Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/418

410 ; but the worst of it is that its forms are so various, its manifestations are sometimes so delicate, and it often lies so near to the real and the true, that is it difficult to distinguish it. Life hurries past us very rapidly. The interests which demand our attention are very numerous and important. We have not time to scrutinize them all. Then, too, the publicity of everything nowadays prevents modest retirement from being a sign of merit. We go on the principle that if anything is good, it is for the public. Publicity is honorable and proper recognition, and those who have charge of the public trumpets have not time, if they have the ability, to discriminate and criticize very closely.

These reflections account sufficiently for the growth of sensationalism in general. Probably each one sees the mischief which it does in his own circle or profession more distinctly than elsewhere. I have certainly been struck by its influence on education. I see it in common-school education as well as in the universities. It attaches to methods as well as to subjects. It develops a dogmatism of its own. Men without education, or experience as teachers, often take up the pitiful rôle of another class which has come to be called "educators." They start off with a whim or two which they elaborate into theories of education. These they propound with great gravity in speech and writing, producing long discussions as to plans and methods. They are continually searching for a patent method of teaching, or a royal road to learning, when, in fact, the only way to learn is by the labor of the mind in observing, comparing, and generalizing, and any patent method which avoids this irksome labor produces sham results and fails of producing the mental power and discipline of which education consists.

Persons of this class are generally impatient until they have attained some opportunity of putting their notions