For the adult generation that now works (and for how many generations to come we do not know), we cannot hope to make ideal conditions. Work will still be work, with its evil implications, as toil without complete inner satisfaction, and without sufficiently free motives. But the direction in which practical changes should be made seems clear. There must still be a lessening of the hours of routine labor, until there are perhaps no longer more than six or five devoted to vocation. The remainder of life is not for idleness but must be in part productive or the lessened hours of routine will not be possible. There must be possibility of both practical and recreational activities outside the regular day's work, as well as for educational work, all of these in part at least publicly provided for. This activity may serve many purposes and accomplish a variety of results. As educational it ought to open up new opportunities; it must fulfill the desire for creative activity; it must be a socializing power; it must lead to an appreciation of the nature and value of skill and efficiency; it must introduce all to the higher world of art and the intellectual life. Above all it must impress deeply the truth that growth in the normal life is never ended.

The third phase of industrial education which is to be emphasized now is the teaching of what we have called thrift. This idea of thrift, for pedagogical purposes, is equivalent to the broad principle that purposes in this world are achieved by the expenditure of force—by the control of energies which are not unlimited in amount as now controlled and which are subject to definite laws. Since objects which are to be secured by the expenditure of energy differ in value it is a part of this education in thrift, indeed an important and necessary part, to give to all such knowledge and powers of appreciation as will enable them to recognize that which is essential, and to give the essential and the unessential their proper places in the whole economy of life.

It will never be right of course to inspire a parsimonious spirit in regard either to goods or to energies. Life itself and all its energies must be given freely; material goods must not be evaluated too minutely. The miserly life is not what we wish to teach. Still there is a wise attitude toward all material things and toward all values which recognizes goods as means to ends, which places true values high and demands economy in the use of all things that must be conserved in order to attain them.

It must be a part of the work of physiology, which thus branches out into psychology, to teach to all the efficient use of human energies. These energies are the precious things in the world; they must be valued and respected as the source of all efficiency. The idea of economy of movement, from this standpoint, has an important place in all motor or industrial or manual training. Processes must be regarded as definite series of acts in which we may approach perfection. Technique in motor operations is not to be regarded lightly as a mere finish applied to useful acts. It is the expression of an ideal of efficiency and economy. Children recognize the value of technique in games; its wider and more practical application needs to be impressed.

In the same way knowledge of the precise values and uses of material things ought to be imparted. The war has had the effect of showing all of us the values of materials and the relations of materials to one another. It has given us a sense of the great powers of natural wealth, and also of its limitations and the weak points that exist now in our economy. The war has proved to us how closely related the things we use lavishly and wastefully may be to the most ideal possessions. It has shown that the production, the distribution and the use of wealth of all kinds are parts of the accomplishment of the main purposes of life and that all these things belong to the sphere of duty; and that no individual can escape obligations in regard to economy.

Education, therefore, must lay foundations both for an understanding of economy and for the practice of it. First of all, every individual, we may assume, ought to have some experience in the production of the elementary forms of material goods, and in the conversion of them into higher values and in their conservation. We looked carefully to some of these activities as a war measure. It is hardly less necessary in times of peace. We should teach these things, not simply because the practice of them is educational, but because the practice of them is useful, and is a necessary service, on the part of every individual, to the world. Adding to the world's store of goods and consciousness of the need of doing this directly or indirectly should be regarded as a fundamental duty and habit. To establish both the habit and the sense of duty, we may suppose, a stage is necessary in which the individual's contribution shall be direct and tangible. Hence the value of those educational activities that deal with foods and their conservation.

On a little higher plane, and in a little different way we can apply the same thoughts to the whole cycle of material things. The distribution of wealth is of course in part a technical and a theoretical problem. It is also a practical and a general one. All at least ought to be judges of the waste that now goes on in the industrial life because the "middleman" has occupied such a place of vantage in the economic order. In teaching occupation and in all preparation for vocation ought we not to take this into consideration? Occupations that are purely distributive and which involve a great waste of human energies and of materials have been unduly emphasized, at least by default of more positive preparation, by the school. Because they are easy and untechnical and have a little elegance about them, in some cases, they fit in very well with the generality and bookishness and detachment from real life that the school sometimes represents.

The occupations that are more creative, both in the field of material things and of ideas, have, relatively speaking, been neglected. Inventiveness especially seems to be a quality that we have supposed to be a gift of the gods, and we have given but little attention to producing it, or even giving it an opportunity to display itself. Have we not gained from the war new impressions both about the powers of the human mind in producing new thoughts and in controlling both material and psychic forces, and also about the necessity for developing originality and independence? Is it too much to expect now that greater ingenuity be displayed in education itself to the end of producing more originality? This is a hackneyed request to make of the school, but it seems certain that we do not succeed in obtaining through our educational processes the highest possible degree of productiveness of mind, as regards either quantity or quality. It is because indeed we seem to be very far from our limit in these respects, and because better results might perhaps so easily be gained that it seems necessary to make this plea so often. More activity, more art, greater enrichment of the mind, ought to have the desired result, especially if the environment of the school could be so changed that its moods would be more joyous and intense. These changes are at any rate demanded for so many other reasons that if they fail to make the intellect more productive, they will not be completely a failure.

Education in the use of wealth must now be regarded as a part of moral education. In America we have ignored the necessity of thrift, and the idea of thrift has certainly had no part in education. The proper use of everything we produce or own is a fundamental part of conduct, and it ought to be a persistent theme in education. We have now the interest and incentive that have come from the war, we say, for we have felt, if only remotely, what poverty means, and we have seen that no amount of natural wealth and no degree of civilization can wholly insure us against famine and disaster. We need throughout our national life now, again, something like the old New England conscience in the uses of things, applied in a different way, of course, and now made more effectual by our broader science. The encouragement of this spirit will perhaps make the difference in the end between having a world seriously engaged in progressive tasks with its material forces well in hand, and a world which in all its practical affairs, large and small, is operated according to the principle or the lack of principle of a laissez faire attitude throughout life. Saving in a good cause, and with a clear conscience and determined purpose, is one of the elements of the higher life and is far removed from miserliness. It is a principle of adaptation of means to ends, and that any school which trains this power is reaching fundamental principles of the practical life needs hardly to be said.

The higher uses and appreciation of wealth which we are wont to call plain living and high thinking, the moral idea of philanthropy, the aesthetic values and hygienic implications of the right kind of simplicity must not be omitted from the educational idea of thrift. To impart something of the spirit of restraint and generosity, and to make the child feel what living simply, and with definite purpose, and making means serve one's real ends in life imply, to teach the joys of the higher uses of common things, is no mean achievement. But can we indeed do these things which after all have their main virtue in being general and social, and a part of a program? All we can say is that if we are to have a better order, and if we think education has any place in it, economy in its broadest sense, but economy also as applied to the details of daily life must also have a place in it. It is both fatuous and insincere to talk about good things to come, and not be willing to pay the price in labor and in sacrifice necessary to obtain them honestly. Especially when the price of these things is in itself no demand for the sacrificing of any real good, but quite to the contrary is a summons to a more joyous life, we should be glad to pay it.



CHAPTER IX

NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The social problems of education that have arisen because of our new world relations and new internal conditions in our own country are of course only special phases of social education as a whole, and social education cannot indeed be separated sharply from other educational questions. There are, however, new demands and new evidences, and new points of view from which we see social education (or better, education in its social aspects), in a somewhat new and different light, as compared with our ideas of the school in the days before the war. We have discussed some of these social problems. Now we must consider them both in their general significance, and also in their more specifically pedagogical aspects.

There appear to be two things that social education needs especially to do now: create and sustain a firmer unity at home—a wider and deeper loyalty on the part of the individual to all the causes and to all the groups to which he is attached; and to make our world-consciousness a more productive state of mind. It is perhaps because such educational proposals as these are generally left in the form of ideals and things hoped for in a distant future, and are not examined to see whether they may be made definite programs, and are legitimate demands to be made now, that we are likely to regard all suggestions of this nature as impracticable. And yet the production of morale at home and a social consciousness adequate for our new relations abroad seems to be a proper demand to make even upon the school. In part, of course, and perhaps largely, the need is first of all for practical relations, but we must consider educationally also the fundamental and creative factors of the psychic process itself which must in the end sustain the relations that we have established at such cost and shall now begin to elaborate as practical functions.

