both as to choice of work and the time employed; the co-ordination of courses; a continuous session of the school without special assemblage or ceremonials; the giving of certificates of proficiency (but not degrees); the encouragement of independent organizations among the pupils; and instruction above all else in self-control.

Such a school may be wholly autonomous, itself a free creative activity, its initiation extending even to the writing and printing of its text-books and the invention and manufacture of its tools and equipment. It would organize research into fields that are today almost untouched by trained explorers-the field of industrial physics and industrial chemistry. A laboratory devoted to the problem of the industrial application of energy might become a factor in racial progress. The school might hope to become a training place for inventors.

THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS

GROUND: WALT WHITMAN.

I.

The religious system of Christendom, in almost the entire range of its theologic and ethical conceptions, is patriarchal, monarchical, or feudal in origin and character. In the terms "Our Lord" and "Our Father" the whole occidental idea of divinity is contained. The Kingdom of Heaven was modeled upon the kingdoms known to men at the time when the idea was first conceived; only in the place of a weak, corrupt and defective king, there was substituted a perfect Being whose word was absolute Truth and whose acts constituted absolute Justice. Around the "Emperor of Heaven"-to use Dante's phrase-vicegerents of lesser realms were thought to subsist, declining in authority, rank by rank, to the lowest priest in the earthly hierarchy, each dispensing truth and justice as deputized by the rulers higher in the scale. Over a realm of "chaos and old night" Satan and his myrmidons ruled in identical manner. The philosophic ground of this system is known as dualism.

Towards their various rulers mortals held the relation of vassals. The whole theory of duty, obligation, punishment, and salvation, the very attitude men assumed in supplication, was feudal in character. The

very term Lord, employed to describe one person of the triune throne, is indicative of the feudal conception in the whole warp and woof of western theology. In early English the apostles were designated also as thegns, the title for the lesser nobility or kingly servitors. The ethical codes, corresponding to the monarchical theology, such as describe the relations of men to their rulers or to their compeers, were military in effect. "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" represent the ways of kings to their servants. A system of rites and ceremonials was further invented by the priests to express the relation of lord and vassal. "Order" to use Pope's word, meaning gradation or rank-being "Heaven's first law," a proper series of deadly and venial sins and their corresponding virtues was constructed, and up the painful path the subjects of the King were enjoined to labor, if so they might enter the heavenly kingdom and glorify God forever.

From this point of view distinctions were drawn between the natural and the spiritual. In so far as man was related by bodily birth and inheritance to the order of Nature, he was of necessity base, corruptible, sinful, and in need of redemption; in so far as he was spiritual, his soul tended toward the good. Here were the elements mingled for an unending warfare. For its help the soul had the sword of the spirit, the breastplate of faith, the helmet of salvation, the whole armor of righteousness.

God, the Divine Ruler of the Universe; Man, the vassal under surveillance; Nature, the arena of conflict: such are the three general terms of Christian

theology formulated by the church fathers, subscribed to by Dante and Milton, and current today in every nation of the occident. Even in America, the organized churches and denominations, Catholic and Protestant, subsist upon the feudal traditions. Our National Hymn concludes with an appeal to "Great God, our King." Indeed it is not too much to say that if the notion of king and subject, of judge and convict, were discarded, if the dualistic distinctions relating to good and evil were dismissed, if the gulf between man and nature were closed, almost the whole content of orthodox theology would be dissipated in a twinkling-and yet the whole of modern life would remain. The creeds, the homilies, the books of prayer, the codes of conduct bequeathed the churches by past centuries, offend the scientific and self-dependent mind. The future belongs to the new tendencies. Either the churches must reconstruct their systems in terms of democracy, vitalize their theology by renewal at the founts of modern life, or simply decline in influence till they become mere antiquarian symbols, reminiscent of ancient peoples and old beliefs. Said Emerson: "We too must write Bibles to unite again the heavenly and the earthly world."

II.

I turn for illustration of what may be done in formulating a new and modernized theology to Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," the one book of considerable importance known to me that breaks utterly with feudal forms and assumes the processes of democracy, and that is at

the same time intentionally religious in basic purpose. "I will see," Whitman said to himself, "whether there is not, for my purposes as poet, a religion, and a sound religious germinancy in the average human race, and in the hardy common fibre and native yearnings and elements, deeper and larger, and affording more profitable returns, than all mere sects or churches-as boundless, joyous, and vital as Nature itself-a germinancy that has been too long unencouraged, unsung, almost unknown. The time has certainly come to begin to discharge the idea of religion from mere ecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and churches and church-going, and assign it to that general position, chiefest, most indispensible, most exhilarating, to which the others are to be adjusted, inside of all human character, and education, and affairs. The people, especially the young men and women of America, must begin to learn that religion is something far, far different from what they supposed. It is indeed, too important to the power and perpetuity of the New World to be consigned any longer to the churches, old or new, Catholic or Protestant-Saint this, or Saint that. It must be consigned thenceforth to democracy en masse, and to literature."

More than any other thinker of his generation Whitman realized the need of creating new religious ideals for America, new "mind formulas" as real and large and sane as the continent itself, and while acknowledging to the full the indebtedness of America to "venerable priestly Asia" and "royal feudal Europe" he accepted the opportunity of a new world and a new time to plant the seeds of a new gospel. "I too, following many and followed by many, inaugurate a new religion." It was not his