The education of the American citizen

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THE EDUCATION OF THE
AMERICAN CITIZEN

THE EDUCATION
THE AMERICAN CtTffi&N

BY

ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY

President of Yale University

AUTHOR OF "economics: AN ACCOUNT OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND PUBLIC WELFARE," " RAILROAD

TRANSPORTATION: ITS HISTORY AND ITS LAWS"

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1901

H3h'

f » * f J* • •

Copyright, 1901,
By Yale University

Published, September, tqoi

UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S. A.

PEEFACE

In many of the political writings of the day, there is
a tendency to lay too much stress on the mechanism of
government and of industry, and too little stress on the
force by which this mechanism is kept at work. In
recent educational movements, also, too much thought
is perhaps given to the problem of preparing men and
women to take their several places in a social machine,
and too little to the development of that power and spirit
upon which the perpetuation of our whole social order
depends.

From my public addresses and magazine articles of
the past few years, I have tried to select those which
emphasize the more neglected side of these questions, and
to arrange them in a continuous series. In a book thus
prepared, it is inevitable that there should be some repe-
tition and some apparent inconsistencies. If the reader
is perplexed by any of these things, he will perhaps find
the explanation in the date of the different utterances
and the special conditions under which they were made
public.

No sharp line can be drawn between those papers
which are political and those which are educational. It
is becoming evident that the really difi&cult political

vii

PREFACE

problems of the day can be solved only by an educational
process. Not by the axioms of metaphysics on the one
hand, nor by the machinery of legislation on the other,
can we deal with the questions which vex human society.
We must rely on personal character; and as new diffi-
culties arise, we must develop our standard of character
to meet them. It is also becoming evident that the real
test of an educational system lies in its training of the
citizen to meet political exigencies. If it accomplishes
this result, it is fundamentally good, whatever else it
may leave imdone; if it fails at this cardinal point, no
amount of excellence in other directions can save it from
condemnation.

This book is offered to the public in the hope that it
may contribute something to the understanding of our
political needs, to the growth of a public sentiment
which shall give us power to meet those needs, and to
the development of those educational methods which
shall make for an increase of such power in the years
which are to come.

Tale University, New Haven,
April, 1901.

VIU

CONTENTS

Page
THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY . 1
An Address delivered before The New England Soci-
ety of New York City, December 22, 1900.

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY . . 6
An Address delivered before the Convocation of the
University of Chicago, January 2, 1900.

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 17

An Address delivered at the Charter Day Exercises
of the University of California, March 23, 1901.

THE FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS . . 34

Scribner's Magazine, November, 1899.

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 61

Forum, October, 1894.

THE RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND POLI-
TICS 64

Opening Address at the meeting of the American Eco-
nomic Association, New Haven, December 27, 1898.

ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 88

Opening Address at the meeting of the American Eco-
nomic Association, Ithaca, December 27, 1899.

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 100

Yale Review, November, 1892 ; February, 1893.
ix

CONTENTS

Paob
POLITICAL EDUCATION 135

An Address delivered at the celebration of Founders'
Day, Vassar College, April 27, 1900.

THE RELATION BETWEEN HIGHER EDUCATION

AND THE PUBLIC WELFARE 160

An Address delivered before the Connecticut State
Board of Agriculture, December 11, 1900.

THE DIRECTION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
DEVELOPMENT 161

An Address delivered at the Twenty-fifth Anniversary
of the Founding of Vanderbilt University, October
23, 1900.

FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN SCHOOL EDU-
CATION 175

An Address delivered before a meeting of teachers at
Norfolk, Connecticut, November 20, 1900.

THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS . . 191
A Paper read before the Department of Superinten-
dence, National Educational Association, February
26, 1901.

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT .... 210
Inaugural Address as President of Yale University,
October 18, 1899.

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN
CITIZEN

THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY

It sometimes happens that the meaning of a great
anniversary is for a time partly lost; and then found
once more, when some renewal of the old conditions
arises, and it becomes an inspiration for the present
as well as a remembrance of the past. Such was the
fate of the birthday of our national independence.
During the first half of the nineteenth century the
celebration of the Fourth of July grew more and
more perfunctory. To those who knew not what it
meant to fight for an idea, the memory of Revolu-
tionary heroes became obscured; their principles be-
came mere phrases, from which the vital substance
had gone out. But under the stress of another great
war, with the new emotions which it excited, this an-
niversary at once rose into something more than an
empty form of commemoration of the dead, and made
itself an occasion of patriotism in the living.

So it has been, to some extent, with Forefathers'
Day, and the annual celebrations which attend it. There
has been at times a somewhat perfunctory character in
our remembrance of the Puritan, both of the old England
and of the new. Although we have not ceased to render
him gratitude for the hardships which he bore in order
that his descendants might live a hfe of freedom, we
have in some measure lost personal contact with the
I 1

'THE '^U'CATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

** * ihW Und' iiridferstanding of what he really was. By
nine persons out of ten, the Puritans of the seven-
teenth century are remembered chiefly for the pattern
of their clothes or the phraseology of their creeds;
and even the tenth man who really goes below the
surface often lays wrong emphasis on the different parts
of their activity, and fails to understand the tru6 reason
of their power. He thinks of the Puritan not so much
for what he did as for what he refused to do and forbade
others to do; as one who held himself aloof from the
joys of life and apart from the sympathies of humanity.

Not in such restrictions and refusals was the strength
of the Puritan character founded. Not by any such
negative virtue did he conquer the world. The true
Puritan was intensely human — a man who " ate when
he was hungry, and drank when he was thirsty ; loved
his friends and hated his enemies." If he submitted to
self-imposed hardships, and practised abstention where
others allowed themselves latitude, it was not because
he had less range of interest than his fellows, but be-
cause he had more range. He did these things as a
means to an end. His thoughts went beyond the limits
of the single day or the single island. He was a man
who considered power as more than possession, princi-
ples as better than acquirements, pubhc duty as para^
mount to personal allegiance. He regarded himself as
part of a universe under God's government. For the
joy of taking his place in that government he steeled
himself to a temper which spared not his own body nor
that of others. His life, with all its powers, was held in
trust. To the fulfilment of this trust he subordinated
all considerations of personal pleasure.

Men are always divided more or less clearly into two
types, — those who recognize this character of life as a

2

THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

trust, and those who fail to recognize it. But not in all
ages and in all countries does the distinction between
the two types manifest itself sharply in historic action.
Often the range of possible interests is so small, and the
conduct of life so bound down by conventions, that the
man who would pursue pleasure finds no opportunity for
adventure, nor does the man who is ready to accept large
trusts find occasion for their exercise. But in England,
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the dis-
covery of new worlds abroad and the development of
new problems at home gave opportunity for this diver-
gence of character to show itself to the utmost. The
explorer who journeyed for adventure or for gain was
differentiated from him who journeyed for freedom's
sake. The citizen who was ready to seek his fullest en-
joyment in the old pohtical order was separated from
him who would hazard that enjoyment for what he be-
lieved to be eternal principles of human government. It
was because England had men of the latter type that her
subsequent progress as a free nation has been realized.
It was the Puritan who, by subjecting his power and
his love of Ufe to self-imposed restraints, made freedom
possible in two hemispheres.

Once more we are come to a similar parting of the
ways. The close of the nineteenth century has wit-
nessed an expansion of the geographical boundaries of
men's interests comparable only to that which came three
hundred years earlier, in the days of Queen Elizabeth.
It is for the next generation to decide how these new
fields shaU be occupied. Shall it be to gratify ambition,
commercial and political? or shall it be to exercise a
trust which has been given us for the advancement of
the human race ? Shall we enter upon our new posses-
sions in the spirit of the adventurer, or in the spirit of

3

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

the Puritan ? The conflict between these two views will
be the really important issue in the complex maze of
international relations during the half-century which is
to come. The outcome of this conflict is likely to
determine the course of the world's history for ages
thereafter.

Nor is it in international politics and in problems of
colonization alone that this issue is arising between those
who regard the world as a field for pleasure and those
who regard it as a place for the exercise of a trust. The
development of modem industry has placed the alter-
native even more sharply before us in the ordering of
our life at home. The day is past when the automatic
action of self-interest could be trusted to regulate prices,
or when a few simple principles of commercial law, if
properly applied, secured the exercise of justice in matters
of trade. The growth of large industries and of large
fortunes enables those who use them rightly to do the
public much better service than was possible in ages
previous. It also permits those who use them wrongly
to render the public correspondingly greater injury. No
system of legislation is likely to meet this difficulty.
The outcome depends on the character of the people. Is
our business to be dominated by the spirit of the adven-
turer, or by the spirit of the Puritan ? Shall we regard
wealth as a means of enjoyment and commercial power
as a plaything to be used in the game of personal
ambition? or shall we treat the fortimes which come
into our hands as a trust to be exercised for the benefit
of the people, rigidly abstaining from its abuse our-
selves, and unsparingly refusing to associate with others
who abuse it? No American has a right to claim a
share in the glory of the Pilgrim Fathers if he has any
doubt concerning his answer. Let us throw ourselves,

4

THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

heart and soul, on that side of the industrial question
which proves us worthy of Puritan ancestry, — the side
which regards wealth as a trust, to be used in behalf of
the whole people and m the furtherance of the purposes
of God's government.

Abroad and at home the issue is defining itseK. We
have the chance to prove whence we are sprung. We
cannot add to the glory of those whose deeds we cele-
brate ; but we can help to carry their work one historic
step farther toward its accomplishment. In the words
of Abraham Lincoln, — no less appropriate now than in
the day when they were first spoken at Gettysburg, —
" It is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining
before us; that from these honored dead we take in-
creased devotion to that cause to which they gave the
last full measure of devotion; that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free-
dom ; that government of the people, by the people, and
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL
MORALITY

An unusually well-informed foreign critic — Mr. Muir-
head, whose character as a dispassionate observer is weU
attested by the fact that he has written several of Baede-
ker's handbooks — has recently pubHshed the opinion
that the standard of personal morality in America is
decidedly higher than in England, that of commercial
morality probably a little lower, and that of pohtical
morality quite distinctly lower. His statement, thus
formulated, undoubtedly represents a consensus of
opinion of well-informed observers on both sides of the
Atlantic. The causes for this condition of things de-
mand serious attention. A failure to carry into politics
the same kind of ethical standard which is apphed in
matters of personal morals imphes, as a rule, that there
is something in a people's political conditions to whose
understanding it has not fully grown up. Such a failure
implies a defect in public judgment rather than a weak-
ness in individual character. It indicates that we do not
know what virtues must be exercised for the maintenance
of organized society as weU as we know what virtues are
necessary to the harmonious living of individuals among
their neighbors.

The difference between standards of political morality
and of personal morality attracted attention even in the
days of Plato and Aristotle. From that time onward

6

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY

every moralist who has really studied the subject has
recognized that there were certain distinctive political
virtues, elements superlatively necessary in the conduct
of a good ruler or member of the ruling class, which
may be relatively less important in matters outside the
sphere of politics. What is to be regarded as par excel-
lence the virtue of the ruler and the freeman is a ques-
tion which is answered differently in different stages of
society. In the earliest developments of civilization
stress is chiefly laid on courage which can maintain
authority; in a later stage greater importance is atn
tached to the habit of self-restraint which will submit to
the authority of a general code of law ; while in a still
later development at least equal prominence must be
given to public spirit, which will use for a collective or
unselfish end the measure of authority bestowed on each
individual. American society has witnessed the passage
from the first stage to the second ; much must be done
before we have attained to the third.

In the beginnings of civilization the virtue of courage
is a necessary prerequisite for any and all government.
When people so far emerge from superstition that they
come to distrust the authority of the old priesthood,
a strong and fearless hand is needed to create a recog-
nized police authority which can repress license and
disorder. Whoever has this courage will have the
authority in his hands; for without it there is no
authority at all. If it is possessed by but few, we shall
have an oligarchy; the more widely it is diffused the
more nearly shall we approach democracy. So indis-
pensable is such courage to the maintenance of social
order, that society in its early stages will condone in the
possessors of courage and fighting efficiency the want of
many other virtues ; will let them vindicate the majesty

7

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

of the law by hanging the wrong man if the right man
is not to be found ; will let them assert their authority
to make laws by an assumption of an authority in their
own person to break the laws which they have made ;
and will despise or suppress the " base mechanical " who
would protest against this arbitrary infraction of legal
principle.

But the " base mechanicals," thus unceremoniously
despised in a nation's beginnings, prove a necessity for
its progress beyond those beginnings. The State, as
Aristotle says, having begun as a means of making life
possible, continues as a means of making life prosperous.
When once the necessary basis of authority is established,
that authority becomes with each generation more im-
partial and more absolute, protecting the laborer as weU
as the soldier or politician. The brave citizen can in
these later generations best serve the cause of his
country, not by an excess of personal zeal in chastising
those who do him wrong, but by a readiness to submit
his claims to the arbitrament of tribunals which have
been established for the determination of justice. Forti-
tudo gives place to temperantia as the characteristic
virtue of the freeman. This change is manifest in every
department of human activity as soon as it advances
beyond a certain rudimentary stage. Fighting ceases to
be a matter of personal courage, and becomes a matter
of discipline, so that the ideal soldier is no longer the
leader of a cavalry charge, but the organizer of victory,
who can give and take orders as part of a larger whole.
Success in business is no longer the perquisite of the
venturesome trader who starts on a voyage of explorar
tion, but of the painstaking merchant who understands
the laws of supply and demand, and can regulate his
conduct by those laws. In short, the whole feudal

8

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY

organization of society, where authority rests on courage
and obedience is rendered in return for personal pro-
tection, gives place to a newer and larger order, where
the authority of permanent principles is recognized as
superior to that of any individual, however courageous,
and where obedience is no badge of servitude, but a duty
which rests on every law-abiding citizen.