The greatest work of social education to-day is to infuse into all the social relations a new and more ardent spirit. It is the elevation of the social moods to a more productive level, we might say, that is wanted. AEsthetic elements, imagination, and the harmonizing of individual and social motives are needed. War has shown us the possibilities of exalted social moods; what we ought to do now is to consider how we may make our morale of peace equal in efficiency and in power to our war morale. This is in great part a problem of social education.

Every nation has its own especial social problems which must become educational problems, and be dealt with in some way according to the methods available in schools. In England the social questions seem to be more in mind and to be better understood than here. They are more conscious there of social disharmony and of living a socially divided life than we are. They have seen at close range the dangers of class interests and individual interests. Individualism, class distinction and party politics and the independence of labor came near proving the ruin of England. The Bishop of Oxford has expressed himself as believing that the blank stupid conservatism of his country, as he calls it, is really broken and that a new sense of service is actually dawning in all directions. Trotter says (and he too is thinking of England) that a very small amount of conscious and authoritative direction, a little sacrifice of privilege, a slight relaxation in the vast inhumanity of the social machine might at the right moment have made a profound effect in the national spirit. Generalizing, and now thinking of social phenomena in terms of the psychology of the herd, he says that the trouble in modern society is that capacity for individual reaction—that is for making different reactions to the same stimulus—has far outstripped the capacity for intercommunication. Society has grown in complexity and strength, but it has also grown in disorder.

Such disharmony of the social life of course exists also in America. We have not the sharp division of classes and interests and the demonstrative and protesting individualism that are to be found in England (our individual rights are taken more for granted perhaps) but for that very reason, it may well be, our disharmonies are all the more dangerous and difficult to overcome. The tension of the individual and the social will (using MacCurdy's expression) is great. We are highly individualistic in our mode of life, as is shown both in domestic and in public affairs. Specialization and an intense interest in occupations that bring individual distinction and large financial returns have certainly taken precedence over the more fundamental and common activities and interests.

It is these fundamental and common activities and interests and sympathies that ought to be the chief concern of social education, or perhaps we had better say that all our educational processes ought so to be socialized as to broaden sympathies and make activities common. Education must constantly strive to make the common background of our national life more firm and strong. More important to-day than any further education in the direction of specialization of life in America is the securing of a strong cohesion throughout society by means of common interests and moods. It is true that specialization carried out in some ideal way may provide just the conditions needed for the best social order, but this can be only in so far as individuals become specialized within the whole of society, so to speak, in which individuals continue to have a common life. Individuals as wholes must not be differentiated and left to find their own means of cooerdination and association, or be brought together artificially by law or convention. Specialization must be made the reverse side, as it were, of a social process in which at every point cooerdination is also provided for. At the present time, it is the latter rather than the former that is of most importance to us.

Social education in a democratic country must always be a matter of the greatest concern. In autocratic societies the cohesive force exists in traditions or can at any moment be generated executively. The autocratic country can be held together in spite of social antagonism. In a democracy this cannot be. We voluntarily accept some degree of incooerdination and confusion for the sake of our ideals of freedom. We do not wish cohesion based upon any form of pessimism or fear—fear of enemies without or of powers within. To secure unity in our own national life we must work for it incessantly, and we ought to be willing to, for unity means so much to us. It is not cohesion at any price that we want, but voluntary and natural union, and to secure that we should not hesitate to make our educational institutions broad enough to include the education of the most fundamental relations of the individual to society. We want neither a "healthy egoism" nor a morbid self-denying spirit that is only a step removed from slavery—neither instinctive independence nor an artificial and enforced social organization. We must not be deceived either by a vague and false idea of liberty or by the equally vicious ideal of militarism with its superficiality of social relations and its pedagogical simplicity. Both these ideas represent social life on a low plane. Healthy individualism, even with its strong sense of tolerance and comradeship and its respect for law and order, is not the kind of social ideal that we should now cultivate, for it is too primitive a state to fit into our already complex social life, or to be a basis for the firm solidarity we need for the future. As for militarism, it may become a mere shell, giving the appearance of social unity when its bonds are mere shreds and the last drop of moral vitality has gone out of it.

Our need and problem are plain enough. We wish to develop social cohesion and unity upon a natural and permanent basis of social feeling expressed in, and in turn produced by, social organization, voluntarily entered into for practical and for ideal purposes. Such solidarity can neither be made nor unmade by external forces. We must form and sustain it by creating internal bonds. We live, in any great society, always over smoldering fires, however highly civilized the society, and we are always threatened with the eruption of volcanic forces. It is fatuous to ignore this, and to make a fool's paradise of our democracy. Our problem is to produce such a social life as shall keep us safe through all dangers—dangers from enemies without, and within, and underneath. A democracy, or indeed any society after all and at its best, contains the makings of the crowd and the mob. Organized as it is, it is always an order made of material units which may enter into disorder. Society is based upon social consciousness, upon the consciousness of kind, but it also has collective force. The crowd and the collective force are always contained in society. However far human nature is removed from its primitive form, the social order is always fragile. Mental operations that are not intelligent and are not emotional in the ordinary sense, but which consist, so to speak, of common factors among primitive feelings, may gain and for a time hold the ascendancy. Eruptions in the social consciousness are of the nature of morbid phenomena, and are rare and exceptional expressions of the collective life, but we are never free entirely from the menace of them. Social order, we say, is always fragile. We must not overlook that fact. It is this characteristic of the social life, the potentiality of mob spirit and the forces of primitive anger and fear, that lead some writers to think, wrongly we believe, that this is the psychological basis of wars in general. War comes out of the order of society. The higher ecstatic states and the ideals of man enter into them. These things we speak of are of the nature of disorder, or are only the order of pure momentum. But whatever the truth may be about the relation of instinct to war and however remote the dangers to ourselves from the forces which in society make for disorder, it is the work of social education to control, transform and utilize all social and collective forces, the primitive emotions and instincts, the moods of intoxication and all the higher ecstasies of the social life, and it is only, we suppose, by thus consciously and with premeditation controlling these forces that in any real sense we can "make democracy safe for the world."

It is the idea of society cooerdinated by intelligence and by common interests and moods that we must always hold before us. Trotter says that civilization has never brought a well-cooerdinated society, and that a gregarious unit consciously directed would be a new type of biological organism. If this be so, the time seems peculiarly ripe to make advance toward this better social solidarity. Both the promise and the need seem greatest in the great English speaking countries now. There is waiting, we may truly think, a larger sphere of life for all democratic countries. If it be conscious direction alone that can bring about the change, education has a long and a hard task before it, to make the democratic peoples capable of such conscious direction. This must come in part by the development of the idea of leadership, and by the production of all the conditions that make leadership possible. In part it must come by the clear perception of definite tasks to be performed by nations and by all organizations within nations—tasks which have all grown out of the relations existing within society. In part it means cultivating intelligent appreciation of social values, and developing in every possible way all the social powers.

What we appear to need most in our social education just now is a conception of what the individual is and what the social life is in terms of the desires and the functions they embody. These are the raw materials with which we work. We should then treat all our social problems in a somewhat different way from that in which they are mainly dealt with now. We should try especially to make harmony in society not by maneuvering so that we might have peace and good feeling for their own sakes, but by coordinating the functions which are expressed in the life of the individual and in all social relations. That is precisely what is not being done now, in our present stage of society, either in the life of the individual, or in the wider life of society. People live without deep continuity in their lives, and we are not conscious enough of the ideal relationships individuals should have with one another, in order to make the social life productive. In a word we do not sufficiently take account of the purposes to be achieved, but are too conscious of states of feeling. We do not yet appear to see all the possibilities contained in the social life, what voluntary unions are necessary, and what kind of community life must be developed before we can have a really democratic order.

We must not be content, certainly, with a merely superficial and external solidarity or the purely practical gregariousness of the shops or the artificial forms of the conventional social life. Society must more and more accomplish results by the social life. Coordination in the performance of a few obvious functions, and enthusiasm for a few partisan causes, will not be enough. Nor will such order as militarism represents suffice. Is it not plain, indeed, that democracy must rest upon deeper and far more complex cooerdinations than we have now, and that social feelings or moods must be made more creative? It is the desire to accomplish ends through social organization, rather than the desire to possess and enjoy, that must be made to dominate it. To effect such changes in the social life must be in great part the work of education.

