is long enough to accomplish all that may be done, and all the preparation made for its duties is a wise economy. It is hardly necessary here to state the inference that general education is practical education.

The demand for less of general education before the special is prominent. This demand does not necessarily imply that its authors believe there is too much preparation for life work; indeed, few of them would wish that preparation to be less; they would simply change the ratio between general and special training. We believe that a critical examination of rational courses of study in the schools would show that little of the work could well be omitted; that nearly all contributes toward the end of a well-rounded education, indeed is necessary to that end; and that the training of faculty is only well begun at the end of the high-school course. Even the study of the classics, besides other incidental advantages, trains the critical powers, refines the taste, and is in an important sense a subjective study. The inference is that, with less of general education, the forces of one’s being would not be properly trained and marshalled for active service in life.

If we define practical education as that which is capable of being turned to use or account, a high degree of general education before the special is eminently practical, inasmuch as it broadens and heightens a man’s possibilities. Moreover, it is of service to all that even a few should be educated ideally. Such education places ideals before men which tend to elevate them. We cannot easily estimate the value to the world of a genius, one of those men who stand on nature’s heights and see with clear vision, and proclaim the glories of their view to listening men, who picture at least feebly the things described. They are the heralds of new events, the inspirers of progress. A highly educated man, though not a genius, in a way may occupy a similar place, and may repay by his influence, many times, in practical ways, the expense of his education. Societies of laborers are already beginning to ascribe their troubles in part to lack of education, and are looking to education as a means of improving their condition. General education is practical education.

While every boy should be taught to earn a living, this should not be done needlessly at the expense of the higher development of the faculties. Too much attention to the practical dwarfs the powers, limits the horizon, and will result in the destruction of that spirit which makes a strong national character. There is little need to urge the practical; the more immediate and obvious motives constantly draw men toward it. The refinements of the soul are at first less inviting; they are hard to gain and easy to lose. Carlyle says: “By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass that, in the management of external things, we excel all other ages, while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are, perhaps, inferior to most civilized ages.... The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditioned one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good, but a calculation of the profitable.... Our true deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external nature for us, and we think it will do all other things.” Carlyle possessed a true insight when he penned these words. Popular demands tend to make the age more unpoetic than it is. In this age the tourney has been converted into a fair; the vision of the poet is obscured by the smoke of factories; Apollo no longer leads the Immortal Nine upon Parnassus; and we would dethrone the gods from Olympus.

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Men and peoples have made permanent contributions to the world’s progress, not by military achievement or accumulation of wealth, but by the something better called culture. The glory of the Greeks lay not in their civil wars, but in the spirit brought to the defence of their country at Thermopylæ; not in the cost and use of their temples and statuary, but in the art that found expression in them; not in their commerce, but in the lofty views of their philosophers and the skill of their poets. Men admire that which ennobles, without thought of price or utility, and the world still demands liberal education. Literature and philosophy have much more in them for the average student than has yet been gained from them. The æsthetic side of literature is too often condemned or neglected. There is genuine education in all æsthetic power, even in the lower form of appreciation of the ludicrous, the power to observe fine distinctions of incongruity. We say a thing is perfectly ludicrous, perfectly grotesque, and thereby recognize the art idea, namely, perfection in execution. Man is always striving to attain the perfect in some form, and the art idea is one of the highest in the field of education. Art leans toward the side of feeling, but is none the less rich and valuable for that. Shakespeare furnishes some of the highest types of art in literature. The flow of his verse, the light beauty of his sonnets, the boldness and wonderful aptness of his metaphors, the skill of his development, the ever-varying types, the humor, the joys, the sorrows, the wisdom, the folly of men, the condensation of events and traits and experiences in individual types, the philosophical and prophetic insight, the artistic whole of his plays, constitute a rich field of education.

The Gothic cathedral, with its pointed arch, its mullioned window, tapering spire, and upward-running lines, indicating the hope and aspiration of the middle ages, with its cruciform shape, typical of the faith of the Christian, is more than the stone and mortar of which it is constructed. The truly educated man in art perceives the adaptation, polish, and perfection in literature; discovers the grace, the just proportions, the ideal form and typical idea in sculpture; views the expression, grouping, sentiment, coloring, and human passion in painting; enjoys the harmonies, movements, and ideas in music, that combination of effects that makes subtile and evasive metaphors; discovers the conventionalized forms and mute symbols, the “frozen music” of architecture; finds grandeur in the mountains, glory in the sunset, metaphors of thought in every form of nature; laughs with the morning breeze, finds strength in the giant oak, and sorrow in the drooping willow.

