Means and Ends of Education Part 3

As we let the light fall at different angles upon a precious stone, and change our position from point to point to study a work of art, so it is well to give more than one expression to the same truth, that the intellectual rays falling upon it from several directions, and breaking into new tints and shades, its full meaning and worth may finally be brought clearly into view. If those with whom thou art thrown appear to thee to be hard and narrow, call to mind that they have the same troubles and sorrows as thyself, essentially too the same thoughts and yearnings; and as, in spite of all thy faults, thou still lovest thyself, so love them too, even though they be too warped and prejudiced to appreciate thy worth.

The wise man never utters words of scorn, For he best knows such words are devil-born.

Our opponents are as necessary to us as our friends, and when those who have n.o.bly combated us die, they seem to take with them part of our mental vigor; they leave us with a deeper sense of the illusiveness of life. Freedom is found only where honest criticism of men and measures is recognized as a common right.

As one man's meat is another's poison, so in the world of intelligible things what refreshes and invigorates one, may weary and depress another. What delights the child makes no impression upon the man.

Men and women, the ignorant and the learned, philosophers and poets, mothers and maidens, doers and dreamers, find their entertainment largely in different worlds. Napoleon despised the idealogue; the idealogue sees in him but a conscienceless force.

Outcries against wrong have little efficacy. They alone improve men who inspire them with new confidence, new courage, who help them to renew and purify the inner sources of life. Harsh zeal provokes excess, because it provokes contradiction. Whoever stirs the soul to new depths, whoever awakens the mind to new thoughts and aspirations, is a benefactor. The common man sees the fruits of his toil; the seed which divine men sow, ripens for others. The counsels worldlings give to genius can only mislead. Not only the truth which Christ taught, but the truth which nearly all sublime thinkers have taught, has seemed to the generation to which it was announced but a beggarly lie. The powerful have sneered with Pilate, while the mob have done the teachers to death.

Make truth thy garb, thy house, wherein thou movest and dwellest, and art comfortable and at home.

If thou knowest what thou knowest and believest what thou believest, thou canst not be disturbed by contradiction, but shalt feel that thy opposers are appointed by G.o.d to confirm thee in truth.

As the merchant keeps journal and ledger, so should he whose wealth is truth, take account in writing of the thoughts he gains from observation, reflection, reading, and intercourse with men. We become perfectly conscious of our impressions only in giving expression to them; hence ability to express what we feel and know is one of the chief and most important aims and ends of education.

What thou mayst not learn without employing spies, or listening to the stories of the malignant or the gossip of the vulgar, be content not to know.

Our miseries spring from idleness and sin; and idleness is sin and the mother of sin. "To confide in one's self and become something of worth," says Michelangelo, "is the best and safest course."

Life-weariness, when it is not the result of long suffering, comes of lack of love, for to love any human being in a true and n.o.ble way makes life good. Whatever mistakes thou mayst have made in the choice of a profession and in other things, it is still possible for thee to will and do good, to know truth, and to love beauty, and this is the best life can give. Think of living, and thou shalt find no time to repine.

The character of the believer determines the character of his faith, whatever the formulas by which it is expressed. What we are is the chief const.i.tuent of the world in which we now live, and this must be true also of the world in which we believe and for which we hope. For the sensualist a spiritual heaven has neither significance nor attractiveness. The highest truth the n.o.blest see has no meaning for the mult.i.tude, or but a distorted meaning. What is divinest in the teaching of Christ, only one in thousands, now after the lapse of centuries, rightly understands and appreciates. It is not so much the things we believe, know, and do, as the things on which we lay the chief stress of hope and desire, that shape our course and decide our destiny.

They alone receive the higher gifts, who, to obtain them, renounce the lower pleasures and rewards of life. Those races are n.o.blest, those individuals are n.o.blest, who care most for the past and the future, whose thoughts and hopes are least confined to the world of sense which from moment to moment ceaselessly urges its claims to attention.

Desire fanned by imagination, when it turns to sensual things, makes men brutish; but when its object is intellectual and moral, it lifts them to worlds of pure and enduring delight.

