Part 2
Moreover, education trains the powers through knowledge. The power to observe accurately the world of beauty and wonder; the power to recombine and modify in infinite kaleidoscopic forms the percepts and images of the mind, making possible all progress; the power to elaborate, verify, and generalize; the power to feel the greatness of truth, the rhythms and harmonies of the world and the beauty of its forms; the power to perceive and feel the right; the power to guide one’s self in pursuit of the best—these are worth more than mere practical acquisitions and mere knowledge, for they make possible all acquisition and growth and enjoyment.
The thoughtless person who argues against education little knows how much he and all men are indebted to it. The demand for general intelligence is increasing, and the capabilities of the race for knowledge are greater with each educated generation. Earnest men are endeavoring to make a degree of culture almost universal, as is shown by the “Chautauqua Scheme” and the plan of “University Extension.” Education adheres less rigidly to the old lines, and men can gain a more purely English training, including scientific preparation for industrial and commercial pursuits. These schemes are useful because they tend to popularize education, and they reach a class which would not be reached by the usual courses of study.
But there is danger of departing from the ideal type of education—education for general training and knowledge and manhood. Not that traditional courses must be rigidly adhered to, for a new field of learning has been opened in which may be acquired a knowledge of material nature. But, in the zeal for the modern side of education, there is danger of neglecting the ancient, the classic side, the humanities. Language and literature, history and philosophy and art, since they train expression and cultivate ideals, and teach the motives of men and the nature and destiny of the human race, since they deal with the spiritual more than with the material, since they belong exclusively to man, since they stimulate the activity of divine powers and instincts, since they are peculiarly useful as mental gymnastics, since they are culturing and refining—they still have and always will have a high value in ideal education. The ancient side and the modern side should fairly share the honors in a college course.
The arguments for so-called practical education are fallacious, whenever the nature, time, and possibilities of the pupil will enable him to develop anything more than the bread-winning capabilities. When one knows the pure mathematics, his knowledge can be applied in the art of bookkeeping with a minimum effort. Bookkeeping is a mere incident in the line of mathematical work. A year in a school of general education, even to the prospective clerk or merchant, should be worth ten times as much as a year spent in the practice of mechanical processes. United States history is valuable to an American youth, but, while with one view America is in the forefront of progress, there is another view in which our century of history is only an incident in the march of events. The present can be understood only historically, and the elements of our civilization should be known in the light of the world’s history.
Not only should we adhere to our faith in university education, but we can find reasons for raising the standard of a part of university work. Even now, no student should receive a professional degree who has not previously obtained at least a complete high-school education; and the time may come when, in all institutions, at least two years of college life will be required as a basis for a doctor’s or a lawyer’s degree. Graduate courses have become a prominent feature of many American universities, and year by year larger numbers of students seek higher degrees. As the race advances, the preparation for active life will necessarily enlarge.
* * * * *
Many know but little of the forces that move the world. Material progress does not make the spirit of the age, but the spirit of the age makes material progress. The outward works of man are a result of the promptings of the inner spirit. It is the spirit of a nation that wins battles, the spirit of a nation that makes inventions. Take away ideals and the world would be inert. It is spirit that makes the difference between the American soldier fighting for his liberty and the Hessian hireling or the old Italian _condottieri_ who played at war for the highest bidder. Here is the difference between a slave and a freeman, between the oppressed of old countries and the free American.
Ideas move the world. It is related that in the second Messenian war the Spartans, obeying the Delphic oracle, sent to Athens for a leader, and the Athenians in contempt sent them a lame schoolmaster. But the schoolmaster had within him the spirit of song, and he so inspired the Spartans that they finally gained the victory. In the contests with England, during the time of the Edwards, the national spirit of Wales was aroused and sustained by the songs of her bards. The Marseillaise Hymn helped to keep alive the fire on the altar of French liberty. It is only as man has hope, aspirations, courage, that he acts, and, in order to progress, he must act towards ideals. The mind imagines higher things to be attained, and endeavor follows.
Natural features of sea or forest or mountain or desert have something to do with the character and ideas of a people; so, also, the material wealth in lands and buildings. But to understand the great movements of history, we must look at the great psychical factors. Our heritage of ideas, our love of liberty, our Puritan standards, our hatred of tyranny, our independence of spirit, are strong characteristics that make us a distinctive and progressive people. It was an idea that gave England her Magna Charta; an idea that made us a free and independent nation; an idea that preserved our Union.
