based on words led them far out of touch with actual conditions; hence he decided that the "end of man is an action, not a thought"; that "education is the cultivation of a just and legitimate familiarity between the mind and things."

CLINGING TO PAST IDEALS

The conservatism of men in education is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in their clinging to educational principles long after the reason for doing so no longer exists. No one will doubt the advances that have been made in the scientific world as a result of the Baconian philosophy. In fact, since Bacon's time, the world has been made over. We have entirely cut loose from the past in medicine, physics, chemistry, and the other physical sciences, and no one would think to-day of basing research in these sciences on deduction. We gain our knowledge of them from a study of things. What the ancients gave us in them has been brushed aside as worthless rubbish. But in education we still cling to the past, although there is every reason to brush it aside that there was in the case of scientific knowledge. In fact, educational principles must go hand in hand with scientific principles, or they are worthless. Plato said, "All the useful arts are degrading, and the end of education is to cultivate the thinking powers," and we are willing to risk all on his judgment. At the time of the Renaissance, when men were digging from their hiding places the manuscripts of the Greeks, some fellow happened to dig out this philosophy of Plato, and it has had such a tremendous influence that to-day we are unable to break loose from it. Our educational system is largely based on words because Plato, on one bright morning two thousand years ago, happened to feel a little lazy and

gave expression to the feeling that he was glad he did not have to work. He lived in a land where useful work was performed by slaves, where all labor was menial, and he knew nothing of the useful arts as we know them to-day. However, had he even looked into things a little more clearly, he would have realized that it was the work of men's hands that gave Athens its chief glory and made it the admiration of the ages.

Bacon, by his system of inductive philosophy, has done much to overcome the evil of Plato's philosophy and has paved the way for the union of thought and action, which should never have been divorced. Comenius' aphorism "Learn to do by doing" leads in the same direction. In fact, all great educational thinkers have emphasized the importance of maintaining the proper relation between thought and action. Pestalozzi, Froebel, Horace Mann, Herbert Spencer, G. Stanley Hall, Dr. Eliot, and Montessori have all brushed aside the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and hold that the end of education is to cultivate the proper relation between thought and action. The reason why the lost relationship is not restored in practice is because of the conservatism of the man who has direct control of educational practice, because of his lack of adaptability and his failure to catch the spirit of the reform.

It is strange that so few of our leading school men have caught the spirit of the kindergarten and of manual training. They have caught the letter, and we have kindergartens and manual training schools in abundance; but few have caught the real spirit of the relation between thought and action, of the relation between the motor and the psychic states. In many places manual training is emphasized because of its vocational value, and this has raised a storm of protest from the culturist who

abhors the material. This has made its progress slower than it would have been had its true meaning been understood. For instance, few of our best schools have caught the full meaning of Ruskin when he said: "The youth who has once learned to take a straight shaving off a plank, or to draw a fine curve without faltering, or to lay a brick level in its mortar, has also learned a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could ever teach him." Rousseau said: "The student will learn more in one hour of manual labor than he will retain from a whole day's verbal instruction; that the things themselves are their best explanation."

THOUGHT AND ACTION NOT DIVORCED IN PRIMITIVE

EDUCATION

In outlining our educational system we can learn a wholesome lesson from our half-civilized forefathers. The primitive man never thought of divorcing thought and action; in fact, he emphasized the action and was willing to let the thought take care of itself, and what progress he made in his manner of living was due to this fact. He never gave his son book lessons in the use of the bow and arrow or the tomahawk; but he placed these weapons in his hands and let him learn through practice. He learned to fish by fishing; he learned to spear by spearing; and he learned to swim by swimming. We have every reason to believe that his intellectual progress kept pace with the progress he made along practical lines. We have no reason to doubt that the American Indian's intellectual attainment kept pace with his ability to use the weapons of the hunt and warfare in practice. In fact, from the very nature of things, it must have done so. The primitive man was compelled to be a believer in the practical, and it was only when education was taken out of the

hands of the practical man and put into the hands of priests and other men of leisure that there was a failure to maintain the proper relation between the theoretical and the practical. This class feeling that labor is degrading has caused us to divorce the science from the art and to emphasize in our schools history, mathematics, and literature, without the practical application of these to actual conditions. In fact, our education, under such conditions, has left off at the point where it was beginning to be of service.

Nothing has done more to corrupt the morals of men than the idea that it is beneath the dignity of the gentleman to engage in manual labor; and nothing has done more to raise moral standards than the turn education has taken during the last few years in the direction of the practical. The man who deals in words alone is sure to wander far from the truth. He thus cultivates the habit of being out of line with truth. On the other hand, the man who never stops with an idea until it is expressed in tangible form is constantly measuring his ideas by the truth and cultivates the habit of honesty. The man who works with his hands cannot deceive, for his work is there to show for itself. The false with him is certain to be exposed; but with the man who deals in thought alone, and never seeks to test the accuracy of that thought by applying it to realities, all is mere speculation, and there is not cultivated in his mind that love of truth which is characteristic of the worker; hence it is not without reason that we speak of the "honest sons of toil."

EDUCATION BASED ON WORDS LEADS TO CONSERVATISM

Another weakness of a system of education based on books is that it tends too much to conservatism. The man who studies books has his face turned toward

the past. He is constantly looking to the past as the golden age of the world. As long as men were dominated by the deductive philosophy of Aristotle, they made no progress, because they were tied securely to the past. This looking backward, perhaps, did more than any other thing to bring about the stagnation of civilization that caused it to sink so low during the Middle Ages, and we have every reason to believe that it would have gone even lower had it not been revived by coming in contact with real things.

The upper classes in all countries have always been the conservative classes, because they have not been compelled to labor and have devoted their time to mere intellectual pursuits. In the English government the conservative element has been the House of Lords, and it has been driven to every reform by the man who worked with his hands. The House of Commons has taken the lead in every progressive governmental reform, and the more it has gotten into the possession of the thinker, the more conservative it has become and the more it has become necessary for the worker on the outside to bring pressure to bear. The man who works with his hands and deals with actual conditions can easily go from the things that are to what they ought to be. He is constantly seeing room for improvement and is by nature a reformer. The world stood still as long as it was ruled by the mere thinker, and it began to move forward when Bacon taught men that "education is the cultivation of a just and legitimate familiarity between the mind and things." Youth is progressive because it is the time of action; old age is conservative because it is the period of thought and inactivity. The man who ceases to act loses his adaptability and is, for this reason, a conservative.