Part 6

Here, then, is the hope that takes the sting from the indictment of Plato, Ibsen and how many other critics of democracy. Plato said, "Until philosophers are kings, . . . cities will never have rest from their evils,--no, nor the human race, as I believe." Once, perhaps once only, Plato's dream was realized: in that noblest of philosopher emperors, wholly dedicated to the welfare of the world he ruled with autocratic power; yet the soul of Marcus Aurelius was burdened with an impossible task. It is one of the tragic ironies of history that, in this one realization of Plato's lofty dream, the noble emperor could postpone, he could not avert, the colossal doom that threatened the world he ruled. So he wrapped his Roman cloak about him and lay down to sleep, with stoic consciousness that he had done his part in the place where Zeus had put him, but relieved that he might not see the disaster he knew must swiftly come.

How different our dream: it is no illusion of a happy accident of philosopher kings. We want no arbitrary monarchs, wise or brutal: from the noblest of emperors to the butcher of Berlin, we would sweep them all aside, to the ash-heap of outworn tools. Our dream is the awakening and education of the multitude, so that the majority will be able and glad to choose, as its guides, leaders and representatives, the noblest and best. When that day comes, there will be, for the first time in the history of mankind, the dawn of a true _aristocracy_ or rule of the best; and it will come through the fulfillment of democracy. A long and troubled path, with many faults and evils meantime? Yes, but not so hopelessly long, when one considers the ages of slow struggle up the mountain and the swiftly multiplying power of education over the mind of all.

XVIII

PATERNALISM VERSUS DEMOCRACY

The contrast between paternalism and democracy in aim and method is thus extreme. Paternalism seeks directly organization, order, production and efficiency, incidentally and occasionally the welfare of the subject population. Democracy seeks directly the highest development of all men and women, their freedom, happiness and culture, in the end it hopes this will give social order, good government and productive power. It is willing, meantime, to sacrifice some measure of order for freedom, of good government for individual initiative, of efficiency for life. Paternalism seeks to achieve its aims, quickly and effectively, through the boss's whip of social control. Democracy works by the slower, but more permanently hopeful path of education, never sacrificing life to material ends. Paternalism ends in a social hierarchy, materially prosperous, but caste-ridden and without soul. Democracy ends in the abolishment of castes, equality of opportunity, with the freest individual initiative and finest flowering of the personal spirit. Which shall it be: God or Mammon, Men or Machines?

There is no doubt that efficiency can be achieved most quickly under a well-wielded boss's whip, but at the sacrifice of initiative and invention. Moreover, remove the whip, and the efficiency quickly goes to pieces. On the other hand, the efficiency achieved by voluntary effort and free cooperation comes much more slowly, but it lasts. Moreover, it develops, hand in hand, with initiative and invention.

The negro, doubtless, has never been so generally efficient as before the civil war, in the South, under the overseer's whip; yet every negro who, to-day, has character enough to save up and buy a mule and an acre of ground, tills it with a consistent and permanent effectiveness of which slave labor is never capable. In the one case, moreover, there is the average economic result, in the other, the gradual development of manhood.

Organize a factory on the feudal lines so prevalent in current industry. Get a strong, dominating superintendent and give him autocratic authority. Quickly he will show results. Always, however, there is the danger of strikes, and if the strong hand falters, the organization disintegrates. On the other hand, let a corporation take its artisans into its confidence, give each a small proportionate share in the annual earnings. Each worker will feel increasingly that the business is his business. He will take pride in his accomplishment. Gradually he will attain efficiency, and work permanently, without oversight, with a consistent earnestness no boss's whip ever attained,

The experience of the National Cash Register Company at Dayton, Ohio, proves this. The experiments of Henry Ford are a step toward the same solution. So, in lesser measure, is the plan of the Steel trust to permit and encourage its employees to purchase annually its stock, somewhat below the current market price, giving a substantial bonus if the stock is held over ten years.

If you wish an illustration on a larger scale, consider the mass formation tactics of the German soldiers, in contrast to the individual courage, initiative and action of the French. There are the two types of efficiency in sheerest contrast, but beyond is always the question of their effect on manhood. France has saved and regenerated her soul; but Germany--?

