GIFT OF 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
THICS . . . 
 
 -^ AND THE -^ 
 
 "NEW F DUCATiON." 
 
 BRYANT. 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 s. c. QRiaas & CO. 
 1894- 
 
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 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/ethicsneweducatiOObryarich 
 
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ETHICS 
 
 AND THE) 
 
 "NEW EDUCATION," 
 
 BY 
 
 Wm. M. Bryant, M. A., 
 
 Instructor in Mental and Moral Philosophy, 
 St. Ivouis Normal and High School. 
 
 1 UNIVEBSIjIjYy 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
 S. C. GRIGGS & CO., 
 1894. 
 

 A 
 
 Copyright by Wm. M. Bryant 
 
 1894. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 'YyHAT is here offered is a reproduction, as exact as 
 I have been able to make from memory of an 
 address delivered before the St. Louis Society of 
 Pedagogy, January 20th, 1894. Its appearance in 
 its present form is due to the suggestion of a number 
 of friends ; and I take the liberty of saying: here that 
 the first to make that suggestion was Mr. F. E. Cook, 
 one of the founders of the Society of Pedagogy, 
 alwa3^s one of its most active and most efficient mem- 
 bers, repeatedly its President, now chairman of its 
 Executive Committee, and, in his work for many 
 years as principal of one of our leading schools, a 
 recognized representative of the New Education 
 in its wisest and worthiest aspects. 
 
 251365 
 
ETHICS AND THE 
 
 "NEW EDUCATION 
 
 Mr. President: — 
 
 T AM here to tell 3^011 nothing beyond what you 
 already know. If anything I may chance to say 
 should be altogether new to you it must by that fact 
 prove to be untrue. Truth is but the absolute, eternal 
 form of mind. Mind is but the fulfilment, the con- 
 crete unfolding of Truth. And whatever appeals to 
 you at au}^ time with special force and freshness of 
 vital import must yet seem, and even be in very truth, 
 only a simple renewal and further intensification of 
 what had always hovered, though it be in dimmest 
 outline, within j^our own consciousness. If the seem- 
 ingly new thing is true, it belongs to mind as mind; 
 and your individual mind has but awaited the shock of 
 circumstance to wake it into fuller measure of con- 
 sciousness as to what by right must ever be its very 
 own. 
 
THICS A.\C THE '^XEIV EDUCA TIOX. 
 
 And that is the reason why language, which is but 
 the body of thought — why thought, which is but the 
 soul of language, — why life, which is but the central 
 substance of every possible degree of thought — should 
 be so full of ambiguities The richer the conception 
 represented by an}- term, the greater the variet}' in 
 the shades of meaning that may be suggested by that 
 term. 
 
 And so in all our educational work, as in all the 
 work of life, there is nothing that demands more 
 careful watchfulness than just the very terms which 
 we must be forever using to give outward expression 
 to our inmost thoughts, through which alone, in 
 turn, our lives attain or can attain to actual definition. 
 
 To what better use, then, can we put the hour than 
 this: That you and I in company devote ourselves to a 
 stud}" of a few of the terms specially apt to pro^'e 
 misleading through the very wealth of meaning of 
 which they have come to serve as the outer, organic 
 form. 
 
 And first of all, think of the marvelous aspects of 
 Revelation, unfolded to us through that distinctiveh' 
 modern stage in the total process which constitutes in 
 its full meaning the true "Advancement of Learning I" 
 These aspects have crammed the word "Nature" with 
 such volumes of fresh meaning for us as to render it 
 ambiguous in most bewildering degree. 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION: 
 
 Old as the world, indeed, is the explicit affirmation 
 that "self-preservation is the first law of nature." 
 The very simplicity and imperious practical self- 
 evidence of the principle thus expressed rendered its 
 early conscious formulation inevitable. But the prin- 
 ciple alread}^ implies a "self" to be preserved and a 
 "nature" in the midst of which and by means of 
 which that self is to make sure of its own preserva- 
 tion. 
 
 Taken in its most immediate significance, indeed, 
 the principle looks first of all to the preservation of 
 the mere animal existence of man. And it was long 
 since pointed out that Nature presents three distinct 
 sets of conditions which must forever predetermine 
 the life of man in the sphere of his mere animal 
 existence. In the first place the tropical regions 
 supply man with everything needful to satisfy the 
 immediate demands of his being. If he is hungry, 
 there is food always to be had for the mere trouble of 
 gathering. If clothing is required, nature, unasked, 
 supplies fabrics which, with scarce a change, are fully 
 suited to such needs. If shelter is desired, a few 
 thrift}^ saplings drawn together above, and covered 
 with the luxuriant foliage always at hand, will very 
 well suffice. With such conditions there is nothing 
 stimulating man to enter upon any higher measure of 
 activity ; and also the excess of heat forbids. 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION. 
 
 Again, in the extreme polar regions nature is ex- 
 cessive in its severity and parsimonious to the last 
 degree in its provisions for satisfying human wants ; 
 so that here man's whole energ}- is taken up in eking 
 out the barest ph3^sical existence. In either case it is 
 scarcely possible that man should ever clearl}^ discover 
 in himself anything above the ever-recurring neces- 
 sities of his mere daily existence. 
 
 It is in the intermediate regions, in the temperate 
 zones alone, that man's relation to nature has been 
 such as neither to lull him into ceaseless spiritual lan- 
 guor and mere sensuous dream on the one hand, nor 
 to overwhelm him with the difficulties of supplying his 
 immediate physical necessities on the other. Here 
 there is just warmth enough to stimulate and cold 
 enough to warn ; just food enough to sharpen the 
 appetite and not enough to satisfy ; abundant material 
 for shelter, but not sufficient shelter to which nature 
 has already given shape. 
 
 Always in this region man is confronted by the 
 twin brothers : Fact and Possibility ; always and 
 everywhere, too, there is here latent the suggestion 
 that Possibility may still be merged in Fact ; and yet 
 always when this miracle is once accomplished Possi- 
 bility fails not to reappear in its own specific charac- 
 ter while yet assuming new and freshly luring, freshly 
 threatening forms. 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''XEIV EDUCA TION. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Possibility! That is the giant Proteus with which 
 from the beginning the Heracles called Man has been 
 compelled to struggle. And this perpetual struggle it 
 is, and the ceaseless victory involved therein, that has 
 been the indispensable condition upon which man 
 could ever come to know that quality of genuinely 
 divine Sonship which constitutes the very essence 
 of his own true being. 
 
 n. 
 
 But even so this discovery must already involve the 
 further suggestion that, after all, sel f-preserv^a t ion is 
 only the "first" law of nature ; that in fact there is a 
 second and higher law that is no less a law of 
 "Nature," since it is manifestly involved in the very 
 being of man himself. And because forever re-dis- 
 covered possibility is forever luring, forever driving 
 man onward to new achievement, and since each new 
 achievement is in its truest significance but a step in 
 the enlarging of man's actual present self, there cannot 
 fail to dawn upon man's consciousness this divinest of 
 all possibilities : That there is no given conceivable 
 stage of advancement beyond which man may not 
 still hope to pass A nd if this be true, then clea rlv 
 that^second and hig^her law of Xature can be nothing . 
 els e and no thing_less than that of self-realization. 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION: 
 
 ( And still and always Fact and Possibility present 
 themselves; and in this higher sphere the}^ are knowii 
 as the Real and the Ideal. 
 
