Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/127

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means of its attainment—a feeling that binds the attention to the end and the means. His doctrine denies hedonism. We are not to aim at a good, but to act the good. We are not to work for the pleasure, but to find pleasure in working. This is a doctrine of vast importance to the educator. External and unworthy rewards for effort are false motives. The work itself must furnish interest, because suited to the activities of the pupil. The great problem of the teacher is to invite a self-activity that finds its reward in the activity.

False motives should not be held before pupils. There is a view of life called romanticism, the condemnation of which gives Nordau his one virtue. The adherents claim for themselves the fill of a constantly varying round of completely satisfying emotional life. The history of prominent adherents of this view is a warning to this generation. The devotees either become rational and satirize their own folly, or become pessimists, railing at the whole that life has to offer, or commit suicide, and thus well rid the world of their useless presence. Carlyle points out that not all the powers of christendom combined could suffice to make even one shoeblack happy. If he had one half the universe he would set about the conquest of the other half. And then follows the grand exhortation to useful labor, the performance of duty, as the lasting source of satisfaction. If we do not find happiness therein, we may get along without happiness and, instead thereof, find blessedness. This is the doctrine of Goethe's Faust. Faust at first wishes to enjoy everything and do nothing. He runs the whole round of pleasure, of experience, and emotional life, and finds satisfaction