We need the ideal. Let us not permit the mortal body to lord it too much over the immortal spirit. The ideal man is the purpose of education and the aim of existence, or life is not worth living. All material prosperity is naught except as contributing to that end. Sympathetic spirits are calling for more enlightenment and enjoyment, and leisure for the laboring classes. They believe that men should be men as well as machines, and that, if they are educated ideally, the practical will take care of itself. If we retain our belief in the high possibilities of the human soul, we shall have faith in ideal education, and shall confidently offer every opportunity for the highest development possible of the child’s power for knowledge, enjoyment, and action. And let his development be full and rounded. Let the roar of ocean and the sough of the pines make music for his ears as well as the whir of factories; let the starry heavens speak to his soul as vividly as the electric lamp to his eye. Let us evolve from the material present ideals that shall stand in place of the vanished ones.

ELEMENTS OF AN IDEAL LIFE.

ELEMENTS OF AN IDEAL LIFE.

THE MODERN GOSPEL OF WORK.

A gentleman who had resided some years in Central and South America, conversing one evening with friends upon a doctrine of happiness, illustrated his argument with an anecdote. A Yankee living in South America observed that the native bees had no care for the morrow. He thought to make a fortune by bringing hard-working honey bees from the North to this land of perennial flowers, where they could store up honey the year around, and he tried the experiment. The bees worked eagerly for a time, but soon discovered that there was no winter in this paradise, and they perched on the flowers and trees and dozed the livelong day. Our philosopher assumed that the indolent, improvident life of the ignorant natives of sunny climes is the one of real happiness, and that a life of great activity is not to be desired. If his theory holds, then the savage under his palm tree is happier than the civilized man of the temperate zone, the monkey in the tropical jungle is better off than the savage, and the clam is happiest of all.

An observant traveller, returning by the southern route from California, studies Indians of various tribes at successive stages of the journey. Near the Mohave desert he sees abject beings loafing about the railway station to beg from the curious passengers; further east he sees self-respecting red people offering for sale pottery or blankets—their own handiwork; later he notes members of another tribe working on railroad construction by the side of white laborers; as he approaches the settled region he observes yet others who have homes and farms and engage in civilized industry, and his thought runs along the ascending scale of being until he contemplates the highest energy of the most cultured and forceful minds of our best civilization. He instinctively decides that the desirable life is on the upper scale of intelligence, feeling, and action.

Happiness through work is the creed of the dawning century. The romance of chivalry gives place to the poetry of steam; democracy is teaching wealth and position the dignity of labor; evolution and psychology show action to be the consummate flower of thought and feeling; recent literature illustrates the gospel of effort; and religion reaffirms the doctrine that faith without works is dead.

Herbert Spencer’s philosophy defines life to be “the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.” This adjustment implies self-activity. If man has been evolved through a long period of change, he is a survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. His ancestral history is one of exertion, his powers have been developed by use, he maintains himself by striving, his normal state is in the field of labor, and logically it is there his welfare and happiness are found.