 Are these exclusive the one of the other in this 
 higher sphere? or may they rightly be viewed as 
 complementary aspects of a concretely unfolded human 
 world ? 
 
 In seeking a clew to the true answer to this ques- 
 tion we cannot do better than turn, though it be ever 
 so briefly, to the most finished work of the world's 
 greatest dramatist, ''The Tempest'' of Shakespeare! 
 Who has not read and re-read with growing wonder 
 and delight this marvelous production ? And in 3'our 
 reading you can scarcely have failed to notice how 
 the whole representation does but set forth in most 
 impressive fashion the fundamental phases of relation 
 between the Real and the Ideal. 
 
 On the one side the phase of Idealism is represented 
 by the good Duke Prospero. On the other hand the 
 phase of Realism is represented by the Duke's brother 
 Antonio and by the King of Naples and his Court. 
 Prospero gives himself over wholh' to his studies, de- 
 votes his time and energ\^ exclusively to exploring 
 the ideal world, and thus drifts inevitably away from 
 the "real" world. On the other hand Antonio sees 
 nothing but vagary and mere illusion in the Duke's 
 pursuits. So that not only does he take up and will- 
 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION 
 
 \\\%\\ perform the practical duties of the Dukedom, 
 but he also speedily persuades himself that he is in 
 truth the rightful ruler. His blind ambition cancels 
 all hesitancy on his part to plot the destruction of his 
 too confiding brother, and at the same time to bring 
 humiliation upon his native state by its reduction to 
 the condition of mere vassalage to a foreign power; 
 just as on his part the King of Naples, for no other 
 purpose than to extend his own authority, partici- 
 pates in the ignoble plot of Antonio. 
 
 Thus these latter see nothing but the "Realty" of 
 the present moment and greedily grasp at that, wholly 
 regardless of the shadowy world of the "Ideal." And 
 so these two worlds drift asunder. Prospero is set 
 afloat upon the frail craft of his own learning and 
 speculation. Only, he bears with him his choicest 
 books and his infant daughter, Miranda. And now, 
 indeed, it seems that as between the eternal powers 
 and the visions of this dreamer there is truest unison. 
 
 "There they hoist us, 
 To cry to the sea that roared to us ; to sigh 
 To the winds, whose pity, sighing back again, 
 Did us but loving wrong." 
 
 And upon this mystic voyage Miranda, "wonder- 
 ful" daughter indeed of this most wonder-working 
 Duke, "did smile, infused with_a_igrtitude from 
 heaven. ' ' 
 
ETHICS AND THE "NEIV EDUCA TION^ 
 
 Could such vo3'age end elsewhere than upon the 
 shores of the Enchanted Island? There alone could 
 the magic powers of Prospero find free field of exer- 
 cise. There alone could his prophetic visions assume 
 unhindered their most perfect forms. It is there that 
 Prospero finds Caliban, the living embodiment of the 
 grosser brute forces of Nature, and reduces him to 
 something approaching at least automatic service, 
 friction-grumbling though it be, at the bidding of 
 human will. 
 
 There, too, he discovers Ariel, the spirit of the 
 subtlest phases of the world's space-filling energy, 
 and through whose m3'sterious electric enginer}- he 
 fills the sky with tempest or with sunshine at his will. 
 Truly is the Enchanted Island the proper home of the 
 splendid revelry- of Idealism in its separation from 
 the sterner aspects of the world of Realty' ! 
 
 But meanwhile how fa res it with the world of ex- 
 clusive Realism ? Having thrust out the Ideal from 
 their midst and from their very thoughts the denizens 
 of that world can now live' only from moment to 
 moment, not clearly seeing what next must follow. 
 /Mutual trust is indeed for them impossible, for each 
 (knows the other a conspirator. In spite of them- 
 selves, besides, they still have each an ideal, though 
 this is now limited to the mere vision of the possible 
 attainment of purely selfish ends. Yet they must 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCATION: 
 
 (hold together for mutual defense, for mutual support ; 
 nay in very fear of one another and hence for mutual 
 surveillan ce, must ea ch be near to each. 
 
 Yet spite of all their watchfulness, and spite of all 
 their wise precautions, they find themselves at length 
 adrift upon an unknown sea. Realism has failed 
 utterly. The ship of State has lost its moorings and 
 plunges helplessly before a newly risen and mysteri- 
 ously desolating tempest. 
 
 And where should they be driven but straight upon 
 the shores of this same Enchanted Island where Pros- 
 pero is now the undisputed master? Not elsewhere 
 can safe harborage be found for them. Failing this, 
 to sink to the bottom of the bottomless abyss must be 
 their doom. Only through reunion with the despised 
 Ideal can the vaunted world of the Real be saved out 
 of the tempest into which it has been driven by its 
 own follies. 
 
 After all then, the Ideal can very well maintain 
 itself in isolation from this or that particular form of 
 the Real. For the Ideal is, in truth, the very soul of 
 all Realty and on occasion can unfold a real world of 
 real life and beauty from and within its own infinitely; 
 varied resources. On the contrary, when the Real, in 
 whatever of its forms, is seriously taken as apart from 
 the Ideal, it proves destitute of any central, vitaliz- 
 
ETHICS AND THE '\\E\V EDUCATIOX 
 
 ing principle and hence crumbles and fades into utter 
 unreality upon the first breath of opposition. 
 
 From which it would even seem that the Ideal is in 
 truth more "real" than is the so-called Real itself. 
 
 And yet in any phase of human life the Ideal apart 
 from the Real can scarcely save itself from becoming 
 more or less fantastic ; just as the Real in separation 
 from the Ideal sinks unfailingly into ever lower 
 depths of degradation. In passing, too, we ought to 
 remind ourselves that separation as between Real and 
 Ideal can at most be nothing more than relative. For 
 in absolute and literal separation each must wholly 
 cease to be. 
 
 And further, it is precisely here upon the Enchanted 
 Island that these complementary aspects of the social 
 world must once more be brought to assume their 
 normal relation of fused union and vital wholeness. 
 And Prospero, the "dreamer," is, of course, the first 
 of all to clearly recognize this fact. Xay, he prepares 
 the way for it and directs and even seems — seems even 
 to himself — to actually awake the very tempest but 
 now occuring, and to just that end. 
 
 Wholly self-deprived of any measure of prophetic 
 vision the representatives of rash Realism are driven 
 in helpless amazement upon the island. And once 
 landed here by Ariel's help, already from the first 
 moment the}- are separated into groups which still 
 
ETHICS AND THE '-NEW EDUCATION: 
 
 tend more and more to fall asunder. The grosser 
 ones, guided solely by their instincts, fall naturally 
 and inevitably into the company of Caliban. On the 
 other hand the arch -conspirators — the King, the king's 
 brother and Antonio— constitute another of these 
 groups. And straightwa}' their perverted natures 
 are manifested in the monstrous plot of the latter two 
 against the sleeping king. 
 
 Meanwhile Prospero is showing the superior power 
 of the Ideal by working spells that bring all again 
 into one complex group in which Prospero 's daughter 
 Miranda, "the wonder," is alread}^ the promised 
 bride of Ferdinand, the king's son — the youth whom 
 the world of Realism has not yet been able to spoil 
 and reduce to its own gross level ; who therefore is 
 most akin to the world of the Ideal and who must for 
 this reason be the first to make discovery of the 
 magician's cavern, which is but the normal center of 
 this ideal world. 
 
 It is, in truth, precisely this w^edding of the beauti- 
 ful daughter of Idealism with the still uncorrupted 
 son of Realism that restores the world to its divinest 
 rhythm, — the prophetic-feminine leading the historic- 
 masculine to ever brighter realms. 
 