A man makes a labor-saving invention, and the ease and luxury of physical living are increased, and men bless the inventor and proclaim that the practical man alone is of use to the world. Another gives to the world a thought—a great work of art, a song, or a philosophy—and it takes possession of men and becomes an incentive to noble living, and the race has truly progressed. Let the spirit that possesses our people die out and all material prosperity would perish.
In primitive times, when men lived in caves, and, as Charles Lamb humorously says, went to bed early because they had nothing else to do, and grumbled at each other, and, in the absence of candles, were obliged to feel of their comrades’ faces to catch the smile of appreciation at their jokes—then, if a great man had a thought, he related it to his neighbor, and his neighbor told it to a friend, and it did good. Later, a great man had a thought, and he wrought it out laboriously on a parchment and loaned it to his neighbor, and he sent it to a friend, and many came, sometimes from far, to read it, and it did more good. In our age a great man had a thought and he printed it in a book, and thousands read it, and it was translated into many tongues, and his words became household words, and the race had taken a step forward. The world advances more rapidly to-day because ideas spread with such facility.
What is called contemptuously “book learning,” the education of young men in the schools, helps to preserve, increase, make useful, and transmit all the discoveries and the best thoughts of past generations. The student is likely to be a man of ideas, of ideals, and hence he is the great power of the world.
The man of affairs says to the ideal man: There is nothing of value but railroads, houses, inventions, and creature comforts. Of what use are your history, poetry, philosophy, and stuff? The scholar replies: Every man contributes something to the common good. I am improved by your practical view and skill, and you are unconsciously benefited by my ideas. You live, without knowing it, in an atmosphere of ideas, and the practical men of to-day breathe it in and are inspired and stimulated by it. Without the atmosphere of ideas, your inventions and material progress would not be.
The culture of the ancients directly encourages ideal standards. It was a happy thought of the Greek that personified principles and ideas, that created muses to preside over the forms of literature. Let us deify our best ideals and set up altars for their worship.
Men laugh at the nonsense of poetry and ideal standards, but thoughtful men pity them. I remember listening some years since to a prominent lecturer in a large town. He began with a prelude, in which with masterly strokes he pictured the admirable location of the city, its relation to the environing regions, the whole country, and the world, its probable growth, its material promise, and its opportunity for social, intellectual, and moral development, and he pointed to the picture as an inspiration for young men. Then he entered upon his main theme, “Proofs of Immortality.” As with dramatic distinctness he made one point after another, he held his vast audience breathless and spellbound. The next morning I took up my paper at the breakfast table and noted the glaring headlines and details of robberies, murders, and domestic scandals, while, in an obscure corner, expressed in a contemptuous manner, were a dozen lines upon the magnificent oratory and supreme themes of the evening before. Is there not room for the scholar with his ideals?
* * * * *
Rudyard Kipling, that Englishman in a strange oriental garb, visited one of the great and prosperous cities of our country. He was met by a committee of citizens and shown the glory of the town. They gave him the height of their blocks, the cost of their palace hotels, and the extent of their stockyards, expecting him to express wonder and admiration. He surprised them by exclaiming, “Gentlemen, are these things so? Then, indeed, I am sorry for you;” and he called them barbarians, savages, because they gloried in their material possessions, and said nothing of the morals of the city, nothing of her great men, nothing of her government, her charities, and her art. He called them barbarians because they valued their adornments, not for the art in them, but for their cost in dollars. A lecturer not long ago said derisively that of all the Athenians who listened with rapt attention to the orations of Demosthenes, probably not one had a pin or a button for his cloak. It would be a curious problem to weigh a few orations of Demosthenes against pins and buttons. It is said of men of olden time that they conspired to build themselves up into heaven by using materials of earth, and began to erect a lofty tower, but the Almighty, seeing the futility of their endeavor, thwarted their attempt at its inception, and thus showed that men could never ascend to the heavens by any material means. It is a wonderful invention, but no flying machine will ever give wings to the spirit. There is a material and a spiritual side to the world, and the spiritual can never be enhanced by the material. The lower animals, through their instincts, perform material feats often surpassing the skill of man. For his purpose the beaver can build a better dam than man; no skill of man can make honey for the bee. That which distinguishes man is his manhood, his thought, his ideals, his spirituality.
