5. If it is true, as clearly expressed by strong thinkers in the most various fields of deeper investigation, that many of the chief literary products that have come down to us from former ages are the only means by which we can be brought into vital touch and sympathy with the spirit and motives then ruling among men; if it is equally true that children will not grow up to the proper appreciation and interpretation of our present life, except as they have experienced, in thought and interest at least, the chief struggles and motives of our fathers,--we may find in these historic and literary materials the deep and living springs of true education for children. The thought of the educative power of this ancestral literature has been forcibly expressed by many eminent writers. Scudder, in "Literature in School," says:-- "There is the element of continuity. In the Roman household there stood the cinerary urns which held the ashes of the ancestors of the family. Do you think the young ever forgot the unbroken line of descent by which they climbed to the heroic founders of the state? In the Jewish family the child was taught to think and speak of the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. In that great succession he heard a voice which told him his nation was not of a day. It is the business of the old to transmit to the young the great traditions of the past of the country; to feed anew the undying flame of patriotism. "It is this concentration in poetry and the more lofty prose which gives to literary art its preciousness as a symbol of human endeavor, and renders it the one essential and most serviceable means for keeping alive the smouldering coals of patriotism. It is the torch passed from one hand to another, signaling hope and warning; and the one place above all others where its light should be kindled is where the young meet together, in those American temples which the people have built in every town and village in the country." Mabie, in "Books and Culture" (pp. 88, 89-113), says:-- "Now, it is upon this imperishable food which the past has stored up through the genius of great artists that later generations feed and nourish themselves. It is through intimate contact with these fundamental conceptions, worked out with such infinite pain and patience, that the individual experience is broadened to include the experience of the race."