 So Shakespeare seems in his dazzling way to say to 
 us. 
 
 And yet throughout this perfectly realized ideal 
 
l6 ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION." 
 
 representation there is manifest a painful sense of 
 contradiction because of the recognized discrepancy 
 between what is and what should be. And precisely 
 this painful sense of contradiction is it that drives,^ 
 and has ever driven, and must ever continue to 
 drive men into action — action through which alone 
 self-realization is in any measure possible. And hence 
 it cannot reasonably be doubted that in very truth 
 pain has the ver}^ highest ethical value. Far enough, 
 indeed, is the fact of pain from being a proof of 
 defect in the total World-order ! On the contrary 
 careful anal3^sis proves it to be nothing less than one 
 of the indispensable factors of an}- conceivable world 
 having a genuinely ethical import. 
 
 But again it is alreadj^ evident that the process of 
 self-realization involves continuous and vital relation- 
 ship as between each self and all other selves Not 
 mere abstract relations, like those of distance and 
 direction between bodies in space ; but actual concrete 
 relations without which souls could no more exist 
 and unfold into ever richer degrees of spiritual reality 
 than could masses of matter aggregate in space and 
 exist as definite bodies apart from gravit}^ which is 
 the very essence of their being as bodies. 
 
 Nay, pain itself is one essential aspect of this 
 relationship as between soul and soul. So that we 
 are bound to give careful consideration to what on 
 
ETHICS AND THE -WE IF EDUCA TIOX." 
 
 first view is the amazing and even appalling fact of 
 pain inevitably suffered by each through all and for 
 all. Nor may we safely omit to note that the effect 
 upon each, of the pain each suffers, must depend upon 
 the way it is apprehended and endured by each. 
 
 And here in attempting to estimate what can scarcely 
 be regarded otherwise than as the vicarious aspect of 
 human relations we ma}' very well turn again to one 
 of the world's great literary works for fruitfulest 
 suggestion. Among all the great novels of the world 
 what one can compare in complexity and subtlety of 
 character, in depth and delicacy of sentiment, in sus- 
 tained vigor of portrayal, with Les Miserablesf No 
 king, but only a peasant is its hero. No queen, but 
 only a nameless waif is its heroine. Not the attar of 
 roses so much as subterranean odors greet you 
 throughout its pages. Yet how sublime the culmina- 
 tion ! 
 
 A poor, ignorant wood-cutter sees his sister's child- 
 ren starving. His immense but wholly undisciplined 
 strength can find no adequate field of productive 
 exercise. What to do ? 
 
 Passing a baker's window he sees bread in abund- 
 ance. Only glass between him and plenty ! And 
 glass is transparent ! Hunger on this side ; bread on 
 that ; and only a transparent medium between ! 
 Under such conditions how could a mind of such 
 
i8 E THICS A XD THE 'WE If' ED UCA TIOX. ' ' 
 
 siniplicit}" be expected to comprehend that the glass 
 is but the illusory fragile representative of inflexible 
 and keen-edged law ? 
 
 Na}^ at that moment he knew nothing, saw nothing 
 but that the children were hungry and that bread was 
 within his reach. Only with the crashing of the 
 glass, only in the light of the blood flaming out upon 
 his hand does he awake to the fact that linked all 
 about him, and not less within him, is the adaman- 
 tine net of Law binding him to his fellow-man beyond 
 all possibility of separation. For the first time in his 
 life he has seriously stumbled and violently shaken 
 that chain ; and its sudden fearful clanking has filled 
 all his world with harshest discords. 
 
 Discords indeed I The crash ; the plunge from the 
 nightmare of hunger into the nightmare of conscious 
 crime ; the attempted escape ; the capture — and five 
 years in the galle3's for failing to clearly see what had 
 been to him indeed the Invisible ! 
 
 To a soul like that how wholly fiendish must seem 
 the disproportion of such corrective to such fault ! 
 Startled into keener intellectual consciousness by 
 such suffering he is blinded to every aspect of self- 
 realization save that which consists in such growing 
 strength as shall be applied on first and ever}- oppor- 
 tunit}' to square accounts with the monster called 
 Societv. 
 
ETHICS AXD THE "XEIV EDUCA 
 
 For this purpose he assumes the air of docility and 
 attends the prison school For this purpose he prac- 
 tices all arts that promise the least advantage to him 
 in the ideal struggle with what is to him the hideous 
 Reality — which ideal struggle now^ alone gives mean- 
 ing to his life. 
 
 And shall he not test his growing strength and 
 skill betimes in efforts to escape from the cruel clutch 
 with w^hich this monster now has such fast hold upon 
 him? Three exercises of this kind in his effort at 
 self-education costs him fourteen additional j^ears in 
 the galleys ! So that not until the end of a nineteen 
 years' course is he graduated from this university of 
 crime and presented wdth the fatal diploma consisting 
 of the yellow passport which he must ever3'where dis- 
 play ! 
 
 You remember his appearance in the village four 
 days after his discharge from prison — his rude dis- 
 missal from every inn ; his fruitless attempt to pur- 
 chase food and shelter at private dwellings ; the fear 
 and horror everywhere awakened by his presence and 
 his final kindly reception by the good Bishop of the 
 village. 
 
 You wall remember his fairly childish delight at 
 being addressed in respectful tones and terms. You 
 will remember his awaking in the night, the return — 
 it was night indeed ! — of the long-cherished purpose 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW ED CCA TION. 
 
 to avenge himself upon societ}-. You will remember 
 the inner struggle, the newly awakened sense of 
 shame, the victory of the long-cherished passion, the 
 robber}^, his escape, his capture and return b}^ the 
 officers. You will remember how the Bishop and his 
 household were alread}^ aware that the man they had 
 dealt with so kindly had robbed them. 
 
 And now the splendid efficienc}' of the legal arm 
 of the Social Organism is once more proven ! The 
 house-breaker, the galley-slave, the ungrateful robber 
 of the only man who had befriended him — can the 
 Law now do otherwise than firmly close its iron 
 fingers upon him and crush out a life so manifestly 
 destitute of every worthy human quality ? 
 
 The officers, proud indeed of their achievement, 
 drag the prisoner to the Bishop's door. The door 
 opens. There is the group : the serene Bishop, the 
 triumphant officers, the stolid, desperate man who is 
 once more experiencing the futility of his purpose to 
 avenge himself upon society. Not a word, not even the 
 slightest look of resentment on the part of the patri- 
 archal Bishop ! Rather, instantly comprehending the 
 whole situation, he exclaims in kindliest tones: 
 "Ah! so you have returned. I am glad to see you. 
 Did 3'ou not know? I gave 3'ou the candle-sticks too. 
 They are silver and are worth two hundred francs. 
 How was it that you failed to take those with the 
 rest?" 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCATION.' 
 
 To Jean Valjean that was nothing less than the 
 voice of an angel! To the officers it could but bring 
 confusion and deepest mortification. They had made 
 so great a blunder, then? The prisoner had told the 
 truth in saying the plate had been given him by an 
 aged priest? The Bishop assures them that this is 
 only the simple truth; he brings the candlesticks, 
 puts them in the hands of Jean Valjean and dismisses 
 the officers. 
 
