Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/167

Rh in the age of Pericles, that flowering time of the human spirit, there was but one language held worthy of study—the native tongue? To look too steadily upon the vehicle of thought and erect that into an end is to make no less grave a mistake than was made in the other partial ends that we have examined and rejected.

But it is un-Froebelian and unphilosophic to dwell too long upon the negative side of things. The materials of life are positive. I have had a purpose, however, in stopping so long among these negations. I have wanted to make it very clear that these ends are partial and fragmentary, and quite unworthy of those who seek the highest good. If one still believes that citizenship, or industrialism, or economics, or trade, or parenthood, or language, is a defensible end of education, it will be difficult to concentrate the interest upon a worthier image.

It is not idle to let one's imagination and one's love play about this image of the complete man, to picture him in all his beauty of body, of intellect, and of heart, for it is only by thus entertaining this conception and making it thoroughly our own that we shall ever have it prevail, and ever have the educational process conform to this as its ideal product.

It is perhaps convenient for purposes of study to consider man in the threefold aspect of body, intellect, and heart. But the division is not true to Nature, and if it blinds us to the essential unity of man, it is an expensive convenience that we had much better do without. The common conception of his nature is dualistic. He is body and spirit, or he is body and soul. This conception, which from an educational point of view, is certainly unfortunate, is founded upon the current dualistic philosophy, which discerns a universe made of mind and matter. Even more particularly is it founded upon that theological dualism which makes the spirit and the body the most unhappy of partners, forever at warfare, and each defeating the other's best interests. It is a philosophy whose logical extreme is asceticism, and would land us all, like poor Simon Stylites, on top of a pillar of useless renunciation. It would lead us to miserably dwarf our natures instead of gloriously expanding them. This bloodless philosophy is deeply instilled into us all, for it has been a part of our creed for many generations back. Even now, I find myself and probably many of you do the same—when taken unawares, deciding that the disagreeable thing must be the right thing, and simply because it is disagreeable. The Jonathan Edwards in those of us who have inherited both the riches and the poverty of the New England blood is very apt to speak out and commit us to many such immoralities.

This dualistic philosophy is the very opposite of the philosophy