When we would form an estimate of a man, we consider not what he knows, believes, and does, but what kind of being his knowledge, faith, and works have made of him. He who makes us learn more than he teaches has genius. Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.

Each one is the outcome of millions of causes, which, so far as he can see, are accidental. How ridiculous then to complain that if this or that only had not happened, all would be well. It is ignorance or prejudice to make a man's conduct an argument against the worth of his writings. Byron was a bad man, but a great poet; Bacon was venal, but a marvellous thinker.

Books, to be interesting to the many, must abound in narrative, must run on like chattering girls, and make little demand upon attention.

The appeal to thought is like a beggar's appeal for alms,--heeded by one only in hundreds who pa.s.s; for, to the mult.i.tude, mental effort is as disagreeable as parting with their money.

A newspaper is old the day after its publication, and there are many books which issue from the press withered and senile, but the best, like the G.o.ds, are forever young and delightful.

"Whatever bit of a wise man's work," says Ruskin, "is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. It is mixed always with evil fragments,--ill-done, redundant, affected work; but if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and _those_ are the book." Again: "No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked so that you may refer to the pa.s.sages you want in it."

Unity, steadfastness, and power of will mark the great workers. A dominant impulse urges them forward, and with firm tread they move on till death bids them stay. As the will succ.u.mbs to idleness and sin, it can be developed and maintained in health and vigor only by right action.

If thou makest thy intellectual and moral improvement thy chief business, thou shalt not lack for employment, and with thy progress thy joy and freedom shall increase.

Progress is betterment of life. The acc.u.mulation of discoveries, the multiplication of inventions, the improvement of the means of comfort, the extension of instruction, and the perfecting of methods, are valuable in the degree in which they contribute to this end. The characteristic of progress is increase of spiritual force. In material progress even, the intellectual and moral element is the value-giving factor. Progress begets belief in progress. As we grow in worth and wisdom, our faith in knowledge and conduct is developed and confirmed, and with more willing hearts we make ourselves the servants of righteousness and love; for in the degree in which religion and culture prevail within us, co-operation for life tends to supersede the struggle for life, which if not the dominant law, is, at least, the general course of things when left to Nature's sway.

Catchwords, such as progress, culture, enlightenment, and liberty, are for the mult.i.tude rarely more than psittacisms, mere parrot sounds. So long as we genuinely believe in an ideal and strive to incarnate it, the spirit of hope kindles the flame of enthusiasm within the breast.

Its attainment, however, if the ideal is sensual or material, leads to disappointment and weariness. Behold yonder worshipper at the shrine of money and pleasure, whose life is but a yawn between his woman and his wine. But if the ideal is spiritual, failure in the pursuit cannot dishearten us, and success but opens to view diviner worlds towards which we turn our thought and love with self-renewing freshness of mind.

If thou seekest for beauty, it is everywhere; if for hideousness, it too is everywhere.

To believe in one's self, to have genuine faith in the impressions, thoughts, hopes, loves, and aspirations which are in one's own soul, and to strive ceaselessly to come to clear knowledge of this inner world which each one bears within himself, is the secret of culture.

To bend one's will day by day to the weaving this light of the mind and warmth of the heart into the substance of life, into conduct, is the secret of character. At whatever point of time or s.p.a.ce we find ourselves, we can begin or continue the task of self-improvement; for the only essential thing is the activity of the soul, seeking to become conscious of itself, through and in G.o.d and His universe.

The little bird upbuilds its nest Of little things by ceaseless quest: And he who labors without rest By little steps will reach life's crest.

The true reader is brought into contact with a personality which reveals itself or permits its secret to be divined. In spirit and imagination he lives the life of the author. In his book he finds the experience and wisdom of years compressed into a few pages which he reads in an hour. The vital sublimation of what made a man is thus given him in its essence to exalt or to degrade, to inspire or to deaden his soul. In looking through the eyes of another, he learns to see himself, to understand his affinities and his tendencies, his strength and his weakness. Eat this volume and go speak to the children of Israel, said the spirit to the prophet Ezekiel. The meaning is--mentally devour, digest, and a.s.similate the book into the fibre and structure of thy very being, and then shalt thou be able to utter words of truth and wisdom to G.o.d's chosen ones. The world's spiritual wealth, so far as it has existence other than in the minds of individuals, is stored in literature, in books,--the great treasure-house of the soul's life, of what the best and greatest have thought, known, believed, felt, suffered, desired, toiled, and died for; and whoever fails to make himself a home in this realm of truth, light, and freedom, is shut out from what is highest and most divine in human experience, and sinks into the grave without having lived.