Further, the breakdown of paternalistically achieved efficiency has been evident in Germany's utter failure to understand the mind of other peoples, particularly of democracies. She had voluminous data, gathered by the most atrociously efficient spy system ever developed, yet she utterly misread the mind of France, England and the United States. The same break-down is evident in Germany's failure in colonization in contrast to England's success.

For offensive war, it must be admitted, the efficiency under the boss's whip will go further. For defensive war, or war for high moral aims, it is desirable that the individual soldier should think for himself, respond to the high appeal. Thus for such warfare the efficiency of voluntary effort and cooperation is superior. An autocracy would better rule its soldiers by a military caste; there can be no excuse for such in a democracy. Thus, the utmost possible fraternization of officers and men is desirable, and social snobbery, the snubbing of officers who come up from the ranks, and other anachronistic survivals, should be stamped out, as utterly foreign to what should be the spirit of the military arm of democracy.

Further, in estimating the two types, one must remember that paternalism may exercise its power in secret and that it accomplishes much in the dark. Democracy, on the other hand, is afflicted and blessed with pitiless publicity. Thus its evils are all exposed, it washes all its dirty linen in public; but the main thing is to get it clean.

When it comes to invention and initiative, as already indicated, democracy has the advantage, immediately, as in the long run. We are the most inventive people on earth, and that quality is a direct result of our democratic individualism. It is a significant fact that most of the startling inventions used in this War were made in America--but _developed and applied in Germany._ There, again, are evident the contrasting results of the two types of social organization. The indefatigably industrious and docile German mind can work out and apply the inventions furnished it, with marvelous persistency and effectiveness, under paternal control. We have the problem of achieving by voluntary effort and cooperation a persistent thoroughness in working out the ideas and inventions that come to us in such abundant measure.

The path of democracy is education.

XIX

THE SOLUTION FOR DEMOCRACY

When we say that the path of democracy is education, we do not mean that there is an easy solution of its problem. There is no patent medicine we can feed the American people and cure it of its diseases. There is no specific for the menaces that threaten. Eternal vigilance and effort are the price, not only of liberty, but of every good of man. Let things alone, and they get bad; to keep them good, we must struggle everlastingly to make them better. Leave the pool of politics unstirred by putting into it ever new individual thought and ideal, and how quickly it becomes a stagnant, ill-smelling pond. Leave a church unvitalized, by ever fresh personal consecration, and how quickly it becomes a dead form, hampering the life of the spirit. Leave a university uninfluenced by ever new earnestness and devotion on the part of student and teacher, and how soon it becomes a scholastic machine, positively oppressing the mind and spirit.

There is a true sense in which the universe exists momentarily by the grace of God. Take light away, and you have darkness. Take darkness away, and you have not necessarily light; you might have chaos. Take health away, and you have disease. Take disease away, and you have not necessarily health; you may have death. Take virtue away, and you have vice. Take vice away, and you have not necessarily virtue; you might have negative respectability. Thus it is the continual affirmation of the good that keeps the heritage of yesterday and takes the step toward to-morrow.

Nevertheless, if there is no easy solution of the problem, there are certain big lines of attack. If we are right in our diagnosis, that the problem of democracy is a problem of education, then our whole system of education, for child, youth and adult, should be reconstructed to focus upon the building of positive and effective moral personality.

American education began as a subsidiary process. Children got organic education in the home, on the farm, in the work shop. They went to school to get certain formal disciplines, to learn to read, write and cipher and to acquire formal grammar. With the moving into the cities, the industrial revolution and the entire transformation of our life, the school has had to take over more and more of the process of organic education. If children fail to get such education in the school, they are apt to miss it altogether.

With this entire change in the meaning of the school, old notions of its purpose still survive. Probably no one is so benighted to-day as to imagine that the chief function of the school is to fill the mind with information; but there are many who still hold to the tradition that the chief purpose of education is to sharpen the intellectual tools of the individual for the sake of his personal success. This notion is a misleading survival, for tools are of value only in terms of the character using them. The same equipment may serve, equally, good or bad ends. Only as education focusses on the development of positive and effective moral character can it aid in solving the problem of democracy.

Need it be added that this does not mean teaching morals and manners to children, thirty minutes a day, three times a week? That is a minor fragment of moral education. It means that all phases of the process-- the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government and discipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, the proportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectual culture--all shall be focussed and organized upon the one significant aim of the whole--_character_.

