{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_73718/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_73718","id":"gutenberg_73718","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73718","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Category: Teaching & Education","Education","Genius"],"text":"[Transcriber\u2019s note: No text has intentionally been changed from the\noriginal; no printing errors were found. There are two unbalanced\nquotes in the original, which are duplicated here. The first is on\np. 24, in the area \u201cWhen an attempt\u201d; the second is on p. 77, in the\narea \u201cexclaims Mill\u201d.\n\nThis text is based on the Internet Archive scan with the identifier\n\u201cphilistinegenius00sidirich\u201d.]\n\n\n\n\n                             PHILISTINE AND\n                                 GENIUS\n\n\n                                   BY\n                     BORIS SIDIS, A.M., Ph.D., M.D.\n     _Medical Director, Sidis Institute, Portsmouth, New Hampshire_\n\n\n                       BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER\n                  TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED\n\n\n                 *        *        *        *        *\n\n\n                    Copyright, 1917, by Boris Sidis\n\n                          All Rights Reserved\n\n                  Made in the United States of America\n\n                   The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.\n\n\n                 *        *        *        *        *\n\n\n                                   TO\n                        THE FATHERS AND MOTHERS\n                                   OF\n                           THE UNITED STATES\n\n\n                 *        *        *        *        *\n\n\n                                PREFACE\n\nWhen in 1909 \u201cPhilistine and Genius\u201d was delivered by me in the form of\na Commencement address before the Harvard Summer School, my prediction\nof the coming European war storm was regarded by everybody as dream and\nfancy. My best friends and sympathisers thought my foreboding\nunjustified and ill-founded. I was an alarmist, a Cassandra, when I\nspoke of the coming catastrophe which was to shake Europe to its very\nfoundation. When \u201cPhilistine and Genius\u201d was published in 1911 the\nAmerican and European press, dealing with the views advanced in this\nlittle volume, completely ignored the following warning given by me:\n\n\u201cAbout the middle of the nineteenth century Buckle made the prediction\nthat no war was any more to occur among civilized nations. Henceforth\npeace was to reign supreme. \u2018The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the\nleopard shall lie down with the kid; their young ones shall lie down\ntogether, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.... Nations shall\nbeat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning\nhooks. Nations shall not lift up swords against nations, nor shall they\nlearn war any more.\u2019 This prophecy was rather hasty. We have had since\nthe Civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Spanish-American war, the\nBoer war, the Russo-Japanese war, not counting the ceaseless wars of\nextermination carried on by civilized nations among the various\nsemi-civilized and primitive tribes. Civilized nations do not as yet\nbeat their swords into ploughshares, but keep on increasing the strength\nof their \u2018armed peace,\u2019 and are ready to fight bloody battles in the\nquest of new lands and the conquest of new markets.\n\n\u201cIn spite of the Hague conference, convoked by the peace-loving Czar, no\nother age has had such large standing armies provided with such costly\nand efficient weapons of execution ready for instant use. The red\nspectre still stalks abroad claiming its victims. We still believe in\nthe baptism of fire and redemption by blood. The dogma of blood\nredemption is still at the basis of our faith, and, consciously or\nunconsciously, we brand that sacred creed on the minds of the young\ngeneration.\u201d\n\nThe present European upheaval has finally disclosed to the impartial\nobserver the fearful state of Europe as the final outcome of its \u201carmed\npeace.\u201d Instead of realizing the dangers of armed peace or of\n\u201cpreparedness,\u201d we are ready to become a military democracy in which\nevery able-bodied man is a soldier or a sailor, every child is a scout,\nand every woman a nurse or a munition worker. We are anxious to waste\nour resources on preparedness rather than on the education of the young.\nWe hanker for the greatest navy in the world at a cost of several\nbillions of dollars. We aspire after a million headed, billion armed\nnavy and army. We clamor for universal, compulsory, military service in\nwhich our children should be drilled for murder and slaughter at the\ndecree of a few autocratic officials and officers. We imitate Europe\nslavishly, in spite of the fact that the policy of preparedness or of\n\u201carmed peace\u201d has kept Europe in a state of turmoil for generations, has\nbrought her to the brink of ruin, and has plunged her into the most\ncruel and most destructive war ever waged by man.\n\nThe recent estimate of Count von Roedern, Secretary of the Imperial\nGerman Treasury, puts the total cost of the war to date, the end of\n1916, for all the belligerents, at fifty-nine and a half billions of\ndollars. The Mechanics and Metals National Bank of New York City figures\nthat seventy-five billion dollars will be spent for direct military\npurposes, if the war lasts another year. The enormity of that\nexpenditure can only be realized if we consider that the total wealth of\nGreat Britain and Ireland is eighty-five billions of dollars, that of\nGermany eighty billions, that of France fifty billions, that of Russia\nforty billions, that of Austria-Hungary twenty-five billions, and that\nof Italy twenty billions. Such waste is appalling!\n\nAccording to the figures given by Mr. Frank H. Simonds, eighteen and a\nhalf million casualties, of which deaths make up nearly one-quarter, is\nthe toll already levied on the fighting men of all the belligerent\nnations by twenty-six months of war. More than any other war the present\nEuropean struggle squanders the wealth of empires and sacrifices the\nlives of nations.\n\nOur social status is a reversion to savagery of the most degenerate\ntype, an atavistic lapse towards the paleolithic and eolithic man, only\nmore brutal, on account of the greater power for evil possessed by\nmodern man. What Hun or Vandal ever dreamt of such colossal destruction!\nThe fame of Attila, Jenghiz Khan, Batu, and Tamerlane pales and fades\nbefore the glory of the Kaiser. In a couple of years the aggressive\nGerman \u201cKultur\u201d has caused more ruin to humanity than all the invasions\nof the yellow peril in the history of mankind. Can we take issue with\nthe late Professor Royce of Harvard when he declares the German Empire\nto be \u201cthe wilful and the deliberate enemy of the human race\u201d?\n\nSome future historian in describing our times will place us below the\nmoral level of our contemporaries, the Bushman and the Hottentot. He may\nsay: \u201cTowards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the\ntwentieth century there took place a vast accumulation of wealth, due to\na rapid development of science and practical arts. Instead, however, of\nimproving their condition, European nations deteriorated morally and\nintellectually.\n\n\u201cLiberal education gave way to technical training. Science served greed.\nEducation became mechanical and military in character. The successful\nbanker, the greedy usurer, the commonplace storekeeper, the mediocre\nshopkeeper, the philistine patriotic business man became the patterns,\nthe ideals, the guides, and leaders of commercialized nations.\nAdvertising and notoriety became the rage and the bane of society. The\nthinker gave way to the tinker, the scientist to the mechanic, the\nartist to the artisan, the genius to the philistine. False patriotism of\nthe jingo type, controlled and animated by industrial and commercial\ninterests, became the standard of nations. An insane frenzy of\nmilitarism seized on the minds of nations. Blind obedience became a\nvirtue.\n\n\u201cThe state enslaved the individual. Drill and discipline stupefied\npeople. Nations boasting of scientific efficiency and \u2018kultur\u2019 broke\ntreaties, attacked, destroyed, deported, enslaved whole populations of\nsmall, weak, neighboring countries. Women and babes were drowned like\nrats in the middle of the ocean. Aeroplanes and Zeppelins showered\nexplosive missiles on defenceless people. For such cowardly, inhuman,\nand diabolical acts the miscreants were decorated and honored as heroes\nby their alleged superiors. Man could not have fallen to any lower\nlevel.\n\n\u201cThe elements of nature were let loose for the ruin of nations. Man\ngloried in his devilish, military, inventive power of destruction.\nProfessors, carrying high the banner of \u2018kultur,\u2019 exulted in the\ndegrading, vicious process of training by which the individual is\nhypnotized and narcotized into submission to a brutal organization of\nmilitary junkers, hallowed by the name of State. All conception of free,\nindividual development was lost among the Germanic tribes of Central\nEurope. It was the darkest period in the history of mankind. Assaults on\ncountries, massacres of nations, deportation of populations into slavery\nfor powerful munition interests, all such outrages, dignified by the\nname of war for the defense of the Fatherland, had not their parallel\neven in the most degrading period of the history of humanity. Man was\ncrazed with the lust of blood, frenzied with rapine and slaughter.\u201d\n\nSuch will be the just estimate of our times by a future impartial\nhistorian.\n\nWe possess indeed vast stores of wealth, but we have not as yet learned\ntheir use. Like silly upstarts, we use our wealth for dissipation and\nruin. Our greed and cruelty seem to grow with our possessions. Greed\nwith its army and navy is like the Biblical horseleech that \u201chath two\ndaughters crying, \u2018Give, give.\u2019\u201d Human life, man\u2019s genius, we hold in no\nesteem. We sink the value of man in the price of his product. We raise\nthe value of stock, but lower the worth of man. Our young generation is\ntrained by fear into discipline and obedience. We suppress the genius in\nthe child, raise mediocrity, and cultivate the philistine.\n\n\u201cObedience and discipline are the mainstay of family and school,\u201d told\nme an otherwise intelligent schoolmaster. \u201cI control my children with\nkindness, if possible, and if needs be, with force.\u201d The child is\ntrained to act not by the light of reason, but by the command of\nsuperior force. The child is ruled by fear!\n\nAs a protection against fear the child learns to be secretive, evasive\nof truth, and cowardly of action. These traits of character, acquired in\nearly childhood, become basic. The child will never fully rid himself of\nfear and its distressing consequences. Fear will stay with him, and dog\nhis steps all his life long.\n\nFear is one of the most fundamental of animal instincts, it is the\ncompanion of the most primitive impulse of self-preservation. Once this\nfear instinct is aroused, it grows like an avalanche in its downward\ncourse. In later life this fear instinct becomes manifested in various\nways, giving rise to the most distressing nervous and mental symptoms.\nIn my medical practice, as specialist of nervous and mental diseases, I\nhave traced again and again the worst forms of maladies to the fear\ninstinct aroused in early childhood.\n\nTraining by fear, submission, and obedience opens the door wide to all\nkinds of nervous and mental germs, weakening the mental and moral\nconstitution of man. Man becomes unreasonable, capricious, driven by the\nimpulse of self-preservation and by the furies of the fear instinct. The\nimpulse of self-preservation with its satellite the fear instinct\nbecomes predominant in character which lacks the stamina of sturdiness,\nfrankness, openmindedness and independence.\n\nA person brought up in the school of fear and blind obedience lacks\nsteadiness of purpose, courage, independence, critical judgment, becomes\nbigoted and intolerant. He falls an easy prey to the suggestions of his\ntimes and surroundings, succumbs to the influence of unscrupulous\nleaders. Such a person lacks mental and moral poise, he is wanting in\nthe true courage of reason, present in the fully developed man and\nwoman. He can not withstand the pressure of social opinion, being unable\nto stand by his post in the face of threatening social opposition. Ruled\nby fear at home, he is governed by terror in society. He is afraid of\nsocial punishment, \u201cof losing face,\u201d as the Chinese say, with his\nneighbors, gossips, circles and clubs. He dreads above all the judgment\nof the crowd, and is scared by the jeers and ridicule of the mob. Human\nlife interests become limited by the narrow horizon of a mob-ruled\npersonality. The unceasing obedience to the suggestions of the crowd\nweakens and loosens the reasoning and moral fibre, reduces the energies\nof the mind to the animal level, controlled by self-preservation and\nfear.\n\nWith reduced and impoverished energies, the person, in case of trouble\nand misfortune, is unable to fall back on his inner resources, he falls\na prey to worry, fear, anxiety, and disease. In other cases the\nintellectual and moral powers are enfeebled by the rigid discipline and\nby the course of enforced obedience, the person falls a victim to all\nforms of temptations. With no principle to guide him, with no will to\nstay him, the person drifts helplessly on the stream of life. Lured by\nseductive sirens, his life is finally wrecked on the rocks and reefs of\nvice, sin, crime, and disease.\n\nWhere stumbling on vice, disease, and crime is avoided, the person\ninevitably lands on the dull shores of the Lotophagi. Ideas and ideals\nare forgotten and forsaken in the routine of animal existence. This is\nthe land of Philistinism, a land where all human, humane interests,\nindependent thought, and courageous action are wanting. Philistines are\nuncritical, unconscious of defects and faults, living in the mire of\nself-contented stupidity and mediocrity. They cease to grow mentally and\nmorally. Their intellectual and moral capacities become paralyzed,\natrophied. _Man becomes the equal of the brute._\n\nWith a philistine education and training, man is fit to become one of\nthose unfortunate and pitiful European pawns and automata who obey\nblindly the commands of their superior officers. Philistines shoot,\nstab, poison, pillage, bum, outrage, and murder at the command of\nunscrupulous, self-seeking leaders, brutal junkers, bloodhounds of\nempires.