PROGRESS IN EDUCATION BY THE RT. REV. I. L. SPALDING, D. D. NOTRE DAME, INDIANA; THE AVE MARIA. PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. { 0 ; '• - . /< PROGRESS IN EDUCATION Address delivered before the National Education Association, July 9, 1901, Detroit, Michigan BY THE RT. REV. J. L. SPALDING, D. D. NOTRE DAME, INDIANA: THE AVE MARIA. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Aphorisms and Reflections. 12mo. 80 cts., net. Opportunity and other Essays and Ad- dresses. 12mo. $1.00. Education and the Higher Life. 12mo. $1 . 00 . Things of the Mind. 12mo. $1.00. Means and Ends of Education. 12mo. $1 .00 . Thoughts and Theories of. Life and Education. 12m o. $1.00. Education and the Future of Religion. 48 pp., paper cover. 5 cts. The Victory of Love. 62 pp., paper cover, 10 cts. PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. Our belief is that the Word shall prevail over the entire rational creation, and change every soul into His own per- fection ; in which state everyone, by the mere exercise of his own power, will choose what he desires and obtain what he chooses. For although in the diseases and wounds of the body there are some which no medical skill can cure, yet we hold that in the mind there is no evil so strong that it may not be overcome by the Supreme Word and God.— Orioen. ROGRESS is increase of power and quality of life. It is this even when it seems to be but greater control of the forces of nature ; for they are thus made serviceable to life. Education is the unfolding and upbuilding of life, and it is therefore essentially progress. All progress is educational, and all right education is progress. The nineteenth century will be known as the century of progress,—the century in which mankind grew in knowledge and freedom more than in all preced- ing ages; in which the energies, not of a few only but of whole peoples, were aroused as never before. We have been brought into conscious contact 6 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. with new worlds, infinitely great and infinitesimally small; we have formed hypotheses which explain the develop- ment of suns and planets; we have traced the course of life from the protoplasmic cell through all its end- less varieties ; we have followed the transformations of the earth, from its appearance as a crust on which nothing could live, through incalculable lapses of time down to the birth of man and the dawn of history; we have resolved all composite substances into their primal elements, and made new and useful combinations; we have discovered the causes of nearly all the worst diseases, and the means whereby they may be cured or prevented ; we have learned how the many languages and dialects, with their wealth of vocabulary, have been evolved from a few families and a few thousand roots; we have traced the growth of customs, laws and insti- tutions from their most simple to their most complex forms. What control of natural forces have we not gained! We have invented a thousand cunning machines, with which we compel steam and electricity to warm and light our I PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. 7 cities, to carry us with great speed over earth and sea, to write or repeat our words from continent to continent, to spin and weave and forge for us. The face of the earth has been renewed and we live in worlds of which our fathers did not dream. Filled with confidence and enthusiasm by this wonderful suc- cess, we hurry on to new conquests ; and as the struggle becomes more intense, still greater demands are made upon us to put forth all our strength. Our fathers believed that matter was inert; but we know that all things are in motion, in process of transformation. The earth is whirling with incredible speed both on its own axis and around the sun. A drop of water that lies quietly in the palm, if it could be sufficiently magnified would present a scene of amazing activity. We should see that it consists of millions of molecules, darting hither and thither, colliding and rebounding millions of times in a second. The universe is athrill with energy. There is everywhere attraction and repulsion, an endless coming and going, combining and dissolving; in the midst of which all things are changing, even those 8 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. which appear to be immutable. The sun is losing its light, the mountains are wearing away. The consciousness to which we have attained that the universe is alive with energy has awakened in the modern man a feverish desire to exert himself, to be active in a world in which nothing can remain passive and survive ; and as greater and greater numbers are mobilized and set thinking, it becomes more and more difficult for the individual to stand upright and make his way, unless he be awakened and invigorated in mind and bodv. The ideal doubtless «/ is the co-operation of all for the good of each; but the fact is the effort of each to assert himself in the face of all, and if needs be at their cost. Nations, like individuals, are drawn into the world -wide conflict. The old cry of vs£ victis still applies, under conditions indeed seemingly less brutal, but more inexorably fixed. In such a state of things whoever is not alert, intelligent, brave and vigorous, falls, as the ancient civilizations fell before advancing armies filled with courage and the confidence of irresistible PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. 