Means and Ends of Education Part 4

Gladly I turn from them to you, young gentlemen, who have persevered in the pursuit of knowledge and virtue, and to-day are declared worthy to receive the highest honor Notre Dame can confer. The deepest and the best thing in us is faith in reason; for when we look closely, we perceive that faith in G.o.d, in the soul, in good, in freedom, in truth, is faith in reason. Individuals, nations, the whole race, wander in a maze of errors. The world of the senses is apparent and illusive, that of pure thought vague and shadowy. Science touches but the form and surface; speculation is swallowed in abysses and disperses itself; ignorance darkens, pa.s.sion blinds the mind; the truth of one age becomes the error of a succeeding; opinions change from continent to continent and from century to century. The more we learn, the less we know; and what we most of all desire to know eludes our grasp. But, nevertheless, our faith in reason is unshaken; and holding to this faith, we hold to G.o.d, to good, to freedom, and to truth.

Goodness is the radical principle; the good, the primal aim and final end of life; for the good is whatever is helpful to life. Hence what is true is good, what is useful is good, what is fair is good, what is right is good; and the true, the useful, the fair, and the right are intertwined and circle about man like a n.o.ble sisterhood, to waken him to life, and to urge him toward G.o.d, the supreme good, whose being is power, wisdom, love without limit. The degree of goodness in all things is measured by their approach to this absolute Being. Hence the greater our strength, wisdom, and love, the greater our good, the richer and more perfect our life. There is no soul which does not bow with delight and reverence before Beauty and Power; and when we come to true insight, we perceive that holiness is Beauty and goodness Power.

Genuine spiritual power is from G.o.d, and compels the whole mechanic world to acknowledge its absoluteness. The truths of religion and morality are of the essence of our life; they cannot be learned from another, but must be wrought into self-consciousness by our own thinking and doing,--by habitual meditation, and constant obedience to conscience. Virtue, knowledge, goodness, and greatness are their own reward: they are primarily and essentially ends, and only incidentally means. Hence those who strive for perfection with the view thereby to gain recognition, money, or place, do not really strive for perfection at all. They are also unwise; for virtue, knowledge, goodness, and greatness are not the surest means to such ends, and they can be acquired only with infinite pains. The highest human qualities cease to be the highest when they are made subordinate to the externalities of office and wealth. The one aim of a mind smitten with the love of excellence is to live consciously and lovingly with whatever is true or good or fair. And such a one cannot be disturbed whether by the general indifference of men or by their praise or blame. The standpoint of the soul is: What thou art, not what others think thee.

If thou art at one with thy true self, G.o.d and the eternal laws bear thee up and onward. The moral and the religious life interpenetrate each other. To sunder them is to enfeeble both. To weaken faith is to undermine character; to fail in conduct is to deprive faith of inspiration and vigor. Learn to live thy religion, and thou shalt have little need or desire to argue and dispute about it. Truth is mightier than its witnesses, religion greater than its saints and martyrs.

Learn to think, and thou shalt easily learn to live.

In the presence of the highest manifestations of thought and love, of truth and beauty, nothing perfect or divine is incredible. Men of genius, philosophers, poets, and saints, who by thinking and doing make this ethereal but most real world rise before us in concrete form and substance, are heavenly messengers and illuminators of the soul. Had none of them lived, how should we see and understand that man is G.o.dlike and that G.o.d is truth and love? We cannot make this high world plain by telling about it. It is not a land which may be described.

It is a state of soul which they alone comprehend who have been transformed by patient meditation and faithful striving. But once it is revealed, a thousand errors and obscurities fall away from us. If not educated, strive at least to be educable,--a believer in wisdom, and sensitive to all high influence, and eager to be quit of thy ignorance and hardness. As the dead cannot produce the live, so mechanical minds, however much they may be able to drill, train, and instruct, cannot educate. The secret of the mother's specific educational power lies in the fact that she is a spiritual not a mechanical force, loves and is loved by her pupils. The most enn.o.bling and the most thoroughly satisfying sentiment of which we are capable is love. Until we love we are strangers to ourselves. We are like beings asleep or lost to the knowledge of themselves and all things, till, awakening to the appeal of the pure light and the balmy air, they look upon what is not themselves; and, finding it fair and beautiful, learn in loving it to feel and know themselves.

