UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 >r. Ernest Carroll Moore
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING
 
 Jmprimi ote*t 
 
 ANTHONY J. MAAS, S.J., 
 
 Provincial Maryland-New York Province 
 
 REMIGmS LAFORT, 
 
 Censor 
 
 imprimatur 
 
 *JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY, 
 
 Archbishop of New York 
 
 June 18, 1914
 
 TEACHER 
 AND TEACHING 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD H. TIERNEY, S.J. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK 
 LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 
 
 1914
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
 
 1 
 
 
 
 vU 
 
 Education 
 
 Librarj 
 
 I -T;, 
 
 
 T-vt 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHEB 
 
 19385,':
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS little book is neither an erudite nor 
 an exhaustive discussion of the great prob- 
 lem of education. It is composed of a se- 
 ries of simple essays written in moments 
 stolen from serious and exacting academic 
 duties. The essays originally appeared in 
 the columns of "America," and are now 
 committed to a more permanent form, at 
 the request of many who found them help- 
 ful. 
 
 In view of this request, the papers are 
 left unchanged in form and substance, in 
 the hope that the interest which they orig- 
 inally evoked may be revived at a second 
 reading. 
 
 The author is aware of their defects, 
 but he trusts that they may continue to 
 suggest some thoughts to those who are 
 engaged in the great work of Christian ed- 
 ucation. If they accomplish this, his la-
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 bor will not have been without fruit. For 
 the rest, he can say with the poet : 
 
 "What is writ is writ. 
 Would that it were worthier.*' 
 
 E. H. T.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE TEACHER AND THE TEACHER'S CHIEF 
 
 WORK 1 
 
 II TRUE EDUCATION 12 
 
 III THE IDEAL TEACHER 27 
 
 IV METHODS OF TEACHING 38 
 
 V MENTAL STIMULUS IN EDUCATION .... 54 
 
 VI THE METHOD AND FUNCTION OF RECITATION 68 
 
 VII DISCIPLINE 82 
 
 VIII CHARACTER 97 
 
 IX TRAINING FOR CHARACTER 106 
 
 X RELIGION IN EDUCATION 117 
 
 XI SOCIOLOGY AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION . .130 
 
 XII THE BOY AND THE SECULAR LIFE .... 144 
 
 XIII THE BOY AND THE PRIESTHOOD .... 155 
 
 XIV THE BOY AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE . 168
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TEACHER AND THE TEACHER'S 
 CHIEF WORK 
 
 THE primary aim of all true education 
 is the formation of character. The ambi- 
 tion of every true teacher is to accomplish 
 this aim. He longs to work on the souls 
 entrusted to his charge, in a way that will 
 most surely effect this purpose. The sub- 
 jects on whom he works are the young 
 creatures of the moment people notori- 
 ously inconsiderate of past and future. 
 Like butterflies they are absorbed in the 
 delights of the present. Their souls are 
 cabined and confined and imprisoned within 
 narrow limits. Worst of all, the prison- 
 house is so comfortable and even consoling 
 that the youths either fail to realize its
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 nature, or realizing it, are disinclined to 
 rescue the prisoner, hence it becomes the 
 teacher's first task to destroy the great 
 gates, or at least throw them open, so that 
 the spirit of his pupils may enter upon a 
 larger and nobler life. There is but one 
 way to do this effectively, to wit, by bring- 
 ing the boy to realize the high purpose of 
 life, by giving him a view, a great, wide 
 view of the end of existence and a desire 
 to play a noble part in the world. 
 
 For a soul with an overmastering de- 
 sire for a higher life will not remain 
 shackled. It will live life in all its fulness, 
 anxious to make the best of its powers. 
 Nor can our efforts in this direction begin 
 too early. Time lost here is time never 
 regained. No boy who enters our schools 
 is too young to be brought to the realiza- 
 tion that he is preparing to play a great 
 part in the drama of life. This should be 
 driven home to him with all possible force 
 in the very beginning, so that his school 
 days may be an inspiration to him, for the 
 standard which he is expected to reach 
 cannot be put too high.
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 3 
 
 He has a work to do. Its merit and 
 force for good will depend upon the per- 
 fection of his character and this is limit- 
 less. Moreover, he should be shown that 
 character is a fabric woven from his per- 
 sonal thoughts, words and actions. As 
 they are, so will his character be. Thus, 
 he will come to know that his every aspira- 
 tion is of importance; that every act of 
 the present will work for good or ill in the 
 future. Here is the teacher's first task, 
 the quickening of the boy's soul by a noble 
 ambition. 
 
 In the Sistine Chapel there is a great 
 masterpiece of Michael Angelo illustrating 
 Adam's evolution to perfection. Though 
 the picture is altogether ideal, yet it may 
 be interpreted to point an apposite and 
 practical moral lesson. Adam lies upon 
 the ground a naked clod, dull of face, slow 
 of comprehension, low of aspiration, an 
 unlovely creature. Clouds lower upon 
 him, and he will not rise. But of a sud- 
 den God's arm is thrust through the over- 
 hanging mists. The fingers of the divine 
 hand touch the tips of Adam's fingers.
 
 4 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 Forthwith the clouds disappear, the sun 
 shines brightly, and the man of earth leaps 
 erect, face uplifted, eyes flashing, the light 
 of heaven on his brow. The touch of God 
 has transformed him. 
 
 Adam is the boy, the teacher's work is 
 like unto God's. Adam sits before us, 
 naked of intellect, dull of face, slow of 
 comprehension, low of aspiration; and we 
 are not only to touch him into a new life, 
 but to lead him thereto, to train him into 
 it. But how I What are to be our instru- 
 ments? These are of two kinds, natural 
 and supernatural. The latter have been 
 dwelt upon so often that they do not need 
 special discussion here. Hints about them 
 will be thrown out from time to time. The 
 former call for attention. 
 
 Life is the great educator. Life, not 
 books, should be a boy's study. What is 
 it, I ask, that has contributed most to im- 
 mortalize the great classic? Surely not 
 the name of the author. For an author 
 shines in the light reflected from his book. 
 Not mere diction; for diction alone were 
 as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 5 
 
 What then? The great thoughts and no- 
 ble deeds that seem to make the pages pal- 
 pitate. Life. Homer's is Homer's he- 
 roes. The Prometheus of .^Eschylus is 
 the chained hero who made a holocaust of 
 himself for his fellow men. It is this that 
 flames in the mind long after the music 
 of the language has died from the ear and 
 the beauty of the imagery has faded from 
 the memory. It is this and kindred things 
 that call to the best that is in man edu- 
 cate him. From such will our pupils' draw 
 inspiration and courage: ability to con- 
 ceive, strength to dare. It were the veriest 
 folly, then, a farce ridiculous beyond de- 
 scription, to drawl through authors of 
 whatsoever kind, content to replace a mis- 
 placed comma, to parse a word now and 
 then, to illustrate a figure and trace the 
 course of a river. This may be instruc- 
 tion; it is not education. He who works 
 so has missed the idea of a sublime voca- 
 tion, and his pupils lose forever a great 
 discipline which is necessary to harmonize 
 the warring elements within. They will 
 not become men after the image of the
 
 6 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 most perfect man. While under such 
 guidance, their college or school life will 
 have no meaning for them. It will be a 
 succession of incoherent days, leading no- 
 where; a series of stupid, meaningless 
 tasks, with the effect of quenching the tiny, 
 flickering soul-fire which may have been 
 lighted in a lower class or school. So they 
 will lose ambition and drift from us be- 
 cause of our neglect. For they cannot live 
 on husks. They are not of a species lower 
 than ourselves. They are as ourselves: 
 alive with a like life every instant : in pos- 
 session of a soul which needs training every 
 minute of our all too short class-term. 
 Every instant the lesson must be given 
 high thoughts, lofty aspirations, candor, 
 so infrequent in these unhappy days, rev- 
 erence, purity, unselfishness, accuracy: a 
 labor, surely, for a lifetime. 
 
 This is our task. God pity us if we neg- 
 lect it. To ruin a boy's intellect is hideous : 
 to spoil his character, tragic. But we shall 
 lose no opportunity to accomplish our pur- 
 pose. In literature, for example, we will 
 not aim merely at words and phrases and
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 7 
 
 figures. We shall look below these for the 
 chief instrument by which we are to ac- 
 complish the end in view. We shall have 
 praise for all that is noble, scorn for all 
 that is base. The Trojan war will be more 
 than a succession of battles it will be a 
 temporal punishment of crime. The flight 
 of ^Eneas from the burning city will be a 
 heroic example of love and reverence to 
 parents and those in authority. The hell 
 of the ^Eneid and the pool of Phaedo will 
 show, first, that reason unaided by revela- 
 tion demands a future punishment for 
 crime; secondly, that the Catholic dogma 
 on this point fits in neatly with the dictates 
 of reason and meets an instinct of nature. 
 Then the lesson will be made actual by ref- 
 erences to current thought and other con- 
 temporary conditions. All this will the 
 good teacher do, if not from love, at least 
 from duty; for such is the demand of his 
 profession. 
 
 But to do all this the master must him- 
 self be a man of character. He must 
 tower over his pupils in soul power. The 
 frog can scarcely teach the young mock-
 
 8 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 ing-bird to sing. The man of low estate 
 cannot impart high lessons to others. The 
 touch of his finger-tips will not cause his 
 pupils to leap erect into a new-found life. 
 It will but leave mire and pitch on the 
 younger finger-tips. If the high thoughts 
 to which he gives utterance are hung on 
 his soul by borrowed hooks, they will do 
 more harm than good. They will gener- 
 ate in his class-room an atmosphere of in- 
 sincerity which is apt to destroy the very 
 capability of a young soul for many of the 
 virtues nowadays sadly needed, truth, for 
 instance, and respect for authority. 
 
 Teachers therefore must cultivate a 
 great heart. Great hearts beget great 
 hearts. Heroes generate heroes. They 
 must have unswerving faith in the essen- 
 tial goodness of their pupils ; they must be 
 men of sympathy and broad view, patient, 
 free from prejudice, forgiving, gentle yet 
 firm, humble but confident, generous, 
 bounteous, cordial, dignified but not stilted, 
 enthusiastic, totally in earnest with an 
 earnestness that comes from the convic- 
 tion that their vocation is a gift from God
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 9 
 
 for which they cannot be too grateful. All 
 this must they be, and more. They were 
 taskmasters else, hirelings, and not as they 
 should be, the chosen ones of God, * l to give 
 sight to the blind," "to set free the cap- 
 tive." 
 
 Such then are the traits of the real 
 teacher. He who possesses them will fall 
 neither in great things nor in those smaller 
 details in which so many are deficient. For 
 instance, he will stand by lawful authority ; 
 he will not shrink from the smallest duty 
 to curry favor; he will not accept an in- 
 exact observation, a careless statement, a 
 half truth. He will not allow roughness 
 or discourtesy to pass unrebuked, realizing 
 that to do so were to demoralize rather 
 than to upbuild character. 
 
 The broad ocean is composed of small 
 drops ; character is formed piece by piece, 
 from thoughts and words and deeds that 
 come from out the soul and go back again 
 to fashion it unto good or evil. Each 
 morning the master will go forth to his 
 work with hope and courage, firm in the 
 conviction that he is to accomplish some-
 
 10 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 thing sublime. No difficulty will frighten 
 him, no material, be it ever so unpromis- 
 ing, will dishearten him. The Providence 
 of God is his mantle, the faith which 
 teaches him that there are divine possibili- 
 ties in every soul, his staff. He will in- 
 sist with himself that the roughest soul 
 may be fashioned "into a vessel of elec- 
 tion." 
 
 The Florentines are exceedingly proud 
 of their great statue of David, and rightly 
 so, for it is a thing of beauty. Yet behold 
 its origin! Michael Angelo had pondered 
 well the life of God's hero. He had medi- 
 tated on his virtues, rejoiced in his great 
 deeds, sorrowed in his trials, until his soul 
 re-lived David's life so long and faithfully 
 that David's image was stamped hard and 
 fast, every feature of it, on his mind. Then 
 the sculptor went forth in quest of material 
 in which to embody that picture. He 
 found it on a scrap heap, a cast-off piece 
 of marble. Slowly and patiently he 
 worked on that despised material, watch- 
 ing every line that appeared thereon. Soon 
 a form began to emerge, faint and rough
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 11 
 
 at first, but gradually yielding under skil- 
 ful blow and touch to something finer and 
 still finer, until at last David stood forth, 
 so fair and lifelike that he seemed ready 
 to grasp his sling and slay a monster. An 
 artist had conceived a hero and reproduced 
 a hero from castaway material. 
 
 Christian teachers should do likewise. 
 They should conceive unto themselves 
 Christ, their prototype, the great teacher. 
 They should ponder His life, burn His im- 
 age into their souls, till it becomes a flam- 
 ing, leaping thing which must communi- 
 cate itself to others. Then the most un- 
 promising material will yield to their in- 
 fluence. The breath of a new life will en- 
 ter it. A new image will appear therein, 
 weak and blurred at first, but growing 
 slowly in shape and beauty, until at last 
 the fair Christ is reproduced in another 
 human soul. The teachers' work is done. 
 Generations will call them blessed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 TRUE EDUCATION 
 
 MANY men in many professions score a 
 failure in life. The teacher's profession 
 seems especially fruitful of wrecks. 
 Though there are many contributing 
 causes to ill success in this vocation, yet 
 there is one which is generally eminent 
 amongst all others. Young men fired with 
 enthusiasm for a noble cause approach 
 their task without a definite idea of the 
 work of a true educator. They do not set a 
 right standard for themselves. They en- 
 ter the class-room intent on suppressing 
 disorder, teaching syntax and anything 
 else which may happen to be on their sched- 
 ule. The printed card on which are listed 
 subjects and periods, and the few instruc- 
 tions which the head master may vouch- 
 safe to give, are their sole directive agents. 
 12
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 13 
 
 Books learned piecemeal have been their 
 preceptors. Bealities are lost in a haze. 
 It never occurs to them that each lesson 
 should be a step towards the realization 
 of a great scheme, the production of a no- 
 ble man. They teach Latin, and they teach 
 Greek, but beyond the Latin and the Greek 
 there does not loom up in all his sublime 
 proportions the man whom they should 
 strive to form. Hence their work is un- 
 inspired, undirected, haphazard, worth- 
 less. For success follows only on well- 
 rounded ideals prudently elaborated. So 
 it is in all arts and sciences, and teaching 
 is both one and the other. The successful 
 artist first conceives every important de- 
 tail of the masterpiece, and after that 
 works under the inspiration and guidance 
 of his exemplar. The architect concludes 
 that a church should catch up the soul from 
 earth by impressing it with the idea of 
 God's might and sublimity, with reverence 
 and devotion. Then he draws upon the 
 canvas of his soul a picture of the mighty 
 Gothic temple, with its great nave and 
 huge pillars symbolic of sublimity and
 
 14 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 might, its towering turrets and well-pro- 
 portioned arches symbolic of prayer. He 
 executes his design and man's soul is sat- 
 isfied. The work is a success. Do not 
 painter and sculptor act likewise? Pic- 
 ture and statue are both the realization of 
 a proper conception. Should either man 
 attempt to work without an ideal, the ef- 
 fect would be monstrous, and that, too, 
 not from lack of natural ability or train- 
 ing, but from sheer absence of the ideal. 
 A certain English painter executed ex- 
 quisite portraits of high-born dames, but 
 failed lamentably in his "Holy Family." 
 The lesson lies on the surface. A teacher 
 with a like defect will be deficient in his 
 work, and failure in education is far more 
 serious both for educator and pupil than 
 failure in most other vocations. For in 
 education we deal with an immortal soul. 
 Its fate is in our hands. Its destiny is 
 bound up with our work. We are to fash- 
 ion it either into a vessel of glory or in- 
 famy, and in the fashioning lies our re- 
 ward or punishment; more often the lat- 
 ter than the former, we fear.
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 15 
 
 To make the situation more portentous, 
 character once deformed in natural traits 
 is apt to remain deformed therein forever. 
 Few men retrace their boyhood steps to 
 set right early mistakes. Few recognize 
 their shortcomings, fewer still know how 
 to correct them, fewest are inclined to do 
 so. Hence the teacher's task is as far 
 above the architect's and painter's and 
 sculptor's as the human soul is above wood 
 and stone and canvas and pigments. He 
 must then labor under the influence of the 
 highest and most definite idea of the aim 
 of his work. 
 
 For this he must realize what true edu- 
 cation is. Real education is a process of 
 guiding a human being from a state of im- 
 perfection to a state of perfection. It is 
 the development of man according to the 
 highest attainable standards, the disci- 
 pline of soul and body into the best that can 
 be had. Such a process concerns itself 
 with every part of the pupil : with the body 
 and the senses, with the soul and all its 
 powers. Since each individual faculty is 
 the servant of the whole man, and man is
 
 16 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 % 
 
 the slave of none, all must be developed 
 harmoniously. If one be cultivated at the 
 expense of another, the fine equilibrium 
 which should be the most cherished posses- 
 sion of every educated man, is lost. If 
 body and senses be cultivated at the expense 
 of the higher faculties, the result is either 
 a fox or a mere athlete, creatures equally 
 unlovely. If the intellect is trained at the 
 cost of the will, the outcome is a rascal. 
 If the imagination be fostered to the neg- 
 lect of the other faculties, the product is 
 a mild lunatic. If memory alone be 
 strengthened, we have a machine. If the 
 will receives all attention, behold a fanatic 
 or a pious dolt! God's purpose cannot be 
 thwarted without sad effect, and God did 
 not intend man to be a gladiator only, nor 
 a mere scholar, nor simply an upright man, 
 but a perfect combination of all: a lithe 
 and active body, acute senses, a powerful 
 intellect, a virtuous heart; such His de- 
 mand. 
 
 But how accomplish all this? As re- 
 gards the body, little need be said. In the
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 17 
 
 years of adolescence a primal instinct im- 
 parted by the Creator for the purpose 
 guides youths in this matter. It were well 
 to study this instinct and follow its dic- 
 tates, curbing now, stimulating again. 
 Thus the body will be trained; and the 
 whole interest of the college, faculty and 
 students included, will not centre round an 
 inflated bag or a willow club. The senses 
 require more consideration. English em- 
 pirical philosophy has led to many excesses 
 in their regard. They have absorbed and 
 are absorbing entirely too much attention. 
 On the other hand they must not be under- 
 rated. They are agents of caution and ac- 
 curacy, and consequently promote good 
 thinking, indirectly at least. Moreover, 
 as everybody knows, there is an intimate 
 connection between them and the exceed- 
 ingly important imagination. The blind 
 and the deaf, for instance, are forever shut 
 out from certain intellectual gifts. By all 
 means then cultivate the senses. For this 
 manual training is good. However it is 
 not the only means. Accurate observa-
 
 18 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 tion in field and street, care in reading and 
 writing play a splendid second in the 
 process. 
 
 This brings us to the consideration of 
 faculties which present more intricate dif- 
 ficulties. False psychology and ethics lead 
 to many blunders here. Sometimes the 
 memory is neglected, very frequently the 
 imagination, most frequently the will. 
 What, now, should our attitude be? 
 
 To begin with the memory: first, no one 
 should doubt the importance of this fac- 
 ulty. It is a real handmaid, on whose ac- 
 tion most of the higher powers of the soul 
 depend in a marked degree. A weak mem- 
 ory is often a manacle to a quick intelli- 
 gence, and a sieve through which the finest 
 fruits of the imagination filter. So it must 
 be cultivated. There are two ways of 
 doing this, one indirect, the other direct. 
 Clear, accurate, noble thinking constitutes 
 the first. Such thoughts exercise a salu- 
 tary influence on every faculty. Exercise 
 is the second, rational exercise on matter 
 which is so beautiful and easy of compre- 
 hension that one who runs will understand
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 19 
 
 and love it. As is clear, great care should 
 be taken to prevent the memorizing from 
 becoming a mere process of gorging and 
 the repetition a species of regurgitation. 
 For these would promote mental slovenli- 
 ness and torpor of the reason. 
 
 Hardly less important than the memory 
 is the imagination, a truly noble but rest- 
 less and at times wayward faculty, which 
 is easily elevated and as easily debased. 
 By it man can live with angels and saints 
 or wallow with the animal. Without it he 
 would be little better than a statistician or 
 the dry-as-dust scientist who described 
 noble grief in terms of chemical notation. 
 Literature would be a poor thing indeed 
 without rich and varied imagery. For lit- 
 erature is not a succession of words and 
 phrases, nor even a collection of fine ideas. 
 More than this is required. Pictorial and 
 dramatic elements enter largely into its 
 composition. Lofty thoughts and noble 
 emotions must be clothed in superb lan- 
 guage. Then and only then is literature 
 born. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton are 
 fascinating, if not sublime, because of the
 
 20 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 superb play of the phantasy. Moreover, 
 literature exerts its cultural influence 
 chiefly through this same faculty. It fas- 
 tens itself on it, and through it arouses 
 high ideas and noble emotions. The pol- 
 ished and elegant (Edipus frequently has 
 less humanistic effect than the more 
 rugged Prometheus or the distinctly in- 
 ferior Hecuba, solely because the first does 
 not appeal to many imaginations. The 
 triumphant Achilles charioteering madly 
 round the walls, spear in hand, and then 
 disappearing through the flaming breach, 
 followed by hosts of lusty warriors; the 
 giant staring savagely into Ulysses' face 
 with that one awful eye; the white-sailed 
 galleys speeding swiftly on as strong oars- 
 men " smite the sounding furrows;" dis- 
 torted, shaggy-maned, long-fanged mon- 
 sters appearing above the foaming waves 
 and dragging frightened men from their 
 places to a certain death; these and kin- 
 dred or more sublime pictures are the ele- 
 ments that thrill the youthful soul and 
 eventually win it to appreciation of the 
 higher realities and the more subtle feel-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 21 
 
 ings of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton. The 
 imagination then is the agent of noble 
 work, and every instrument should be 
 called into requisition to train it. Litera- 
 ture, painting, music, the drama, natural 
 scenery are all potent factors in purifying 
 it and stimulating it. 
 