Social education in our present time and conditions might very well be considered in terms of the antinomies which exist in society. These antinomies represent the obstacles to national unity. They stand for inhibitions which are expressed in feelings that are wholly unproductive. Each one of them is a measure of so much waste, so much failure and lack of momentum, so much disorder and disorganization. A program of social education, we say, might be based upon a consideration of these antinomies. It would consider mainly how the waste and obstruction of these conflicting purposes of the social life might be overcome by giving desires more harmonious and more positive direction. A complete account of social education from this standpoint would need to take notice of many disharmonies now very evident in our life as a nation. Among them would be found sectional antagonisms, party opposition, frictions of social classes and industrial classes, religious differences, disharmony between the sexes, racial antipathies. Some of these we have already touched upon briefly. Some others seem to require further mention in the present connection.

The lack of understanding and sympathy between lower and upper classes in society plays a larger part in democratic America than we are usually inclined to admit. There are divided interests, divergent mores, lack of unity and cooerdination in some of the most urgent duties because of the antagonism of classes and the lack of understanding, on the part of one, of the ways of another. Especially in civic life the unproductiveness of the situation is very apparent. What money and advantage on one side combined with willing hands on the other might do is left undone.

In part this antagonism of classes is merely the result of difference in manners. There are manners and forms that constitute a common bond among the members of a class everywhere. Ought we not to take advantage of this example and use the suggestion it offers for bridging over the differences that we complain of? We have seen during the war, also, how well common tasks can unite all classes. Does not our educational institution afford us opportunity to continue this advantage, and make common service lead more directly to understanding and appreciation, not for the sake of the sympathy alone, but because of all the practical consequences and the opportunities for the future that are thus opened up? We assume that social feeling may be created through social organization. Mabie says that America is distinguished by its capacities for forming helpful organizations. We must make the most of this habit, which presumably is derived from the neighborliness and comradeship of our original colonial life. We need many group causes, not artificially planned as trellises upon which to grow social feelings, but, first of all certainly, in order to accomplish those things that can be done effectively only socially.

The secret of harmony among classes is presumably not to allow any class to have vital interests which are exclusively its own, since to have an exclusive vital interest means of course to live defensively or to carry on offensive strategy. The chief interest of the great working class at the present time is plainly to secure a living, and it is the sense of isolation in this struggle which in part at least is the cause of many unfavorable conditions in our present social order. Ought not education to prepare the way for a different attitude in which all should become vitally interested in the economic problems of all? This does not mean an education directed toward enlarging the spirit of philanthropy; it means mainly organization to serve common purposes.

These social problems are very numerous. They are both national and local. Any city which will undertake to solve in its civic relations this problem of securing greater social unity in social causes will provide an object lesson which will be of the greatest value. It is in these local groups perhaps that some of the best experimental social work may be done. Here the educational and the political modes of attack can best be cooerdinated, results can be made most tangible, and the primitive and simple forms of solidarity most nearly realized. It is indeed by going back to these simpler forms of social life and seeking means of coordinating the group in fundamental activities that the greatest headway will be made in the solution of wider social problems.

Another of the disharmonies which social education must from now on undertake to control is the disharmony and the inequality of the sexes, not so much as this appears in the domestic life as in the broader relations of the social life. Brinton says that the ethnic psychologist has no sounder maxim than that uttered by Steinthal, that the position of women is the cardinal point of all social relations. Every one, of course, now recognizes the fact that the position of women is to-day in a transitional and experimental stage. Conflicting motives are at work, and on the part of neither sex do the highest motives seem to prevail, nor is there a full realization anywhere of the values that are at stake. Men are thinking of the question of the position of women too much from the standpoint of expediency, and are scrutinizing too closely the immediate future. Women perhaps are thinking too much just now of their rights. There is a decadent form of chivalry or at least a sexuality that perpetuates conventions and interests that on the whole seem to interfere with progress. Jealousy and in general the tense emotional relations between the sexes obscure larger issues. Thus misunderstanding or antagonism, or at least disharmony, prevails in relations in which there should be perfect harmony of ideals and purposes, and productive activities of the highest nature. The education of women, whether for the domestic life or for the life outside the home is plainly but a part of the educational problem. The sexes have different desires, and it is precisely the work of harmonizing these desires, and regulating and coordinating activities and functions, that is the most important part of social education in regard to the sexes.

It is not at all difficult to see what the basic need is. It is not so easy to find practical means of applying the remedy in the form of education, because the whole system of living of the sexes must in some way be affected. The generalized principle on the practical side seems clear. All classes or groups in society must learn to think and to act not in terms of and with reference to the desires of their class alone, but with regard to wider tasks and values that are not fully realized by the most natural and the conventional activities of the class. The question is not one of making a moral change—converting individuals or classes from a spirit of selfishness to that of altruism. What we need is an educational process and a social life in which the nature of the individual and of the class is revealed as social, as best represented and satisfied in situations in which both the individual and the wider social idea work together.

Practically, we should say, the problem of education of the sexes with reference to one another and to a wider social life consists first of all in actually educating them together not merely in juxtaposition but in relations of a practical character. The relations of the sexes have evidently been mainly domestic and emotional, or in cases where they are practical the position of women has been little better than servitude. Of social cooerdination there has been little. Education of the sexes through situations in which the special abilities of each sex are brought into action, doing for the wider social life what the natural and instinctive differentiation of activities has accomplished in its way for the domestic life seems to be the main principle now to be employed in the education of the sexes. Women must be made to see that the ideal of independence which is uppermost at the present time is only the mark of a transitional stage, and that cooerdination in which of course competition of various kinds cannot be entirely eliminated will be the final adjustment. We should have no fear of placing the sexes, in their educational situations, in positions where competition is necessary, since through competition fundamental desires may be brought to the surface and regulated. Provided we admit at all that a new social adjustment is needed between the sexes, we can hardly fail to see that it is primarily in a practical life lived together that both education for the new order will best be conducted and the new order itself realized.

The details of method of what we have called social education for democracy we can only suggest here and of course in a very imperfect and tentative way. All aspects of education and every department of the school are involved; and every available method employed in education must in some way be turned to the purpose of developing social relations. In a very general way we think of these specific processes of the school as methods of learning, methods of art, and methods of activity, although of course in reality there can be no such sharp separation of them as this might imply.

There must be some place in the school now for a subject which in a general way might be designated as social history. We must teach the whole story of the social life of our country in such a way as to reveal the motives of classes, parties, sections, and of all organizations, institutions and principles. Such teaching should have the effect of bringing to light the causes of the disharmonies of society, and it should also be a means of conveying the feelings and moods as well as the ideas that govern the conduct of all groups that make up our national life. We must teach sympathetically what the desires and intentions of all are, on the assumption that behind all conduct there are natural causes and essentially sound instincts. By showing the desires of groups in their relation to one another, their disharmony and their possible harmony, we indicate what society as a functioning whole may be, and we may say that it is the chief end to be gained by the intellectual treatment of the social life to make clear what the ideal of social unity for practical life is, and what the main obstacles are that now stand in the way of it. By this social history we do not mean, moreover, something abstruse and academic suited for the college alone. Wherever the social antagonism is experienced, at whatever age, there is the opportunity to begin to set the mind at work about it, and to prevent the formation of prejudice and resentment. These states of mind begin very early indeed, and they are hard to eradicate.

A very large part in the work of social education is played by methods of education that we may call aesthetic. This must mean not only the inclusion of the methods of art in presenting facts, but we must bring to bear all kinds of aesthetic influences upon the social life. Social life in which there is introduced the dramatic moment is one of the main objectives of all education. It is in the recreational life that some of the best conditions for the realization of social moods in dramatic or aesthetic form are obtained. In the recreational experience the social states must be made productive of social harmony, as they themselves tend to be. In these experiences the conflicting motives of the individual and society, and of individual with individual, and the opposing desires of the individual are harmonized by means of ideal experiences in which the desires are exploited. Since we here touch upon the whole theory of the aesthetic in its practical application, we cannot be very explicit and clear, but the main service of the aesthetic social life experienced typically in the form of recreational activities, ought to be plain. Recreation is a means of giving the common experience so much needed in democratic countries like our own—common feelings, common activities and interests. This store of common life, containing exalted social feelings, expressed in play and art—languages which all nationalities can understand—must constantly be increased. All institutions that control the leisure hours of the people must be made educational as means of raising the social life to a higher level and making it more harmonious and productive of common interests. It is indeed one of the functions of the recreational activities and institutions to create and sustain public morale.