Max Nordau wrote a book on “Degeneration.” It contains much interesting matter, many wholesome suggestions, and considerable false theory. He claims that the demands of modern civilization place men under too great a strain, that the human race is tending toward insanity, and that by and by we shall stop our daily newspapers, remove the telephones from our homes, and return to a life of greater simplicity. It is true that tension never relaxed loses its spring, and worry kills, but the most potent causes of degeneration are false pleasures and lack of healthful work. Evolution’s most important ethical maxim is that deadheads in society degenerate as do parasites in the lower animal kingdom. Every idler violates a great law of his being, which demands that thought and feeling shall emerge in action. Every class of people has its idlers, men who desire to possess without earning. The aimless son of wealth and the tramp tread the same path. Universal interest in honest, healthful employment would cure nearly all the evils of society and state. Manual labor is the first moral lesson for the street Arab and the criminal, and the best cure for some species of insanity. True charity does not give when it can provide the chance to earn. Idlers, lacking the normal source of happiness, seek harmful pleasures, and learn sooner or later that for every silver joy they must pay in golden sorrow. False stimuli, false excitement, purposeless activities, take the place of vocation. Tramps are not the only vagabonds; there are mental and moral vagabonds whom a fixed purpose, a definite interest and principles of conduct would turn from degeneration to regeneration. Balzac, with his keen analysis, describes the career of a graceless spendthrift who, finally weary of himself, one day resolved to give himself some reason for living. Under good influences he took up a life of regularity, simplicity, and usefulness, and learned that men’s happiness and saneness of mind are proportionate to their labors. This is the great lesson of Goethe’s “Faust,” set in imperishable drama for the instruction of the ages. Balzac’s Curé of Montegnac speaks to a repentant criminal: “There is no sin beyond redemption through the good works of repentance. For you, work must be prayer. The monasteries wept, but acted too; they prayed, but they civilized. Be yourself a monastery here.” Repentance, prayer, work—these are the way of salvation.

Every man of broad mind has full regard for the problems of labor and has faith in a progress that shall mean better conditions for the less fortunate, but Edwin Markham’s “Man With the Hoe,” as applied, not to special and extreme conditions of hardship, but in general to the problems of the human race, is wrong at the foundation; it is neither correct science, good philosophy, nor accurate history. It is the doctrine of the fall of man rather than of the ascent of man; it is the doctrine that labor is a curse. Without the hoe the human race would be chimpanzees, savages, tramps and criminals. In human development no useful labor ever “loosened and let down the brutal jaw” or “slanted back the brow” or “blew out the light within the brain” or deprived man of his birthright. At a stage of his progress, by cultivating the soil man of necessity cultivates his soul. The hoe has been an indispensable instrument to the growth of intelligence and morals, has been the great civilizer—a means of advance toward Plato and the divine image. Hardship may arrest development, but seldom causes degeneration. Our problem is not to free from bondage to work, but to relieve of burdens that are too heavy, and place a larger part on the shoulders of the strong and selfish.

Our educational philosophy at times wanders in dangerous bypaths, but there is a recent return to the plain highway. Some late notable utterances maintain that character must be formed by struggle, that a good impulse must prove its quality by a good act, that education is self-effort, and that passive reception of knowledge and rules of conduct may make mental and moral paupers. Here is an apt thrust from a trenchant pen: “Soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense to suppose that every step in education _can_ be interesting. The fighting impulse must often be appealed to.”

I like to discover philosophy in the literature of the day, literature which does not rank as scientific, but contains half-conscious, incidental expression of deep perceptions of human nature. Kipling at his best sounds great moral depths, and teaches the lesson of life’s discipline. He has a plain message for America as she takes her new place in the congress of the world. Civilized nations must take up the burden of aiding less favored peoples, not for glory or gain, but as an uncompromising duty without hope of appreciation or reward. We must expect the untaught races will weigh our God, our religion, and us by our every word and act in relation to them. We, as a nation, may no longer wear the lightly proffered laurel, but must expect the older, civilized nations will judge us by our wisdom, equity, and success in discharge of our new responsibilities. In Kipling’s “McAndrew’s Hymn” many years of hardship, sternly borne in obedience to duty, atone for misspent days under the influence of the soft stars in the velvet skies of the Orient. In “The ’Eathen” the author refers to the native inhabitants of India, whose most familiar household words are “not now,” “to-morrow,” “wait a bit,” and whose chief traits are dirtiness, laziness, and “doin’ things rather-more-or-less.” He describes the raw English recruit, picked out of the gutter, recounts the stages of discipline that make him a good soldier, and finally a reliable non-commissioned officer—a man that, returned to his country, would prove a good and useful citizen.

“The ’eathen in ’is blindness bows down to wood ’an stone.
’E don’t obey no orders unless they is ’is own;
’E keeps ’is side arms awful: ’e leaves ’em all about,
An’ then comes up the regiment an’ pokes the ’eathen out.

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The ’eathen in ’is blindness must end where ’e began,
But the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man.”

“L’Envoi” of “The Seven Seas” suggests the creed of a healthy soul: to accept true criticism; to find joy in work; to be honest in the search for truth; to believe that all our labor is under God, the Source of all knowledge and all good.

