of emulation in the classroom. Locke, for instance, considers emulation “the great secret” of education, and Lessing describes the "thirst for honor and the craving for the novel” as the “motives that urge man to arrive through his own thinking

at truth.” 1

But the Herbartians have rightly drawn attention to the fact that the fostering of ambition deteriorates the work of the school. Make emulation the chief motive in education, and the pupils will never conceive a direct interest in their studies, and the disinterested devotion to a subject will either not be learned or will be unlearned. The external is thus made of chief moment instead of the internal, the work accomplished will receive more consideration than the will and intention. The individual will be measured, not by his own standard, but by the standard established by the work of others; he who is quick and clever, will be considered superior to him who is, indeed, more efficient, but slower in his work or less dexterous in the use of a given opportunity; the successful pupil will be filled with pride and conceit, while the pupil who failed will grow jealous or discouraged--perhaps for life. There can be no doubt that the teacher must individualize in order to bring out the individual powers and to develop the faculties of the different minds; and he must individualize, if ever, in evaluating the work and progress of his pupils. The objective standard (least of all, if established by the work of a fellow-pupil) will not suffice, but must be complemented by the subjective and moral standard: the teacher must examine how much progress in the moral and intellectual development of the individual any work accomplished represents. It is here especially that the teacher must stress high aims and moral purposes. The emulation of the pupils must be divested of its odious element of egoism. They must be guided, as Plato says, not by the hard, iron rule of cupidity, but by the holy, golden law of moral insight. The teacher must impress upon their minds St. Paul's conception of honor: “Let everyone prove his own work, and so he shall have glory in himself only, and not in another.”2

* Locke, Some Thoughts on Education, $ 56 ff.; Lessing, Literaturbriefe, 11. 2 Gal., VI, 4.

CHAPTER VII.

The Socio-Ethical Principle.

1. The instinctive impulse for.mental work, the longing for inner formation, the tendency to acquire practical skill-all these are legitimate motives of education so long as they do not check, but further, moral growth. But neither the theory nor the practice of education may be satisfied with the individual-personal form which morality takes in the concept of virtue. Morality must certainly be the centre in man, but man is not the centre of morality. It is not enough to cultivate the seeds of the good found in our own hearts: we must strive to receive in our inner nature the pure and full effects of both the good and the treasures possessed by the moral communities. There is still an element of egoism in the efforts made by the individual mind to develop its powers; and the self-sufficient wise man, the æsthete and the self-satisfied just man are all actually cultivating but a refined and sublimated kind of virtuosity, which is far removed from the whole virtus. To overcome this selfishness, we must do more than obey the impulses of our better self; we must place ourselves whole and entire at the service of a higher and super-personal order; i. e., we must raise the individual-ethical conception to the socio-ethical and transcendental view.

To moralize the socio-egoistic tendency we must examine it on its own grounds. Its watchwords are: practical aims, the needs of life and the professions, social rank and position. But these watchwords can not be judged aright- and therefore can not be corrected from the viewpoint of individual ethics. To attempt to correct them from this viewpoint would but bring out more strongly the opposition between school and life, between general education and vocational training, between humanism and realism, and would ultimately lead us too far afield and away from present-day educational conditions. Though the individualistic aims may contend that instruction should develop a broad humanity in every man, should assist in the harmonious development of all his faculties, and lay a moral foundation for a many-sided mental life, still these claims do not disprove that the interests of society at large, its system of labor, and

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the production and exchange of goods must likewise be taken into consideration. The socio-ethical principle, however, does not interfere with these interests, with this labor and these goods; but it rightly insists that there are also higher than purely material interests at stake, that our daily needs are not our only needs, but that we have also a higher task of providing for the common welfare of the nation and the race, and that there is besides the production and distribution of material goods also a production, transmission, and distribution of intellectual treasures. The schools should, indeed, serve the interests of life; but life must be conceived broadly enough to include the intellectual treasures of the nation and the race, for these constitute the permanent and ideal elements of life. The schools should take cognizance of the realities also; but the real must not be confined to what is perceptible to the touch: all that is effective is real, and hence the factors of the national and racial consciousness are also realities. Consequently, the educative process should pass from the sphere of abstract humanity into the service of concrete human society. A school which would aim only at the harmonious formation of the mind, at stimulating the mental powers, etc., “would turn out such colorless and soulless graduates as would require a rigorous training in the school of life before they would be fit to take up their life work. Such a school would spread broadcast over the world blank leaves of a book on which life would first have to write a legible and intellegible text.”! It is only proper that the school write the initial letters of this text; still, life should allow that some of these initial letters be illuminated, for though this illumination does not make the text more legible nor more intelligible, it shows the reverence with which the writer regards the book and its contents.