In the recreational experiences under control of the school we have the opportunity to educate the deepest and most powerful of motives. Play and art we should suppose, therefore, ought to have a greater part and more serious recognition in the school. We cannot of course accomplish much merely by crowding more arts and plays and games into the curriculum. It is something larger and more transforming that is wanted. We need to make the school take a greater place in the life of the child; it must reach a deeper level of human nature, in which the motives of play and art lie, and there must be a broader exposure of all young life to those influences of the social life everywhere which contain our highest social ideals. The place of art and to some extent of play as the methods and the spirit of the school is to convey persuasively to the child this larger and better life in which we expect him to take part.

Neither erudition nor art nor both together can, of course, fulfill all the requirements for a social education suited to our present needs. It is presumably in the social life itself, in the form of a practical activity, that social education will in great part be gained. This educational social life, which is also practical, will, however, be one in which every opportunity is taken to show the social life in its historical perspective, and to make clear its purposes and meaning; and in which sympathetic moods and intense social states are realized by conducting this social life, so far as possible, so that it will be subjected to the influences of what we may call in a broad way art.



CHAPTER X

RELIGION AND EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR

The war, which has left no field of human interest untouched, has raised many questions about religion that must be dealt with in new ways—about its validity, its power, its future. The impression the whole experience of the war seems to convey is that religion has failed to be either a great creative force or a great restraining power, although to express this as a failure of religion may imply more than we have a right to expect of it. Religion did not cause the war, but it certainly did not prevent it. It had no power to make peace. Yet we see that now religion is needed more than ever, and that if the social life be not deeply infused with the religious spirit, and if we do not live as a world more in the religious spirit, something fundamental and necessary will be wanting which may be the most essential factor of progress and civilization. The war leaves us with the feeling, perhaps, that until now the world has had far too many religions and too little religion. There has been too much of creed and too little of deep and sustaining religious moods. Perhaps, as Russell says, we are to be convinced that religion has been too professional; there has been too much paid service, and too little voluntary service.

Such conclusions of course have in them all the reservation that personal reactions must have, but it is easy to believe that in the life of such a nation as our own, and indeed in the world, no practical unity will ever be permanently reached unless there be a firm basis in a common religious foundation. This we might say is made probable by the truth that religion is the most fundamental thing in life, and if there be no unity and common understanding in that sphere, there can be none in reality anywhere in life. Differences in creed mean little, except in so far as they conceal basic agreement and make artificial barriers; differences in the way of understanding and valuing the world mean everything. We want a common religious faith—common in the possession at least of the moods which make a harmonious social life possible, and of the spirit in which the world's work can, we may believe, alone be done.

Upon such grounds one might maintain that a very important part of the work of education everywhere is to teach now more natural religion, or rather perhaps that the school must be everywhere conducted to a greater extent in the spirit of religion. Then we might hope to see religion becoming actually a power in the social life, helping to transform the crude forces and purposes of the day into higher ones. With such a religious basis we might begin to see the working of God in history and in the world as a whole, and we should feel in the history of the world and in the world that is before us the presence of reality. Then we should have a common ground for the sympathy and understanding without which not even the most practical affairs can be conducted efficiently. That ideal in education, often expressed by the educator, which holds that the purpose of all teaching is to convey the meaning of the world to the child, to make the world live in epitome, so to speak, in the soul of every child, is religious and nothing else, and quite satisfies the demands of our present day.

If such a standpoint be the right one, certainly the ambition of any nation (or indeed of any group) to have a religion peculiar to itself and an outgrowth of its own culture is unfortunate, and indeed comes from the very essence of morbid nationalism. In such desires there is thinly veiled the hope that through religion the old claim of nations to the right to temporal supremacy may be vindicated. Lagarde, in about 1874, was probably the first to say that Germany must have a national religion, but during the war this hope has been expressed again and again—Germany must have a new religion, befitting a great independent people, and must no longer be dependent for its religion upon an old and inferior race. Whether this longing for a new religion has not been in reality a longing to be upheld again by the old pagan faith, which was a fitting cult for the nationalistic temper, with its ideal of force, may justly be asked. It is interesting to remember that in Japan also, in recent times, there has been a demand for a national religion that should unite all the creeds in one. That this idea of a national religion, as contrasted with an universal religion, is opposed to the spirit of Christianity is plain, and the claim that Germany has not been able to understand the key-note of Christianity, as it is revealed in humanity and justice, may therefore be said to have some foundation in truth.

Can we say that the work of education, in the religious life, is that of inculcating and extending Christianity? It might indeed so be interpreted, and with a liberal enough understanding of Christianity we should say that this is true. But after all, it is Christianity as the vehicle of certain fundamental religious moods and ideals that, from an educational point of view at least, is of the greatest concern. It is the optimistic mood, the ideal of justice and humanity, the recognition of the worth of the soul of the individual, the ideal of service—it is these qualities of Christianity rather than its specific doctrines that we must now emphasize in our wider social life, and such religion is natural religion, or philosophy or Christianity as we may choose to call it. Any experience, indeed, that fosters such moods and ideals has a place in religious education. Who can doubt that such religion must henceforth have a large place in the world? It will be the test in the end of the possibility of sincere internationalism. Unless we can have common religious moods we can have no universal morality that is founded upon secure feeling and principles, and unless we can include the whole world in our religion, we shall certainly not be able to include it in any sincere way in our politics.

No religion, finally, will be profound enough and have great enough power to be thus a support of a future world-consciousness unless it be a religion of feeling rather than primarily of ideas—a religion in fact capable of inspiring ecstatic moods. And this ecstasy of feeling can never in our modern world be a prevailing quality of the religious life unless religion be something that extends over all life and draws its power from all the energies and capacities of the psychic life. The religion of our new era, we may be sure, if it be in any real sense a religion of the world, will not be something apart from and above other experiences. It will be a secular religion and a democratic religion, a quality and spirit of life as a whole. Experience referred to what we believe is real and universal, and subjected sincerely to all the capacities and criteria of appreciation that we possess is religious experience. Religion, educationally considered, is a means of giving to life a sense of reality and of value. That spirit should pervade and inspire all we do in the work of education.



CHAPTER XI

HUMANISM

There has much been said during the war to the effect that the great struggle was essentially a conflict between the spirit of humanism and some principle or other which was conceived to be the opposite of humanism. Humanism is said to be opposed to rationalism, or to nationalism, or specialization, or paganism, or Germanism as a whole, humanism often being thought of as the spirit of Greek or Christian thought and philosophy.

There is truth, we should say, in these views. Humanism in a broad sense emerged from all the purposes of the war as the principle of the greater part of the world, as opposed to the idea of Germanism. This spirit of humanism, however, is no single motive or feeling. It is a complex mood, so to speak, and it is not to be regarded as strange that it has been felt and described in various ways, and that it is not yet clearly understood. Humanism appears to be most deeply felt as the appreciation of the common and fundamental things in human nature. It inclines toward the employment of feeling, or at least to subjective rather than to purely objective principles in the determination of fundamental values in life. Humanism includes an interest in personality, which is of course the most basic of the common possessions of man, and it is therefore interested in justice and in freedom. Humanism as thus an appreciation of fundamental values in life by feeling rather than by principle, belongs to the deeper currents of life, those that flow in the subconscious—it is close to instinct, to moods, and the religious and the aesthetic experiences.