Increase of the power to love is increase of life. But love needs guidance. We first awaken in the world of the senses, and are attracted by what we see and touch and taste. The aim of education is to help the soul to rise above this world, in which, if we remain, we are little better than brutes. Hence the teacher seeks in many ways to reveal to the young the fact that the perfect, the best, cannot be seen or touched, cannot be grasped even by the mind; but that it is, nevertheless, that which they should strive to make themselves capable of loving above all things. And thus he prepares them to understand what is meant by the love of truth and righteousness, by the love of G.o.d. In the training of animals even, patience and gentleness are more effective than violence. How, then, shall we hope by physical constraint and harsh methods to educate human beings, who are human precisely because they are capable of love and are swayed by rational motives? There is no soul so gross, so deeply buried in matter, but it shall from some point or other make a sally to show it still bears the impress of G.o.d's image. At such points the educator will keep watch, studying how he may make this single ray of light interfuse itself with his pupil's whole being.

It is not possible to know there is no G.o.d, no soul, no free will, no right or wrong; at the worst, it is only possible to doubt all this.

The universe is as inconceivable as G.o.d, and theories of matter as full of difficulties as theories of spirit. It is a question of belief or unbelief; ultimately a question of health or disease, of life or death.

They who have no faith in G.o.d can have little faith in the worth of life, which can be for them but an efflorescence of death, a sort of inexplicable malady of atoms dreaming they are conscious. If the age tends irresistibly to destroy belief in G.o.d, the end will be the ruin of belief in the good of life. In the mean while the doubt which weakens the springs of hope and love is not a symptom of health but of disease, pregnant with suffering and misery for all, but most of all for the young. He who is loved in a true and n.o.ble way is surrounded by an element of spiritual light in which his worth is revealed to him.

In perceiving what he is to another, he comes to understand what he is or may be in himself.

Our self respect even is largely due to the love we receive in childhood and youth. Enthusiasm springs from faith in G.o.d and in the soul, which begets in us a high and heroic belief in the divine good of life. It is thus an educational force of highest value. It calms and exalts the soul like the view of the starlit heavens and the everlasting mountains. It is, in every good and n.o.ble cause, a fountain head of endurance and perseverance. It bears us on with a sense of joy and vigor, such as is felt when, mounted on a high-mettled steed, we ride in the pleasant air of a spring morning, amid the beauties and grandeurs of nature. In the front of battle and in the presence of death it throws around the soul the light of immortal things. It gives us the plenitude of existence, the full and high enjoyment of living. On its wings the poet, the lover, the orator, the hero, and the saint are borne in rapture through worlds whose celestial glory and delightfulness cold and unmoved minds do not suspect. It is not a flame from the dry wood and withered gra.s.s, but a heat and glow from the abysmal depths of being. It makes us content to follow after truth and love in dark and narrow ways, as the miner, in central deeps where sunlight has never fallen, seeks his treasure. It keeps us fresh and young; and, like the warmer sun, reclothes the world day by day with new beauty. It teaches patience, the love of work without haste and without worry. It gives strength to hear and speak truth, and to walk in the sacred way of truth, as though we but idly strolled with pleasant friends amid fragrant flowers. It gives us deeper consciousness of our own liberty, faith in human perfectibility, which lies at the root of our n.o.blest efforts; to which the more we yield ourselves the more we feel that we are free. It knows a thousand words of truth and might, which it whispers in gentlest tones to rightly attuned ears: Since the universe is a harmony whose diapason is G.o.d, why should thy life strike a discordant note? Yield not to discouragement; thou art alive, and G.o.d is in His world. The combat and not the victory proclaims the hero. If thy success had been greater, thou hadst been less. The noisy partic.i.p.ants in great conflicts, of whatever kind, exercise less influence upon the outcome than choice spirits, who, turning aside from the thunder and smoke of battle, gain in lonely striving and meditation view of new truth by which the world is transformed.

We owe more to Columbus than to Isabella; to Descartes than to Louis XIV.; to Bacon than to Elizabeth; to Pestalozzi than to Napoleon; to Goethe than to Blucher; to Pasteur than to Bismarck. If thou wouldst be persuaded and convinced, persuade and convince thyself. Be thy aim not increase of happiness, but of knowledge, wisdom, power, and virtue; and thou shalt, without thinking of it, find thyself also happy.

