life, this activity is merely play; in the higher grades, it takes the rational and significant form of artistic creation.

In some future golden age, foretold by poets and prophets, it may be that all work will be play, all speech will be song, and joy will be universal.

DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION.

I.

The life of an organism is preserved and fulfilled through its right adjustment to environment. If the organism fail to accommodate itself to its conditions it is doomed to a life of tragic conflict, a weakness increasing to decay, and to final extinction. The school is an agency devised by the social intelligence or instinct to prepare the young organism for more effective existence. Its function is two-fold: First, to enable the young to appropriate the inheritance which the past bequeaths; and, second, to hasten and facilitate their adjustment to present conditions and future growths. The first service, being fairly constant, tends to maintain in all educational institutions that conservatism which so irritates the progressive educator whose attention is given to the work of readjustment. From the conditions of the problem it must be seen that the stability of institutionalism is overcome at the fulfillment of the first function. After that everything is subject to change according to the variation of the social environment. It is at this point that institutionalism may become pernicious and subversive. A given system becomes conventionalized, loses vitality, ceases to move with the times, educates for conditions long outgrown, retards progress, and enslaves the very life that created it. Then the Promethean soul is bound to the rocks and tyrannized over by the Jupiter of custom.

But evermore, wise through its pains, it destroys the order of routine and shapes its life anew. Meanwhile, the accredited institution is upheld at an enormous waste of energy. Individual organisms have been subverted and destroyed. The so-called "graduates" of schools, in order to be effective in their environment, are required not infrequently to overcome the disability of their education. If the individual is weak it drags out a wretched life, querulous, dyspeptic, and finally perishes. I think the life that goes out on battle fields is a small measure of the energy wasted in schools. The tragedy of the "educated man" is perhaps the most pathetic under the sun; a tragedy not less grievous because of its frequency. And of these tragic misfits the schools of today, by reason of peculiar conditions of transition, are furnishing an unending line. Our traditions, as those bearing upon "school discipline" and "school studies," have reference to military, priestly, scholastic, or other special ideals of times long past; whereas the necessity of the day is for a genuine social being, with varied practical and industrial capacities, generous democratic sympathies, and inclusive as light. "Where does the great city stand?" asks Whitman.

"Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the common words and deeds,

Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,

Where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases,

Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority,

There the great city stands."

The question thus viewed is an important one, not to be

lightly passed: How shall the schools educate in view of "triumphant democracy?" I venture to discuss this topic in three of its phases: (1) The personal ideal to which the modern man owes allegiance; (2) The social ideal to which the school should conform; (3) The school work calculated to accomplish the ends desired.

II

My general thesis may be stated first in abstract terms. The conditions of democracy require an education that shall be directed to the equipment of the individual in respect of his self-sovereignty on the one hand and of his socialism on the other. The individual, who shall be fitted to live in a democratic community, must be taught to control himself as a "simple, separate person" and to govern his conduct with reference to his place in the social system. Neither phase of his character can be safely neglected. Of the two sides, however, the individialistic would seem to be the more important, for true self-realization is both individualistic and social. By the realization and continual enlargement of the self-a self that is in its very nature social—the individual comes to include the multitude and his right becomes their right and his law their law. A genuine federation of men is not to be accomplished by the written agreement of lawyers, but only through the identification in ideas and interests of the separate members of the groups and communities. A perfect democracy is possible only with persons who are completely developed in every aspect of personality, and able therefore to substitute an inner for

an outer bond of union. Create great individuals, establish the right personal ideal-the rest follows.

When viewed from the standpoint of the democratic man, the various ideals about which the imagination and sympathies of men have gathered in times past-the military ideal, the priestly ideal, the cultural ideal-all fall short of measuring the status of the true man of the age. The military ideal, formed when the world was a great soldiers' camp, was the necessary concomitant and support of thrones and empires. Chivalry, furnishing opportunity for spiritual strivings, was the beauty and perfume that attracted to a rigorous ideal the souls of finer nurture, and through the ages life has been construed by poets and thinkers in terms of warfareterms that have become the very counters of our speech and determine the texture of our thinking. From an ideal so universal it is difficult for anyone to escape. Nevertheless, it is an ideal outgrown and should be utterly abandoned. It enforces principles of obedience to the will of others in authority and interferes with the true self-activity proper for the democratic man. Upon the model of the military all religious systems and moral tenets have been formed, not excepting those of the more recent Protestant churches, whose devotion to bishops or Bibles or creeds betrays their acceptance of the military principle. It is a simple fact that the religious life of all peoples today is grounded in authority of some kind. The success of the Salvation Army is an evidence of an attitude of mind that would seem to be almost universal in matters pertaining to religion. Yet priestcraft in all forms is destined to pass away: the army organization, the word of command, the obligation of