 In the mind of Jean Valjean what a whirl ! He is 
 at liberty. He will not be taken back to prison. He 
 has been forgiven his ingratitude. In his universe 
 two planets have collided and are fusing. The two 
 planets are rude Strength and ineffable Love. He 
 trembles. His strength seems broken. It is only 
 the tremor of divine Love breaking through the 
 granite rudeness of his Strength. 
 
 When the officers had gone the Bishop said gravely 
 and tenderly: "Never forget that you have promised 
 me to use the proceeds of this silver in becoming an 
 honest man." Then he added: "Jean Valjean, my 
 brother, 3^ou no longer belong to evil, but to good. I 
 have bought your soul of you. I withdraw it from 
 black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and give it 
 to God.'- 
 
 Stunned, humbled, elated, confused, transfigured, 
 Jean Valjean left the presence of this living Crucifix; 
 
ETHICS AX D THE 'WEW EDUCATION 
 
 and yet through all his wanderings and amid all his 
 struggles, never for a moment did he lose the living 
 Presence of the Divinit}^ thus represented, from his 
 soul. 
 
 And swiftly does event follow upon event in the 
 further unfolding of his life — his quiet entrance into 
 a struggling village; the new process in manufacture; 
 the creation of wealth; the building up of the town; 
 the liberal and noble dispensing of wealth; the un- 
 hesitating sacrifice of self for the sake of others, even 
 to the extent of wholly renouncing the new sweet life 
 of reconciliation to the existing social world — na}^ 
 to the extent of denouncing himself in open court as 
 the real galle3-slave so long lost sight of, and 
 this in order that he might save from a repetition of 
 his own dreadful experience one who had been guilty 
 of a minor offense indeed, but who was now about 
 to be mistakenl}^ identified with and punished as the 
 long undetected and still, in the eyes of the law, 
 altogether irreclaimable Jean Valjean himself; finally 
 his perilous journey through the sewer for the pur- 
 pose of rescuing Marius — all this done, and his career 
 is ended. 
 
 And ceaselessly hovering near this transfigured 
 soul is that blackest shadow of things evil, which 
 nevertheless is firmly assured of itself as the very per- 
 sonification of all good — the absolutel}' consciencious 
 
ETHICS AND THE 'N'EW EDUCA TIOX.' 
 
 representative of the dead, and therefore deadly, forms 
 of mere conventionality — the ver}^ impersonation of 
 that diabolical spirit of Injustice which sincerely, 
 devoutly believes that Justice and Mercy have nothing 
 in common, — the inflexible, incorruptible, fanatical 
 embodiment of "Law and Order," Javert. 
 
 It is his business to hunt down men w^ho have been 
 made demons by the galleys. It is his pride never 
 to let one escape his vigilance ; it is the proof of his 
 worthiness that he keeps his eye fastened upon the 
 outcast; it is his glory to protect society — finished, 
 faultless Society — not merely from the actual depre- 
 dations of such lost souls, but also from contamina- 
 tion through merest casual contact with them, though 
 this be unawares ; and above all from the scandal of 
 seeing them prosperous and honored, as if redemption 
 from the very pit of the Inferno were not merely a 
 possibilit}^ but also an actually realized present fact ! 
 
 And yet even Javert is not wholly impervious to 
 the subtle chemistr}^ of the divine Light that emanates 
 from a truly noble character. Each time he comes in 
 contact with Jean Valjean there is an unconscious 
 molecular readjustment of his seemingly impervious 
 nature. 
 
 And at length the climax comes. After the strug- 
 gle at the Barricades and the deliberate saving of 
 Javert's life by Jean Valjean, there is the sudden, 
 
ETHICS AND THE 'N'EIV EDUCATION. 
 
 unexpected meeting at the mouth of the great sewer, 
 with the fresh, pathetic evidence of Jean Valjean's 
 measureless self-sacrifice. Making no effort to escape, 
 he onl}^ asks that he be allowed the privilege of re- 
 storing the wounded, helpless, unconscious 3'outh to 
 his home — to the sane and clearly conscious world. 
 
 Already and in spite of himself Javert is trans- 
 formed. He assents to an act of kindness while 
 "Duty*' is left waiting. He even so far forgets him- 
 self as to assist in the performance of a deed of mere}- 
 — to be the mere assistant in such deed when the 
 chief performer is the very outlaw whom of all others 
 he has for years been ceaselessly tracking and eagerly 
 hoping to bring to justice ! 
 
 To discover this noted convict and once more 
 make him subject to the Law — that would be the 
 worthy crowning of a truly honorable career ! And 
 3'et under the spell of this great soul in hiding from the 
 Law — the Law that has itself become ferocious — 
 Javert quite forgets himself ! He allows his prisoner 
 to go alojie to his room to change his clothing. Will 
 not the prisoner escape? Javert, self -forgetting, 
 stands meekly below — hoping the prisoner z^:-/// escape! 
 
 Nay, by this time Javert dimly comprehends this 
 splendid being. He knows he will not attempt to 
 escape. He knows he will return. And he does re- 
 turn. He opens the door, steps upon the pavement, 
 
ETHICS AXD THE 'WEIV EVrCATIOX.' 
 
 looks about — there is no officer there ! Javert has 
 alread}' walked rapidly awa}^ — but toward the bridge 
 across the plunging current of the river. 
 
 In these last moments he has even seen through to 
 the beautiful soul of this man whom he has so long 
 and relentlessh^ been pursuing in full belief that he 
 was thus but doing worthiest work. Xow for the first 
 time he clearl}^ sees, what before he had not in the 
 dimmest wa}' suspected, that to appl}^ the forms of 
 law in such wise as to deal with this man as if he 
 were a criminal would be nothing less than the black- 
 est of sins, the most monstrous injustice. 
 
 And yet by the strict forms of Law, which Javert 
 has alwa3'S hitherto looked upon as wholly infallible, 
 Jean Valjean ought to be arrested and returned to the 
 galleys. Failing to do this Javert himself becomes a 
 criminal. To Javert 's intelligence the contradiction 
 is wholly insoluble ; and from the middle of the bridge 
 he looks down, and in the plunging river below sees 
 the one safe, sure channel by which he may escape 
 from the still more wildly plunging stream of events 
 by which he has been swept hither. 
 
 But into that same stream the great sewer itself, 
 from w^hich Jean Valjean has but just emerged, 
 empties its contents — perchance to be purified. 
 
 The sewer ? That is not merely the great sewer of 
 Paris. It is the great World-Sewer of crime and sin 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION: 
 
 and shame. And this cowering convict — nay, this 
 angel from the gallej^s — has for years been struggling 
 up and down its dark, noisome lengths for no other 
 purpose than that of saving other souls from perishing 
 amid its horrors. 
 
 Poor Fantine, not vicious, but onh^ ignorant of the 
 real world, and hence trusting the world without 
 reserve, not dreaming that Real and Ideal could fail 
 to coincide, how could she fail to be bewildered by 
 the fearful contradictions into which such blind trust- 
 fulness has plunged her? To her, thus awakened, 
 organized society can have no realt}^ save in its purely 
 legal aspect. And in this aspect Society is for her 
 nothing else than a heartless, purely demonic 
 mechanism having but this single purpose: To crush 
 live souls into ever lower depths of the wretchedness 
 of living death. 
 