Robert Louis Stevenson is great as a novelist; he is greater in his brief writings and his letters. He presents some plain truths with attractive vigor. He says: “To have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth, and has to be learned in the fire.... In almost all circumstances the human soul can play a fair part.... To me morals, the conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I will own frankly and sweepingly, so infinitely more important than the other parts of life, that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed in the latter. To me the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood in my handkerchief are accidents; they do not color my view of life.... We are not put here to enjoy ourselves; it was not God’s purpose; and I am prepared to argue it is not our sincere wish.... Men do not want, and I do not think they would accept, happiness; what they live for is rivalry, effort, success. Gordon was happy in Khartoum, in his worst hours of danger and fatigue.”

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A cartoon of Gladstone, appearing soon after he had ostensibly retired from public life, showed him, with eager look and keen eye, writing vigorous essays upon current political questions. It recalled the grandeur of a life filled with great interests, sane purposes, and perpetual action. Biography is the best source of practical ideals; it is philosophy teaching by example; the personal element gives force to abstract truths. Luther’s Titanic power and courage under the inspiration of a faith that could remove mountains has served the purpose of millions of men in great crises.

Were I to seek an epic for its power to influence, I would go to real history and choose the life of William the Silent. For thirty years this Prince of Orange stood for civil and religious liberty in the Netherlands, in an age when men little understood the meaning of liberty. He sacrificed wealth and honors for his country. In spite of reverses, of the cowardice and disloyalty of his followers, of ignorance of the very motives of his action, he persevered. Throughout the long struggle he was hopeful, cheerful, and courageous. When the celebrated ban appeared, barring him from food, water, fire, shelter, and human companionship, setting a price on his head, in reply he painted in vivid colors a terrible picture of the oppressors of his people and held it up to the view of the civilized world. The motives which sustained him were faith in God, a strong sense of duty, and a deep feeling of patriotism. His biographer says: “As long as he lived he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.”

Heine, the poet and philosopher, was dying in an obscure attic in Paris. He was wasted to a skeleton and was enduring the extremity of human suffering. He could see only dimly, as through a screen. As he himself said, there was nothing left of him except his voice. Under these almost impossible conditions, he was still laboriously writing, that he might leave a competence to his wife. A friend of his earlier days visited him, and through a long conversation his words sparkled with wit, humor, poetry, and philosophy. Surely the active spirit is more than the body! There was a feudal knight who went about saying to all despondent wayfarers, “Courage, friend; the devil is dead!” and he always spoke with such cheerful confidence that his listeners accepted the announcement as good news, and gained fresh hope.

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In this Philosophy of Work is there no place for romance? Shall there be no thrilling adventure, nothing but dull duty and drudgery? Shall we have only dead monotony—no color, light, or shadow? Shall Carlyle’s “splendors high as Heaven” and “terrors deep as Hell” no longer give a zest to life? Stevenson’s “Lantern Bearers” has an answer for this natural and ever recurrent question. In a little village in England, along the sands by the sea, some schoolboys were accustomed to spend their autumn holidays. At the end of the season, when the September nights were black, the boys would purchase tin bull’s-eye lanterns. These they wore buckled to their waists and concealed under topcoats. In the cold and darkness of the night, in the wind and under the rain, they would gather in a hollow of the lonely sand drifts, and, disclosing their lanterns, would engage in inconsequential talk. In his words: “The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the topcoat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart, to know that you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.... Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man’s imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a bull’s-eye at his belt.... The ground of a man’s joy is often hard to hit. The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action, that is the explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not the secret of the lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books.” This quotation needs no excuse. The mould of human nature from which this copy was taken is forever broken, and can never be reproduced.

To be a lantern-bearer on the lonely heath, to rejoice in work and struggle—this is the romance, real, attainable, and apt for the world as it is and for the work we must do. If irrational pastime, attended with endurance, may be a joy, surely rational effort toward some desired result may have its poetry. Sacrifice and heroism are found in humble homes; commonplace labor has its dangers and its victories; and many a man at his work, in knowledge of the light concealed, the interest he makes of his vocation, his romance, exults and sings.