Character is formed by effort, resistance, and patience. If necessity is the mother of invention, suffering is the mother of high moods and great thoughts. Poets have sung to ease their sorrow-burdened or love-tortured hearts; and the travail of souls yearning with ineffable pain for truth has led to the nearest view of G.o.d. Wisdom is the child of suffering, as beauty is the child of love. If a truth discourages thee, thou art not yet ripe for it; for thee it is not yet wholly true.

Work not like an ox at the plough, but like a setter afield; not because thou must, but because thou takest delight in thy task. Only they have come of age who have learned how to educate themselves.

Education, like life, works from within outward: the teacher loosens the soil and removes the obstacles to light and warmth and moisture; but growth comes of the activity of the soul itself.

A new century will not make new men; but if, in truth, it be a new century, it will be made so by the deeper thought and diviner love of men and women. Let the old tell what they have done, the young what they are doing, and fools what they intend to do.

The power to control attention, as a good rider holds his horse to the road and to his gait, is a result of education; and when it is acquired other things become easy.

Let not poverty or misfortune or insult or flattery or success, O seeker after truth and beauty! turn thee from thy divine task and purpose. Pardon every one except thyself, and put thy trust in G.o.d and in thyself. "If I buy thee," asked one of a Spartan captive, "and treat thee well, wilt thou be good?"--"I will," he replied, "if thou buy me or not; or if, having bought me, thou treat me ill."

If there be anything of worth in thee, it will make thee strong and contented; it is so good for thee to have it that thou canst easily forget it is unrecognized by others.

If all sufferings, sorrows, and disappointments had been left out of thy life, wouldst thou be more or less than thou art? Less worthy, doubtless, and less wise. In these evils, then, there is something good. If thou couldst but bear this always in mind, thou shouldst be better able to suffer pain, whether of body or soul. There are things thou hast greatly desired which, had they been given thee, would make thee wretched. The wiser thou growest, the better shalt thou understand how little we know what is for the best.

"Had I but lived!" cried Obermann. And a woman of genius replied: "Be consoled, O Obermann! Hadst thou lived, thou hadst lived in vain." So it is. In the end we neither regret that pleasures have been denied us, nor feel that those we have enjoyed were a gain unless they are a.s.sociated with the memory of high faith and thought and virtuous action. He who is careful to fill his mind with truth and his heart with love will not lack for retreats in which he may take refuge from the stress and storms of life. Noise, popularity, and buncombe: onions, smoke, and bedbugs.

Be thy own rival, comparing thyself with thyself, and striving day by day to be self-surpa.s.sed. If thy own little room is well lighted the whole world is less dark. If thou art busy seeking intellectual and moral illumination and strength, thou shalt easily be contented.

Higher place would mean for thee less liberty, less opportunity to become thyself. The secret of progress lies in knowing how to make use, not of what we have chosen, but of what is forced upon us. To occupy one's self with trifles weans from the habit of work more effectually than idleness. Perfect skill comes of talent, study, and exercise; and the study and exercise must continue through the whole course of life. To cease to learn is to lose freshness and the power to interest. We lack will rather than strength; are able to do more and better than we are inclined to do; and say we can not because we have not the courage to say we will not. The law of unstable equilibrium applies to thee, as to whatever has life. Thou canst not remain what thou art, but must rise or fall. The body is under the sway of physical law, but the progress of the mind is left in a large measure to the play of free will. If thou willest what thou oughtest, thou canst do what thou willest; for obligation cannot transcend ability. Happy are they who from earliest youth understand the meaning of duty, and hearken to the stern but all-reasonable voice of this daughter of G.o.d, the smile upon whose face is the fairest thing we know.

He who willingly accepts the law of moral necessity is free; for in thus accepting it he transcends it, and is self-determined; while he who rebels against this law sinks to a lower plane of being than the properly human, and becomes the slave of appet.i.te and pa.s.sion. Duty means sacrifice; it is a turning from the animal to the spiritual self; from the allurements of the world of manifold sensation--from ease, idleness, gain, and pleasure--to the high and lonely regions, where the command of conscience speaks in the name of G.o.d and of the nature of things. Forget thyself and do thy best, as unconscious of vain-glorious thoughts as though thou wert a wind or a stream, an impersonal force in the service of G.o.d and man. Obey conscience, and laugh in the face of death. Convince thyself that the best thing for thee is to know truth and to make truth the law of thy life. Let this faith subordinate all else, as it is, indeed, faith in reason and in G.o.d. Abhorrence of lies is the test of character. Hold fast by what thou knowest to be true, not doubting for a moment because thou canst not reconcile it with other truth. Somewhere, somehow, truth will be matched with truth, as love mates heart with heart.