To those who have uttered themselves in public speech, there comes at times a feeling akin to self-reproach. They have taken upon themselves the office of teacher, and yet what have they taught that is worth knowing and loving? They have lost the privacy in which so much of the charm and freedom of life consists; they have been praised or blamed without discernment; and a great part of what they have said and written seems to themselves little more than a skeleton from which the living vesture has fallen. Ask them not to encourage any one to become an author. The more they have deafened the world with their voices, the more will they, like Carlyle, praise the Eternal Silence. They have in fact been taught, by hard experience, that the worth of life lies not in saying or writing anything whatever, but in pure faith, in humble obedience, in brave and steadfast striving. The woman who sweeps a room, the mother who nurses her child, the laborer who sows and reaps, believing and feeling that they are working with G.o.d, are leading n.o.bler lives and doing diviner things than the declaimers and theorizers, and the religion which upholds them and lightens their burdens is better than all the philosophies.

CHAPTER III.

THE MAKING OF ONE'S SELF.

The wise man will esteem above everything and will cultivate those sciences which further the perfection of his soul.--PLATO.

It has become customary to call these endings of the scholastic year commencements; just as the people of the civilized world have agreed to make themselves absurd by calling the ninth month the seventh, the tenth the eighth, the eleventh the ninth, and the twelfth the tenth.

And, indeed, the discourses which are delivered on these occasions would be more appropriate and more effective if made to students who, having returned from the vacations with renewed physical vigor, feel also fresh urgency to exercise of mind. But now, so little is man in love with truth, the approach of the moment when you are to make escape and find yourselves in what you imagine to be a larger and freer world, occupies all your thoughts, and thrills you with an excitement which makes attention difficult; and, like the noise of crowds and brazen trumpets, prevents the soul from mounting to the serene world where alone it is free and at home.

Since, however, the invitation with which I have been honored directs my address to the graduates of Notre Dame in this her year of Golden Jubilee, I may, without abuse of the phrase, ent.i.tle it a commencement oration; for the day on which a graduate worthy of the name leaves his college is the commencement day of a new life of study, more earnest and more effectual than that which is followed within academic walls, because it is the result of his sense of duty alone and of his uncontrolled self-activity. And, though I am familiar with the serious disadvantages with which a reader as compared with a speaker has to contend, I shall read my address, if for no other reason, because I shall thus be able to measure my time; and if I am prolix, I shall be so maliciously, and not become so through the obliviousness which may result from the illusive enthusiasm that is sometimes produced in the speaker by his own vociferation, and which he fondly imagines he communicates to his hearers.

The chief benefit to be derived from the education we receive in colleges and universities, and from the personal contact into which we are there thrown with enlightened minds, is the faith it tends to inspire and confirm in the worth of knowledge and culture, of conduct and religion; for nothing else we there acquire will abide with us as an inner impulse to self-activity, a self-renewing urgency to the pursuit of excellence. If we fail, we fail for lack of faith; but belief is communicated from person to person,--_fides ex auditu_,--and to mediate it is the educator's chief function. Through daily intercourse with one who is learned and wise and n.o.ble, the young gain a sense of the reality of science and culture, of religion and morality; which thus cease to be for them vague somethings of which they have heard and read, and become actual things,--realities, like monuments they have inspected, or countries through which they have travelled. They have been taken by the hand and led where, left to themselves, they would never have gone. The true educator inspires not only faith, but admiration also, and confidence and love,--all soul-evolving powers. He is a master whose pupils are disciples,--followers of him and believers in the wisdom he teaches.