 There yet remain two faculties to be 
 considered. The first in order is the intel- 
 lect. Of this so much can be said that too 
 much is apt to be said. To forefend 
 against such a defect we shall confine our 
 remarks to some general hints. The aim 
 of a college is not to train specialists ; that 
 belongs to professional schools. Neither 
 should a college strive to store the intellect 
 with facts. Eather its effort should be ex- 
 erted to give pupils a love of learning, a 
 desire to be learned, and a knowledge of 
 how to become so. An illustration will 
 make our contention clear. In a college 
 there are two sets of men. First, there are 
 brilliant fellows who perform their daily 
 tasks well. Their repetitions are perfect: 
 they solve problems, marshal dates, ana- 
 lyze passages in a most satisfactory fash-
 
 22 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 ion, and, as a consequence, are graduated 
 with honors. But their laurels are scarce 
 a month old before learning begins to pall 
 on them. Books and all other means of 
 education are neglected, and intellectual 
 progress ceases. The second class is com- 
 posed of plodders who labor hard with in- 
 different success, often stumble, but never 
 lose heart. They too are graduated but 
 not with honor. However, they go forth 
 from the college determined to continue 
 the discipline of soul, and in time, by dint 
 of hard, persistent labor, they become men 
 of culture and learning. The former were 
 not educated, the latter were. The former 
 were neither disciplined nor taught how to 
 discipline themselves. Their minds were 
 sponges, which absorbed and exuded ma- 
 terial under pressure of a perceptorial 
 stimulus. The latter, however, were dis- 
 ciplined and taught how to discipline 
 themselves. They received a college train- 
 ing. 
 
 To accomplish this every legitimate 
 means should be employed. Every study 
 is useful. Each gives some aid: mathe-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 23 
 
 matics, caution and accuracy; physical sci- 
 ence, alertness and accuracy too; history, 
 high ideals ; and so on for other branches. 
 They must be used prudently, however. 
 One is not to be given unfair advantage 
 over another, for undue progress in one 
 direction means a halt in another. Then 
 too the best that is in a subject should be 
 brought out. Mathematics is not a page 
 of notation ; history is not a series of facts. 
 Beneath the one is a logic to be unfolded; 
 beneath the other, ethics to be laid bare. 
 Every element in a subject should be 
 brought to bear on a boy's mind. Litera- 
 ture, for example, should furnish ethical, 
 historical, literary, textual aids to the 
 work. Not many of the last however lest 
 digammas and iota-subscripts obscure the 
 more valuable factors. 
 
 The will alone, the storm-centre of many 
 disputes, remains for discussion. To our 
 mind there is no objective reason for any 
 difference of opinion about the training of 
 this faculty. It needs education and should 
 get it. There is impulsiveness to be 
 checked, stubbornness to be softened, pet-
 
 24 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 tiness to be stifled, and so on through a 
 long category. There are a thousand ways 
 of effecting all this. But in order that a 
 teacher may use them to advantage he must 
 know the character of each pupil and adapt 
 the methods to the individual. All cannot 
 be treated alike. Twin brothers may be 
 as different in disposition as lambs and 
 crocodiles. And the master is not a 
 herder, but a trainer of souls. 
 
 Skilful repetitions will furnish many oc- 
 casions for efficient work on the will. A 
 rebuke here, a word of encouragement 
 there, a playful remark now, an insinua- 
 tion again, are all useful in their proper 
 place. All should be used as prudence and 
 need dictate. Then there are the great 
 disciplines which appeal to the highest that 
 is in the human soul. In the natural order 
 there are appeals to honor and self-respect 
 and patriotism and love of parents and 
 college, and a thousand others which find 
 an echo in the human heart. Such things 
 should not be neglected. Though not the 
 best, they are yet noble. They are nat- 
 ural, it is true. But is nature bad? Is
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 25 
 
 not the supernatural built up on the nat- 
 ural? How often are we not taunted with 
 the accusation that a bad Catholic is the 
 worst of men ! If this be true, may not the 
 reason lie in the fact that when the slender 
 cord which bound him to Heaven broke, 
 there was nothing to fall back upon, simply 
 because the natural virtues had been 
 scorned by his teachers f 
 
 Of course the great means for our work 
 are supernatural. For there are defects 
 in the human soul which only the plummet 
 of revealed religion can sound, crevices 
 which only the light from God's face can 
 illuminate and cleanse. Religion alone 
 stirs the soul to its very depths, lifts it out 
 of itself and cleanses it of sin and the de- 
 sire of sin. Even so slight a part of re- 
 ligion as the more simple devotions are of 
 incalculable value in education. The saint 
 who was as ourselves, weak and perchance 
 sinful, stands before the boy in transcen- 
 dent glory. The young soul goes out to 
 the holy one of God in admiration, affec- 
 tion. Now love is aroused, now intense 
 reverence, now pity or mercy, or desire of
 
 26 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 emulation: all, in short, that purifies, sub- 
 dues, and yet elevates. 
 
 Here then is our great educator: reli- 
 gion, doctrine and practice, too; gently 
 urged, sweetly accomplished. For religion 
 is life also. We must insist on all this. 
 For often the soul must leap up from the 
 slime of earth, and to whom shall it bound, 
 save to God the Father, Searcher of hearts, 
 the Dispenser of the wine of love, and the 
 oil of mercy? This then is education, a 
 process of perfecting man, body and soul, 
 by all the means which nature and grace 
 can furnish. But where shall we find our 
 exemplar f He breathes through the pages 
 of Holy Writ.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE IDEAL TEACHER 
 
 TRUE education is generally the work of 
 skilful teachers. Since the former is a 
 pearl without price, the value of the latter 
 can scarcely be overestimated. In view of 
 this, a consideration of the qualities of an 
 ideal master will not be out of place. The 
 subject, of course, is large, too large for 
 adequate treatment in the short space 
 which can be allotted to it. Hence the most 
 that can be done is to jot down a few re- 
 marks in the hope that they will open up 
 a line of thought which can be followed out 
 later. 
 
 So to begin. By virtue of his office, the 
 real educator should, first of all, be a gen- 
 tleman. The reasons for this are too ob- 
 vious to demand discussion. Not so, how- 
 ever, the elements which go to constitute a 
 
 27
 
 28 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 gentleman. They are many and complex. 
 Some are small and easily neglected, some 
 large and difficult of acquisition and re- 
 tention. All are important. In the for- 
 mer class are many which delicacy and a 
 sense of propriety exclude from public dis- 
 cussion. There are others about which a 
 passing word is better than a disquisition. 
 For no teacher would tolerate without in- 
 dignation insistence on the necessity of 
 simple, chaste language, free from the taint 
 of slang and provincialism, and an accu- 
 rate, unaffected pronunciation. The finer 
 instincts in which all people of the profes- 
 sion share alike are sufficient guarantees 
 for correctness in these matters. But this 
 cannot be said of other necessary char- 
 acteristics. For sometimes in the stress 
 and strain of work both instinct and train- 
 ing fail us. This is especially true in re- 
 gard to courtesy, to which are closely linked 
 frankness and openness of mind, qualities 
 by which the good influence of a teacher is 
 largely buttressed. Strange though it may 
 appear, it is just here that teachers are 
 so apt to fail. By its very nature their
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 29 
 
 profession tends to make them exceedingly 
 dogmatic and sensitive of correction. 
 They spend a great part of their life in 
 contact with inferior minds, which they 
 must often coerce into knowledge. From 
 sheer necessity of being dictatorial on oc- 
 casions they are apt to become habitually 
 and arrogantly so. Their dogmatism often 
 exceeds all bounds, even the bounds of 
 truth. The intellectual evils of this are 
 deplorable enough, but the moral effect is 
 well nigh disastrous. Frankness slips 
 away and cunning and untruthfulness, the 
 refuge of cowards, and unfairness to ad- 
 versaries develop. The mind is closed to 
 all suggestion and correction and improve- 
 ment. It has become sufficient to itself, 
 and woe betide the pupil who catches his 
 master napping and dares to throw even a 
 pale, flickering light on an official blunder. 
 Cujusvis hominis est errare, nullius, nisi 
 insipientis, in errore perseverare, is a ped- 
 agogical heresy. 
 
 This would not be so bad did it not tend 
 to generate prejudice, a fault so common 
 amongst teachers that it seems to be a
 
 30 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 schoolmaster's peculiar heritage. The 
 harm which this defect works is beyond 
 computation. It erects an unscalable 
 adamantine wall between master and dis- 
 ciple, begets distrust and ill feeling on both 
 sides, snuffs out the teacher's desire to 
 better the condition of his charges, closes 
 the boy's heart against the man and often 
 engenders in the young soul contempt for 
 the master and all that he stands for, how- 
 ever sacred. Nor does the evil end here. 
 The boy is fired with a sense of wrong, 
 obsessed with the idea of injustice, real or 
 imaginary, and does not hesitate to speak 
 his thoughts, thus begetting dislike for the 
 school in the minds of parents and pros- 
 pective pupils. The teacher too plays his 
 role in the drama of further mischief. He 
 speaks unkindly, often unjustly of his pu- 
 pils. Minds are poisoned against them, 
 and as a consequence they must meet a 
 hostile and oftentimes militant prejudice 
 all along the line of travel. Thus souls are 
 warped and perchance ruined because the 
 teacher has not the self-control of a gentle- 
 man. Even though the process of destruc-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 31 
 
 tion may not proceed as far as this, yet the 
 evil is always great. For the teacher who 
 alienates his pupils from him labors under 
 a tremendous disadvantage. Strive as he 
 may to better conditions, boys ' motives for 
 study are seldom high. Few study from 
 a sense of duty, fewer from fear or hope 
 of reward, fewest from love of books. 
 Many, however, will work out of admira- 
 tion and love of the professor, who should 
 strive to gain the respect and affection of 
 his pupils so that he may hold the key to 
 their wills for noble purposes. But this 
 is a digression. 
 
 Courtesy will bear further analysis with- 
 out being exhausted. In the first place it 
 is well to bear in mind that this fine flower 
 of religion does not consist in soft accents, 
 graceful bows and gentle smiles. It lies 
 below the surface. It is an instinct of a 
 cultivated soul, proportionate to the good- 
 ness thereof, and shows itself in a thou- 
 sand ways, such as by respect for superi- 
 ors, the aged, the opinions, feeling, rights 
 and legitimate habits of others, and all 
 that. Here then is one of a gentleman's
 
 32 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 chief assets, and no teacher can dispense 
 with it. Moreover a gentleman, and hence 
 an ideal teacher, must be tactful, calm, not 
 impulsive, simple of manner, not affected, 
 large of mind in all things, not small: in 
 short, so well disciplined as to be perfectly 
 balanced. Those who would pursue this 
 subject further would do well to ponder 
 Newman's description, excising a phrase 
 or two and adding to all the perfection of 
 Christian charity. 
 
 The other traits of a perfect teacher are 
 numerous. For the sake of clearness they 
 can be divided into two classes, natural and 
 supernatural. 
 
 Amongst the former ability stands pre- 
 eminent. Like courtesy, this quality sug- 
 gests many ideas; some in reference to 
 the intellect, others in regard to the will. 
 That a teacher should be intellectual goes 
 without saying. The classroom is no place 
 for a dolt or an ill-trained man. The true 
 master must have natural ability which has 
 been cultivated long and assiduously. His 
 subject matter must be a part of his life 
 and he must be able to present it simply,
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 33 
 
 clearly, directly, correctly. If it is hazy 
 in his mind, it will be thick on his lips and 
 foggy in the minds of his boys. If he finds 
 difficulty in clothing his ideas in words and 
 does so awkwardly, his listeners will have 
 greater difficulty in grasping his meaning. 
 If he is inaccurate, his charges will be an 
 abomination of desolation in this regard. 
 If he is disorderly and inconsequent in 
 presentation, his pupils will be the despair 
 of all future teachers. An illogical mind 
 is almost as incorrigible as the devil. 
 Learning, order, conciseness, clearness, 
 simplicity, power to amuse without dis- 
 tracting, therefore, are some of the quali- 
 ties a successful educator should have. 
 
 Such an equipment requires hard 
 thought and perpetual study for acquisi- 
 tion and upkeep and profitable use. The 
 moment a man ceases to reflect and study, 
 in that instant he lapses from a teacher to 
 a mouther of words. No matter how 
 learned he may be, he stands in need of 
 proximate preparation for class. With- 
 out this his ideas will inevitably be vague, 
 loose, inconsequent. Moreover sciences
 
 34 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 grow. Then too there is constant need of 
 remoulding old knowledge to meet new con- 
 ditions. New illustrations must always be 
 sought. The Parthians and Medes are 
 dead a bit too long to interest American 
 boys. The teacher must study always, not 
 by books alone, but by accurate observa- 
 tion also, and by attendance at lectures, and 
 so forth. 
 
 This brings our discussion to another 
 group of characteristics of a perfect mas- 
 ter. They may be called moral for they 
 pertain to the will. They fall naturally 
 into two classes, a minor and a major. In 
 the former are found justice, fortitude, the 
 mother of perseverance and good disci- 
 pline, kindness and patience. These are 
 indispensable. The teacher's position is 
 unprofitable and intolerable without them. 
 Year after year his life is cast amongst un- 
 trained youths of all sorts of dispositions 
 and habits. Some are jealous and are con- 
 tinually on the alert for the least sign of 
 favoritism. Some are clamorously bold 
 and stand in need of stiff rebukes. Some 
 are weak and timid and long for sympathy
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 35 
 
 and encouragement. Some are lazy and 
 require the lash. Some are petulant ; some 
 impulsive; others are querulous, others 
 again coarse. Some are untruthful, others 
 politic. All are imperfect in a thousand 
 diverse ways and degrees. The teacher 
 must meet all these different exigencies 
 quietly, calmly, effectively, bending now 
 one way, now another,. smoothing a wrinkle 
 here, levelling a mountain there, till at last 
 the soul committed to his care is normal, 
 if not supernormal. 
 
 The major and last class of moral quali- 
 ties can be summed up in one word, godli- 
 ness. The ungodly man is entirely out of 
 place in a classroom. He himself is 
 stunted, deformed and cannot form others. 
 His soul is unsymmetrical and he may com- 
 municate his amorphism to others. He 
 lacks the last and most potent touch re- 
 quired for perfection, the touch of God. 
 The Os sublime is not his. His horizon is 
 narrowed to earth. His thoughts are of 
 gold and beef and beer and cheese, and 
 alas! sin. If he be true to his principles 
 he will be an insufferable egoist. Indeed,
 
 36 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 human respect or lack of logic alone will 
 save him from this, and both are equally 
 undesirable in a trainer of men. Life will 
 begin with himself and end with himself. 
 His whims and passions will be his laws, 
 and as far as he can effect it, everybody 
 else's laws. God and state and individual 
 will be so many objects for his personal 
 aggrandizement, irrespective of his duties 
 and their rights. Logically all his tenden- 
 cies will be distinctly anti-social. Such is 
 the natural outcome of selfishness. And 
 ungodliness, to put it at its lowest, is the 
 supremest selfishness, frantic egotism 
 which outrages every sense of decency and 
 justice, unseats God and puts self on the 
 throne for which man should be the foot- 
 stool. Away then with the ungodly 
 teacher. Give us rather the man of God, 
 reverent, high-minded, devout. In such 
 there is a power for good, not of earth, but 
 of Heaven. 
 
 These then are some of the chief char- 
 acteristics of the ideal master. He can be 
 aptly described in words adapted from 
 Plato's "Kepublic," as a lover of all wis-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 37 
 
 dom, a man with a taste for every kind of 
 knowledge and an insatiable desire to 
 learn; one who has greatness of soul and 
 a well proportioned mind, quick to learn 
 and to retain ; a spectator of all times and 
 all existence, noble and gracious, the friend 
 of truth, justice, courage, temperance. 
 All which we cap with the word, godly. 
 
 Such the teacher. Great, noble, consol- 
 ing is his task. Workers on marble may 
 live to see their work perish, builders of 
 temples may watch their masterpieces 
 crumble in the dust : teachers will have the 
 consolation of beholding the temple of God, 
 the shrine of the Holy Ghost which they 
 helped to raise and sustain in human souls, 
 stand for eternity, in dazzling light, a mon- 
 ument of their zeal and a tribute to their 
 nobility.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 METHODS OF TEACHING 
 
 THE teacher who reflects on his work and 
 experiences will probably be confronted 
 by a phenomenon which is becoming all 
 too common in these latter days. As he 
 muses there will pass before his mind a 
 shuffling army of boys who were at once his 
 care and his despair. They were likely 
 lads in many ways. Physically they were 
 sound, morally they were upright. But 
 intellectually they were impossible, and 
 this, too, not through lack, of native ability, 
 but rather through sheer absence of ambi- 
 tion. At first blush this phenomenon 
 seems puzzling, but it loses its obscurity 
 once we call upon our larger experiences 
 for a solution. 
 
 As we go through life we meet many men 
 of many races and characters, and amongst 
 
 38
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 39 
 
 this motley throng are some who are exact 
 counterparts of our smug schoolboys. 
 They too are vigorous of frame, virtuous 
 and amiable, but as inactive as the sloth, 
 which will never move from its favorite 
 tree save under the impulse of hunger. 
 Conversation will soon reveal the secret 
 of their torpor. They have few or no 
 ideas, and those which they have are small 
 and borrowed, and worn from prior use 
 by many other intellectual parasites. As 
 a consequence the will is not stimulated to 
 great desires and sturdy deeds. It has no 
 motive power. Thoughts are few and lit- 
 tle and outworn, and desires and acts are 
 commensurate with them, no better, no 
 worse. For the will follows on after the 
 intellect. Our friends are like well-built 
 ships which lie at anchor in the harbor, 
 rising and falling listlessly on each wave, 
 and rotting, too, for lack of fuel to propel 
 them. 
 
 Now, though this condition is often due 
 in part to character and careless home 
 training, yet inefficient teaching more often 
 plays a large part in accomplishing it. The
 
 40 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 school-room is too frequently the grave of 
 mental power and hope and ambition. For 
 there are two ways of teaching, and one of 
 them is fatal to intellectual life. It ruins 
 the very vitality of the mind and leaves it 
 jaded and prostrate. This method is an 
 unnatural process of stuffing unaccom- 
 panied by digestion. The teacher hastily 
 loads his own intellect with ill-sorted, un- 
 assimilated odds and ends of knowledge, 
 and by dint of great physical exertion 
 worthy of a stevedore, pitches shred after 
 shred, patch after patch, chunk after chunk 
 into the tender minds of the pupils. Men- 
 tal dyspepsia, with all its lamentable re- 
 sults, such as disgust for learning, follows. 
 Euin is at hand. For the process is violent 
 and unnatural. By it the mind is contin- 
 ually overloaded and weighed down with 
 debris of all sorts. It cannot react on its 
 contents ; they subjugate it, curb it, smother 
 it, kill its initiative, condemn it to a pas- 
 sivity which in the end destroys its appe- 
 tite for knowledge, and puts in its stead a 
 tendency to nausea at the very sight of a 
 book or the sound of a teacher's voice. A
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 41 
 
 much abused stomach will refuse to per- 
 form its functions ; so will a maltreated in- 
 tellect. 
 
 There is scarcely need of laboring this 
 point further. However, it can be illus- 
 trated from an analogy with a partially 
 true example from the social life of ants. 
 Amongst these wonderful insects there are 
 certain individuals, the "repletes," which 
 hang from the roof of the nest chamber, 
 day in and day out, with crop full of food. 
 They themselves assimilate only a tiny por- 
 tion of the supply, just enough to keep 
 them alive. Sparing towards themselves, 
 they are prodigal towards others. As they 
 hang in their forced position, worker after 
 worker approaches them to have food 
 pumped into the crop. Should the repletes 
 die, the workers are at a loss for their daily 
 sustenance, and death often overtakes 
 them. Now, though this is not all exactly 
 square with facts, yet it exemplifies the 
 main point at issue. The teacher is the 
 replete, the pupil is the worker. Deprive 
 the pupil of the support of the teacher and 
 his fate is mental stagnation and volitional
 
 42 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 inactivity from which he cannot rebound, 
 for that the mind has lost its elasticity 
 through abuse. Things would be far dif- 
 ferent if a rational method of teaching had 
 been employed, a method of guidance and 
 suggestion, under which the mind increases 
 both its appetite for knowledge and its rel- 
 ish for it. 
 
 Here, as every place else, nature offers 
 excellent suggestions for the success of our 
 work, and a moment's reflection will re- 
 veal all of them to us. The appetite of 
 the mind bears a striking resemblance to 
 the appetite of the body. In youth both 
 are keen. They require little stimulus, and 
 the relish consequent on their satisfaction 
 is great. They wane with increasing years 
 and often need a spur. What, now, is the 
 attitude of a mother or nurse with regard 
 to the bodily appetite of the child ? Stuff- 
 ing, gorging, is not tolerated. Food suit- 
 able in quantity and quality to the age and 
 condition of the child is given in a decent, 
 rational manner. Whenever necessary, 
 stimulus is exerted to promote the desire 
 for nourishment. Through gradual train-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 43 
 
 ing the boy is brought to know his own 
 needs and capacity, and the manner of sat- 
 isfying himself, according to changing cir- 
 cumstances. In other words, he is edu- 
 cated to a point where he relies on his own 
 resources so prudently that his conduct en- 
 sures his growth and vigor. This is just the 
 way the mind must be trained. In this case 
 at least, art and science too must follow na- 
 ture and help it. The teacher must exer- 
 cise the utmost care to preserve and in- 
 crease the natural appetite of the mind, 
 by imparting suitable knowledge in a suit- 
 able way, guiding rather than forcing, un- 
 til at last the intellect becomes strong, 
 pliable, full of initiative and resourceful- 
 ness, and is set free from preceptors, 
 eager and able to stimulate and satisfy its 
 legitimate tendencies. 
 