A man's word is himself, his reason, his conscience, his faith, his love, his aspiration. If it is false or vain or vile, he is so. It is the expression of life as it has come to consciousness within him. It is the revelation of quality of being; it is of the man himself, his sign and symbol, the form and mould and mirror of his soul.

Thou thinkest to serve G.o.d with lies, Thou devil-wors.h.i.+pper and fool!

The moral value of the study of science lies in the love of truth it inspires and inculcates. He who knows science knows that liars are imbeciles. From the educator's point of view, truthfulness is the essential thing. His aim and end is to teach truth, and the love of truth, which leavens the whole ma.s.s and makes it life-giving. But the liar has no proper virtue of any kind.

The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient, and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt there may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds. But the scepticism of sciolists lacks the depth and genuineness of truth. To be frivolous where there is question of all that gives life meaning and value is want of sense.

The sciolist is one who has a superficial knowledge of various things, which for lack of deep views and coherent thought, for lack of the understanding of the principles of knowledge itself, he is unable to bring into organic unity. The things he knows are confused and intermingled, and thus fail either to enlighten his mind or to impel him to healthful activity. He forms opinions lightly and p.r.o.nounces judgment rashly. Knowing nothing thoroughly, he has no suspicion of the infinite complexity of the world of life and thought. The evil effects of this semi-culture are most disagreeable and most harmful in those whose being has been developed only on its temporal and earthly side. Their spiritual and moral nature has no centre about which it may move, and they wander on the surface of things in self-satisfied conceit, proclaiming that what is beyond the senses is beyond the reach of the mind, as though our innermost consciousness were not of what is intangible and invisible.

All divine things are within and about us, here and now; but we are too gross to see the celestial light, or to catch the whisperings of the heavenly voices. G.o.d is here; but we, like plants and mollusks, live in worlds of which we do not dream, upheld and nourished and borne onward by a Power of whom we are but dimly conscious,--nay, of whom, for the most part, we are unconscious.

There is a truth above the reach of logic, an impulse of the mind and heart which urges beyond the realms of sense, beyond the ken of the dialectician, to the Infinite and Eternal, before whom the material universe is but a force at whose finest touch souls awaken to the thrill of thought and love.

When we are made conscious of the fact that the Divine Word is the light of men, we readily understand that our every true thought, our every good deed, our every deeper view of nature and of life, comes from G.o.d, who is always urging us into the glorious liberty of His children, until we become a heavenly republic in which righteousness, peace, and joy shall reign. "The restless desire of every man to improve his position in the world is the motive power of all social development, of all progress," says Scherr, unable to perceive that the mightiest impulses to n.o.bler and wider life have been given by those who were not thinking at all of improving their position, but were wholly bent upon improving themselves. Make choice, O youth! between having and being. If having is thy aim, consent to be inferior; if being is thy aim, be content with having little. Real students, cultivators of themselves, are not inspired by the love of fame or wealth or position, but they are driven by an inner impulse to which they cannot but yield. Their enthusiasm is not a fire that blazes for an hour and then dies out; it is a heat from central depths of life, self-fed and inextinguishable.

The impulse to n.o.bler and freer life springs, never from ma.s.ses of men, but always from single luminous minds and glowing hearts. The lightning of great thoughts shows the way to heroic deeds. It is better to know than to be known, to love than to be loved, to help than to be helped; for since life is action, it is better to act than to be acted upon. Whosoever makes himself purer, worthier, wiser, works for his country, works for G.o.d. The belief that the might of truth is so great that it must prevail in spite of whatever opposition, needs, to say the least, interpretation; for it has often happened that truth has been overcome for whole generations and races; and the important consideration is not whether it shall finally prevail, but whether it shall prevail for us, for our own age and people. It is of the nature of spiritual gifts to work in every direction; they enrich the individual and the nation; they develop, purify, and refine the intellectual, moral, and physical worlds in which men live and strive.

The State and the Church are organisms; the body, the social and religious soul, under the guidance of G.o.d, creates for itself. And not only should there be no conflict between them, but there should be none between them and the free and full development of the individual. A peasant whose mental state is what it might have been a thousand years ago is for us, however moral and religious, an altogether unsatisfactory kind of man. All knowledge is pure, and all speech is so if it spring from the simple desire to utter what is seen and recognized as truth. The love of liberty is rare. It is not found in those whose life-aim is money, pleasure, and place, which enslave; but in those who love truth, which is the only liberating power. Knowledge is the correlative of being, and only a high and loving soul can know what truth is or understand what Christ meant when He said: "Ye shall know truth, and truth shall make you free." High thinking and right loving may make enemies of those around us, but they make us G.o.dlike.