The world is as we regard it. Many look at the world as Doctor Holmes’ squint-brained member of the tea-table views the plant kingdom. He makes the underground, downward-probing life of the tree the real life. The spreading roots are a great octopus, searching beneath instinctively for food, while the branches and leaves are mere terminal appendages swaying in the air. It is a horrible conception, and we are pained at standing on our heads. The tree roots itself to the earth and draws its nourishment therefrom that it may spring heavenward, and bear rich fruit and be a thing of beauty, a lesson and a promise. Man is rooted to the earth, but his real life springs into the free air and bathes in the glad sunlight.

* * * * *

The purpose of our labor determines its qualities of truth and healthfulness. Satisfaction must be sought by employing our faculties in the useful arts and in the search for truth. Perfection of self is the ultimate good for each individual, but this is attained, not in isolation, but in social life with its mutual obligations. The lesson of civil and religious liberty, taught by the great reformers, has been only partly learned. Individualism, rightly understood, is the true political doctrine, but the selfishness of individual freedom is the first quality to develop. Concerning great public questions often the attitude is as expressed in Balzac’s words: “What is that to me? Each for himself! Let each man mind his own business!” Democracy is the way of social and political progress, but we have not yet reached the height of clear vision. We are struggling up the difficult and dangerous path, looking hopefully upward, thinking we see the summit, only to find at each stage that the ultimate heights are still beyond. When kings are dethroned, the hope of democracy is to enthrone public conscience. Here is a picture of a condition occasionally possible in any state of America to-day. We will say there is some great public interest, not a party problem, involving the financial prosperity and the essential welfare of the state, and affecting its credit, honor, and reputation abroad. And—with some noble exceptions—perhaps not a minister in his pulpit, not an orator on his platform, not a newspaper with its great opportunity for enlightening the people and exerting influence, not an educator, not a college graduate, not a high-school graduate, not a business man, not a politician arises and says: Here is a common good imperilled, and I for one will give of my time, my energy, and, if need be, according to my ability, of my money in its support. So long as such a state of apathy concerning public questions may exist, there is something still to be desired for the ideals of democracy and for our methods of education.

The Platonic philosophy has largely inspired educational work, and must still furnish its best ideals. But emphasizing the worth of the individual to himself has created a false conception of social obligation. Culture for culture’s sake has been the maxim, but I have come to believe that a culture which does not in some way reach out to benefit others is not of much value to the individual himself. Some one has aptly illustrated this view: probably the drone in the bee-hive, when he is about to be destroyed, would say, “I would like to live for life’s sake, and would like to buzz a while longer for buzz’s sake.”

I would see young men and women go out into the world with a true democratic spirit, with a ready sympathy for all classes of people, and with a helpful attitude toward all problems of state and society. The work of any public institution of higher learning is a failure in so far as its graduates fail to honor the state’s claim on them as citizens. The great principle of evolution is the struggle for life; there is another equally important principle, namely, the struggle for the life of others. Altruism, dimly disclosed away down on the scale of being, finally shines forth in the family and home in all of those social sentiments that make human character beautiful and noble. Society is the mirror in which each one sees himself reflected, by which each attains self-consciousness, and becomes a human being. From coöperation spring industries, commerce, science, literature, art—all that makes life worth living. If the individual owes everything to society, he should be willing in some small ways to repay part of the debt.

* * * * *

The great Bismarck, that man of iron and blood, not given to sentimentality, in fireside conversation repeatedly proclaimed that during his long and arduous struggle for the unification of Germany he was sustained by a sense of duty and faith in God. “If I did not believe in a Divine Providence which has ordained this German nation to something good and great, I would at once give up my trade as a statesman. If I had not the wonderful basis of religion, I should have turned my back to the whole court.” Some one has said that the essence of pessimism is disbelief in God and man. Fear is a kind of atheism. Heine once said: “God was always the beginning and end of my thought. When I hear His existence questioned I feel a ghastly forlornness in a mad world.” The inspiration of labor is faith in God, faith in man, faith in the moral order of the world, faith in progress. The religious man should have a sane view of life, should have convictions, and the courage of his convictions. He should believe that his work all counts toward some great purpose.