 But how can this be accomplished? 
 Many means are available. Perhaps Aris- 
 totle gives us the best suggestion in their 
 regard by stating that wisdom has its be- 
 ginning in wonder. The old sage was 
 right, as anybody who has ever seen a class 
 of boys pass from a lesson in calculus to
 
 44 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 experiments in chemistry or physics will 
 realize. Nodding heads are prominent in 
 the former case, bulging eyes in the second. 
 Here then is our first cue. For wonder is 
 the mother of interest, and interest fosters 
 enthusiasm. These had, half the difficulty 
 in education is overcome. Therefore, the 
 first effort of a wise teacher should be to 
 arouse interest and enthusiasm in his pu- 
 pils. Now, he will never accomplish this 
 unless he himself is enthusiastic over his 
 work. Taskmasters whose only ambition 
 is a salary can never draw a spark from 
 the souls of the young. Drive they may, 
 inspire they cannot. The teacher's enthu- 
 siasm depends in large measure on his love 
 for his vocation and his knowledge of his 
 subject. A man who does not love his work 
 should give it up. The sooner the better, 
 both for himself and his charges. But love 
 is not sufficient for success. Knowledge 
 of the matter and the pupils must be added 
 to it. It is well-nigh criminal for an ig- 
 norant person to enter a classroom. It is 
 stupid for a ready man to teach without 
 due regard for the ability and character
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 45 
 
 of his pupils. In both cases failure will 
 be the inevitable result. No man can teach 
 what he does not know well, and no man 
 can teach what he does know well to those 
 whom he does not know well. As soon as 
 a master draws near the edge of this knowl- 
 edge, his manner loses vigor and conviction 
 and becomes timid and halting. Embar- 
 rassment replaces confidence, and embar- 
 rassment is contagious, if not infectious. 
 At any rate, there is no room for enthu- 
 siasm in such a situation. Travel over a 
 rugged mountain road in dim twilight, in 
 charge of an inexperienced guide, is not 
 exhilarating either for the guide or his 
 company. 
 
 The teacher's knowledge should be broad 
 and accurate. Mere specialists may be 
 very well in their place, but their place is 
 not the class-room of a high school or 
 college. Men who have spent the forma- 
 tive period of their lives under them look 
 at the world and life through a pin-hole. 
 Moreover few specialists are good teach- 
 ers, few are even good conversationalists. 
 They are apt to smack a bit of glorified,
 
 46 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 self-sufficient mechanics. Nor is it enough 
 to know only the pages of an author. Such 
 a knowledge is hardly worthy of the name. 
 The teacher who learns mathematics page 
 by page, and Homer or Virgil line by line, 
 without assimilating the logic of the one 
 and the spirit of the other, is an insuffer- 
 able bore. The work he does could be done 
 as well by a phonograph. Mathematics 
 and literature will be dead things in his 
 keeping. He will teach isolated proposi- 
 tion after isolated proposition, and his pu- 
 pils will learn isolated propositions, and 
 that will be the end of it. The master will 
 never think of pointing out sequences, the 
 relation of part to part, the logical growth 
 of proofs. Pivotal propositions will be 
 omitted or explained without reference to 
 their consequences, yet it is precisely in 
 elements of this kind that the value of 
 mathematics in a scheme of general edu- 
 cation lies. Its chief function is to train 
 the intellect not to jump in the dark, but 
 to step cautiously and on firm ground, un- 
 der full light. Disjecta membra torn from 
 a finely articulated body of truth will never
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 47 
 
 accomplish that. They will overload the 
 memory, smother the reason. 
 
 Nor will literature fare better. Homer 
 and Virgil, Cicero and Demosthenes, Ju- 
 venal and Horace will be searched and re- 
 searched, ploughed and furrowed for ex- 
 amples of hendiadys and prolepsis, and 
 what not, all good in their places, to the 
 utter neglect of all else. The hunter stalks 
 the forest and uses powder and shot on the 
 mosquito, while the deer run off in safety. 
 Risum teneatis, amid! 
 
 The reason for this is ignorance, or indif- 
 ference, or both. To be sure, no one should 
 underrate grammar and rhetoric. They 
 are necessary and powerful factors in ed- 
 ucation. Students of Greek, for instance, 
 will have their power of discrimination 
 enormously enlarged by an intelligent study 
 of conditional sentences. But then the 
 sum and substance of education does not 
 lie in the ability to explain a grammatical 
 puzzle, or to turn an elegant sentence, for 
 there are things other than climaxes, anti- 
 climaxes, figures and metres and unities. 
 There are higher realities than these, more
 
 48 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 subtle agencies of power and expression. 
 We plead for them: the things behind the 
 veil of language, the joys, the sorrows, the 
 comedies, the tragedies, the failures, the 
 successes, the virtues, the passions of life, 
 that they may enter into the soul and stir 
 it and inspire it and smite it and prick it 
 and tease it and harass it and frighten it ; 
 in short, castigate it. For these we plead : 
 all the elements of art, science, life which 
 conduce to the formation of a man. A 
 corpse is uninspiring. Literature should 
 not be converted into one. It should be 
 used for what it is, a record of the live 
 works of live men. Through it souls should 
 be brought into contact with souls. The boy 
 should live with the hero ' 'four-square to 
 every wind that blows," the real hero un- 
 idealized. Fairies which peer over the 
 garden walls of the lotus-eaters interest 
 none save poets and mystics. 
 
 Thus will the young soul grow. It can- 
 not touch life without response. It thinks 
 the better from experience of good think- 
 ing ; it aspires the higher from contact with 
 high aspirations; it loves the better from
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 49 
 
 glimpses of pure love ; it throbs the faster 
 from contact with strenuous life. It ex- 
 pands and contracts, adds and prunes un- 
 der the inspiration which can be caught up 
 from beneath the words on which petti- 
 fogging masters spend weary hours, only 
 to send forth pupils with the physique of 
 giants and the mind and character of suck- 
 lings Bless the mark! both marks, 
 teacher and pupil, too. 
 
 But this is only the first means of rous- 
 ing the pupil to study. There are some 
 others which deserve at least a passing 
 mention. Amongst these are numbered 
 emulation, prizes, marks and punishments. 
 The first two claim a few words ; the others 
 can be treated at another time. 
 
 All teachers have at least a speculative 
 knowledge of the evils which can attend on 
 emulation. Many writers on pedagogy, 
 more voluble than experienced, have 
 painted them in vivid colors. But then it 
 is easy enough to sit clad in dressing-gown 
 and slippers before a grate fire, formulate 
 a proposition, dub it a conclusion and in- 
 vent arguments to support it. A year or
 
 50 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 two of classroom drudgery would cure this 
 pernicious habit. Emulation has dangers. 
 It has been abused, and out of the abuse 
 have grown disgusting egotism, selfish- 
 ness, unfairness, jealousy, pettiness of all 
 kinds. But abuse never supersedes use. 
 Otherwise we should be obliged to give up 
 everything, save death. Emulation is an 
 instinct with youths, and cannot be obliter- 
 ated save by converting our boys into mum- 
 mies or marble statues. Moreover, it is 
 a most powerful incentive to industry and 
 progress, while an attempt to eradicate it 
 would have many ridiculous consequences. 
 First, repetitions would be abolished ; then, 
 all those healthful games which have fos- 
 tered and developed in the American boy 
 so many of his finest qualities, such as en- 
 durance, bravery, resourcefulness, cour- 
 tesy to opponents and manliness under de- 
 feat. Better direct it into ethical channels, 
 and keep it there until through it the boy 
 has developed all the noble characteristics 
 for which it offers so fine a chance. This 
 can be done by appealing rather to interior 
 than exterior motives. For true emula-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 51 
 
 tion does not consist so much in trying to 
 outdo another, as in trying to outdo one- 
 self. Its motive is not chagrin over an- 
 other's success, but a noble, unselfish de- 
 sire to improve one's own status. The 
 boy should be taught to keep his eye on 
 his own record, not on his neighbor's, with 
 a view of scoring a point on himself. How- 
 ever, exterior motives should not be neg- 
 lected entirely. They are good, especially 
 those which appeal to the instinct for play, 
 and tend to pit a large number against a 
 large number, not one against one. Emu- 
 lation thus managed is no more dangerous 
 to character than a friendly, unprofes- 
 sional game of baseball or football. 
 
 Prizes, too, have come in for their share 
 of bitter denunciation. Here again use is 
 confounded with abuse. In themselves 
 they are not evil. Even our Lord held 
 out the hope of reward, temporal and eter- 
 nal, to those who were fighting the battle 
 of life. That there has been excess in this 
 matter is only too patent. In some places 
 cheap premiums are still as numerous as 
 they were last century in "fitting schools,"
 
 52 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 where young ladies learned to paint woolly 
 trees and speak poor French. The prize 
 is everything : the end and the motive. Of 
 course, this is baneful in the extreme. It 
 places the pupil in a false atmosphere by 
 teaching him to depend entirely on reward 
 and not on duty, honor and such high mo- 
 tives. The results will be a false notion 
 of values, consequent on the undue empha- 
 sis which has been placed on material suc- 
 cess; and greed and unfairness, and all 
 those wretched traits observable in men 
 who measure success in life by a full wallet 
 and the possession of a dozen automobiles. 
 But all this is reason, not for the abolition 
 of rewards, but for their prudent use. 
 They are good in their place. Let them 
 play the part of extremely subordinate mo- 
 tives, and be of such a kind that large num- 
 bers of the class can enter the competition 
 for them with hope of success, and their 
 effect will be salutary. 
 
 In conclusion, every good method of 
 teaching should tend to arouse interest and 
 enthusiasm in the boy, and keep both at
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 58 
 
 white heat until all the complex elements of 
 an educated man have begun to fasten 
 themselves securely in the young soul. 
 Thus will teaching be fruitful of good.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SUSTAINED mental alertness has at least 
 two aggravating characteristics. It is 
 hard to acquire and difficult to retain. 
 Yet unless a teacher succeeds in keeping 
 the intellects of his pupils active, he will 
 labor in vain to educate them. Their 
 minds will become spongy. A process of 
 absorption and evaporation will set in. 
 Spontaneous action will give way to mech- 
 anism. Growth will cease and with it 
 education. Hence a conscientious mas- 
 ter must bend every effort to preserve, 
 strengthen and increase the interest which 
 he has aroused in his pupils' minds at the 
 cost of so much thought and labor. This 
 can only be done by constant stimulus, and 
 since no one can give what he does not pos- 
 sess, the teacher must first of all keep his 
 
 54
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 55 
 
 own mind fresh and active. This is not 
 an easy task. On the contrary, the circum- 
 stances of a teacher's life make it ex- 
 tremely difficult. Routine and monotony 
 fall to the share of workers in the class- 
 room in full measure. The former weaves 
 a pall to cover the mind, the latter frames 
 a mould in which to confine or encase it. 
 The effect is stagnation, which is often aug- 
 mented by physical inactivity consequent 
 on advancing years or indiscreet bookish- 
 ness. 
 
 The pall and the mould and the physical 
 inactivity must have no part in a teacher's 
 life. If they do, he will become a veritable 
 prig, venerable and dignified perchance, 
 but withal statuesque and more ornamental 
 than useful. He will live a life so far apart 
 from his pupils' that they will look upon 
 him as a relic of an age happily past, while 
 he in turn will view them as gnomes or 
 mimes in a pantomime, which pass and re- 
 pass before the eye much after the fashion 
 of images which haunt a fever-racked 
 brain. Their needs and moods and diffi- 
 culties and aspirations will never enter his
 
 56 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 horizon. He will have no horizon, or if he 
 has, it will be low and narrow and alto- 
 gether determined by his own personality. 
 His interests will be himself. He will 
 withdraw within himself more and more 
 each day, until finally he will spend a large 
 part of his time in pursuit of the phantoms 
 of an eccentric soul. No very great power 
 of imagination is required to picture the 
 result. He will lose interest in his boys, 
 they will lose interest in him and in the 
 principles and studies of which he is the 
 official exponent. 
 
 His lectures and explanations will not 
 vary one jot or tittle from year to year. 
 They will be reeled off phonographically 
 without change of tone, without gesture, 
 without facial expression. Everything 
 will fall from his lips, heavy, unanimated 
 and uninspiring. His words have long 
 since ceased to be the language of a soul 
 rich in thought and fraught with noble 
 emotions, and have degenerated into a 
 noise as interesting as the buzz of bees on 
 an oppressive day. Jokes and illustra- 
 tions hoary with years and feeble through
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 57 
 
 constant use will be read from yellow mar- 
 gins of ragged note books. The statue 
 speaks but its auditors wish it far, far 
 away in another world. Their inspiration 
 comes from the imp which hovers near 
 every boy and never fails of an opportun- 
 ity to do a work of mischief. The mental 
 stimulus he gives is not unto good. Fail- 
 ure to educate is inevitable under such cir- 
 cumstances, and that, too, simply because 
 the teacher has fallen into a rut and as a 
 result has become entirely impersonal or 
 offensively personal. For an automaton 
 is either one or other, according to the dis- 
 position and viewpoint of the spectator. 
 This point cannot be labored too much. 
 For in this monotony and listlessness lies 
 a teacher's crux. 
 
 All good teaching is intensely alive with 
 a commanding personality. To be success- 
 ful, a live, noble man must put himself into 
 words. He must strip his subject matter 
 clear of the useless accretions of centuries, 
 modernize it, assimilate it, vitalize it, elec- 
 trify it into life and send it from his heart 
 vibrant, palpitating, enriched with life, his
 
 58 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 life, his individuality. Moreover in doing 
 so he must appeal to the whole man : to the 
 eye by gesture and diagram and facial ex- 
 pression; to the ear by tones; to the im- 
 agination by word pictures ; to the intellect 
 by simple, cogent reasoning ; to the will by 
 moral lessons, the greatest of which is his 
 own life. For the man is to be trained, not 
 the eye nor the ear, but the man, the whole 
 creature, composite of body and soul. The 
 problem involved in this can be solved not 
 by books, but by and through the teacher 
 only. His life is his pupils' life, his 
 stupor, their stupor. 
 
 All this requires great and persistent 
 effort. But then work is more than a 
 teacher's pleasure; it is his duty. Teach- 
 ers are only too apt to forget this. As 
 soon as they begin to feel tolerably sure of 
 tenure of office they are inclined to lapse 
 into utter indifference, which they justify 
 to themselves by ethics as fanciful as it is 
 ineffective. For plead as they may, the ul- 
 timate resolution of all arguments leaves 
 untouched the hard undeniable fact that 
 prolonged, wilful neglect on the part of a
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 59 
 
 teacher is a crime. By the very nature of 
 his profession he has entered into a serious 
 contract, mediate or immediate, by which 
 he agrees to give his best in return for re- 
 muneration. Wilful neglect constitutes a 
 deliberate violation of this serious agree- 
 ment and no amount of casuistry can jus- 
 tify or extenuate the offence. It is useless 
 to argue that parents expect some inef- 
 ficiency. For even were this true, it is 
 quite beside the point. Inefficiency is not 
 neglect. Moreover in this matter the 
 teacher himself is responsible for his class. 
 The shadow of his superior officer is a poor 
 and useless refuge for him in his guilt. 
 The work is his to do, the responsibility his 
 to assume. His conscience, though cow- 
 ardly enough to attempt to embed its dart 
 in another soul, cannot unburden itself. 
 Guilt is there and will remain there. The 
 sooner teachers acknowledge this the bet- 
 ter for themselves and their charges. For 
 then they will make serious efforts to fos- 
 ter the mental freshness and activity which 
 are so necessary for effective work. 
 Frank fellowship with older and younger
 
 60 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 people is a valuable aid to this. It opens 
 up two new points, exposes two new ex- 
 periences, both advantageous. The ex- 
 periences of the older enrich us, broaden 
 us, tempt us to look ahead beyond ourselves 
 in order to be ready for future emergen- 
 cies. Those of the young show us that we 
 must continually readjust ourselves to 
 changing problems and conditions. Clouds 
 are bad points of vantage for educational 
 work, and teachers are proverbially fond 
 of living in the clouds and working there- 
 from. Occasional association with a 
 younger generation will dissipate the haze 
 and bring the dignified professor to earth, 
 in time to render at least a portion of his 
 life useful to those to whom he has conse- 
 crated the whole of it. Aloofness is a bad 
 asset for a man who would train boys. For 
 they change with changing years. The 
 boy of to-day is not the boy of ten years ago 
 and much less is he the boy of twenty or 
 twenty-five years ago. He is of quite a 
 different species. Hence methods which 
 were effective in eighteen hundred and 
 eighty are apt to be grotesque in the year of
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 61 
 
 grace nineteen hundred and fourteen. 
 Yet those old ways and means are only too 
 often in vogue with consequences that are 
 at once pitiable and ludicrous. 
 
 To fellowship with others the teacher 
 should add judicious reading in subjects 
 that do not bear directly on his matter. 
 He must forget his specialty once in a 
 while, or else it will degenerate into a poor 
 hobby, and then his thoughts and desires 
 and words will be all of a piece. His sub- 
 ject will be the be-all and end-all of his ex- 
 istence and other existences. He will have 
 one thought, no more, and a dry one it will 
 be, at least for others if not for himself. 
 His mind will be warped, his life dom- 
 inated, not dominating. Though this is 
 the result of all imprudent specialization, 
 yet it is strongly characteristic of exclusive 
 attention to the exact sciences. They nar- 
 row the mental compass, stifle emotion, kill 
 the aesthetic sense, convert a man into an 
 overbearing bigot. Darwin lived to lament 
 that he could not appreciate a poem. A 
 page of Huxley is as narrow as a code of 
 laws devised by a pious maiden aunt for an
 
 62 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 obstreperous nephew. Both men rode a 
 hobby to the edge of their graves, into 
 which they fell mentally cramped by con- 
 tinual application to one subject. 
 
 Broad reading will prevent this and will 
 besides furnish the teacher with informa- 
 tion and schemes which will make his class- 
 room a pleasant and a useful place for the 
 young. Interest-awakening resources will 
 never fail him. He will be ready to turn a 
 thousand incidents of everyday life to the 
 benefit of his class. The eruption of a 
 Pelee or a Vesuvius will prompt him to lead 
 his pupils through Pliny's description of 
 a similar incident. The burning of a San 
 Francisco or a Baltimore will find him 
 ready to explain Tacitus' picture of the 
 burning of Eome. And as collateral mat- 
 ter he will have at hand the conflagration 
 in "Barnaby Budge," Headley's truly re- 
 markable description of the destruction of 
 Moscow, Fouard's still more wonderful ac- 
 count of the burning of Jerusalem, and oth- 
 ers no less interesting. An outbreak of 
 bubonic plague or cholera will remind him 
 of Thucydides ' plague of Athens, which he
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 63 
 
 will supplement by Defoe's " Plague of 
 London," Gasquet's " Black Death" or 
 Manzoni's Plague of Milan and the wreck 
 of a Titanic will introduce his class to the 
 Dickens shipwreck, and so on for all but 
 innumerable incidents, not excluding the 
 Sicilian earthquake, whose counterpart he 
 will discover in Thucydides. 
 
 Everything will be alive to such a man. 
 For he himself is alive, and life flows from 
 him into his subjects. Neither he nor his 
 pupils will complain that the classics are 
 old, lifeless, uninteresting. He will put 
 youth and life and interest into them. 
 Bather he will find all three there. For 
 they are there. Life is ever young, active 
 and interesting. Who, pray, more modern 
 than Horace and Juvenal, ' ' dead songsters 
 who never die " ? A deft and slight change 
 here and there and their satires could be 
 read from hustings in Baltimore, New 
 York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and San 
 Francisco, to the delight even of the rabble. 
 Samuel Johnson recognized Juvenal's 
 adaptability in his day and recooked him in 
 "London" and "The Vanity of Human
 
 64 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 Wishes. " A Viennese, a Parisian and a 
 Gothamite could do the same with profit 
 to-day. 
 
 But freshness and mental activity in a 
 teacher avail little unless he is skilful in 
 exposition. Herein lies a difficulty. The 
 golden mean is hard to grasp. Some men 
 assign lessons by pages without a word of 
 advice or explanation. Such have missed 
 their vocation. It is unprofitable to dis- 
 cuss their case. Death or resignation 
 alone can cure them. Others again out of 
 pure zeal go to the opposite extreme and 
 leave nothing to the energy and ingenuity 
 of the pupils. This is a grievous mistake. 
 It stifles originality, checks initiative, con- 
 verts lads into intellectual paupers who will 
 never learn to think or do for themselves. 
 Good teachers should never do for a boy 
 what the boy can and should do for him- 
 self. They are not foolish, doting moth- 
 ers, and let them remember that "male 
 mothers" are queer, contemptible creatures 
 even in boys* eyes. The master's duty is 
 to make the boy active, self-reliant, re- 
 sourceful. This can be accomplished only
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 65 
 
 by throwing the boy on his own resources 
 as far as is consistent with prudence. The 
 forest guide does not train his novices by 
 blindfolding them and carrying them 
 through successive thickets on his shoul- 
 ders. He teaches them to beat their way 
 through the bush and briar at the cost of 
 pain. The mother bird does not get her 
 fledgling to fly by putting it on her back and 
 soaring aloft with it. She tempts it to try 
 even dangerous feats of flight that it may 
 learn to wing its way safely through the 
 mazes which will beset its after years. 
 