 Hence is it that with the fatal fever of life's enigma 
 upon her she can only shiver and gasp and die at the 
 apparition of faultless — that is, soulless — Societ}^ as 
 persgnifiedjby _the inflexible, incorruptible savage, 
 Jayert. It is only the transfigured fugitive from such 
 hopelessly unjust justice that, in the last moments of 
 the poor dazed soul, can close her eyes to the shame 
 and despair of the world that has so cruelly ensnared 
 her. And this he does with such reverent tenderness 
 that a halo seems to hover about her wan features as 
 
ETHICS AMD THE ''NEW EDUCATIOy: 
 
 if to show that her e3^es are just opening upon the 
 splendors of a more divinely ordered world. 
 
 Truly may it be said : Her sins were forgiven her. 
 And yet let us speak waril}^ here also In and of 
 itself no sin can be forgiven. All sin is unpardonable 
 — absolutely so. Only the sinner can be forgiven ; 
 and that only when he separates himself from his sin. 
 And as for Fantine, what moment of her existence 
 but was filled with the repentance of agonized de- 
 spair, not ceasing to struggle, though it be in frantic 
 fashion, to expiate her offense upon the cross of Life's 
 most poignant contradiction. And the meaning and 
 saving efficacy of this unequal struggle is shown her 
 in her last hours b}^ this new living crucifix, Jean 
 Valjean, who, to the legal world, was still a mere 
 destroyer. 
 
 But the doubly orphaned little Cosette must also be 
 rescued from even the possibilities of the sewer. It 
 is this in fact, that constitutes the more immediate 
 motive leading Jean Valjean to break through the 
 forms of Law that once more begin gathering about 
 him after his self-denunciation in the Arras Court. 
 
 Was this jail-breaking a relapse into lawlessness — 
 a real return to the sewer — on his own part? No! 
 Not otherwise at least than from the standpoint of ex- 
 treme legality personified by Javert. For two catual 
 offenses the simple form of Law might still demand 
 
28 ETHICS A ND THE ''NEW ED UCA TION. ' ' 
 
 an answer from him. But the graver of the offenses 
 had long since been estimated by the good Bishop, as 
 sole "prosecuting witness," from the higher ethical 
 point of view, and he had refused to look upon it as 
 constituting a righteous cause of complaint. Na}' he 
 had even made the ver}' offense itself the occasion of 
 proving the genuiness and depth of his good-will as 
 toward the outcast, and this in such degree as to 
 awaken hope and self-respect upon the part of the 
 outcast. 
 
 And the other offense — that of the little Gervais 
 and the bit of money — had not Jean Valjean atoned 
 for that a thousand times since then? Judged, not by 
 the letter that kills, but by the spirit that gives life, 
 Jean Valjean, at the time of his last jail-breaking and 
 escape from Javert, so far from being a criminal and 
 worthy of bonds, was one of the saintliest of all the 
 saints that have ever walked the earth ! Under such 
 conditions it was his duty to break from the jail of 
 conventionality/ and save Cosette from the Inferno 
 of the Thenardier household. 
 
 And yet he accomplishes this task only to bring 
 her at length into relationship with Marius — Marius, 
 who, in his youthful inexperience and impetuosit}^ 
 becomes involved in contradictions and is swept into 
 the struggle of the barricades and thus unwittingly 
 plunges into the sewer of crime, from which he too is 
 
ETHICS AXD THE ''XEW EDUCATlOXr 29 
 
 saved b}^ the self-denying vigilance of Jean Valjean. 
 
 True, this last act of devotion is done — with what 
 passionate whirl of mingled feeling I — immediately in 
 the interest of Cosette ; but also essentially in the 
 interest of that divine-human Ideal which Jean Val- 
 jean himself had come to embody in wondrous meas- 
 ure of concrete reality, yet without dreaming in the 
 least degree that he had risen to such splendid height 
 of fulfilled being. 
 
 And so, with the accomplishment of this task of 
 saving the youth who had freely offered his life in a 
 way lacking wisdom, indeed, but yet in the noble cause 
 of human freedom, Jean Valjean had insured the honor 
 and happiness of his foster-child Cosette, and in so 
 doing had fairly rounded out his own world to its com- 
 pleted form. But one thing more remains for him in 
 this sphere of his existence. and that is: To pass — 
 and who can doubt the reality of the transition? — 
 through the ethereal gates of his own transfigured life 
 into the still richer realms of activit}' awaiting his re- 
 fined and nobly developed spiritual powers. 
 
 "Made perfect through suffering I" Xot onh' 
 through his own suffering, but through the suffer- 
 ing of others as well ! And yet did the divine deed 
 of the good Bishop cost him any real suffering? Was 
 it not rather a joy to him to do as and what he did ? 
 Scarcely can it be doubted that such, in the immediate 
 
JO ETHICS AND THE '' NEW EDUCATIONS 
 
 instance, was the case But that only brings into 
 clear view the fact that through a whole long life of 
 self-forgetting sacrifice the Bishop had attained a 
 divinit}' of soul to most men wholly inconceivable. 
 So that what must make the^n blind with fury only 
 stimulated him to clearer vision through his superior 
 power of Love. 
 
 In such wise, and in such wise only, are the finest 
 phases of the education of human souls accomplished. 
 
 III. 
 
 But even so, it is evident that all genuinely educa- 
 tional work involves, and of necessity involves, what 
 can scarcely be rightly named otherwise than as the 
 Purgatorial Factor. 
 
 No graver error has ever found adoption in the 
 course of educational theorizing than that of suppos- 
 ing that all educational work ought to be made wh^y 
 pleasurable ; that the factor of pain is detrimental and 
 ought to be wholl}' eliminated ; that all lessons must 
 be made "interesting" and delightful. The true 
 mission of the teacher is not to lull souls into a sense 
 of self-satisfaction and security. On the contrary his 
 mission is to wake life into increasingly complex 
 phases and into ever intenser degrees of manifCvSted 
 energ}^ And this can be done only at the expense ol 
 a greater or less degree of pain, 
 
ETHICS A MD THE ''lYE W ED UCA TION. ' ' j/ 
 
 Make the lessons interesting? To whom? In what 
 sense? Interesting only to the infantile mind? "In- 
 teresting" only in the sense of "amusing?" Is the in- 
 fantile mind forever to retain its infancy ? — forever to 
 remain in the speechless, thoughtless, deedless state ? 
 Nay, it is to become articulate, to unfold its divine 
 inner possibilities into the actuality of outer speech 
 and deed. The infant must be led to take in- 
 terest in things not infantile. Attention is to be 
 drawn, even by force and divine violence, if need be, 
 away from the trivial and vanishing to the essential 
 and eternal. For only by such transferrence of his 
 interest is it possible that the child should ever be- 
 come in very truth and deed a man. 
 
 By no means, then, is it to be our first study to 
 keep the child out of Purgatory. Rather are we be- 
 times in duty bound deliberately to plunge him into 
 Purgator}- — plunge him in on the one side and bring 
 him out on the other ! We are to show- him how to 
 cease to be a child, how to become in truest sense a 
 man. We are to show^ him the true secret of Ceasing 
 and Beginning ; of Living and Dying ; of that daily 
 dying which is involved in the very idea of perpetual 
 and perpetually increasing Life We are to show him 
 how the dying of interest in the particular rose that 
 fades is involved in the unfolding of genuine living 
 interest in the fadeless T3^pe of Rose that blooms with 
 
32 ETHICS AND THE "XEM EDUCATION:' 
 
 perfect beaut}^ in the soul alone. We are to so guide 
 him that he ma}' come to actuall}^ see for himself 
 what splendor of meaning there is in the suggestion 
 that he ought to set his affections, his inmost interest, 
 "not upon things on the earth," things that have no 
 element of perpetuit}^ "but upon things above," 
 things that constitute the soul's own divinest Life. 
 