He founds a school which, if it does not influence the whole course of thought and history, like that of Plato or Aristotle, does at least form a body of men, distinguished by zeal for truth and love of intellectual and moral excellence. To be able thus, in virtue of one's intelligence and character, to turn the generous heart and mind of youth to sympathy with what is intelligible, fair, and good in thought and life, is to be like G.o.d,--is to have power in its n.o.blest and most human form; and its exercise is the teacher's chief and great reward.

To be a permanent educational force is the highest earthly distinction.

Is not this the glory of the founders of religions, of the discoverers of new worlds?

In stooping to the mind and heart of youth, to kindle there the divine flame of truth and love, we ourselves receive new light and warmth. To listen to the noise made by the little feet of children when at play, and to the music of their merry laughter, is pleasant; but to come close to the aspiring soul of youth, and to feel the throbbings of its deep and ardent yearnings for richer and wider life, is to have our faith in the good of living revived and intensified. It is the divine privilege of the young to be able to believe that the world can be moulded and controlled by thought and spiritual motives; and in breathing this celestial air, the choice natures among them learn to become sages and saints; or if it be their lot to be thrown into the fierce struggles where selfish and cruel pa.s.sions contend for the mastery over justice and humanity, they carry into the combat the serene strength of reason and conscience; for their habitual and real home is in the unseen world, where what is true and good has the Omnipotent for its defence. Of this soul of youth we may affirm without fear of error--

"The soul seeks G.o.d; from sphere to sphere it moves, Immortal pilgrim of the Infinite."

Life is the unfolding of a mysterious power, which in man rises to self-consciousness, and through self-consciousness to the knowledge of a world of truth and order and love, where action may no longer be left wholly to the sway of matter or to the impulse of instinct, but may and should be controlled by reason and conscience. To further this process by deliberate and intelligent effort is to educate. Hence education is man's conscious co-operation with the Infinite Being in promoting the development of life; it is the bringing of life in its highest form to bear upon life, individual and social, that it may raise it to greater perfection, to ever-increasing potency. To educate, then, is to work with the Power who makes progress a law of living things, becoming more and more active and manifest as we ascend in the scale of being. The motive from which education springs is belief in the goodness of life and the consequent desire for richer, freer, and higher life. It is the point of union of all man's various and manifold activity; for whether he seeks to nourish and preserve his life, or to prolong and perpetuate it in his descendants, or to enrich and widen it in domestic and civil society, or to grow more conscious of it through science and art, or to strike its roots into the eternal world through faith and love, or in whatever other way he may exert himself, the end and aim of his aspiring and striving is educational,--is the unfolding and uplifting of his being.

The radical craving is for life,--for the power to feel, to think, to love, to enjoy. And as it is impossible to reach a state in which we are not conscious that this power may be increased, we can find happiness only in continuous progress, in ceaseless self-development.

This craving for fulness of life is essentially intellectual and moral, and its proper sphere of action is the world of thought and conduct.

He who has a healthy appet.i.te does not long for greater power to eat and drink. A sensible man who has sufficient wealth for independence and comfort does not wish for more money; but he who thinks and loves and acts in obedience to conscience feels that he is never able to do so well enough, and hence an inner impulse urges him to strive for greater power of life, for perfection. He is akin to all that is intelligible and good, and is drawn to bring himself into ever-increasing harmony with this high world. Hence attention is for him like a second nature, for attention springs from interest; and since he feels an affinity with all things, all things interest him.

And what is thus impressed upon his mind and heart he is impelled to utter in deed or speech or gesture or song, or in whatever way thought and sentiment may manifest themselves. Attention and expression are thus the fundamental forms of self-activity, the primary and essential means of education, of developing intellectual and moral power.

