rich and varied as the world itself, but the objects produced by artistic skill are particularly helpful in this respect. They are the products of intellectual activity and, like books, they embody and express thought. In stimulating the mind they also possess somewhat of the influence of what we hear and read. Painting, sculpture, and architecture are educative for young and old, the lettered and the unlettered. From the works of these arts the Greeks derived their sense-so widely spread among them-for the beautiful in space. With the majority of early Christians, works of art took the place of the Scriptures. "What the book does for readers," says Gregory the Great, "that the picture does for the unlettered, for in the picture they can see what they are to do, and from the picture they read what they can not read from books.' The Church has, therefore, remained the art school of the common man, especially since she has called into her service, not only the painter and the sculptor, but also the musician, the orator, and the poet.

1

Popular art is an element of popular education that is often underestimated. "The peasants living in the mountains of Southern Germany," says Riehl, “are inferior in knowledge to their countrymen of the North, but they possess an artistic sense and technical skill of which the Northerners have nothing. The painting of saints' pictures in the Bavarian and Tyrolese villages, the deft carvings in wood, the soulful songs that resound from field and wood, the straw-plaiting and watchmaking of the Black Forest-it all is educational activity. It is one of the most serious of modern mistakes to evaluate popular education according to the percentage of encyclopedia articles that the common man has in his head."2

Poetry and music ennoble, inspire, and refresh the mind. They are combined in the folk song and in church music. As long as the drama was true to its original purpose (as in antiquity and in the Middle Ages) of assisting at public worship, it was an agency of culture and uplift; and ever since it fell from its former high estate, the noblest of the race have been bending their efforts to restore it to its former place of teacher and educator of the people. The influence of the arts will be the more potent, the more closely they are correlated with the interests

1 Greg. M., Ep. IX, 9: "Quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis præstat pictura cernentibus, quia in ipsa etiam ignorantes vident, quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt, qui litteras nesciunt."

2 Riehl, Land und Leute, 5th ed., 1861, p. 213.

of life: buildings and monuments mean more to the masses than museums and art galleries; and concerts mean less to them than the music performed on an occasion when their feelings are aroused. Yet there must needs be higher works of art, even if they convey little to the man on the street, for they serve the purpose of advancing and furthering the arts, and this advancement will in turn react favorably upon general education.

3. After the works of art, it is the thousand and one products of industry which belong to our cultural apparatus, and which, if carefully examined, will prove of educational value. They are one and all, like the works of art, products of thought, and can consequently again elicit thought. But the very commonness of these articles renders them mute, because we do not find time to question them, and few of us are conscious that our environment abounds in things that required long and weary hours to invent and make. "Even in the sciences we rarely find a full and satisfactory account of the thought-development involved in the making of a thing, and the world of thought represented by our environment lies in unmethodical confusion. Much thought is concealed in all the thousands of things and objects in whose company we grow from childhood into manhood and old age; and, like overrich heirs, we receive them without any labor on our part. The dust of the commonplace settles on these wonders, and it is only when we are in the proper mood and when our curiosity has been aroused that we begin to unearth the treasures that are apparently so insignificant.

After the daily use has worn the novelty off the things we use and see day by day, we should strive to observe them in a new light, for instance, in a foreign country, as this will invariably bring out points hitherto overlooked. This factor is one of the special advantages of travelling, for in foreign countries we rarely meet anything altogether new, but we see the familiar in a new light and, being thus encouraged to compare our own with the new forms, we acquire a more definite knowledge of that with which familiar use had already acquainted us.

2

The educational advantages of travelling have been recog nized from time immemorial. Ulysses "visited the cities of

1 Bernstein, Naturkräfte und Geisteswelten, 1876. In his essay, An Everyday Conversation, the author enlarges upon the watch, the weekly market, and the mail service, in connection with the following conversation: "How late is it?" "A quarter to eight." "Then I shall go to market." "Will you please take along this letter and drop it into the mail box?"

2 Supra, ch. XXVII, 2.

many nations to become acquainted with their ways of thinking. Herodotus was eager for knowledge and "inquired everywhere about what had been done in the early days. The ancients made a practice of travelling for the twofold purpose of seeing the world and of studying under celebrated teachers. Isocrates gave this sound advice: "Let not the length of the journey discourage thee, when there is a question of receiving useful instruction, for it were assuredly a disgrace to have the merchants brave the high seas for the sake of material wealth, while our youths would not undertake even a journey by land for the sake of gaining intellectual culture." The Romans had to seek the higher learning in Athens, Rhodes, and Alexandria, and were thus obliged to make study trips.