2. The socio-egoistic conception regards vocation as the position occupied by the individual in his struggle for existence; and to fit oneself for holding this position and for using it to the best possible advantage, is its view of the aim of education. But the higher, ideal view of education, as expressed in Humanism and allied movements, must reject this narrow conception, and justly demands that the head and the heart be developed in keeping with the high dignity and capability of man. However,

even this view fails to rectify the narrow conception of vocation, which it regards as diametrically opposed to its own principle. This is one of the evil effects of the ancients' scorn of all service and of their jealousy of the dignity of the free man. But the socio-ethical conception corrects the mistake that is the ground of the quarrel: the vocation-originally a religious conception, the kiñois, vocatio (I Cor. VII, 20), the calling of the individual to fill his appointed place in the whole-implies no opposition at all to truly human activities, but is their social basis. The vocation implies more than the round of one's daily duties: it implies the circle of the duties and activities of one's whole life. “To educate a man for his vocation is, not to train him for a certain kind of work, but to enable him to seek vital relations (Lebensbeziehungen) in his own sphere, to seize such as are within his reach, to hold fast to them when once established, and to devote himself to them all.”! To connect what is specific in one's vocation with the generic, to spiritualize, or, if one may use the term, to humanize the material work of one's vocationthis is the test of real education. Hence it is not wholesome for the cultural pursuits to be confined to one's leisure and to constitute a special circle of thought, while the vocational work is the burden of long working hours. The two spheres should rather be organically combined: the cultural pursuits should be co-ordinated with the vocational duties, and the latter should be lightened by the former. There is no harm in a man's culture being colored by his vocation so long as his vocational work savors of culture.?

3. The socio-ethical principle is, from the viewpoint of the individual, super-personal and transcendental, and, consequently, leads to a still higher plane, to the infinite and eternal. This viewpoint of the infinite and eternal is essential to a complete and final evaluation of the educational aims. We must examine education, not only in its bearing on human life and endeavor, but also in its highest and broadest relationship, i. e., that relationship which faith, the complement of science, establishes between all existing things.

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Scheibert, 1. c., p. 11.

As difficult as it is to ascertain the media of intercommunion between mind and morality,' so difficult is it to analyze psychologically the interrelation between man's longing for the transcendental and the supernatural, on the one hand, and his attachment to the sensuous and the finite, on the other. All ideals are inspired, either consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, by the striving for the transcendental and the supernatural. The moral striving, the search after truth, the impulse to produce and create--all these are attended, if not by the clear conviction, then at least by the subconscious perception, that they are directed upon something that has not been wrought by man, and that must remain a riddle, unless faith discloses its proper place in an eternal order of things. It is true that an exclusive attention to the supernatural may produce those hard and rigid forms of intellectual life that characterize priestly culture and education. But it is not true that breaking the bonds that connect man with the supernatural, promotes the cause of education. On the contrary, infidelity is, even under the most favorable external circumstances, intellectually sterile. “All periods in which faith, in whatever form, reigns supreme, are splendid; they elevate the heart, and are fruitful for contemporaries and posterity. But all those periods in which infidelity, in whatever form, holds the day-though such periods may for a short time gleam with a borrowed lightare ignored by posterity, because no one will trouble himself with something that is barren of results.”? It can not be said that temple precincts and monastery gardens have been remarkable for exuberant culture. Yet these holy places have been the nursing ground whence sprang such fruits as contained seeds of strong germinating power; and these fruits nourish the period that rejoice in a wealth of the choicest Аowers.

4. Scripture says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and the fear of the Lord is likewise the final point at which the inquiry into the intellectual values arrives. In the light of this text we can best determine the true value, whether absolute or relative, of the different educational motives. In the light of this text the socio-ethical motives are strengthened and deepened, because the moral communities are regarded as divinely established institutions, and the duties towards them ap

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