Further, if education is to overcome the menaces and solve the dilemma of democracy, it must be carried beyond childhood and youth and outside the walls of academic institutions. The ever wider education of adult citizenship is indispensable to the progress and safety of democracy. It is one of the glaring illustrations of the inefficiency of our democracy that there are still communities where school boards build school houses with public money, open them five or six hours, five days in the week, and refuse to allow them to be opened any other hour of the day or night, for a civic forum, parents' meeting, public lecture or other activity of adult education; and yet we call ourselves a practical people! Surely, in a democracy, the state is as vitally interested in the education of the adult citizen as of the child.

Herein is the significance of those various extensions of education, developing and spreading so widely to-day. University-extension and Chautauqua movements, civic forums, free lectures to the people by boards of education and public libraries, summer schools, night schools for adults--all are illustrations of this movement, so vital to the progress of democracy. Through these instrumentalities the popular ideal may be elevated, the public mind may be trained to more logical and earnest thought, citizenship may be made more serious and intelligent, and finally a most helpful influence may be exerted on the academic institutions themselves. It is an easily verifiable truth that any academic institution that builds around itself an enclosing scholastic wall, refuses to go outside and serve and learn in the larger world of humanity, in the long run inevitably dies of academic dry rot.

In the endeavor to solve the problem of democracy cannot we do more than we have done hitherto in cultivating reverence for moral leadership--the quality so much needed in democracy at the present hour? This may be achieved through many aspects of education, but especially through contact with noble souls in literature and history. History, above all, is the great opportunity, and, from this point of view, is it not necessary to rewrite our histories: instead of portraying solely statesmen and warriors, to fill them with lofty examples of leadership in all walks of life?

Women as well as men: for surely ideals of both should be fostered. A colleague, interested in this problem, recently took one of the most widely used text-books of American history, and counted the pages on which a woman was mentioned. Of the five hundred pages, there were four: not four pages devoted to women; but four mentioning a woman. What does it mean: that women have contributed less than one part in a hundred and five to the development of American life? Surely no one would think that. What, then, are the reasons for the discrepancy? There are several, but one may be mentioned: men have written the histories, and they have written chiefly of the two fields of action where men have been most important and women least, war and statesmanship. Surely, however, if American history is to reveal the American spirit, exercise the contagion of noble ideals and develop reverence for true moral leadership, it must present types of both manhood and womanhood in all fields of action and endeavor.

One who has stood with Socrates in the common criminal prison in Athens and watched him drink the hemlock poison, saying "No evil can happen to a good man in life or after death," who has heard the oration of Paul on Mars Hill or that of Pericles over the Athenian dead, who has thrilled to the heroism of Joan of Arc and Edith Cavell, the noble service of Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, the high appeal of Helen Hunt Jackson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who has heard Giordano Bruno exclaim as the flames crept up about him, "I die a martyr, and willingly," who has responded to the calm elevation of Marcus Aurelius, the cosmopolitan wisdom of Goethe, the sweet gentleness of Maeterlinck's spirit and the titan dreams of Ibsen, can scarcely fail to appreciate the brotherhood of all men and to learn that reverence for the true moral leader, that dignifies alike giver and recipient.

XX

TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP

Since the path of democracy is education, moral leadership is more necessary to it, than in any other form of society; yet there are exceptional obstacles to its development. We speak of "the white light that beats upon a throne": it is nothing compared to the search light played upon every leader of democracy. With our lack of reverence, we delight in pulling to pieces the personalities of those who lead us. Thus it is increasingly difficult to get men of sensitive spirit to pay the price of leadership for democracy.

Is it not possible to do more than we have done, consciously to develop such leadership? Where is it trained? In life, the college and university, the normal school, the schools of law, medicine and theology. Yes, but if not one boy and girl in ten graduates from the high school, surely we want one man and woman in ten to fulfill some measure of moral leadership, and the high school is directly concerned with the task of furnishing such leadership for American democracy.

If that is true, is it not a pity that the high school is so largely dominated from above by the demand of the college upon the entering freshman? It is not to be taken for granted that the particular regimen of studies, best fitting the student to pass the entrance examinations of a college or university, is the best possible for the nine out of ten students, who go directly from the high school into the world, and must fulfill some measure of moral leadership for American democracy. The presumption is to the contrary. College professors are human--some of them. They want students prepared to enter as smoothly as possible into the somewhat artificial curricula of academic studies they have arranged. The Latin professor wishes not to go back and start with the rudiments of his subject, as the professor of mathematics with the beginnings of Algebra and Geometry. The result is they demand of the high school what fits most smoothly into their scheme.