 Teachers can learn from guide and 
 mother bird that education is begun and 
 consummated in travail. It is unjust and 
 absurd to shield a boy from all painful ef- 
 fort. When his strivings are intelligent, 
 he should be allowed to struggle to the last 
 ditch. The mill of pain and the press of 
 sacrifice are required to make a man. 
 
 Without them the soul is only half itself, 
 a dwarfed, stunted thing in bonds which it 
 cannot break. Story writers tell us, and 
 how old the tale! that one day a tender- 
 hearted naturalist happened upon a but-
 
 66 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 terfly striving to free itself from the co- 
 coon. After great effort it cast off all im- 
 pediments to freedom except one slender 
 thread, which offered stubborn resistance. 
 In pity for the creature's apparent help- 
 lessness, the scientist cut the thread and 
 released the butterfly, which fluttered 
 gaily for a moment and then fell dead. 
 The last effort for release was necessary 
 for life. Such was nature's inexorable 
 law, and nature violated, avenged itself in 
 the death of the insect. False sympathy 
 was its undoing. 
 
 Greater calamities happen in the class- 
 room for like reasons. Nature's law is 
 violated, intellectual and oftentimes moral 
 death follow. Better that the teacher 
 study the future and contemplate the 
 seething arena of life into which his pupils 
 are soon to be cast. From his contempla- 
 tion he will learn that victory belongs to the 
 alert and resolute. The alert and resolute 
 he must form then. Otherwise he will unfit 
 his pupils for life. Under his tutelage they 
 will dream a long dream, but the awakening 
 will come, and it will be rude indeed. The
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 67 
 
 illusion will be great, readjustment to puz- 
 zling and unsuspected conditions, impos- 
 sible. There will be another wreck on the 
 highway of life, another tragedy fateful 
 beyond telling. A soul will be over- 
 whelmed, perhaps forever. The seeds of 
 ruin were sown and nourished years be- 
 fore in the classroom. The tragedy began 
 not on the highway, but under the eye of 
 the teacher, the savior of men. Vae, hom- 
 ini! But all this will be avoided if the 
 teacher continually lives a sturdy, noble 
 life, intellectual and moral, and communi- 
 cates it to his charges. Interest aroused, 
 interest preserved, here is the one way of 
 accomplishing this sublime work.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE METHOD AND FUNCTION OF 
 RECITATION 
 
 GOOD teaching embraces many diverse 
 elements. All of them are important in 
 some degree or other. Eecitation is 
 amongst the most important. A master's 
 work does not end with explanations, how- 
 ever good and varied. For after he has 
 given the best that he knows in the best 
 possible way, he still has a grave duty to- 
 wards his pupils. He must see what effect 
 his instructions are having on their minds. 
 For though he may work with great skill 
 and diligence, yet it is just possible that, 
 for some reason or other, the stream of 
 knowledge which flows from him may pass 
 into the intellect of his charges, be impeded 
 in its course for a moment, and then flow
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 69 
 
 on and out, leaving the mind as arid and 
 fruitless as ever. 
 
 This should be corrected in the very be- 
 ginning. Otherwise it will work incalcu- 
 lable harm to pupil and teacher alike, caus- 
 ing stagnation in the one and a feeling akin 
 to despair in the other. The corrective 
 lies in intelligent recitations, oral and writ- 
 ten. This is apparent from the very na- 
 ture and function of the recitation. For 
 there is no instrument more capable of 
 testing and training the mind. Its aim is 
 not merely to gauge a pupil's knowledge. 
 It has a value above and beyond this. By 
 skilful use it becomes a wonderful agent 
 for correction of mental defects and defi- 
 ciencies. It promotes introspection, en- 
 genders habits of correct and orderly 
 thought, and guides the mind into new 
 channels of unsuspected lore. Moreover, 
 it inspires to better work, and easily falls 
 in with the teacher's chief purpose by as- 
 sisting in the moulding of character, giv- 
 ing as it does, mental poise and resource- 
 fulness in difficult circumstances, two aids 
 to calmness, frankness and courtesy. The
 
 70 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 teacher crowns his work by conducting 
 skilful recitations, the pupil profits im- 
 measurably by them. 
 
 But which way of carrying them out is 
 best calculated to effect all this 1 ? Nature 
 holds the key to the answer once again. 
 She must be consulted first, before any def- 
 inite plans can be inaugurated with profit. 
 A glance at an illustration may betray her 
 secret to us. Two little boys go forth to 
 recreation. One is a matter-of-fact chap, 
 practical to a fault. Presently he begins 
 to build a toy house. He works slowly and 
 thoughtfully, examining now his material, 
 now the ungainly structure. He compares 
 piece with piece, selects the wood best 
 suited to each emergency, saws it here, 
 shaves it there, until finally it suits his pur- 
 pose. At last by dint of much ingenious 
 if awkward work he tops off his castle with 
 a chimney and then stands back to contem- 
 plate his masterpiece and to soliloquize 
 about it. His words reveal an ambition 
 to become a man overnight and build a 
 whole village of "real" houses after the 
 pattern of the model before him. Act and
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 71 
 
 speech have enabled us to follow the men- 
 tal process of the lad from beginning to 
 end. He proceeded by slow and laborious 
 steps from particular to universal, ending 
 by bringing his knowledge into relation 
 with life. 
 
 In the meantime the other boy is look- 
 ing on with supreme unconcern, or per- 
 chance disgust. He will have no part with 
 such jobbery. His mind is rebellious 
 against the narrowness of the thought- 
 process required for it and impatient of 
 the details involved. Soon some other 
 lads join the two. Immediately the silent 
 fellow takes on new life. His tongue is 
 unleashed, and he suggests that all play at 
 Indian. He is to act as chief, and as such 
 begins instructions for the game. His 
 talk, though quite inconsequent, is filled 
 with imagery. Mountains and valleys and 
 animals and warriors are all mentioned in 
 turn. Soon the game is on, led by the 
 chief, who proves himself entirely differ- 
 ent from the potential contractor. He is 
 unpractical and imaginative and a bit wild 
 of concept.
 
 72 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 Here we have two types of minds with 
 which the teacher has to deal, and from 
 them we get a clue to the two main meth- 
 ods of recitation : one the Socratic method, 
 betrayed by the builder ; the other, the topic 
 method, revealed by the little Indian. The 
 first of these, which is most useful in train- 
 ing young minds, and careless and incon- 
 sequent and highly imaginative minds, re- 
 quires special tact and preparation. If a 
 to. oher would be successful in its use, he 
 must canvass his matter carefully, separate 
 the important from the unimportant ele- 
 ments, pitch upon the main idea, pick out 
 the principal difficulty of the lesson, and 
 ; -range in his mind a set of clear, logical 
 qaestions which lead gradually to the very 
 heart of the subject. On obtaining appro- 
 priate answers, he must propose difficul- 
 ties suitable to the age and attainments of 
 his pupils. The more modern and novel 
 these objections are, the better, for then 
 they will surely coordinate knowledge with 
 life. 
 
 This done the repetition is over. But 
 this is only an outline of the process. A
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 73 
 
 close examination of it will be of profit. 
 Naturally the questions call for first con- 
 sideration. These should be, above all, di- 
 rect, clear, orderly and progressive, the 
 easier and more fundamental first, the dif- 
 ficult and more general next. This last 
 caution has its justification in the very na- 
 ture of science itself. For science, the ob- 
 jective body of correlated truths, has a cer- 
 tain fixed order. There is subordination 
 and coordination of truth to truth. S^raie 
 truths are fundamental, some pivotal, some 
 top the structure. This order moreover 
 should be respected, so that the mind can 
 proceed in logical fashion from simple to 
 more complex, from particular to gener.3^ 
 and thus assimilate and retain, not ouus 
 and ends, but an articulated, compact sys- 
 tem of truth. This should be the aim and 
 result of intelligent recitation. For it 
 should be constructive not destructive. 
 Sometimes of course it must begin in de- 
 struction but it should not end there. If 
 idols are smashed, something better should 
 be put in their place. There is nothing 
 more discouraging to a boy than to have
 
 74 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 his mind swept clear of all knowledge by 
 a whirlwind of questions, or filled with the 
 debris of the framework of science, which 
 he had erected at the cost of great labor. 
 Cui bono will soon become a motto. Such 
 a process is all the more lamentable for the 
 fact that it is unnecessary. A great part 
 of the knowledge which was swept away 
 could have been saved. Perhaps all that 
 was required was a deft excision here and 
 there, and some rearrangement. But 
 granted the worst, that nothing could be 
 preserved. Then at least the bad could 
 have been replaced by the good, and dis- 
 couragement offset. The mind which is 
 visited by a destroying tornado once a day, 
 or even once a week, creeps from discour- 
 agement to despair, from despair to de- 
 fiance, and from defiance to ruin. Teach- 
 ers who as a rule do not attempt to leave 
 knowledge and encouragement, or at least 
 some stimulus to better things, in the wake 
 of their recitations, are building up with 
 their left hand and tearing down with their 
 right. 
 
 Sometimes the whole difficulty with reci-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 75 
 
 tation lies in the questions. In framing 
 them no consideration is given to the fact 
 that old knowledge which the boy surely 
 has is a starting point for new conquests. 
 Then again they are often either obscure 
 or so transparent that they bear the an- 
 swer on the surface. It is hard to decide 
 which of these last is the worse. They are 
 at least equally bad. The former puzzle, 
 harass, discourage and lead nowhere, save 
 perhaps into blind alleys. The latter in- 
 duce mental inactivity, thus defeating the 
 very purpose of education. The questions 
 should rouse the mind to great activity, 
 put it on its mettle without taxing it too 
 much, involve it in difficulties from which it 
 should be forced to extricate itself with the 
 least possible external aid. This is train- 
 ing. 
 
 Valuable as is the form and nature of 
 the questions, there is something even more 
 important in this kind of recitation, and 
 that is the deduction of general conclu- 
 sions and laws. During the whole process 
 of quizzing, the boy's mind should be re- 
 flecting, comparing knowledge with knowl-
 
 76 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 edge, piecing this and that together, until 
 finally it is led to draw a universal judg- 
 ment and establish a law. This is vital. 
 For after all, science is founded on the 
 universal. Though we may not fully agree 
 with Kant's Anschauungen Begriffe sind 
 blind, yet we must confess that singular 
 and even particular judgments add very 
 little to the store of scientific knowledge. 
 Hence the recitation should culminate, if 
 possible, in a general conclusion. Up to 
 this point the process will have been mainly 
 inductive. The mind proceeded step by 
 step, piece by piece, joining item to 
 item, until by inference it passed to a gen- 
 eral law. 
 
 A new process can now be brought into 
 play with extreme advantage. The intel- 
 lect can be made both to survey the whole 
 chain of knowledge which it has formed 
 and to contemplate all its ramifications. 
 Skilful objections will accomplish this by 
 bringing the mind to a realization of the 
 bearing of link on link, by pointing out the 
 connection of this chain to others, and by 
 showing its value, its use. Thus the rela-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 77 
 
 tion of fact to fact, law to law, science to 
 science, will stand revealed. This can be 
 accomplished by the self-activity of the 
 pupil's intellect. Thus the young mind, 
 naturally unreflective and tenacious of er- 
 ror, will be made to feel its power. Thus 
 will it be expanded, stimulated, inspired to 
 new and higher conquests. 
 
 The teacher, too, will profit by this 
 method. It will force him to prepare for 
 his classes intelligently. He will learn to 
 concentrate his mind on the main issue, 
 which he will always keep before him in his 
 explanations, leading up to it and away 
 from it in a clear, orderly manner. He 
 will subordinate his illustrations to it, solve 
 difficulties in reference to it. In this way 
 he will develop a keener sense of propor- 
 tion, and will hold to a direct, open course, 
 free from those wretched aberrations to 
 which all of us are accustomed. 
 
 Good as is this method, it is yet liable to 
 abuse. In the hands of some men it is lit- 
 tle better than an instrument of torture. 
 Procrustes of old tried to make all his vis- 
 itors fit into one bed; some teachers, in
 
 78 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 imitation of this crude, uncomfortable bar- 
 barism, try to make all minds fit into one 
 mould. They must get back what they 
 gave forth in the order, and sometimes also 
 in the very words in which it was given. 
 Their questions play the part of a relent- 
 less vise which squeezes all individuality 
 and originality out of the mind. Thus 
 forms and words and pages of books will 
 be exalted above thought and mental ac- 
 tivity. Likely enough, pupils will go away 
 from such men poor replicas of poor 
 types. But such an abuse is its own con- 
 demnation. It is too enormous to require 
 discussion, and does not in any way affect 
 the intrinsic value of the Socratic method, 
 which can be put to excellent use, especially 
 in the exact sciences and in the case of 
 flighty, imaginative, careless minds which 
 stand in need of a severe discipline. 
 
 But this method is not the only one at 
 the teacher's disposal. Three others re- 
 main. From them we have chosen one, al- 
 ready mentioned, the topic method, for 
 consideration. This consists in choosing 
 from the lesson important topics or items
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 79 
 
 and proposing them for discussion. The 
 discussion, however, should be carried on 
 by the pupil, not by the teacher. The lat- 
 ter may guide it by prudent suggestions, 
 but he should not lead it. If he is skilful 
 in this work, the process will promote in- 
 sight, imaginative power and coherence of 
 thought. Moreover it will help in the ac- 
 quisition of a choice vocabulary and in the 
 promotion of readiness of speech and pre- 
 cision of expression. If on the other hand 
 the method is used carelessly, disadvan- 
 tages too numerous and obvious for discus- 
 sion will follow. Verboseness, inconse- 
 quence and slovenliness of thought, inex- 
 actness of expression, are but a small 
 fraction of them. 
 
 Yet the teacher should not be deterred 
 from using the method by the catalogue of 
 evils. It is most useful in the training of 
 hard, dry, practical, unimaginative minds. 
 Moreover, it enables the master to get a 
 quick and correct estimate of his pupil's 
 intellect. A boy cannot discourse for long 
 on any topic without betraying his limita- 
 tions. The teacher will soon be able to
 
 80 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 discover a weak imagination here, a riot- 
 ous one there, superficiality in this one, 
 disorder in another, now stolidity and self- 
 assurance, again timidity and a mental 
 nervousness which causes the mind to leap 
 aimlessly from topic to topic as a caged 
 and frightened bird flits from perch to 
 perch. With this knowledge in hand the 
 master can easily adapt himself to indi- 
 vidual needs and dispositions. 
 
 As is clear, both the Socratic and the 
 topic method can also be conducted in writ- 
 ing. These written exercises and others 
 of a different kind are of great importance. 
 Should any one doubt this, he can read 
 with profit the humorous and illuminating 
 chapters on " Elementary Studies" in 
 Newman's ''Idea of a University." But 
 our paper is not concerned either with the 
 value of themes or their structure, but 
 rather with their correction. Stupid sys- 
 tems of recension deprive themes of half 
 their value as a medium of education. 
 Teachers mark mistakes in red, green and 
 blue, and give back the papers to the pu- 
 pils, and there the matter ends. The boy
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 81 
 
 never knows his mistakes, or if he does, 
 he never takes pains to correct them. So 
 year after year he commits the same er- 
 rors, and finally goes forth from school to 
 become a blundering doctor or lawyer or 
 spiritual adviser. For long-standing men- 
 tal defects are seldom eradicated. 
 
 The case would be different if the teach- 
 er's work were intelligent. But it becomes 
 intelligent only when the boy is led to cor- 
 rect his own mistakes. Score the theme 
 in red, blue and green by all means, but 
 insist that it be returned corrected by the 
 one who made the scoring necessary. In 
 this way the boy will be forced to think. 
 He will reflect and compare and analyze, 
 and call upon old knowledge to meet new 
 emergencies. He will worry out old mean- 
 ings under new forms, trace sequences, de- 
 pendencies of clause on clause, note struc- 
 ture of sentences, match idioms, learn to 
 distinguish between shades of meaning, 
 think, diagnose a case, and carry the habit 
 thus formed into law, or medicine, or the 
 priesthood, or business, where it is of su- 
 preme moment.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 DISCIPLINE 
 
 EFFICIENT mental and moral training 
 depends, to a large extent, on good disci- 
 pline. For on the one hand, disorder dis- 
 tracts and disconcerts the teacher and 
 wastes his energy, while on the other, it 
 renders impossible the attention and calm- 
 ness of mind, without which pupils can 
 neither acquire nor retain knowledge. 
 Moreover boys cannot live long in an at- 
 mosphere of riot without moral hurt. 
 Their ideals are shattered and their wills 
 either become wayward or grow slack of 
 purpose and effort. In their disrespect 
 for the representative of authority they 
 learn to despise authority itself. Eevolt 
 against the master is often a prelude to 
 formal contempt of the office and power of 
 all superiors. The consequences of this 
 
 82
 
 are serious enough to make every teacher 
 take thought about his responsibility for 
 them. Without doubt he has a far-reach- 
 ing duty in this matter which he cannot 
 neglect. For his office obliges him to dis- 
 cipline, not precisely that he may teach 
 with ease and comfort to himself, but 
 rather that he may train the souls of his 
 pupils. 
 
 To do this effectively, the teacher must 
 first discipline himself. The undisciplined 
 master is the centre and source of a vast 
 amount of the disorder so common in the 
 class-rooms. His defects and deficiencies 
 react on those in his charge and drive them 
 to contumely, for which they had no nat- 
 ural inclination in the beginning. Boys 
 will not tolerate a noisy demagogue, nor a 
 poor punster, any more than they will 
 abide an irascible tyrant, whose chief dis- 
 tinction lies, not in brains, but in strong 
 muscles and a bass voice. Their young 
 lives may be made miserable, but they will 
 demand and get the pound of flesh, and the 
 blood, too. In the end they will be the 
 masters. The good disciplinarian then
 
 84 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 must himself be disciplined. The man 
 who has not subjugated himself cannot ex- 
 pect to rule others. He has failed to con- 
 quer the one closest to himself, and has no 
 reason to expect success in governing those 
 separated from him by the widest and most 
 unintelligible of all finite gulfs, a different 
 personality. 
 
 Hence, the first task of every young 
 teacher is the conquest of his own heart. 
 He must begin by recognizing frankly his 
 faults and rooting them out. On investi- 
 gation he will probably find that he is im- 
 mensely impressed by his own learning, 
 dignity and importance. Of course, his 
 pupils' impressions will not be half so in- 
 tense and flattering. This will soon be- 
 come apparent. Then the young teacher's 
 soul will begin to smart under disappoint- 
 ment, and unless he has a care he will be- 
 tray himself lamentably. For vanity does 
 not brook dark corners and places below 
 stairs. It insists on living in the open, and 
 is as ingenious as a sensational preacher 
 in attracting notice to itself. Anger, 
 sarcasm, injustice, cheap politics, and a
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 85 
 
 thousand other petty vices and schemes 
 are its shameless instruments. It ob- 
 trudes itself on the notice of the pupils in 
 the most offensive ways, until finally 
 Blessings on their manly spirit! they 
 take matters into their own hands, roughly 
 perhaps, but effectively. The teacher is to 
 blame for all this. He has created the dis- 
 order, and will father more, unless he ap- 
 plies the knife to his soul. He must cut 
 away anger, for it darkens counsel, and 
 put up in its place calmness, which has a 
 majesty about it, at once attractive and 
 compelling. That done, he is ready for 
 new excisions and new acquisitions. 
 
 Softness, favoritism, undue suspicious- 
 ness, the most contemptible of all petty 
 vices, and that fox-like animal astuteness 
 which, no doubt, has been mirrored in the 
 face of every man who ever harbored it in 
 his heart, from Judas to the last of the 
 tribe, must be replaced by the sturdy, 
 frank, wholesome manliness which com- 
 mands the respect and admiration of every- 
 body worthy of an education, or even con- 
 sideration. The teacher who does this has
 
 86 
 
 made a great stride towards success in dis- 
 cipline. He has few or no natural defects 
 on which boys can play, to his chagrin and 
 consequent undoing. He will be prudent 
 and forceful in thought and action. 
 Though boys may not cringe before him, 
 yet they will not lead him by a chain. 
 They will troop on by his side, happy in 
 his inspiration and leadership. 
 
 So far we have been looking at the disci- 
 plinarian from one angle only. There is 
 another view-point which presents a new 
 aspect. For disorder can also arise from 
 poor, uninteresting teaching. As soon as 
 a boy loses interest in his studies he be- 
 comes a problem to his teacher. He must 
 be busy. If he is not intent on his books 
 he will be intent on mischief. The pru- 
 dent master recognizes this and does his 
 best to keep his pupils ' minds concentrated 
 on their work. With this intent he studies 
 his boys and adapts himself to their needs. 
 He never imposes tasks beyond their men- 
 tal and physical endurance. He aims at 
 clear, "snappy" explanations. His eye
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 87 
 
 is ever alert for the first signs of restless- 
 ness, which he is quick to suppress by 
 change of work or greater clearness, or re- 
 newed vigor of manner. His recitations 
 are always times of mild surprises. His 
 pupils never know how or when they are 
 to be called upon to recite. They never 
 feel quite safe. They are conscious that 
 a call in the beginning of a lesson does not 
 mean immunity for the rest of that lesson. 
 If there are six recitations they are liable 
 to be called upon in all. They have no time 
 to plot mischief, none even to indulge the 
 luxury of a day-dream. They must be 
 alert the whole day. Such conditions safe- 
 guard boy and teacher alike. 
 
 Just here one may object that these prin- 
 ciples are a bit too narrow to cover the 
 whole problem at issue. They concern 
 either the personality of the teacher, or 
 one only of his many relations to his pu- 
 pils, thus leaving untouched many phases 
 of the perplexing question. Broader prin- 
 ciples and a discussion of other relations 
 would be welcome. This necessitates a
 
 88 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 consideration of the nature of the disci- 
 pline desirable in a class-room and on the 
 play-ground. 
 
