Means and Ends of EducationSpalding, John Lancaster
Philosophy
Means and Ends of Education
Spalding, John Lancaster
Culture; Education
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient, and laborious mind is
worthy of respect. In such doubt there may be found indeed more faith
than in half the creeds. But the scepticism of sciolists lacks the
depth and genuineness of truth. To be frivolous where there is
question of all that gives life meaning and value is want of sense.
The sciolist is one who has a superficial knowledge of various things,
which for lack of deep views and coherent thought, for lack of the
understanding of the principles of knowledge itself, he is unable to
bring into organic unity. The things he knows are confused and
intermingled, and thus fail either to enlighten his mind or to impel
him to healthful activity. He forms opinions lightly and pronounces
judgment rashly. Knowing nothing thoroughly, he has no suspicion of
the infinite complexity of the world of life and thought. The evil
effects of this semi-culture are most disagreeable and most harmful in
those whose being has been developed only on its temporal and earthly
side. Their spiritual and moral nature has no centre about which it
may move, and they wander on the surface of things in self-satisfied
conceit, proclaiming that what is beyond the senses is beyond the reach
of the mind, as though our innermost consciousness were not of what is
intangible and invisible.
All divine things are within and about us, here and now; but we are too
gross to see the celestial light, or to catch the whisperings of the
heavenly voices. God is here; but we, like plants and mollusks, live
in worlds of which we do not dream, upheld and nourished and borne
onward by a Power of whom we are but dimly conscious,--nay, of whom,
for the most part, we are unconscious.
There is a truth above the reach of logic, an impulse of the mind and
heart which urges beyond the realms of sense, beyond the ken of the
dialectician, to the Infinite and Eternal, before whom the material
universe is but a force at whose finest touch souls awaken to the
thrill of thought and love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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