Through these two stages, which it has taken Europe
centuries to accomplish, America has been passing in a
comparatively brief period. First we have had the
lawless frontier community, where men have such
rights as they can defend with their own revolvers;
where in case of emergency the vigilante, who takes
the law into his own hands, is the most necessary of
citizens ; where the necessity for the presence of Judge
Lynch is so sharply recognized that his occasional mis-
takes are condoned; and where absence of power to
insist on one's own rights is almost as bad as having
no rights at all. With the necessity for more regular
investment and employment of capital and the estab-
lishment of the police authority which is coincident
with that employment, the virtues and vices of the
frontiersman pass out of political prominence, and we
reach a stage where the standard of social success is
found in playing with keenness the games of commerce
and of politics ; where every man is expected to submit
to the law of which he becomes a part ; but where, as
long as he keeps within the rules set by that law, all
things are condoned which do not pass that line of
meanness or violent immorality which disqualifies a
man from associating personally with his fellow-men.

The suddenness of the change has been attended with
all the exaggeration to which sudden social movements
are liable. In Europe the men who exercised authority

9

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

in virtue of their courage were only gradually displaced
by those who did so in virtue of their astuteness. The
earlier standard of military virtue as a qualification
for social distinction persisted long after it had ceased
to be the main requisite for success in business and in
politics, or even in war itself. Traditions as to the use
of wealth which had survived from earlier times exer-
cised a potent influence even upon those who had
amassed that wealth by the methods peculiar to later
ones. A man who would have that standing in the
community which for most men is the chief object of
ambition was compelled to pay his respects to tlie past
no less than to the present. In America the case was
different. The flood of industrial settlement swept so
rapidly into the districts which but a short time before
had been the habitat of the miner or the ranclunan that
it obliterated as with a sponge the traces of the social
order of a ruder time. Unhampered by precedent, each
man set out to make his fortune in a world where all
were from one standpoint peaceful citizens and from
another absolute adventurers. Life in the half-settled
communities of the United States became a game in
a sense which it perhaps never had been before; a
game played by a series of accepted rules, and where
no tradition or code of etiquette not incorporated in
the rules counted for anything at all. The result has
been an exaltation of the principles pecuhar to one
stage of the world's history to an unquestioned su-
premacy which they have elsewhere sought in vain.

As long as the conditions remained which gave birth
to this state of things — free land, abundance of oppor-
tunities, a body of men possessed of physical and mental
soundness, and starting to play the game with approxi-
mately equal chances — so long did the moral and pohti-

10

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY

cal standards which were based upon these conditions
prove themselves tolerably adequate for the purpose in
hand. They might be criticised by outside observers as
incomplete, wanting in background, crude, perhaps repul-
sive ; but they at least enabled a vast social machine to be
run with a great deal of aggregate happiness and with
less glaring violation of justice than had been exemplified
in any other machine to which the critics could point.

With a change in conditions this degree of success was
less fully assured. And this change has already come
about. Organization in business, in local politics, and
in national politics has brought with it an inequality
of opportunity and an unfairness of conditions under
which the game of life is played. Competitive business
is giving place to trusts. The town meeting has been
supplanted by the organized municipality. The old
federation of States, with its strong traditions of home
rule, has become a centralized nation, reaching out be-
yond its old borders to rule over other nations less
civilized than itself.

Under these circumstances it becomes impossible for
the community to rest complacently in that egoistic
morality which seemed sufficient for the needs of a
generation earlier. We can no longer rely on competi-
tion to protect the consumers against abuse when in-
dustry has become so highly organized that all production
is centralized in the control of a single body. It is no
longer true, in the sense that it was true fifty years ago,
that each man may be left free to manage his own busi-
ness, and that the community will find its work best
done as a consequence of such freedom. Commerce and
industry are no longer to be regarded as games where
we have nothing to do but to applaud the most skilful
player when he wins, and rest in the assurance that his

11

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

triumph is in line with the best interests of the com-
munity as a whole. What once was regarded as a game
has now become a trust; not merely in the superficial
and accidental sense in which the name "trust" is
applied to all large combinations of capital, but in a
profounder sense, as a public function intrusted to those
who control large capital which they can exercise well
or ill at their pleasure, without adequate restraint from
any quarter. Where competition is thus become a
remote contingency, and where law is almost necessarily
inadequate unless it be made so strict as to forbid the
good no less than the evil in private business enterprise,
a new system of ethics is a matter of vital necessity for
the American people. This new system must not regard
the director as an individual pursuing private business
of his own. It must not allow him to resent the sugges-
tion that he shall conduct this business unselfishly. It
must regard him as having moral responsibilities to his
stockholders, to his workingmen, and to the consumers
that purchase his goods or his services. In the absence
of such an ethical advance, no political or legal solution
of the so-called trust problem is likely to be effective.
Demagogues will continue to meet it with prohibitions
which do not prohibit. Visionaries will attempt to
limit its abuses by semi-socialistic measures that are
readily evaded. But each of these classes will tend to
perpetuate the evils which it is trjdng to check. They
are attempting to reform by improved legal machinery
matters for which there can be no real remedy without
improved commercial morality.

Nor are we better protected against the abuses of
public trusts than against those of private ones. Our
old-fashioned methods of representative government
have not proved adequate to guard us against the evils

12

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY

incident to the working of administrative machinery in
our cities, our States, and our country as a whole. In old
times legislatures were regarded chiefly as fields for
debate between the champions of different interests. A
representative assembly, whose members came from dif-
ferent districts, was admirably adapted to secure this
end. The presence of men from every locality was
sufficient protection against the adoption of measures
through ignorance of the needs of the several sections
to prevent that which would result in unfair sacrifices.
But with the substitution of the work of actual govern-
ment for that of discussion, the representative assembly
no longer proves equally weU adapted for our purposes.
It becomes an arena for contests between conflicting
claims, rather than for the interchange and reconciliation
of differing views. It becomes a field where political
organization can exercise its fullest sway ; a field where
the self-interest of the several parts, instead of becom-
ing a means for the promotion of the welfare of the
whole, becomes too often a means toward its spoliation.
With the increasing scale on which public business is
now conducted, it has undergone a change analogous
to that which we see in private business. It has become
a trust in a deeper sense than it was a generation or two
ago. A wider discretionary power for good or ill is
placed in the hands of those by whom the public affairs
of the city or State are conducted. These affairs wiU
not be safe while politics is regarded as a game, any
more than private interests are safe while commerce
is regarded as a game. Nor can they be made safe by
any constitutional machinery, however well devised,
unless we have the right kind of public sentiment
behind it. A moderate degree of reform is indeed
possible by fixing the responsibility in the hands of

13

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

a single person instead of dividing it among so many
as to neutralize at once the power for good and the
accountability for evil. But this change, however salu-
tary and even necessary in the conduct of municipal
or State business, is far from meeting the whole evil.
Until there is a fundamental reform in the code of
political ethics which the community imposes upon its
members, public trusts wiU be no more adequately
controlled than private ones. Nay, they are likely to be
even less adequately controlled; because a public offi-
cial, holding his power as a tool of a ring and acknowl-
edging no allegiance to standards higher than those
which have made his organization successful, is as a
rule more firmly intrenched in authority than the
representative of any private corporation, however ex-
tensive and powerful. Until a change of ethical ideas
is effected, the socialistic ideal of reforming abuse of
private trust by the substitution of public trust will be
but a substitution of one set of masters for another.

If this difficulty is felt in internal affairs, where those
who suffer are at any rate citizens and men of action,
with the power to make their protests heard even where
they cannot make their resistance successful, much worse
will it be in dealing with colonies and dependencies.
The history of our Indian relations has proved how
much real immorality may characterize the public deal-
ings of a people who in their private dealings with one
another are habitually honest and straightforward.
Whenever we govern a race so inferior that it is not, and
in the nature of things cannot be, adequately represented
in our councils, one of two things must happen : either
it will be left a victim of the most unscrupulous office-
holders — as in the case aUuded to — or it will be cham-
pioned by disinterested men, not as a means for their own

14

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY

political success, but as a duty which they owe to their
own moral natures. Under an imperialistic policy our
government cannot remain what it was. It must grow
either worse or better. It cannot remain a game, in
which the struggle for success is as far as possible
dissociated from the moral sense of the participants. It
will involve either a direct breach of trust or a direct
acceptance of trust.

Our own experience with problems other than these,
and the experience of England with this particular
problem, both warrant us in the belief that we shall
move toward a better solution rather than toward a
worse. England's first political dealings in India were
characterized by methods totally indefensible. The
career of Warren Hastings is an example of how a
really great man may be infected by a disordered public
morality. But the very powerlessness of India to pro-
tect itself against official abuse brought home to the
English mind the fact that public unmorality meant
pubhc immorality. We need not go so far as to assert
that the reform of the English civil service and the
purification of English pohtics were the results of ex-
periences in India and the colonies. This is a dis-
puted point. But we can at any rate see that the very
weakness of England's dependencies has compelled the
young men of England, as they go out into official
duties in these lands, to adopt the position of pro-
tectors, and the responsibihty which attaches to such a
relation, rather than the position of adventurers who
seek their fortunes in the opportunity of personal gain.
The development of this mental attitude was in some
respects less difficult in England than it will be in
America, because there was in England a survival of
certain traditions from the earher mihtary age of society

15

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

which made social success depend far more upon the
acceptance of responsibility than upon the achievement
of eminence in business or in politics. Yet in spite of
this difference, we may look forward to the future with
confidence. A country like ours, which has in so many
of its parts passed in a single generation from the law-
lessness of frontier life to the legality of organized
commerce, may readily, in a generation more, pass from
a conception of public duty that is bounded by legality
alone to one which is inspired by a sense of moral obli-
gation; and learn to carry into the conduct of pubhc
affairs those principles and sentiments which we recog-
nize as binding upon the individual in his private deal-
ings with his fellow-men.

le

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

Theee are two quite distinct theories of democratic
government, — the individualistic and the sociaUstic. The
former relies mainly on the self-interest of the various
citizens, acting independently, as a means of determining
and promoting the general welfare. The latter relies
mainly on the votes of those citizens acting as a body.
The individuahst believes that the selfish conduct of
each man and woman, if properly enlightened and sub-
jected to a certain necessary minimimi of restraint, can
be trusted to work out results which will conduce to
the good of the body poHtic. The socialist beheves that
this good must be sought by the collective action of the
people ; and that the machinery of government, by giving
effect to those measures which, after proper discussion,
the majority of the people beheve to be desirable, is the
agency on which we must place our chief confidence for
the solution of political and industrial problems.

Most thoughtful men would agree that neither of these
theories has proved wholly satisfactory.

Of the individuahstic theory, this is now quite univer-
sally admitted. Even those who emphasize most clearly
what self-interest has done for political and industrial
progress are compelled to recognize that it will not do
everything. Its successes have been great, but they
have not been unmixed with failures. It is a powerful
stimulant, but it is by no means that panacea for social
2 17

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

ills which so many economists and moralists have con-
sidered, it. The exalted hopes of the individualistic
philosophers during the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury have been followed during the second half by a
correspondingly depressing reaction.

Down to the beginning of that century, business had
been hedged about by a multitude of restrictions which
had been thought necessary for the general good. The
removal of these restrictions proved to be of great benefit.
By giving a man, as far as possible, the right to enjoy
what he produced, we furnished him the best motive to
work. We were thus able to dispense with the necessity
of serfdom, and obtained much more effective service
under free labor than ever was possible under compul-
sion. By guaranteeing a man the right to the un-
hampered use of what he possessed, we stimulated the
accumulation of capital, and thus developed new methods
of production which helped the community even more
than they enriched the individual possessor. We were
able to arrange a system of competition which prevented
trade from degenerating into a %ht between buyer and
seller, and utilized it as a means of mutual advantage.
The institution of private property was thus made a
vast machine for turning self-interest to the service of
the body politic. The literature of political economy, in
the hands of Adam Smith and his successors, was occu-
pied with developing the advantages of economic free-
dom ; in other words, with showing how the enlightened
selfishness of each individual could be made to contribute
to the good of others as well as of himself.

Nor have these theories been confined to the field of
economics. Outside of the realm of business, we have been
developing a set of moral precepts based on enlightened
selfishness. Instead of compelling the people to obey

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

laws because they were imposed by a superior authority,
we have striven to show that they have a personal inter-
est in obeying such laws — that by a violation of pubhc
advantage they will in the long run hurt themselves
scarcely less than they hurt others. Not a few writers
have gone so far as to proclaim that this is the only
rational basis of social obhgations, and that the attempt
to impose any other theory upon a democratic commun-
ity is an insult to its intelligence.

The restrictions contained in the old systems of class
legislation, both on business and on personal conduct,
had been so arbitrary that their abohtion was of itself
an improvement ; and a moderately enlightened degree
of self-interest could hardly fail of producing better
business and better conduct. But as matters have ad-
vanced farther, we see that the consequences of this
freedom, though preferable to the system which they
superseded, are not in every respect ideal. What might
result if all men were sufficiently intelligent to work
them out to the best advantage is a doubtful question,
which I shall not attempt to discuss. What does result,
under the existing degree of inteUigence, is a mixture of
good and evil, better than that which existed a century
ago, but far short of anything with which we can rest sat-
isfied. Even in the field of economics we have learned
that the coincidence of private interest and public inter-
est cannot be made complete. However much we may
preach the blessings of competition, we find that there
are many cases in which competition will not work.
However warmly we may champion the benefits of free
labor and free capital, we reach a stage of development
where the one cannot be obtained without considerable
sacrifice of the other. We have come to a point where
we regard the principles of political economy in their

19

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

true light, as a valuable scientific discovery, but not in
their false light, as a cure for every industrial wrong.