 All good discipline is self -discipline. It 
 is a concern of each individual soul : some- 
 thing that the boy must impose upon him- 
 self. It does not consist in coercion from 
 without, but in a chastening from within. 
 The teacher, tradition and that intangible 
 element called atmosphere, may offer oc- 
 casion for it, may even promote and direct 
 it, but they cannot make it. For discipline 
 is not a growth from without. It is a 
 spirit within. It begins in a realization 
 of the difference between right and wrong, 
 proceeds to an understanding of duty and 
 obligation, goes a step further to the for- 
 mation of high ideals, and finally rests 
 in a fruitful determination to order all 
 thoughts, words and actions in accordance 
 with the high standards conceived and 
 adopted as the norm to be followed. 
 
 Thus, discipline pertains both to the in- 
 tellect and to the will. Enlightenment and 
 strength are necessary for it. The intel- 
 lect must see the truth clearly and present
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 89 
 
 it to the will as a good to be desired and 
 adopted. The teacher 's part in the process 
 consists in skilful and attractive exposi- 
 tions of ideals and reasonable attempts to 
 persuade his pupils to adopt and obey 
 them. In all this he must be chary of co- 
 ercion. He is dealing, not with statues, 
 which remain where they are put by force, 
 but with rational, high-strung boys, who 
 possess faculties which respond poorly 
 enough to the lash and the harsh word. 
 Reason was never yet persuaded by 
 either of these means, and as a rule, the 
 will is cowed by them, only to rebound to 
 former defects with redoubled energy, if 
 not fury. 
 
 Discipline, be it remembered, is not op- 
 pression and suppression. It is the very 
 opposite of these. It is expansion, ac- 
 companied by excision of the mean and low 
 and base. The class-room is not a prison 
 in charge of a relentless warden nor yet a 
 barracks in the keeping of a stern colonel. 
 It is rather a meeting place of a family 
 circle, where brothers in spirit meet under 
 the care of an experienced guide for help
 
 and encouragement in high effort. Its 
 rules are as few and simple as possible. 
 Its spirit is as informal as is consistent 
 with effective work. Though the rod and 
 harsh words are as necessary and salutary 
 in the school as in the home, yet they 
 should be called into requisition judi- 
 ciously, after all other means of training 
 have failed. Both are sometimes indis- 
 pensable for the proper upbringing of 
 boys, and, truth to tell, a vast army of our 
 American boys would profit by their use. 
 On the other hand, their abuse is a mon- 
 strous evil. Misused, they become instru- 
 ments of oppression. 
 
 Those souls only are trained which are 
 allowed to live a normal life. Then it is 
 that teachers can see the defects which are 
 to be uprooted and the virtues which need 
 straightening. The easy family circle is 
 more apt to uncover selfishness and petu- 
 lancy quicker than the drawing-room, ruled 
 by rigid conventionalities. The authori- 
 tative reasoning of a father is more potent 
 for good than a sharp rebuke from a mas- 
 ter of ceremonies who watches every move-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 91 
 
 ment with a critical eye. Rational super- 
 vision is better than officious espionage. 
 Indeed, the latter is not only ineffective, 
 it is disgnsting and contemptible, and there 
 is nothing more pitiable than a system 
 which fosters it, or even tolerates it. The 
 boy who is tagged and nagged continually 
 is a superior being, indeed, if he escapes 
 ruin. He is almost sure to become a cun- 
 ning, dishonest fellow, who glances out the 
 side of the eye, and slinks round corners 
 like a thief. Espionage is a confession of 
 failure. It argues- more plainly than 
 words that the system which spawned it is 
 incapable of touching the soul, and must 
 rely on a miserable makeshift to perpetu- 
 ate its life, which were better annihilated, 
 for that it is a lie. Training? It gives 
 none. The dog which bays the robber from 
 the booty does not convert the thief. The 
 horse whose training for the hunt consists 
 in forced avoidance of posts in a paddock, 
 is fit not for the chase, but for lions' food. 
 The pedagogue who is an officious spy 
 does scant courtesy to his own character 
 and to his profession. Whatever his ver-
 
 92 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 bal profession may be, his conduct is meas- 
 ured and directed by the gratuitous and 
 perverse doctrine of total depravity. He 
 were better on the benches striving for 
 higher ideals. Of course there should be 
 supervision. But supervision and espion- 
 age are worlds apart. There is nothing 
 offensive or inordinate about the former. 
 It is reasonable and necessary. Its 
 method is directive rather than coercive. 
 Though at times it issues in penalties, yet 
 is never arbitrary. Modus in rebus is its 
 motto. The spirit which prompts it is too 
 reasonable to tempt rational objections. 
 For its purpose is not so much the observ- 
 ance of a rule, as the acquisition of that for 
 which the rule was instituted. It knows 
 how to overlook trifles, pretends not to see 
 each and every fault, does not judge the 
 great and small equal. Moreover when it 
 has to punish, it is solicitous, not for the 
 penalty, but for the good which is to be 
 derived from it. Hence it has a care to 
 bring the boy both to a realization of his 
 fault and to a willingness to accept the pen- 
 alty. But this, of course, will never be
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 93 
 
 if the penalty is harsh or excessive, or stu- 
 pid, as is the imposition of the transcrip- 
 tion of long, unintelligible passages from 
 Greek authors, a monstrous process even- 
 tuating in hatred for a noble study and in 
 a ruined chirography. 
 
 Young teachers are notorious culprits 
 in regard to punishments. Their wits 
 seem to desert them in an emergency, and 
 they strike blindly and wrathfully. Could 
 they but learn to sleep on their wrath they 
 would escape many a blunder. Impulse 
 and anger always lead to excess, poise and 
 calmness counsel moderation. Punish- 
 ments should be meted out dispassionately 
 a little at a time to individuals, not angrily 
 and heavily, to many at once. Nothing 
 brings a boy to his senses quicker than the 
 realization that the punishment is to be 
 proportioned, not so much to the gravity 
 of the offence, though that should be taken 
 into consideration, too, as to his unwill- 
 ingness to admit the wrong and his slow- 
 ness in correcting it. Boys who are de- 
 fiant on the first and second day of punish- 
 ment give way on the third if they feel that
 
 94 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 by so doing their faults are forgiven and 
 forgotten. 
 
 In dealing with boys the teacher has four 
 appeals to make: one to the reason, an- 
 other to the instinct of fear, a third to the 
 instinct of reverence, and a fourth to their 
 love. The first appeal often fails in the 
 case of young lads, seldom in that of older 
 boys. Yet failure in the former case need 
 not be the rule. If it is, the fault lies not in 
 the boy, but either in the argument or the 
 man who makes it. Young boys are rarely 
 captivated by speculative reasons. They 
 are almost to a lad pleasure-loving and 
 utilitarian, and arguments to be effective 
 with them must show that a proposed 
 course of action is at least useful, if not 
 pleasurable. The bonum utile and the 
 bonum dulce should be combined wherever 
 possible. 
 
 The appeal to fear, though at times nec- 
 essary and useful, should in the main be 
 avoided. Its educative influence is not as 
 great as is supposed. Oftentimes it de- 
 stroys the self-confidence of the timid, and
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 95 
 
 makes others dark and secretive, results 
 wholly undesirable. 
 
 Reverence and love have none of these 
 drawbacks. In them there is naught save 
 power for good. By them the boy sur- 
 renders himself completely to the teacher, 
 whose solemn duty it is to inspire him with 
 God-like thoughts and aspirations. But it 
 must be admitted that in these critical and 
 desperately democratic days boys require 
 a high degree of excellence in those whom 
 they would reverence and love. Common- 
 place mediocrity will scarcely attract their 
 notice, much less fascinate them. They 
 demand superior mental and moral excel- 
 lence in their heroes. We deceive our- 
 selves by judging qtherwise, or by thinking 
 that we can dazzle them by false pretence. 
 They estimate character by a wonderful 
 instinct which is akin to that queer, un- 
 canny intuition in women, which so often 
 and so effectively replaces ratiocination. 
 Boys' impressions of their teacher are 
 generally correct. It is only when they 
 begin to reason laboriously, an infrequent
 
 96 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 occurrence, that they go astray. For then 
 false witness and prejudice are apt to di- 
 rect and color their judgments. 
 
 As a rule, then, the teacher must ring 
 true to be estimated true. And he will ring 
 true if he is a master of his subject and 
 allied subjects; a friend of his boys, yet 
 their superior ; a pure wholesome compan- 
 ion, yet a prudent counsellor in time of 
 need; a whole-souled unenvious man, who 
 disdains to speak disparagingly of fellow- 
 professors, or of pupils in the presence of 
 pupils ; a man, in short, who gives himself 
 to a noble cause, forgetful of rebuif and 
 ingratitude, seeking only to perpetuate the 
 work of Him, who set free the captive and 
 gave sight to the blind. To such a one 
 discipline is not a problem.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 CHARACTER 
 
 EDUCATION which does not make for 
 character is a delusion and a snare. It is 
 a play at hypocrisy. It pretends to do 
 what it cannot do, make a man. It works 
 on the unformed child and converts him 
 into a deformed man. It misses the only 
 effect worthy of supreme effort. For after 
 all a good character is man's greatest 
 treasure. Without this the "psalm of life 
 is a broken chord," with it there is har- 
 mony in the soul, be trial and suffering 
 ever so great. Hence character should be 
 a teacher's chief est care. He should covet 
 nothing so much as the privilege of bend- 
 ing every effort to the formation of souls 
 unto justice. Such labor is his life work. 
 
 To accomplish this he must first have a 
 care of himself. As far as possible unal- 
 
 97
 
 98 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 loyed goodness in great and small things 
 must possess his heart. For he is not an 
 actor. He does not teach from behind a 
 mask or under a wig. He does not edu- 
 cate by mere words, nor yet by deeds, but 
 by his manhood, by his thoughts, his as- 
 pirations, his words, his deeds, his whole 
 self, every fibre of his being. He is his 
 lesson. If he is noble, his lesson is ex- 
 alted ; if he is base, his work is low, mean 
 and ineffectual. He is a voice crying in 
 the wilderness, the voice is hollow and un- 
 persuasive, and the wilderness will always 
 retain its primitive savagery, if indeed it 
 does not increase it. The man is the edu- 
 cator. The more a noble personality en- 
 ters into the work, the better and more 
 lasting will its effects be. 
 
 Just here modern education scores one 
 of its most lamentable failures. The sys- 
 tem has become so bureaucratic that the 
 teacher is a pawn to rule and sched- 
 ule. He is cramped, cabined and confined 
 by petty regulations. His individuality is 
 smothered. His natural goodness is re- 
 placed by a text book, from which diluted
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 99 
 
 ethics is spelled between taps of a gong. 
 He teaches according to inflexible schemes 
 and diagrams, which have been drawn up 
 in a far-away office by an unpractical if 
 exalted person who knows just enough 
 about boys to class them under vertebrates 
 and bipeds. Thus masters are converted 
 into machines and pupils go forth into 
 the world trade-marked not soul-marked. 
 High hopes of youth are blasted and a no- 
 ble vocation is debased beyond telling. 
 Happily however the bureaucracy cannot 
 wind its tentacles around every man dedi- 
 cated to the training of boys. There are 
 some beyond its reach. These are our 
 hope and consolation. 
 
 In order that these men may succeed in 
 their efforts they should first realize what 
 character is. They must have an ideal to 
 aim at. For good will is paralyzed by 
 absence of true notions about the end to 
 be attained. What then is a good charac- 
 ter? It were impossible to give a thor- 
 oughly adequate and satisfactory defini- 
 tion of this. Its details are so numerous 
 and complex and withal subtle that some
 
 100 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 of them escape analysis and as a conse- 
 quence defy a verbal formula. For char- 
 acter is life, and life is intricate and deep 
 and shifty, and scorns compression into a 
 sentence or even into a volume. However 
 there are certain features of a fine char- 
 acter on which we can fasten without much 
 difficulty. First of all it supposes lofty 
 ideals, high, correct thinking. This is es- 
 sential but not sufficient. Something more 
 is demanded. The ideals must have a mo- 
 tive power. They must not be isolated 
 from action. They must react constantly 
 on the will, moving it to repeated, delib- 
 erate deeds, until habits which embody 
 lofty principles become so involved with 
 life itself that one is the measure of the 
 other. Theoretically all this is quite com- 
 monplace. Practically it is shamefully 
 neglected. We have reached a stage 
 where the few noble ideals left to our peo- 
 ple affect many of their possessors on 
 bright Sundays during "service." Their 
 workaday lives are in strange contrast to 
 their Sunday professions. The result is 
 an open book writ so large that he who
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 101 
 
 runs ever so swiftly can read without fear 
 of eye-strain. 
 
 Character then is a fixed condition of 
 the soul, a permanent state in which the 
 spirit lives and moves under the inspira- 
 tion and guidance of deep-rooted princi- 
 ples. It is not a fitful thing, something 
 which changes with the weather or comes 
 and goes at beck and call. It is life, 
 strong, exalted life, which outlasts the 
 mortal breath a.nd lives on for eternity. 
 True, men may sometimes fall short of 
 their ideals, but they are not for that char- 
 acterless. Falls are incidents even in the 
 lives of the just, and sad though they be, 
 they may not be indicative of more than 
 a passing weakness. Occasional lapses 
 are perfectly consistent with a character 
 which may be good, albeit not perfect. The 
 crux of this question is not in infrequent 
 deviations from high standards, but rather 
 in the total lack of all elevating principles. 
 Better a hundred, yea, a thousand falls 
 which bring repentance than an unguided 
 or misguided life. The latter were charac- 
 terless, the former is not.
 
 102 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 Teachers of boys are only too apt to en- 
 tertain wrong notions on this point. They 
 forget that character formation is the 
 work of a lifetime, done, may be, in storms 
 which every now and then displace por- 
 tions of the spiritual edifice which is build- 
 ing in pain and travail. The shortcom- 
 ings of their pupils discourage and embit- 
 ter them. They give up in despair of ac- 
 complishing any lasting good and await 
 their Nunc dimittis with high expectation. 
 foolish and slow of heart ! Foolish, that 
 they do not understand life ; slow of heart, 
 that they do not place their trust on high 
 and begin anew, even after the edifice 
 which they saw rising under their eyes 
 collapses with a crash. All is not lost. 
 The crash may be more apparent than real. 
 For boyhood is a time of strange, gusty 
 moods and stranger contradictions. The 
 wind of the moods may be boisterous, but 
 it is seldom strong enough to do lasting 
 hurt. It disturbs the surface of the soul 
 and leaves the inner depths untouched. 
 The whim of the contradiction may lead 
 the boy to emphasize the evil that is in
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 103 
 
 him and hide the good. But virtue is there 
 and will soon reassert itself in all its na- 
 tive vigor and beauty. The teacher's ideal- 
 ism would seldom be blighted, his energy 
 seldom sapped through disappointment, did 
 he but call to his experiences in the for- 
 mation of his own character. The book of 
 his life is scored with failures. Struggle 
 was and is the meat and drink and breath 
 of his life; eternal vigilance, the price of 
 his every victory. And failure and strug- 
 gle and vigilance are emphatically not 
 signs of lack of character. Were it so, 
 the corpse would be most masterful. 
 Whence, then, discouragement save from 
 a pusillanimous heart? Courage and con- 
 fidence, a martyr's motto, be our inspira- 
 tion. After we have assisted the boy to 
 lay the broad outlines of his character, let 
 us help him with the details thereof. For 
 they are many and fickle and worrisome 
 and demand constant, toilsome effort. In 
 the end success will crown our work. For 
 Nature is not altogether bad and Grace is 
 strong. The constant striving of the boy, 
 guided by us, will bring unto him integ-
 
 104 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 rity, which will make him true to himself 
 and hence to others; courage which will 
 rejoice to make an enemy for the sake of 
 principle and scorn to find a friend at the 
 cost of a principle; patience which endur- 
 eth all things; joy that scattereth bless- 
 ings in the way; kindness which refuses to 
 crush the bruised reed or quench the smok- 
 ing flax: in short, all the characteristics 
 which Saint Peter postulates for those 
 "who have obtained equal faith with us 
 in the justice of our God and Savior 
 Jesus Christ": faith and courage and 
 knowledge and abstinence and patience 
 and brotherly kindness and love, which if 
 they be with us and abound, will make us 
 neither empty nor unfruitful. 
 
 The Greeks of old, drunk with joy over 
 their high estate, would honor Zeus for 
 that he had been benign. They searched 
 their quarries for flawless, spotless mar- 
 ble, and finding it, they set their most ex- 
 pert sculptor to carve therefrom a godlike 
 statue of the godly Zeus. The work was 
 done. The happy Greeks thronged to pay 
 the statue homage. At first sight they ac-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 105 
 
 claimed it for its majesty and beauty. But 
 soon their joy was turned to wrath by the 
 discovery of the sculptor's name cut so 
 deep into the fair marble that its removal 
 could be accomplished only by the destruc- 
 tion of the statue itself. The work of the 
 Christian educator is symbolized in this. 
 He is to send forth a Godlike man, with 
 the name and character of Christ, the real 
 fashioner of hearts, cut so deep into the 
 soul that they can be removed only by the 
 annihilation of the soul itself. But Christ 
 the Lord of creation and Savior of men 
 will not permit so great a calamity. Let 
 us see how all this can be accomplished.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 TRAINING FOR CHARACTER 
 
 AT present there is perhaps no subject 
 more frequently discussed in pedagogical 
 circles than the formation of character. 
 The subject itself appeals to every teacher. 
 Moreover, something akin to a panic has 
 been caused amongst educators by sharp 
 criticisms of their failure to fashion boys 
 of sterling worth, and panics which are 
 not too soul-racking promote debate. 
 
 The net result is that discussion has far 
 outrun achievement, chiefly because the 
 principles laid down are only too often 
 vague and impracticable. Hence the topic 
 presents further opportunity for argu- 
 ment. 
 
 What part is the teacher to play in form- 
 ing a pupil's character? In general he 
 must both inculcate principles and foster 
 
 106
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 107 
 
 the formation of habits. This requires 
 constant activity and elaborate but definite 
 knowledge. Mere acquaintance with cer- 
 tain common foibles of human nature is 
 not sufficient. Each boy in particular 
 must be known intimately and trained in- 
 dividually. Otherwise there is much use- 
 less beating of the air. 
 
 The acquisition of the necessary knowl- 
 edge depends on circumstances which vary 
 with persons, times and places. But cer- 
 tain general hints may help to its attain- 
 ment. 
 
 Those for whom these papers were 
 chiefly written are thrown in contact with 
 boys of many different extractions. Each 
 group is marked by certain traits. The 
 lads of one set are intellectually quick, 
 critical, destructive rather than construc- 
 tive. They are disinclined to the hard, 
 persistent effort which results in thor- 
 oughness. They work well under stimu- 
 lus, but are apt to give up once the goad 
 is lifted. Moreover, they are emotional 
 and sensitive, forgiving in great injustices, 
 unforgiving in small offences, prodigal in
 
 108 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 poverty, tight in wealth, tender to all in 
 distress, hard on their fellows who are suc- 
 cessful, but a bit obsequious to alien peo- 
 ples of wealth or influence. 
 
 The boys of the second class are men- 
 tally slow, but persistent and thorough. 
 They set their teeth firm and reach the 
 goal in triumph, late it may be, but well 
 for all that. They are stolid to a certain 
 point. Beyond that they are passionate. 
 Their melancholia is acute and prolonged, 
 their anger vehement. Their boiling point 
 is high but once it is reached there is a 
 mighty ebullition and an overflow which is 
 uncomfortable to the objects of their 
 wrath. They possess a wonderful instinct 
 for organization, which is sometimes car- 
 ried to the excess of undue insistence on 
 petty details, and an unfortunate exclusive- 
 ness. 
 
 The third group resembles the second in 
 many ways. Its members partake of 
 many of the latter 's good qualities, but 
 they lack the instinct for organization, and 
 their defects are more pronounced. This 
 is especially true of stubbornness and an-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 109 
 
 ger. There are few lads of this group 
 who are not sons of Boanerges in dis- 
 guise. 
 
 Finally, the boys of the last class are 
 quick in speculation, but inept in practical 
 affairs, except perhaps in diplomacy. 
 They are mystical and emotional, and lit- 
 tle inclined to intellectual drudgery. They 
 are capable of the highest idealism, which 
 is often tainted by self-interest. Such in 
 general are some of the characteristics of 
 our pupils. 
 
 But a teacher's view of the difficulties 
 which will be encountered would be incom- 
 plete without some very definite notions of 
 the influences which play upon boys in 
 America. In the first place, responsibil- 
 ity sits lightly upon the shoulders of many 
 American parents. They are selfish and 
 frivolous, and quite willing to shift the 
 burden of the more serious parental duties 
 to other shoulders. Their whole attitude 
 towards their boys is apt to be wrong. 
 Rightly enough they often make compan- 
 ions of their children at an early age. But 
 the companionship is not always as whole-
 
 110 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 some as it might be. Conversation very 
 often turns to criticism of the boy's 
 teacher, pastor or superior. Authority is 
 attacked. The boy's sense of reverence 
 and obedience is either weakened or de- 
 stroyed, and before long he holds the reins 
 of parental power in his hands. He rules 
 the home, and naturally enough attempts 
 to lord it over his teacher. He has a false 
 idea of manliness. He confounds it with 
 the most unmanly of all defects, pertness 
 and a contempt for submission to lawful 
 authority. These wretched conditions are 
 due to the home. Outside influences have 
 a worse effect upon him. The very atmos- 
 phere which he breathes is morally un- 
 healthful. Lying and other forms of dis- 
 honesty are so common that they excite 
 little surprise. Eaiment is more than life. 
 Pleasure is more than the soul. Money is 
 the be-all and end-all, it is Circe's bread 
 and wine, the cause of a thousand woes in 
 which many rejoice. The godless and ig- 
 norant man, who a decade or two ago 
 coined money from the blood of the poor, 
 is the hero of the hour. He is featured in
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 111 
 
 the public press. His goings and comings 
 are noted in red ink. His vices are 
 trumpeted as things of glory. His pic- 
 ture and those of his successive living 
 wives are printed in a prominent place. 
 His benefactions are tagged with his name. 
 Applause is long and loud, even though his 
 filthy coins are given for cheap glory's 
 sake, and bid fair to prostitute the nation's 
 ideals and institutions to ungodliness. 
 
