If the old view of life and youth and education savors of asceticism, the new one is sheer materialism. But setting aside all supernatural considerations, we must condemn the extreme electivism of the modern system on merely natural grounds. Nor is this attitude peculiar to the Society of Jesus; it is firmly maintained by educators who in their religious tenets differ widely from ourselves. Professor Münsterberg has well pointed out the damage which results from this system to the character of the child, to the "formal side of education," as he styles it. "A child who has himself the right of choice, or who sees that parents and teachers select these courses according to his tastes and inclinations, may learn a thousand pretty things, but never the one which is the greatest of all: to do his duty. He who is allowed always to follow the paths of least resistance never develops the power to overcome resistance; he remains utterly unprepared for life. To do what we like to do, – that needs no pedagogical encouragement: water always runs down hill. Our whole public and social life shows the working of this impulse, and our institutions outbid one another in catering to the taste of the public. The school alone has the power to develop the opposite tendency, to encourage and train the belief in duties and obligations, to inspire devotion to better things than those to which we are drawn by our lower instincts. Yes, water runs down hill all the time; and yet all the earth were sterile and dead if water could not ascend again to the clouds, and supply rain to the field which brings us the harvest. We see only the streams going down to the ocean; we do not see how the ocean sends up the waters to bless our fields. Just so do we see in