 That Death is involved in Life is, indeed, already 
 a commonplace remark. Modern science has already 
 shown that so far from this being a mere rhetorical 
 phrase and poetic extravagance it is rather a realistic 
 fact of the most prosaic type and absolutely universal 
 in the whole range of living beings. 
 
 And 5'et long ago poetic, which is also prophetic, 
 vision caught a glimpse of the necessity of Death as 
 involved in the full measure of Life. And so clear 
 was this vision that it focused itself upon the horror 
 oi not being able to die ! 
 
 You will remember how Eos, the goddess of the 
 Dawn, came to regard her own destin}' as bound up 
 with the destin}' of a mortal Once the wife of the 
 human husband, Tithonos, the measure of divine 
 happiness seemed to her to be attained. And yet she 
 could not be long in awaking to the consciousness 
 that, while she was immortal, Tithonos belonged to 
 the race of mortals. 
 
 After all, then, the Real failed to coincide with the 
 
ETHICS AND THE "NEW ED UCA TION. ' ' 33 
 
 Ideal even in the life of the goddess. And so, re- 
 membering an unclaimed boon she had long ages ago 
 been promised by Father Zeus she hastened to him 
 and prayed that the boon might now be granted. And 
 Father Zeus said: "It shall be as you desire. What 
 will you have?" And Eos prayed: "Oh, make my 
 husband immortal ! ' ' And yet as time went on Eos 
 discovered to her infinite dismay that after all she had 
 made the worst conceivable mistake. She had failed 
 to complete her prayer by adding this further request: 
 "And give to him eternal youth." And so it was 
 that Tithonos grew old, and feeble, and blind, and 
 querulous — and yet was wholly unable to die ! 
 
 A fatalit}^ indeed for Tithonos, and also for the 
 beautiful Goddess of the Dawn, whose blooming 
 youth and beauty were renewed through death with 
 each succeeding da}' ! Blooming Life bound irre- 
 trievably to living Death ! Impossible that this 
 should be endured ! And so Tithonos was put away 
 in a cavern — in a living tomb — so that his cries might 
 not be heard and so that his withered, unsightly 
 features and figure might not torture the eyes of the 
 Goddess. 
 
 'Even from the earliest dawn of human conscious- 
 ness, then, men have discerned this truth: That if 
 you eliminate death from life, life itself becomes a 
 living death ! And while we listen to the clear dawn- 
 
34 E THICS A ND THE ' 'NE IV EDL 'CA TION. ' ' 
 
 music of the myth, it is as if through such medium 
 the finest instinct of the divinely prophetic spirit of 
 antiquit}' were uttering this exclamation: O/i, blessed, 
 7i'orld-reneii'ing Death, that is forever turning dark 
 decay into ever freshly dawning Life! 
 
 But is Eos merely a mythical personage vaguely 
 looming alone in far-off antiquity? or may it be that 
 she is indeed a veritable reality of all time, and that 
 she is even familiarh^ know to us to-da}- ? You know 
 the answer. Eos is a realty ! She is ceaselessly 
 present in our midst. She is the goddess who presides 
 over the dawning of individual human consciousness. 
 She is known as Primary Education. And she is also 
 wedded to a very human husband, who is yet im- 
 mortal, and whose name is Discipline. 
 
 Worthy husband of a worthy Goddess — if only Eos 
 makes sure of adding to her prayer: "Give to m}' 
 husband eternal youth !" But when this is forgotten, 
 as sometimes is the case, then it cannot fail that he 
 should grow old, and blind, and feeble, and queru- 
 lous; so that no truh' divine eye could longer endure 
 to look upon him; and even his very name changes. 
 He is then called Order. 
 
 Discipline and Order ! Discipline is the soul of 
 Order. Order is the mere body of Discipline. Dis- 
 cipline without Order is the palest of ghosts. Order 
 without Discipline is a mere death's-head scaring 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCATION. 
 
 away all life. Discipline unfolding into Order, Order 
 realized through Discipline— that is Heaven's First 
 Law in its concrete, divinely beautiful form ! That 
 alone is worthy to be forever wedded to the eternally 
 youthful and beautiful goddess who presides over the 
 endlessly repeated dawning of divine consciousness 
 in human souls. 
 
 And yet this dawning consciousness must in every 
 instance come up out of the night of the merely sen- 
 suous phase of existence Up to this point soul has 
 been drowned in Matter, and the dawning of conscious- 
 ness is not so much a process of re-awaking as a pro- 
 cess of re-animation. And always at best this involves 
 more or less of amazement, of terror, of painful sense 
 of contradiction. 
 
 All the more, then, must the priest or the priestess 
 of Eos be careful to see that Order is never allowed to 
 appear in its mere death's-head character, but rather 
 that it shall appear as perfectly ensouled by Discipline; 
 and so, divinely beautiful. 
 
 But this, too, has its reservation. For Beauty 
 itself is not without austerity, and sometimes Disci- 
 pline must even be severe. Does a weak ankle give 
 narrow limitation to the power of locomotion ? The 
 surgeon comes and with steel bands and clamps con- 
 strains bones and tendons into normal form and into 
 normal relation. The process is irksome, painful. 
 
36 ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCATION." 
 
 But presently bones and tendons are restored to their 
 proper state and the individual, released from the 
 torturing bonds, goes free and is able thereafter to 
 keep step with the music of the world. You use a 
 caustic word now and then. But that is only to burn 
 away the "proud flesh" and leave the soul clean, and 
 whole, and scarless, and beautiful. 
 
 Sometimes you find yourself unable to turn your 
 head either this way or that. Your horizon is nar- 
 rowed, your consciousness self-centered and painful. 
 You call the phj'sician. He comes and applies elec- 
 tricit}^ and makes you quiver with pain. But this is 
 only to free you from such abnormal constraint and to 
 render 3'ou able to look freely aloft and behold Divin- 
 ity shining through all the stars. 
 
 Discipline ! One of the divinest of all words ; and 
 yet how rarely is it divinely comprehended! The 
 eternal Fact for which it stands is nothing less than 
 the solemn vo3^age by which each individual soul 
 must make discovery of the great New World of 
 spiritual Light and Life. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It is here, indeed, that we come in full view of 
 what to-day is with so much insistance called the 
 N'ezv Education. For the special claim made in behalf 
 of what is usually so described is nothing less than 
 
ETHICS AXD THE '' NEW EDUCATION:' 37 
 
 that the true method of adequatel}^ preparing the in- 
 dividual for actual living is now at length and once 
 for all discovered. 
 
 And yet once more we come upon a lurking am- 
 biguity. In three-fold form at least it proves its 
 readiness to mock us. For the New Education may 
 be considered equally well in respect either of its 
 subject-matter, or of its method, or of the spirit in 
 which its method is to be applied in dealing with its 
 subject-matter. 
 
 In very truth if we would at all comprehend the so- 
 called New Education we must carefully consider it 
 in each and all these aspects. We must consider each 
 in order that we may comprehend its truly specific 
 characteristics. We must consider all — and that 
 means each in the full compass of its relations — in 
 order that we ma}^ rightly estimate its claims as the 
 true and truly adequate and therefore final mode of 
 preparing the individual for actual living. 
 
 As to its subject-matter the "New Education" puts 
 forward its first claim to newness on the ground of its 
 estimate of "Nature" as the medium through which 
 the truest and fullest development of mind is to be 
 secured. Already, indeed, a revolution has taken 
 place in modern times in this respect. Education 
 has really assumed a definitel}^ new character through 
 the increase of attention given to the tracing out of 
 
j8 ETHICS AXD THE ''XEW EDUCATION." 
 
