wide rim. To make the drawing let a horizontal axis represent the number of individuals born in the same year, the number of the boys being placed on the right side and the number of the girls on the left, and let the years be marked on a vertical axis drawn from the horizontal axis. It is easy to illustrate with this figure the social aspect of the different kinds of education. The years of the elementary school period are indicated by a horizontal line, from which only the percentage of children receiving no elementary schooling is taken away, while the percentage of those who receive their elementary instruction at home should also be indicated. The zone that represents the years before puberty, must show how many have during this period passed to higher schools. The next higher zone, which covers the first years after puberty, is to indicate how many are during this period following different walks in life. By far the majority will be seen to take up in active life the struggle for existence; they enjoy no further training or schooling; a goodly number turn apprentices, but only a small number stay in the middle schools: high school, college, and girls' academy. Each year a certain number leave these schools, and only a small percentage complete their course. At the time of graduation from the secondary schools there is again a parting of the ways: some students enter upon the practical duties of life, while others. go to the university to prepare for their respective professions. It would not be difficult to secure the approximate numerical data for this diagram; but to obtain the exact data, it would be necessary to collect the statistics from the present social viewpoint. The subject is assuredly interesting enough to warrant any such efforts.

3. It is certain that education and culture must assist in the reconstruction of the social body by assimilating the new generation, and it is no less certain that a friend of the race and of the young will not rest content with this function: he will seek to have our young people not merely as good as their parents, but better; he hopes that human society will not be merely preserved in its present state, but that it will be raised to a higher plane. And it is just because of this hope that the educational reformer and the utopian dreamer will run counter to existing conditions. The paths of the history of education are strewn with the wrecks of their wild tilts, and these should warn us against underestimating the treasures of education and culture, which are given into our keeping, and which are too valuable to be exposed to

foolish attacks. But the dreams, fantastic though they may have been, of erratic reformers were founded on that which, if rightly understood, is the proper attitude and one that can well be harmonized with the reverence with which the inheritance of the past is to be received. F. A. Wolf says: "The education that would meet only the needs of the age, will be inferior to that age. Education and culture should assist in making the world better, and they will the more certainly succeed in this the greater is the reverence with which they receive in trust the enduring intellectual treasures of the race and the more they labor to educe the beneficent powers inherent in them. It is especially the structure of society (which comprises all the unions that produce the world's goods and treasures, material and intellectual) that can be improved and perhaps even built up anew by rightly organizing the transmission of the intellectual inheritance.

Plato regarded the system of education as a lever with which Attic society, which was hastening to its ruin, might be saved; and he justly declared that all educational endeavors should be focussed on a point which, lying beyond the changing and passing elements of time and earth, constitutes the μέγιστον μάθημα, the supreme teaching content. It is the duty of each man, says Plato, to do his share of the common duty, in order to prove himself a worthy member of the whole organism, whose soul is justice, and the conviction of this duty should be based on the supreme teaching content. The great philosopher has here pointed the way that we must follow in seeking to ascertain how the education of the young can be made a wall of defence against the forces that are blasting at the foundations of our social order.

The modern conception differs from Plato's in that the modern educationists are chiefly inquiring how the school can best fit its pupils for successful careers in the different callings. But starting even from their views, we shall eventually recognize the need for higher and ideal aims. To be proficient in one's calling is, indeed, one of the conditions for contented social activity, but it is not the sole condition: the youth must be taught to be moderate in his aims and desires, and he will never be so unless he be brought to understand and appreciate the value of the immaterial treasures. The striving for material goods is necessarily more or less egoistic in tendency and if the mind.

1 Vol. I, Introduction, II, 2; III, 2; supra, ch. IV, 2 and 3; ch. XX, 5. 2 Ch. XXXV, 1.

dreams of no higher treasures, a mad hunt after the world's goods will be the result, and the vocational skill will heighten, instead of allaying, the fever of the striving, and thus the ultimate end will be the breaking of social ties and war between labor and capital.

To correct these disastrous tendencies, we must give our young people ideals instead of teaching them the sordid striving for material goods. Yet if the ideal be still of the earth, it can not assure society of permanency. The spirit of national consciousness and patriotism, for instance, may temporarily check (by substituting other objects) the hunt after the goods of the earth earthly, but they are themselves not above suspicion and are not immune from growing sullied and corrupt. They will lead to pride and lust unless they be brought under the influence of religion. Hence the religious treasures must be prized reverently and transmitted unselfishly to the next generation, for they alone can heal the nations. Thus we arrive again at a péyoтov μálnμa, the unum necessarium. To oppose. effectively the forces that are undermining present-day society and to assist in rebuilding what has already fallen, education must be based on religion. It must transmit to the young with an almost religious reverence the educational and cultural treasures of the race. It must watch with jealous solicitude over the institutions of learning that have been handed down to us as a precious inheritance, and only upon these foundations may it undertake vocational training.