The later German philosophy of life we might mention as a denial of much that humanism asserts. Here we see a doctrine of force, an ideal of life based upon the elevation of conscious will to its first principle. If we seek concrete contrasts to this anti-humanism we might mention our own national life, governed by an idea of free living, which has made possible the assimilation of many stocks, in a life in which common human nature is regarded as the supreme value. Extreme specialization, rational principles, objective standards are watchwords of the plan of life that is most opposed to humanism. In this life instincts and values determined by feelings are brought out into the clear light of consciousness and are there judged with reference to their fitness to serve ends determined by reason. It is all noon-day glare in this rational consciousness. Collectivism is based upon coercion and upon calculation of the value of order in serving practical purposes, themselves determined by a theory of society, instead of upon social feeling or upon a natural process of assimilation of the different and the individual into a common life. Specialization also, in this philosophy, is a result of calculation rather than of a belief in the value of the individual, and is gained by the sacrifice of those experiences which, if we hold to the humanistic ideal, we regard as essential to the life of the individual and to society. This calculus of values extends, of course, into the field of international life. Here too conduct is based upon estimation of effects, freedom is relative to and subordinate to economic values. A theory of the state takes precedence over all subjective ethical principles, and there must be a disavowal of all native sentiments and judgments as regards justice which issue from an appreciation of the worth of personality and other fundamental human values and possessions; and all common human sentiments which would stand in the way of carrying out the decisions of reason and state-theory or any political policy must of course also be denied.

This contrast, however inadequate our analysis of the spirit of humanism and its opposite may be, will at least show that the idea of justice, which in the humanistic ideal grows directly out of the appreciation of the value of personality is the central practical principle of humanism, and it is exactly as an opponent of the idea of justice on the ground of its alleged weakness, that the rationalistic or the nationalistic philosophy is best conceived.

It is upon this question of justice that we must take our stand for or against humanism. If we are humanists we believe in the rights of individuals, whether men or nations, to their own life and independence, which they are entitled to preserve through all forms of social processes. Justice means recognition of the right of individuals to perform all their functions as individuals, and humanism is precisely an appreciation of the values of the individual as such a functioning whole. If we are humanists we believe that this principle of justice, and this feeling of justice ought to be cultivated and made world-wide. This is the ideal of equal rights to all human values. Hence it is the mortal enemy of all philosophies of life which place any principle above that of justice and its moral implications, Whether in the narrower or the wider social life. This is humanism.

There are various ways of interpreting humanism as a practical philosophy or principle of education. Burnet says, perhaps not very completely expressing what he means, that the humanistic ideal of education, as contrasted with the merely formal, is that the pupils should above all be led to feel the meaning and worth of what they are studying. We should say that the meaning of humanism in education is that the child should understand and appreciate the meaning and worth of all human life. This requires that education should so be conducted that the child may learn to see—rather to feel and appreciate—the inner rather than the merely external nature of all life that is presented to him, and in which he participates. Not language, but thought; not history, but experience, is his field. Justice depends wholly upon an ability to come upon reality in the realm of human nature. This implies not only intellectual penetration, but a form of sympathy which consists of putting oneself as completely as possible into the life of that which is studied.

All this means, it is plain, a power in the educational process, a spirit and a mood in all education which we have not yet in any very large measure attained. What is required is indeed that children should live more intimately with reality, so to speak, and that we should not be satisfied when they have merely learned about it. We shall not be content, however, with an educational process which, in fulfilling these requirements for more life, becomes merely active. Life must also be dramatic and intense and abundant. All the mental processes—the feelings, the intellectual functions and not the will alone must participate in this active life.

We shall soon see, no doubt, and in fact we are beginning already to see a renewed interest in all the arguments for and against a humanistic as opposed to a scientific culture and curriculum for our schools. It is the humanistic side from which, it is likely, we shall now hear the most pleas, for the war has ended, they say, in victory for humanity and for humanism—hence for the humanities. It is the Christian and the Graeco-Roman civilization that has prevailed. Victorious France, whose culture is founded upon that of the Greek and the Roman, has vindicated the supreme value of that culture. On the other hand we hear that our present age has become an age of science. If science has been a factor in causing the war, science has also won it. If industrialism involved the world in disaster, the world will be saved by more and better work, more practical living, wider organization for the production of goods and of wealth. Therefore our curriculum must become more practical. We must have more of business and industry, more vocational training, more training that sharpens the intelligence.

There is a truth which cannot be overlooked in the claim of the humanists, but the acceptance of it as it stands as a philosophy of education is not without its serious dangers. What we may well apprehend is a reactionary philosophy of education, and of all culture. We begin to hear very strong pleas, for example, for a school in which language, literature, and perhaps history become the center. West[1] asks for a wider recognition of the humanities after the war. Moore[2] says that the war is a victory of the civilization finally established by the Romans on the basis of law, over the barbaric ideas of power. Seeing this he is led to plead for a closer union now between Latin and modern studies, binding civilization of to-day with the thought and feeling of old Rome. Butler[3] says that we are surely coming back to the classical languages and literature.

Such conclusions as these raise many questions and perhaps doubts and apprehension. The ideal they express of penetrating the heart of civilization and experiencing in the educational process the inner life rather than the outer form of life, must indeed appeal to all, and we should all as humanists agree that this ideal expresses what humanism means and is the center of a true philosophy of education—but whether this ideal can be realized by any school that clings to the old classical learning, even in spirit, is quite another matter. To-day, if ever, we need to go forward in education. Our spirit must be that of the searcher for new truth, and for a better life. The old will not satisfy us either as a model and ideal or as a method. No already accumulated culture material will be adequate for our new school.

Our schools of to-morrow, we should conclude, must still be inspired by the scientific spirit, but what we need is science humanised, and science in the service of moral principles. One may well ask whether it is not now the most opportune time to leave our classical learning behind, and try to find a more adequate culture in which to convey the spirit of our new humanism. If we have won a victory for humanity, as we think, and have kept alive the Christian spirit by means of a meager culture, we need not still cling to that culture if we can find something better. Even if modern Germany has misused science and brought it to reproach, we need not be prejudiced against science. We need more science but we need to bring science into closer relation to the whole of human life. We need more of all the psychological sciences as an aid to our appreciation of history as the story and a revelation of the meaning of spirit in the world—and it is this way rather than through language that we must undertake to know and to explain life. On the other hand, it is for the business of practical, social living that the material sciences should have most significance in education. There is no science, not even mathematics, that cannot be taught as a phase of the adventure of spirit in the world, and none that cannot in some way be made to aid spirit in finding and keeping its true course in the future. Such use of all culture is what we mean by humanism. The secret of the difference in the educational ideals of those whom we may call the old humanists and the new is that to one education means predominantly learning, and to the other it means mainly living. Living, for the child, means growing into the life of the world by participating in spirit and in body, according to the child's needs and capacities, in the activities of the world. To gain a consciousness of the meaning of those activities through a knowledge of their history and by an appreciation of their purpose is indeed the main purpose of learning.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Educational Review, February, 1919.]

[Footnote 2: Educational Review, February, 1919.]

[Footnote 3: Teachers College Record, January, 1919.]



CHAPTER XII

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION

Throughout this study we have again and again been led to consider the relations of the aesthetic experiences to the practical life. It is as the repository of deep desires and as the appreciation of values that the aesthetic may be most readily seen to be practical, but it performs other functions. As ecstatic experience it is the source of power in the conscious life, and it was indeed the belief in art as a means of attaining power that has given art its place in the world. The aesthetic experience is the form also in which desires are brought into relation to one another, harmonized and transformed, or transferred to new objects. So the aesthetic is the type of adaptation in the inner life.

We have asserted that all life, and certainly the educational process, must have its dramatic moments, since the dramatic experience, as ecstasy of the social life, is the expression of social feeling in its highest form. The aesthetic experience is the central point of experience, so to speak, at which social ideals impinge upon and influence and mold pure nature. Art is the form in which play, representing biological forces, is carried to a higher stage, and made a factor in conscious evolution. The aesthetic experience is a practical attitude in another way. It is by our aesthetic appreciation, more than we commonly understand, that we judge life as a totality, that we estimate the fitness of its parts to belong to the whole, and that indeed we guide life when we judge it not according to principles which so often are seen to be inadequate, but when we try to bring to bear our utmost of powers of appreciation and to find ultimate values.

