A yet more fertile source of ideal conceptions is the choice literature of the world. From this rich treasury we draw the poetry which we apply to life. In literature truth is given life and color, idealized and made attractive. Qualities are abstracted, refined, perfected, and glorified. They serve to show us the meaning of those qualities in us. Literature presents emotions that in their purity and refinement seem to transcend the material world; heroes and martyrs idealized and embodying self-sacrifice and devotion; sentiments that touch the whole range of chords in the heart and awaken tenderness or heroism. The pupil reads Homer and gains conceptions of heroic virtues; the "Lays of Ancient Rome," and gains ideas of perfect honor and devotion to country; Tennyson, and he follows the pure conceptions and feels that life has taken on a nobler coloring; Carlyle's doctrine of work and duty, and feels his moral sinews strengthened. Thoughts that aspire, emotions of transcendent worth, courage, heroism, benevolence, devotion to country or humanity—all these are at the command of the instructor, if he has the skill to lead the pupil into the spirit and understanding of literature. If he has not the skill, let him not touch it.
The study of science itself offers opportunities. Science searches for truth, judges not hastily, removes all prejudice, employs the judicial spirit. It should suggest lessons in fairness, justice, and truth in the field of human conduct. Hasty inference, prejudiced judgment are responsible for half the sins of this world, and the scientific spirit should be made to pass from the abstract field over into practical life.
