been rather optimistic about the educational conditions of this country. Thus President Eliot has quite recently expressed himself very frankly on the "failure of our popular education." In spite of the greatest efforts of various agencies towards checking vice in every shape, he sees small results. His practical conclusion is that "we ought to spend more money on schools, because the present expenditures do not produce all the good results which were expected and may be reasonably aimed at."[1] Still, it is more than doubtful whether an increased expenditure is the needed remedy; it is not lack of money, but lack of the true method of education, which is at the root of the failure of education. This has been correctly observed in several comments on President Eliot's indictment. The defects of our people, says the Chicago Chronicle, lie "in morals rather than in intelligence." And the Columbia State remarks: "It will at least be difficult to point at any fatal exaggeration in this arraignment. But is it fair to charge all of it up to education? Would it not be better for Harvard's President to revise his views as to the power of education? Learning of itself, the mere accumulation of knowledge, can not make morally better an individual or a society. It is unfair to expect so much. Education of the mind may be a help, since it does fit the individual to understand, to distinguish right from wrong and to apprehend the consequences of evil. But education ought never to have been regarded as an insurance against immorality, a preventive of crime, a cure for cupidity, or a guaranty that the Golden Rule will be observed. The
- ↑ The Literary Digest, November 22, 1902, p. 669.
