titor, with as many of the men as possible. As a farmer or a merchant, a clerk or a mechanic, he would learn more of the world, its burdens and temptations, in two years, than in twenty spent in theological study or in preaching, or even in paying the conventional parochial visits.

At the same time, the opportunity for setting the community an example in probity, charity, good temper, helpfulness to others, must not be overlooked. Having gone through the mill himself, he would be in a position. thereafter to help the weak, bolster the strong, steady the uncertain-minded, advise the ignorant, with an efficiency and an assurance not to be attained in any other way.

Nor need this regimen interfere with his exercise of pulpit and parish functions. The pastor who directs his activities could assign him to regular duties in these fields. The precedents are abundant and worthy. Peter was a fisher of fish before he became a fisher of men. Even so mighty a preacher as Paul tells us that he supported himself bodily while ministering to the spiritual needs of his disciples. Moreover, there is no means at once so efficacious and so wholesome for giving a young man a proper conception of his own bent and a true measure of his powers, as a wrestling-round with real life. Sup

pose, when he has got a glimpse of the clerical profession from the ordinary layman's point of view, our candidate makes up his mind that he has mistaken his calling? Or suppose that, having embarked upon the ministry of one denomination, he discovers that at heart he is wedded to the beliefs of another? Is it not better, in either event, that he should awake to his error before he has so far committed himself to a specific career that he is ashamed to turn back?

Would not some such trying-out process as I have here suggested save the ministry at large from a goodly share of its misplaced element, and avert many of the irritations which flow from schisms and heresy trials? It might be that this weeding would reduce still further the number of clever young men who enter the clerical ranks, and thus emphasize one of the complaints of which we hear so much. But, even so, would not the remnant be of enough higher quality to more than make up for the quantitative decrease? And would there not come to be, among the original candidates, a much smaller proportion of those who are drawn toward the work of the church by the promise of a livelihood secured without the preliminary struggle which the young competitors in any other employment have to wage?

I

No other age of the world has made such demands upon character as does the age in which we live. We talk about the sterling qualities of our Puritan ancestors and mourn over a supposed decadence of moral fibre in our days, forgetting that the colonist was virtuous by necessity, frugal through lack of the materials of luxury, free from the vast avarice of our time because there were no financial fields to furnish the requisite opportunity and temptation. He was offered the hard choice between industry and starvation, and endurance was thrust upon him by his very situation in the wilderness. It means no derogation of his place of honor in our memory, and of his value as a national ideal, to say that the character which sustained him in his primitive environment might break down in complete failure under the stress of modern temptation. In short, it is harder to be good to-day than it was in the time of Miles Standish and John Winthrop, and we can hope for conduct equal to theirs only by grace of character even stronger.

Effective character includes intelligence to know the right, and the will to do it; on both of these the modern world lays new burdens. We live in a far more complex environment than did our forefathers, for we have left the simple paths where instinct was a sufficient guide for conduct, and are now dwelling in a world of man's own creation, where instinct is not at home,

and where problems can be solved only by the highest intelligence.

Our social philosophy is based upon that of the Greeks; but what a contrast exists between our social state and theirs! Their great political scientist declares that a state could not be conceived to embrace so many as a hundred thousand people. What would he have thought of cities inhabited by millions, gathered into states which in turn are combined into a nation nearly a thousandfold larger than his extreme limit? And are we not to-day watching the first clear beginnings of the world-state, the poet-prophet's 'federation of the nations, the parliament of man'? With this enormous increment of mere size in political units has come corresponding increase in complexity of structure and operation. The intelligence of thoughtful men stands aghast at the problems knocking at our doors, -tariff and finance, conservation, raceconflicts, law-making and enforcement, administration of nation, state, and municipalities. The very clash of disagreement among honest thinkers concerning social questions proves the difficulty of the riddles thrust upon us by our day. Most serious and menacing of all perhaps are questions of industry of which the earlier world knew little. Greece and Rome and medieval Europe kept these perplexities under the surface by a system of slavery or rigid caste; it is only in modern times that the Enceladus of human labor has succeeded in throwing off so much of the superincumbent Etna as to let the up

per world of thought and intelligence become vividly aware of his existence, and of the promise and the menace of his upward struggle.