 Law and Order as the inmost e ssence of the wor ld of 
 Nature. 
 
 And further, this essence of the world of Nature 
 alread}^ involves the method which the New Educa- 
 tion puts forward as the second specific mark of its 
 newness. And no doubt there is justice in the claim. 
 In educational work there had not previously, nor has 
 there even j^et, been sufficient emphasis placed upon 
 the necessity of carefully following the methods of 
 Nature in every department of study. 
 
 Only let us beware of taking these terms at too low 
 an estimate of their value. For "methods" imply 
 mind; and if Nature presents a method then it is fair 
 to conclude — nay it is absolutely unfair or irrational 
 not to conclude — that "Nature" is but the manifesta- 
 tion of Mind; that it is, in truth, nothing else than 
 the infinitely complex medium through which we 
 have to discover the simpler modes of the working of 
 the ultimate and perfect Mind. 
 
 And in this case it is evident that to follow the 
 "methods of Nature" must thus far be the same as to 
 follow the methods of the perfect Mind Newly ap- 
 prehended and better appraised in many ways there 
 can be no doubt that the methods of Nature truly are. 
 But yet for all that these methods cannot rightly be 
 said to be but just now for the first time discovered. 
 This discover}', in fact, has been going on through 
 
ETHICS AND THE "NEW E 
 
 all the centuries. And both in its subject-matter and 
 in the explicit presentation of its methods the New 
 Education owes much more to Aristotle than it seems 
 commonly aware of. Here and there, indeed, the 
 pioneer work of the great Greek in the investigation 
 of Nature is incidentalh' referred to. But that he was 
 the first to map out, and that he effectually and ade- 
 quately mapped out the method by which all true 
 thinking must be done — and that is the very essence 
 of the "method of Nature" — is ver}- commonly lost 
 sight of altogether in the enthusiasm of "modern 
 acievement. ' ' 
 
 But this can only be referred to in passing. It may 
 be that the "New Education" is better entitled to its 
 designation as "new" in respect of the clear and keen 
 appreciation of the end proposed in education and 
 also in respect of the spirit in which its work is 
 actually done. 
 
 This at least is certain: That the study of Nature, 
 at first leading away from the study of Man, has at 
 ^length again led up to man as himself the necessary 
 culmmation of Nature. And even so the measureless 
 contrast between man and every other aspect of 
 Nature as the one unit capable of measuring Nature, 
 and hence as standing above Nature while yet also 
 actually including it within his own being — all this 
 has served to emphasize the unique quality of man 
 
ETHICS AND THE '' NEW EDUCATION: 
 
 and to emphasize anew the supreme significance in- 
 volved in the relations sustained by man to man. 
 
 In which case it may after all be that the study of 
 Nature is not to replace the study of the "Humani- 
 ties;" but rather that the study of Nature is only to 
 prepare the wa}^ for the more fruitful cultivation of 
 the humanistic field as itself constituting the actual 
 culminating phase of "Nature." And if this is true 
 then so far from being already "antiquated" the 
 "Humanities" belong to the perennially "modern" 
 world. 
 
 Let the Humanities, thus newly interpreted, be 
 transfused with the genuinely humanitarian quality 
 and you will have in full view the very spirit of 
 the New Education in the worthiest sense of the term. 
 Already, in fact, the New Education has come to be 
 definitely characterized as above all ethical. So that 
 all its other phases assume a special tone as being 
 distinctly subordinated to the end of unfolding 
 rational human character on the part of each and every 
 child. 
 
 The child shall be taught, not merely how to make 
 a living — that is already the "New Education" of 
 yesterday — but still more is he to be taught, how best to 
 live. And that is the New Education that must for- 
 ever abide. 
 
 But even so the ambiguities have not wholly disap- 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''XEW EDUCA TION.' 
 
 peared. "Nature" ought assuredly to be studied with 
 a view to rendering it subservient to human needs — 
 with a view, first, to making it productive, in the 
 highest measure, of those things, and materials for 
 things, required to satisfy the necessities of man's 
 physical being; and secondly, with a view to render- 
 ing it organic to man's spiritual being, and this so as 
 to emancipate man from the simple exhaustion of 
 his energy as inevitably consequent upon all forms of 
 mere slave-labor. 
 
 And yet this is by no means all. For Nature ought 
 still further to be specially studied as the outer, con- 
 crete unfolding of that great, majestic thing called 
 Law. For precisely in that does "Nature" approach 
 nearest to "Man." So that while on the one hand 
 it includes man, yet also on the other hand, in just 
 this subtle character of Law, it is comprehended by 
 and in the mind of Man. And if the highest term of 
 "Nature' ' is Law, and if it is precisely in this, its high- 
 est term, that Nature is comprehended by and in the 
 mind of Man; and if, further, to "comprehend" is to 
 "think," then, because that which Man comprehends 
 or thinks is by that very fact already proven to be of 
 the nature of thought, it is evident that Nature itself 
 is a system of thought and that in comprehending 
 Nature Man proves himself one in type with that 
 supreme Thinking-Energy which is the living Law 
 that constitutes the highest term of Nature. 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION. 
 
 V. 
 
 But in such case how much more complex must be 
 the relations between man and man than are the rela- 
 tions between thing and thing in Nature. And since 
 every human life is inextricably involved in every 
 other human life we cannot overlook the fact that we 
 here come upon what I venture to call the Third a?id 
 highest Law of Nature. And that Law may be form- 
 ulated as: Mutual Helpfulness in the divine Process of 
 Self Realization. And why should not this be given 
 the further name of Transfigured Ethicsf 
 
 And yet are these relations between man and man 
 new relations? Or can it be said that they have been 
 but just discovered? The answer to such questions 
 may be found in Histor}^ 
 
 And here we have to turn once more to Aristotle. 
 A thousand years of waiting for Aristotle before the 
 Ivatin-Christian world had grown to such intellectual 
 height as to be able to comprehend this great figure 
 even in dimmest outline ! And still two other cen- 
 turies, and well-nigh three, were added before the 
 Aristotelian Ethics could be rightly meavSured. 
 
 It remained for St. Thomas Aquinas at the close of 
 the thirteenth centur}' to free the great system-maker—-^ 
 or rather system-discoverer — from the obscurations and 
 perversions of the Arab commentators, to rightly ap- 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION:' 43 
 
 preciate the system in its due proportion, to adapt it 
 to the needs of Thought and Life as now at length 
 fairly Christianized, and in many ways also to supple- 
 ment the system. 
 
 Especially was this the case with the Aristotelian 
 Ethics. Here we already have the famed group of 
 the four "Cardinal Virtues" — b}^ no means "new," 
 even with Aristotle. These are Knowledge, Tem- 
 perance, Courage and Justice. And it is evident 
 that these present a thoroughly organic relation each 
 with each. As for Knowledge, that is presupposed 
 in the very notion of Virtue. Virtue wholly without 
 knowledge must forever remain a mere contradiction 
 in terms. 
 
 Again, Temperance is essentially self-restraint, 
 self-regulation. And without knowledge this must 
 clearly be impossible. 
 