\n\nBrought up in a school of fear, obedience, and suggestibility, the\nphilistine, like Cain, murders his brother without aim and without\nunderstanding the full significance of the awful deed. He is no more\nresponsible than is the machine gun which he accurately trains and\npoints at his supposed enemies. Philistines are led to the battlefield\nlike cattle to the slaughter house. Philistines have no personality, no\nindividuality, they are cogs in wheels, links in chains of monster\nmechanisms.\n\nThe philistine, the product of our home and school, is suggestible and\ngullible, he is always on the lookout for authority, for a leader whom\nhe should worship, by whose opinions and conviction he is ready to\nswear, whose command he is ready and proud to follow. The philistine is\ngood material for mobs, for mental epidemics, for religious crazes, and\nfor all kinds of hysterical movements in which not reason but emotional\nautomatism is in the foreground. _Philistinism, stupidity, and implicit\nobedience of a monstrous, efficient war machine are intimately\ninterrelated. The individual becomes a private, the nation an army, and\nthe country a camp._\n\nDo we as parents wish to bring up our children as soulless, willless\nmachines? Do we wish them to be without good judgment, without personal\nconvictions? Do we wish them to be led about like cattle? We certainly\nwish them to be of strong nature and sturdy character, able to stand by\ntheir convictions, able to use their critical judgment, able to\ndiscriminate the right from the wrong, able to love the good and avoid\nthe evil.\n\nIn _The Psychology of Suggestion_, published by me in 1897, I arrive at\nthe conclusion that \u201cPersonality is suppressed by the rigidity of social\norganization; the cultivated, civilized individual is an automaton, a\nmere puppet.\u201d... Again, \u201cUnder the enormous weight of the sociostatic\npress ... the personal self sinks, the suggestible, subconscious,\nsocial, impersonal self rises to the surface, gets trained and\ncultivated, and becomes the hysterical actor in all the tragedies of\nhistorical life.\u201d... In recent European events the suggestible, social\nself plays the chief r\u00f4le.\n\nIn the same work I come to the following conclusion: \u201cWhen social\nconditions are of such a nature as to charge society with strong\nemotional excitement, or when institutions dwarf individuality, when\nthey arrest personal growth, when they hinder the free development and\nexercise of the personal, controlling consciousness, then society falls\ninto a hypnoid condition, the social mind gets disaggregated. The\ngregarious self begins to move within the bosom of the crowd, and\nbecomes active; the demon of the demos emerges to the surface of social\nlife, and throws the body politic into convulsions of demoniac fury.\u201d\n\nThe European horrors, atrocities, and brutalities, dignified by the\nstupefying and hypnotizing slogan \u201cKultur, Patriotism,\u201d are due to the\nearly training, by fear and force, of the individual into submission to\nsuperior authority. Such pernicious training sacrifices the genius of\nthe child, the originality of the man, to a highly efficient, but brutal\nand blood-thirsty Moloch State. The European war is a mental plague\nwhich attacks gigantic, social aggregates when their ultimate\nconstituent units, the individuals, are deprived of independent thought\nand liberty of decision and action, when men are swayed by hypnotizing\nsuggestions of \u201csuperior leaders\u201d who represent the interests not of\nevery individual at his best, but of high noble castes and of commercial\nclasses. The organized murder of European nations is due to the stifling\nof human genius by the cultivation of mob spirit which is the cause of\nall forms of social insanity and mental epidemics.\n\nIn the stifling of the genius of the child and the cultivation of the\nmob spirit America does not lag behind Europe. Mental epidemics, excited\nby the fear instinct and by the impulse of self-preservation, are\nprevalent in the States. As described by me in _The Psychology of\nSuggestion_: \u201cAmerican society oscillates between acute financial mania\nand attacks of religious insanity. No sooner is the business fever over\nthan the _delirium acutum_ of religious mania sets in. Society is thrown\nfrom Scylla into Charybdis. From the heights of financial speculation\nsociety sinks into the abyss of revivalism. _American society seems to\nsuffer from circular insanity._\u201d\n\nRevivalism, a mental frenzy to which the American mob mind is specially\nprone, is a resurrection of Greek Bacchanalia and Roman Saturnalia.\nRevivals are emotional debauches, religious orgies. As I had pointed out\nin the same work: \u201cRevivalism is far more dangerous to the life of\nsociety than drunkenness.... As a sot man falls below the brute; as a\nrevivalist he sinks lower than the sot.\u201d\n\nIf Europe is in violent convulsions of war insanity, America suffers\nfrom no less serious mental maladies,\u2014speculation frenzies, revival\nmanias, and preparedness plagues. Mental epidemics are ineradicable\nafflictions of the highly evolved mob spirit characteristic of the\nphilistine. The evolution of the philistine is the involution of genius.\nPhilistinism is social decay. _The progress of humanity is from brute to\nman, from Philistine to Genius._\n\n                                                          Boris Sidis.\n _Sidis Institute,_\n  _Maplewood Farm,_\n   _Portsmouth, New Hampshire._\n\n\n\n\n                         PHILISTINE AND GENIUS\n\n\n                                   I\n\nI address myself to you, fathers and mothers, and to you, open-minded\nreaders. I take it for granted that your life-work is with you a serious\nmatter and that you put forth all your efforts to do your best in the\nwalk of life which you have chosen. I assume that you want to develop\nyour energies to the highest efficiency and bring out the best there is\nin you. I assume that you earnestly wish and strive to bring out and\ndevelop to the highest efficiency the faculties not only of your\nchildren, but also those of your friends and co-workers with whom you\nassociate in your daily vocation, and that you are deeply interested in\nthe education of your countrymen and their children, who share with you\nthe duties, rights and privileges of citizenship. I also assume that as\nmen and women of liberal education you are not limited to the narrow\ninterests of one particular subject, to the exclusion of all else. I\nassume that you are especially interested in the development of\npersonality as a whole, the true aim of education. I also assume that\nyou realize that what is requisite is not some more routine, not more\ndesiccated, quasi-scientific methods of educational psychology, not the\nsawdust of college-pseudagogics and philistine, normal school-training,\nbut more light on the problems of life. What you want is not the\ntraining of philistines, but the education of genius.\n\nWe need more light, more information on \u201cthe problems of life.\u201d Is it\nnot too big a phrase to employ? On a second thought, however, I must say\nthat your problems are the problems of life. For the problems of\neducation are fundamental, they are at the bottom of all vital problems.\nThe ancient Greeks were aware of it and paid special attention to\neducation. In rearing his revolutionary, utopian edifice, Plato insists\non education as the foundation of a new social, moral and intellectual\nlife. Plato in his Republic makes Socrates tell his interlocutor,\nAdeimantus: \u201cThen you are aware that in every work the _beginning_ is\nthe most important part, especially in dealing with anything young and\ntender? For that is the time when any impression which one may desire to\ncommunicate is most readily stamped and taken.\u201d\n\nWe may say that all man\u2019s struggles, religious, moral and economical,\nall the combats and conflicts that fill the history of mankind, can be\ntraced finally to the nature and vigor of the desires, beliefs and\nstrivings which have been cultivated by the social environment in the\nearly life of the individual. The character of a nation is moulded by\nthe nature of its education. The character of society depends on the\nearly training of its constituent units. The fatalism, the\nsubmissiveness of the Oriental; the \u00e6stheticism, the independence, love\nof innovations and inquisitiveness of the ancient Greek; the ruggedness,\nsturdiness, harshness and conservatism of the ancient Roman; the\nemotionalism, the religious fervor of the ancient Hebrew; the\ncommercialism, restlessness, speculation and scientific spirit of modern\ntimes, are all the results of the nature of the early education the\nindividual gets in his respective social environment. We may say that\nthe education of early life forms the very foundation of the social\nstructure.\n\nLike clay in the hands of the potter, so is man in the hands of his\ncommunity. Society fashions the beliefs, the desires, the aims, the\nstrivings, the knowledge, the ideals, the character, the minds, the very\nselves of its constituent units. Who has the control of this vital\nfunction of moulding minds? Fathers and mothers, the child is under your\ncontrol. To your hands, to your care is entrusted the fate of young\ngenerations, the fate of the future community, which, consciously or\nunconsciously, you fashion according to the accepted standards and\ntraditions with which you have been imbued in your own education.\n\nIt is related, I think, in Plutarch\u2019s Lives, of Themistocles telling\nwith the ironical frankness characteristic of the Greek temperament that\nhis son possessed the greatest power in Greece: \u201cFor the Athenians\ncommand the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, his mother commands\nme, and he commands his mother.\u201d This bit of Greek irony is not without\nits significance. The mind of the growing generation controls the future\nof nations. The boy is father to the man, as the proverb has it; he\ncontrols the future. But who controls the boy? The home, the mother and\nfather, the guides of the child\u2019s early life. For it is in early life\nthat the foundation of our mental edifice is laid. All that is good,\nvalid and solid in man\u2019s mental structure depends on the breadth, width,\ndepth, and solidity of that foundation.\n\n\n                                   II\n\nThat the groundwork of man\u2019s character is laid in his childhood appears\nas a trivial platitude. I am almost ashamed to bring it before you. And\nyet, as I look round me and find how apt we are to forget this simple\nprecept which is so fundamental in our life, I cannot help calling your\nattention to it. If we consider the matter, we can well understand the\nreason why its full significance is not realized. We must remember that\nall science begins with axioms which are apparently truisms. What is\nmore of a truism than the axioms of Geometry and Mechanics\u2014that the\nwhole is greater than the part, that things which are equal to the same\nthing are equal to one another, or that a body remains in the same state\nunless an external force changes it? And yet the whole of Mathematics\nand Mechanics is built on those simple axioms.\n\nThe elements of science are just such obvious platitudes. What is needed\nis to use them as efficient tools and by their means draw the consequent\neffects. The same holds true in the science of education. The axiom or\nthe law of early training is not new, it is well known, but it is\nunfortunately too often neglected and forgotten, and its significance is\nalmost completely lost.\n\nIt is certainly surprising how this law of early training is so\ndisregarded, so totally ignored in the education of the child. Not only\ndo we neglect to lay the necessary solid basis in the early life of the\nchild, a solid basis ready for the future structure, we do not even take\ncare to clear the ground. In fact, we even make the child\u2019s soul a\ndunghill, full of vermin of superstitions, fears and prejudices,\u2014a\nhideous heap saturated with the spirit of credulity.\n\nWe regard the child\u2019s mind as a _tabula rasa_, a vacant lot, and empty\non it all our rubbish and refuse. We labor under the delusion that\nstories and fairy tales, myths and deceptions about life and man are\ngood for the child\u2019s mind. Is it a wonder that on such a foundation men\ncan only put up shacks and shanties? We forget the simple fact that what\nis harmful for the adult is still more harmful to the child. Surely what\nis poisonous to the grown-up mind cannot be useful food to the young. If\ncredulity in old wives\u2019 tales, lack of individuality, sheepish\nsubmissiveness, barrack-discipline, unquestioned and uncritical belief\nin authority, meaningless imitation of jingles and gibberish,\nmemorization of mother-goose wisdom, repetition of incomprehensible\nprayers and articles of creed, unintelligent aping of good manners,\nsilly games, prejudices and superstitions and fears of the supernormal\nand supernatural, are censured in adults, why should we approve their\ncultivation in the young?\n\nAt home and at school we drill into the child\u2019s mind uncritical beliefs\nin stories and tales, fictions and figments, fables and myths, creeds\nand dogmas which poison the very sources of the child\u2019s mind. At home\nand at school we give the child over as a prey to all sorts of fatal\ngerms of mental diseases and moral depravity. We leave the child\u2019s mind\nan open field to be sown with dragon\u2019s teeth which bring forth a whole\ncrop of pernicious tendencies,\u2014love and admiration of successful evil,\nand adoration of the rule of brute force. From the dragon\u2019s teeth sown\nin early childhood there rises in later life a whole brood of\nflint-hearted men who blindly jostle and fight and mercilessly tear one\nanother, to obtain for some greedy Jason, some witch of a Medea their\ncoveted golden fleece.