puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This idea they have differently followed and with various success. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.

There is one man of genius who has done much for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated; -I mean Emanuel Swedenborg. The most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt of course must have difficulty which no genius could surmount. But he saw and showed the connection between nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his shade-loving muse hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul material forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement, is the new importance given to the single person. Every thing that tends to insulate the individual, to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall

treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state, -tends to true union as well as greatness. "I learned," said the melancholy Pestalozzi, "that no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man." Help must come from the bosom alone. The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one lesson more than another which should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, some of them suicides. What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience, - patience; with the shades of all the

good and great for company; and for solace the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; - not to be reckoned one character; - not to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers and friends, please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 1

PHILANDER P. CLAXTON

A STUDY of the chapters of the portion of the report submitted herewith and of certain other chapters which were not ready in time to be included in this report shows that within the year there has been in this country an increase in tendency toward democracy in education, toward giving to every child of whatever condition a full and equal opportunity with all other children for that degree and kind of education, that quantity and quality of education, which will develop in the fullest measure its manhood or womanhood, its human qualities, prepare it for the duties and responsibilities of democratic citizenship, for participation in civic and social life, and for making an honest living, contributing its part to the Commonwealth, and serving humanity by some useful occupation, followed intelligently and skillfully with good-will and strong purpose. In a larger degree than ever before are we beginning to understand that, next to the right to live, this is the most important right of every child. If democracy has any valuable and ultimate meaning it is equality of opportunity. But there can be no equality of opportunity without equality of opportunity in education. If to any child this is denied and it is permitted to grow to manhood or womanhood without that education which prepares it for good living, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, and for making an honest living by some intelligent, useful occupation, then there is nothing

1 From the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education (1915), vol. I, p. xvi.

which individual or society can do, nothing which man or God can do, to make good the loss. More than ever before are we beginning to understand that material progress, social purity, civic righteousness, political stability and strength, and the possibilities of culture and the attainment of higher ideals, all depend on the right education of all the people. If any man or woman follows his or her trade or profession with less intelligence and skill than he or she might, the total amount of wealth produced is less than it might be. If any lack knowledge of fundamental principles of government and institutional life necessary for intelligent citizenship in our democracy, the civic and political life of city, State, and Nation is affected thereby. If the health, the culture, or the moral education of any has been neglected, all society and each of its members must suffer as a result. If any, through wrong education or the inculcation of false ideals, work at occupations for which they are not fitted or in which they may not serve themselves and society as well as they might in other ways, their own lives and the lives of us all are less full and satisfactory than they might otherwise be. We are bound up in the sheaf of life together, and our interests from the lowest to the highest and from the highest to the lowest are inextricably interwoven. Therefore the liberal use of public funds for the support of schools and other agencies of education is more and more clearly recognized as good business, and careful thinking and planning for the fullest and best education of all the children of all the people as the highest duty of citizenship.