In entering upon the consideration of the part which knowledge plays in the making of human happiness, it seems impossible to secure a view of satisfactory breadth. What we, as children, knew as recently established facts was with our fathers, in many instances, entirely undreamed-of, so rapidly has the fund of knowledge grown within the last century. With us now, more than at any other time, is correctness of judgment advantageous, since, with increased learning, has come a fiercer competition in all the affairs of life, and more dependent than ever before is the individual now, upon his intelligence for his livelihood, as well as for his happiness. In this day, as never previously, are the words of Bacon true: “Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them, and wise men use them.”

At the present time, also, as at no time in the historic past, is experience gained at the hands of others or through them; so that the youth of to-day does not have to suffer the consequences of getting experience “first hand” on account of the lack of books, or of the prejudice or ignorance of his parents and teachers, as was so often the case in the not remote past. Furthermore, intelligent parents are taking their children into their confidence, and informing them upon all subjects with perfect freedom, since, inasmuch as knowledge must come to children at some time, it is vastly preferable that it should come through those who have the interest of the inexperienced at heart, so that the proper color and perspective may be given to each and every fact. It is almost an axiom of pedagogics to-day that “ignorance is the most potent cause of crime.” With the unprecedented dissemination of knowledge which has taken place during the past few decades, there has necessarily been a proportionate advancement in the culture of the masses, and, with culture, comes refinement and conscience.

The cheapness and attractiveness of current literature, before the decline in culture which engulfed this country with the rise of commercialism and imperialism, was a thing of which America had every reason to be proud; and while we are now in the trough of the wave of progress, and will continue to be until money and commercial influence lose their present prestige, yet it does not take an optimist to see that, sooner or later, and somewhere, humanity will take advantage of its hard-won victories of the past and commence again its march toward better conditions.

Here, again, as with the individual, so with the entire race. As we outgrow the things of our childhood at the arrival of mature years, so has and will the human family as a whole. Who cannot remember the marvelous width and depth of the vistas of youth, as looked back at in the transmuting light of memory; and yet, when, after years of toil, we look at the same scenes again in reality, how disappointing and dwarfed they are! It is not the actual physical distance which has been altered, but we, ourselves. Our horizons have unconsciously widened every day; our standards of comparison have been insidiously raised. Just as an inch, when compared with a foot, seems relatively small, with a yard, smaller, and so on until we reach the “light year,” the value of the fraction is reduced to almost an inappreciable sum; so, as we progress through life, the momentous events of our youth lose their importance, and we look at our past through the minifying glass of experience, until at last we can hardly believe that the person whose life we have been reviewing is, in reality, one with our present self. Furthermore, events seen at a distance assume their true proportions, and we are less influenced by passions and prejudices after the lapse of time; hence it is only in retrospection that we are able to secure a view of anything which we have experienced without distortion. All normal human beings are so constituted that their psychic activity runs through a long series of periods of evolution during each individual life. As Haeckel has shown, five of these, at least, can be clearly defined:

1st—The Infantile Stage—from birth to the beginning of self-consciousness.

2nd—The adolescent stage—from self-consciousness to puberty.

3rd—The idealistic stage—from puberty to the period of sexual intercourse.

4th—The mature stage—from the time of sexual intercourse to the beginning of degeneration with age.

5th—The senile stage—from the commencement of degeneration with age until death.

The investigation of a human life, according to this outline, will prove, quite readily, the psychic possibilities of mundane existence.

As is well known, the child enters life with its cerebellum almost devoid of functions. The vital processes are carried on through the cerebrum and the medulla oblongata, purely by virtue of the stamp of heredity, and it is only after some days that the outside stimuli, such as light, heat, pressure or contact, etc., of the most elementary and primitive sort, are responded to by the infant. Its life is a matter of little or no individual interest to it, and it is usually only after many months, and, in some cases, years, before the child has any conception of its own existence. Previous to the comprehension of its existence, the infant has to learn to see and judge something of the distance and size of objects by the use of its eyes, if not to invert the retina image. In a non-monistic sense, the child, during this period, has no soul, and its life or death is of absolutely no moment to it.

In the second, or adolescent stage, the most important of the individual’s concrete knowledge is obtained—that upon which the basis of judgment rests in after-years. The developing mentality seizes new facts with avidity, and the memory is more keen, potentially, at this stage than at any other. The value of correct associations at this era cannot be over-estimated, as ideas and habits formed in this period cling tenaciously to the individual. So deeply seated do they become that they form a part of what we call, in after-years, our instinct, and upon these memories and the foundation of habits we build our later intuition. Voltaire has somewhere remarked that “Mankind is led more by instinct than by reason,” and his observation is a just one. The acquisition of concrete facts or knowledge, in a specialized form, takes place at a very much more rapid rate at this period than during any other one, and the child’s mind is very plastic, and absorbs information greedily. Nature has so arranged it that at this time, when most is to be learned, learning comes more easily than before or afterwards. In the normal child, the sense of duty begins to make itself felt at this juncture, and while this may be entirely an objective idea, nevertheless, it clearly shows an appreciation of justice in a regard for the rights of others. Coupled with this, there is a satisfaction which comes both from a sense of our knowledge—little though it be—and the feeling that this is being used as a guide to our conduct; a sentiment which Bacon eloquently expresses in his aphorism: “No pleasure is comparable with the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth.” With this realization, life for the first time becomes worth living, and our desire for more knowledge follows directly upon our appreciation of the power which truth gives over our destiny. The grasping and comprehension of this idea by the child is one of the greatest, if not the most important, points to be attained in any educational system. The absorption of abstract facts does not constitute, primarily, any part of an education, as Spencer has so clearly shown; but the implanting of the desire for truth, and the manner in which we should assimilate and use it, does attain the highest aim of any scheme of erudition. It is in this second stage of development that this must be done rudimentally; consequently, compulsory education must be carried at least through this period.

At the beginning of the third subdivision in the life of the individual, we find a peculiar nervous tension, which is invariably an accompaniment of this stage of physical development. The imaginative faculties are enormously stimulated, and, unless directed into the right channels, are sure to work to the eternal harm of both male and female children. They should have been given a general knowledge of their physical peculiarities, previous to this time, by their parents, and should be allowed the companionship of playmates of the opposite sex so long as their characters are not objectionable. These close acquaintances between girls and boys should be fostered and allowed to become friendship, rather than be discouraged and ridiculed, by the parents and guardians, as is so often the case. The polarity of sex will assert itself at this early age, and the boys will strive to appear manly, strong and noble, while the girls, in a less positive sense, perhaps, but in an equally beneficial manner, will attempt to assume the womanly peculiarities of reserved kindliness and sympathy, which has made the female character so lovable and universally admired through all the ages. In this matter of the intersexual association of children, our public school system is usually in error, since, in most towns, the playgrounds of the boys and girls are separated by high fences, and communication is entirely cut off during play times. The association with a large number of individuals of the opposite sex gives the child a broader basis upon which to form a judgment concerning any one, and if taught at the same time to use his mind analytically, will mean a correspondingly high ideal of his own. The ideal of the child is but the selected striking characteristics of his own acquaintances, coalesced into an imaginative being. This ideal is high or low, just as he has been taught to reverence and worship beautiful or unlovely and vile things; but, all conditions being equal, there is no other time in life when the human mind will so readily respond to the pure and noble stimulation of Æstheticism as against the baseness and depravity of unbridled sensuality.

Much has been said concerning the difference in the systems of education and the class of facts to be presented to the male, as distinguished from the female, mind. There can be no doubt that the desired result of education in either case is broadly similar—the fitting of the individual for a useful and happy life. But it does not follow that, because in our present civilization, the woman is necessarily the guardian of the Æsthetic, while the man is engrossed with the practical, that the same set of facts and power of investigation and reason are not just as good a preparation with which to meet the identical world-problems in the one life as in the other. Truth is the same to the boy as to the girl, and the material facts do not change whether faced by one sex or its opposite. Since in our industrial life, we have allowed woman to assume already no mean part, we have more than ever a valid reason for giving her the same course of training in general which we prescribe for her brother. Nor are we speaking of intellectual and moral education alone—but the physical as well—and this in its broadest sense. If we can but stamp indelibly upon the minds of our children that the natural consequences of their actions are the punishments, per se, which they must suffer in person, we have done about all possible toward making their pathways through the world lead at least through negative enjoyment, in place of absolute grief. There must be inculcated a frankness and sincerity into the processes of their mentality, before correct judgment can exist, and, without this, no scheme of education can fulfill its mission. This honesty of character or intro-active integrity is a hard matter to instill into the child, since our methods and actions are very rarely consistent, as Richter, Rousseau, Spencer, and others—in truth, all of our great educational thinkers—have so well realized. The indispensability of this candor and fervor is none the less appreciated, however, owing to the almost insurmountable difficulties attending its procuration. It is just in this connection that intimate friendships with members of both sexes so nicely supplement the work accomplished by parental association, since the restraint certain to come from the authority of the parent or guardian, is unknown as an influence between those equal in age and station in life.

In the use of the beginning of sexual intercourse, as a line of demarcation between periods of human existence, it would seem that a most natural and rational selection were made. As a proof of this, it is but necessary to call to mind the large number of barbaric and semi-civilized peoples who observe some initiatory rites or mysteries connected with the arrival of the individual at puberty or nubility, which with them is, to all intents and purposes, the same as, if not absolutely identical with, the beginning of sexual indulgence. Under our civic law, it is at this time that, through marriage, the human being assumes his full responsibilities, and, by the beginning of an independent family relation, becomes an integral, co-ordinate member of the state. It is at this “stress and storm” period that the real work of life—the fruition of existence—takes place. Beginning with the intimate association with another human being, whose rights and privileges are so interwoven with our own that it is frequently a hard matter to respect them without becoming distant, tolerating the idiosyncrasies, and lauding the virtues, in such a way that the former are diminished, while the latter are increased; trying to anticipate the wants and wishes of the other so that they may be gratified—not for their own satisfaction, primarily, but for our own; seeing the pleasures of sensuality transmuted in the crucible of pain into the gold of a new existence; feeling the supplementary affection and interest, which, for the want of a better name, we call parental love, and, as the offspring grow older, the pride and elation which comes with their achievements; standing at last beside the grave, crushed with grief, raving like Macbeth in despair, or inspired with a transcendental insanity like Richter’s—these all are the vicissitudes of mature human life, when at its best.

But, great and varied as they are, we find them, in fact, very closely fused together; and like all life-processes, they take place at a comparatively slow rate, so that before we are aware, we have arrived at the beginning of senile degeneration.

Prior to the ending of this fourth stage, the education of the individual has been finished, and it depends largely upon the previous mode of living, and the manner of thinking whether he may not remain at his best for a while, or must at once begin the descent, from which there is no return. Fortunate, indeed, is he whose “star remains long bright at the zenith.” Considering now what constitutes an education and the best means of obtaining it, we can profitably review the principles involved. As Spencer has shown, intellectual, moral, and even physical development for the human being must proceed in one direction—call it what we will. There can be no question that the infant, as an individuality, is homogeneous in its ignorance and positive influence; that the first facts which dawn upon its germinating intelligence are concrete and empirical, and that all of its acts are simple, resulting from comparatively simple stimuli. Education, in its broadest sense, is the development, cultivation, and direction of all the natural powers of man, and its purpose should be to fit the individual for a useful and happy life. Education can come only through the acquisition of knowledge, but knowledge can be obtained in two ways. By knowledge, we mean assurance born of conviction, based upon sufficient evidence, that a mental conception corresponds with that which it represents. The primal way of gaining knowledge is by experience, and undoubtedly this is the most satisfactory and thorough in all cases, where the result of such experience is not of such a nature as to potentially lessen the possibilities of the individual for future usefulness and happiness. Where this would occur, or where, for any reason, such as lack of time or opportunity, it cannot be resorted to, the accurately recorded experience of others can be assimilated through the memory and reasoning faculties, and added to the store of knowledge for the mind’s use. In using the second method of acquiring knowledge, we should not only exercise the utmost care in selecting authorities who have a reputation for keenness of perception and truthfulness of narration, but we should not accept their dictum for what seems to be to us contrary to our previous experience, and unsound to our reason and judgment. Unless we are able to follow with our reason their narration of the causes of events, it is of but little avail that we reach their conclusion.

The adoption of the scientific as distinguished from the Aristotelian system of education by the leading teachers of all the Occidental countries within the last century, has been of enormous benefit to the human race. We know now that the first thing to be learned is to maintain the body in as nearly perfect physical condition as possible—since the mind, to a marked degree, reflects the pathological state of the flesh. Consequently, hygiene becomes the fundamental science in the education of the human being, and facts relating thereto should take precedence generally over all others in the priority of time in a youth’s education.

With the habit of health once established, the next matter is to see that those studies which will place the individual in possession of the greatest numbers of facts concerning his physical and mental environments, and which will give him the best training in observation and reasoning, are pursued.

For this, natural science and its accompanying mathematics, are supreme, although enough manual training and domestic science should be included in the curriculum to insure an acquaintance with the matters of everyday life. Human physiology and anatomy, as well as the subject of parenthood, should also have a share of attention commensurate with their importance—and this has long been denied them. Elementary psychology must also have a place even in that course of education which should be made compulsory in every State. A knowledge of the elementary Latin and Greek is also to be desired in those countries whose vernaculars are largely made up from word-roots to be found in these dead languages.

As a matter of amusement and erudition every individual should have some line of work other than that of his daily routine, upon which to devote his spare time, regardless of the educational advantages which he may have had before assuming his responsibilities in the world’s work. This is equally true of woman. However, this should not be done with the intention of winning fame—although that is not impossible, since Newton developed his Calculus in his spare time after hours, while working as a clerk upon a very moderate salary—or attracting the attention of others, but as a means of self-development. Either some particular unsolved problem may be taken hold of, such as the sciences of chemistry, physics, or biology are so replete with, or the subject of literature and belles lettres may be studied most entertainingly and profitably. This class of workers were very much more numerous formerly than at present, owing to the rise of commercialism recently over the whole world, and it is among these that labor for love, rather than for profit, that much of the real accomplishment occurs. From our standpoint, no plan of human existence can be complete, in the highest and best sense of the word, which does not include this phase of life, nor can any scheme of education be comprehensive which does not lead up to it. There is probably no natural law, the knowledge of which is of so much importance to the human race at large, as that commonly known as the law of compensation. How many of the thinking vulgar have for ages repeated the ancient adage: “You cannot have your pie and eat it.” But it has remained for modern science to demonstrate how absolutely true this is, and Emerson only partly stated his case in one of his best essays: “Tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure, love for love. Give and it shall be given to you. Nothing venture, nothing have. Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. Who doth not work, shall not eat. Harm watch, harm catch. Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. Bad council confounds the adviser. ‘What will you have?’ quoth God; ‘pay for it and take it.’” It is one of the largest parts of any education, yea, it is the major, to know that you must pay for what you get in life whether you will or no, and that you are forced constantly to bargain and barter what you have for what you have not, and it is imperative that you see that you get something which you really want, and which will add to your happiness. And, in spite of yourself, you will get what you really want, for you can’t help it; but for it you will have to pay out something, as you are doing all the time. Be sure to get something back of value, let your ideals be high, choose the thing which will give you the most happiness, but, remember, that you must pay its price. It is the sudden realization of the law of compensation, held possibly to an untenable extreme, that accounts for the recent rapid proselyting of the Christian Science cult.