9 might. Hence not individuals alone but nations are driven to educate themselves, that they may be prepared for the competitive struggle which is found everywhere as never before in the history of mankind. Hence, too, in such a society there is necessarily progress in education ; for education is vastly more than the knowledge and discipline acquired in schools. The institutions into which men are gathered by common needs and sym- pathies, and by which they are lifted out of savagery and barbarism into intelligence and freedom, are the family, the state, civil society, and the Church. By them the life of individuals and of peoples is evolved and moulded more fundamentally and thoroughly than it can be by any possible scholastic training and teaching. They not only provide and defend the things that are necessary to man’s physical well-being, but they make possible the cultivation of his intellectual faculties. Schools are fatally impeded in their work when they receive their pupils from vulgar or impure homes, or when they are born in a tyrannical or lawless state, or in a 10 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. corrupt civil society, or belong to a church which lacks faith and authority; and much of the adverse criticism of schools is due to misconceptions which lead to the demand that they shall do what it is not in their province or their power to do. Indeed, where the cardinal institutions are at fault, what is needed is not so much schools, as reform schools!; and a reform school can not possibly be a normal home of education. The rationalistic philosophy of the eighteenth century had as one of its results an exaggerated belief in what schools can accomplish. Kant, who in his views on this subject is chiefly influenced by Rousseau, holds that man is merely what education makes him ; and for him to educate means little more than to enlighten the mind concerning the right use of human endowments. In his opinion, if all are made sufficiently intelligent, all will be just, helpful and good. It is the idea of Socrates that wrong-doing is only the result of ignorance. Though we have largely outgrown this optimistic faith, it gave a mighty impulse to individual and national efibrts to establish schools for PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. 11 the whole people, of which the national systems of the present day are, in great part, the outcome. The world - view, however, which has resulted from science and scientific theories of the universe, has led numbers of thinkers to attach comparatively little importance to enlightenment or mental culture, and to lay stress chiefly on heredity and envi- ronment. The opinion tends to prevail that the mind and character of man, like his body, like the whole organic world, is the product of evolution, working through fatal laws, where- with human purpose and free will, the possibility of which is denied, can not interfere in any real way. No one who is occupied with education can accept this theory without losing faith in the efficacy of his efforts and enthusiasm for his work. Fortunately, one may admit the general prevalence of the law of evolution without ceasing to believe in God, in the soul and in freedom. This is the position of Kant and it is that which nearly all of us take. With- out a thought of denying the power of heredity and environment in shaping 12 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. man’s life, we are certain that his free and purposive action is able to modify and to a large extent control their influence. It is indeed the tendency of right education to enable man to create his world, to teach him to live not merely in his material surroundings but in the spiritual realms of thought and love, of hope and aspiration, of beauty and goodness, until these become his proper and abiding home, for which climate and soil furnish merely the settings and foundations. And when we speak of progress in education we think primarily not of a fatal evolution, but of the forces and institutions which the human spirit with free self-determination and deliberate aim makes use of for the uplifting of the race. Here too, of course, we have growth rather than creation, — growth of which certain races and peoples, especially favored by environ- ment and heredity, we may suppose, have shown themselves _ more capable than others ; and with our present knowledge of history we are able to assign, with some degree of accuracy, to each the part it has played in the education of mankind. The contributions l>RO(^RKSS IN KBUCATION. 