There is a glory of the present and a glory of the past. The glory of the past was its literature, its art, its examples of greatness. Let us retain the glory of the ancient civilization and add to it the marvellous scientific and practical spirit of the present. Then shall we have a civilization surpassing any previous one. Let us not only tunnel our mountains for outlets to our great transcontinental railway systems, but let us also find among our mountain ranges, and domes, and cañons, some sacred grottoes. Let us not only explore our peaks for gold and silver, but find some Parnassus, sacred to the Muses, whom we shall learn to invoke not in vain.
* * * * *
Shall we venture to characterize the American student of the near future? He will hardly be a recluse, nor will he wholly neglect the body for the culture of the mind. He will be a man of the world, a man of business; on the one hand, not disregarding the uses of wealth, and, on the other, not finding material possessions and sensuous enjoyment the better part of life. He will be an influence in politics and in the solution of all social problems. His ideals will be viewed somewhat in the light of their practicality. He will know the laws of mental growth in order to use them, and will find the avenues of approach to men’s motives. His religion will add more of work to faith. He will secure a high growth of self by regarding the welfare of others, instead of worshipping exclusively at the shrine of his own development. The scientific knowledge of nature’s materials and forces, and the skill to use them, will invite a large class of minds. In brief, the coming student will take on more of the traits of the ideal man of affairs.
But, while we may not expect a revival of the almost romantic life of the early literary clubs of London, there will be many a group devoted to the enjoyment of thought and beauty in literature. If no Socrates shall walk the streets proclaiming his wisdom on the corners, at imminent risk from cable cars and policemen, there will be a philosophy, disseminated through the press of the coming century, which will still strive to reach beyond the processes of nature to the unknown cause, will reëxamine those conceptions of the Absolute, which are thought to stand the test when applied to explain the problems of human life. If no Diogenes shall be found with his lantern at noontide, seeking, as it were, in a microscopic way, the honest man which the brilliant luminary failed to reveal, many a one, living courageously his principles and convictions, will endeavor by precept and example to make an age of honest men who will find the golden rule in the necessities of human intercourse, as well as in the concepts of ethics and the teaching of religion.
The student owes much to the world. The ideal scholar is too intelligent to be prejudiced, one-sided, or superstitious. He should avoid the path of the political demagogue. He should know the force of ideas and the value of ideals; he should be too wise to fall into the slough of pure materialism.
The literature of the future will not try the bold, metaphorical flights of Shakespeare, but there will be a literature that will show the poetry of the new ideas. Whatever philosophy finally becomes the prevalent one, there are certain transcendental conceptions, from which the human mind cannot escape, that will still inspire poetry. There must always be men who will open their eyes to the wonders of the world and of human existence—who must know that any, the commonest, substance is a mystery, the key to which would unlock the secrets of the universe. The beauty of the starry heavens will ever be transcendent; every natural scene and object remains a surpassing work of art; life is filled with tragedy and comedy, and the possibilities of human existence are as sublime as the eternal heights and depths. Such conceptions beget a poetry which rises to a faith above reason; that instinctively looks upon the fact of creation and of existence as sublime and full of promise, and clings to a belief, however vague, in the ultimate grand outcome for the individual. The right view of the world is essentially poetic, and the truest poetry includes faith and reverence. It is the privilege of the earnest and profound scholar to know that literature refines, that philosophy ennobles, that religion purifies, that ideals inspire, and that the world can be explained in its highest meaning only by the conception of a personal God.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding its practical tendencies, this century is not wanting in the highest literary power. It has given us the universal insight and sympathy of Goethe, whose writings Carlyle describes as “A Thousand-voiced Melody of Wisdom.” He thus continues, “So did Goethe catch the Music of the Universe, and unfold it into clearness, and, in authentic celestial tones, bring it home to the hearts of men.”
This century has revealed the grandeur of metaphysical thought through Hegel, and found a wonderful expounder of science in Spencer. Each an exponent of a great philosophy, both giants in mental grasp, they greatly influence the thought of the age, and become co-workers in the investigation of many-sided truth.
Next stands Carlyle, in the midst of this mechanical and seemingly unpoetic age, and proclaims it an age of romance; in inspired words teaches the beauty of the genuine, the sublimity of creation, the grandeur of human life. Wordsworth, Nature’s priest, interprets her forms and moods with finest insight, and finds them expressive of divine thought. He looks quite through material forms and feels
“A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.”