There is need, then, of a new sociomoral intelligence to grasp the new complexities of the world in which we live. Who is my neighbor?' is a harder question now than it was in olden times: then a man dealt face to face with men he knew, and easily realized that his deeds fell on their heads as well as on his own. Nowadays employer and employee, buyer and seller, especially producer and consumer, are too often cut off from each other by a gulf of separation which leads naturally to mutual ignorance, indifference, and even to hatred. Long and devious are the channels through which the product of industry circulates in its way from the painful and often degrading labor of production, to the comfortable consumer, who at first perhaps does not know whence come his ease and luxury, and later, when wedded to his comforts, does not care; or at least cares too little to face squarely his relation to his far-off and unknown neighbor. Never before in human history has it been so true that no man liveth unto himself, but never has it been so easy to lose sight of the truth.

Besides the new demands made by the modern world upon social and moral intelligence, there are new strains upon the will itself. The very abundance and variety of the products of art and manufacture render the old fundamental ideal of self-control more difficult than ever. The senses are solicited by stimuli unknown to the ancients; and every part of our world is flooded with the products of all other parts through the unlimited reach of modern commerce. It almost seems that we live to-day on a sort of second level of barbarism; for just as the barbarian lives in bondage to the material world of nature, so we

tend to fall into the bondage of the material things of our own creation. Our thought and energies are usurped by providing, not for actual and legitimate needs, but for the kind of food and drink and raiment and dwellings which custom and fashion prescribe for us. Civilized man has failed signally to content himself with a simple material regimen, and has wasted upon the things that perish the energy which ought to have been devoted to the higher and truly human life.

II

The demands upon moral character, then, were never so great as now; what of the emphasis upon moral character in education? No one would be apt to deny that character is the aim of education. This axiom is still a part of our formal pedagogy, and by many is supposed to govern our practice; it is proclaimed at educational gatherings, and appears regularly in books and articles. But in the woof and warp of educational thought and teaching it has no such place as it had in previous ages. The pages of Plato and Aristotle, Comenius, Montaigne, Milton, which deal with education, are dominated by the moral element. One of the most striking passages in the Republic is the one which insists that the literature selected for the curriculum shall be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue'; the philosopher unhesitatingly rejects those passages, even of the sacred Homer and Hesiod, which fail to inculcate true principles.

Does any school or college of today choose its classics with this primary regard for the promotion of virtue? Montaigne would have history taught in such a way that the teacher imprint not so much in his scholar's mind the date of the ruin of Car

thage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as because he was unworthy of his devoir he died there.' Milton's Tractate is so noble throughout, that it is hard to make selections. His very definition of education magnifies the moral aim: 'I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.' His humanism never degenerates into mere linguistics, or literary æsthetics. In the classics, he says, the main skill and groundwork will be to temper the pupils with such lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as may lead and draw them into willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue, stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages.'

With Doctor Arnold of Rugby one ideal is always supreme, that of moral thoughtfulness and devotion to duty; all else is auxiliary and subordinate. The key to Horace Mann's self-abnegation in the cause of the schools was the belief that education is the only force that could elevate character; his labors, his public addresses, and his writings, are all inspired and penetrated with the moral aim.

When we come to current educational discussion we find a surprising change of emphasis. The reader who will make comparison between the earlier writers and the leading formal treatises on education of our own time, will agree that far less stress is laid upon the moral element. Fortunately, we have excellent and rather impersonal evidence of this fact in the form of a number of well-known reports which embody the collective thought and conclusions of leading educational thinkers of the day.