13 of Israel, of Greece and of Rome are known to all. We are less familiar with what geology and archaeology have done to throw light not merely on the struct- ure and development of the globe, but on the course of human life in epochs of which we possess no written account. Wherever man has lived he has left traces of himself, which tell his story to the trained eye of the scientific student; and we are consequently able to investigate the earliest efforts of savages, in some remote stone age, to bend their rude minds to the conquest of nature. The darkness which overshadpwed Egypt has been dispelled, and the rise and decay of the arts of civilization in the valley of the Nile are no longer a mystery. Archaeological research has done less for the valley of the Euphrates; but much, nevertheless, has been accomplished there also. We have learned to read the cuneiform characters, which for thou- sands of years were the only literary script of the world. Babylon, we have reason to believe, was the source of the civilization of China, the oldest now existing. ‘‘Egypt and Babylon,’’ saysRawlinson, 14 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. ‘‘led the way and acted as the pioneers of mankind in the various untrodden fields of art, literature and seience. Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chronology, architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture, textile industry, seem all to have had their origin in one or other of these two countries.’’ The Turanian or Mongol tribes of the valley of the Euphrates were probably the first to invent written signs and to establish schools. Though we owe to them the original impulses which have led to civilization, they themselves never rose above the stage of barbarian culture, an ascent which only the Semitic and Aryan races have been able to make ; and among them, in the pre-Christian ages, the Jews, who are Semites, and the G;*eeks and the Romans, who are Aryans, have been the chief creators and bearers of the spiritual treasures which consti- tute the essential wealth of humanity. To the first we owe the mighty educa- tional force which lies in a living faith in One Supreme God, creator of all things, who demands of men that they love and serve Him with righteous hearts. In their schools they emphasized PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. 15 the necessity of religion and morality, which are indeed the permanent founda- tions whereon all genuine human culture must forever rest. From the Greeks we derive the vital elements of our intel- lectual life, our philosophy and science, our literature and art ; and their educational ideals are the most potent mental stimulus in the modem world. The school, we may say, is not only a Greek word but a Greek institution. The Romans excelled all other peoples in genius for law and the science and art of government ; and hence they believed in discipline rather than in culture; and in their schools, until they were brought under the influence of Greek philosophy and literature, their chief concern was to make men courageous, dignified, obedient, enduring and reverent. When the civilizations of the Jew, the Greek and the Roman declined and fell to ruin, when the empire was broken to fragments by the barbarous hordes that century after century laid waste its fairest provinces, the world seemed destined to sink into the darkness and confusion out of which it had 16 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. been struggling with infinite pains for thousands of years; and if a wider, juster and more enduring social state has been built on the ruins of pagan culture and religion, this has been accomplished chiefly with the aid ol the principles and ideals of Christianity. We possess a faith and insight, a depth and breadth of intellectual view, a grasp of the elements of human character, a largeness of sympathy and appreciative- ness, to which no pre-Christian people or age ever attained ; and after the most patient and conscientious investigation into the causes which have made the modem world what it is, the impartial and enlightened mind is driven to confess that as the civilized nations date their history from the birth ol Christ, so He is the primary and vital impulse in all the most excellent things they have achieved. We are beyond doubt the heirs of all the past, and have become conscious of the debt we owe to Jew and Gentile, to barbarian and Greek; but the ideals which deter- mine our views of God, of man, of the family, of the state, of the aim and end of all progress, are Christian ideals; PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. 17 and if this light should go out in darkness, it is not conceivable that our civilization should survive. The genius of Hellas, as it is manifested in her greatest philosophers, poets, artists, orators and statesmen, we have not surpassed ; in our own day some of the noblest minds are not consciously Christian. In the long conflicts with the barbarism which overwhelmed the Roman Empire, individuals and peoples who had been baptized into faith in Christ, have not always, in Ithe midst of the confusion and ignorance, of the lawlessness and violence, had a clear view of the divine truth, goodness, tolerance and love which are revealed, in Him: have even at times been the foes of the godward march of humanity. Yet when all is said the supreme fact remains, that with Him the new life of the race begins ; Ithat in Him its divinest hopes and aspirations are enrooted ; and through Him its highest and most beneficent conquests have been made. It is to Christianity, not to science, that we are indebted for our faith in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mankind; in the immortal and god- 18 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. like nature of the soul; in the freedom of the will; in the paramount