Religious shrines and the universities were the objective points of most travelling in the Middle Ages. At this time travelling was also made a conditio sine qua non-the Wanderjahre for attaining recognized standing in a mechanical or technical art. Travelling as education, however, received most attention in the Renaissance, when so many books appeared on educational travelling as to form a special department in literature.'

But travelling in the interests of science is a peculiar feature of our time, for we demand' more in this respect than any previous age. The geographer, the archeologist, and, if possible, the historian must-such is the general opinion to-day-visit the countries of which they intend to write. Indeed, to visit the sites where history has been made, can not but prove advantageous to a man of culture. We have elsewhere remarked that travelling is a helpful factor in the training of teachers.2

The method adopted in teaching geography affects the benefits to be derived from travelling; and if home geography is properly distinguished from general geography, then the knowledge gained from travelling will assimilate more readily with the knowledge of home conditions."

4. Both our home and the world at large are sources of education because of the wealth of man-made objects which they present to our eye and mind. But the fact that our home and the world at large include nature is another reason for their being sources of education. Nature offers many opportunities

1 Cf. Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, s. v. Travelling as Education. Supra, ch. XLIX, 4.

2

3 Ch. XXXVII, 2.

1

for informal education, and Comenius truly says, "For our instruction has God filled the great theatre of the natural world with the living characters of His wisdom. Still we can not persuade ourselves to follow those educationists who blindly accept the views of Francis Bacon and speak of the living book of nature in contrast to the dead books of the past, as though the former were the only "school of realities, of things." Let the mind, on the contrary, withhold the interpretation, and the teachings of nature are unintelligible. The sense of nature or the feeling for nature is the fine flower, but not the root, of education and culture. The highest beauties of nature remain unperceived without the intermediary influence of art, and it is the function of philosophy and Faith to trace the wisdom of nature's workings. Thus nature is a source of education only with the aid of many and various agencies. This, however, does not mean that the pupil or teacher may ignore nature. We have before this stated that the health of the soul demands that the sensuous present occasionally take the place of living in the past—the latter is the common result of study and reading and that the soul be refreshed and stimulated by communing with nature."

5. Informal education has, if compared with regular and formal education, the advantage of being more free in its movement, more elastic, and more independent of outside influences. Its motive forces are not habit and duty, but spontaneous interest, eagerness for knowledge, and the desire innate in man to develop and perfect his faculties. However, in the case of the average man, possessing only moderate talents, the spontaneous and inborn interests will not stimulate him to any special exertions. But in the case of the very gifted pupil, these interests may be strong enough to inaugurate the process of self-development. The history of self-made men demonstrates that the truly gifted can blaze their own path to success without being driven along the highway of the school. Their course of mental development might at first blush seem to be truly organic, since it springs from the germ of individuality, which, growing both intensively and extensively, assimilates all homogeneous materials. Still, their mental development will hardly

1 Did. magn., 19, 27.

Supra, ch. XXVIII, 1.

3 Aristotle praises, in his Rhetoric (I, 7, 33), the spontaneity and originality, Tò auToqués, of the self-made man, and recalls the words of Phemios (Odyss., 22, 347): αὐτοδίδακτός εἰμι, Θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας παντοίας ἐνέθηκεν.

be called ideal, when one realizes the faults-both moral (as conceit and self-opinionatedness) and intellectual (as one-sidedness of intellectual growth and great gaps in certain departments of knowledge)—which generally enter into the composition of such men as reached the goal of knowledge by other than the common avenues of the schools.1

It is a pleasure to note the power and energy displayed by these men, who scale the rungs of the ladder by dint of their own unaided efforts, prompted and sustained solely by the force of their own strong individuality. Yet, precisely because unaided, these men are handicapped and can never expect to reap the full benefits accessible to those who are so fortunate as to enjoy the complete and regular course of the schools. The educational results of the self-made man reveal strikingly the weakness of the individualistic tendency, which is prominent throughout their entire course of mental development. Nor is this defect counterbalanced by the organic development, especially since the latter is not restricted to their course of training. The regular education of the schools, if orientated according to the needs and end of man and if so adapted to the individual as to develop his faculties, will also affect the germ of his individuality and operate with his inmost powers.

CHAPTER LX.

Varieties of Education and of Schools.

1. The various agencies and sources of education are used. by individuals in very different ways in keeping with the different aims that one can pursue in the educative process. We have, in chapters I.-VII., treated of these educational aims and ideals, but have not yet traced the various combinations that the different aims admit of. The educative process will differ according to whatsoever combination is made of the various aims. However, the ethico-religious ends should be included in every combination of educational aims. But if we join these ethico-religious ends with the intellectual-æsthetical aims, the kind of education that results is entirely different from the one that is inspired by a combination of the same ethico-religious

1 "The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities," says Disraeli (Literary Character, ch. VI.).