Such a recognition of the relation of art or the aesthetic to life we see often expressed in the literature of the day. It is a sign of the times—of an effort to attain higher powers, to take more comprehensive views of life, and to gain deeper insight into it. It is a phase of the seriousness of purpose which the war has aroused in us. Dide speaks of a deep but obscure need that drives all human beings to put themselves in harmony with the universal, and says that this is the end and purpose of the aesthetic tendencies. This phase of the place of the aesthetic is seen and expressed in various ways. Some think of it as a significant change in the attitude of life which is to bring about an era of peace. Clutton-Brook, an English writer, says that unless we attain to some kind of beauty and art, we shall have no lasting peace. We shall never have freedom from war until we have a peace that is worth living. Some see in the humanistic spirit an essentially aesthetic principle. The fairness and justice of the French, the spirit of the English that expresses itself in their ideal of sportsmanship, some attribute to the aesthetic spirit.

All this is in keeping with our new experiences of life in all its dynamic expressions. It becomes easier for us to see the truth about the nature of the aesthetic and of all other powers of consciousness, since consciousness has revealed itself to us as itself so great a power. The aesthetic experience may no longer appear to be only a joy, something subjective, but, indeed, as a practical force in the world. The aesthetic is a feeling of power, but it is also an experience in which mental power is generated, and it must be employed to such an end. The aesthetic mood is a mood of happiness, but it is also a mood of persuasion, in which something is being done to the will, and in which desires are being turned continually toward new objects, and composite feelings are being formed which will direct the course of future experience. So art and the aesthetic experience are not things apart from life, but may even be thought of as the method and the quality of life in some of its most dynamic forms. They are not added to life as an ornament or a luxury, but are the spirit in which life is lived when it is indeed most productive.

When we make specific analyses of aesthetic experience we find represented in it all the deep motives and tendencies, of life. This gives us our clew to the practical application of the aesthetic in the business of life. All it contains, all the art and the play of the world must be put to work, although this is a conclusion that might readily be misunderstood. We do not expect to harness the powers of childhood to the world's tasks, or expect industry to become fine art, but we do expect art and play to be something more than passive and unproductive states. We expect them to sustain and to create the energies by which the world's work is to be carried on. We would utilize them to give more power to life at every point, and to make all activities of the practical life more free and creative. And was there ever a time when power was more greatly needed—in industry, in political life and in every phase of life both of the individual and of society?

But it is not only in creating and doing that the world needs art to-day, in the sense in which we mean to define it. An aroused world is called upon to feel to the depths of reality, and to draw from these depths new and more profound valuations. We stand at a point where many things in life must be tested and judged anew, where the danger of perverting and misjudging many things is great. It is by the powers of appreciation gained in dynamic states of consciousness, we may believe, rather than by discoveries and an accumulation of data that we shall be most certain of finding true values, and the way of extrication from our present grave doubts.

Can one hesitate to conclude, then, that in all our educational experiences, we must try not only to train these powers that we call aesthetic, but to give opportunity at every point for the exercise of them as selective functions, and as a means of creating and expressing power in the mental life?



CHAPTER XIII

MOODS AND EDUCATION: A REVIEW

In the philosophy of education it is with moods that in our view, we have most of all to deal. Man, we have a right to say, is a creature of feeling, not of instinct or of reason. It is not the instinct as a definite reaction to stimulus or as an inner necessity, nor emotion as a subjective response to this stimulus that is the driving force of conduct, but rather the more lasting and deeper and more complex states or processes that we can call by no other name than moods. Since it is in the moods that the most profound longing or tendency or desire is represented, we say that moods are the object of chief concern in a practical philosophy of life. These moods are the repositories, so to speak, of instinct, impulse, tendency, desire, and it is therefore by the control and education of moods that the individual in all his social and in all his personal aspects will be most fundamentally educable if he is educable at all.

It is as the seat of the will to power, we might say, that the moods which are the main sources of human energy are to be conceived. The craving for power, as a generalization of more primitive desires, comes to take the position of the main motive in life. The craving for power is a desire, as we see when we analyze it, that expresses itself as a longing for ecstatic or intense states of consciousness, and an abundant life. It is a craving to be possessed by strong desire and also for the satisfaction of many desires—often vicariously, since the objects desired may be confused and general. So this motive of power and the ecstatic states in which it is expressed or realized is no instinct and no pure emotion. It is an outgrowth and culmination of instincts, a fusion of them into a new product.

It would be going too far afield to try to summarize here the psychology of moods or of the motive of power in the individual and in society, but the main fact needed for the moment seems plain. In this motive and its expression in feeling and conduct there is a very general tendency which is the source of many forms of interest and enthusiasm, of ambition, of the spirit of war, of various kinds of excitement, and to some extent of morbid and criminal tendencies. The spirit of war we think of as a summation of the same forces as those which in other ways appear as the energies behind various enterprises having quite different objectives. War is an anachronism, we may believe, a wrong direction taken by the forces of the social life, an archaic expression now, let us say, of the will to power which might and ought to have different objectives. In the life and the mood of the great city we see a very varied expression of the motive of power. The city life is still a crude life. It satisfies deep desires, but in it desires for we know not what are aroused. It is indeed as the seat of eager, unsatisfied desire that the city is best of all characterized. These desires readily take shape in the city as the spirit of war and as a craving for excitement of various kinds.

These same forces re-directed or finding different objects and working under different conditions appear in moral, religious, or aesthetic forms. In these higher experiences and more progressive moments in history or in the life of the individual, the forces which at other levels emerge in different forms and in search of different objects we may think of as transformed, or given new direction; but to suppose them annihilated or suppressed is to misunderstand, according to our view, the whole process of the development of spirit. Life is not a process in which instincts are balanced, or in which good motives stand in sharp contrast to bad motives, or in which an original selfishness is opposed and gradually overcome by an altruistic motive. We think rather of very complex processes in which many desires, gathered into moods, find many forms of expression. There are prevailing moods—of war and of peace—and these moods are deep forces, containing both the desires and the sources of energy, so to speak, out of which our future will be made. The ecstatic states of the social life, the moods of war and the enthusiasm of the periods of rapid change are conditions in which energies and purposes are deeply stirred. These are the moods of intoxication, if we wish to describe them by pointing out one of their chief common characteristics. Peace is a reverie, we may say, in which the purposes and the results expressed and attained in the more dramatic moments are elaborated and fulfilled, and in which new impulse is gathered of which the dramatic moment is itself the expression. But throughout the whole course of history and through all the life of the individual, the same motives are at work. Life in its fundamental movements and motives, we should argue, is both simple and continuous. It is fragmentary and complex only on its surface.

The whole problem of the nature of education of course resolves itself, from this point of view, into the question whether progress is something inherent in nature, or is something controlled by man. Or if we cannot make so sharp a contrast between nature and will, shall we say that progress is in the main and in all essential ways one or the other? Does conscious effort, the having of ideals, exert any profound effect upon the history of spirit? Does it accelerate, give direction, provide energy? Is the course of history inevitable or is the making of it in our hands? We can see what, in a general way, so far as regards the transformation of the fundamental motives of life, the order of development has been—how the original and basic desires or instincts have become merged and confused in the more general desires and moods, how the motive of power has emerged, finding so varied expression as we see in the whole movement of art and play in the world, how out of these motives of art and play more controlled enthusiasms have arisen. But the part in this movement played by conscious direction does not thus far appear to have been great. A movement of and within consciousness it has been, and no mere biological or physical development, but when we speak of conscious will or any ideals controlling the course of spirit in essential ways, we find as yet only a beginning. And yet, this does not indicate that in the future conscious direction may not be even the greatest factor in evolution. It is difficult to see how we can know with certainty that we have such powers; but to refrain from acting as though we had is also difficult, and indeed impossible.

As a working hypothesis, at least, we seem to be allowed to assume that much will depend, in the future, upon the extent to which conscious factors are brought to bear upon the world's progress as a whole, upon the form in which the world-idea shapes itself, and the power which is put behind that world idea by the educational forces of the world. The world appears now to stand balanced at a critical moment, its future depending upon whether old ideals and primitive emotions shall prevail, or whether a new spirit which is perhaps after all but a sense of direction growing out of the old order shall become the dominating influences. Whether the consciousness of nations shall be creative and progressive seems to depend now upon the extent to which the whole life of feeling is influenced by ideas which, although they are products, as we say, of the primitive biological processes that underlie history, are also outside these processes, as definite purposes, desires, visions, ideals. At least we seem to depend now upon these superior influences for many things that we regard as good—for the rate at which we shall make progress, and for the certainty of making progress at all. Upon these conscious factors directing and shaping the plastic forces represented in the moods of our time, we shall assume, the course of history will depend.