worth of character; in the duty of universal benevolence, having as its implication equality of laws and opportunities for all, in the progress which is marked by an ever-increasing domination of the spirit over matter and the gradual spreading of the kingdom of heaven over earth. With Christ a new and immense hope was born in the heart of man,— a hope of everlasting life and endless progress; a conception of a gradually developing divine purpose in history; of a return through labyrinthine and devious ways of the whole creation to God, from whom it springs. This hope and this conception are not found in the religions of paganism, nor can science inspire or justify them. In the individual and in the race, as in nature, growth and decay are simultaneous. When the one predominates there is progress; when the other, regress and final extinction. And as it would be absurd to imagine that a human being, in this present existence at least, might continue to grow forever, it would not be less PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. IS extravagant to believe that a people ot the race itself might continue indefinitely to make progress. Nations, like indi- viduals, are born, grow and perish ; and mankind, to whatever heights they may rise, must rise but to fail. The monu- ments of the most glorious achievements are destined to become fragments of a globe on which no living thing can longer be found. As endless time preceded the appearance of man on earth, so endless time shall follow his disappear- ance from the visible universe. All that is possessed must be lost, since possession is a thing of time, and what time gives it takes again. If it were possible to embrace in one view the entire history of our little planet, we should neither be disturbed by the failures nor made greatly glad by the successes of men, so inevitable and transitory it would all appear to be. This is the standpoint, this the conclusion of science, when it is accepted as the sole and sufficient test of reality. But we can not take delight or find repose in such wisdom. Our thoughts wander through eternity ; our hopes reach forth to infinity; we are akin to 20 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. atoms and stars, to the worm and to the Eternal Spirit. The whole past has helped to make us what we are, and we in turn shall help to make the whole future. In the midst of a perishable universe, the soul dwells with the indestructible; in the midst of a world of shadows, it seeks repose with the all-real and abiding One. In all faith in progress, in all efforts to advance, we follow the light of an ideal, which, if we look closely, is found to be that of perfect truth, beauty and goodness, wedded to absolute power. Whatever the means taken to approach it, this is the end which noble minds forever hold in view,— the ultimate goal of all our yearning and striving, which the laws of reason and the necessities of thought compel us to identify with the Supreme Being from whom and to^ whom all things move. Our way leads not from nothingness to nothingness, from death to death, but from life to more and % higher life; from spirit to the Infinite Spirit, who is perfect truth, beauty and love, wedded to absolute power. It is possible, even when there is question of things the most vital and indispensable PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. 21 to human welfare, to take opposite views and to defend with plausible arguments whatever opinion* One may or may not set store by money or pleasure or position or friendship or culture. He may hold that civilization awakens more wants than it can satisfy, creates more ills than it can cure ; that art, like the tint and perfume of the flower, is but a symptom of decay; that all monuments are funeral monuments. One may deny free will ; or accepting it, may think that license is the inevitable result of liberty, and that the best fortune for individuals and societies is to be governed by able tyrants. Our estimates depend so largely on what we ourselves are that agreement is hardly to be looked for. The light ‘ which visits young eyes is not that which falls on those who have been sobered by the contemplation of man’s mortality. Serious minds have maintained that life, together with the means whereby it is propagated, preserved and increased, is the sum of all evil ; that the love of life is the supreme delusion in a universe where whoever feels and thinks neces- sarily suffers irremediable pain. Hence they believe not in 'progress but in 22 PROGRESS IN EDUCATION. regress; holding that as all life has sprung from the unconscious, the sooner it sinks back into it the more speedily shall all things be reduced into eternal order. This is not merely a speculative view of a few exceptional individuals: it has been and still is the religion of millions in Eastern Asia, whose dream is ever- lasting repose in nothingness ; who neither desire nor make progress. The ultimate standard of value is helpfulness to life; for except for the living nothing can have nor be known to have worth. But our belief in the goodness of life is the result of a primal feeling, not of philosophic or scientific demonstration. It is essentially a faith which arguments can neither create nor destroy,—a faith which draws its nourishment