 So, too. Courage is self-directed power in defense of 
 self, of home, of country, and in the positive conquest 
 of the world to reason-serving forms. And this also 
 is inconceivable, save as involving knowledge, which 
 latter is the mode of the mind that first gives defini- 
 tion to the mind itself, through discovering definition 
 as already existing in Nature; and which then again 
 gives definition to the human aspects of the world in 
 which man lives and of which man constitutes the 
 culminating term. 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCATION, 
 
 But again it is manifest that Knowledge as such 
 could not be acquired save through self-restraint and 
 prolonged effort, implying the courageous facing of 
 fairl}^ endless menacing forms of opposition. And 
 further, it is evident that Courage without Temper- 
 ance or self-restraint must be mere savagery; while 
 Temperance without Courage could be nothing more 
 than simple helpless inanition. And so also without 
 Knowledge both Temperance and Courage must be 
 blind; just as without Temperance and Courage 
 Knowledge must be altogether empt}- and that would 
 be the same as non-existent. 
 
 Finally, the perfect interfusion of all these could 
 not but result in a perfectly well-ordered human world; 
 and this could be nothing less than the concrete reali- 
 zation of Justice, in which neither excess nor yet de- 
 fect could ever find unfoldment. 
 
 All this St. Thomas saw and gave to it apprecia- 
 tion in fullest measure and in noblest fashion. But 
 he also saw a limitation, a lack, even in so admirable 
 a presentation of the essential factors of the moral 
 world. These virtues, so systematically unfolded in 
 the Aristotelian Ethics, are, as St. Thomas noted, 
 still only Juunan virtues. 
 
 No doubt they belong to the whole nature of Man, 
 and so cannot be separated from any other possible 
 Virtues pertaining to man's nature. But over and 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION:' 45 
 
 above them, though still transfusing and transfigur- 
 ing them, are certain other distinguishable qualities 
 or modes of the human soul which St. Thomas named 
 the Divijie Virtues; and this because he conceived 
 them to be infused by Divinity into man and as hav- 
 ing the value of transforming humanity into manifest 
 divine lifeness. 
 
 These divine virtues are: Faith, and Hope, and 
 Love. 
 
 And yet they are scarcely enumerated before one is 
 impelled to ask: Faith in what? Hope for what? 
 lyove of what ? And for us to-day the answer comes in 
 some such fashion as this; Faith in the Law of Gravity 
 for one thing; faith in the great Law of the Conser- 
 vation of Energy for another thing; faith in this Law 
 as the absolute unification of the outer world or uni- 
 verse — a unification in accordance with a faultless 
 method which, as we have already noticed, bears 
 within it this logical necessity: That we recognize 
 Mind as the supreme Essence or positive Being of 
 the actual world. 
 
 And this, once more, must compel us to recognize 
 the absolute oneness in Type as between this World- 
 Mind and the individual human mind. And this 
 again involves the infinitely significant Article of 
 Faith: That 7nan in his spiritual 7iature is injinitely 
 perfectible a7id, for that very reaso?iy beyond peradve^i- 
 ture inunortal. 
 
46 ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCATION." 
 
 And if this is true, then the virtue of Hope involves 
 the fullness of infinite expectanc}^ ! If ni}^ Faith is 
 borne on the wings of Reason to infinite, divine 
 heights, then Hope rises b}^ the self-same medium to 
 the same exalted level, and hence I, in my own per- 
 son, may legitimately and literally hope for all things 
 — all things at least that pertain to the world of divine 
 Reason. 
 
 But so also this raises the virtue of Love to its 
 highest power, and proves it to be also a truly divine 
 virtue. For Love is distinctly a relation between 
 Mind and Mind. And because all minds are neces- 
 sarily of the same divine Type then I cannot but 
 recognize some measure of Divinity in each and every 
 member of the human race. 
 
 And so in our work as teachers, if we possess this 
 divine virtue of Love in its true significance, we can- 
 not but regard with deepest interest every soul com- 
 mitted to our care. No matter how crude, no matter 
 how perverted, no matter how repellent such soul 
 ma}^ be, still, as a soul, as a mind, it cannot but pre- 
 sent some qualit}', some characteristic that must 
 call forth our faith, that cannot but excite our hope, 
 that must command our reverence; something then 
 for us to love in the true sense of devoted effort to 
 awaken, to reclaim such soul, to guide it into the 
 way of fulfilling within its own being that divine Self 
 that is the true Type of all possible selves- 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION." 
 
 Think of your task in this way and you cannot fail 
 to see with what scorn the great Teacher must have 
 made the exclamation: "He that loveth not his 
 brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God 
 whom he hath not seen !" For the surest proof that 
 a man has not seen God is the fact that he fails to see 
 God in his brother. 
 
 It was said long since: "No man can see God and 
 live." It might rather be said: No 7nan can see God 
 and go on living the same way; since to see God is 
 nothing less than to enter upon genuinely transfigured 
 existence, to die to all that is merely evanescent, to 
 here and now unfold eternal Life within the indi- 
 vidual soul. 
 
 Such, in fact, is the fundamental element in all 
 truly ethical conduct; and it is the very core of all 
 that is noblest in the "New Education." Nor was 
 St. Thomas the first to discern these supreme factors 
 of a truly ethical life- Paul knew of them, and all 
 thoughtful minds in all ages have more or less been 
 conscious of them. 
 
 To-day, indeed, we seem but just rising to the level 
 at which we can begin keenly to appreciate the splen- 
 dor of the discovery of the Doctor Angelicus of the 
 Thirteenth Century and of his chief predecessor in 
 such prophetic vision, the Apostle to the Gentiles. 
 
 It is this, I repeat, which is coming at length to 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION, 
 
 penetrate the ver}^ substance of our being to-da}^; and 
 that is the secret of our newly awakened sense of 
 responsibility to that one of our brothers who is fast 
 losing the divine likeness through crime and sin, as 
 well as toward that other brother from whom we our- 
 selves may hope for honor and advantage. That is 
 the secret of the new movement of Prison Reform; a 
 movement which looks through rags of destitution, 
 through all deformities of sin and shame, and sees 
 still shining there, though it be ever so dimh^, a 
 divinely constituted unit, an undying soul worthy to 
 be redeemed and worth, beyond all calculation, all 
 effort and expenditure that its redemption can require. 
 
 That is the secret, too, of the newly awakened mis- 
 sionary spirit of University Extension which will not 
 wait until souls stumble through pitfalls of ignorance 
 into the inferno of sin and crime, but will rather save 
 them from such agonies by guiding them, while yet 
 innocent, into clear knowledge of and reverence for 
 the eternal Laws of godlike Character. 
 
 And truly may we apply to this newly awakened 
 spirit of divine Humanity a world-old name world-full 
 of meaning. And that name is: Enthiisiasyn, which, 
 being interpreted, means: The Seiise of God zvithin one. 
 
 And with this as the core of every motive of your 
 lives, you, as teachers, cannot fail in your daily 
 school-room tasks, to exhibit spontaneously that 
 
ETHICS AND THE ''NEW EDUCA TION.' 
 
 beautiful quality represented by the word of which 
 Matthew Arnold was so fond : Epieikeia, and to 
 which he gave singularly apt rendering in the phrase: 
 Sweet reaso7iable7iess. 
 
 Infused with these divinest virtues of Faith and 
 Hope and I^ove you cannot fail of genuine enthusiasm 
 in your work, nor of sweet reasonableness in the man- 
 ner of your work. And working in such manner you 
 cannot fail of proving to be in your own persons the 
 divinely appointed because divinely attuned media 
 through which groping souls shall find true answer to 
 that wonderful prayer : ''Lead, Kindly Light!'' 
 
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