How seldom in our daily experience of men do we find one who wishes to be enlightened, reformed, and made virtuous! How easy it is to find those who wish to be pleased and flattered!

At no period in history has civilization been so widespread or so complex as to-day. Never have the organs of the social body been so perfect. Never has it been possible for so many to co-operate intelligently in the work of progress. You, gentlemen, have youth and faith and the elements of intellectual and moral culture. In the freshness and vigor of early manhood, you stand upon the threshold of the new century. You speak Shakspeare's and Milton's tongue; in your veins is the blood which in other lands and centuries has nourished the spirit which makes martyrs, heroes, and saints. Your religion strikes its roots into the historic past of man's n.o.blest achievements, and looks to the future with the serene confidence with which it looks to G.o.d. Your country, if not old, is not without glory. Its soil is as fertile, its climate as salubrious as its domain is vast. It is peopled by that Aryan race, which, from most ancient days, has been the creator and invincible defender of art and science and philosophy and liberty; and with all this the divine spirit and doctrine of the Son of Man have been interfused.

We are here in America const.i.tuted on the wide basis of universal freedom, universal opportunity, universal intelligence, universal good-will. Our government is the rule of all for the welfare of all; it has stood the test of civil war, and in many ways proved itself both beneficent and strong. Already we have subdued this continent to the service of man. Within a hundred years we have grown to be one of the most populous and wealthy and also one of the most civilized and progressive nations of the earth. Your opportunities are equal to the fullest measure of human worth and genius. In the midst of a high and n.o.ble environment it were doubly a disgrace to be low and base. In intellectual and moral processes and results the important consideration is not how much, but what and how. How much, for instance, one has read or written gives us little insight into his worth and character; but when we know what and how he has read and written, we know something of his life. When I am told that America has more schools, churches, and newspapers than any other land, I think of their kind, and am tempted to doubt whether it were not better if we had fewer.

The more general and the higher the average education of the people, the more urgent is the need of thoroughly cultivated and enlightened minds to lead them wisely. The standard of our intellectual and professional education is still low; and neither from the press nor the pulpit nor legislative halls do we hear highest wisdom rightly uttered.

To be an intellectual force in this age one must know--must know much and know thoroughly; for now in many places there are a few, at least, who are acquainted with the whole history of thought and discovery, who are familiar with the best thinking of the n.o.blest minds that have ever lived; and to imagine that a sciolist, a half-educated person, can have anything new or important to impart is to delude one's self.

But if you fail, you will fail like all who fail,--not from lack of knowledge, but from lack of conduct; for the burden which in the end bears us down is that of our moral delinquencies. All else we may endure, but that is a sinking and giving way of the source of life itself. It is better, in every way, that you should be true Christian men than that you should do deeds which will make your names famous.

And if you could believe this with all your heart, you would find peace and freedom of spirit, even though your labors should seem vain and your lives of little moment. The more reason and conscience are brought to bear upon you, the more will you be lifted into the high and abiding world, where truth and love and holiness are recognized to be man's proper and imperishable good. Become all it is possible for you to become. What this is you can know only by striving day by day, from youth to age, even unto the end; leaving the issue with G.o.d and His master-workman, Time.

CHAPTER IV.

WOMAN AND EDUCATION.

Progress, man's distinctive mark alone; Not G.o.d's and not the beasts'; G.o.d is, they are; Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.--Browning.

The partialness of man's life, the low level on which the race has been content to dwell, is attributable, in no small measure, to the injustice done to woman. It was a.s.sumed she was inferior, and to make the a.s.sumption true, she was kept in ignorance, dwarfed and treated as a means rather than as an end.

The right to grow is the primal right; it is the right to live, to unfold our being on every side in the ceaseless striving for truth and love and beauty. In comparison with this, purely political and civil rights are unimportant. And in a free state this fundamental right must not only be acknowledged and defended, but a public opinion must be created which shall declare it to be the most sacred and inviolable.

The principle is universal, and is as applicable to woman as to man.

