the streams of life the human emotions following the impulses down to selfishness and pleasure and enjoyment, but we do not see how the human emotions ascend again to the ideals, – ascend in feelings of duty and enthusiasm; and yet without this upward movement our fields were dry, our harvest lost. That invisible work is the sacred mission of the school; it is the school that must raise man's mind from his likings to his belief in duties, from his instincts to his ideals, that art and science, national honor and morality, friendship and religion, may spring from the ground and blossom."
According to Dean Briggs of Harvard,[1] no people lay themselves more recklessly open to reductio ad absurdum than advocates of the elective system. They wish to put enjoyment into education, without being sure that such education is robust enough. He quotes the example of Dr. Martineau, who gave double time to the studies he disliked, in order to correct the weak side of his nature rather than to develop its strong side. Now it is not necessary to go to such length; studies need not be imposed because they are difficult and unpleasant, but if they are of real educational value they should be imposed although they are hard and unpleasant. Still, no branch is of any educational value, unless it presents difficulties; the mental powers are called into action and are trained only if they have to overcome obstacles.
Some pedagogists sneer at the idea that resistance, the overcoming of obstacles, plays an important part in education. Herein, however, they manifest their shortsightedness. The old adage, "Fast gotten, fast
- ↑ Atlantic Monthly, October 1900.