\n\n\n                                  Ill\n\nWe regard with disapproval the bloody combats of some savage tribe; we\nregard with horror the sacrifice of children and prisoners to some idol\nof a Phenician Moloch or Mexican Huitzlio-Potchli; we are shocked at the\ncriminal proceedings of the infamous Torquemada with his inquisition\nglorying in its terrors and tortures in the name of Christ; we are\nsickened as we read of the religious wars in Europe; we shudder at the\nhorrors of the night of St. Bartholomew; we are appalled by the recent\nslaughters of the Jews in Russia, by the wholesale massacre of the\nChristians in Turkey.\n\nAll such atrocities, we say, belong to barbaric ages and are only\ncommitted in semi-civilized countries. We flatter ourselves that we are\ndifferent in this age of enlightenment and civilization. Are we\ndifferent? Have we changed? Have we a right to fling stones at our older\nbrothers, the savage and the barbarian? We are so used to our life that\nwe do not notice its evils and misery. We can easily see the mote in the\neye of our neighbor, but do not notice the beam in our own.\n\nWe are still savage at heart. Our civilization is mere gloss, a thin\ncoating of paint and varnish. Our methods of inflicting pain are more\nrefined than those of the Indian, but no less cruel, while the number of\nthe victims sacrificed to our greed and rapacity may even exceed the\nnumbers fallen by the sword of the barbarian or by the torch of the\nfanatic. The slums in our cities are foul and filthy, teeming with\ndeadly germs of disease where the mortality of our infants and children\nin some cases rises to the frightful figure of 204 per thousand!\n\nThe sanitary conditions of our cities are filthy and deadly. They carry\nin their wake all forms of plagues, pests and diseases, among which\ntuberculosis is so well known to the laity. \u201cTuberculosis,\u201d reads a\nreport of a Tenement House Commission, \u201cis one of the results of our\ninhumane tenements; it follows in the train of our inhumane sweatshops.\nIt comes where the hours of labor are long and the wages are small; it\nafflicts the children who are sent to labor when they should yet be in\nschool.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Consumers\u2019 League,\u201d says Mr. John Graham Brooks, \u201clong hesitated to\nlay stress upon these aspects of filth and disease, because of their\nalarmist and sensational nature, and of the immediate and grave risk to\nthe consumer of the goods manufactured in the sweatshop and the tenement\nhouse. If the sweatshop spread diphtheria and scarlet fever, there is\nthe hue and cry before personal danger. But these diseases are the very\nslightest elements of the real risk to the general good. It is the\nspoiled human life, with its deadly legacy of enfeebled mind and body,\nthat reacts directly and indirectly on the social whole.\u201d We do not\nrealize that we drift into national degeneracy. We fail to realize that\nwe raise a generation of stunted lives, of physical and nervous wrecks,\nof mental invalids and moral cripples.\n\nWe boast of our wealth unrivalled by other countries and by former ages.\nWe should remember the great poverty of our masses, the filthy\nconditions of our wealthy cities, with their loathsome city-slums, in\nwhich human beings live, breed and teem like so many worms.\n\nWe spend on barracks and prisons more than we do on schools and\ncolleges. What is the level of a civilization in which the cost of crime\nand war far exceeds that of the education of its future citizens? We\nspend on our army and navy a quarter of a billion dollars, which is\nfound to be insufficient, while the \u201ctotal money burden of crime amounts\nin this country to the enormous sum of 600 million dollars a year!\u201d\n\nThe cost of crime alone is so enormous that a representative of the\nBoard of Charities of one of our Eastern states considers \u201cthe entire\nabolition of all the penal codes and the complete liberty of the\ncriminal class.\u201d Our civilization can boast of the city-slum, the abode\nof misery and crime, the gift of our modern industrial progress, wealth\nand prosperity.\n\nProfessor James and myself were over once on a visit to a charitable\ninstitution for mentally defective. With his clear eye for the\nincongruities and absurdities of life, Professor James remarked to me\nthat idiots and imbeciles were given the comforts, in fact, the luxuries\nof life, while healthy children, able boys and girls, had to struggle\nfor a livelihood. Children under fourteen work in factories, work at a\nwage of about twenty-five cents a day, and, according to the labor\nbureau, the daily wage of the factory children of the South is often as\nlow as fifteen cents and sometimes falls to nine cents. In many of our\ncolleges many a student has to live on the verge of starvation, freeze\nin a summer overcoat the whole winter and warm his room by burning\nnewspapers in the grate. We are charitable and help our mediocrities,\nimbeciles and idiots, while we neglect our talent and genius. We have a\nblind faith that genius, like murder, will out. We know of successful\ntalent, but we do not know of the great amount of unsuccessful talent\nand genius that has gone to waste. We favor imbecility and slight\ngenius.\n\nOne of the physicians of the institution overheard our conversation and\nattempted to justify his work by an argument commonly advanced and\nuncritically accepted\u2014\u201cOur civilization, our Christian civilization\nvalues human life.\u201d Does our civilization really value human life? The\ninfant mortality of the slums of our large cities and the factory work\nof our young children do not seem to justify such a claim.\n\nThe loss of life on our railways is as large as one caused by a national\nwar. Thus the number of persons killed on American railways during a\nperiod of three years ending June 30, 1900, was about 22,000, while the\nmortality of British forces, including death from disease, during three\nyears of the South African war amounted to 22,000. In 1901, one out of\nevery 400 railway employees was killed and one out of every 26 was\ninjured. In 1902, 2,969 employees were killed and 50,524 were injured.\n\nCommenting on the statistics of railway accidents, Mr. John Graham\nBrooks says: \u201cOne has to read and re-read these figures before their\ngrewsome significance is in the least clear. If we add the mining, iron\nand lumbering industries,\u2014portions of which are more dangerous than the\nrailroad,\u2014some conception is possible of the mutilated life due to\nmachinery as it is now run.\u201d It may also be of interest to learn that,\naccording to the calculation made by a representative of one of the\ninsurance companies, more than a million and a half are annually killed\nand injured in the United States alone.\n\nThe waste of human life is in fact greater than in any previous age.\n\u201cSaul hath slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands.\u201d Think of\nour modern warfare, with its infernal machines of carnage, mowing down\nmore men in a day than the warlike Assyrians and Romans, with their\ncrude bows, arrows and catapults, could destroy in a century. And is not\nour country, our civilized Christian society, with its high valuation of\nhuman life, keeping on increasing its army and navy, and perfecting\ndeadly weapons of slaughter and carnage? What about the justice dealt\nout by Judge Lynch? From 1882 to 1900 there were about three thousand\nlynchings! What about our grand imperial policy? What about our\ndominance over weak and ignorant tribes, treated in no gentle way by the\narmed fist of their civilized masters, who send to the benighted\nheathens their missionaries to preach religion and their soldiers to\nenforce the sale of narcotics and other civilizing goods?\n\n\n                                   IV\n\nWe are stock-blind to our own barbarities; we do not realize the\nenormities of our life and consider our age and country as civilized and\nenlightened. We censure the faults of other societies, but do not notice\nour own. Thus Lecky, in describing Roman society, says: \u201cThe\ngladiatorial games form indeed the one feature which to a modern mind is\nalmost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in\nan advanced period of civilization,\u2014men and women who not only\nprofessed, but very frequently acted upon a high code of morals\u2014should\nhave made the carnage of men their habitual amusement, that all this\nshould have continued for centuries with scarcely a protest, is one of\nthe most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly\nnormal, while it opens out fields of ethical inquiry of a very deep,\nthough painful, character.\u201d\n\nAs in modern times, our college authorities justify the brutalities of\nfootball and prize-fights, so in ancient times the great moralists of\nthose ages justified their gladiatorial games. Thus the great orator,\nthe moralizing philosopher, Cicero, in speaking of the gladiatorial\ngames, tells us: \u201cWhen guilty men are compelled to fight, no better\ndiscipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye.\u201d And\nit is certainly instructive for us to learn that \u201cthe very men who\nlooked down with delight, when the sand of the arena reddened with human\nblood, made the theater ring with applause when Terence in his famous\nline proclaimed the brotherhood of men.\u201d\n\nOne feeble protest is on record, a protest coming from the mother of\ncivilization, from ancient Athens. \u201cWhen an attempt was made to\nintroduce the games into Athens, the philosopher Demonax appealed\nsuccessfully to the better feelings of the people by exclaiming: \u201cYou\nmust first overthrow the altar of pity!\u201d\n\nThe philosopher Demonax had not the compromising spirit of the modern\nprofessor. Although the brutal games of our youth and populace need a\nDemonax, we certainly should not look for one in our colleges and\nuniversities. Our college authorities assure us that athletic prestige\nis indispensable to a good university. In fact, according to some\nofficial statements, football teams are supposed to express the superior\nintellectual activities of our foremost colleges. Like Cicero of old, we\nclaim that \u201cour games are good,\u2014they train men, and no better\ndiscipline can be presented to the eye.\u201d\n\nThe fact is, man is bat-blind to the evils of the environment in which\nhe is bred. He takes those evils as a matter of course, and even finds\ngood reasons to justify them as edifying and elevating. In relation to\nhis own surroundings, man is in the primitive condition of the Biblical\nAdam,\u2014he is not conscious of his own moral nakedness. Six days in the\nweek we witness and uphold the wholesale carnage, national and\ninternational, political, economical, in shops, factories, mines,\nrailroads and on the battlefields, while on the seventh we sing hymns to\nthe God of mercy, love and peace.\n\nWe pick up the first newspapers or popular magazines that come to our\nhand, and we read of wars, slaughters, murders, lynchings, crimes and\noutrages on life and liberty; we read of strikes, lockouts, of tales of\nstarvation and of frightful infant mortality; we read of diseases and\nepidemics ravaging the homes of our working population; we read of\ncorporation iniquities, of frauds and corruption of our legislative\nbodies, of the control of politics by the criminal classes of the great\nmetropolis of our land. We read of all that evil and corruption, but\nforget them next moment.\n\nOur social life is corrupt, our body politic is eaten through with\ncankers and sores, \u201cthe whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint.\nFrom the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in\nit; but wounds, and bruises and putrefying sores,\u201d and yet we think we\nare a civilized people, superior to all countries and to all ages. \u201cThe\nvoice of our brother\u2019s blood crieth unto us from the ground.\u201d How can we\nbe so callous? How can we be so mole-blind and so stone-deaf?\n\nThe truth is, we have but a thin varnish of humaneness, glossing over a\nrude barbarism. With our lips we praise the God of love, but in our\nhearts we adore the God of force. How much physical force is worshipped\nwe can realize from the crowds that throng the games of baseball,\nfootball, prize-fights and boxing exhibitions. They go into tens of\nthousands. How many would be drawn by a St. Paul, an Epictetus, or a\nSocrates?\n\nThe newspaper, the mirror of our social life, is filled with the names\nand exploits of our magnates of high finance, our money-mongers and\nusurers. Our journals teem with deeds and scandals of our refined \u201csmart\nset\u201d set up as patterns, as ideals, after which our middle class so\nlongingly craves. Like the Israelites of old we worship golden calves\nand sacred bulls. Our daughters yearn after the barbaric shimmer and\nglitter of the bejewelled, bespangled, empty-minded, parasitic females\nof \u201cthe smart set.\u201d Our college boys admire the feats of the trained\nathlete and scorn the work of the \u201cgrind.\u201d Our very schoolboys crave for\nthe fame of a Jeffries and a Johnson. If in the depths of space there is\nsome solar system inhabited by really rational beings, and if one of\nsuch beings should by some miracle happen to visit our planet, he would\nno doubt turn away in horror.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nWe press our children into the triumphant march of our industrial\nJuggernaut. Over 1,700,000 children under 15 years of age toil in\nfields, factories, mines and workshops. The slums and the factory\ncripple the energies of our young generation. The slaughter of the\ninnocents and the sacrifice of our children to the insatiable Moloch of\nindustry exclude us from the rank of civilized society and place us on\nthe level of barbaric nations.\n\nOur educators are narrow-minded pedants. They are occupied with the dry\nbones of text-books, the sawdust of pedagogics and the would-be\nscientific experiments of educational psychology; they are ignorant of\nthe real vital problems of human interests, a knowledge of which goes to\nmake the truly educated man.\n\nAbout the middle of the nineteenth century, Buckle made the prediction\nthat no war was any more to occur among civilized nations. Henceforth\npeace was to reign supreme. \u201cThe wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the\nleopard shall lie down with the kid; their young ones shall lie down\ntogether, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.... Nations shall\nbeat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.\nNation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war\nany more.