The Report of the Committee of Ten is probably the best known and most authoritative educational document in America. It originated in the National Education Association, and occupied the attention of a series of committees and conferences from 1891 to 1893, when the Report was published. The original committee included among its ten members, all eminent, three whom it cannot be invidious to mention, President Eliot, chairman; Dr. W. T. Harris, and President Angell. Nine sub-committees, or conferences, with ten members each, were appointed to deal with the branches of the secondary curriculum; thus the Report is the work directly of one hundred eminent teachers and experts, chosen to represent the parts and aspects of the secondary school. The Educational Review said editorially: 'No committee appointed in this country to deal with an educational subject has ever attracted so much attention as this one'; and later calls the work of the committee, 'the most systematic and important educational investigation ever undertaken in this country.' It may safely be said that there is not a high school in the United States to-day that is not affected by the Report of this great committee; its total influence is beyond estimate.

Yet one might read the Report from cover to cover and hardly be reminded that there is such a thing as moral education. True, there are, out of the two hundred and forty-nine pages, a few sentences which touch this theme, some directly, more indirectly; but these could be assembled easily on three or four pages, and the other two hundred and forty-five be left without a trace; moreover, what is more significant, the removal would not affect the original unity one whit, but would rather seem to be an elimination of extraneous matter.

Lest any one, under the influence of just those prevalent conceptions which this paper aims to set forth, should say that the absence of the moral element is normal and legitimate in view of the general aim and nature of the Report, let us quote from the Report itself to show that it does not ignore the final values in education. For example, we read, 'The secondary schools . . . do not exist for the purpose of preparing boys and girls for college. ... Their main function is to prepare for the duties of life.' One of the most interesting (and extraordinary) parts of the general report is that which deals directly with values of studies. Indeed, the proposed doctrine of values calls forth a vigorous minority report from one of the leading members of the committee; and this minority report contains the most direct and pointed of all the few fragments that bear on moral character: The training of observation, memory, expression, and (inductive) reasoning is a very important part of education, but is not all of education. The imagination, deductive reasoning, the rich possibilities of emotional life, the education of the will through ethical ideas and correct habit, all are to be considered in a scheme of learning. Ideals are to be added to the scientific method.' It is clear then, and will be increasingly clear as one reads the pages of the Report, that the value and influence of the studies discussed formed an integral and essential part of the Report, and that no part of that value could be considered as excluded, except, perhaps, by its insignificance and minuteness.

But some one may ask, Did not the majority of the conferences deal with subjects which have no influence upon character, as Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, German and French, Geography and Biology? The italics are the author's.

Well, in truth we are not much troubled over this question, so far as our argument is concerned, although somewhat grieved that it should have to be raised at all. We shall be glad if most of our readers say here that the writer has set up a straw man, and that no one would think of denying ethical value, at least to some of these studies. At all events, we are willing to waive the charge of the complete absence of the moral element from these parts of the reports for the present, asking only one question: What of a secondary curriculum in which the subject-matter of seven out of nine conferences has to be excused from an examination as to moral value?

But we still have two inalienable fields left: English and History. Here we are on very solid ground, for we do not need Milton to tell us that these subjects are the very soul of the ethical power of the school; and moreover, in both cases, the conferences state in no uncertain terms their own conception of the aims. In the case of English we cannot do better than quote: 'The main direct objects of the teaching of English in schools seem to be two: (1) to enable the pupil to understand the expressed thoughts of others, and to give expression to thoughts of his own; and (2) to cultivate a taste for reading, to give the pupil some acquaintance with good literature, and to furnish him with the means of extending that acquaintance. Incidentally, no doubt, a variety of other ends may be subserved by English study, but such subsidiary interests should never be allowed to encroach on the two main purposes just indicated.' No one who reads the conference report through will suspect the writers of any sins against their final injunction in the foregoing quotation; the anonymous incidental ends, including practically all the ideals most dear to the old Greeks