Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/76

64 Fortunately, our purpose has been already served by a few contrasting paragraphs admirably conceived and expressed:

I. "From the standpoint of humanism education has its own purpose in itself, viz., universal culture of man. According to philanthropism, education has not its purpose in itself, but only a relative purpose, viz., the training of man for a future avocation.

II. "From the point of view of humanism it is not, in education, 80 much matter of chief importance to collect knowledge as to discipline the spirit by it. From the point of view of philanthropism, the aim is to fill the mind with the largest possible amount of useful information.

III. "Humanism exercises the mind of the student not so much to make him apt for some appointed business—culture of the spirit is here an end in itself. With philanthropism culture is something aimless in so far as the spirit is not made more apt by it for some special business.

IV. "As respects the objects of education, humanism does not require many objects by which the youth is distracted and prevented from thorough acquisition. The pupil should be advanced by a few objects to the highest degree of knowledge.

"Philanthropism, on the other hand, in view of the daily increasing territory of what may be known, does not dare confine itself to holding the youth throughout his entire period of education to a few objects—much rather attention should be paid to rendering easy the circle of objects, that the child may be offered the greatest possible amount of knowledge.

V. "Humanism brings before the youth single departments of knowledge in the entire manifoldness of their separate objects, then teaches to arrange these objects with exact system, thereby to accustom the student to logical thinking, so that, when later he ventures upon outlying territories of knowledge, he will not fall into error. Philanthropism would broaden instruction, to cover as far as possible the entire field of knowledge, because he who has not a view of the whole must possess only half-way and distorted impressions concerning the separate departments of knowledge and their particular objects.

VI. "According to humanism, not things but ideas are best adapted to the exercise of the spirit, that the youth may not, during his future, active life lose himself in the region of bread-and-butter knowledge. Philanthropism demands for this very mental exercise not ideas (which strictly considered are only words), but things, and this in order that the mind, perpetually occupied with letters and words empty of content, may not lose itself in the region of mere word-knowledge, and become good for nothing in practical life."

These ideas of man and of his place in the world are fundamentally distinct. They can never be done away or disregarded, for they root themselves in the twofold nature of man. It is possible to be a