Our own Emerson to this generation quaintly says, “Hitch your wagon to a star,” and thousands strive to rise superior to occupation, rank, and habit into the dignity of manhood—to rise above the clouds of sorrow and disappointment, and bathe in the pure sunlight. The spiritual beauty of his face, the calm dignity of his life will live in the memory of men and add to the force of his writings.
Longfellow has said,
“Look, then, into thine heart, and write.”
Every aspiration, every care and sorrow, every mood and sentiment, finds in him a true sympathy; he stands foremost, not as a genius of the intellect, but as a genius of the heart. How often he enters our homes, sits at our firesides, touches the sweetest, tenderest chords of the lyre, awakens the purest aspirations of our being.
Then comes Dickens, and tells us that fiction may have a high and noble mission; that it may teach love, benevolence, and charity; that it may promote cheerfulness and contentment; that it may expose injustice and defend truth and right.
All these, each a master in his field, are powerful in their influence; but beyond this fact is the more significant one that they index some of the better tendencies of the century. Never before were so many fields of thought represented; never did any possess masters of greater skill. We may hope that, even in the midst of this period of material prosperity, invention, and scientific research, the spiritual side of man’s nature will ultimately gain new strength, and thought a deeper insight.
* * * * *
With our exact thought and practical energy, is there not danger of losing all the romance which clothes human existence with beauty and hope? The gods are banished from Olympus; Helicon is no longer sacred to the Muses; Egeria has dissolved into a fountain of tears; the Dryads have fled from the sacred oaks; the elves no longer flit in the sunbeams; Odin lies buried beneath the ruins of Walhalla; “Pan is dead.” That wealth of imagination which characterized the Greek, enabled him to personify the powers that rolled in the flood or sighed in the breeze, has passed away. We would turn Parnassus into a stone quarry and hew the homes of the Dryads into merchantable lumber. The spear of chivalry is broken in the lists by the implements of the mechanic, the tourney is converted into a fair. Romance is for a time clouded by the smoke of manufactories.
But a seer has arisen, who finds in remotest places and in humblest life the essence of romance. Carlyle is our true poet and we do well to comprehend his meaning. To his mind we have but to paint the meanest object in its actual truth and the picture is a poem. Romance exists in reality. “The thing that _is_, what can be _so_ wonderful?” “In our own poor Nineteenth Century ... he has witnessed overhead the infinite deep, with lesser and greater lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by the hand of God; around him and under his feet the wonderfullest earth, with her winter snow storms and summer spice airs, and (unaccountablest of all) _himself_ standing there. He stood in the lapse of Time; he saw eternity behind him and before him.” I cannot lead you to the end of that wonderful passage, but it is worth the devotion of solitude.
We have left the superstitions of the past, but the beauty of mythology is transmuted into the glory of truth. In the valley of Chamounix, Coleridge sang for us a grander hymn than any ancient epic, Wordsworth has read the promise of immortality in a humble flower, science reveals to us the sublimity of creation. Romance has not passed away; if we will but look nature becomes transparent and we see through to Nature’s God.
* * * * *
Many good men fear the results of independent thought and scientific research, but such fear is the outgrowth of narrow views. Every pioneer in an unexplored field should be welcomed. The Darwins and the Spencers are doing a grand work. Only the widest investigation can possibly affirm the truth of any belief. Let men doubt their instincts and go forth to seek a foundation for truth. Let them trace the evolution of organized being from the simplest elements. Let them resolve the sun and planets and all the wonderful manifestations of force into nebulæ and heat. Let investigation seek every nook and corner penetrable by human knowledge. All this will but show the processes and the wonders of creation without revealing the cause or end.
The intellect of man, for a time divorced from the warm instincts of his being, sent forth into chill and rayless regions of discovery, having performed its mission, will return and speak to the human soul in startling, welcome accents: Far and wide I have sought a basis for truth and found it not. Any philosophy that recognizes no God is false. Search your inner consciousness. You are yourself God’s highest expression of truth. You see beauty in the flower, glory in the heavens. You have human love and sympathy, divine aspirations. Life to you is nothing without aim and hope. Trust your higher instincts.
The ancient Romans read omens in the flight of birds, and ordered great events by these supposed revelations of the deities. In our day, a Bryant has watched by fountain and grove for the revelations of God, and has read in the flight of a “Waterfowl” a deeper augury than any ancient priest, for it relates not to political events, but to an eternal truth, implanted in the breast and confirming the hope of man.
“There is a power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast— The desert and illimitable air— Lone wandering but not lost.
“Thou’rt gone, the abyss of Heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart.
“He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.”