 All this has a most deleterious effect 
 upon our boys. It tinsels baseness and 
 glorifies infamy, and tinsel and sham glory 
 dazzle and pervert youth. Thus pupils 
 come to our schools spoiled, abnormal, mis- 
 shapen. Deep down in their hearts lurk 
 ideals which are only too often brought 
 into play by the first temptations of man- 
 hood. Great is the ruin. To offset this 
 their souls must be reshaped, their spirit 
 remade. The task of reform will be huge, 
 but not hopeless. At least hopeful ma- 
 terial is at hand, an immortal soul, the 
 image of an all-holy God. Faith too is 
 present, and faith is the foundation of all 
 that is high and noble and holy.
 
 112 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 As soon as the boy is committed to the 
 teacher's care his training should be in- 
 augurated. No moment should be lost. 
 Late conversions are apt to be few and 
 far between, and though they are a bless- 
 ing in comparison with a former condition, 
 yet they are seldom as satisfactory as a 
 slow, steady growth in goodness from 
 childhood to old age. Carpe diem cannot 
 be insisted on too much. A spoiled boy of 
 twelve years is a difficult problem, one of 
 fourteen years a knotty problem, one of 
 seventeen an all but desperate problem. 
 Hope of perfect success rests to a great 
 extent on early beginnings. The little 
 prince is trained for kingship from in- 
 fancy, so that on accession to the throne 
 he will be a king in deed and not in name 
 alone. It were a stupid thing for his 
 training to wait on the sceptre. King and 
 kingdom were lost. It were equally stupid 
 to permit a boy to enter the kingdom of 
 manhood, undirected by a guiding hand, 
 untouched by the chastening rod of disci- 
 pline. The kingdom of manhood is fac- 
 tious, difficult of rule, and the king un-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 113 
 
 trained from youth is slack of purpose and 
 unsteady in achievement, a weakly thing 
 swayed by every wind of passion, like a 
 slender, naked reed in a stiff November 
 storm. Elpenor of old were not more 
 pitiable, and of him the minstrel sang in 
 biting words : 
 
 There was Elpenor, the youngest, a chap 
 
 of little worth, 
 Nor stanch in battle, nor well-knit of soul. 
 
 How often are we not called upon to 
 say of many of our pupils that they are 
 not stanch in battle, nor well-knit of soul? 
 A little heart-searching would frequently 
 fasten the shame of such conditions on us. 
 For few teachers work earnestly and in- 
 telligently at character formation. Most 
 of them are content to let good enough 
 alone. External discipline is their only 
 concern. Others again put a slight veneer 
 over a soul which festers at the core. Age 
 and sorrow and temptation and sin eat 
 through the covering in a thousand places, 
 and bequeath to the world a race of 
 crabbed old men. This will never do.
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 Nor will it suffice simply to uproot vices. 
 The garden is not made beautiful by a 
 mere process of weeding, but barren and 
 ready perchance for a new crop of more 
 loathsome weeds. There must be a sow- 
 ing of good seed. Culture must succeed 
 the planting, until at last the perfect 
 flower rewards the labor done. 
 
 One by one, slowly and patiently, at- 
 tractive ideals must be held up before the 
 pupils. There must be no confusion, no 
 bustle, no magisterial tones, but peace and 
 calmness and simplicity. Above all there 
 must be a rational system. To get a boy 
 to adopt two or three principles a year is 
 a great victory. But a master will never 
 bring this to pass by pitch-forking ideals 
 into little heads. The farmer who scat- 
 ters all sorts of seeds on the same ground 
 harvests nothing. The teacher should 
 classify his boys according to their races, 
 watch for national characteristics, learn 
 personal traits, and fit his training to the 
 needs, and as the needs are generally va- 
 ried, so too must the training be. * * Treat 
 all alike," advice often given to young
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 115 
 
 teachers, is absurd and impossible. As 
 well might the old practitioner say to the 
 young doctor: " Treat your typhoid, 
 small-pox and grip patients exactly in the 
 same way." To treat the timid and the 
 bold, the sluggard and the plodder, the 
 reverent and the irreverent alike, is either 
 to crush the one or to harden the other in 
 evil. Treat all differently is often the only 
 sensible advice. Before all else the 
 teacher must beware of shielding the boys 
 from trial and struggle. He should not 
 graft virtues on to their souls. He must 
 let his pupils suffer the travail incident to 
 the formation of their characters. They 
 themselves must struggle to train their 
 souls under the master's direction. En- 
 vironment, exposition of principles, en- 
 couragement, are all indispensable, but in- 
 sufficient and even ineffective without work 
 and suffering on the part of the boy. 
 Goethe hits upon more than a half truth 
 in his Es bildet ein Talent sich in der 
 Stille, dock ein Character in der Strom der 
 Welt. Struggle and even temptation make 
 for fuller development. Trial deepens
 
 116 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 courage, temptation engenders self-con- 
 trol and sympathy, sorrow fathers meek- 
 ness and patience, intellectual difficulties 
 foster humility, the ingratitude of others 
 promotes unselfishness in us. What could 
 be better? For life is not a tripping to a 
 dance measure. The pace must often be 
 set to the music of the battle march, or the 
 solemn beat of the dirge. For such men 
 must be prepared. We dance by instinct. 
 But even after stern preparation we gird 
 our loins and swing the battle-axe with 
 clumsy reluctance. Without training our 
 young men will do neither in any way. 
 Failure, doom, will be their fate. 
 
 On the other hand, with proper care pu- 
 pils will leave our halls lofty of mind, 
 strong of will, sound of judgment, poised 
 in all things : men who will sing under low- 
 ering clouds, and whistle in the teeth of a 
 biting wind. 
 
 "I dare do all that may become a man; 
 Who dares do more, is none" 
 
 will mean more for them than for Mac- 
 beth himself.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 RELIGION IN EDUCATION 
 
 EDUCATION without religious training is 
 sadly incomplete. Such is the verdict of 
 reason and experience. The latter pre- 
 sents an open book eloquent in testimony 
 of the ills which follow an ungodly up- 
 bringing. The former convinces us that 
 man has spiritual faculties which can be 
 perfected to their fullest extent by religion 
 alone. 
 
 Moreover, viewed from a merely human 
 standpoint, life is an inevitable failure. 
 We war against enemies who . eventually 
 cast us into the grave, conquered. Illu- 
 sions of victory may be many and strong 
 to buoy us up till our allotted time is fin- 
 ished. Victory itself is impossible. As 
 well expect the bleating lamb to outrun the 
 
 swift-footed wolf, as man to flee the relent- 
 in
 
 118 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 less universal reaper in safety. There 
 awaits us all the "one far-off divine event 
 to which the whole creation moves," death, 
 defeat. In sober moments this conviction 
 is uppermost in all men's souls. Art and 
 literature bespeak it pathetically and elo- 
 quently. Authors as far apart in educa- 
 tion and temperament as the writer of the 
 "Book of Wisdom," Chrysostom, Turge- 
 nieff, Shakespeare, Shirley, Tennyson and 
 a thousand others, press it home upon us 
 with the passionate conviction peculiar to 
 a thought which arises from the human 
 heart so spontaneously and irresistibly 
 that it must be spoken in hot, eloquent 
 words. Life on earth is broken, incom- 
 plete. Its complement lies beyond the 
 clouds, in Heaven. It is our duty to at- 
 tain thereto. This can be done only by re- 
 ligion. There should therefore be no 
 doubt about the necessity and fitness of 
 religious education. Our boys have a 
 right to it. Parents and teachers are 
 obliged to give it. 
 
 How to do this is a question worthy of 
 consideration. The problem, tangled by
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 119 
 
 its very nature, is made doubly difficult 
 by present-day circumstances. Eadical 
 democracy is the fashion of the hour. That 
 never yet made for faith and God, but only 
 for unfaith and gods. Under its spell men 
 are not content to see darkly. They must 
 see clearly or not at all. They measure 
 God by themselves, not themselves by God. 
 So their god becomes identified with the 
 will of man, an imperfect, sinning thing 
 groping towards a perfection which it will 
 never reach. 
 
 Consequently the teacher's first task is 
 to persuade his pupils that to see darkly 
 is the lot of man on earth. Human vision, 
 howsoever keen, cannot be the measure of 
 the greatness of the Creator. The poor 
 flickering light of the human intellect can- 
 not illuminate the inscrutable abyss of 
 God's majesty. The plummet of the hu- 
 man heart is lost in sounding the depths 
 of the love and goodness of God. In the 
 very nature of things, religion must con- 
 tain an element of mystery. It were a 
 sham else, a fraud, a lie. This must be 
 brought home to boys. Then they must be
 
 120 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 inspired with a holy reverence and awe for 
 the infinite, all-holy personal God in whom 
 they live and move and are. 
 
 Nothing is too small to be of consequence 
 in this matter. Disregard of the small 
 leads to contempt of the great. Irrever- 
 ence in church or at prayer betokens a di- 
 minishing respect for Him who is the Lord 
 of church and prayers and all things else. 
 The final outcome may be calamitous for 
 the soul. Hence no effort should be spared 
 to foster in the boy a spirit of intense re- 
 spect for all that pertains tio God. Church 
 services and the teacher's habitual atti- 
 tude towards God should all impress the 
 youth with the dignity and importance of 
 religion. 
 
 Though reverence for religion may be 
 acquired without much knowledge of doc- 
 trine, yet it cannot survive for long under 
 such a condition. For this and other rea- 
 sons the question of proper instruction is 
 of utmost importance. This instruction is 
 of two kinds, informal and formal. The 
 first named can be given at any time and 
 in diverse ways. Occasions for it are al-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 ways at hand. Private conversations, apt 
 hints, pictures, biographies of holy, zeal- 
 ous laymen such as Ozanam and Moreno, 
 all lend themselves to it easily and profit- 
 ably. 
 
 Formal instruction presents greater 
 difficulties. Boys do not take kindly to 
 catechism and sermons. Their attitude to- 
 wards them is often that of passive resist- 
 ance. Occasionally there is some justifi- 
 cation for this disedifying condition. The 
 dreariest remembrances of a schoolboy's 
 career sometimes centre round the lesson 
 in religion and the sermon. Likely as not, 
 the former consists of a spiritless, monot- 
 onous repetition of questions and answers, 
 while the former is often vague and im- 
 practicable. Yet the great justification of 
 our schools is not Latin or Greek or his- 
 tory or mathematics, but religious train- 
 ing. It is for this that Catholic fathers 
 and mothers make yearly sacrifices which 
 are simply stupendous, and it is this above 
 all else which should call to the best that 
 is in the teacher. His preparation for a 
 lesson in religion should be diligent and
 
 122 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 minute; his instruction intelligent, lively, 
 varied. Question and answer should play 
 their part, but they are not everything. 
 They must be vivified, made practical, 
 brought into touch with life by story and 
 illustration. They are dead things into 
 which the teacher must inject a palpitat- 
 ing soul that will appeal to imagination, 
 intellect and will. Eeligion is also life, 
 and life belongs to more than one faculty. 
 The student who leaves college with no re- 
 ligious training save that implied in a mere 
 knowledge of doctrine is in a fair way to 
 becoming a devil, the more wicked because 
 of his knowledge. Yards of questions and 
 answers will not save his soul. Something 
 else is required, an upright life. In that 
 lies salvation. The boy must live the doc- 
 trine from early youth. This demands an 
 atmosphere fit to support and strengthen 
 life. A dull page had by rote cannot ac- 
 complish such a condition. Monotony 
 saps vigor and life itself. There should 
 then be variety of method in our teaching. 
 Chart and picture and story appeal 
 strongly to high-school boys, and are by
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 123 
 
 no means scorned by older students. 
 These latter profit most of all by intelli- 
 gent discussions conducted with as little 
 interference as possible from the teacher. 
 A topic, such as the infallibility of the 
 Pope, can be assigned to a bright student 
 for defence. Other members of the class 
 should be appointed to search out and 
 urge objections. This privilege, however, 
 should not be confined exclusively to a se- 
 lected few. All should be allowed and 
 even urged to enter the lists. Such exer- 
 cises, if not too frequent, have a wonder- 
 fully stimulating effect, and give to the les- 
 son a value hard to acquire from any other 
 source. Mature boys also take an interest 
 in preparing essays on religious topics to 
 be read in the class-room before their fel- 
 lows. Success will attend all these meth- 
 ods of instruction if the teacher is sym- 
 pathetic and helpful, not cynical and fussy. 
 Sermons to college boys offer particu- 
 lar difficulties. The choice of subjects, the 
 manner of presentation, the lessons to be 
 drawn, all present their own problems. It 
 goes without saying that preparation is
 
 184 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 required for success in this work. Boys 
 do not expect eloquence in every man, but 
 they do expect clearness of presentation 
 and dignity of style. Neither is possible 
 without forethought. This is often con- 
 spicuously absent. Many a time the text 
 from Scripture is the only clear, incisive 
 part of the sermon. The rest is "shoes 
 and ships and sealing-wax and cabbages 
 and kings. " Some men, too, preach their 
 eccentricities. They forget the Eum opor- 
 tet crescere, me autem minui. Their vain- 
 glory is too much for them. They pro- 
 ject themselves into sacred scenes and 
 places in a manner which gives occasion 
 for merriment and remarks far from con- 
 soling and complimentary. Bad as is the 
 vainglorious sermon, there is another still 
 worse, the baseball or football sermon. 
 No doubt points can be scored by an occa- 
 sional prudent use of apt illustrations 
 drawn from the campus. But to preach as 
 if "Spalding's Guide" were a text-book in 
 homiletics is to cheapen religion and de- 
 grade a sacred function. The effect on 
 the boys is the very opposite of that de-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 125 
 
 sired. Much as they love the field, they 
 resent its encroachment on the sanctuary. 
 They look for something higher: sermons 
 that are short, clear, vigorous, practical, 
 spiritual. 
 
 But when all has been said, it must be 
 granted that sermons, lessons and discus- 
 sions will be of little avail unless the boy 
 is brought to live the doctrines taught. 
 "We are saddened at times by lapses of our 
 pupils from their early practices. They 
 reject the milk and honey of their Father's 
 house for the husks that swine do eat. 
 They exchange the liberty of the sons of 
 God for the bondage of sin. Why? Per- 
 haps because their growth in spirit was 
 automatic rather than loving and spon- 
 taneous. The gong sounded, and they 
 went to Mass by force of rule or tradition. 
 They bowed and genuflected and sang 
 without thought of the significance of their 
 acts. Their attendance on the sacraments 
 was a function instead of an outgoing of 
 the soul to God. Religion was more ex- 
 terior than interior, more a thing of sense 
 and tradition than of the soul. There was
 
 126 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 much of the wheel and cog about it, and lit- 
 tle of life. In the end temptation came and 
 stirred the soul deeper than religion. The 
 result is better conjectured than described. 
 This can be prevented. Both teacher and 
 confessor can play a part in averting it. 
 The latter can do so by making each con- 
 fession tell on the boy's soul in the man- 
 ner dictated by experience and theological 
 training. The task of the former is a bit 
 more difficult. His one hope of success lies 
 in making religion part and parcel of the 
 life of the boy's soul. This is not easy. 
 Boys live by the senses rather than by the 
 spirit. Their religion is apt to be a thing 
 of sense, the more so that Catholicism ap- 
 peals so strongly to the lower faculties. 
 Of course this appeal is just what it should 
 be. For these faculties are creatures, and 
 should be led captive to God. They are 
 channels of knowledge, and should be used 
 for that purpose. But that religion should 
 proceed no further than eye and ear is 
 monstrous. Architecture, painting, sculp- 
 ture, vestments are symbols of a reality 
 which should stir the spirit to its very
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 127 
 
 depths. Lights, flowers, incense, music 
 should make their ultimate appeal to the 
 soul. Do they do so ? Not always. The boy 
 is not taught to look beyond the symbols. 
 He becomes absorbed in them to the neg- 
 lect of that which is symbolized. The 
 Mass, the great gift of God to men, the 
 Mass, at once a sacrament and a sacrifice, 
 a history and a pathetic drama with cli- 
 max and anti-climax, is but a passing show, 
 a brave pageant, without inner meaning. 
 There are lights and vestments and chants 
 and incense and bows and genuflections, 
 all awesome no doubt, but almost mean- 
 ingless to the young soul. So too of other 
 sublime offices of the ritual. There is no 
 just appreciation of their significance, and 
 hence no reaction strong enough to induce 
 the formation of vigorous habits of virtue. 
 The boy's attitude is much like that attrib- 
 uted by Plato to those captives in a cave, 
 who ascribed all that went on in the world 
 above them to the shadows which flitted 
 on the walls of their prison. 
 
 Shadows and symbols are everything to 
 the lads. They weave therefrom a web of
 
 128 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 romance and mystery, pleasing enough, 
 perhaps, but wholly unfit to bridge the 
 abyss of life. Bookishness, shallowness, 
 formalism of instruction is the cause of 
 this. Too much is attempted, too little 
 done with life and energy. Christ is not 
 made to stand out in all and through all. 
 He does not become a living reality. He 
 is more mythical than real. He is ob- 
 scured in word, and obscured very often 
 in devotion. And so the young soul re- 
 mains unconscious of the beauty and sub- 
 limity of His character, and never becomes 
 attracted to Him with a real personal love. 
 Herein is the secret of many spiritual dif- 
 ficulties of later life. The corrective is 
 within the teacher's power. Through the 
 grace of God he must impart apt knowl- 
 edge to the boys, generate ardent convic- 
 tions in their minds, create passionate at- 
 tachment to right in their souls. 
 
 Then all will be well with the pupils. 
 For everything will speak to them of God. 
 Joy and sorrow, success and failure will be 
 His messengers, men His image, books His 
 mouthpiece, nature His robe. He will
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 129 
 
 dwell in the silence of the forest, brood in 
 majesty over the rolling sea, rule in the 
 raging tempest, whisper in the gentle 
 breeze : God everywhere, in all and through 
 all. Boys who appreciate this will never 
 go far astray. They will realize with Bus- 
 kin that "to live is nothing unless to live 
 be to know Him by whom we live. ' ' Then 
 in the end they will repeat with convic- 
 tion: 
 
 Plurima qu&sivl, per singula quceque 
 cucurri, 
 
 Nee quidquam inveni melius quam cre- 
 dere Christo.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOCIOLOGY AND CATHOLIC 
 EDUCATION 
 
 PBESENT-DAY society presents a picture 
 which is far from exhilarating. Masses 
 are in conflict with classes ; morals are bad, 
 lawlessness is rife, and, worst of all, many 
 good men, in despair of a remedy, have 
 become inactive and pessimistic. Yet 
 there must be an offset to the evils of the 
 times. Strife and discontent are not new 
 in the world. The voice of revolution and 
 anarchy has been heard before. Virtue 
 has been in rags and tatters ere this, and 
 vice has paraded in satin and broadcloth. 
 Society has been in desperate straits many 
 a time. And it has always passed through 
 them in safety, albeit weakened and per- 
 chance a bit shattered. Sensual, grovel- 
 ling Eome died, and the State lived on. 
 
 130
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 131 
 
 The frantic era of the Reformation went 
 its way and left society after it. The cold, 
 cynical, rationalistic eighteenth century 
 disappeared, and the State survived. And 
 God's arm is not shorter now than then. 
 His intellect has not lost its power, nor 
 His will its strength. He is not puzzled 
 nor conquered nor intimidated by the ex- 
 cesses of men. He is still the God of na- 
 tions. The State as well as the individual 
 is His creature. Society is His work and 
 His care. He can redeem it and sanctify 
 it once again. For its redemption and 
 sanctification are bound up with the re- 
 generation of each individual soul, a result 
 easy of attainment through the super- 
 abounding merits of the Blessed Savior. 
 Pure hearts make a worthy State; and 
 pure hearts are not beyond God's power. 
 But it is to God, and to Him alone, that 
 we must look for relief in the present 
 crisis. There is neither remedy for vice 
 nor promise of progress save by and 
 through the observance of His law. Men 
 cannot be dragooned into virtue. The 
 bayonet may pierce the heart; it cannot
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 reform it. Statutes may promote public 
 decency; they cannot furnish props for a 
 sin-laden State. Eventually, 
 
 Vis consili expers mole ruit sua. 
 
 Eeligion is the one sure foundation of 
 society. Balzac was only half right in as- 
 serting that Christianity is the greatest 
 element of social order. It is more than 
 that. It is the fundamental element. 
 Without it all other elements are vain and 
 useless. True, the wisdom of the world 
 does not reckon with this. But the wisdom 
 of the world has failed for many a century ; 
 and it were time now to give the folly of 
 the Cross some consideration. 
 
