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acknowledged and given the highest commendation. All this is not absolute but relative. It is neither self-sufficient nor self-existing. It represents the physical side of life. It is the product of centuries of an earlier culture, a culture which was none the less real because it supposed the earth was flat, a culture which was pre-eminent in the development of the moral and spiritual forces of life.

The age of science and commercialism is here. There is no sound reason for wishing it otherwise. The wise desire is not to destroy it, but to use it and direct it rather than to be used and directed by it, that it may be as it should be, not the master but the servant, that the physical forces may not prevail over the moral forces and that the rule of life may not be expediency but righteousness.

No question can be adequately comprehended without knowing its historical background. Modern civilization dates from Greece and Rome. world was not new in their day. They were the inheritors of a civilization

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The superstructure is entirely dependent upon them for support whatever may be its excellence. However worthy a place it may fill, it cannot stand except on a sound foundation. In the revival of learning the philosophy of Greece played an important part. It was under its stimulus that the two methods of induction and deduction experiment and reason by which the human mind gains knowledge were firmly established. This swept away the vain imaginings of the schoolmen, gave a new freedom to thought and laid the beginnings of modern scientific scientific research. It has brought about the modern era of learning which is reflected in every avenue of human life. It is in business. in education. It is in religion. No one questions its power. No one questions its desirability, but it is not all sufficient.

It is

It is impossible for society to break with its past. It is the product of all which has gone before. We could not cut ourselves off from all influences which existed prior to the Declaration of Independence and expect any success

which had gone before, but what they by undertaking to ignore all that hap

had inherited they recast, enlarged and intensified and made their own, so that

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their culture took on a distinctive form, embracing all that the past held best in the Roman world of the Caesars. great Empire fell a prey, first to itself and then to the barbarians. After this seeming catastrophe scholarships and culture almost disappeared for nearly a thousand years, finally to emerge again in the revival of learning. This came almost entirely out of the influence of the Christian church. The revival of learning was the revival of the learning of Greece and Rome plus the teachings of revealed religion. Out of that revival has grown the culture of Western Europe and America. It is important to keep foundations clearly in mind.

pened before that date. The development of society is a gradual accomplishtinuing effort. The education of the race ment. Culture is the product of a conis never accomplished. It must be gone over with each individual and it must continue from the beginning to the ending of life. Society cannot say it has attained culture and can therefore rest from its labors. All that it can say is that it has learned the method and process by which culture is secured and go on applying such method and process.

Biology teaches us that the individual goes through the various stages of evolu tion which has brought him to his present state of perfection. All theories of education teach us that the mind develops in the same way, rising through the various stages that have marked the

ascent of mankind from the lowest savagry to the highest civilization. This principle is a compelling reason for the continuance of classics as the foundation of our educational system. It was by the use of this method that 'we reached our present state of develop ment.

This does not mean that every person must be a classical scholar. It is not necessary for everyone who crosses the ocean to be an experienced mariner, nor for everyone who works on a building to be a learned architect, but if the foreign shore is to be reached in safety, if the building is to take on a form of utility and beauty, it will be because of direction and instruction given according to established principles and ideals. The principles and ideals on which we must depend not only for a continuance of modern culture, but, I believe, for a continuance of the development of science itself come to us from the classics. All this is the reason that the sciences and the professions reach their highest devolopment as the supplement of a classical education.

Perhaps the chief criticism of education and its resulting effect upon the community today is superficiality. A generation ago the business man who had made a success without the advantages of a liberal education sent his son to the university where he took a course in Greek and Latin. On his return home, because he could not immediately take his father's place in the conduct of the business, the conclusion was drawn that his education had been a failure. order to judge the correctness of this conclusion it would be necessary to know whether the young man had really been educated or whether he had gone through certain prescribed courses in the first place, and in the second place whether he finally developed executive ability. It cannot be denied that a superficial knowledge of the classics is only a su

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perficial knowledge. There can not be expected to be derived from it the ability to think correctly which is the characteristic of a disciplined mind. Without doubt a superficial study of the classics is of less value than a superficial acquaintance with some of the sciences or a superficial business course. One of the advantages of the classics as a course of training is that in modern institutions there is little chance of going through them in a superficial way. other of their advantages is that the master of them lives in something more than the present and thinks of something more than the external problems of the hour, and after all it was the study of the classics that produced the glories of the Elizabethan age with its poets, its philosophers, its artists, its explorers, its soldiers, its statesmen, and its churchmen.