Now if it is not possible to serve equally the needs of both groups, would it not be better to neglect the one tenth of the students, going on to college, even assuming they are the pick of the flock, which they are not always? They have four more years to correct their mistakes and round out their culture. If any one must be subordinated, it would be better to neglect them, and focus upon the needs of the nine out of ten, who go directly from the high school into life and have not another chance; yet there are states in the Union, where it is possible for a committee of the state university at the top to say to every high school teacher in the state, "Conform to our requirements, or leave the state, or get out of the profession." The threat, moreover, has been carried out more than once.

That situation is utterly wrong. We want organization of the educational system, with each unit cooperating with the next higher, but if education is to solve the problem of democracy and furnish moral leadership for American life, we want each unit to be free, first of all, to serve its own constituency to the best of its power. The problem is not serious for the big city high school, with its multiplied elective courses, but for the small rural or town high school, with its limited corps of teachers and its necessarily fixed courses, the burden is onerous indeed.

Is the American college and university doing all that it might do in cultivating moral leadership for American democracy? The last decades have seen an astounding and unparalleled development of higher education in America. In the old days, the college was usually on a denominational foundation. It was supported by the dollars and pennies of earnest religionists who believed that education was necessary to religion and morality. The president was generally a clergyman of the denomination; he taught the ethics course, and all students were required to take it. There was compulsory chapel attendance, and once a day the entire student body gathered together to listen to some moral and religious thought.

Then came the immense expansion of higher education. Courses were multiplied and diversified. Universities were established or endowed by the state. Academies became colleges, and colleges, universities. Institutions were generally secularized. Compulsory chapel attendance was rightly abandoned. Each department served its own interest apart. Until to-day certain of our great universities are not unlike vast intellectual department stores, with each professor calling his goods across the counter, and the president, a sort of superior floorwalker, to see that no one clerk gets too many customers. It is an impressive illustration of what has happened to our higher institutions that, in certain of them, the one regular meeting place of the entire student body in a common interest, is the bleachers by the athletic field. One continues to believe in college athletics, in spite of the frequent absurdities and worse, done in their name; only if the numbers of those playing the game and those exercising only their lungs and throats from the bleachers, were reversed, better all-round athletic education would result. Is it not, however, a trenchant criticism on the situation in our higher education, that so often the one common interest should be in something that is, at least, aside from the main business of the institution?

Moreover, no institution can rightly serve democracy, unless it is itself democratic. Thus the growth of an aristocratic spirit in our colleges and universities is an ominous sign. For instance, it is still true that any boy or girl, with a sound body and a good mind and no family to support, can get a college education. Money is not indispensable: it is possible to work one's way through. Will this always be true? One wonders. It is significant that it is easiest to work your way through college, and keep your self-respect and the respect of your fellows, in the small, meagerly endowed college on the frontier. It is most difficult, with a few exceptions one gladly recognizes, in the great, rich universities of the East. What does that mean?

Straws show the tide: it was announced some time ago by the president of one of our richest and oldest universities that henceforth scholarships in that institution would be given solely on the basis of intellectual scholarship, as tested by examination; and applause went up from the alumni all across the country; yet what does it mean? It means that the boy who has to work on a threshing machine, sell books to an unsuspecting public, or do some other semi-honorable work all summer to get back into college in the Fall, cannot pass those examinations equally with a rich man's son of equal mind, who can take a tutor to the seashore or the mountains and coach up all summer. Thus foundations, established by well-meaning people to help poor boys self-respectingly through college, become intellectual prizes for those who do not need them. That is all wrong.

Take the special student problem. When a college or university is founded, it needs students: they are the life-blood of the institution. Really all that is needed to make a college is a teacher and some students: buildings are not indispensable, but students the school must have. Thus it is apt to keep its bars down and its entrance requirements flexible. Special students, often mature men and women, who are not prepared to pass the freshman examinations, are admitted on the recommendation of heads of d epartments, to special courses they are well fitted to take. Students are admitted freely, and then sifted out afterward, if they prove unworthy of their opportunity: not a bad method, by the way.