\u201d This prophecy was rather hasty. We have had since the Civil\nwar, the Franco-Prussian war, the Spanish-American war, the Boer war,\nthe Russo-Japanese war, not counting the ceaseless wars of extermination\ncarried on by civilized nations among the various semi-civilized nations\nand primitive tribes. Civilized nations do not as yet beat their swords\ninto ploughshares, but keep on increasing the strength of their \u201carmed\npeace,\u201d and are ready to fight bloody battles in the quest of new lands\nand the conquest of new markets.\n\nIn spite of The Hague conference of peace convoked by the peace-loving\nCzar, no other age has had such large standing armies provided with such\ncostly and efficient weapons of execution ready for instant use. The red\nspectre still stalks abroad claiming its victims. We still believe in\nthe baptism of fire and redemption by blood. The dogma of\nblood-redemption is still at the basis of our faith and, consciously or\nunconsciously, we brand that sacred creed on the minds of the young\ngeneration.\n\nWe are not educated to see and understand the wretchedness, the misery\nof our life,\u2014the evil of the world falls on the blind spot of our eye.\nIn the name of evolution and the survival of the fittest, we justify the\ngrasping arm of the strong, and even glory in the extermination of the\nweak. The weak, we say, must be weeded out by the processes of natural\nselection. The strong are the best; it is right that they should survive\nand flourish like a green bay tree. The fact is that we are still\ndominated by the law of the jungle, the den and the cave. We are still\nwild at heart. We still harken to the call of the wild; we are ruled by\nthe fist, the claw and the tooth.\n\nLove, justice, gentleness, peace, reason, sympathy and pity, all humane\nfeelings and promptings are with us sentiments of \u201cunnatural\u201d or\nsupernatural religion which we profess in our churches, but in which we\nreally have no faith as good for actual life. We mistake brutishness for\ncourage, and by fight and by war we train the beast in man.\n\nAll humane feelings are regarded as so many hindrances to progress; they\nfavor, we claim, the survival of the weak. We are, of course,\nevolutionists, and believe most firmly in progress. We believe that the\nluxuries and vices of the strong are conducive to prosperity, and that\nthe evils of life by the automatic grinding of that grind-organ known as\nthe process of evolution _somehow_ lead to a higher civilization.\n\nWhen in the beginning of the eighteenth century Bernard de Mandeville\nproclaimed the apparently paradoxical principle that _Private Vices are\nPublic Benefits_, the academic moralists were shocked at such profane\nbrutality. Mandeville only proclaimed the leading, the guiding principle\nof the coming age of industrial prosperity. We now know better. Are we\nnot evolutionists? Have we not learned that progress and evolution and\nthe improvement of the race are brought about by the fierce struggle for\nexistence, by the process of natural selection, by the merciless\nelimination of the weak and by the triumph of the strong and the fit?\nWhat is the use of being sentimental? Like Brennus, the Gaul, we throw\nour sword on the scales of blinded justice and shout triumphantly _\u201cV\u00e6\nvictis!\u201d_\n\n\n                                   VI\n\nWe are confirmed optimists and sow optimism broadcast. We have\noptimistic clubs and mental scientists and Christian scientists,\u2014all\nafflicted with incurable ophthalmia to surrounding evil and misery. We\nare scientific, we are evolutionists, we have faith in the sort of\noptimism taught by Leibnitz in his famous Theodicea. We are the Candides\nof our oracles, the Panglosses. You may possibly remember what Voltaire\nwrites of Professor Pangloss. \u201cPangloss used to teach the science of\nmetaphysico-theologo-cosmologo-noodleology. He demonstrated to\nadmiration that there is no effect without a cause and that this is the\nbest of all possible worlds. It has been proved, said Pangloss, that\nthings cannot be otherwise than they are; for everything, the end for\nwhich everything is made, is necessarily the best end. Observe how noses\nare made to carry spectacles, and spectacles we have accordingly.\nEverything that is, is the best that could possibly be.\u201d It is such\nshallow optimism that now gains currency.\n\nVerily, we are afflicted with mental cataract. \u201cIf we should bring\nclearly to a man\u2019s sight,\u201d says Schopenhauer, \u201cthe terrible sufferings\nand miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized\nwith horror, and if we were to conduct the confirmed optimist through\nthe hospitals, infirmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through\nprisons, asylums, torture-chambers and slave-kennels, over battlefields\nand places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes\nof misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, he\nwould understand at last the nature of this _best of possible worlds_.\u201d\n\nSchopenhauer is metaphysical, pessimistic, but he is certainly not\nblinded by a shallow optimism to the realities of life. Drunk with the\nspirit of optimism, we do not realize the degradation, the misery and\npoverty of our life. Meanwhile the human genius, the genius which all of\nus possess, languishes, famishes, and perishes, while the brute alone\nemerges in triumph. We are so overcome by the faith in the transcendent,\noptimistic evolution of the good, that through the misty, heavenly,\nangelic visions, we do not discern the cloven hoof of the devil.\n\nProfessor James in a recent address told the Radcliffe graduates that\nthe aim of a college-education is \u201c_to recognize the good man_,\u201d when\nyou see him. This advice may be good for Radcliffe young ladies; but,\nfathers and mothers, _the true education of life is the recognition of\nevil wherever it is met_.\n\nThe Bible begins the story of man in a paradise of ignorance and\nfinishes it with his tasting of the fruits of the forbidden tree of\nknowledge of good and evil. \u201cAnd the eyes of them both were opened and\nthey knew that they were naked. And the Lord God said,\u2014Behold, the man\nis become as one of us to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth\nhis hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever.\nTherefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden. So he\ndrove out the man.\u201d We prefer the sinful, mortal, but godlike man with\nhis knowledge of evil to the brutish philistine in the bliss of Elysium.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nIn the education of the young generation the purpose of the nation is to\nbring up the child as a good man, as a liberal-minded citizen, devoted\nsoul and body to the interests of social welfare. This purpose in the\neducation of the young citizen is of the utmost importance in every\nsociety, but it is a vital need in a democratic society. We do not want\nnarrow-minded patriots devoted to party-factions, nor bigoted\nsectarians, nor greedy _entrepreneurs_ fastening in trusts, like so many\nbarnacles, on the body-politic. We do not want ringleaders and mobs,\nunscrupulous bosses and easily led voters. What we need is men having at\nheart the welfare of their fellow-men.\n\nThe purpose of the education provided by the nation for its young\ngeneration is the rearing of healthy, talented, broad-minded citizens.\nWe need, above all, good citizens, active and intelligent, with a\nknowledge of life and with a delicate sense of discrimination and\ndetection of evil in all its protean forms; we need strong-minded\ncitizens with grit and courage to resist oppression and root out evil\nwherever it is found. A strong sense of recognition of evil should be\nthe social sense of every well-educated citizen as a safeguard of social\nand national life. _The principle of recognition of evil under all its\nguises is at the basis of the true education of man._\n\nIs it not strange that this vital principle of education, the\nrecognition of evil,\u2014a fundamental principle with the great thinkers of\nhumanity,\u2014should remain so sadly neglected by our educators and public\ninstructors? Our educators are owl-wise, our teachers are pedants and\nall their ambition is the turning out of smooth, well-polished\nphilistines. It is a sad case of the blind leading the blind.\n\nIt is certainly unfortunate that the favored type of superintendent of\nour public education should be such a hopeless philistine, possessed of\nall the conceit of the mediocre business man. Routine is his ideal.\nOriginality and genius are spurned and suppressed. Our\nschool-superintendent with his well-organized training-shop is proud of\nthe fact that there is no place for genius in our schools.\n\nUnfortunate and degraded is the nation that has handed over its\nchildhood and youth to guidance and control by hide-bound mediocrity.\nOur school-managers are respected by the laity as great educators and\nare looked up to by the teachers as able business men. Their merit is\nroutine, discipline and the hiring of cheap teaching-employees.\n\nIt is certainly a great misfortune to the nation that a good number of\nour would-be scientific pedagogues are such mediocrities, with so absurd\nan exaggeration of their importance that they are well satisfied if the\nmass of their pupils turn out exact reproductions of the silly\npedagogue. What can be expected of a nation that entrusts the fate of\nits young generation to the care or carelessness of young girls, to the\nire of old maids, and to pettifogging officials with their educational\nred tape, discipline and routine,\u2014petty bureaucrats animated with a\nhatred towards talent and genius?\n\nThe goody-goody schoolma\u2019am, the mandarin-schoolmaster, the\nphilistine-pedagogue, the pedant-administrator with his business\ncapacities, have proved themselves incompetent to deal with the\neducation of the young. They stifle talent, they stupefy the intellect,\nthey paralyze the will, they suppress genius, they benumb the faculties\nof our children. The educator, with his pseudo-scientific,\npseudo-psychological pseudogogics, can only bring up a set of\nphilistines with firm, set habits,\u2014marionettes,\u2014dolls.\n\nBusiness is put above learning, administration above education,\ndiscipline and order above cultivation of genius and talent. Our schools\nand colleges are controlled by business men. The school-boards, the\nboards of trustees of almost every school and college in the country\nconsist mainly of manufacturers, storekeepers, tradesmen, bulls and\nbears of Wall street and the market-place. What wonder that they bring\nwith them the ideals and methods of the factory, the store, the bank and\nthe saloon. If the saloon controls politics, the shop controls\neducation.\n\nBusiness men are no more competent to run schools and colleges than\nastronomers are fit to run hotels and theaters. Our whole educational\nsystem is vicious. A popular scientific journal entered a protest\nagainst the vulgarization of our colleges, the department-store trade\nmethods of our universities, but to no avail. The popular hero, the\nadministrative business superintendent still holds sway, and poisons the\nsources of our social life by debasing the very foundation of our\nnational education.\n\n\n                                  VIII\n\nFrom time to time the \u201ceducational\u201d methods of our philistine teachers\nare brought to light. A girl is forced by a schoolma\u2019am of one of our\nlarge cities to stay in a corner for hours, because she unintentionally\ntransgressed against the barrack-discipline of the school-regulations.\nWhen the parents became afraid of the girl\u2019s health and naturally took\nher out of school, the little girl was dragged before the court by the\ntruant officer. Fortunately \u201cthe judge turned to the truant officer and\nasked him how the girl could be a truant, if she had been suspended. He\ndidn\u2019t believe in breaking children\u2019s wills.\u201d\n\nIn another city a pupil of genius was excluded from school because \u201che\ndid not fall in with the system\u201d laid out by the \u201cvery able\nbusiness-superintendent.\u201d A schoolmistress conceives the happy idea of\nconverting two of her refractory pupils into pin-cushions for the\nedification of her class. An \u201ceducational\u201d administrative superintendent\nof a large, prosperous community told a lady who brought to him her son,\nan extraordinarily able boy, \u201cI shall not take your boy into my\nhigh-school, in spite of his knowledge.\u201d When the mother asked him to\nlisten to her, he lost patience and told her with all the force of his\nschool-authority, \u201cMadam, put a rope around his neck, weigh him well\ndown with bricks!\u201d\n\nA principal of a high school in one of the prominent New England towns\ndismisses a highly talented pupil because, to quote verbatim from the\noriginal school document, \u201cHe is not amenable to the discipline of the\nschool, as his school life has been too short to establish him in the\nhabit of obedience.\u201d \u201cHis intellect,\u201d the principal\u2019s official letter\ngoes on to say, \u201cremains a marvel to us, but we do not feel, and in this\nI think I speak for all, that he is in the right place.\u201d In other words,\nin the opinion of those remarkable pedagogues, educators and teachers,\nthe school is not the right place for talent and genius!\n\nA superintendent of schools in lecturing before an audience of\n\u201csubordinate teachers\u201d told them emphatically that _there was no place\nfor genius in our schools_. Dear old fogies, one can well understand\nyour indignation! Here we have worked out some fine methods, clever\nrules, beautiful systems and then comes genius and upsets the whole\nstructure! It is a shame! Genius cannot fit into the pigeon-holes of the\noffice desk. Choke genius, and things will move smoothly in the school\nand the office.\n\nNot long ago we were informed by one of those successful\ncollege-mandarins, lionized by office-clerks, superintendents and\ntradesmen, that he could measure education by the foot-rule! Our Regents\nare supposed to raise the level of education by a vicious system of\nexamination and coaching, a system which Professor James, in a private\nconversation with me, has aptly characterized as \u201cidiotic.