There is not a religion, a philosophy, a science, an art for man and another for woman. Consequently there is not, in its essential elements at least, an education for man and another for woman. In souls, in minds, in consciences, in hearts, there is no s.e.x. What is the best education for woman? That which will best help her to become a perfect human being, wise, loving, and strong. What is her work?

Whatever may help her to become herself. What is forbidden her?

Nothing but what degrades or narrows or warps. What has she the right to do? Any good and beautiful and useful thing she is able to do without hurt to her dignity and worth as a human being.

Between her and man the real question is not of more and less, of inferiority and superiority, but of unlikeness. Chast.i.ty is woman's great virtue; truthfulness, which is the highest form of courage, is man's; yet men and women are equally bound to be chaste and truthful.

Mildness and sweet reasonableness are woman's subtlest charms; wisdom and valor, man's; yet women should be wise and brave, and men should be mild and reasonable. The spiritual endowment of the s.e.xes is much the same, but they are not equally interested in the same things. Man prefers thought; woman, sentiment; he reaches his conclusions through a.n.a.lysis and argument; she, through feeling and intuition. He has greater power of self-control; she, of self-sacrifice. He is guided by law and principle; she, by insight and tact; he demands justice; she, equity. He wishes to be honored for wealth and position; she, for herself. For him what he possesses is a means; for her, something to which she holds and is attached. He asks for power; she, for affection. He derives his idea of duty from reason; she, from faith and love. He prefers science and philosophy; she, literature and art.

His religion is a code of morality; hers, faith and hope and love and imagination. For her, things easily become persons; for him, persons are little more than things. She has greater power of self-effacement, forgetting herself wholly in her love. Whether she marry or become a nun, she abandons her name, the symbol of her ident.i.ty, in proof that she is dedicate to the race and to G.o.d. The arguments of infidels have less weight with her than with man, for her sense of religion is more genuine, her faith more inevitable. She pa.s.ses over objections as a chaste mind pa.s.ses over what is coa.r.s.e or impure. She more easily finds complacency in her appearance and surroundings, but she has less pride and conceit than man. She is more grateful, too, because she loves more, and the heart makes memory true. If her greater fondness for jewelry and showy adornment proves her to be more barbarous, her greater refinement and chast.i.ty prove her to be more civilized than man. And does not her delight in dress come of her care for beauty, which in a world of coa.r.s.e and ugly creatures is a virtue as fair as the face of spring? Why should the flowers and the fields, the hills and the heavens, be beautiful, and man hideous, and the cities where he abides dismal? Are we but cattle to be stalled and fed? Are corn and beef and iron the only good and useful things? Are we not human because we think and admire, and are exalted in the presence of what is infinitely true and divinely fair?

Faith, hope, and love are larger and more enduring powers for woman than for man. She feeds the sacred fire which never dies on the altars of home and religion and country. She lives a more interior life, and more easily retains consciousness of the soul's reality and of G.o.d's presence. If she speaks less of patriotism in peaceful times, in the hour of danger the white light flashes from her soul. It is this that makes brave men think of their mothers and wives and sisters when they march to battle. They know that those sweet hearts, however keen the pangs they suffer, would rather have them dead than craven. When woman shall grow to the full measure of her endowments, a purer flame will glow upon the hearth, and love of country will be a more genuine pa.s.sion.

If she gain a wider and more varied interest in life, she will become happier, more willing and more able to help the progress of the race.

Like man, she exists for herself and G.o.d, and in her relations to others, her duties are not to the home alone, but to the whole social body, religious and civil. Whether man or woman, is a minor thing; to be wise and worthy and loving is all in all. Our deeper consciousness and practical recognition of the equality of the s.e.xes is better evidence that we are becoming Christian and civilized than popular government and all our mechanical devices. We, however, still have prejudices as ridiculous and harmful as that which made it unbecoming in a woman to know anything or in a man of birth to engage in business.

If we hold that every human being has the right to do whatever is fair or n.o.ble or useful, we must also hold that it is wrong to throw hindrance in the way of the complete education of any human being. We at last, however slowly, are approaching the standpoint of Christ, who, with his divine eye upon the s.e.xless soul, overlooks distinctions of s.e.x, and placing the good of life in knowing and loving, in being and doing, makes it the privilege and duty of all to help all to know and love, to become and do. Is it true? Is it right? These are the immortal questions, springing from what within us is most like G.o.d, and they who deal deceitfully with them have no claim upon attention. They are jugglers and liars.