Education is primarily a means of establishing ideals.. Its first great duty is the formation of character, which is the result of heredity and training. This by no means excludes the desirability of an education in the utilities, but is a statement of what education must include if it meet with any success. It is not only because the classical method has been followed in our evolution of culture, but because the study of Greek and Latin is unsurpassed as a method of discipline. Their mastery requires an effort and an application which must be both intense and prolonged. They bring into action all the faculties of observation, understanding and reason. To become proficient in them is to become possessed of self-control and of intelligence, which are the foundations of all character.

We often hear Greek and Latin referred to as dead languages. There are some languages which may have entirely expired, but I do not think any such have yet been discovered. There are words and forms in all languages which

are dead because no longer used. There are many such in our own language. But Greek and Latin are not dead. The Romance languages are a modified Latin, and our own language is filled with words derived from Greek and Latin which have every living attribute. This is so true that to a certain extent there can be no adequate comprehension of the meaning of a large part of the language employed in every day use, and the language of science and scholarship almost in its entirety, without a knowledge of Greek and Latin. Our literature is so filled with classical allusions that an understanding of its beauties can scarcely be secured by any other

means.

The most pressing requirement of the present hour is not how we are to solve our economic problems, but: Where are we to find the sustaining influences for the realities of life? How are we to justify the existing form of government in our Republic? Where shall we resort for teaching in patriotism? On what can we rely for a continuation of that service of sacrifice which has made modern civilization possible? The progress of the present era gives no new answers to these problems. There are no examples of heroism which outrival Leonidas at Thermopylae or Horatius at the Bridge. The literature of Greece and Rome is through and through an inspiring plea for patriotism, from the meditations of their philosophers to the orations of their statesmen and the despatches of their soldiers.

The world has recently awakened to the value and the righteousness of democracy. This ideal is not new. It has been the vision which the people of many nations have followed through centuries. Because men knew that that ideal had been partially realized in Greece and Rome, they have had faith that it would be fully realized in Europe and America. The beginnings of

modern democracy were in Athens and Sparta. That form of human relationship can neither be explained nor defended, except by reference to these examples, and a restatement of the principles on which their government rested. Both of these nations speak to us eloquently of the progress they made so long as their citizens held to these ideals, and they admonish us with an eloquence even more convincing of the decay and ruin which comes to any people when it falls away from these ideals. There is no surer road to destruction than prosperity without character.

There is little need to mention the debt which modern literature owes to the great examples of Greece and Rome. Even the New Testament was written in Greek. It is unthinkable that any institution founded for the purpose of teaching literature should neglect the classics. Nowhere have the niceties of thought been better expressed than in their prose. Nowhere have music and reason been more harmoniously combined than in their poetry, and nowhere is there greater eloquence than in their orations. We look to them not merely as the writers and speakers of great thoughts, but as the doers of greater deeds. There is a glory in the achievements of the Greeks under Themistocles, there is an admiration for the heroes of Salamis, there is even a pride in the successful retreat of the Ten Thousand which the humiliating days of Philip and Alexander cannot take away.

But when we turn to Rome we are overwhelmed by its greatness.

When we recall the difficulties of the transportation of that day, which made the defense easy and attack difficult, her achievement, not only in conquering all that there was of the then civilized western world, but of holding it in subjection with a reign of law so absolute. that the world has never known a peace so secure as that of the Pax Romanum

strikes us with wonder. They gave to the world the first great example of order, and a tolerable state of liberty under the law. As we study their history, there is revealed to us one of the greatest peoples, under the guidance of great leaders, exhausting themselves in their efforts that the civilized world might be unified and the stage set for the entrance of Christianity. In their conquests, we see one of the most stupendous services, and in their disintegration one of the most gigantic tragedies which ever befell a great people.

Everyone knows that the culture of Greece and Rome are gone. They could not be restored, they could not be successfully imitated. What those who advocate their continued study desire to bring about is the endurance of that modern culture which has been the result of a familiarity with the classics of these two great peoples. We do not wish to be Greek, we do not wish to be Roman. We have a great desire to be supremely American. That purpose we know we can accomplish by continuing the process which has made us Americans. We must search out and think the thoughts of those who establish our institutions. The education which made them must not be divorced from the education which is to make us. In our efforts to minister to man's material welfare we must not forget to minister to his spiritual welfare. It is not enough to teach men science, the great thing is to teach them how to use science.

