Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/84

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

(3) human action, (4) human thought, (5) æsthetic and ethical qualities. The studies corresponding are (1) mathematics, (2) natural science, (3) history, (4) language and literature, (5) art and ethics. Mathematics treats of quantitative knowledge, furnishes a peculiar intellectual training, and makes possible all commerce, all great structures, and the higher developments of physical science. Natural science acquaints us with the field of physical phenomena and of plant and animal life, is the best training in induction, and is largely the basis of our material civilization. History reveals the individual and our present civilization in the light of all human action, is a source of ethical training, and has high practical value for the problems of government and society. Literature reveals the ideal thought and the speculations of men, gives æsthetic and ethical culture, and in a practical way applies poetry to life. Art and ethics deal with distinct types of knowledge, cultivate the higher emotional powers, and, like ideal literature, set up standards of perfection in execution and in conduct of life.

The world in which we live is the world we are to know in order to adapt ourselves to it in thought, the world we are to know in order to gain power to work therein with success, the world we are to know as representing the thought of the Creator and the correlated nature of man, the world we are to know to gain the soul's highest realization, and, for these ends, to know in its various phases. Each department of study makes its own peculiar contribution to knowledge, each has its peculiar fitness for developing some given power of the mind, each makes its own contribution in preparing the individual for the