\u201d\n\nOur schools brand their pupils by a system of marks, while our foremost\ncolleges measure the knowledge and education of their students by the\nnumber of \u201cpoints\u201d passed. The student may pass either in Logic or\nBlacksmithing. It does not matter which, provided he makes up a certain\nnumber of \u201cpoints\u201d!\n\nCollege-committees refuse admission to young students of genius, because\n\u201cit is against the policy and the principles of the university.\u201d\nCollege-professors expel promising students from the lecture-room for\n\u201cthe good of the class as a whole,\u201d because the students \u201chappen to\nhandle their hats in the middle of a lecture.\u201d This, you see, interferes\nwith class discipline. _Fiat justitia, pereat mundus._ Let genius\nperish, provided the system lives. Why not suppress all genius, as a\ndisturbing element, for \u201cthe good of the classes,\u201d for the weal of the\ncommonwealth? Education of man and cultivation of genius, indeed! This\nis not school policy.\n\nWe school and drill our children and youth in schoolma\u2019am mannerism,\nschool master mind-ankylosis, school-superintendent stiff-joint\nceremonialism, factory regulations and office-discipline. We give our\npupils and students artisan-inspiration and business-spirituality.\nOriginality is suppressed. Individuality is crushed. Mediocrity is at a\npremium. That is why our country has such clever business men, such\ncunning artisans, such resourceful politicians, such adroit leaders of\nnew cults, but no scientists, no artists, no philosophers, no statesmen,\nno genuine talent and no true genius.\n\nSchool-teachers have in all ages been mediocre in intellect and\nincompetent. Leibnitz is regarded as a dullard and Newton is considered\nas a blockhead. Never, however, in the history of mankind have school\nteachers fallen to such a low level of mediocrity as in our times and in\nour country. For it is not the amount of knowledge that counts in true\neducation, but originality and independence of thought that are of\nimportance in education. But independence and originality of thought are\njust the very elements that are suppressed by our modern barrack-system\nof education. No wonder that military men claim that the best\n\u201ceducation\u201d is given in military schools.\n\nWe are not aware that the incubus of officialdom, and the succubus of\nbureaucracy have taken possession of our schools. The red tape of\nofficialdom, like a poisonous weed, grows luxuriantly in our schools and\nchokes the life of our young generation. Instead of growing into a\npeople of great independent thinkers, the nation is in danger of fast\nbecoming a crowd of well-drilled, well-disciplined, commonplace\nindividuals, with strong philistine habits and notions of hopeless\nmediocrity.\n\nIn levelling education to mediocrity we imagine that we uphold the\ndemocratic spirit of our institutions. Our American sensibilities are\nshocked when the president of one of our leading colleges dares to\nrecommend to his college that it should cease catering to the average\nstudent. We think it un-American, rank treason to our democratic spirit\nwhen a college president has the courage to proclaim the principle that\n\u201cTo form the mind and character of one man of marked talent, not to say\ngenius, would be worth more to the community which he would serve than\nthe routine training of hundreds of undergraduates.\u201d\n\nWe are optimistic, we believe in the pernicious superstition that genius\nneeds no help, that talent will take care of itself. Our kitchen clocks\nand dollar timepieces need careful handling, but our chronometers and\nastronomical clocks can run by themselves.\n\nThe truth is, however, that the purpose of the school and the college is\nnot to create an intellectual aristocracy, but to educate, to bring out\nthe individuality, the originality, the latent powers of talent and\ngenius present in what we unfortunately regard as \u201cthe average student.\u201d\nFollow Mill\u2019s advice. Instead of aiming at athletics, social\nconnections, vocations and generally at the professional art of\nmoney-making, \u201cAim at something noble. Make your system such that a\ngreat man may be formed by it, and there will be a manhood in your\nlittle men, of which you do not dream.\u201d\n\nAwaken in early childhood the critical spirit of man; awaken, early in\nthe child\u2019s life, love of knowledge, love of truth, of art and\nliterature for their own sake, and you arouse man\u2019s genius. We have\naverage mediocre students, because we have mediocre teachers,\ndepartment-store superintendents, clerkly principals and deans with\nbookkeepers\u2019 souls, because our schools and colleges deliberately aim at\nmediocrity.\n\nRibot in describing the degenerated Byzantine Greeks tells us that their\nleaders were mediocrities and their great men commonplace personalities.\nIs the American nation drifting in the same direction? It was the system\nof cultivation of independent thought that awakened the Greek mind to\nits highest achievements in arts, science and philosophy; it was the\ndeadly Byzantine bureaucratic red tape with its cut-and-dried\ntheological discipline that dried up the sources of Greek genius. We are\nin danger of building up a Byzantine empire with large institutions and\nbig corporations, but with small minds and dwarfed individualities. Like\nthe Byzantines we begin to value administration above individuality and\nofficial, red-tape ceremonialism above originality.\n\nWe wish even to turn our schools into practical school-shops. We shall\nin time become a nation of well-trained clerks and clever artisans. The\ntime is at hand when we shall be justified in writing over the gates of\nour school-shops \u201cmediocrity made here!\u201d\n\n\n                                   IX\n\nI assume that as liberal men and women you have no use for the process\nof cramming and stuffing of college-geese and mentally indolent, morally\nobtuse and religiously \u201ccultured\u201d prigs and philistines, but that you\nrealize that your true vocation is to get access to the latent energies\nof your children, to stimulate their reserve energies and educate, bring\nto light, man\u2019s genius. The science of psychopathology now sets forth a\nfundamental principle which is not only of the utmost importance in\npsychotherapeutics, but also in the domain of education; it is the\nprinciple of stored up, dormant, reserve-energy,\u2014the principle of\npotential, subconscious, reserve energy.\n\nIt is claimed on good evidence, biological, physiological and\npsychopathological, that man possesses large stores of unused energy\nwhich the ordinary stimuli of life are not only unable to reach, but\neven tend to inhibit. Unusual combinations of circumstances, however,\nradical changes of the environment, often unloose the inhibitions\nbrought about by the habitual narrow range of man\u2019s interests and\nsurroundings. Such unloosening of inhibitions helps to release fresh\nsupplies of reserve energy. It is not the place here to discuss this\nfundamental principle; I can only state it in the most general way, and\ngive its general trend in the domain of education.\n\nYou have heard the psychologizing educator advise the formation of good,\nfixed, stable habits in early life. Now I want to warn you against the\ndangers of such unrestricted advice. Fixed adaptations, stable habits,\ntend to raise the thresholds of mental life, tend to inhibit the\nliberation, the output of reserve-energy. _Avoid routine._ Do not let\nyour pupils fall into the ruts of habits and customs. Do not let even\nthe _best_ of habits harden beyond the point of further possible\nmodification.\n\nWhere there is a tendency towards formation of over-abundant mental\ncartilage, set your pupils to work under widely different circumstances.\nConfront them with a changed set of conditions. Keep them on the move.\nSurprise them by some apparently paradoxical relations and strange\nphenomena. Do not let them settle down to one definite set of actions or\nreactions. Remember that rigidity, like sclerosis, induration of tissue,\nmeans decay of originality, destruction of man\u2019s genius. With solidified\nand unvariable habits not only does the reserve energy become entirely\ninaccessible, but the very individuality is extinguished.\n\nDo not make of our children a nation of philistines. Why say, you make\nman in your own image? Do not make your schools machine-shops, turning\nout on one uniform pattern so much mediocrity per year. _Cultivate\nvariability._ The tendency towards variability is the most precious part\nof a good education. Beware of the philistine with his set, stable\nhabits.\n\nThe important principle in education is not so much _formation_ of\nhabits as the power of their _re-formation_. The power of breaking up\nhabits is by far the more essential factor of a good education. It is in\nthis power of breaking down habits that we can find the key for the\nunlocking of the otherwise inaccessible stores of subconscious reserve\nenergy. _The cultivation of the power of habit-disintegration is what\nconstitutes the proper education of man\u2019s genius._[1]\n\n-----\n\n[1] A well known editor of one of the academic Journals on Educational\nPsychology writes to me as follows:\n\n\u201cYour remarks on the avoidance of routine would be like a red rag to a\nbull for a number of educators who are emphasizing the importance of\nhabit formation in education at present.\u201d\n\n\n                                   X\n\nThe power of breaking down or dissolving habits depends on the amount\nand strength of the _aqua fortis_ of the intellect. The logical and\ncritical activities of the individual should be cultivated with special\ncare. The critical self, as we may put it, should have control over the\nautomatic and the subconscious. For the subconscious has been shown to\nform the fertile soil for the breeding of the most dangerous germs of\nmental disease, epidemics, plagues and pestilences in their worst forms.\nWe should try to develop the individual\u2019s critical abilities in early\nchildhood, not permitting the suggestible subconsciousness to\npredominate, and to become overrun with noxious weeds and pests.\n\nWe should be very careful with the child\u2019s critical self, as it is weak\nand has little resistance. We should, therefore, avoid all dominating\nauthority and categorical imperative commands. Autocratic authority\ncultivates in the child the predisposition to abnormal suggestibility,\nto hypnotic states, and leads towards the dominance of the subconscious\nwith its train of pernicious tendencies and deleterious results.\n\nThere is a period in the child\u2019s life between the ages of five and ten\nwhen he is very inquisitive, asking all kinds of questions. _It is the\nage of discussion in the child._ This inquisitiveness and discussion\nshould by all means be encouraged and fostered. We should aid the\ndevelopment of the spirit of inquisitiveness and curiosity in the child.\nFor this is the acquisition of control over the stored-up, latent\nenergies of man\u2019s genius.\n\nWe should not arrest the child\u2019s questioning spirit, as we are often apt\nto do, but should strongly encourage the apparently meddlesome and\ntroublesome searching and prying and scrutinizing of _whatever interests\nthe child_. Everything should be open to the child\u2019s searching interest;\nnothing should be suppressed and tabooed as too sacred for examination.\nThe spirit of inquiry, the genius of man, is more sacred than any\nabstract belief, dogma and creed.\n\nA rabbi came to ask my advice about the education of his little boy. My\nadvice was: \u201cTeach him not to be a Jew.\u201d The man of God departed and\nnever came again. The rabbi did not care for education, but for faith.\nHe did not wish his boy to become a man, but to be a Jew.\n\nThe most central, the most crucial part of the education of man\u2019s genius\nis _the knowledge, the recognition of evil_ in all its protean forms and\ninnumerable disguises, intellectual, \u00e6sthetic and moral, such as\nfallacies, sophisms, ugliness, deformity, prejudice, superstition, vice\nand depravity. Do not be afraid to discuss these matters with the child.\nFor the knowledge, the recognition of evil does not only possess the\nvirtue of immunization of the child\u2019s mind against all evil, but\nfurnishes the main power for habit-disintegration with consequent\nrelease and control of potential reserve energy, of manifestations of\nhuman genius. When a man becomes contented and ceases to notice the\nevils of life, as is done by some modern religious sects, he loses his\nhold on the powers of man\u2019s genius, he loses touch with the throbbing\npulse of humanity, he loses hold on reality and falls into subhuman\ngroups.\n\nThe purpose of education, of a _liberal_ education, is not to live in a\nfool\u2019s paradise, or to go through the world in a post-hypnotic state of\nnegative hallucinations. The true aim of a liberal education is, as the\nScriptures put it, to have the _eyes opened_,\u2014to be free from all\ndelusions, illusions, from the _fata morgana_ of life. We prize a\nliberal education, because it _liberates_ us from subjection to\nsuperstitious fears, delivers us from the narrow bonds of prejudice,\nfrom the exalted or depressing delusions of moral paresis, intellectual\ndementia-praecox, and religious paranoia. A liberal education liberates\nus from the enslavement to the degrading influence of _all_\nidol-worship.\n\nIn the education of man do not play on his subconscious sense by\ndeluding him by means of hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions of\npositive and negative hallucinations, with misty and mystic, beatific\nvisions. Open his _eyes_ to undisguised reality. Teach him, show him how\nto strip the real from its unessential wrappings and adornments and see\nthings in their nakedness. _Open the eyes of your children so that they\nshall see, understand and face courageously the evils of life._ Then\nwill you do your duty as parents, then will you give your children the\nproper education.\n\n\n                                   XI\n\nI have spoken of the fundamental law of early education. The question is\n\u201c_how early?