We are no longer to be satisfied with natural progress. We have gone too far and too long, let us say, upon a rising tide of biological forces, and we have not yet realized what conscious evolution might mean. We have been too well satisfied with the physical resources and the psychic energies that seemed sufficient for the need of the day. A world in which democracy is going to prevail can no longer live in this way. It will not grow of itself in a state of nature. Its principle, on the other hand, forbids program-making after the manner of autocratic societies. Democracy, as the form in which the youthful and exuberant spirit of the world now makes ready for creating the next stage of civilization, will advance, we may suppose, neither by nature nor by force. It is the main work of our day to find for ourselves a new and better mode of shaping history, by bringing to bear upon all the social motives of the day the best and strongest influences. Our whole situation is from this point of view an educational problem. Probably there was never a greater need than that the democratic forces of the world now have great leadership. It is a practical world, a world of politics and of business, but it is also a world exceedingly sensitive to many influences, good and bad, a world in which, we may think, nothing great and permanent can be accomplished unless moral, religious and aesthetic influences prevail and give to our civilization its new dominant.

It will depend upon these conscious forces—upon our efforts to make progress and upon the clarity of our vision—it must depend upon these—whether in the future our great war shall be looked back upon as after all an upheaval of primitive forces and a debauch of instincts, or as the beginning of a new life. It is for us to create out of the war the foundation of a better order. We cannot go back to the old regime. Our enthusiasms will either be directed to better things, or the emotions aroused by the war will run riot and finally settle into habits on a low plane, and destroy, it may be, all that civilization has thus far gained. All things seem possible, in this critical time.

Stated in the broadest possible way, the educational problem of our times seems plain. We must lay hold upon and set to work for a higher civilization the motives and purposes that in the past have worked obstructively, and now destructively. A great work of our day is to understand these motives and forces that were the main factors in the cause of the war, and make them count for progress. That they are powerful forces we can have no doubt. They are not for that reason hard to direct, at least not necessarily so. We see that, whether in war or in peace, we need greater power in the social life. Life must be made to satisfy the longing for intensity and abundance of experience. But this abundant life that we now seek cannot be something merely subjective and emotional. To see this is indeed the crucial test. This subjective life cannot remain an ideal in a world determined to become democratic, to make progress, to be a practical and well-cooerdinated world. Abundant life must now be sought in the performance of functions which express themselves in practical aims and consequences. The prevailing mood and form of this life may still be dramatic, and indeed it must be dramatic. The possession of this quality is the test of its power.

Such views, of course, imply that our practical educational problem is something very different from that of finding an outlet for emotions. For example, to search for a substitute for war now is a superficial way of looking at the problem of the control and education of the social consciousness. We think of the motives that have caused the war, according to these older views, as bad instincts or evil emotions, as we are usually asked to think of the motives behind intemperance, and the habits of gambling and the like. By some form of katharsis we hope to drain off these emotions (unless we undertake merely to suppress them). This we say is a narrow view of the problem, merely because the motives that underlie the conduct we deplore are not bad instincts, or indeed instincts as such at all, but rather feelings or moods which are variable in their expression, complex, and educable. They have no definite object of which they are in search, so that we may think the only way to thwart them is to find some object closely resembling theirs which may surreptitiously be substituted for them. These motives are indeed broad and general. We must do with them what education must do all along the line, find the fundamental desires they contain and utilize the energies expressed in these desires in the performance of functions—these functions being the purposes most fundamentally at work in the social life or representing our social ideals.

Such an ideal of education invites us to work beneath the political and all formal, institutional and merely practical affairs and to lay our foundations in the depths of human nature. There we shall begin to establish or to lay hold upon continuity, and there bring together the fragments of purpose which we find in the life we seek to direct. This which one can so easily say in a sentence is, of course, the whole problem of education. These things are what we must work for in establishing and sustaining our democracy, for we must, to this end, make forces work together, instead of separately and antagonistically as they themselves tend to do. It is the same problem, at heart, in the education of the individual—to harmonize desires, and to create a higher synthesis of energies than nature itself will yield. And in the new and wider field of international life that opens up before us, the problem is still educational. The educational forces of the world must begin now the gigantic task of national character building. The spirit of the nations, the divergent motives of power, of glory, of comfort and pleasure-seeking that are said to dominate nations, the justice, and loyalty, and steadfastness and truth which at least they put upon their banners and into their songs must be made to work together in a practical and progressive world, or to make such a world possible.

The Germans like to interpret the tricolor of their flag as signifying Durch Nacht und Blut zur Licht. But plainly the night and bloodshed do not always lead to light, and of themselves they cannot. Nor, must we think, need the world continue always to seek its way toward light only through the blackness and guilt of wars and revolutions. In some distant day, let us think, justice and morality will have been bred into all the social life, and life will be lived more in the spirit of art and religion. Then they will see that, under the influence of these forces we call now educational, an old order will have given way to a new by imperceptible degrees, and it will be no longer through darkness and bloodshed that the world must make its way to light, but need only go through light to greater light.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following list contains the titles of a few books and articles that have contributed data or suggestions to this study. It is neither complete nor systematic. Numbers in the text refer to this list.