CHAPTER LXVI.

The Organism of the System of Education.

1. If the system of education is to be of any aid in reorganizing society, then it must itself be organic, and hence we shall now inquire into the conditions governing its organic formation. We have as yet found only the teaching system of the Church to be truly organic, that is, born solely of a principle. However, the teaching system of the Church is but a branch of the whole system of education, for the latter includes beside the teaching system of the Church the social and state institutions of education. Thus the whole appears at first sight as an aggregate of elements derived from various forces and added at different

times, the result, therefore, of historical accumulation and a product, not organic, but rather mechanical, in nature.

This is best seen in those countries where the State has refrained longest from controlling the schools, for instance, in England. In fact, one might really question the propriety of speaking of an English educational system, as the English schools represent only disjointed and unorganized material. Oxford and Cambridge abandoned the ancient Faith but retained their peculiar organization. However, beside them there exist universities of recent foundation with entirely different tendencies and characteristics. The middle schools also fall plainly into two groups: the Latin schools that date back to the 14th and 15th centuries and, in contrast to them, the Latin schools of later date which are modern in scope. Elementary instruction is imparted either in private schools, or in the poor schools founded and supported by various societies, or in private denominational schools; and it is only recently that the government has begun to standardize elementary education. Other European countries have, it is true, done more in the interest of standardizing and articulating the schools, but what has been done is still far from enough to secure a truly organic formation.

2. If the State fixes the legal relations between the different educational institutions, if it correlates and articulates them, if it founds institutions wherever needed-if it does all this, it will establish only a system; and this means formal progress only. If false principles govern this systematization, if for the sake of uniformity old and valuable institutions of learning must disappear, if the all-powerful State violates the rights of other authorities, then the condition of the English schools, though they constitute only an aggregate, is preferable by far to a systematization upon such false foundations. In England the vitalizing elements of education are at least not choked, as is the case in the false system.

But the mere aggregate of schools is far from ideal, as the schools should constitute with the other educational agencies one organism. The aim must be to bring about a compact union of all factors, each being recognized at its true value, especially with regard to its assisting in attaining the end of the whole educational system. The present problem is analogous to that of the organization of the content of education.' The latter problem dealt with correcting the defects of a curriculum

1 Supra, ch. XXXV, f.

which was but an aggregate of the various studies that were connected with each other only externally. To substitute for this mechanical juxtaposition something living, it was first necessary to concentrate the educational content, so as to correlate the whole course and all its parts with the ethico-religious end. It was furthermore necessary so to correlate the branches with one another as to constitute a continuum. And, lastly, it was necessary to grade the studies, so that it was possible by distinguishing the basic from the accessory to acquire successively the content of education. To establish the right relationship between the recipient and what was to be received, it was necessary to correlate the content of education with the pupil's mental horizon.1

Our present problem has something analogous to each of these phases. In the system of education there is also need, first, for correlating all its parts with its supreme end, so as to establish a continuity in education. There is need, secondly, for grading the schools, so that the basic institutions are the norm for the accessory. And, thirdly, there is need for correlating the system itself with the social body, so that the former may best supply the needs of the latter and in return receive from it the greatest possible assistance.

3. The religious element and, after it, the patriotic element represent the core of the educational content; and the representatives of these two elements, the Church and the State, must in the system of education claim an analogous precedence of all other factors. In view of the various religious denominations tolerated by the modern State it is plain, that the school must likewise be fair to them all, and consequently the religious character of the school must be brought out in denominational schools. The denominational character conflicts in no way with the character of State schools, for religion is the foundation of all State authority, and far from opposing the legitimate authority of the State, every denomination will recognize it and support it in all its just demands. A dispassionate study of the subject must reveal that an intimate relationship exists between the throne and the altar; and the battlecry of the anarchists: “No God, no master," has thrown a new, if lurid, light on this old

truth.

That the elementary school should be denominational, is based on historical grounds; and internal reasons support the 1 Supra, chapters XXXV-XXXVII, and ch. XLVI.