_\u201d There are, of course, children who are backward in their\ndevelopment. This backwardness may either be congenital or may be due to\nsome overlooked pathological condition that may be easily remedied by\nproper treatment. In the large majority of children, however, the\nbeginning of education _is between the second and third year_. It is at\nthat time that the child begins to form his interests. It is at that\ncritical period that we have to seize the opportunity to guide the\nchild\u2019s formative energies in the right channels. To delay is a mistake\nand a wrong to the child. We can at that early period awaken a love of\nknowledge which will persist through life. The child will as eagerly\nplay in the game of knowledge as he now spends the most of his energies\nin meaningless games and objectless silly sports.\n\nWe claim we are afraid to force the child\u2019s mind. We claim we are afraid\n_to strain his brain prematurely_. This is an error. In _directing_ the\ncourse of the use of the child\u2019s energies we do not force the child. If\n_you_ do not _direct_ the energies in the right course, the child will\n_waste_ them in the _wrong_ direction. The same amount of mental energy\nused in those silly games, which we think are specially adapted for the\nchildish mind, can be directed, with lasting benefit, to the development\nof his _interests in intellectual activity and love of knowledge_. The\nchild will learn to play at the game of knowledge-acquisition with the\nsame ease, grace and interest as he is showing now in his nursery-games\nand physical exercises.\n\n\n                                  XII\n\nAristotle laid it down as a self-evident proposition that all Hellenes\n_love knowledge_. This was true of the national genius of the ancient\nGreeks. The love of wisdom is the pride of the ancient Greek in\ncontradistinction to the barbarian, who does not prize knowledge. We\nstill belong to the barbarians. Our children, our pupils, our students\nhave no love of knowledge.\n\nThe ancient Greeks knew the value of a good education and understood its\nfundamental elements. They laid great stress on early education and they\nknew how to develop man\u2019s mental energies, without fear of injury to the\nbrain and physical constitution. The Greeks were not afraid of thought,\nthat it might injure the brain. They were strong men, great thinkers.\n\nThe love of knowledge, the love of truth for its own sake, is entirely\nneglected in our modern schemes of education. Instead of training men we\ntrain mechanics, artisans and shopkeepers. We turn our national schools,\nhigh schools and universities into trade-schools and machine-shops. The\nschool, whether lower or higher, has now one purpose in view, and that\nis the training of the pupil in the art of money-making. Is it a wonder\nthat the result is a low form of mediocrity, a dwarfed and crippled\nspecimen of humanity?\n\nOpen the reports of our school superintendents and you find that the\nillustrations setting forth the prominent work performed by the school\nrepresent carpentry, shoemaking, blacksmithing, bookkeeping,\ntypewriting, dressmaking, millinery and cookery. One wonders whether it\nis the report of a factory inspector, the \u201cscientific\u201d advertisement of\nsome instrument-maker or machine-shop, a booklet of some popular hotel,\nor an extensive circular of some large department-store. Is this what\nour modern education consists in? Is the aim of the nation to form at\nits expense vast reserve armies of skilled mechanics, great numbers of\nwell-trained cooks and well-behaved clerks? Is the purpose of the nation\nto form cheap skilled labor for the manufacturer, or is the aim of\nsociety to form intelligent, educated citizens?\n\nThe high-school and college courses advised by the professors and\nelected by the student are with reference to the vocation in life, to\nbusiness and to trade. Our schools, our high schools, our colleges and\nour universities are all animated with the same sordid aim of giving\nelectives for early specialization in the art of money-getting. We may\nsay with Mill that our schools and colleges give no true education, no\ntrue culture. We drift to the status of Egypt and India with their\ncastes of early trained mechanics, professionals and shopkeepers. Truly\neducated men we shall have none. We shall become a nation of\nnarrow-minded philistines, well contented with their mediocrity. The\nsavage compresses the skull of the infant, while we flatten the brain\nand cramp the mind of our young generation.\n\n\n                                  XIII\n\nThe great thinker, John Stuart Mill, insists that \u201cthe great business of\nevery rational being is the strengthening and enlarging of his own\nintellect and character. The empirical knowledge which the world\ndemands, which is the stock in trade of money-getting, we would leave\nthe world to provide for itself.\u201d We must make our system of education\nsuch \u201cthat a great man may be formed by it, and there will be a manhood\nin your little men of which you do not dream. We must have a system of\neducation capable of forming great minds.\u201d Education must aim at the\nbringing out of the genius in man. Do we achieve such aim by the\nformation of philistine-specialists and young petty-minded artisans?\n\n\u201cThe very cornerstone of an education,\u201d Mill tells us, \u201cintended to form\ngreat minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object\nis to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual _power_,\nand to inspire the intensest _love of truth; and this without a particle\nof regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead_.\u201d\nWith us the only love of truth is the one that leads to the shop, the\nbank and the counting-house.\n\nThe home controls the school and the college. As long as the home is\ndominated by commercial ideals, the school will turn out mediocre\ntradesmen.\n\nThis, however, is one of the characteristic types of the American home:\nthe mother thinks of dresses, fashions and parties. The daughter twangs\nand thrums on the piano, makes violent attempts at singing that sound as\n\u201cthe crackling of thorns under a pot,\u201d is passionately fond of shopping,\ndressing and visiting. Both, mother and daughter, love society, show and\ngossip. The father works in some business or at some trade and loves\nsports and games. Not a spark of refinement and culture, not a redeeming\nray of love of knowledge and of art, lighting up the commonplace and\nfrivolous life of the family. What wonder that the children of ten and\neleven can hardly read and write, are little brutes and waste away their\nprecious life of childhood in the close, dusty, overheated rooms of the\nearly grades of some elementary school? Commercial mediocrity is raised\nat home and cultivated in the school.\n\n\u201cAs a means of educating the many, the universities are absolutely\nnull,\u201d exclaims Mill. The attainments of any kind required for taking\nall the degrees conferred by these bodies are, at Cambridge, utterly\ncontemptible.\u201d Our American schools, with their ideals of money-earning\ncapacities, our colleges glorying in their athletics, football teams and\ncourses for professional and business specializations would have been\nregarded by Mill as below contempt.\n\nWhat indeed is the worth of an education that does not create even as\nmuch as an ordinary respect for learning and love of truth, and that\nprizes knowledge in terms of hard cash? What is the educational worth of\na college or of a university which suppresses its most gifted students\nby putting them under the ban of disorderly behavior, because of not\nconforming to commonplace mannerisms? What is the educational value of a\nuniversity which is but a modern edition of a gladiatorial school with a\nsmattering of the humanities? What is the educational value of an\ninstitution of learning that expels its best students because they\n\u201cattract more attention than their professors\u201d? What is the intellectual\nlevel of a college that expels from its courses the ablest of its\nstudents for some slight infringement, and that an involuntary one,\nunder the pretext that it is done for the sake of class-discipline, \u201cfor\nthe general good of the class\u201d? What travesty on education is a system\nthat suppresses genius in the interest of mediocrity? What is the\ncultural, the humanistic value of an education that puts a prize on\nmediocrity?\n\n\n                                  XIV\n\nDiscipline, fixed habits approved by the pedagogue are specially\nenforced in our schools. To this may be added some \u201cculture\u201d in the art\nof money-getting in the case of the boys, while in the case of girls the\n\u00e6sthetic training of millinery and dressmaking may be included. The\ncolleges, in addition to class-discipline looked after by the professors\nand college-authorities, are essentially an organization of\nhasty-pudding clubs, football associations and athletic corporations.\nWhat is the use of a college if not for its games? Many regard the\ncollege as useful for the formation of business acquaintances in later\nlife. Others again consider the college a good place for learning fine\nmanners. In other words, the college and the school are for athletics,\ngood manners, business companionship, mechanical arts and money-getting.\nThey are for anything but education.\n\nWe have become so used to college athletics that it appears strange and\npossibly absurd to demand of a college the cultivation of man\u2019s genius.\nWho expects to find an intellectual atmosphere among the great body of\nour college undergraduates? Who expects of our schools and colleges true\nculture and the cultivation of a taste for literature, art and science?\nA dean, an unusually able man, of one of the prominent Eastern colleges\ntells me that he and his friends are very pessimistic about his students\nand especially about the great body of undergraduate students.\nLiterature, art, science have no interest for the student; games and\nathletics fill his mental horizon.\n\nIn the training of our children, in the education of our young, we think\nthat discipline, obedience to paternal and maternal commands, whether\nrational or absurd, are of the utmost importance. We do not realize that\nin such a scheme of training we fail to cultivate the child\u2019s critical\nfaculties, but only succeed in suppressing the child\u2019s individuality. We\nonly break his will-power and originality. We also prepare the ground\nfor future nervous and mental maladies characterized by their fears,\nindecisions, hesitations, diffidence, irritability, lack of\nindividuality and absence of self-control.\n\nWe laugh at the Chinese, because they bandage the feet of their girls,\nwe ridicule those who cripple their chest and mutilate their figure by\nthe tight lacing of their corsets, but we fail to realize the baneful\neffects of submitting the young minds to the grindstone of our\neducational discipline. I have known good fathers and mothers who have\nunfortunately been so imbued with the necessity of disciplining the\nchild that they have crushed the child\u2019s spirit in the narrow bonds of\nroutine and custom. How can we expect to get great men and women when\nfrom infancy we train our children to conform to the philistine ways of\nMrs. Grundy?\n\nIn our schools and colleges, habits, discipline and behavior are\nspecially emphasized by our teachers, instructors and professors. Our\ndeans and professors think more of red tape, of \u201cpoints,\u201d of discipline\nthan of study; they think more of authoritative suggestion than of\ncritical instruction. The pedagogue fashions the pupil after his own\nimage. The professor, with his disciplinarian tactics, forces the\nstudent into the imbecile mummy-like mannerism of Egyptian pedantry and\ninto the barrack-regulations of class-etiquette. Well may professors of\nour \u201cwar-schools\u201d claim that the best education is given in military\nacademies. They are right, if discipline is education. But why not the\nreformatory, the asylum and the prison?\n\nWe trust our unfortunate youth to the Procrustean bed of the mentally\nobtuse, hide-bound pedagogue. We desiccate, sterilize, petrify and\nembalm our youth in keeping with the rules of our Egyptian code and in\naccordance with the Confucian regulations of our school-clerks and\ncollege mandarins. Our children learn by rote and are guided by routine.\n\n\n                                   XV\n\nBeing in a barbaric stage, we are afraid of thought. We are under the\nerroneous belief that thinking, study, causes nervousness and mental\ndisorders. In my practice as physician in nervous and mental diseases, I\ncan say without hesitation that I have not met a single case of nervous\nor mental trouble caused by too much thinking or overstudy. This is at\npresent the opinion of the best psychopathologists. What produces\nnervousness is worry, emotional excitement and lack of interest in the\nwork. But that is precisely what we do with our children. We do not take\ncare to develop a love of knowledge in their early life for fear of\nbrain injury, and then when it is late to acquire the interest, we force\nthem to study, and we cram them and feed them and stuff them like geese.\nWhat you often get is fatty degeneration of the mental liver.\n\nIf, however, you do not neglect the child between the second and third\nyear, and see to it that the brain should not be starved, should have\nits proper function, like the rest of the bodily organs, by developing\nan interest in intellectual activity and love of knowledge, no forcing\nof the child to study is afterwards requisite. The child will go on by\nhimself,\u2014he will derive intense enjoyment from his intellectual\nactivity, as he does from his games and physical exercise. The child\nwill be stronger, healthier, sturdier than the present average child,\nwith its purely animal activities and total neglect of brain-function.\nHis physical and mental development will go apace. He will not be a\nbarbarian with animal proclivities and a strong distaste for knowledge\nand mental enjoyment, but he will be a strong, healthy, _thinking man_.\n\nBesides, many a mental trouble will be prevented in adult-life. The\nchild will acquire knowledge with the same ease as he learns to ride the\nbicycle or play ball. By the tenth year, without almost any effort, the\nchild will acquire the knowledge which at present the best\ncollege-graduate obtains with infinite labor and pain. That this can be\naccomplished I can say with authority; I know it as a fact from my own\nexperience with child-life.\n\nFrom an economical standpoint alone, think of the saving it would ensure\nfor society. Consider the fact that our children spend nearly eight\nyears in the common school, studying spelling and arithmetic, and do not\nknow them when they graduate! Think of the eight years of waste of\nschool buildings and salaries for the teaching force. However, our real\nobject is not economy, but the development of a strong, healthy, great\nrace of genius.