Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/165

Rh this same generosity and openness. We want to drink greedily of this cup of life. We want to press it upon others, for it is good. This is not alone the teaching of modern science. It is, as well, the song of modern verse.

Life in its fullness and totality means much. It means youth, manhood, and old age. It means one day and all days. It means the life of the body, that it shall be clean and sweet and wholesome; it means the life of the intellect, that it shall be keen, inquisitive, receptive, creative; it means the life of the emotions, that they shall be strong and deep and human.

These needs of the complete man, these needs of the body, of the mind, of the heart, must be recognized and gratified if life in its fullness and totality is to be realized. Human nature is many-sided, and in this consist its charm and its promise.!Not one of its many sides may be neglected. As Spencer puts it, "The performance of every function is in a sense a moral obligation" The social ideal which philosophy and ethics press upon us is not that of an economical community, but rather that of a community touched with the divine ungrudgingness, a community made up of men and women of large needs, large appetites, large hearts, large capacities for receiving and giving pleasure, and in addition equally large opportunities for gratifying to the full these many sides of an enriched human nature.

Do you realize that to-day nine tenths of our people, perhaps more, are leading starved lives, and the pity of it is that they don't even know that they are starved? It is the mission of social culture to arouse these benumbed spirits, to set them on fire with the vision of the complete life, to quicken the social conscience so that it shall not rest content until these, our brothers and sisters, shall have drunk to the full of the riches and glory of life. The social ideal of philosophy and ethics has little to do with the economic law of supply and demand, and much to do with the human law of need and fulfillment. To accomplish this end, to open to each soul the fullest life of which that soul is capable, is manifestly the social purpose of which education is the formal process.

In deciding upon the type man and woman we wish to have prevail, we assuredly stand at the parting of the ways. The more definite and concrete ends appeal to practical minds, because they seem the more attainable. But if, my friends, a careful analysis of life shows—and I am sure that it does show—that these ends are not the major ends, it is surely a poor victory to compass them and to leave the major ends unessayed.

We stand to-day in the midst of much educational activity. We see a great deal of dull, routine work, but we also see many new