their troubles in part to lack of education, and are looking to education as a means of improving their condition. General education is practical education.
While every boy should be taught to earn a living, this should not be done needlessly at the expense of the higher development of the faculties. Too much attention to the practical dwarfs the powers, limits the horizon, and will result in the destruction of that spirit which makes a strong national character. There is little need to urge the practical; the more immediate and obvious motives constantly draw men toward it. The refinements of the soul are at first less inviting; they are hard to gain and easy to lose. Carlyle says: "By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass that, in the management of external things, we excel all other ages, while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are, perhaps, inferior to most civilized ages. . . . The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditioned one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good, but a calculation of the profitable. . . . Our true deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external nature for us, and we think it will do all other things." Carlyle possessed a true insight when he penned these words. Popular demands tend to make the age more unpoetic than it is. In this age the tourney has been converted into a fair; the vision of the poet is obscured by the smoke of factories; Apollo no longer leads the Immortal Nine upon Parnassus; and we would dethrone the gods from Olympus.
Men and peoples have made permanent contribu-
