Means and Ends of EducationSpalding, John Lancaster
Philosophy
Means and Ends of Education
Spalding, John Lancaster
Culture; Education
general indifference of men or by their praise or blame. The
standpoint of the soul is: What thou art, not what others think thee.
If thou art at one with thy true self, God and the eternal laws bear
thee up and onward. The moral and the religious life interpenetrate
each other. To sunder them is to enfeeble both. To weaken faith is to
undermine character; to fail in conduct is to deprive faith of
inspiration and vigor. Learn to live thy religion, and thou shalt have
little need or desire to argue and dispute about it. Truth is mightier
than its witnesses, religion greater than its saints and martyrs.
Learn to think, and thou shalt easily learn to live.
In the presence of the highest manifestations of thought and love, of
truth and beauty, nothing perfect or divine is incredible. Men of
genius, philosophers, poets, and saints, who by thinking and doing make
this ethereal but most real world rise before us in concrete form and
substance, are heavenly messengers and illuminators of the soul. Had
none of them lived, how should we see and understand that man is
Godlike and that God is truth and love? We cannot make this high world
plain by telling about it. It is not a land which may be described.
It is a state of soul which they alone comprehend who have been
transformed by patient meditation and faithful striving. But once it
is revealed, a thousand errors and obscurities fall away from us. If
not educated, strive at least to be educable,--a believer in wisdom,
and sensitive to all high influence, and eager to be quit of thy
ignorance and hardness. As the dead cannot produce the live, so
mechanical minds, however much they may be able to drill, train, and
instruct, cannot educate. The secret of the mother's specific
educational power lies in the fact that she is a spiritual not a
mechanical force, loves and is loved by her pupils. The most ennobling
and the most thoroughly satisfying sentiment of which we are capable is
love. Until we love we are strangers to ourselves. We are like beings
asleep or lost to the knowledge of themselves and all things, till,
awakening to the appeal of the pure light and the balmy air, they look
upon what is not themselves; and, finding it fair and beautiful, learn
in loving it to feel and know themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account