The impulse to reverence and prayer is an essential fact, as real as the inborn tendency to physical and mental action. Its development is necessary to the complete man. The religious nature obeys the great law of power through effort, and increases strength by use. He who by scientific analysis comes to doubt the value of his ethical feeling has not learned the essential truth of philosophy, namely, that a thing’s origin must not be mistaken for its character.

Some tendencies of the best scientific thought of to-day, seen here and there, confirm this view of man’s nature. Here are some fragments, expressed, not literally, but in substance: It is the business of science to analyze the entire content of human consciousness into atomic sensations, but there its work ends. The man of history, of freedom and responsibility, whose deeds we approve or disapprove, is the real man, a being of transcendent worth, aspiring toward perfect ideals; and the teacher must carry this conception of the child’s nature into the work of education. It is a scientific fact that prayer is for the health of the soul. It is useless to theorize on the subject—men pray because it is their nature; they can not help it. Even if prayer does not change the will of God, at least it does change the will of man, which may be the object of prayer. The Christian experience shows that prayer is a communion of man’s spirit with God, the Spirit. John Fiske affirms the reality of religion. He argues that the progress of life has been achieved through adjustment to external realities; that the religious idea has played a dominant part in history; that all the analogies of evolution show that man’s religious nature cannot be an adjustment to an external non-reality. He says: “Of all the implications of the doctrine of evolution with regard to Man, I believe the very deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the Everlasting Reality of Religion.”

* * * * *

In this message to students we have emphasized a particular ideal, namely, normal activity, because one’s own effort and experience count most for growth and power.

“It was better youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made.”

Students are at an age when to them the roses nod and the stars seem to wink. Their mental landscape is filled with budding flowers, singing birds, and rosy dawns. Every one has a right to consider his own perfection and enjoyment, his own emotions. One is better for his healthful recreations, his aspirations and ideals, his perceptions of beauty and his divine communings—the sweetness and light of the soul. We can only ask that the main purpose and trend of life may be laborious and useful, even strenuous and successful.

Lowell wrote of the pioneers who settled New England that they were men

“Who pitched a state as other men pitch tents,
And led the march of time to great events.”

The pioneers of this Commonwealth were men who here pitched a state as other men pitch tents, and are leading the march of time to great events. The age, America, offer great opportunities to educated young men and women. Use them with courage. King Henry IV. of France once gained a great victory at Arques. After the battle, as he was leading his troops toward Paris, he met one of his generals coming up late with a detachment of the army, and thus greeted him, “Go hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques and you were not there,” as though the greatest privilege in life were an opportunity to contend and win for one’s self a victory.

A few years ago I went to Ayr, the birthplace of Burns. I visited the poet’s cottage, walked by the Alloway Kirk where Tam o’ Shanter beheld the witch dance, crossed the Auld Brig and wandered by the banks and braes o’ bonny Doon—and it is a beautiful stream. I found myself repeating lines from “Tam o’ Shanter,” “Bonny Doon,” “Scots Wha Hae wi’ Wallace Bled,” and from some of the sweeter and nobler songs of Burns. And I thought of the mission of the poet. The scenery in and about Ayr is beautiful, but there is many another region equally attractive. The people with whom Burns dwelt, his neighbors and friends, were commonplace men and women, knowing the hardships, the drudgery, the pettiness of life. And yet he so sang of these scenes and these people, so touched every chord of the human heart, that annually thirty thousand travellers visit Ayr to pay their homage at the poet’s shrine. The poetic view of life is the right one. The poet sees the reality in the commonplace. Our surroundings are filled with wonderful and varied beauty when we open our eyes to the truth. Our friends and companions are splendid men and women when we see them at their worth. For happiness as well as success add poetry to heroism.

“The Inscrutable who set this orb awhirl
Gave power to strength that effort might attain;
Gave power to wit that knowledge might direct;
And so with penalties, incentives, gains,
Limits, and compensations intricate,
He dowered this earth, that man should never rest
Save as his Maker’s will be carried out.

* * * * *

There is no easy, unearned joy on earth
Save what God gives—the lustiness of youth,
And love’s dear pangs. All other joys we gain
By striving, and so qualified we are
That effort’s zest our need as much consoles
As effort’s gain. Both issues are our due.

* * * * *

Better when work is past
Back into dust dissolve and help a seed
Climb upward, than with strength still full
Deny to God His claim and thwart His wish.”

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH.