What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in ParticularHolmes, Edmond
Philosophy
What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular
Holmes, Edmond
Education
that in the last resort the two aspects are one.
From every point of view, then, and above all from that of Religion,
the path of self-realisation is seen to be the path of salvation.
For it is the only scheme of life which enables him who follows it
to attain to knowledge of God; and knowledge of God has, as its
necessary counterpart, a right attitude, in general towards the world
which surrounds him, and in particular towards his fellow-men.
But is it possible, within the limits of one earth-life, to follow
the path of self-realisation to its appointed goal? And if not, will
the path be continued beyond that abrupt turn in it which we call
death? The respective attitudes of the two great schools of popular
thought towards the problem of the grave, are in brief as follows.
The Materialists (or Naturalists, as they miscall themselves) believe
that death is the end of life. The Supernaturalists believe that one
earth-life (or even a few years or months) of mechanical obedience to
supernatural direction will be rewarded by an eternity of happiness
in "Heaven." But those who walk in the path of self-realisation, and
whose unswerving loyalty to Nature is rewarded by some measure of
insight into her deeper laws, know that the goal of the path is
infinitely far away, and in their heart of hearts they laugh both the
current eschatologies to scorn. And the higher they ascend, as they
follow the path, the more vividly do they realise how unimaginably
high above them is the summit of the mountain which the path is
ascending in spiral coils.
The Utopian experiment, humble as it is, can, I think, throw some
light on these mighty problems. The relations between the type and
the various sub-types, between the type and the individual, between
the sub-type and the individual--whether in plant or beast or
man--are matters which could not be handled within the limits of this
book, and which I have therefore as far as possible ignored. Nor have
I attempted to deal with the difficult problems that are presented by
the existence of races, such as the Negro, which seem to be far below
the normal level of human development. There is, however, in the vast
region of thought which these and kindred problems open out to us,
one by-way which I must be allowed to follow for a while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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