Interest is aroused and held by need, which creates desire. If we are hungry, whatever may help us to food interests us. Our first and indispensable interests relate to the things we need for self-preservation and the perpetuation of the race; and to awaken desire and stimulate effort to obtain them, instinct is sufficient, as we may see in the case of mere animals. But as progress is made, higher and more subtle wants are developed. We crave for more than food and wife and children. The social organism evolves itself; and as its complexity increases, the relations of the individual to the body of which he is a member are multiplied, and become more intricate. As we pa.s.s from the savage to the barbarous, and from the barbarous to the civilized state, intellect and conscience are brought more and more into play. Mental power gains the mastery over brute force, and little by little subdues the energies of inorganic nature, and makes them serve human ends. Iron is forced to become soft and malleable, and to a.s.sume every shape; the winds bear man across the seas; the sweet and gentle water is imprisoned and tortured until with its fierce breath it does work in comparison with which the mythical exploits of G.o.ds and demi-G.o.ds are as the play of children. Strength of mind and character takes precedence of strength of body. Hercules and Samson are but helpless infants in the presence of the thinker who reads Nature's secret and can compel her to do his bidding. If we bend our thoughts to this subject, we shall gain insight into the meaning and purpose of education, which is nothing else than the urging of intellect and conscience to the conquest of the world, and to the clear perception and practical acknowledgment of the primal and fundamental truth that man is man in virtue of his thought and love.

Instruction, which is but part of education, has for its object the development of the intellect and the transmission of knowledge. This, whether we consider the individual or society, is indispensable. It is good to know. Knowledge is not only the source of many of our highest and purest joys, but without it we can attain neither moral nor material good in the n.o.bler forms. Virtue when it is enlightened gains a higher quality. And if we hold that action and not thought is the end of life, we cannot deny that action is, in some degree at least, controlled and modified by thought. Nevertheless, instruction is not the princ.i.p.al part of education; for human worth is more essentially and more intimately identified with character and heart than with knowledge and intellect. What we will is more important than what we know; and the importance of what we know is derived largely from its influence on the will or conduct.

A nation, like an individual, receives rank from character more than from knowledge; since the true measure of human worth is moral rather than intellectual. The teaching of the school becomes a subject of pa.s.sionate interest, through our belief in its power to educate sentiment, stimulate will, and mould character. For in the school we do more than learn the lessons given us: we live in an intellectual and moral atmosphere, acquire habits of thought and behavior; and this, rather than what we learn, is the important thing. To imagine that youths who have pa.s.sed through colleges and universities, and have acquired a certain knowledge of languages and sciences, but have not formed strongly marked characters, should forge to the front in the world and become leaders in the army of religion and civilization, is to cherish a delusion. The man comes first; and scholarship without manhood will be found to be ineffectual. The semi-culture of the intellect, which is all a mere graduate can lay claim to, will but help to lead astray those who lack the strength of moral purpose; and they whom experience has made wise expect little from young men who have bright minds and have pa.s.sed brilliant examinations, but who go out into the world without having trained themselves to habits of patient industry and tireless self-activity.

Man is essentially a moral being; and he who fails to become so, fails to become truly human. Individuals and nations are brought to ruin not by lack of knowledge, but by lack of conduct. "Now that the world is filled with learned men," said Seneca, "good men are wanting." He was Nero's preceptor, and saw plainly how powerless intellectual culture was to save Rome from the degeneracy which undermined its civilization and finally brought on its downfall. If in college the youth does not learn to govern and control himself,--to obey and do right in all things, not because he has not the power to disobey and do wrong, but because he has not the will,--nothing else he may learn will be of great service. It seems to me I perceive in our young men a lack of moral purpose, of st.u.r.diness, of downright obstinate earnestness, in everything--except perhaps in money-getting pursuits; for even in these they are tempted to trust to speculation and cunning devices rather than to persistent work and honesty, which become a man more than crowns and all the gifts of fortune. Without truthfulness, honesty, honor, fidelity, courage, integrity, reverence, purity, and self-respect no worthy or n.o.ble life can be led. And unless we can get into our colleges youths who can be made to drink into their inmost being this vital truth, little good can be accomplished there. Now, it often happens that these inst.i.tutions are, in no small measure, refuges into which the badly organized families of the wealthy send their sons in the vain expectation that the fatal faults of inheritance and domestic training will be repaired. In college, as wherever there are men, quality is more precious than quant.i.ty. The number of students is great enough when they are of the right kind; and the work which now lies at our hand is to make it possible that those who have talent and the will to improve themselves may enter our inst.i.tutions of learning.

But those who are shown to be insusceptible of education should be eliminated; for they profit not themselves, and are a hindrance to the others.