 The reform of society, even in the 
 sense intended by advanced sociologists, 
 pertains primarily to Christianity. La 
 morale chretienne n'est pas sociale is an 
 outrage on truth and other virtues alike. 
 Christ's mission was also sociological in 
 the highest and truest sense. There never 
 was and never will be a more successful 
 social reformer than Our Lord. And this 
 for the very reason that sociology and re- 
 ligion are inseparable. Sociology without
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 133 
 
 religion is a fraud; religion without so- 
 ciology is cant. Imagine a sociology with- 
 out the works of mercy ! Nothing could be 
 more absurd, save perhaps a heaven with- 
 out God. And yet these self samer works 
 of mercy are part and parcel of Christ's 
 gospel. He taught them and practised 
 them. He instructed the ignorant, coun- 
 ^selled the doubtful, admonished sinners, 
 comforted the sorrowful, fed the hungry, 
 gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the 
 naked, visited the sick, cleansed the lep- 
 rous, strengthened the palsied, gave sight 
 to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing 
 to the deaf. " Jesus went about all the 
 cities and towns, teaching in the syna- 
 gogues and preaching the Gospel of the 
 Kingdom, and healing every disease and 
 every infirmity." All these He did, and 
 so much store did He set by them that He 
 offered them as proofs of His Messiah- 
 ship. "Go and relate to John what you 
 have heard and seen. The blind see, the 
 lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf 
 hear, the dead rise again, the poor have 
 the Gospel preached to them."
 
 134 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 This is real sociology. Heaven is its 
 pith and substance: the works of mercy 
 done in the spirit of Christ, for the glory of 
 God and the regeneration of the body 
 politic. And this kind alone is helpful. 
 Other species are debasing to the helper 
 and the helped. To teach the young the 
 laws of hygiene and external decorum 
 without attempting anything further, is to 
 labor at the formation of semicultured 
 pagans whose very gifts will be a menace 
 to the State. There will be outward glow 
 and show, and inward rottenness. To dole 
 out food to men without inspiring them 
 with Christian self-reliance or resignation 
 as need may demand, is to generate a race 
 of paupers. To pension the poor without 
 consideration of the virtue which should 
 be peculiar to their condition, is to increase 
 an already huge army of impudent and 
 ungrateful parasites, who will bleed the 
 State to the last drop without generous 
 thought of neighbor or of God, the giver 
 of all bounty. There is no sociology in 
 this, but only sickly sentimentalism, or 
 ' t slumming, ' ' the debased and debasing di-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 135 
 
 version of divorcees and powdered dam- 
 sels. Mere benevolence, philanthropy, 
 will not solve social problems. Nations 
 have thought so. Their ashes are a mon- 
 ument to their success. 
 
 Philanthropy flourishes exceedingly 
 amongst us to-day. It was never more 
 conspicuous. Neither were our national 
 vices. Charity is needed the virtue that 
 puts Christ, and not the name of the sor- 
 did millionaire, into the hearts of the poor 
 and unfortunate. It is only through char- 
 ity that our modern shibboleth ''the fa- 
 therhood of God and the brotherhood of 
 man" has a true meaning. We are chil- 
 dren of the Father and brothers of one 
 another in and by and through Christ. 
 We remain such by imitating Him. Christ 
 is charity, not philanthropy. 
 
 This is the mind and spirit of the 
 Church. Such the ideal to which she has 
 been so true that even her arch enemies 
 admire her for this feature of her life. 
 Guizot, in contemplating this characteris- 
 tic, was forced to admit that she has played 
 a grand part in the history of civilization.
 
 136 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 She emerged from the catacombs torn and 
 bleeding, to begin her open life in a society 
 composed of an army of slaves, lustful 
 freemen, dames whose names were a hiss- 
 ing and a byword, and a few harmless ora- 
 tors. The State was rotten to its very 
 nerves and fibres, heartless as a tiger, 
 tyrannous as a demon. And yet in the 
 face of all this the Church found a way to 
 inaugurate sociological works which com- 
 pel universal admiration. The sick, the 
 maimed, the orphan were gathered into 
 hospitals and homes, and treated with ten- 
 derness as brothers of Christ. A special 
 Order was instituted for the care of the 
 poor. The Master's mantle covered many 
 shoulders and warmed many hearts to he- 
 roic deeds of love. There were many men 
 like Laurence, who, under orders to sur- 
 render the treasures of the Church to the 
 State, presented to the Eoman officials a 
 multitude of maimed and miserable peo- 
 ple. And this spirit lived in the mission- 
 ers who, century after century, stalked 
 forest and jungle in search of men to whom 
 they might impart both religion and the
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 137 
 
 useful arts and sciences. The greatest 
 body of sociologists who ever lived were 
 the Benedictines. They set a standard 
 which has never been surpassed and is but 
 poorly imitated. One-third of the French 
 towns owed their origin to these monks. 
 Their monasteries rose in trackless for- 
 ests, and became schools for the children, 
 hospitals for the sick, almshouses for the 
 poor and inns for the weary travellers. 
 Therein the arts of peace flourished for 
 long ages, enriching the world with mas- 
 terpieces which adorn many a modern mu- 
 seum. Under the care of these men wild 
 souls were tamed, rough manners became 
 gentle, sleeping intellects awoke, clumsy 
 hands grew skilful. Life took on new val- 
 ues. The nomad tribe became a civilized 
 society with Christ as Guide and Master. 
 True sociology scored a victory. It would 
 score another, were it brought into play. 
 For the Church can meet every need. She 
 has a remedy for every ill. Her divine 
 Founder foresaw all, and provided in ac- 
 cordance with His prevision. 
 And never was there greater necessity
 
 138 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 of the Church's doctrines and practices. 
 Unreasonable individualism, the Gallic 
 Egalitairism in which the French Bevolu- 
 tion focused, has done a sad work. Its in- 
 fluence is felt in religious, social and eco- 
 nomic spheres. Men are living for them- 
 selves. They will not subordinate one 
 tithe of their ambitions to the general good. 
 Charity is crushed. Philanthropy, in 
 many cases at least, is a personal gratifi- 
 cation of vainglory. The union and fra- 
 ternity without which the State cannot ex- 
 ist is growing less and less. Authority is 
 disrespected. Laws are framed for 
 classes, and violated both by classes and 
 masses. The insolent rich have become 
 irresponsible and the poor truculent. 
 Fraud and lust are gnawing at the vitals 
 of the State. Plato was wont to represent 
 society as an organism in which individ- 
 uals are the organs. How long can such 
 an organism subsist, head at war with 
 hands, neck at war with shoulders, heart 
 at war with lungs t The application is ap- 
 parent. 
 
 Conditions would be far different were
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 139 
 
 Catholic doctrines followed. Individual 
 and class interests would be subordinated 
 to the common good. Authority would be 
 considered God-given, not man-made. 
 Laws would take on new sanctions. The 
 rich would learn that they are but stewards 
 of wealth, responsible to God for its use 
 and abuse. The poor would be taught the 
 nobility of labor and patience under trial. 
 They would seek relief through legitimate 
 means, understanding that it were better 
 to suffer an ill than to sin in righting it. 
 Christ would be reproduced in souls. And 
 that is the one thing needed. More of 
 Christ, and less of shower-baths and ath- 
 letic meets and stereopticon lectures, would 
 do a deal to straighten out tangled condi- 
 tions. 
 
 Catholic educators should be the fore- 
 most in effecting this. Times and condi- 
 tions have changed. Methods must change 
 with them. Formerly the priest was the 
 sole agent of the work. He cannot be 
 so any longer. A wave of radicalism 
 has alienated many from him. Our cities 
 are teeming with aliens, ignorant of our
 
 140 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 language, shy of our religious customs, 
 strangers in a strange land, whom priests 
 cannot reach, but whom wolves in sheep's 
 clothing do reach. The layman must go 
 down amongst these waifs and bring Christ 
 unto them. 
 
 But laymen will not do so unless they 
 are brought to an early realization of their 
 powers and responsibilities in this mat- 
 ter. For obvious reasons, this is the work 
 of Catholic instructors, a work sadly neg- 
 lected. In one of our large cities, less 
 than five per cent, of the active members 
 of the St. Vincent de Paul Society are col- 
 lege men, and less than fifteen per cent, 
 of the workers in the Ozanam Society had 
 the advantages of academic training. 
 Hard-working clerks and salesmen are the 
 principal laborers in these guilds. They 
 are the Christophers, while the college men 
 of large opportunities, and hence of 
 greater responsibilities, hold aloof from 
 the holy work almost entirely. There is no 
 excuse for this, and there is but one satis- 
 factory explanation for it: the apathy of
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 141 
 
 Catholic teachers. Boys pass through col- 
 lege unaware of the ignorance and help- 
 lessness to which so many splendid fellows 
 are condemned through no fault of their 
 own. How can our students desire to help 
 others, if they never realize the needs of 
 others? How can they be expected to ex- 
 tend active charity to others, if they are 
 neither taught their obligations nor in- 
 spired with a desire to fulfil them? 
 
 Men argue that it is impossible to inter- 
 est American boys in such matters. This 
 is not true. Secular universities have in- 
 terested their students in them. More- 
 over, our boys do not fall short of Span- 
 ish, Belgian, German or English boys in 
 idealism and enthusiasm for good. They 
 do fall far short of them in practical works 
 of charity. Teachers may look for the 
 reason in their own conduct, not in the 
 slackness of their pupils. This is all the 
 more unfortunate in view of the ever-in- 
 creasing need of Catholic lay workers 
 among poor boys. Fine but untrained 
 boys, with good religious instincts, are
 
 142 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 neglected at the critical period of their 
 lives, only to become the prey of Socialists 
 arid Anarchists. 
 
 The harvest is white, but too large for 
 the number of laborers. The remedy for 
 this deficiency is not far to seek. Simple, 
 definite instructions and sympathetic talks 
 to young students, a rational course in so- 
 ciology for older boys, would accomplish 
 much. Senior students would profit too 
 by intercourse with social workers; by 
 well-directed participation in the activi- 
 ties of the Ozanam Society ; by attendance 
 at meetings in which social needs and cor- 
 rective ways and means are discussed; by 
 reading the literature of the St. Vincent de 
 Paul Society and the Eunomic Club. 
 
 All this can be brought about by Cath- 
 olic teachers. They can plant a seed 
 which will sprout and grow, and blossom 
 and bear fruit in the later life of their stu- 
 dents. To this they are obliged. They 
 are their brother's keeper. In the end 
 their stewardship will be scrutinized and 
 appraised. And Christ has said: "De- 
 part from me, . . . for I was hungry, and
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 143 
 
 you gave me not to eat : I was thirsty, and 
 you gave me not to drink : I was a stranger, 
 and you took me not in: naked, and you 
 covered me not: sick, and in prison, and 
 you did not visit me." Truly, a terrible 
 sanction on neglect of social duties. But 
 who neglects these more than the teacher 
 careless of his obligations in this regard?
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE BOY AND THE SECULAR LIFE 
 
 of affairs are at present vigorously 
 debating the question of the practical value 
 of college education in business. Their 
 opinions are various and often directly con- 
 tradictory. The self-made man sees no ad- 
 vantage in higher education. He has suc- 
 ceeded without it. Therefore, it cannot 
 be of any use. On the contrary, likely as 
 not, it will prove a hindrance to progress. 
 It converts men into idealists, makes them 
 unpractical, and thus renders them unfit 
 to grapple with the ever-changing prob- 
 lems of these strenuous times. These 
 statements are generally followed by an 
 array of statistics quoted with an air of 
 supreme confidence. The confidence, how- 
 ever, is not born of the arguments. They 
 scarcely call for analysis or refutation. 
 
 144
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 145 
 
 Even the blear-eyed can look through them 
 without great effort. Yet since it is al- 
 ways interesting to observe how a man 
 hoists himself with his own petard, a word 
 of retort may not be entirely vain. Money, 
 influence, dignity, constitute the self-made 
 man's norm of success. Be it so. Noth- 
 ing could serve our purpose better, nor his 
 worse. Computation based on the study 
 of fifteen thousand " successful" careers 
 shows that men with academic training 
 have two hundred and fifty chances of suc- 
 cess against the one poor chance of persons 
 who are not college-bred. Even though 
 observation be confined to the narrow lim- 
 its of the purely industrial and commercial 
 field, yet the college man loses nothing in 
 comparison with his companions who have 
 not had the advantage of higher education. 
 One in every six of the sometime students 
 of New York institutions who have become 
 eminent, attained their success in business. 
 In this sphere the college man has forty 
 chances of success against the one chance 
 of non-college men. 
 
 So much for statistics and the inferences
 
 146 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 drawn from them. No doubt both one and 
 the other are partial, and to some extent 
 misleading. But they are the self-made 
 man's stock in trade. They are his weap- 
 ons of attack. Under compulsion, they be- 
 come our instruments of defence. Condi- 
 tions render a poor boomerang more ef- 
 fectual than a Mauser. 
 
 But apart from all this, it is clear that 
 college training by its very nature fits man 
 the better for the battle of life. More- 
 over, life is more than bread and meat. 
 The soul and its gifts count for something. 
 Hence, so does culture of the spirit. This 
 is obvious enough to make argument un- 
 necessary. We could wish, however, that 
 the fact were driven into the hearts of 
 Catholics so hard and fast that they would 
 be forced to pay more attention to col- 
 legiate education. Nineteen per cent, of 
 all students of higher education in the en- 
 tire United States are found in the Col- 
 leges of New York, and yet the number of 
 Catholics in this throng is relatively small. 
 Each year two thousand boys are gradu- 
 ated from the parochial schools of one New
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 147 
 
 York diocese alone, and of these likely 
 chaps only a very small proportion enter 
 high schools. Probably the dismissal pic- 
 ture is equally true of Catholic youths who 
 attend the city schools. 
 
 The consequences are not pleasant to 
 contemplate. In the main, our men of the 
 next generation will be hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water distinctly inferior to 
 those about them, intellectually and in all 
 other ways save morally. Yet an unused 
 remedy lies at hand. But, as we said, dis- 
 cussion of this is not our main purpose. 
 Bather we wish to give attention to the sec- 
 ular careers of those who actually frequent 
 our colleges. 
 
 Many of these boys need advice and 
 other assistance in order to start well in 
 life. As a rule, they get neither. Through 
 lack of interest and proper organization 
 the alumni societies are of little help. In 
 most places alumni and students are sep- 
 arated by a gap almost as broad and deep 
 and formidable as that which separated 
 Dives from Father Abraham. There is a 
 dinner once a year, at which graduates are
 
 148 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 inducted into the society. They come into 
 personal contact with the old men for the 
 first time, and only for a moment. Ac- 
 quaintance is most casual. At the dinner 
 the president of the society announces that 
 a committee of the alumni will sit in the 
 parlor to offer advice to the young men. 
 As is clear, the capacity of the parlor is 
 overtaxed by the number of youths who 
 are anxious to consult these all but total 
 strangers about a profession. Comment 
 is unnecessary. 
 
 Teachers are often of as little help. 
 Their duties and manner of life keep them 
 out of touch with doctors' offices and law 
 courts and markets. They have, then, no 
 information to give. In view of this, per- 
 haps they may find a few items helpful and 
 even interesting. It is significant of the 
 condition of professions like law and medi- 
 cine that the drift of graduates is almost 
 altogether away from them. A century 
 ago law attracted more men than any other 
 profession save the ministry. Times have 
 changed and choice of professions has 
 changed with them. A recently compiled
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 149 
 
 list of graduates of twenty-seven repre- 
 sentative and widely distributed colleges 
 reveals the fact that teaching claims 
 twenty-five per cent, of the younger grad- 
 uates, business twenty per cent., law fif- 
 teen per cent, and medicine six per cent. 
 This drift is most natural. Law and medi- 
 cine have fallen in popular estimation. 
 Moreover, despite the decrease in the num- 
 ber of educated men who follow them, they 
 are both overcrowded. Hordes of in- 
 ferior, untrained, unscrupulous youths 
 have pushed themselves into these profes- 
 sions, with sad effect on the morale of both. 
 This is especially true of law. Our large 
 cities are stocked with lawyers who live by 
 their wits, not unfrequently off widows or 
 other unsuspecting women. Criminal law 
 is becoming positively odious. Self-re- 
 specting men, who must earn their bread 
 and butter, had better think twice before 
 casting in their lot with it. Then too, be- 
 sides the unworthy lawyers, there are oth- 
 ers, honest fellows, whose fees from draw- 
 ing wills and collecting evidence scarcely 
 equal the salary of well-paid clerks. In
 
 150 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 one city of less than two hundred thousand 
 inhabitants there is an over-supply of one 
 thousand five hundred lawyers. 
 
 Of course, there is always room for a 
 man of talent, energy and character. But 
 not every college man is such. Some lack 
 one or other quality. Others lack all 
 three. Advisers should take this into con- 
 sideration. Moreover, they should give 
 thought to the particular branch of law for 
 which a boy is best fitted. A youth with 
 absolutely no scientific instinct is not apt 
 to meet with success at patent law. He 
 may succeed, however, by making a spe- 
 cialty of real estate. This offers a double 
 chance for an honest competence; one 
 through the practice entailed, the other by 
 throwing open legitimate avenues of spec- 
 ulation closed to many who are unaware of 
 the opportunities. 
 
 Bright young lawyers often fail to make 
 progress because they are not put suffi- 
 ciently upon their mettle. They should en- 
 ter new and uncrowded fields as strangers 
 determined to succeed. The writer has in 
 mind seven young men who owe their sue-
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 151 
 
 cess more to the fortunate choice of place 
 than to talent. Acting under advice, they 
 set themselves down in growing western 
 cities with the happiest results. 
 
 Applied science offers numerous oppor- 
 tunities for college men. Electrical sys- 
 tems of various kinds must be managed, 
 bridges must be built, sewage disposed of, 
 roads constructed, streets opened and 
 graded, and so forth. Hence there is con- 
 stant demand for electrical, sewage, me- 
 chanical and civil engineers. Some find 
 employment in the engineering depart- 
 ments of our cities, others get places on the 
 staffs of great companies. Then too, 
 wholesale groceries, sugar refineries, mills 
 and the chemical departments of city hos- 
 pitals all need chemists. And so on 
 through a long list of opportunities af- 
 forded by applied science. "Why not turn 
 the attention of our boys this way? There 
 is room for the college graduate. Only 
 three per cent, of this generation of gradu- 
 ates take up engineering. 
 
 Despite pessimistic reports, there are 
 also chances in business for the right kind
 
 152 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 of a boy. The great telephone companies 
 employ numbers of youths in positions 
 which are entirely honorable and lucrative 
 for beginners. Each year the Standard 
 Oil Company seeks college men for work 
 in Asia. Salaries are high, and chances 
 of advancement are fair. Other large 
 companies are only too glad to place col- 
 lege men amongst their employes. Busi- 
 ness is expanding enormously, especially 
 along certain lines, and needs trained in- 
 tellects more than ever. For instance, 
 some fifteen years ago a motor vehicle was 
 a novel sight in the United States. Now 
 there are one million such vehicles in use. 
 The factories turned out $400,000,000 
 worth of automobiles of various kinds dur- 
 ing the year 1913. The promises for 1914 
 are equally fair. According to one esti- 
 mate 600,000 cars will be manufactured. 
 There is almost as much activity in other 
 branches of business. The real estate 
 market and contracting, for example, are 
 continually assuming larger proportions. 
 College men should share in this general 
 prosperity. To do so, however, they
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 153 
 
 should be willing to begin humbly and 
 climb high by merit. This is the only sen- 
 sible process. Meteoric careers are apt 
 to be brief. The right precedent has been 
 set by men like the late manager of the 
 Pennsylvania Railroad, who, after com- 
 pleting his technical education, began life 
 as a rodman. Educated youths might 
 study such a career with profit. 
 
 Many young men are deterred from en- 
 tering business by fear of a penniless old 
 age. They dread the prospect of giving 
 their best years to a company which will 
 throw them aside after their usefulness 
 begins to diminish. This objection, once 
 very real, is gradually losing its force. A 
 good number of reputable companies have 
 already established generous pension 
 funds. Others are contemplating a like 
 step. Thus the United States Steel Cor- 
 poration, the American Telephone Co., the 
 Armour Co., the Morris Co., the Westing- 
 house Air-Brake Co., the Wells Fargo Co., 
 the Adams Express Co., the Gorham Man- 
 ufacturing Co., the American Sugar Re- 
 fining Co., and the International Harvester
 
 154 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 Co. all have funds. Some of these funds 
 are really huge, and the conditions under 
 which employes may profit by them are not 
 hard. 
 
 Besides all the ways enumerated, there 
 are many other honorable means of liveli- 
 hood. Most of them are so well known 
 that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them. 
 Teaching, the army and navy, government 
 service at home and in the colonies, all af- 
 ford dignified, though not enormously 
 lucrative ways of making a living. 
 
 The whole crux of this question is not so 
 much lack of opportunities as want of men 
 charitable enough to take an interest in 
 struggling boys. Alumni societies can 
 easily remedy this. Let them be' assured 
 that it is a great charity both to assist 
 young graduates by advice and to exert 
 influence that the boys may begin their ca- 
 reers auspiciously. Bread cast upon the 
 water is returned twofold.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE BOY AND THE PRIESTHOOD 
 
 HAPPINESS and unhappiness, success 
 and failure, salvation and damnation, are 
 so intimately connected with the choice of 
 a state of life, that all who are interested 
 in boys should give the subject serious con- 
 sideration. Boys must face the future. 
 They must choose a vocation. A happy 
 choice is an earnest of a happy, useful 
 life. An unhappy choice is the prelude 
 of an unhappy, useless life. 
 
 Though this is universally true, yet it 
 has special reference to the priesthood. 
 The unworthy priest is at once the most 
 pitiable and wretched of men. The giant 
 of the forest, towering high above its fel- 
 lows in the full vigor of a more bounteous 
 life, is suddenly struck by a ruthless bolt, 
 and thereafter stands among its kindred 
 
 155
 
 156 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 a forlorn, withered thing, fit only for a 
 base use or the destroying fire. Its for- 
 mer preeminence but makes its present low 
 estate the more noticeable and pathetic. 
 Thus it is with the priest shattered by the 
 bolt of sin. His face stamped with an in- 
 delible, indescribable seal not of earth, he 
 moves amongst his fellows, an uncanny 
 creature whose very presence fills godly 
 hearts with pity and sorrow, and causes 
 godly lips to move instinctively in prayer. 
 The salt of the earth has lost its savor, and 
 it is fit for naught save to be cast out and 
 to be trodden on by men. The man's hopes 
 and life are blasted. So too are the hopes 
 and lives of many who depend on him for 
 the bread of the word and the water that 
 springs unto eternal life. If the shep- 
 herding be faithless, the flock will be 
 decimated. The ravening wolf is never 
 far distant, and noxious weeds and pol- 
 luted fountains abound on every side. 
 
