Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/541

Rh no addition to his knowledge save the written and printed symbols, gets no increase to his vocabulary, and little facility in using it. For these slight gains he gives the freshest, best years of life, and exhausts in weariness of spirit the fountains of intellectual interest and enthusiasm.

In the experiment an effort was made to bring the child at once into contact with the real substance of education. It is this concentration of attention upon the subject-matter, not upon the method of teaching it; on the kind of ideas, not upon the symbols of ideas, that chiefly differentiates this experiment from ordinary primary work, and makes the use of the word experiment legitimate. The value of method is heartily conceded, but what shall be taught was thought to be of more importance. Is it not a law of Nature that new and valuable ideas only can arouse interest and lead to worthy thoughts? When such thoughts exercise the mind, do they not exclude the transient and trivial, lead to culture and right conduct, and so further the true end of existence—the perfectionment of the soul?

Do not the showy, the superficial, the transient, the seeming, rule the hour? Where do we find the heroic dignity that should inhere in man and woman? Few pursue truth and righteousness for their own sakes regardless of consequences; in few does the love of humanity overcome the shrinking from poverty and calumny. Are we becoming a nation of cowards and infidels, that we can fear nothing but material and intellectual discomforts in this one short life?

To awaken love for great literature, to arouse interest in local history, to develop a habit of observing Nature's phenomena—to do these before the mind has sunk itself in materialism and the love of sensual delights—to do these while the child is still so young that mind and heart are plastic and responsive, is indelibly to impress the idea that these are the legitimate objects of study whose pursuit leads, not to learning only, but to nobility of mind, and to real, satisfying pleasures. One can not know and love the great in the world's literature and not be ashamed of mean thoughts; one can not be a student of history without bringing to bear upon the affairs of our own time a greater intelligence than the majority of our politicians exhibit; one can not habitually observe Nature's phenomena without extending that habit to the highest and most interesting of her creatures—man; and one can not observe man, with any depth of insight, without being profoundly impressed, not alone by the miseries of the very poor and the never-ending drudgery of the laboring classes, but by the lack of unselfish zeal, heroism, dignity, truth, gentleness, generosity, and purity among the well-to-do; one can hardly view the course of Nature and history from remote ages to the present