The failure of the socialistic principle of government
by the will of the majority is less universally admitted.
The theory seems so plausible that people are inclined to
overlook its historical fallacies and its practical failures.
Modem democracy has in its hands a vast political
machinery, the legacy left by the monarchical or aristo-
cratic systems of government which it has superseded.
The social democrats beheve that by the use of this
machinery the voters can obtain all the benefits which
the older systems enjoyed in the way of coherent power ;
and that they can at the same time avoid the perver-
sion of that power to destroy personal liberty, because
authority is now vested in the whole body of citizens
instead of in a single class.

But the power for good, thus held by modem democ-
racy, is in some respects more apparent than real. The
machinery of government is a vast and complex thing,
but it is not one which will run itself. It has to have
force behind it. In a monarchy or an aristocracy it is
easy to see where the force comes from. It is based on
the superior military strength of a single individual or a
single class. Where one man was pre-eminent above all
others in his fighting power, he had the means of making
his will respected at home no less than it was feared
abroad. This state of things was seen in Homeric soci-
ety. When Hector fell, all the Trojans ran; when
Achilles fell, all the Greeks ran. It was a necessary
consequence that the affairs of the home government
were chiefly ordered by men like Hector and Achilles,
in the interests of the famiUes which they represented.
Where military power was somewhat more widely dif-
fused, there was a similar widening of political privi-

20

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

leges. This was seen in the earlier days of the Roman
republic. It was seen on a still larger scale in medisevaJl
Europe under the feudal system. In either case we had
an order arranged chiefly for the benefit of the knights,
who possessed the monopoly of fighting strength. Aris-
tocratic government was an engine for keeping each man
in his place in a social order of this kind. The selfish
interest of the aristocracy formed at once the support
and the danger of such an order. It was a support,
because it made the government effective; it was a
menace, because it insured its perversion in favor of a
single class.

The invention of gunpowder, and the other changes
in military tactics, which made larger armies imperative,
put an end to the monopoly of power which the knights
had previously enjoyed. Democracy was an almost
necessary consequence of this change. The growth of
democratic government, with its system of general elec-
tions, put an end to the possibility of reserving all polite
ical privileges for a single group. This is everywhere
recognized. An equally important consequence, how-
ever, which is not everywhere recognized, is that it
did away with much of the force which the older gov-
ernments had behind them. Except in those grave crises
when a wave of patriotism sweeps over the community,
the support on which a democratic government rehes
is spasmodic and accidental. No man except the profes-
sional politician feels that the government is being run
in his particular interest. On none, therefore, except
the professional politician can it rely for continuous
activity in giving effect to its decrees.

Yet more serious than this absence of compelling force
behind a democratic government, as compared with an
aristocratic or monarchical one, is the absence of conti-

21

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

nuity of policy and tenacity of purpose. A small group
of men knows what it wants. It pursues common in-
terests, and it has the power to pursue them with an
unwavering fidelity. We see this advantage illustrated
when we compare the diplomacy of Russia, which is
managed by a few men, with the diplomacy of England,
which is under the control of a great many men. The
diplomacy of Russia is steady in its purpose, ready to
wait when waiting is needed, quick to strike when
promptness is imperative; and it is intrusted, from be-
ginning to end, to the hands of acknowledged experts.
The diplomacy of England is, by contrast, vacillating of
purpose, impatient of necessary delays, unready in the
moment of action, and handled by men who are chosen
for reasons not wholly connected with fitness for their
work. What is true of England in this respect is in
even larger measure true of the United States. And
thus it happens that Russia, in spite of the inferior
intelligence of her inhabitants and the lesser material
resources at her command, is in a position to pursue
diplomatic aims more surely and successfully than her
rivals. If this condition shows itself in a field so re-
stricted in its character as that of diplomacy, where the
patriotism of the several countries enlists their inhabi-
tants in a common cause, what must we expect when the
same difference of method is applied to the whole field of
domestic administration, whose purposes are infinitely
complex, and in which the interests involved are diver-
gent and antagonistic ?

In the face of these difficulties, it is obvious that
democratic government, to be successful in what it un-
dertakes, should be managed with great caution. With
the inevitable changes of purpose due to the differing
results of successive elections, it should confine its

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

undertakings to those matters of policy which have been
thoroughly discussed and have pre-eminently commended
themselves to the whole people. With the deficiency of
physical force for carrying its decrees into effect, it
should endeavor to restrict its action to those fields
where there is a sufficient consensus of opinion and a
degree of acquiescence on the part of the minority which
will render a preponderance of force unnecessary. But
this caution is by no means characteristic of modem
popular governments. " The new democracy," to quote
the words of Lord Farrer, "is passionately benevolent,
and passionately fond of power." Conscious of its
honesty of purpose, it is impatient of opposition, and
contemptuous of difficulties, however real. It under-
takes a vast amount of regulation of economic and social
Ufe in fields where two generations ago a free govern-
ment would scarce have dared to enter. In these new
regulations there are many instances of failure, and rela-
tively few of success. We have had much infringement
of personal liberty, with little or no corresponding benefit
to the community. Prohibitory laws applied to places
where there was no pubUc sentiment behind them have
proved a mockery. Anti-trust acts have been so system-
atically evaded that they have degenerated into a means
of blackmail ; and they have often been so injudiciously
drawn that their enforcement would have paralyzed the
industry of the community. There is no need to con-
tinue the catalogue of appropriation bills and currency
bills, and tax bills and labor bills, often devised with the
best of intents of coercing the wicked, but ending in
nothing except evasion and inconvenience.

Nor is it really possible that most of them should end
otherwise. A statute passed by a majority and in the
face of a reluctant minority does not represent the will

23

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

of the people. It is legislation in favor of one class,
wliich happens at the moment, through causes which
may be good or bad, to control a greater number of votes
at the polls, and against another class which can control
a less number. Absolute majority rule, so far as it is
really carried into effect, means tyrannical power in the
hands of a weak and vacillating sovereign. There is a
"curious poHtical superstition," to quote the phrase of
Herbert Spencer, that such rule by majorities was a
fundamental theory of those men whose work at the
close of the last century emancipated America and
Europe from the bonds of the aristocratic system. But
history gives no warrant for this behef. Rousseau
himself, the father of modern democracy, is explicit in
sajdng that the wish or vote of a majority does not neces-
sarily represent the will of the people. The Constitution
of the United States, far from sanctioning unlimited
rights of the majority against the minority, is filled from
beginning to end with restrictions upon the exercise of
such rights, — restrictions devised in the interest of per-
sonal liberty. The Constitution indeed provides for elec-
tions to decide who shall govern us ; but it in no wise
encourages the intrusion of the oflScials thus elected into
those fields of legislation where class and personal inter-
ests are arrayed one against the other.

Political aristocracy being a thing of the past, self-
interest an inadequate support for political order, and
over-legislation an evil worse than that which it under-
takes to cure, I believe that we have but one alternative
before us if we would preserve our integrity as a nation.
"We must go back to the principle that a just govern-
ment is based on the consent of the governed. Without
that consent we have tyranny, even though the govern-
ing body possesses for the moment a majority at the

24

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

polls. Without that consent we can have neither self-
government nor freedom in its true sense. To maintain
such freedom we must accept the principle of govern-
ment by pubUc sentiment.

This is a phrase which is often used, and almost as
often ridiculed. The men who are engaged in what they
call practical politics regard moral ideas in this field as
a matter of slight importance, except in those rare
national crises when the pubhc is thoroughly roused.
They say that for every instance of failure of legislation
without pubhc sentiment behind it you can give at least
as glaring an instance of failure of public sentiment
without legislative and administrative machinery to
support it. They hold, in short, that government by
moral ideas will not work.

I believe that this view, though widely held, rests on
a misconception of what public sentiment really is.

Whenever a large number of people want a thing we
hear it said that there is a pubhc sentiment in its favor.
This is not necessarily true. Even the fact that a
majority may be wilHng to vote for a measure does not
prove that it has this basis. The desire may be simply
the outcome of widespread personal interest, and may
not deserve in any sense the name of pubHc sentiment or
pubhc spirit. Take the whole matter of anti-trust legis-
lation. Most people object to trusts. Why? Largely
because they do not own them. If a man really beheves
that a trust is a bad thing and would refuse to coun-
tenance its pursuits if he were given a majority interest
in its stock, he can fairly dignify his spirit of opposition
to trusts by the title of pubhc sentiment. And it may be
added that if things are done by trusts or by any other
forms of economic organization which arouse this sort of
disinterested opposition, they speedily work their own

26

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

cure. If a considerable number of influential men see
the pernicious effects of a business practice sufficiently
to condemn it in themselves as well as in others, they
can speedily restrict, if they cannot wholly prevent, its
continuance. Most of the effective control of combina-
tions of capital has been in fact brought about by intel-
ligent public opinion slowly acting in this way. If,
however, the critic is doing on a small scale what the
trust is practising on a large scale; if he is making
every effort to sell his goods for as high prices as pos-
sible, not being over-scrupulous as to the means by
which this is brought about ; if he in his own way tries
to monopolize his market as the ill-managed trusts mo-
nopolize theirs ; if, in short, he simply complains of the
practices of the trusts because he is at the wrong end of
certain important transactions, and becomes their victim
instead of their beneficiary, then his words count for
nothing. No matter how many thousands of men there
may be in his position, their aggregate work is not likely
to reach farther than the passage of a certain amount of
ill-considered and inoperative legislation. Take another
instance from similar ground, — that of the silver move-
ment. Here the matter was more complex. A certain
amount of agitation in favor of silver was based on a
real feeling that gold had appreciated, and that this pro-
duced an unfairness which was repugnant to tiie moral
sense of the community. So far as this state of feeling
existed the agitation had real strength, independent of
the question whether the facts which gave rise to this
feeling were rightly or wrongly interpreted. But at least
an equally large part of the silver movement was based,
not on the feeling that the exclusive use of gold hurt
the public, but on the argument that it hurt certain
individuals. When people were therefore urged to

26

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

vote for a change, not because one kind of money was
better for the public than another, but because it was
better for them as individuals to pay their debts in
cheap money, then the sUver agitation became an appeal
to class interests which could command no power except
that which was represented by the votes of the class in
question. This does not mean that the appeal to class
interests was any less marked on the other side ; but it
means that even if the movement had been successful,
the resulting laws would probably have been inoperative
in practice, because imposed by a majority upon the
transactions of a reluctant minority. It cannot be too
often repeated that those opinions which a man is pre-
pared to maintain at another's cost, but not at his own,
count for Httle in forming the general sentiment of a
community, or in producing any effective public move-
ment. They are manifestations of boastfulness, or envy,
or selfishness, rather than of that pubhc spirit which is
an essential constituent in all true public opinion.

There are some moralists who would deny the possibil-
ity of any such pubhc opinion which should be independ-
ent of selfishness, and which should rise above personal
interests. But they have the facts of history against
them. Aristotle has well said that man is a pohtical
animal. He has an instinct for forming communities,
and for acting in concert with the fellow members of
those communities. Every such political community or
unit has its code of political ethics. Under the influence
of this code a man will do things which are quite in-
dependent of his personal selfishness, and which may
even mihtate against the dictates of such selfishness.
The spirit of patriotism will lead him to risk personal
suffering and death itself in the service of that commun-
ity ; it will even lead him to submit to discipline and to

21

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

restraint which is irksome in the extreme. He will ac-
quiesce in the results of laws which place burdens upon
him for the benefit of others. A community in which
such patriotism and public devotion were wholly absent
could no longer remain a people by itself. It would be
daily threatened by conquest from without and by disso-
lution from within.

Public sentiment, or pubhc spirit, is the name given
to the feeling which gives effect to these virtues. It
represents each man's share in that pohtical conscience
which is as important for the ordering of the affairs of
the state as is the personal conscience to the ordering of
the affairs of the individual. Public opinion is a judg-
ment formed in accordance with the dictates of this polit-
ical conscience, and representing a theory which a man is
prepared to apply against himself as well as against others.

Where it exists, such pubhc opinion is not only power-
ful, but all-powerful. It can accompUsh more than any
other coercive agency in the world. Take its operation,
on a small scale, as brought out in the recent hazing
investigation at West Point. When the pubhc senti-
ment of the cadet corps is brought into conflict with the
regulations of the Academy, the unwritten code of honor
proves the stronger. We may differ as to our opinion
of its merits ; but of its power there can be no question.
And the power which is here illustrated on a small scale
has been repeatedly exemphfied on a large scale in the
history of pubhc and private morals. What is it that
has rendered murder a rare exception instead of a fre-
quent social event? It is not the existence of statutes
which make murder a crime ; it is the growth of a pubhc
opinion which makes the individual condemn himself
and his friends, as well as his enemies, for indulgence in
that propensity. There were laws enough against mur-

28

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

der in Italy five hundred years ago ; but these laws were
practically inoperative, because they had not really formed
part of the social conscience, as they have to-day. On
the other hand, the social conscience of mediaeval Italy,
with all its laxity in the matter of murder, was strict in
certain matters of commercial trust, on which it is to-day
relatively loose. A man actually forfeited self-respect by
a questionable financial transaction in those days as he
did not forfeit it by the murder of two or three of his
best friends. As a consequence, that particular kind of
financial immorahty was much rarer then than it is now.
Such instances can be indefinitely multiplied. What-
ever may be the dictum of the theoretical moralist, no
student of social order will doubt that pubhc sentiment,
if once aroused, can be made to dominate the action of
individuals and lead them to do things which from the
standpoint of selfishness are inconvenient and irrational.

But can pubhc sentiment be thus aroused to do any
large portion of the work which we now demand of gov-
ernment ? Admitting its power in those cases where it
already exists, can its application be widened at will, so
as to reach those financial and social wrongs in which
the pursuit of self-interest has involved us ? This is a
fair question, which must be fairly answered.

It may be frankly recognized that public sentiment
will not meet all those evils, or accomphsh all those
objects, for which numbers of people now desire legis-
lation. This fact, however, can be considered a merit
rather than a fault. If any agency were found to give
effect to all the ill-considered demands of our major-
ities, there would be no more freedom in America than
there is in China. That it can be made broad enough to
cover the field where legislation has proved practical and
salutary is, I think, scarcely open to doubt. One or two

29

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

instances will help to illustrate this. The history of
liquor laws shows that the attempt to enforce proliibi-
tion on all localities indiscriminately, independent of the
pubHc sentiment which lay behind them, resulted not
only in defiance of these laws, but in degradation of the
authority of the state itself ; and that the really effective
control was accomplished by measures so framed that
pubhc action went hand in hand with pubHc opinion.
The history of railroad legislation in the United States
furnishes even more marked instances of the same sort.
It has been a pretty constant record of the success of
measures which undertook little, but provided for much
pubhcity, as compared with measures which undertook
much, but tended to drive the recusants into the dark.
If this has been the case hitherto, when the development
of pubhc opinion has been treated as a mere accident,
how much more may we expect it to prove true if the
principle were once brought home to the citizens as a
body that pubhc sentiment was the important thing on
which to rely, and that they could not afford to devolve
upon the legislature or the administration a responsibiUty
which must finally come home to themselves. That the
better class of American citizens would refuse to accept
this responsibihty when thus squarely brought home to
them, I do not for one moment believe. In the matter
of personal morality they do in fact accept it. In no
nation is the influence of sympathy for others so power-
ful; in none are the strong so ready to sacrifice their
convenience to the comfort of the weak. That these
methods are not carried out in our business and our poli-
tics is, I beheve, due to false theories of government,
accepted by the community as a whole, which lead men
to rely too much on self-interest and on legislation. If
our people can accept cheerfully those burdens involved

30

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

in the duties of private life, there is no inherent reason
why they should fail to accept the trusts of public life.
That they are now inclined to make light of their obliga-
tions to others in business and in politics, is not due to
any incapacity for taking heavy obligations seriously ; it
is due to the fact that they have been taught to regard
business and politics as games, with no obligations pro-
founder than the rules, and no authority higher than the
umpire. It is this inadequate conception of public
responsibility, rather than any reluctance to sacrifice
themselves where a responsibility is recognized, that
now stands in the way of our progress.

What rules of conduct public opinion would prescribe
in order to meet the political and industrial dangers
under which we suffer, it is too early to say. What
specific obligations the public conscience, when once
aroused, would regard as binding in matters like this,
we have no time to consider at present. It would take
not one hour, but many, to discuss the uses which could
be made of such a power, when once fully recognized as
a working force in political life. It is enough for the
moment to call attention to the fact that this power ex-
ists ; that it is an instrument fitted to meet the most
urgent needs of society to-day — strong where strength
is needed, slow where conservatism is required, capable
of indefinite expansion without threatening the founder
tions of self-government. It lies for the time unused;
but it awaits only the mind which shall discern its possi-
bilities and the hand which shall wield it in the public
interest. To the men who will thus see it and use it it
offers the opportunity to become leaders in a higher type
of social order than any which the world has yet seen, —
an order in which the principle of noblesse oblige is recog-
nized, not as the exclusive glory of one class, but as a

31

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

democratic possession which imposes its honorable bur-
dens upon the whole body of the people.

The question is often asked what constitutes the essen-
tial mark of a gentleman, as distinct from the accidents
of birth and of clothes, of manners and of speech. I
believe it is to be found in the readiness to accept trusts,
even when they are personally disadvantageous, — the
readiness to subordinate a man's own convenience and
desires to a social code. The code may be a good one or
a bad one ; but it is an authority which the gentleman
accepts of his own free will, without waiting for any one
to compel him to accept it. To the extent that he does
this, he not only proves himself a gentleman, but proves
himself capable of seH-govemment. In this sense I
beheve that the great body of the American people
are gentlemen; and that this is the best guarantee for
the permanence of our system of self-government amid
the increasing difficulties with which it has to deal.
There is much which is as yet defective in our commer-
cial and pohtical code of honor. But the fundamental
fault is in the code and not in the man ; and therefore
the task of the reformer is no insuperable one.

The tiling that makes democracy practicable is a will-
ingness, on the part of the mass of the people, to submit
to self-imposed authority without waiting for the police-
man to enforce it. The cause of democracy was, as we
have seen, the distribution of fighting power, which for-
merly had been confined to one class. The possibihty
of maintaining democracy is due to the fact that the
readiness to accept self-imposed burdens has gone hand
in hand with the distribution of power. The danger of
democracy lies in the adoption of a false code of honor,
which tolerates and approves the pursuit of self-interest
in lines where it must prove ultimately destructive to

32

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION

the community. If our men of influence can see these
dangers in time to submit to self-imposed restrictions,
they can preserve their freedom from legislative inter-
ference, and our republic can remain, as it now is, a self-
governing body. If they do not see it in time, the
demands for the extension of legislative machineiy and
poHce activity will so far restrict our personal liberty
that democratic freedom will exist only in name, and we
shall have a social order where the form of an occasional
election is but a decent veil to disguise struggles for the
tyranny of one class over another.

It is. for the young men who are coming on the field of
pohtical Hfe to-day to guard against this danger. Our
college students have lived in communities which have
their historic traditions and their collective aspirations ;
each of which is in a true sense a body politic, with its
public spirit and its public sentiment. It is for them to
carry into the larger world of business and of legislation
the spirit which will subordinate personal convenience to
collective honor. Let them cease to appeal exclusively to
self-interest, either in their own judgment or in the judg-
ment of others. For a political leader who has not only
fixed standards of right, but a behef in the capacity of
the people to accept those standards, the times are al-
ways ready. Calhoun and Clay and Webster and Lin-
coln differed in their judgments and in their conclusions.
But it was characteristic of them all that they made
their final appeal, not to the narrow interests of any
class, but to what they believed to be broad principles
of public opinion and pubHc morality. It was in the
spirit of these men that our republic gained its growth
during the century that is past ; it is for us, their sons,
to see that the same spirit is applied to the yet larger
problems of the century which is to come.
3 33

THE FORMATION AND CONTROL
OF TRUSTS

In tke year 1898 the new companies formed in the
United States for purposes of industrial consolidation
had an aggregate capital of over nine hundred million
doUars. When this fact first transpired, it was regarded
as surprising. Now it has become conmionplace. For in
the earlier half of 1899, according to the careful estimate
of the Financial Chronicle^ the capital of the new com-
panies of this character was three thousand one hundred
million doUars, or more than three times that of the
whole year preceding.^

It is hard at once to appreciate the magnitude of these
figures. No single event of a similar character, either
in the American or in the English market, has involved
such large and sudden transmutations of capital. It
cannot be paralleled in the annals of railroad investment.
Even in the year 1887, so conspicuous in our railroad
history, the capital used in building thirteen thousand
miles of new line can hardly have reached seven hundred
million dollars. In the whole period of rapid expansion
from 1879 to 1882, the volume of new railroad securities
issued did not equal the industrial issues of this single
half year alone. Under such circumstances the mat-
ter of industrial consolidation becomes one of pressing

* $1,981,000,000 common Btock, $1,041,000,000 preferred stock, and
$120,000,000 bonds.

S4

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

importance. Is this a transient movement, or is it a
manifestation of permanent tendencies ? How far is it
likely to go? To what limits, commercial or legal, is
it subject? How are its evils to be avoided? Is it,
as the socialists claim, a stepping-stone toward a new
organization of industry under government authority?
These are the questions which must be asked and
answered.

It is safe to say at the outset that this movement is
not likely to continue long at the rate which it is now
maintaining. While some of the industrial issues repre-
sent an investment of new capital, a much larger number
represent a conversion of old capital. To such con-
version there is, of course, a natural limit, when all, or
nearly all, the older enterprises in an industry have
become consolidated. Of the three thousand million
dollars of securities placed on the market in the first
half of the year 1899, it is doubtful whether one
thousand million, or even five hundred million, reaUy
represent new capital put into the various lines of busi-
ness enterprise. Measured in dollars and cents, the
industrial growth is a comparatively small element in
this movement, and the financial change of form a much
larger one. We may, I think, go a step farther, and say
that in no small part of these enterprises the financial
motive of rendering the securities marketable is at
present more prominent than the industrial motive of
rendering the operations of the consolidated company
more efficient.

Let us see what is the difference between these two
kinds of motives, and how they operate at the present
juncture.

A man who invests his money in a business has two
distinct objects. He wishes to secure as large an income

35

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

as possible; this is his industrial motive. He also
wishes to be able to get his money back whenever
he needs it, and if possible to get back more than he
put in ; this is his financial motive. The business must
be profitable; the security must be marketable. To a
certain extent these two things go hand in hand. An
investment which has paid large and fairly regular divi-
dends for a series of years becomes known in the local
security market, and can be transferred to other hands
at comparatively slight sacrifice in case the owner desires
to sell it. But this is only true up to a certain point.
Some of the things which make an industry profitable to
the individual owner tend to make its securities less
marketable instead of more so. A local business which
a man has under his own eye, and whose details he
knows by experience, may be a very sure investment for
him, and a relatively unsafe one for others; good to
hold, but bad to seU. The intimate personal knowledge
which is his protection becomes a possible menace to
other holders. The majority of investors throughout
the country cannot safely have anything to do with it.
In such an industry the market value of the stock when
it is sold is apt to be less than proportionate to its
income-producing power.

A great many of the manufacturing industries of the
country have remained in this localised condition. If we
compare the past history of industrial investments and
of railroad investments, we are struck with the relative
narrowness of the market for the former. The securities
of a good railroad could find purchasers anywhere. If
the price paid for the stock was low in proportion to the
return, it was only because people distrusted its future
earning capacity. Even a small railroad might have a
national reputation as an investment. The demand for

86

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

the securities of Iowa railroads was not in any sense
confined to one State or one section. As much as ninety-
seven per cent came from districts remote from Iowa.
But the demand for the securities of an Iowa factory
was for the most part local. Its operations were not
performed under the public eye. Its stocks could there-
fore safely be held only by those who had private advan-
tages for getting an inside view.

But when an industry throughout the country was
consohdated, this condition rapidly changed. A very
much larger public was ready to buy securities of the
American Sugar Refineries Company or the American
Tobacco Company than would have cared to invest in
any of the individual concerns of which they were com-
posed. The national extent of the organization gave the
holder of its shares larger and steadier opportunities
of converting his investment into cash than he could
have had when his factory remained separate from the
others ; and it often, though not always, enabled him to
reaUze a much higher price than he otherwise would
have obtained. While this was not always a dominant
purpose in the formation of these earlier " trusts," it was
an incidental advantage by which their organizers were
quick to profit. Besides the motive of economy in oper-
ation, which was first urged as the reason for enter-
ing these combinations, the motive of selling securities
easily and at a high price soon took its place as one of
co-ordinate importance.

Apart from this legitimate increase in the value of
trust securities, due to the national extent of industry
which enables them to find a market among a larger
circle of investors, there is an illegitimate increase due
to the opportunities which they afford for manipulation
by inside rings. There is a fashion in investments as in

37

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

everything else. A large section of the public buys the
kind of thing that others are buying. Sometimes it has
been land ; sometimes it has been railroads ; just now it
is industrials. In a year of prosperity, with a slight
tendency toward inflation, prices of all kinds of securi-
ties tend to rise. The man who has bought to be in
fashion is pleased with the increase in the nominal value
of his investment and buys more. Those who are con-
nected with the management see an opportunity of dis-
posing of some or all of their holdings to great advantage.
Before the inevitable crash comes they have converted
most of their capital into money ; and the outside buyer
is a loser. Prior to the crisis of 1873 the favorite chance
for these operations was found in railroad enterprise;
but railroad traffic and railroad accounts are now «o
much supervised that the possibility of such transactions
in this field is less than it was thirty years ago. And,
what is of still more importance, a series of hard expe-
riences has made the investing public quite shy of
dishonest railroads. In manipulating the stocks of
"industrials," the speculator finds these obstacles less
serious. The authorities have not learned to exercise
adequate supervision ; the public has not accustomed
itself to use caution.

The buying of industrial securities simply because it
is the fashion to do so is bound to come to an end. The
speculation now so actively indulged in must reach its
own hmit in process of time. When the investors as a
body discover that the system of first and second prefer-
ences is a fatally easy means of putting an individual
security-holder at the mercy of a dishonest board of
directors, we shall probably witness an apparent stop-
page in the rapid process of industrial consolidation. In
fact, there may be a reaction, and a reconversion of the

38

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

united companies into separate ones, if, as has happened
in other cases, the unreasoning fondness of the public
for a particular form of investment is followed by an
equally unreasoning aversion of all enterprises of this
form, legitimate as well as illegitimate. Such a reaction
has taken place more than once in the economic history
of the nineteenth century. Over-speculation in English
railroads in 1844, in American railroads in 1873, in prod-
uce warrants in 1881, in car trusts in 1886, not to men-
tion a score of other less important instances, produced
in the years immediately following an almost absolute
stoppage of the issue of what had seemed previously a
very promising and important form of investanent or
speculation.

We are safe in concluding that the rate of formation
of large industrial companies will be less rapid in the
future than it has been in the past. Consolidations
which have been formed for selling securities by deceiv-
ing investors will cease. But there will always remain
a considerable number which are formed for industrial
rather than financial purposes ; and these will probably
be more important twenty years hence than they are
to-day. As the world moves on, the relative economy
of large concerns makes itseK more clearly known. The
steady movement in this direction is not confined to the
United States. It is just as strongly felt in England ; it
is, if possible, even more strongly felt in Germany. If
less is said about these industrial consoUdations in Europe
than in America, it is because they have proceeded more
quietly and along more legitimate lines, not because they
are fewer or less important. They have not advertised
themselves so extensively, because they were not trying
to sell their securities. This has prevented the public
from knowing so much about them. It has kept them

39

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

in some measure out of the market. But so far from
interfering with their prominence in the actual operation
of manufacture, it has rather contributed to increase it.

The nature of the economy which is realized by these
combinations has been set forth by so many writers that
we can pass over this phase of the subject very quickly.
Their advantage is twofold. In the first place, the con-
solidation of aU competing concerns avoids many un-
necessary expenses of distribution. Under the old system
these expenses are very great. The multiplication of
selling agencies involves much waste. Competitive ad-
vertisement is often an unnecessary and unprofitable use
of money. Delivery of goods from independent produ-
cers, whether by wagon or by railroad, often costs more
than the better-organized shipments of a large single con-
cern. All of these evils can be avoided by consolidation.
In the second place, a consolidated company has advan-
tages in its power of adapting the amount of production
to the needs of consumption. Where several concerns
with large plants are competing and no one knows ex-
actly what the others are doing, we are apt to have an
alternation between years of over-production and years
of scarcity, — an alternation no less unfortunate for the
public than for the parties immediately concerned. A
wisely managed combination can do much to avoid this.
By making its production more even it can give a con-
stant supply of goods to the consumers and a constant
opportunity of work to the laborers ; and the resulting
steadiness of prices is so great an advantage to all con-
cerned that the public can well afford to pay a very con-
siderable profit to those whose organizing power has
rendered such useful service.

This is the picture of the workings of industrial con-
solidation which is drawn by its most zealous defenders.

40

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

It is needless to say that it represents possible rather
than actual achievement ; that where one company has
secured these results, five, or perhaps ten, have failed to
secure them ; that for one combination which has earned
large profits by public service, many have tried to earn
large profits by pubHc disservice, and have frequently
ended in loss to themselves and to the public alike.

But as long as it is possible for a well-managed con-
sohdation to do better work for all parties than could
have been done under free competition, so long we may
expect to see the movement in this direction continue.
Where there is a real economy to be achieved, investors
wiU try to take advantage of tlie opportunity. The
attempt to prohibit them from so doing is likely to
prove futile. There is no better evidence of the strength
of the tendency toward consolidation than is furnished
by the multitude of unenforced laws and decisions in-
tended to prevent it. When railroads were first intro-
duced, people's minds revolted against the monopoly of
transportation thereby involved. Statutes were devised
to make the track free for the use of different carriers,
as the public highway is free to the owners of different
wagons. But the economy of having all the trains con-
trolled by a single owner was so great that people were
forced to abandon their preconceived notion of public
right to the track. They still, however, tried to insist
that the owners of separate railroads should compete
with one another, and passed various laws to forbid the
formation of pools and traffic associations. Some of
these attempts have been failures from the outset;
others have simply hastened the process of consohdation
of the competing interests which put them beyond the
reach of the special law ; the few which have been ef-
fective have done a great deal of harm and almost no

41

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

good. The majority of thinking men have come to the
conclusion that raikoads are in some sense a natural
monopoly, and have classed them with water-works, gas-
works, and other " quasi-pubhc " lines of business, as
an exception to the general rule of free competition.
But we are now beginning to find that the same possibil-
ities of economy which first showed themselves in these
distributive enterprises may be realized also in produc-
tive industry. They are felt to a considerable degree in
all kinds of enterprise involving large plant ; and there
is every reason to believe that the tendency toward com-
bination will be as inevitable in manufacturing as in
transportation. In the one case as in the other, we may
expect that laws against pools will contribute to the
formation of trusts, that laws against trusts will lead to
actual consolidation.

On the other hand, we need not expect this process to
be a sudden one. There are practical limits to the
economy of consolidation, which are more effective than
the legal ones. The difficulty of finding men to manage
the largest of these enterprises constitutes the greatest
bar to their success. Just as in an army there are many
who can fill the position of captain, few who can fill
that of colonel, and almost none who are competent to
be generals in command — so in industrial enterprise
there are many men who can manage a thousand dollars,
few who can manage a million, and next to none who
can manage fifty million. The mere work of centrahzed
administration puts a tax upon the brains of men who
are accustomed to a smaller range of duties, which very
few find themselves able to bear.

Nor is this all. The existence of a monopoly gives
its managers a wider range of questions to decide than
came before any of them under the old system of free

42

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

competition. Where several concerns are producing the
same line of goods the price which any of them can
charge is largely fixed by its competitors. It is com-
pelled to sell at market prices. The manager concen-
trates his attention on economy of production, so as to
be able to make a profit at those prices while his rival is
perhaps making a loss. But when aU of these concerns
are consoHdated under a single hand, the power of con-
trolling the prices of the product is vastly greater. The
manager no longer asks at what rate others are selling ;
he asks what the market will bear. To answer this
question intelligently he must consider the future de-
velopment of the industry as well as the present. The
discretionary power which the absence of competition
places in his hands constitutes a temptation to put prices
up to a point injurious to the public and ruinous to the
permanence of the consoHdated company. Our past
experience with industrial consohdations proves that
very few men are capable of resisting this temptation or
of exercising the wider power over business which the
modem system places in their hands.

The name "trust," which is popularly apphed to all
these large aggregations of capital, was somewhat acci-
dental in its origin. It has, however, an appropriateness
which few persons reaHze. The managers of every con-
soUdated enterprise, whether based on a contract, a trust
agreement, or an actual consolidation, are exercising pow-
ers to benefit or injure the pubhc which are analogous
to those of a trustee. It has been said that all property
is, in its wider sense, a trust in behalf of the consumer.
But where competition is active, the power of using wrong
business methods and unfair prices is so far limited that
the chance for abuse of this trust is greatly lessened. It
is only in the case of large combinations, with their dis-

43

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

cretionary power for good or evil, that the character of
the trust reposed by society in the directors of its busi-
ness enterprise makes itself reaUy and truly felt. With
these trusts, as with every other trust that deserves the
name, it is hard to provide legislative machinery which
will absolutely secure its fulfilment. The ability to
handle any trust is the result of a long process of legal
and moral education. We cannot make a law which
shall allow the right exercise of a discretionary power
and prohibit its wrong exercise. But it is possible to
modify the existing law in a great many directions,
which wiU hasten instead of retarding the educational
process. Thus far most of our statutory regulations
have been in the wrong direction. We have attempted to
prohibit the inevitable, and have simply favored the use
of underhanded and short-sighted methods of doing
things which must be done openly if they are to be done
well.

To make matters move in the right direction, at least
three points must be kept in view.

1. Increased responsibility on the part of hoards of
directors.

Where the members of a board are working for their
own individual purposes, ignoring or even antagonizing
the permanent interests of the investors, all the evils of
industrial combination are likely to be seen at their
worst, and the possibility of improvement is reduced to
a minimum.

In the first place, the mere fact that the directors are
allowed to ignore their narrower and clearer duties to
the investors prevents them from recognizing the very
existence of their wider duties to the public. They
think of business as a game, which they play under cer-
tain well-defined rules. They sacrifice those whom they

44

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

represent in order to win the game for themselves.
This wrong underlying idea prevents them from rightly
conceiving of any trust which they may handle.

In the next place, the temporary interests which the
directors pursue in endeavoring to manipulate the mar-
ket are not likely to coincide with the interests of the
outside pubhc, whether laborers or consumers. The
interests of the speculator may be furthered by these
very fluctuations in price which it is the ostensible
object of the consolidation to avoid. If a business like
that of the Standard OH Company is run with a view
to the permanent interests of the public, it will generally
be found that prices are made relatively low and steady,
and that laborers are given constant employment; but
in some other cases, where the property has been subject
to manipulation, the results have been just the reverse.

Finally — and this is perhaps the most important
point of all — if the directors are allowed to make their
money independently of the interests of the investor and
the consumer, the education in poHtical economy which
should result from business success or failure is done
away with. If a man is managing a business with a
full sense of responsibility to those who put money into
the enterprise, a failure to serve the public means, in the
long run, a failure of his own purposes and ambitions.
If this failure is but partial, he will learn to do better
next time ; if it is complete, he wiU give place to some
one else. But if he has taken up the industry as a
temporary speculation, buying the securities at prices
depressed by untrue reports, holding for an increase of
value, and selling them on false pretences to deluded
investors, no lesson is learned by the management of the
enterprise ; and the same mistakes may be repeated in-
definitely under successive boards of directors. Greater

45

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

strictness with regard to the formation of new compa-
nies, increased publicity of accounts, clear recognition,
legal and moral, of the responsibility of directors who
have made false reports to the stockholders, — these axe
conditions precedent to any radical and thorough reform
of existing abuses.^

2. A change in the legal character of the labor contract.

Here we stand on more doubtful ground. It is easy
to say that the present relations between large corporar
tions and their employees are unsatisfactory. It is
difficult to say just what should be done to make them
better. As matters stand at present, a strike begun on
trivial grounds may be allowed to interrupt the whole
business of a community. The natural alternative
would seem to be compulsory arbitration; but this in
practice has not worked nearly as well as could be
desired. It is probable that in this respect changes in
the laws must come slowly. An obligation of a consoli-
dated company to perform continuous service must be
coupled with a clearer definition of the obligations of
the workman in this respect. Whatever can or cannot
be done by legal enactment, society must at any rate

^ The real objection to stock watering — about which so much is said
and so little nnderstood — lies along these lines. The old-fashioned criti-
cism of watered stock was based on the supposition that the public was
compelled by the practice to pay higher rates than would otherwise
have been charged. There may be a very few instances of this kind ; but
the idea that such water has any considerable general effect on rates has
been pretty thoroughly disproved. The rates are arranged to make max-
imum net returns above expenses, whether the nominal capital be large or
small. The evil which really results, all but universally, from stock water-
ing is habitual falsification of accounts. If the directors so arrange their
books as to make it appear that money has been invested which actually
has never passed through their hands, they are under a great temptation
to make false reports concerning other parts of the business, and to with-
hold from investors and consumers alike that sort of information which
the public has a right to require.

46

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

recognize that those whom it has placed in charge of
large industrial enterprises are not simply handling
their own money or other people's money, but are above
aU things leaders of men ; and it must judge the finan-
cier who has through his negligence allowed the busi-
ness of the community to be interrupted by strikes, as it
would judge the general who, in his anxiety to secure
the emoluments of his office, had allowed his country to
be invaded and his armies paralyzed.

3. An increased care in the imposition of high import
duties.

In the past we have allowed the manufacturers in
each line of industry a great deal of freedom to suggest
what the tariff on the products of their foreign competi-
tors should be, knowing that if it was placed too high
the internal competition of new enterprises would re-
duce profits and prices to a not exorbitant level. Of
course mistakes have been made in this matter which
have caused serious and unnecessary variations in price ;
but as a rule domestic competition has set moderate
limits to the arbitrary results of tariff-making. When,
however, domestic competition is done away with, the
danger is more serious and permanent. It is hardly
possible to deal very directly with the tariff question
without going beyond the limits of a chapter like this ;
but it is safe to say that in those industries which are at
all thoroughly monopolized public safety wiU generally
demand that duties be placed on a revenue rather than
a protective basis. The fact that an industry can thus
organize itself shows that it has outgrown the period
of infancy. If it continues to demand a prohibitory
tariff on its products, the presumption is that it is
trying to make an arbitrary profit at the expense of
the consimier.

47

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

Such are the general directions in which private cor-
porations must expect increased restriction, as they
become more or less complete monopolies. But there is
a still deeper question which many are asking, and to
which not a few are giving a radical answer. Will such
monopolies be long allowed to remain in the hands of
private corporations at all ? Is it not rather true that
this consolidation is a step in the direction of state
ownership of industrial enterprise? Is not a grave
crisis at hand in which there will be a decisive struggle
between the forces of individualism and socialism, of
property and of numbers?

It is quite within the limits of possibility that many
of these enterprises will pass into government owner-
ship in the immediate future ; but it is highly improb-
able that this tendency toward consolidation is increasing
the dangers of a conflict between individualists and
socialists. Its net effect is to diminish these dangers by
making the question of state ownership relatively unim-
portant to the public as a whole. This may seem like a
surprising statement, but there are a great many facts
to justify it. There has been of late years, in connec-
tion with these movements toward consolidation, an
approximation in character between private and public
business. Formerly the two were sharply distinguished ;
to-day their methods are much closer to each other.
Private business can do little more than pay interest on
the capital involved, because of the increased intensity
of modem competition. Public business can do no less
than pay interest on the capital involved, because of the
growing vigilance of the taxpayers; for the taxpayers
will not tolerate a deficit which increases their burdens.
But obviously the position of the consumer toward a
private business which pays less than four per cent is

48

FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS

not likely to be very different from his position toward
a public business which must pay more than three.
The distinction from the financial standpoint is thus
reduced to a minimum; nor is it much greater, if we
look at the matter from the operating standpoint. The
ofi&cers of a large private corporation have almost ceased
to come into direct contact with the stockholders ; and
to a nearly equal degree our public administrative offi-
cials who actually do the work have ceased to come into
contact with the voters. The private officer no longer
seeks simply to please the individual group of investors ;
the pubHc official no longer strives simply to please the
individual group of politicians. The man who does so
is in either case charged, and rightly charged, with mis-
understanding the duties of his office. The more com-
pletely the principles of civil service reform are carried
out, the closer does the similarity become. The re-
sponsibility of public and private officials alike leads
them to the exercise of technical skill and sound general
principles of business policy, rather than to the help of
influential private interests. Under these circumstances,
the character of good public business and good private
business becomes so nearly alike that it makes compara-
tively little difference to most of us whether an enter-
prise is conducted by our voters or by our financiers.
The one question to ask is, which method produces in
any case the fewer specific abuses. We may look with
confidence to the time when the question of state owner-
ship of industrial enterprises will cease to be a broad
popular issue, and become a business question, which
economic considerations may perhaps lead society to
decide in favor of public control at one point and
private control at some closely related point. There
will, of course, always be a conflict between those who
4 49

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

have more money than votes, who will desire to extend
the sphere of commercial activity, and those who have
more votes than money, who will desire to extend the
sphere of political activity ; but to the great majority of
people, who have one vote and just money enough to
support their families, it is not probable that this
conflict will ever create a general issue of the first
importance.

We may sum up our general conclusions as follows :
So far as the present tendency toward industrial consoli-
dation is a financial movement for the sake of selling
securities, it is hkely to be short-lived. So far as it is
an industrial movement to secure economy of operation
and commercial policy, it is likely to be permanent.
Attempts to stop this tendency by law will probably be
as futile in the field of manufacture as they have been
in that of transportation. The growth of these enter-
prises creates a trust in a sense which is not generally
appreciated; it gives their managers a discretionary-
power to injure the public as well as to help it. The
wise exercise of this trust cannot be directly provided
for by legal enactment; it must be the result of an
educational process which can be furthered by widened
conceptions of directors' responsibility. As this process
of consolidation and of education goes on, private and
public business tend to approach one another in charac-
ter. The question of state ownership of industrial
enterprises, instead of becoming an acute national issue,
as so many now expect, will tend rather to become
relatively unimportant, and may not improbably be
removed altogether from the field of party politics.

50

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

There is a set of current conceptions as to the rela-
tions between political economy, socialism, and legisla-
tive reform which have been fostered by writers like
Carlyle or Ruskin, Kingsley or Maurice, which are
reflected in many of the most popular novels and
sermons of the day, and to which some economists of
reputation have more or less inadvertently lent the
weight of their authority. These conceptions may be
formulated as follows: —

1. Political Economy makes the individual an end,
in and for himself; in other words, it is a gospel of
Mammon and a glorification of selfishness.

2. Socialism substitutes collective aims for individual
ones. It is the result of a moral reaction against the
traditional political economy, — a reaction which is tak-
ing hold of the masses, and which they are inclined to
carry to an extreme.

3. The only way to prevent matters from being car-
ried to such an extreme is for the wealthy and intelli-
gent classes to adopt a great many socialistic measures
on their own account, before the control of our social
machinery is taken out of their hands.

The first of these conceptions is an entire mistake.
Political Economy does not regard the individual as an
end in himself. It does not glorify the pursuit of wealth
except so far as this pursuit serves the interests of

51

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

society as a whole. The great work of Adam Smith
was an inquiry into the causes of the wealth of nations;
and subsequent economists have followed in his foot-
steps. They have shown that the collective prosperity
of a people is far better fostered by the individual
freedom and enlightened self-interest of its members
than by any comphcated system of police government.
They have shown that, in the industry of modern civi-
lized nations, the man who serves himself intelligently
is generally serving others, even when he has no inten-
tion or consciousness of so doing. But in all this the
individual freedom is treated as a means to social wel-
fare rather than as an end in itself.

This development of individualism in economics is
part of the general trend of modern thought and modem
life. A few centuries ago, the principle of individual
freedom was not recognized in law or in morals, any
more than in trade. It was then thought that liberty
in trade meant avarice, that liberty in politics meant
violence, and that liberty in morals meant blasphemous
wickedness. But as time went on, the modern world
began to see that this old view was a mistake. Human
nature was better than had been thought. Man was
not in a state of war with his Creator and all his fellow-
men which it required the combined power of the
church and the police to repress. When a community
had achieved political freedom its members on the
whole used that freedom to help one another instead
of to hurt one another. When it had achieved moral
freedom, it substituted an enlightened and progressive
morality for an antiquated and formal one. When it
had achieved industrial freedom, it substituted high
efficiency of labor for low efficiency, and large schemes
of mutual service for small ones. Constitutional liberty

62

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

in politics, rational altruism in morals, and modern busi-
ness methods in production and distribution of wealth,
have been the outcome of the great individualistic
movement of the nineteenth century.

The Bishop of Durham's statement that " individu-
alism regards humanity as made up of disconnected or
warring atoms " is not merely imtrue ; it is exactly the
reverse of the truth. This idea of disconnected and
warring atoms represents the traditional standpoint
instead of the modern individualistic one. The indi-
vidualist holds that, as society develops, the interests
of its members become more and more harmonious;
in other words, that rational egoism and rational altru-
ism tend to coincide. In fact his chief danger lies in
exaggerating the completeness of this coincidence in
the existing imperfect stage of human development, and
in believing that freedom will do everything for society,
economically and morally.

These mistakes and exaggerations of individualism
have given a legitimate field for socialistic criticism,
both in morals and in economics. Some of the ablest
economists on both sides of the Atlantic have done
admirable work in pointing out where the evils arising
from individual freedom may exceed its advantages, and
when society must use its collective authority to pro-
duce the best economic and moral results. Such has
been the work of John Stuart Mill, of Stanley Jevons,
of Sir Thomas Farrer, of President Andrews, and of the
leaders of the German " Historical School." Men of
this type recognize that the point of issue between them
and their opponents is not a question of ends, but of
means. Both sides have the same object at heart ;
namely, the general good of society. One side believes
that this good is best achieved by individual freedom

43

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

in a particular line of action; the other side believes
that the dangers and evils with which such freedom
is attended outweigh its advantages. The good and
evil are often so closely balanced that economists on
either side find the utmost advantage in studying the
criticisms of their opponents as a means of avoiding
or correcting their own errors.

But the name " socialist " is rarely applied to a critic
of this stamp. It belongs by current usage to a far
larger body of people who dislike, misunderstand, and
try to ignore the results of economic experience. They
are, as a rule, men who see clearly the existence of cer-
tain evils in modem industrial society which some econ-
omists have overlooked, and others have deplored as
inevitable. They rush to the conclusion that economic
science regards these evils with indifference, and that its
conclusions and purposes are therefore immoral; while
they claim for themselves, more or less consciously, a
superior moral purpose because they are trying to right
visible wrongs by direct state activity. This is no
unfair account of a reaction against the teachings of
economics, which is now widespread and which is
thought by its exponents to be animated by a high moral
purpose.

In actual fact, the reaction is not so much a moral as
an emotional one. It is not an indication that the social-
ist hates moral evils which the economist of the old
school regards with apathy. It is rather the result of a
difference in mental constitution which leads the econo-
mist to calculate the large and remote consequences of
any measure and ignore the immediate details, while the
socialist feels the details so strongly that he refuses to
work out the indirect consequences of his action. It is
an old saying that men may be divided into two classes,

54

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

one of which is so occupied looking at the woods that it
does not see the trees, while the other is so occupied
with the trees that it does not see the woods. The atti-
tude of some of the economists toward questions of
social reform is not inaptly typified by the former class ;
that of their socialistic critics by the latter.

Of course it will not do to undervalue the emotional
element in dealing with economic matters, as men of the
more purely intellectual type are sometimes prone to do.
Reasoning about human conduct is full of chances of
error ; and if the outcome of such reasoning is to leave a
considerable number of human beings in hopeless misery,
society is justified in demanding that every premise and
every inference in the chain of reasoning be tested, and
every rational experiment be made to see whether such a
consequence is reaUy inevitable. Instances have not
been wanting when the conclusions of the economists
have proved wrong, and the emotions of the critics have
been warranted by the event. The factory legislation of
England furnishes an historic example. The economists,
as a rule, condemned this legislation as wrong in prin-
ciple and likely to do harm ; but the results showed that
these economists had overlooked certain factors of im-
portance with regard to public health and public morals
which vitiated their conclusions and justified public
opinion in disregarding them.

But while the men of emotion may sometimes be right
and the men of reason wrong, the chances in matters of
legislation are most decidedly the other way. It is safe
to say that the harm which has been done by laws based
on unemotional reasoning is but a drop in the bucket
compared with that which has been done by laws based
on unreasoning emotion. The tendency to overvalue
feeling as compared with reason is a far greater danger

65

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

than the tendency to undervalue it. Legislation is esseor
tially a matter of remote consequences. The man who
tries to reason out these consequences will occasionally
make mistakes; the man who refuses to reason them
out will habitually do so. The good which state inter-
ference does is often something visible and tangible.
The evil which it does is much more indirect, and can
only be appreciated by careful study. The man who has
his mind so fixed on some immediate object as to shut
his eyes to the results of such study, is almost certain to
advocate too much state action. He may succeed in
passing a few good laws, but he will be responsible for a
vastly larger number of bad ones.

The danger from this source is increased by the fact
that so many good people make very little distinction
between what is emotional and what is moral. They
think that calculated conduct is selfish conduct, and that
unselfishness can exist only in the emotional as opposed
to the intellectual sphere. Many a man gives charity to
a pauper upon impulse and thinks he is doing a good
deed, when he is reaUy shutting his eyes to the conse-
quences of an evil one. " Virtue," says a French writer,
"is more dangerous than vice because its excesses are
not subject to the restraints of conscience." There is a
great deal of legislation, and a great deal of socialism, to
which this remark will apply. Its promoters believe
themselves to be actuated by moral ideas, when the
chief ground for this belief is the absence of intellectual
ones.

Perhaps the most plausible argimient urged in favor of
the superior morality of the socialistic system is that it
would teach people to think more than they now do of
sympathy as an industrial force, and less of self-interest.
It is urged that a belief in the principles of the commer-

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

cial world tends to make people selfish, while a belief in
socialism tends to make them sjnnpathetic. This view
is hardly justified by the facts of history. In Europe,
all through the Middle Ages, charity was regarded as a
right and business as a wrong; but those ages were
marked by strife rather than by sympathy. The attempt
to restrict business transactions and to suppress self-
interest as a commercial factor stood in the way of
mutual service. The assertion of the duty of charity
did not produce a better system of social relations, as
some of its advocates would have us believe. It put
intolerable burdens upon some classes — especially the
agricultural laborers — in order to support other classes
in comparative idleness. Though the ideals of socialism
may be attractive, its methods have been demoralizing;
and this is the really important thing to consider in
judging the moral character of socialism as an economic
system.

Let us compare the moral effect of the commercial and
the sociaHstic theories of value. The commercial theory
is that the value or proper price of an article is based on
the needs of the market; that is, upon the utUity of
additional supplies of that article to the consumers.
The sociahsts object that the results of this theory are
unjust, and that some people get a large price for what
has cost them very little effort ; while others expend a
great deal of effort and can command only a small price
in return. They would have us adopt a theory of value
which should make the price depend on the sacrifice of
the producer rather than on the needs of the consumer.
At first sight the socialistic theory seems the more just ;
and the emotional man is pretty certain to pronounce it
morally superior to the commercial theory. But the in-
tellectual man, who traces the conseq^uences of the two

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

views, finds that the commercial theory leads men to
produce what others want in. as large quantities as possi-
ble, and with the minimum expenditure of labor ; whUe
the socialistic theory leads men to spend as many hours
as possible over their work and dole out the smallest
possible quantities of what other people want. What-
ever may be thought of the assumptions of the two sys-
tems, the industrial results of the commercial theory are
efficiency, progress, and service to others; while those
of the socialistic theory are inefficiency, antiquated
methods of work, and restriction of service rendered.

Judged in the light of economic history, the "high
ideals " which, to quote the words of a somewhat over-
sympathetic observer, " socialism has placed before the
masses of the people, and which they have absorbed,"
are based partly on erroneous assumptions and partly
on demoralizing ones.

But there is still another point to be considered. Even
if we regard the socialistic views as erroneous and de-
moralizing, the fact remains that they are held to a
greater or less extent by a large number of people —
perhaps a majority of the voters in the United States.
What is a wise man to do under these circumstances?
Shall he make concessions to this sentiment lest a worse
thing befall him? Some economists of high standing
explicitly urge that this should be done. From this
view the writer is compelled to dissent emphatically,
alike on grounds of morality and of pohcy. He believes
that the courageous answer to this question is the pru-
dent one, and that that answer is. No.

Let us not be misunderstood. If, on careful inquiry,
it appears to a thinking man that the public good will
in any particular case be better served by the adoption
of socialistic means rather than of individualistic ones,

58

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

he ought to favor their adoption, whether this policy
commands five votes or five million. But if he does not
believe that the public good will be served by such a
policy, and nevertheless lends his countenance to its
adoption because he is afraid to oppose the emotional
demand which stands behind it, his conduct is a mis-
take from whatsoever point of view we regard it.

In the first place, it is likely to strengthen rather than
weaken the demand for more radical changes. You can-
not compromise with an emotion as you can with a dif-
fering opinion, — witness the difficulties of arbitration
in labor disputes. An emotion is stimulated rather than
satisfied by concessions. Such concessions are taken as
evidence, not of a spirit of accommodation, but of weak-
ness, — and, on the whole, rightly so. If the conserva-
tives yield to a popular clamor which overawes but does
not convince them, the people are justified in assuming
that their previous toleration of evils was due to indif-
ference and not to an honest conviction that it was im-
possible to stop them by state action. In sacrificing
their own better judgment, the conservatives give up
their strongest weapon of defence, and gain absolutely
nothing.