\n\nAs fathers and mothers it may interest you to learn of one of those boys\nwho were brought up in the love and enjoyment of knowledge for its own\nsake. At the age of twelve, when other children of his age are hardly\nable to read and spell, and drag a miserable mental existence at the\napron strings of some antiquated school-dame, the boy is intensely\nenjoying courses in the highest branches of mathematics and astronomy at\none of our foremost universities. The Iliad and the Odyssey are known to\nhim by heart, and he is deeply interested in the advanced work of\nClassical Philology. He is able to read Herodotus, \u00c6schylus, Sophocles,\nEuripides, Aristophanes, Lucian and other Greek writers with the same\nzest and ease as our schoolboy reads his Robinson Crusoe or the\nproductions of Cooper and Henty. The boy has a fair understanding of\nComparative Philology and Mythology. He is well versed in Logic, Ancient\nHistory, American History and has a general insight into our politics\nand into the groundwork of our Constitution. At the same time he is of\nan extremely happy disposition, brimming over with humor and fun. His\nphysical condition is splendid, his cheeks glow with health. Many a girl\nwould envy his complexion. Being above five feet four he towers above\nthe average boy of his age. His physical constitution, weight, form and\nhardihood of organs, far surpasses that of the ordinary schoolboy. He\nlooks like a boy of sixteen. He is healthy, strong and sturdy.\n\nThe philistine-pseudagogues, the self-contented school-autocrats are so\nimbued with the fear of intellectual activity and with the superstitious\ndread of early mental education, they are so obsessed with the morbid\nphobia of human reflective powers, they are so deluded by the belief\nthat study causes disease that they eagerly adhere to the delusion, to\nquote from a school-superintendent\u2019s letter, about the boy being \u201cin a\nsanitarium, old and worn-out.\u201d No doubt, the cramming, the routine, the\nrote, the mental and moral tyranny of the principal and\nschool-superintendent do tend to nervous degeneracy and mental\nbreak-down. Poor old college owls, academic barn-yard-fowls and worn-out\nsickly school-bats, you are panic-stricken by the power of sunlight, you\nare in agonizing, in mortal terror of critical, reflective thought, you\ndread and suppress the genius of the young.\n\nWe do not appreciate the genius harbored in the average child, and we\nlet it lie fallow. We are mentally poor, not because we lack riches, but\nbecause we do not know how to use the wealth of mines, the hidden\ntreasures, the now inaccessible mental powers which we possess.\n\nIn speaking of our mental capacities, Francis Galton, I think, says that\nwe are in relation to the ancient Greeks what the Bushmen and Hottentots\nare in relation to us. Galton and many other learned men regard the\nmodern European races as inferior to the Hellenic race. They are wrong,\nand I know from experience that they are wrong. It rests in our hands\neither to remain inferior barbarians or to rival and even surpass in\nbrilliancy the genius of the ancient Hellenes. We can develop into a\ngreat race by the proper education of man\u2019s genius.\n\n\n                                  XVI\n\nOne other important point claims our attention in the process of\neducation of man\u2019s genius. We must immunize our children against mental\nmicrobes, as we vaccinate our babies against small-pox. _The cultivation\nof critical judgment and the knowledge of evil are two powerful\nconstituents that form the antitoxin for the neutralization of the\nvirulent toxins produced by mental microbes._ At the same time we should\nnot neglect proper conditions of mental hygiene. We should not people\nthe child\u2019s mind with ghost-stories, with absurd beliefs in the\nsupernatural, and with articles of creed charged with brimstone and\npitch from the bowels of hell. _We must guard the child against all evil\nfears, superstitions, prejudices and credulity._\n\nWe should counteract the baneful influences of the pathogenic,\npestiferous, mental microbes which now infest our social air, since the\nchild, not having yet formed the antitoxin of critical judgment and\nknowledge of evil, has not the power of resisting mental infection, and\nis thus very susceptible to mental contagion on account of his extreme\nsuggestibility. The cultivation of credulity, the absence of critical\njudgment and of recognition of evil, with consequent increase of\nsuggestibility, make man an easy prey to all kinds of social delusions,\nmental epidemics, religious crazes, financial manias, and political\nplagues, which have been the baleful pest of aggregate humanity in all\nages.\n\nThe immunization of children, the development of resistance to mental\ngerms whether moral, immoral or religious, can only be effected by the\nmedical man with a psychological and psychopathological training. Just\nas science, philosophy and art have gradually passed out of the control\nof the priest, so now we find that the control of mental and moral life\nis gradually passing away from under the influence of the church into\nthe hands of the medical psychopathologist.\n\nThe physical life of the nation is now gradually being regulated by\nmedical science with a consequent decrease of disease and mortality.\nGradually and slowly the school begins to feel the need of medical\nadvice, both as to the health of the pupils and their more efficient\ntraining. Gradually the medical man assumes the responsibility of\nguiding the teacher and telling him why the pupils are defective in\ntheir studies and why the pedantic methods of academic pedagogy are arid\nand sterile. In some cases the doctor actually undertakes the training\nof the young. Thus the Italian doctor, Maria Montessori, from the\neducation of defective children has finally undertaken, with immense,\nalmost phenomenal, success, the training and education of normal\nchildren.\n\nAs we look forward into the future we begin to see that the school is\ncoming under the control of the medical man. The medical man free from\nsuperstitions and prejudices, possessed of the science of mind and body,\nis to assume in the future the supervision of the education of the\nnation.\n\nThe schoolmaster and the schoolma\u2019am with their narrow-minded, pedantic\npseudogogics are gradually losing prestige and passing away, while the\nmedical man alone is able to cope with the serious threatening danger of\nnational mental degeneration. Just as the medical profession now saves\nthe nation from physical degeneration and works for the physical\nregeneration of the body-politic, so will the medical profession of the\nfuture assume the duty of saving the nation from mental and moral\ndecline, from degeneration into a people of fear-possessed, mind-racked\npsychopathies and neurotics, with broken wills and crushed\nindividualities on the one hand, accompanied, on the other hand, by the\nstill worse affliction and incurable malady of a self-contented\nmediocrity and a hopeless, Chinese philistinism.\n\nThere are in the United States about two hundred thousand insane, while\nthe victims of psychopathic, mental maladies may be counted by the\nmillions. Insanity can be greatly alleviated, but much, if not all, of\nthat psychopathic mental misery known as functional mental disease is\nentirely preventable. It is the result of our pitiful, wretched,\nbrain-starving, mind-crippling methods of education.\n\n\n                                  XVII\n\nIn my work of mental and nervous diseases I become more and more\nconvinced of the preponderant influence of early childhood in the\ncausation of psychopathic mental maladies. _Most, in fact all, of those\nfunctional mental diseases originate in early childhood._ A couple of\nconcrete cases will perhaps best illustrate my point:\n\nThe patient is a young man of 26. He suffers from intense melancholic\ndepression, often amounting to agony. He is possessed by the fear of\nhaving committed the unpardonable sin. He thinks that he is damned to\nsuffer tortures in hell for all eternity. I cannot go here into the\ndetails of the case, but an examination of the patient by the hypnoidal\nstate clearly traced his present condition to the influence of an old\nwoman, a Sunday school teacher, who infected him with those virulent\ngerms in his very early childhood, about the age of five. Let me read to\nyou a paragraph from the patient\u2019s own account: \u201cIt is difficult to\nplace the beginning of my abnormal fear. It certainly originated from\ndoctrines of hell which I heard in early childhood, particularly from a\nrather ignorant elderly woman, who taught Sunday school. My early\nreligious thought was chiefly concerned with the direful eternity of\ntorture that might be awaiting me, if I was not good enough to be\nsaved.\u201d\n\nAnother patient of mine, a clergyman\u2019s wife, was extremely nervous,\ndepressed, and suffered from insomnia, from nightmares, from panophobia,\ngeneral fear, dread of the unknown, from claustrophobia, fear of\nremaining alone, fear of darkness and numerous other fears and insistent\nideas, into the details of which I cannot go here. By means of the\nhypnoidal state the symptoms were traced to impressions of early\nchildhood; when at the age of five, the patient was suddenly confronted\nby a maniacal woman. The child was greatly frightened, and since that\ntime she became possessed by the fear of insanity. When the patient gave\nbirth to her child, she was afraid the child would become insane; many a\ntime she even had a feeling that the child _was_ insane. Thus the fear\nof insanity is traced to an experience of early childhood, an experience\nwhich, having become subconscious, is manifesting itself persistently in\nthe patient\u2019s consciousness.\n\nThe patient\u2019s parents were very religious, and the child was brought up\nnot only in the fear of God, but also in the fear of hell and the devil.\nBeing sensitive and imaginative, the devils of the gospel were to her\nstern realities. She had a firm belief in \u201cdiabolical possessions\u201d and\n\u201cunclean spirits\u201d; the legend of Jesus exorcising in the country of the\nGadarenes unclean spirits, whose name is Legion, was to her a tangible\nreality. She was brought up on brimstone and pitch, with everlasting\nfires of the \u201cbottomless pit\u201d for sinners and unbelievers. In the\nhypnoidal state she clearly remembered the preacher, who used every\nSunday to give her the horrors by his picturesque descriptions of the\ntortures of the \u201cbottomless pit.\u201d She was in anguish over the unsolved\nquestion: \u201cDo little sinner-girls go to hell?\u201d This fear of hell made\nthe little girl feel depressed and miserable and poisoned many a\ncheerful moment of her life.\n\nWhat a lasting effect and what a melancholy gloom this fear of ghosts\nand of unclean spirits of the bottomless pit produced on this young life\nmay be judged from the following facts: When the patient was about\neleven years old, a young girl, a friend of hers, having noticed the\npatient\u2019s fear of ghosts, played on her one of those silly, practical\njokes, the effect of which on sensitive natures is often disastrous and\nlasting. The girl disguised herself as a ghost, in a white sheet, and\nappeared to the patient, who was just on the point of falling asleep.\nThe child shrieked in terror and fainted. Since that time the patient\nsuffered from nightmares and was mortally afraid to sleep alone; she\npassed many a night in a state of excitement, frenzied with the fear of\napparitions and ghosts.\n\nWhen about the age of seventeen, she apparently freed herself from the\nbelief in ghosts and unclean powers. But the fear acquired in her\nchildhood did not lapse; it persisted subconsciously and manifested\nitself in the form of uncontrollable fears. She was afraid to remain\nalone in a room, especially in the evening. Thus, once when she had to\ngo upstairs, alone to pack her trunks, a gauzy garment called forth the\nexperience of her ghost-fright; she had the illusion of seeing a ghost,\nand fell fainting to the floor. Unless specially treated, fears acquired\nin childhood last through life.\n\n\u201cEvery ugly thing,\u201d says Mosso, the great Italian physiologist, \u201ctold to\nthe child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like minute\nsplinters in the flesh, to torture him all his life long.\n\n\u201cAn old soldier whom I asked what his greatest fears had been, answered\nme thus: \u2018I have only had one, but it pursues me still. I am nearly\nseventy years old, I have looked death in the face I do not know how\nmany times; I have never lost heart in any danger, but when I pass a\nlittle old church in the shades of the forest, or a deserted chapel in\nthe mountains, I always remember a neglected oratory in my native\nvillage, and I shiver and look around, as though seeking the corpse of a\nmurdered man which I once saw carried into it when a child, and with\nwhich an old servant wanted to shut me up to make me good.\u2019\u201d Here, too,\nexperiences of early childhood have persisted subconsciously throughout\nlifetime.\n\n\n                                 XVIII\n\nI appeal to you, fathers and mothers, and to you, liberal-minded\nreaders, asking you to turn your attention to the education of your\nchildren, to the training of the young generation of future citizens. I\ndo not appeal to our official educators, to our scientific,\npsychological pseudagogues, to the clerks of our teaching shops,\u2014for\nthey are beyond all hope. From that quarter I expect nothing but attacks\nand abuse. We cannot possibly expect of the philistine-educator and\nmandarin-pseudagogue the adoption of different views of education. We\nshould not keep new wine in old goat-skins. The present school-system\nsquanders the resources of the country and wastes the energies, the\nlives of our children. Like Cato our cry should be _Carthago delenda\nest_,\u2014the school-system should be abolished and with it should go the\npresent psychologizing educator, the schoolmaster and the schoolma\u2019am.