Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/658

638 as traitors. Yet, it is only by heeding the warnings from these sober-minded men, in whatever station of life we may find them, that we shall be able to choose the right road to follow. Do we wish to show the monarchies of Europe that they were wrong in charging us with base and selfish motives? Do we really wish to show the world that in this republic individual character—that which Herbert Spencer told us, sixteen years ago, is the first essential in fitting men for free institutions—is not wanting; that the average American citizen "has a sufficiently quick sense of his own claims, and at the same time, as a necessary consequence, a sufficiently quick sense of the claims of others"? If we do, let us heed the voice of those who bid us beware of the false glamour of military glory. In the history of every young nation, as well as of the individual, there is always sure to come a time when its destiny is to be decided forever; when success in choosing the right means further growth toward a higher and fuller life, and failure means nothing but eventual decay. At such a time this nation has now arrived—



N looking at the actual and possible results of manual training, I come to one of the most attractive aspects of my subject. I find these results, in the main, to be very favorable, but I should be unwilling to use this as an argument for manual training unless it could be shown at the same time that there was an organic relation between these results and the underlying principles. Many of our current social and economic fallacies owe their too long life to just such an appeal to results. The underlying philosophy of manual training might be quite false, and its methods quite unpsychological, and yet the entire scheme in the hands of devoted men and women might be so far modified and colored as to give admirable results. And I am the less willing to use this argument because I should not admit the propriety of its application in the case of unfavorable results. Could the actual results of manual training be shown to be poor, or at least indifferent, I should conclude that it had missed its mark, and had been badly carried out, and not that manual training itself was a poor scheme. It would be quite possible for manual training to be a perfectly sound scheme of education, and the one best