Nor do we find, except in rare instances, that the
failure of an experiment in over-legislation lessens the
demand for similar action in the future. The failure
will be attributed not to the fact that there was too
much state action, but too little. Disasters and losses
connected with state railroad control are made so many
arguments in favor of state railroad ownership. The
difficulties and failures of co-operation under the exist-
ing system of industry lead to a demand for a "co-
operative commonwealth." No socialistic experiment
is proved a failure, in the eyes of its promoters, until

59

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

all other simultaneous experiments have been stopped.
It is just here that individualism has its greatest ad-
vantage for the progress of the community. It tries to
leave people free to make their OAvn mistakes ; trusting
that the successful experiment will be followed and the
unsuccessful one abandoned, and that the community
will thereby profit from the errors hardly less than from
the successes of its active members. Though this ideal
of the individualist is nowhere fully carried out, it is
imquestionably true that economic individualism has en-
abled nations to learn and profit by the success or failure
of industrial experiments far more rapidly than any so-
cialistic system with the collective action which it neces-
sitated. The world's great inventions and improvements,
material and moral, have been made by individual initia-
tive, and adopted reluctantly by organized governments
of any form whatever. Individualism is educational
and progressive; socialism in the majority of cases is
not. That education which a socialist government seeks
to foster, represents the wisdom of the present rather
than the possibilities of the future. Measured by its
success in securing these possibilities, sociahsm, whether
in economics, in politics, or in morals, falls short of that
system of liberty of which men like Mill and Morley
have been the champions. Such writers do not deny
that individual liberty permits grave mistakes which
centralized authority would avoid. They defend the
great principle that each man should be free to make
his own mistakes in that group of actions which is char-
acterized as " self-regarding," not because such mistakes
are few in nimiber, but because their repression involves
a repression of the best possibilities of good. They
would leave all possible ways open to the reformer, be-
cause Qo man knows by which way he will come. Is

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

Morley's expressive language, they refuse to root out
the tares, not because they thereby leave the wheat a
better chance to grow, but because "there are in the
great seed-plot of human nature a thousand rudimentary
germs, not wheat and not tares, of whose properties w^
have not had a fair opportunity to assure ourselves ; and
if you are too eager to pluck up the tares, you pluck up
with them untried possibilities of human excellence."

These are the reasons why the system of the indi-
vidualist has given fuller opportunities than that of
the socialist for the development of progressive men
and methods. It is because of this success in serving
the community that individuahstic economics holds the
position which it does at the present day. It is not
because the leaders of industry or the exponents of
the traditional pohtical economy are popular, for they
are not. It is because their work proves constructive
and preservative of human happiness, while that of their
opponents is unsuccessful or destructive. It is doubt-
ful whether President Cleveland at the time of the
Chicago labor troubles was any more popular than
President Debs; but President Cleveland represented
intellect, while President Debs represented emotion,
and we know what came of the contest. A nation
must let intellect rule over emotion, whether it likes
intellect or not. The alternative is political and in-
dustrial suicide. The proof of intellect and the con-
dition of holding power is success in foreseeing the
future. "There is one quality in a general which
every soldier understands, and that is success."

Whenever a repubhc undertakes to carry on a war,
there is always a popular demand for more vigorous
action than the judgment of the best trained officers can
approve. An emotional public sentiment mistakes the

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

caution of a general for apathy, and stigmatizes his scien-
tific foresight as the result of cowardice or treachery.
Too often, under the influences of such a sentiment, a
Fabius is displaced by a Varro, a McClellan by a Pope,
or a Johnston by a Hood. A Gates is allowed to snatch
away the well-earned laurels of a Schuyler, and even to
menace the authority of a Washington. But sooner or
later science finds its vindication in a Cannse or a Cam-
den, a Manassas or an Atlanta. It is not by yielding to
popular demands, as did Burnside at Fredericksburg or
Lee at Gettysburg, that generals preserve their authority
and their cause. It was a great deed when Thomas held
his position at Chickamauga for hour after hour against
the assaults of ever-increasing numbers, amid imminent
peril of destruction; but it was a far greater deed for
himself and for the Union, when, fifteen months later,
he held his position at Nashville, week after week,
under increasing popular clamor for premature action,
and in the hourly peril of ignominious removal. The
statesman who, under the pressure of popular clamor,
modifies his calmer scientific judgment to suit an emo-
tional demand, barters the possibility of a Nashville for
the probability of a Fredericksburg.

This illustration will serve to show why economists
as a body look with distrust on those who appeal from
the conclusions of history and deduction to those of
popular sentiment, and will explain a great deal of their
alleged intolerance and exclusiveness. It is not true
that economists make the individual good an end in
itself. Nothing but ignorance of their writings can
excuse this belief. Nor is it true that they reject social-
istic means for the promotion of the public welfare.
Those who adopt an extreme position in this matter are
to-day in an insignificant minority. But they strongly

62

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM

disapprove the attempt to " popularize " economics by-
giving too much weight to the conclusions of unin-
structed public sentiment. It is not toward the theories
of the socialists that their hostility is exercised, nor
even toward their practical proposals, but toward their
methods of investigation and the manner of their appeal
to the public. For nothing can be more fatal to that
efficiency of public opinion on which all good govern-
ment rests, than the habit of fixing our eyes on imme-
diate consequences instead of permanent causes, or of
giving to the emotions of a body of witnesses the
dignity of the dehberate judgment of a court.

63

THE RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMICS
AND POLITICS

In some respects economic science is now at the height
of its prosperity. At no previous period has popular
interest in the subject been so widespread. Our college
class rooms are thronged with its students. Teachers
in our secondary schools are striving to find a place for
it in their curricula. For public lecturers in this domain
the demand far outruns the supply. Editors of all our
leading journals seek for writers educated in pohtical
economy. Large business corporations demand expert
statisticians for aid in the solution of their most diffi-
cult problems. In education, in journalism, or in finance,
the trained economist to-day finds a great and growing
demand for his services.

But in one vital respect the conditions are far less
satisfactory. The influence of our economists on gov-
ernment and legislation is not only less than it should
be to-day, but less than it many times has been in the
past. Our practical politicians, good as well as bad,
have for the most part an ill-concealed contempt for
a class of men whom they regard as theorists and vision-
aries. In individual cases they sometimes ask the
advice of economists, and — more rarely — take it ; but
they are far from having the habit of asking or tak-
ing such advice as an incident to the working of
government machinery. The application of civil service

64

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

examinations and other improved methods of filling
administrative offices has not mended matters in this
respect. Rather has it emphasized the lack of influence
of economic science on governmental practice ; for it
has filled our public service with men technically trained
in almost every branch of knowledge except economics.
I am not indeed unmindful of the valuable work which
has been done and is being done by our American econo-
mists on problems of currency and taxation, on price
statistics, on railroad statistics, and other subjects of
public moment. We have no small number of trained
men who are ready and able to do good public service
in these matters. But the very excellence of their work
only emphasizes the contrast between the subordinate
position and precarious influence which is to-day accorded
them, and the commanding places attained by economists
of the earlier generation. Where can we find among
our younger men those who are succeeding to the inheri-
tance of Walker and Wells, of Charles Francis Adams
and Horace White ? One of these economists was given
scope for his powers as superintendent of the census;
another, as commissioner of the revenue. The record
of their work has passed into history; it is a history
of scientific study and practical influence combined
which reads almost like romance when contrasted with
some of the administrative methods of the present day.
The third of these men, as a Massachusetts public
official, created a system of railroad regulation which,
whatever its deficiencies, has nevertheless left its impress
on the law of a whole continent ; the fourth has proved
himself the mightiest champion of the cause of sound
public finance in the country, and has made the journal
which he edits second to none in the world as a power
for influencing public opinion and public action. Where
8 65

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

shall we look for their successors? We are learning
more about the theory of utility than did our fathers ;
but Eire we doing so much for the realization of that
theory in the organized life of the nation?

If the economists fail in their influence upon public
life, they fail in what is the most important appUcation of
their studies, and in what may almost be said to consti-
tute their fundamental reason for existence. Even if
such failure be only temporary, as I believe it is, it
furnishes nevertheless a most serious matter for con-
sideration. Let us strive just now, if we may, to get
some light on this phase of economic history. Let us
see why economics and politics have grown apart in the
immediate past, and consider whether there is any hope
for their reunion in the immediate future.

Our work naturally divides itself into two parts. We
must first acquaint ourselves with the history of eco-
nomics, and note the changed conceptions of economic
study which have successively developed. We must
next do the same thing with politics, and note the
changes which have taken place both in its underlying
ideas and in the method of applying them.

It is hardly necessary to say that the conception of
economics has fluctuated widely from age to age, and
tliat the sphere of economic study has altered corre-
spondingly. The history of this science, like that of
so many others, begins with Aristotle. In his mind the
relations between economics and politics were simple.
Economics meant to him the art of ordering the affairs
of a household, politics the art of ordering the affairs
of a state. Each had its own clearly defined field of
inquiry. The two subjects had indeed points of simi-
larity ; a man who was familiar with the one was better
prepared thereby to deal with the other; but funda-

66

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

mentally their spheres were as distinct as those of geog-
raphy and astronomy. As a part and a subordinate part
of the science of economics, Aristotle was forced to
notice the more unworthy science or rather art of chre-
matistics, — the science or art of making money. It is
notorious that Aristotle looked upon this part of the
subject with disapproval. His idea of business was like
that of Mr. Caleb Garth in Middlemarch, to whom it
" never meant money transactions, but the skilful appli-
cation of labor." But in the minds of Aristotle's suc-
cessors the subject of money and money-making assumed
constantly increasing importance in the study of private
economy. This was in fact an almost necessary conse-
quence of substituting the labor of freemen for the
labor of slaves. If the householder was able to obtain
labor by physical compulsion, he could despise money
and all things connected therewith; but if he had to
buy his labor, he was forced to pay attention to the
means of buying it. Thomas Aquinas had no more
love for money-getting than had Aristotle ; but the
social conditions of the time of Thomas Aquinas
rendered it necessary to take more account of money-
getting than did the social conditions of the time
of Aristotle. It was also gradually seen that money
economy formed a better means of public service than
the older system of slave labor. Interest, at first unrea-
sonably condemned by economic moralists, was after-
wards tolerated and ultimately defended. In the middle
of the seventeenth century the term " economy " had
come to be associated almost exclusively with the work
of money-getting. More than this, the principles of
chrematistics, or of economy in its modern sense, were
applied to the conduct of public affairs, and gave rise
to the study of political economy, in which ideas derived

67

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

from the study of private business were transferred to
the work of the statesman. The cameralists^ applied
the methods of domestic economy to matters of public
finance, — the conduct of the business affairs of the gov-
ernment. The mercantihsts went yet farther, and tried
to apply these same methods to the international com-
merce of the whole people. In other words, they pro-
claimed the duty of the statesman to assist his people as
well as his government in making money. At the end
of the seventeenth century political economy was uni-
versally understood as an attempt to apply the princi-
ples of money-getting to the conduct of national affairs ;
and with this practice in view, it was assiduously studied
by financiers and by statesmen.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have wit-
nessed a reaction. It began with the French physiocrats,
who protested against the aims of the mercantilists;
combating the idea that national wealth could best
be subserved by national money-making; contending
that the food of the people rather than the gold or silver
in circulation measured the national prosperity. It was
carried still further by their English successors, who
criticised the means adopted by the mercantilists no less
than their aims; showing how individual freedom con-
duced to the development of public wealth, in many
cases at any rate, far more surely than did legislative
activity. A new conception of political economy thus
arose, with higher aims and broader foundations than
the old. It is hardly necessary to say that the gain,
both in scientific truth and in practical utility, was very
great indeed. It is perhaps more necessary to point out
some of the dangers which attended the realization of
this gain.

1 Students of camtralia, affairs of the exchequer.
68

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

In the first place, there was often a loss of concrete-
ness. The older political economy expressed its results
in pounds, shillings, and pence. They might be true or
they might be false, but they were at any rate embodied
in a form which was capable of measurement and verifi-
cation. Not without good cause did the mercantihsts
claim for their reasonings the title of "pohtical arith-
metic." We may apply to them the words, at once
appreciative and critical, which Bagehot applied to
George Cornewall Lewis : " Of course he was not uni-
formly right, — there were some kinds of facts which he
was by mental constitution not able whoUy to appreciate,
— but his view of every subject, though it might not
be adequate, was always lucid. His mind was like a
registering machine with a patent index : it took in all
the data, specified, enumerated them, and then indicated
with unmistakable precision what their smn total of
effect precisely was. The index might be wrong; but
nobody could ever mistake for a moment what it meant
and where it was." In this respect later political econo-
mists are at a disadvantage. The new political economy
has substituted a vaguer conception of wealth for the
more concrete one; and many of its propositions have
suffered a corresponding loss of clearness and precision.
The mercantile school of economists had measured wealth
in terms of money. The first generation of their critics
measured it in terms of food. The second and third
generation measured it as "commodities." Our own
generation measures it in terms of utility. But food is
a less definite and tangible measure than money ; com-
modities are a less definite and tangible measure than
food ; and utility is perhaps the least definite and tangi-
ble measure of all. People knew exactly how the propo-
sitions of Sir Thomas Mun applied to any concrete case ;

69

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

they knew approximately how those of Turgot applied ;
they can make a fair guess how those of Ricardo or Mill
apply ; but of the application of those of Sax or Menger
they can hardly hazard a conjecture.

