CHAPTER VI

THREE INSTRUMENTS OF EDUCATION 94

1.--_Education is an Atmosphere_: Only three means of education--Not an artificial environment--But a natural atmosphere--Children must face life as it is--But must not be overburdened by the effort of decision--Dangers of intellectual feebleness and moral softness--Bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity--Not a too stimulating atmosphere--Dangers of “running wild”--Serenity comes with the food of knowledge--Two courses open to us.

2.--_Education is a Discipline_: We must all make efforts--But a new point of view, necessary--Children must work for themselves--Must perform the _act of knowing_--Attention, the hall-mark of an educated person--Other good habits attending upon due self-education--Spirit, acts upon matter--Habit is to life what rails are to transport cars--Habit is inevitable--Genesis of habit--Habits of the ordered life--Habits of the religious life--De Quincey on going to church--Danger of thinking in a groove--Fads.

3.--_Education is a Life_: Life is not self-existing--Body pines upon food substitutes--Mind cannot live upon information--What is an idea?--A live thing of the mind--Potency of an idea--Coleridge on ideas--Platonic doctrine of ideas--Functions of education not chiefly gymnastic--Dangers attendant upon “original composition”--Ideas, of spiritual origin--The child, an eclectic--Resists forcible feeding--We must take the risk of the indirect literary form--Ideas must be presented with much literary padding--No one capable of making extracts--Opinions _v._ ideas--Given an idea, mind performs acts of selection and inception--Must have humane reading as well as human thought.