We believe in the promotion of literature and the arts. We believe in the righteous authority of organized government. We believe in patriotism. These beliefs must be supported and strengthened. They are not to be inquired of for gain and profit, though without them all gain and all profit would pass away. They will not be found in the teachings devoted exclusively to commercialism though without

them commerce would not exist. These are the higher things of life. Their teaching has come to us from the classics. If they are to be maintained they will find their support in the institutions of the liberal arts. When we are drawing away from them, we are drawing away from the path of security and progress. It is not yet possible that instruction in the classics could be the portion of every American. That opportunity ought to be not diminished but increased. But while every American has not had and may not have that privilege, America has had it. Our leadership has been directed in accordance with these ideals. Our faith is in them still.

We have seen many periods which tried the soul of our republic. We shall see many more. There will be times when efforts will be great and profits will vanish. There have been and will be times when the people will be called upon to make great sacrifices for their country. Unless Americans shall continue to live in something more than the present, to be moved by something more than material gains, they will not be able to respond to these requirements and they will go down as other peoples have gone down before some nation possessed of a greater moral force. The will to endure is not the creation of a moment, it is the result of long training. That will has been our possession up to the present hour. By its exercise we have prospered and brought forth many wonderful works. The object of our education is to continue us in this great power. That power depends on our ideals. The great and unfailing source of that power and these ideals has been the influence of the classics of Greece and Rome. Those who believe in America, in her language, her arts, her literature and in her science, will seek to perpetuate them by perpetuating the education which has produced them.

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Play in the New Rural Education

freed and guided toward social efficiency by natural education. The voice raised by Rousseau against the brutality, formality and anti-natural schooling of his times has still to be raised by such men as Dewey, Wirt, Curtis, Lee, and others, to direct our attention in education to the great and happy forms of self-education which nature drives the child irresistably to undertake.

By LOUIS WIN RAPEER, Ph.D., President Research University, Washington, D. C. "Acres of diamonds" lay beneath the feet of the man who gave up his farm in South Africa in disgust because he could not make it pay. A later owner delved deeper and opened to the world inexhaustible riches. The first man failed to see his opportunity and did not get from nature what it had to offer. How all men do desire to strike the great natural resources and translate them into human service and well-being! The melting snows on the mountain side, the streams and rivers, are caught in a great gorge by a Roosevelt dam or Peekskill embankment, and immediately power of millions of horses, the irrigation of hundreds of square miles, or the watering of thirsty millions in a mammoth city have been provided. The great forces of the wind along the summits of ten thousand hills, the untouched energies of the ocean waves sufficient to do all man's work, and the fiery heat of the sun itself burning on a great part of the earth's surface, so ready to transform itself into energy for man's service, are all lying before the inventive men of today or tomorrow who will tap their gigantic reservoirs.

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But human nature is just as rich in undeveloped possibilities as is inanimate nature. By the crude methods of education in the home, church, business, state, unorganized social life, and the school, we do much to develop capacities and makes a people safe for democracy. But these ways are extremely uneconomical, unnatural, and misdirected. We formally farm the surface of child nature by traditional methods while the real diamond in the rough we do not even perceive. The great natural force of resistless and ever-active instinct we are only beginning to believe can be

To one who as parent or teacher, psychologist or practical man of the world, physician or scientific manager, views great numbers of children sitting day after day in school seats in insanitary schools, with their eyes, focussing naturally at twenty feet, but here screwed down continually to the type of books about a foot from the face, who understands the fierce longing of those imprisoned muscles and minds to be selfdirective, co-operatively active, and imaginatively and constructively engaged in the real affairs of life, child and adult, who views the spectacle of the children in later life insurance, for disease arrest, and for other purposes, to such a person the ordinary routine work of the school with its formal grammar, its "busy work for little fingers," its individualistic methods and somber silence, and its demands so out of touch with either the fundamental needs of society or of human nature-such schools, all too common, seem to him like the plowing of a worn-out soil for poor crops over acres of diamonds.

Play is a good inclusive word to use to indicate one of the principal combinations of natural resources in original human nature. It might almost be defined as all the inherited forces finding satisfying outlets in purposive activity. The happy, superabundant movements and

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