\n\nFathers and mothers, you keep in your hands the fate of the young\ngeneration. You are conscious of the great responsibility, of the vast,\nimportant task laid upon you by the education of your children. For,\naccording to the character of the training and education given to the\nyoung, they may be made a sickly host of nervous wrecks and miserable\nwretches; or they may be formed into a narrow-minded, bigoted, mediocre\ncrowd of self-contented \u201ccultured\u201d philistines, bat-blind to evil; or\nthey may be made a _great race of genius_ with powers of rational\ncontrol of their latent, potential, reserve energy. The choice remains\nwith you.\n\n\n                                APPENDIX\n\n                        PRECOCITY IN CHILDREN[1]\n\nBy precocity I mean the manifestation of the child\u2019s mental functions at\na period earlier than the one observed in the past and present\ngenerations of children.\n\nIn the course of his growth and development the individual unfolds his\ninner powers through acquisition of the stored-up experiences of\nprevious generations. The well known biogenetic law may, with some\nmodifications, be applied to mental life. The development of the\nindividual is an abbreviated reproduction of the evolution of the\nspecies. Briefly put: Ontogenesis is an epitome of Phylogenesis. This\nbiogenetic law holds true in the domain of education. The stored-up\nexperiences of the race are condensed, foreshortened, and recapitulated\nin the child\u2019s life history. This process of progressive \u201cprecocity,\u201d or\nof foreshortening of education, has been going on unconsciously in the\ncourse of human evolution. We have reached a stage when man can be made\n_conscious_ of this fundamental process, thus getting control over his\nown growth and development.\n\nAlthough the process of foreshortening of education has been taking\nplace throughout the history of mankind, and especially of civilized\nhumanity, still the process has remained imperceptible on account of its\nextremely slow rate of progress. Hence the fact of \u201cprecocity,\u201d or of\nearly development of children, has been hitherto regarded as rare, as\nphenomenal. Like all rare phenomena, precocity, or early child\ndevelopment, is considered as unique, as abnormal, and even as\npathological. In fact, many still regard precocity as some form of\nmalady akin to mental alienation.\n\nIt is well to bear in mind that phenomena, at first scarce and rare, may\nunder favorable conditions become sufficiently numerous to be quite\ncommon. In fact, we may lay it down as a law that all discoveries,\ninventions, and changes in general, economical, political, social,\nmental, moral, and religious, first appear on a small scale in limited\nareas from which they spread in various directions. Organisms start, as\nvariations or mutations, from minute nuclei of growth; species have\ntheir origin in small centres and restricted areas. A new species may\nbegin with some apparently insignificant variation which may grow and\ndevelop, and which, from a certain standpoint, may be regarded as an\nabnormality.\n\nWhat at present is considered as \u201cprecocity,\u201d and hence as an\nabnormality, may really be the foreshadowing of the future. The\napparently precocious variation may and will turn out a normal\nphenomenon. The stone which the builders refused is become the head\nstone of the corner. Early education, precocity, is to become the corner\nstone of human life. _At present the preliminary period of child\neducation is unduly retarded to the detriment of the individual and\nsociety._\n\nThe truth is, we do not realize the importance of early training. We\nbegin education late in the child\u2019s life, when dispositions have become\nformed and habits have become rigid. This delay seriously injures the\ngrowth of the child by lowering the level of mental activity. The\ncritical points of formation of mental interests are allowed to slip by,\nleaving the individual irresponsive to mental, \u00e6sthetic, and moral\ninterests. The critical turning points, when the best energies could be\nbrought out, are not taken care of at the right moment.\n\nThe mental functions become prematurely atrophied and degenerated. When\nwe later on attempt to awaken those functions, we are surprised to find\nthem absent. We labor under the false impression that the child is\nnaturally inapt and deficient. To make up for this apparent deficiency\nwe force the child\u2019s mind into narrow channels, crippling and deforming\nit into mean mediocrity. The child is run into the rigid moulds of home,\nschool, and college with the result of permanent mutilation of\noriginality and genius. The individual is deformed, because the critical\nspirit of inquiry and originality is racked on the Procrustes\u2019 bed of\nhome and school. The unfortunate thing about it is the firm belief that\nthe crippled spirit of the child is a congenital mediocrity. Instead of\nshouldering the fault, we put the burden on Heredity. Darwinism with its\nspontaneous variation and hereditary transmission, Austro-Germanic\nMendelism, accompanied by a widespread propaganda of Eugenics, have\nblotted out from view the far more fundamental factors of environment\nand education which play such a paramount r\u00f4le in man\u2019s life.\n\nWe may profit by recent studies in Psychopathology. In my investigations\nI have shown the important r\u00f4le which early child experience plays in\nthe patient\u2019s life. Psychopathic affections can be traced to child fears\nwhich become afterwards reinforced by unfavorable conditions of life.\nThis is formulated in my works on Psychopathology. Psychopathology\nclearly brings out the significant fact that a good start in early\nchildhood is of the utmost consequence to the individual. Only a good\neducation in early life can save man from the innumerable psychopathic\nmaladies to which he is subject. The seeds of vicious habits and of\ncriminal tendencies can be eliminated in early childhood.\n\nEarly development or what is termed \u201cprecocity\u201d in children will not\nonly prevent vice, crime, and disease, but will strengthen the\nindividual along all lines, physical, mental, and moral. We should be\ncareful not to cast the child\u2019s mind into ready made moulds, not to\nsubject his mind, his character to the yoke of meaningless mannerisms\nand rigid formalities. We should have respect for the child\u2019s\npersonality. We should remember that there is genius in every healthy,\nnormal child.\n\nWe are blind to the child\u2019s latent genius, because we look to brute\nforce as our standard. Like savages, we are afraid of genius, especially\nwhen it is manifested as \u201cprecocity in children.\u201d This abject fear of\ngenius and of precocity is one of the most pernicious philistine\nsuperstitions, causing the retardation of the progress of humanity. The\nfear of mental precocity is essentially the phobia of the inveterate\nphilistine.\n\nWe should bear in mind that the philistine is an insignificant, though\nexact part of a huge social machine, of a Frankenstein \u201ckultur\u201d before\nwhich the philistine prostrates himself in dust, a social monster of\nwhich he is proud to form an irresponsible mite. Whether he be an atom\nof a political organization, of a nation, or of a military\nkultur-system, the philistine is trained to be content to play the same\nignoble, slavish r\u00f4le of submission, obedience, and irresponsibility.\nWithout personal conscience, without personal will, without personal\ninitiative, the impersonal philistine is like the stupid genie of\nAladdin\u2019s lamp who slavishly obeys the master of the magic lamp.\n\nThe present horrible European war (predicted in this volume several\nyears before the onset of the war. See pp. 30, 31) is the unfortunate,\nbut natural outcome of philistine education and philistine life. The\nimmediate cause of the war may be traced to politics, greed,\ncompetition, to commercial, industrial, cultural, national,\ninternational, and racial complications. At bottom, however, the present\nEuropean war is ultimately due to our pernicious system of training, the\nbane of our industrial, social life. Millions of men are drilled and\ndisciplined to act as automata; men are trained from childhood, at home,\nschool, college, and university to surrender their individual judgment,\nand follow blindly an alleged \u201csocial consciousness,\u201d entrusted, by a\nset of philistine bureaucrats, to superior leaders, to generals,\nadmirals, and field-marshals. Men are hypnotized by a pernicious and\nvicious system of training and quasi-education to consider it a high,\nsacred ideal to obey implicitly the will of a few officials and\ndiplomats, to attack, plunder and slaughter at the command of generals\nand officers, in the interest of a plutocratic oligarchy, hallowed by\nthe vague shibboleth: \u201cFlag, Country, Patriotism.\u201d[2] The youth of\nnations is debauched with the belief in the supreme grandeur of\ndelivering their personal responsibility in the keeping of a handful of\nByzantine bureaucrats, irresponsible junkers, and half-crazed C\u00e6sars.\n\nThe principle \u201cBe Childlike\u201d is paramount in the education of mankind.\nThe child represents the future, all the possibilities, all the coming\ngreatness of the human race. We, the adults, are contaminated by the\nbrutal passions and vices incident to the struggle for existence and\nself-preservation.\n\nPlasticity of mind is characteristic of genius. Plasticity of mind and\nbody is pre\u00ebminently characteristic of the child. Adaptability and\nplasticity are found in all young tissue, muscle, gland, and nerve. As\nthe organism ages, becomes differentiated, and adapted to special\nfunctions and conditions of life, it loses its original plasticity. The\ntissues become fixed and the functions set. The adult\u2019s brain and mind\nbegin to work in ruts. The child is superior to the adult.\n\nThe child looks at the world with eyes simple, clear, bright, not\nblinded by the heavy scales of traditions, superstitions, and prejudices\nof remote ages. The intricate worries, complex fears, selfish motives,\nbrutal passions, greed, revenge, malice, vice, enmity do not as yet mar\nthe soul of the child. Artificial needs, strong animal passions have no\nfirm hold on the child\u2019s mind. The child\u2019s mind is purer, fresher,\nbrighter, far more original than the adult intelligence with its\nphilistine notions and hide-bound habits of thought and belief.\n\nWith age the mind becomes specialized and degraded in quality. Unless\nchecked by a good education and by a persistent course of mental\nactivity, intellectual and other mental interests, the adult mind is apt\nto deteriorate. Unless controlled by a good education and by intense\nmental interests, free from service to animal needs, the emotions of\nself-regard, the impulse of self-preservation with its fear instinct\ngradually gain in man the upper hand. In the child, on the contrary, the\npersonal interests are relatively weak, and fluctuating, hence the\npossibility of pure disinterestedness, pure curiosity, love of learning,\nthe root of all originality present both in genius and the child. The\nchild presents the innocence and gentleness of human genius, the adult\nphilistine is the embodiment of the force and cunning of the brute.\n\nWe should not be scared by the bug-bear of precocity. We should awaken\nman\u2019s genius by giving the child an early, a \u201cprecocious\u201d education. We\nshould bear in mind that the knowledge of our schoolboys and schoolgirls\nfar surpasses that of the ancient sages or of the medi\u00e6val doctors. We\nshould learn to understand and to utilize the process of progressive\nforeshortening of race acquisitions in the history of the individual.\n\nThe great biologist, Professor C. S. Minot, comes to a similar\nconclusion, as the result of his profound biological investigations: \u201cI\nbelieve,\u201d says Minot, \u201cthat this principle of psychological development,\nparalleling the career of physical development, needs to be more\nconsidered in arranging our educational plans. For if it be true that\nthe decline in the power of learning is most rapid at first, it is\nevident that we want to make as much use of the early years as\npossible\u2014that the tendency, for instance, which has existed in many of\nour universities, to postpone the period of entrance into college, is\nbiologically an erroneous tendency. It would be better to have the young\nman get to college earlier, graduate earlier, get into practical life or\ninto professional schools earlier, while the power of learning is\ngreater.\u201d\n\nI may say that within my experience children who had the advantage of an\nearly education and training manifested a higher grade of intellectual\nand moral life, a far better state of physical health than children\nbrought up under the present retarding and crippling system of\neducation. In conclusion I may add that in order to gain access to man\u2019s\nReserve Energy we must have recourse to early child education, to the\nmuch maligned, and greatly feared \u201cPrecocity in Children.\u201d\n\n-----\n\n[1] Reproduced in part, with the kind permission of the publishers, from\nmy contribution to the forthcoming Encyclop\u00e6dia of Education, published\nby Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, London, England.\n\n[2] \u201cThe cheapest form of pride,\u201d says Schopenhauer, \u201cis national pride;\nfor if a man is proud of his own nation it follows that he has no\nqualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not\nhave recourse to those which he shares with his fellow-men.... Every\nmiserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts as\na last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and\nglad to defend all its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus\nreimbursing himself for his own inferiority.... National character is\nonly another name for the particular form which the littleness,\nperversity, and baseness of mankind take in every country.\u201d...\n\u201cNarrowness, prejudice, vanity, and self-interest are the main elements\nof patriotism.\u201d... \u201cDoes not all history show that whenever a king is\nfirmly established on the throne, and the people reach some degree of\nprosperity, he uses it to lead an army, like a band of robbers, against\nadjoining countries? Are not almost all wars ultimately undertaken for\npurpose of plunder?\u201d... Schopenhauer prophetically warns his countrymen:\n\u201cAll war is a matter of robbery, and the Germans should take that as a\nwarning.\u201d","title":"Philistine and genius","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":18375}