1. A.W. Small, General Sociology.

2. C. Andler, Frightfulness in Theory and Practice.

3. W.E. Walling, The Sociologists and the War.

4. H. Hauser, Germany's Commercial Grip of the World.

5. J.F. O'Ryan and W.D.A. Anderson, The Modern Army in Action.

6. R. Dunn, Five Fronts.

7. Mrs. Henry Hobhouse, I Appeal Unto Caesar.

8. F.H. Giddings, The Western Hemisphere in the World of To-morrow.

9. O.H. Kahn, Prussianized Germany.

10. C. Mitchell, Evolution, and the War.

11. A. Wehrmann, Deutsche Aufsaetze Ueber den Weltkrieg, etc.

12. J.P. Bang, Hurrah and Hallelujah.

13. E. Boutroux, Philosophy and the War.

14. M.A. Morrison, Sidelights on Germany.

15. R. Lehmann, Was Ist Deutsch? (In Vom kommenden Frieden.)

16. Durkheim, Germany Over All.

17. H. Bergson, The Meaning of the War.

18. J. Burnet, Higher Education and the War.

19. C.L. Drawbridge, The War and Religious Ideals.

20. M. Dide, Les Emotions et la Guerre.

21. D.G. Brinton, The Basis of Social Relations.

22. Ernesta R. Bullitt, An Uncensored Diary from the Central Empires.

23. Hundert Briefe Aus dem Felde.

24. Mrs. Denis O'Sullivan, Harry Butters "An American Citizen."

25. W. Irwin, Men, Women and War.

26. G. Roethe, Von Deutscher Art and Kultur.

27. J.W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany.

28. W.R. Roberts, Patriotic Poetry: Greek and English.

29. Schmitz, Das Wirkliche Deutschland.

30. Redier, Comrades in Courage.

31. Igglesden, Out There.

32. Madame Lucy Hoesch-Ernst, Patriotismus und Patriotitis.

33. W.E. Ritter, War, Science and Civilization.

34. Hobhouse, The World in Conflict.

35. G.S. Fullerton, Germany of To-day.

36. A. Pinchot, War and the King Trust.

37. J.T. MacCurdy, The Psychology of War.

38. E.L. Fox, Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany.

39. J. Chapman, Deutschland Ueber Alles.

40. G. Blondel, Les Embarras de l'Allemagne.

41. P. Bigelow, The German Emperor and His Eastern Neighbors.

42. G. Le Bon, The Psychology of the Great War.

43. T.A. Cook, Kultur and Catastrophe.

44. Cheradame, The German Plot Unmasked.

45. J.B. Booth, The Gentle Cultured German.

46. J. Claes, The German Mole.

47. T.F.A. Smith, The Soul of Germany.

48. W.N. Willis, What Germany Wants.

49. Hintze, The Meaning of the War. (Modern Germany.)

50. Zitelmann, The War and International Law. (Modern Germany.)

51. Schmoller, Origin and Nature of German Institutions. (Modern Germany.)

52. Hintze, Germany and the World Powers. (Modern Germany.)

53. F. Meinecke, Kultur Policy of Power and Militarism. (Modern Germany.)

54. O.G. Villard, Germany Embattled.

55. E.J. Dillon, Ourselves and Germany.

56. R. MacFall, Germany at Bay.

57. C. Tower, Changing Germany.

58. W.R. Thayer, Germany vs. Civilization.

59. Lamprecht, What Is History?

60. B.T. Curtin, The Land of Deepening Shadows.

61. P. Bigelow, Prussian Memories.

62. E. Troeltsch, The Spirit of German Kultur. (Modern Germany.)

63. A. Guilland, Modern Germany and Her Historians.

64. T.F.A. Smith, What Germany Thinks.

65. Von Buelow, Imperial Germany.

66. J.A. Cramb, Germany and England.

67. G. Bourdon, The German Enigma.

68. P. Collier, Germany and Germans.

69. H.B. Swope, Inside the German Empire.

70. Sumner, Folkways.

71. J. Novicow, Les Luttes Entre Societes Humaines en Leur Phases Successives.

72. H. Gibson, A Journal from Our Legation in Belgium.

73. A.M. Pooley, Japan at the Cross-Roads.

74. F.J. Adkins, The War.

75. H.E. Powers, The Things Men Fight For.

76. J. M'Cabe, The Soul of Europe.

77. Scheler, Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg.

78. S. Freud, Reflections on War and Death.

79. Nicolai, Die Biologie des Krieges.

80. P. Gibbs, The Soul of the War.

81. T. Roosevelt, America and the World War.

82. W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.

83. J. Novicow, Der Krieg und Seine Angeblichen Wohltaten.

84. G.R.S. Taylor, The Psychology of the Great War.

85. W. Wundt, Die Nationen und Ihre Philosophie.

86. Nusbaum, Der Krieg im Lichte der Biologie.

87. Edith Wharton, Fighting France.

88. Crile, A Mechanistic View of War and Peace.

89. Eleanor M. Sidgwick, The Morality of Strife in Relation to the War. (The International Crisis.)

90. G. Murray, Herd Instinct and the War. (The International Crisis.)

91. Bosanquet, Patriotism in the Perfect State. (The International Crisis.)

92. A.G. Bradley, International Morality. (The International Crisis.)

93. L.P. Jacks, The Changing Mind of a Nation at War. (The International Crisis.)

94. G.F. Stout, War and Hatred. (The International Crisis.)

95. E. Mach, What Germany Wants.

96. F. Peil, Der Weltkrieg.

97. T. Veblen, The Nature of Peace.

98. Hirschfeld, Kriegsbiologisches.

99. H.A. Gibbons, The New Map of Europe.

100. F.C. Howe, Why War?



INDEX

AEsthetic, elements in war, 70-77; in education, 230, 315-318

Aggressive instinct, 40-45

American life, 248; mores, 221

Anger, 14

Autocracy and democracy, 104

Bergson, 36, 101, 110

Biological principles, 3 ff.

Bourdon, 90, 129

Boutroux, 55, 101, 236

Boy Scouts, 198

British Labor Party, 273

Burnet, 311

Cannibalism, 13-14

Causes in war, 97-109

Chapman, 52

Christianity, 307

City, moods, 188, 278; school, 190

Civics, 264

Claes, 129

Cleveland, 260

Cobden, 137

Collier, 90

Colonies, 129

Combat, instinct of, 53-58

Conscientious objectors, 200

Consciousness of kind, 8

Cramb, 75, 256

Creative activity, 283

Darwin, 111

Death, 71

Democracy, 232, 253 ff.; spirit of, 185-191

Dickinson, 261

Dide, 52

Dillon, 102, 272

Display, 74

Dominant, 35

Drawbridge, 102

Duelling, 93

Durkheim, 115

Economic factors, 128-141

Economy, 275

Ecstasy, 23, 64

Educational problems, 161-167

Empire, 148

England, 123, 244

Fear, 14, 41

Ferrero, 52

Feudalism, 35

Finance, 134

French, The, 24, 55, 244

Freudians, 20

Future, The, viii

Germany, 34, 43, 50, 55, 89, 98, 106, 115, 124, 126, 198, 239, 245

Gibbs, 54

Government, 242 ff.; functions of, 251

Hatred, 46-52

Herd, The, 4, 10, 18, 57, 62

Heroes, 234

Hintze, 99

Hirschfeld, 23

Historical causes in war, 149

History, teaching of, 173, 266

Hobhouse, 101

Hobson, 260

Hocking, 167

Home-love, 81, 216

Homogeneity of species, 60

Howe, 135, 136

Hullquist, 137

Humanism, 309, 314

Humanities, 312

Industrialism, 33, 134, 220

Industry, and education, 269-289; the higher, 184

Instincts, 4-5, 28, 38-69

Institutional factors in war, 125

International law, 192

Internationalism, 168-196

Intoxication motive, 31

James, 266

Japanese, 90, 119

Jones, 21

Justice, 205, 311

Lamprecht, 34

Land hunger, 131

Leadership, 84, 142, 176

Le Bon, 3, 18, 102, 111, 119, 129, 135, 244

Lehmann, 237

Loyalty, 228; to leaders, 231

M'Cabe, 9

MacCurdy, 48, 56, 58, 201

Mach, 135

Marot, 284

Militarism, 197 ff.

Military training, 208-210

Mitchell, 9

Moods, in education, 319

Moral influences in war, 117-127

Murray, 18

Mysticism, 120

Napoleon, 113

National, character study, 224; desires, 175; honor, 88-96

Nationalism, 79-96; and internationalism, 105

Nicolai, 3, 19, 56, 70, 78, 129, 217

Nietzsche, 110

Novicow, 19, 137

Noyes, 271

Nusbaum, 45

Nutritional motive, 38

Objectives, 140, 143

O'Ryan and Anderson, 45

Ostwald, 98

Pacifists, 200

Patriotism, 79-96, 211-241; elements of, 80, 215

Patten, 115

Peace, 197 ff.; ideals of, vi, 205

Pessimism, 43

Pfister, 45

Philosophical, attitude, 194; influences in war, 110-116

Political, education, 242-268; factors, 142-152; ideals, 235

Power, motive of, 29, 130

Powers, 130

Practical interests, 180-183

Praise of war, 199

Preparedness, 208-210

President of the United States, 102

Pressure of population, 129

Preventive wars, 44

Primitive tendencies, 38

Progress, v, 321

Property, 138

Prophets, viii-ix

Psycho-analysis, 179

Race patriotism, 226

Rationalism and humanism, 107

Recreational life, 303

Redier, 85

Religion and education, 305-308

Religious influences in war, 117-127

Reproductive motive, 38, 66, 73, 76

Reuter, Frau, 51

Reversion theories of war, 17-23

Russell, 17, 167, 246, 305

Savorgnan, 201

Scheler, 7, 47

Sciences, 314

Scientific movement, 112

Selection, 5 ff.

Sexes, 299

Smith, 51

Social, education, 282 ff. 290-304; feeling, 82; history, 301; instincts, 58; solidarity, 63

Socialism, 259

Specialization, 281

Stevens, 138

Sumner, 121, 132

Synthesis of causes, 153-157

Thayer, 56

Thrift, 285

Tower, 98

Tragedy, 71

Trotter, 9, 18, 58, 233, 291, 295

Unconscious motives, 17 ff.

Universal language, 193

Veblen, 46, 78, 137

Venezelos, 151

Von Buelow, 115

War, as dramatic story, 22; motives of, vii, 13, 15; moods, 25 ff., 70 ff.; origin of, 3 ff.

World, idea, 170; organization, 191

Wundt, 90

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- Typographical errors corrected in text: Page 53: cooperative replaced with cooeperative Page 230: cooperation replaced with cooeperation Page 252: artistocratic replaced with aristocratic Page 272: cooperation replaced with cooeperation The author's inconsistent spelling of 'aesthetic' (70) versus 'aesthetic' (39) has been retained. -

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