 There is call, then, for supremest care in 
 the choice of candidates for the priest- 
 hood. And since teachers in Catholic 
 schools are amongst the agents whom God
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 157 
 
 deigns to use for the recruiting of the 
 ranks of His ministry, it were well for them 
 to take thought on their duty and oppor- 
 tunities in this regard. Above all, the 
 teacher should convince himself that he 
 has an obligation in this matter. That 
 this is the case is too obvious to demand 
 discussion. Moreover, apart from any 
 consideration of duty, he were a queer man 
 indeed who did not experience great joy in 
 sending youths forth to an anointing 
 whereby they become other Christs, mes- 
 sengers of glad tidings, angels of peace and 
 mercy, priests of prayer and sacrifice, 
 guardians of a sublime office, who perpet- 
 uate the Eedeemer and His work on earth. 
 The true teacher's soul is filled with joy- 
 ous earnestness for this cause. Prudence 
 alone sets bounds to his zeal. His activ- 
 ity is constant, but yet tactful by reason of 
 guidance from sound principles. These 
 principles are plain and easy of compre- 
 hension. 
 
 First of all, the priesthood is a free gift 
 of God to man. No one has a right to it. 
 Station, wealth, learning, influence, sane-
 
 158 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 tity, nothing save the call constitutes a 
 claim to it. Ordinarily, this call is vouch- 
 safed to persons who possess certain well- 
 defined gifts, natural and supernatural. 
 The doctors of the Church are in substan- 
 tial agreement on this point. In fact, the 
 trivial divergences of opinion which are 
 sometimes noted are verbal rather than 
 real. St. Alphonsus groups these gifts 
 under three categories, St. Thomas under 
 two. But the two categories of the latter 
 include the three of the former. And ulti- 
 mately both doctors make it clear that 
 learning, sanctity and an upright intention 
 are requisite in candidates for the priest- 
 hood. 
 
 But to what extent should these charac- 
 teristics exist in boys who contemplate the 
 priestly life? For surely, as much cannot 
 be expected of them as of seminarians who 
 are about to receive major orders. Quite 
 true. And it is just here that teachers 
 make mistakes. They refuse encourage- 
 ment to those who do not measure up to 
 the very highest standards. They err in 
 expecting too much of striplings. Heroic
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 159 
 
 virtue and great knowledge are slow 
 growths. An Aloysius seldom graces the 
 world by his presence, and Aquins do not 
 strut about in knickerbockers. Something 
 should be left to the seminaries and 
 scholasticates. It is theirs to impart 
 priestly virtues and priestly knowledge. 
 Ordinary Christian virtues, such as purity, 
 the habit of prayer, patience and docility, 
 coupled with mediocrity in studies, should 
 be sufficient to commend a boy to the zeal- 
 ous attention of his master. Most of these 
 virtues and their opposite vices call for no 
 discussion. They can be passed over in 
 silence without fear that their nature or 
 importance will be misunderstood. 
 
 This is not true, however, of other quali- 
 ties of soul. To our mind there are traits 
 of character often overlooked, which jus- 
 tify a teacher in refusing to promote a 
 boy's ambition for the priesthood. 
 Amongst these are ingrained selfishness, 
 habitual untruthfulness which often ap- 
 pears instinctive rather than rational, a 
 sad lack of judgment, and a grotesque, 
 clownish instability. In defects such as
 
 160 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 these, the child is invariably father to the 
 man. And when the man is a priest, the 
 result is shameful and harrowing. The 
 Church blushes at her minister's defects 
 and weeps in impotency over the harm 
 wrought by them. 
 
 Yet these faults show themselves incor- 
 rigible early in life. They are woven into 
 the warp and woof of the soul and cannot 
 be torn out. There are boys so selfish that 
 sacrifice or even consideration for others 
 seems quite incomprehensible to them. 
 Their thoughts and words and deeds are 
 for self and self's interests. Their priest- 
 hood will be for self and self's interests. 
 Souls will be of minor importance. 
 
 What can be expected of the young man 
 whose heart is filled with dark angles? 
 Gratuitous lies come to his lips as natu- 
 rally as warts to a toad's back. He acts 
 as if he had a mission to deceive as many 
 as possible before death overtakes him. 
 Nothing save a grace which would all but 
 deprive him of his liberty will cure him of 
 this. Such a grace is apparently rare. 
 
 And the bungler. He goes bungling to
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 161 
 
 the grave. He is as tactless and impru- 
 dent at sixty as he was at twenty. His 
 taste is execrable. His judgment is 
 warped. He cannot learn by mistakes. 
 He burns his hands at the same fire, in the 
 same way, twice a month. Wholesome ad- 
 vice and honest criticism convince him that 
 his work is superlatively good; otherwise 
 it would not attract notice. He is right 
 and all others are wrong. The priesthood 
 will lose more than it will gain from such 
 a man. The office of confessor, for in- 
 stance, is too sacred and responsible for 
 his kind. And there is no remedy. The 
 defect is radical, a kink in the intellect 
 which cannot be ironed out. 
 
 Nor are we more hopeful of the boy who 
 veers with every breeze, dances with every 
 piping and laments with every mourning. 
 He is a hale-fellow-well-met. He adapts 
 himself to moods and opinions and actions 
 and atmospheres readily and recklessly, 
 with no apparent concern. As he grows 
 into manhood he cultivates the graces of 
 conversation, learns to sing a bit, and be- 
 hold ! develops an apostolic vocation. Let
 
 162 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 the family fireside be his missionary field. 
 A grandfather's chair will make a more 
 excellent pulpit for him. 
 
 So much for the qualities undesirable in 
 those who look forward to the clerical 
 state. But what is the teacher's duty in 
 so important an affair? To our mind his 
 work is both creative and directive. 
 
 Many theologians hold that the priestly 
 vocation formally consists in a special in- 
 ternal charisma, an extraordinary grace 
 by which God sets a man aside for the 
 priestly life. Over and above virtue, 
 learning and a pure intention, they demand 
 this special grace which destines a man 
 for the office. This opinion is entitled to 
 the highest respect. No doubt God often 
 calls persons in the aforesaid way. Little 
 children on whom no external influence has 
 been brought to bear, evince an altogether 
 supernatural desire for the holy state. 
 And this desire grows with years, despite 
 the most untoward conditions. The Holy 
 Spirit is breathing in a special way over 
 the face of the soul. Who dares gainsay 
 it? But is this always the case? We do
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 163 
 
 not think so. In fact there is evidence to 
 the contrary. Moreover, a recent decision 
 of a special commission of Cardinals ap- 
 pointed by His Holiness to settle a con- 
 troversy bearing on this very topic, ex- 
 pressly says "Conditionem, quae ex parte 
 ordinandi debet attendi, quaeque vocatio 
 sacerdotalis appellatur, nequaquam consis- 
 tere, saltern necessario et de lege ordina- 
 ria, in interna quadam adspiratione subjec- 
 ti, sen incitamentis Spiritus Sancti, ad sa- 
 cerdotium ineundum. Sed e contra, nihil 
 plus in ordinando, ut rite vocetur ab epis- 
 copo, requiri quam rectam intentionem 
 simul cum idoneitate in iis gratiae et na- 
 turae dotibus reposita, et per earn vitae 
 probitatem ac doctrinae sufficientiam com- 
 probata, quae spem fundatam facient fore 
 ut sacerdotii munera recte obire ejus- 
 demque obligationes sancte servare queat: 
 esse egregie laudandam." At its very 
 mildest, this denies that a vocation to the 
 priesthood necessarily or even ordinarily 
 supposes a special extraordinary charisma. 
 Virtue and ability there must be, but no 
 special extraordinary internal grace
 
 164 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 prompting a man to assume the priestly 
 office and dignity. A vocation, then, can be 
 acquired. By God's help a man can grow 
 fit for the call. He can get the requisite 
 knowledge and virtue. He can acquire the 
 generosity and strength of will necessary 
 for the office and life. He can even con- 
 ceive a very active, strong, loving desire 
 for both, much in the same way that he can 
 conceive any other supernatural desire. 
 
 Hence, as we have said, a teacher's work 
 can be both creative and directive. Cre- 
 ative, in that by his life and labors he can 
 become an instrument in God's hands both 
 for adorning a boy's soul with the req- 
 uisite intellectual and moral gifts and for 
 inspiring him with the high ambition of 
 consecrating his life to heaven. Directive, 
 in that by advice and encouragement he can 
 guide the lad safely to the seminary or 
 scholasticate. Prudence is required for 
 all this. No undue influence should be ex- 
 ercised. There should be no cajoling, no 
 nagging. Both are unjust intrusions on 
 a boy's liberty. The result will be either 
 scorn on the lad's part, or an imaginary
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 165 
 
 desire for better things, which will disap- 
 pear under the first stiff trial. 
 
 On the other hand, the teacher should 
 do his best to inspire the boys with holy 
 ambition. He should light in their hearts 
 the fire of zeal for great causes and keep 
 it all aglow. This is not only legitimate. 
 It is a duty. For all men should realize 
 that God expects them to go down to the 
 grave leaving the world better and sweeter 
 for their presence. Boyhood, not the 
 evening of life, is the proper time for such 
 a realization. And the master is an agent 
 for its consummation. This may be ac- 
 complished by word, by an apt selection 
 of books for the boys ' library, and, best of 
 all, by example. Teachers live in an at- 
 mosphere of their own creation. This at- 
 mosphere is a reflex of the condition of 
 their souls. By it boys are influenced for 
 good or evil. They feel its effects, and 
 judge from them the worth of the cause 
 to which we have consecrated our lives. 
 They cannot analyze, they cannot prove, 
 but they can and do feel. They feel our 
 frivolity, our neglect, our petty cares, our
 
 166 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 childish dissatisfaction, our moroseness. 
 That which is in the soul is radiated by the 
 soul and affects others according to its na- 
 ture. Good example, then, is a prime fac- 
 tor in this great apostolate. The master's 
 self-sacrifice, singleness of purpose, pa- 
 tience, in short, his Christian heroism will 
 turn the souls of his pupils to high ideals 
 and holy aspirations. The priesthood is 
 rather a natural sequence. 
 
 But holy desires and aspirations are not 
 always lasting. In fact they are so easily 
 lost that their preservation demands con- 
 stant care and watchfulness. The teacher 
 should exercise both in an easy, natural 
 way. In boys, worldliness and temptation 
 to sin make their first and strongest ap- 
 peal to the imagination. Companions, 
 books and theatres often combine to lead 
 this faculty captive. Once caught, the 
 havoc is great. Prayer and attendance on 
 the sacraments help to offset the evil in- 
 fluence of these three. So too do many 
 natural agents, vigorous play for instance, 
 attractive books of travel, biography, his- 
 tory and fiction. And every teacher knows
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 167 
 
 how to induce boys to make use of all these 
 instruments of profit. 
 
 Other directive agencies will be sug- 
 gested by circumstances of time, place and 
 persons. The teacher should use all to 
 further so good a cause. And in the end 
 his cup of joy will be well-nigh filled. An- 
 other of his boys will go forth to the su- 
 pernal vocation in Christ Jesus, a shep- 
 herd of the lambs of God.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE BOY AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 
 
 TEACHERS are often at a loss to know 
 how to deal with boys who apply to them 
 for advice concerning a vocation to the 
 religious life. True the office of counsel- 
 lor in such an affair pertains primarily 
 to the confessor. However the master, es- 
 pecially if he be a priest, cannot always 
 refuse assistance to an earnest enquirer. 
 For this reason it is well for each teacher 
 to have in mind some simple principles to 
 which he can call for guidance in time of 
 need. 
 
 Vocations to the religious life, like vo- 
 cations to the priesthood, are of two kinds, 
 internal and external. The former, which 
 is by far the less common of the two, is 
 a sign of God's special predilection for a 
 soul. It consists of an extraordinary in- 
 
 168
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 169 
 
 terior grace by which a person is urged 
 one way or other, to choose the better part. 
 Sometimes this urging is exercised through 
 the medium of great sensible devotion, 
 which would find an outlet for itself in the 
 mode of life and work of a particular order 
 or congregation. In such cases signs of 
 the vocation are so marked as to be quite 
 unmistakable. The boy involved contem- 
 plates with joy the sacrifices demanded. 
 Everything seems easy and pleasant to 
 him. He has looked forward for years to 
 the consummation of his desire. He is im- 
 patient to begin the life. His interests are 
 altogether centred in it. Each delay in 
 the execution of his cherished wish causes 
 disappointment and even, keen regret. 
 The finger of God is surely here. The vo- 
 cation is clear. Teachers need have no 
 misgivings about any encouragement 
 which they may choose to give in such a 
 contingency. 
 
 But there are times when special voca- 
 tions are manifested in an entirely differ- 
 ent way. Often there is a strong and al- 
 most overpowering sensible repugnance to
 
 170 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 the manner of life indicated by the call. 
 The very thought of a surrender of the 
 will by a vow puts the soul in a state of 
 darkness and turmoil and irrational re- 
 sistance as if to some hostile, invisible 
 force. Resolutions against surrender are 
 frequent and forceful. Yet beneath all 
 this there is a conviction that duty, hard, 
 dry and repulsive, requires the much- 
 feared sacrifice. No amount of quiet rea- 
 soning lessens this conviction in any way. 
 Moreover it is most importunate. Like 
 Banquo's Ghost, it will not down. It is 
 present to the mind the last moment at 
 night and the first instant of the morning. 
 It appears and reappears at frequent in- 
 tervals during the day, even in the midst 
 of distraction and gaiety. And its effect 
 is always the same, disgust and resistance. 
 Finally a sense of duty, unaided in any 
 way by love, becomes too strong for op- 
 position. The soul surrenders to God, 
 despite pain and disgust, and travail that 
 are indescribable. There has been a real 
 internal vocation from the beginning, the 
 stronger and the better by reason of the
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 171 
 
 struggle which it occasioned. Those who 
 are called upon for counsel in cases of this 
 kind should act slowly and cautiously. A 
 little direction given now and then is far 
 better than a hasty decision which sends 
 a worried and disgusted chap off to a 
 novitiate half against his will. He is in 
 no mood to accept rigorous principles and 
 strict discipline. And the outcome may be 
 false appraisement on the part of supe- 
 riors and a hasty exit on the part of the can- 
 didate. Had the young man been allowed 
 to fight his own battle and come to a more 
 independent conclusion, the result would 
 have been different. His convictions would 
 have been on the side of duty and, though 
 his soul might have been sad, yet it would 
 not have been truculent. It had scored a 
 victory and thereby made itself ready for 
 new and more difficult conquests. 
 
 This vocation of which we have been 
 speaking, is uncommon enough. But 
 there is a second kind, the external, 
 which is far more common than is generally 
 supposed. In nature it is quite different 
 from the internal call. It is not a special,
 
 172 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 interior grace. The call comes entirely 
 from without, sometimes through the in- 
 strumentality of scripture, sometimes 
 through a sermon or an accident or sorrow 
 or such like agencies. Though this call 
 may be more insistent in some cases than 
 in others, yet it is universal. It is an in- 
 vitation extended to all to follow on close 
 after our Lord. It is a privilege by which 
 men are allowed to come nigh to Christ 
 and live in His immediate presence. "If 
 thou wilt be perfect go sell what thou hast 
 and give to the poor and thou shalt have 
 treasure in Heaven and come follow me." 
 The lives of the saints furnish many strik- 
 ing examples of this vocation. Thus was 
 Ignatius called and Xavier and Francis 
 Borgia and a host of others. 
 
 All this appears so simple and natural, 
 that it may be necessary to insist that even 
 this kind of call demands definite prerequi- 
 sites. Though universal, it is conditional. 
 It is an invitation. And the acceptance of 
 an invitation depends largely on the cir- 
 cumstances in which the recipient finds 
 himself. An evening reception is about to
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 173 
 
 be given to a distinguished person. Invi- 
 tations are sent broadcast. The host 
 would be delighted to welcome to his home 
 all who have been bidden to attend the func- 
 tion. Greetings will be cordial, hospi- 
 tality lavish. Not all however will attend. 
 Some are unwilling to submit to the eti- 
 quette demanded by the occasion. They 
 refuse to accept the conditions imposed by 
 the very nature of the reception. Others 
 again are delicate and fear to expose them- 
 selves to the night air. They remain at 
 home. In short all receive a perfectly 
 genuine and sincere invitation. Many 
 however either do not or cannot accept it, 
 on account of purely subjective circum- 
 stances. Mutatis mutandis, this applies to 
 the general invitation by which our Lord 
 bids men enter upon the way of the higher 
 life. "A certain man made a great sup- 
 per, and invited many. And he sent his 
 servant at the hour of the supper to say to 
 them that were invited, that they should 
 come, for now all things are ready. And 
 they began all at once to make excuse. The 
 first said to him : I have bought a farm and
 
 174 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 I must needs go out and see it : I pray thee, 
 hold me excused. And another said: I 
 have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to 
 try them; I pray thee, hold me excused. 
 And another said: I have married a wife, 
 and therefore I cannot come. ' ' Herein is a 
 type both of the call and the difficulties 
 which men experience concerning it. This 
 vocation then presupposes certain condi- 
 tions. These can be summed in one word, 
 fitness. Now fitness supposes the presence 
 of certain intellectual and moral qualities 
 and the absence of all obligations inconsis- 
 tent with the religious state. As is clear, 
 the aforesaid qualities may vary greatly. 
 For instance, not all Orders and Congre- 
 gations require the same ability in candi- 
 dates. Some demand intellectual powers 
 well above the ordinary; others are quite 
 content with mediocre talents. Then too, 
 minor moral traits which may prove an ob- 
 stacle to happiness in one Order may not 
 be a hindrance to success and contentment 
 in another. This is most natural. The 
 specific aim and work of various institutes 
 differ widely. The aim of one requires
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 175 
 
 perpetual study: the work of another ne- 
 cessitates travel, freedom, a large measure 
 of self reliance and individuality. The 
 scope of a third is inconsistent with all 
 these. Its work which may be of a simple 
 kind, is carried on almost exclusively 
 within an enclosure, under constant super- 
 vision and stimulus. Just as aim and work 
 vary so too do rules. The rules reflect the 
 spirit. The spirit is expressed in the work 
 and the manner in which the work is ac- 
 complished. Thus the rules of one Insti- 
 tute are extremely strict in regard to pov- 
 erty, those of another, in respect to obedi- 
 ence. This order accomplishes its end by 
 moving en masse, individual action sub- 
 ordinated to the action of the whole body : 
 that congregation insists on individuality 
 and self assertion. The rules reflect all 
 this. As a consequence, the qualities re- 
 quired in candidates for different Orders 
 or Congregations vary in accidentals 
 at least. The boy who could not abide 
 a Trappist's life might become an 
 excellent Dominican or Franciscan. And 
 on the other hand, a lad who would make a
 
 176 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 poor Dominican or Franciscan might find 
 a fit place amongst the Trappists. In other 
 words, failure to meet the requirements of 
 one institute does not imply unfitness for 
 all modes of the religious life. Teachers 
 should bear all this in mind and direct the 
 boy with great singleness of purpose in a 
 way that will subserve the glory of God 
 and the boy's greater good. For after all 
 Christ and His glory is our aim; not the 
 aggrandizement of any particular body of 
 men. We should rejoice exceedingly to be 
 able to direct suitable candidates to any ap- 
 proved Order or Congregation which is 
 working well in God's vineyard. This is 
 especially true of those holy, venerable or- 
 ders which have adorned the church by 
 sanctity and learning and profited the 
 world beyond measure by fruitful labors. 
 True zeal is not exclusive. Neither is it 
 blind. It should therefore be regulated by 
 prudence. The teacher's manner and 
 method should all be above reproach. 
 There is scarcely need of any delay on this 
 last topic. The words written about it in 
 "The Boy and the Priesthood" are quite
 
 TEACHER AND TEACHING 177 
 
 apropos in respect to the religious life ; and 
 the qualities which are there set down as 
 necessary for candidature for the priest- 
 hood are in the main necessary for admis- 
 sion into an order whose members become 
 priests or teachers. 
 
 Before closing however it might be well 
 to say a word or two on the obligation of 
 hearkening to the call and taking upon 
 one's self the yoke which the Lord holds 
 ready. Is there any obligation of obeying 
 the call to the religious life? Some theo- 
 logians assert that there is a grave obliga- 
 tion of following the special vocation. In 
 other words they teach that a person can- 
 not repudiate the interior, extraordinary 
 grace which constitutes the special voca- 
 tion without serious sin and grave danger 
 to eternal salvation. This doctrine ap- 
 pears too rigorous. Proof of serious sin 
 is lacking and though acceptance of the in- 
 vitation may render salvation relatively 
 easy, yet it is not at all clear that rejection 
 of the call entails grave danger to eternal 
 happiness. True, both sin and danger of 
 damnation may be incurred in special cases,
 
 178 TEACHER AND TEACHING 
 
 for special reasons. An instance in point 
 is found in the life of Blessed Margaret 
 Mary. But such cases are exceptional and 
 cannot be covered by a general law or state- 
 ment. 
 
 If the vocation is of the second kind, ex- 
 ternal and universal, there is no danger of 
 sin in refusing to accept it. The call is an 
 invitation, a privilege of such a nature that 
 man is not obliged to make use of it. Of 
 course no one attempts to deny that in both 
 cases refusal means loss of opportunities 
 for great good. But the performance of 
 this good is rather a matter of generosity 
 than of strict obligation.
 
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