And in the second place, with this loss of concreteness
of conception came a loss of definiteness of aim, — the
almost inevitable result of substituting the principles of
a science for the practice of an art. This change was
hardly noticed in the first generation, when Turgot and
Smith and their followers were chiefly occupied in
sweeping away old restrictions ; but when it came to the
point of building up rather than of pulling down, the
loss was felt very strongly. The old political economy
often gave wrong advice, but at the very worst it was
explicit and consistent advice. The new political econ-
omy, in its anxiety to avoid error, falls into vagueness,
and into apparent if not real inconsistency. For a
presumptuous claim of knowledge it substitutes either
controversies or confessions of ignorance. Fools pro-
verbially rush in where angels fear to tread; but this
difference of pohtical method has at times the unfor-
tunate effect of lessening the practical influence of
angels upon the affairs of this world. As the art of
pohtical economy gave place to the science of econom-
ics, it was placed at an inevitable disadvantage in deal-
ing with those who sought for the easily mastered rules
of an art which professed to teach them what they could
do, rather than the general principles of a science which
too often indicated only what they could not do.

This was not the fault of the pohtical economists. It
was their fault, however, that, when the problem of se-
curing practical influence became harder, they did not
always make increased efforts to render their points
clear to the statesman, but oftentimes took refuge in the

70

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

seclusion of the schools, and there built up theories of
society more interesting and profitable to the scientist
than to the politician. The number of students who
thronged their lecture rooms increased this temptation.
Instead of making it a science for statesmen they were
led to make it a science for schoolmen, with all that
complex terminology which Giddings so aptly caUs its
jargon. In many cases this process has gone so far as
to render economics a subordinate department of psy-
chology rather than of politics ; a theory of motives
starting from assumptions that are never realized com-
pletely, and ending in propositions than can never be
verified at all. I am far from wishing to cast ridicule
on metaphysical methods of poKtical economy. Cournot
and Jevons and the Austrian school have taught us
a great many things that we did not know before. They
have substituted good underlying metaphysics for bad
underlying metaphysics. But the very excellence of
this foundation has tended to divert attention from the
superstructure, which, after all, is the thing with which
we have to deal in practical life. I am disposed to think
seriously that the excessive use of psychological terms
and conceptions, to the neglect of purely commercial ones,
has been the most potent cause to weaken the influence
of economists among statesmen and men of the world.

Meantime popular notions of government, and gov-
ernments themselves, were in the midst of a process of
evolution which tended to carry them somewhat away
from the influence of economic theory, even if that
theory had remained the same. The judiciary, the
legislature, and the administration were subject each
of them to separate influences which made them less
ready to rely on the political economist for advice and
guidance.

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

It might be thought that the judiciary, at any rate,
would never have become independent of economic con-
siderations ; for the scientific study of the law has had
and still has a close affihation with the scientific study
of political economy. This affiliation between econom-
ics and jurisprudence is manifest alike in their data,
in their methods, and their conclusions. The funda-
mental datum of modem economics is property right.
This is also the datum and starting-point of a large part
of our legal reasoning. The method of the economist
is a combination of the historical and the deductive.
He studies the precedent by which property right has
been established on the one hand, and deduces the con-
sequences arising from such property rights on the other
hand. This combination is also characteristic of the
methods of the judiciary; the chief difference between
economists and courts being that the economist considers
how the individual judgment will act under the given
conditions, while the court considers how the public
judgment will act. But this difference of standpoint
ought not to lead to conflicting or even to inharmonious
conclusions; for the economist shows over and over
again how freedom of individual judgment in the pur-
suit of its ends results in collective good, and the judi-
ciary shows with equal force how the free activity of
public judgment, in the pursuit of its ends, leads to the
highest measure of individual good. Finally, the char-
acteristic conclusions and precepts of the modem politi-
cal economists are summed up in the two words " free
competition ; " and this is no less characteristically the
conclusion and precept of our law courts. In relying
on competition to liberalize commercial practice, econo-
mists and lawyers have gone hand in hand, sharing in
tolerably equal measure the glory of habitual success

72

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

in its application and the odium of occasional error in
its misapplication.

But economics and law have to some degree parted
company; not so much in hostility as in indifference,
not so much in denying one another's conclusions as in
ignoring them. In the earlier times economists and
jurists were both concerned to harmonize their conclu-
sions with those of pohtical ethics, and each science was
thus brought into vital connection with the other. But
just as economics gradually assumed the character of a
science or discipline by itself, based upon the action of
each individual in deciding what was for his own utility
— and making this exercise of indiAddual judgment an
absolute fact if not an absolute right; so jurispru-
dence at almost the same time became an equally ab-
solute science, based upon the actions of a public will,
the judgments of a sovereign who allowed no control
except that which his own pleasure deigned to impose.
This doctrine of sovereignty as a basis of jurisprudence
has a history closely parallel to that of the doctrine of
utility as a basis of economics. Until the end of the
eighteenth century the authority of the law was based
upon the supposition of a social compact. People
obeyed the government because the government ren-
dered certain services to the people. That such a com-
pact or contract ever existed historically the leading
exponents of the theory did not believe or even pretend
to believe. Rousseau himself explicitly says that it
makes no difference with his social contract theory,
whether it had any historical basis or not. It was an
assumption used to give vitality and concreteness in
the conceptions of that natural justice to which eigh-
teenth-century writers held that law must conform.
Hobbes and Locke and Blackstone and Rousseau, with

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

all their wide divergences of opinion on individual points,
were united in holding to this theory of a compact.
Hobbes might use it to deny the right of revolution,
Locke to prove that same right ; Blackstone might use
it as a conservative force, Rousseau as a destructive
one. But absolutist and revolutionist, conservative
and radical, all had before them the conception of a
higher law of political ethics, limiting the action of the
courts, just as the economists of the same period held
to a similar conception limiting the economic action of
the individual. It was reserved for Bentham to deal
the death-blow to this theory ; to show not only that the
social compact had no foundation in history — which
was an easy enough task, because nobody really thought
it had — but also no foundation in logic ; to insist that
so-called natural law was no law at all; that law was
what the courts said, just because the courts chose to
say it and for no other reason whatever. When a cer-
tain court objected to Daniel Webster's logic, " this is
not law," "it was law until your honor spoke," was
the historic reply.

Of the practical gain in clearness of legal decisions
resulting from the acceptance of the theories of Bentham
there can be no dispute ; but it was a gain which has
been purchased at a very serious cost. The courts have
been estopped from talking no small amount of non-
sense; but they have also lost no small part of their
educational influence which they had under the old
system. For Bentham may be said to have overthrown
a theory which was historically false and prophetically
true, and substituted one which was historically true
and prophetically false. Things have been law, not be-
cause they were just or even logical, but because the
courts enunciated them. But it is safe to prophesy that

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ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

this state of things will continue only so long as the
courts are respected by the public as being at once just
and logical. It is right as well as convenient for the
lawyer to assume that whatever the courts conunand
will be law; but only because the courts show them-
selves clearer-sighted than the body of the nation. The
authority of the Enghsh courts, while nominally derived
from the crown, has been practically derived from their
own good sense and progressiveness. A theory which
leads them to rely more on precedent and less on good
sense and progressiveness, while it may prevent the more
commonplace judges from making an exhibition of them-
selves, nevertheless offers a serious bar to the develop-
ment of legal authority to meet new circumstances and
new emergencies; not to speak of the possibility that
it may at times menace the general respect for the judi-
ciary and general authority of the law as a whole. As
a matter of fact, the courts have made themselves in-
dependent of the help of the economists, by withdraw-
ing from the consideration of those distinctively modern
problems where precedent furnishes no clear guide for
action. In making the corpus juris clearer and more
consistent with itself, it would seem to a layman as if
the courts have sometimes fallen short of meeting the
needs of growing industrial communities. Contrast the
rapid progress of English law down to the middle of
the last century in all economic matters, where judges
were among the most enlightened of reformers, with its
extremely slow development in the face of modern con-
ditions. Take the subject of taxation. Have judicial
decisions adapted themselves to facts? No. They are
based on assumptions as to the possibility of assessment
of personal property which may have been approximately
true in the eighteenth century, but which are totally

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

false in the nineteenth. The courts, while protesting
against unequal taxation, nevertheless refuse to look at
the chief practical source of inequality, that source not
having been a thing of great importance a hundred
years ago. Or take the matter of transportation. For
a generation and more our courts insisted on applying
to the railroad the precedents derived from the highway.
It is not so very many years since they refused to enter
upon the most important of all railroad rate evils, the
evil of discrimination, — saying explicitly that if one
man's rate was reasonable in itself it was irrelevant to
inquire whether another man was charged a lower rate.
Such instances of lack of attention to modern facts
might be multiplied indefinitely ; but these are enough
to show the bad effect of allowing crude attention to
axioms and precedents to take the place of intelligent
discussion of economic effects. It is a grave misfor-
tune for the public when the legal theory of sovereignty
of the court and the economic theory of sovereignty of
the individual result in separating from one another and
from the needs of practical politics two sciences whose
best work has been done hand in hand with each other,
and in the most sedulous application to those needs.

The consequences of this separation have been so
serious that efforts have been made to reintroduce a con-
nection by means of " coromissions " of various forms ;
railroad commissions, tax conunissions, labor commis-
sions, and an indefinite niunber of others. Such bodies,
it is thought, will, like the courts, represent public
opinion ; but unlike the courts they wiU be possessed of
technical knowledge which will enable them to look for-
ward to the future and not merely backward at the past.
On the work of these commissions as a whole, there is
no need of passing judgment or balancing their good

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ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

and their evil. Suffice it to say that they have too
often proved a wholly extraneous element in the de-
velopment of the law, and that in assuming quasi-
judicial functions they have antagonized the courts
instead of helping them. As a matter of constitutional
law, the attempt to supplement courts by commissions,
involving as it does a separation of the progressive from
the conservative, of the technically instructed from the
legally instructed, is questionable in principle and hkely
to produce conflicts in practice. As a matter of politi-
cal experience, I think it is safe to say that technically
trained commissions have proved themselves more valu-
able as assistants to the legislature or the administration
than as supplements to the activity of the courts.

But why did not this conservatism of the judiciary
give the economists all the greater opportunity to influ-
ence the legislature, either directly or indirectly? If
the courts became the exponents of precedent, why could
not Parliaments, with the assistance of just such com-
missions as have been described, be the champions of
progress? Was there not here a field for the activity
of economic experts who, seeing farther than their fel-
lows, could give advice which should be followed and
should stand ? As economists lost the chance to influ-
ence judicial decisions, were they not face to face with a
wider field for influencing legislative debates ?

For the better part of a century this possibility existed.
In fact it may be said to have lasted nearly as long as
legislative debate itself lasted. But the days of legisla-
tive debate are numbered, if they are not already ended.
Congresses and Parhaments have been compelled to
abandon their watchword of free speech, and to adopt
in one form or another the principle of closure. The
system of representative government, devised originally

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

as a check upon the executive, and admirable as a means
for giving free discussion to measures of a more or less
independent administration, has not proved equally suc-
cessful as a means of shaping actual business in its
initiatory stages. "Armies," says Macaulay, "have
won victories under bad generals, but no army ever won
a victory under a debating society." For the practical
conduct of public business the legislature is at once an
unwieldy and an irresponsible body. It is so, in the first
place, on account of its niunbers. When the object of a
Parliament was to form and impress public opinion, a
large body of members was indispensable ; but when the
object is to manage the actual business of government
intelhgentiy, numbers are a hindrance rather than a help.
The difficulty is heightened by the prevalence of the
bicameral system. When the object was the creation
of public sentiment, two houses secured twice as much
publicity as one ; but when the object is despatch of pub-
lic business, two houses result in divided responsibility,
with all the consequent delay and chicane. And finally,
the system of district representation, at first admirable as
a means of giving influence to all the different sections
of the community, becomes under present conditions a
positive disadvantage. In the creation of public senti-
ment, it gave us exchange of opinions ; in the despatch
of public business it means exchange of favors. Instead
of co-operation in the general interests we have log-roUing
for particular interests. Under the current system of
pohtical ethics there is in fact a direct antagonism
between the theory of economics and the practical
working of representative government. The economist
shows how largely the independent action of the parts
may be made to conduce to the collective good of the
whole. The practical working of representative govem-

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ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

ment, making each member primarily responsible to bis
district — or one might better say to the members of his
own party in his district — means that the collective ac-
tion of the whole is made a tool to subserve the sepa-
rate wants of the parts, even though the satisfaction
of those wants may antagonize the general interest of
the nation. The history of every tariff bill and of every
river and harbor bill affords illustrations of this ten-
dency of our representative system. The economist is
at a disadvantage in influencing members of the legisla-
ture, because his ends are different from theirs. He is
trying to pursue collective interests ; they are trying —
and under the existing condition of tilings, necessarily
trying — to balance, to compromise, or in some fashion
to reconcile divergent ones.

This difference of aims, which puts the economist at
a disadvantage in deahng with the legislature, ought
apparently to put him at a corresponding advantage in
advising the executive. For the head of the executive
department, be he wise or unwise, disinterested or self-
seeking, nevertheless regards himself as a representative
of the whole people rather than of small sections of the
people. It would seem that such an executive, on
whom the nation relies for progress in the face of
judicial conservatism and for wise collective action in
the face of legislative particularism, would feel more
than ever the need of advice from trained economists to
guide him in the work of administration. That such
need exists and is felt is unquestionably true; and
where the administration has power to carry out a
poHcy of its own the advice of economic experts is
habitually sought and frequently followed. But it is
not always the case that the administration has this
power to carry out a policy of its own. For centuries

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

we have been busy devising constitutional checks of the
royal prerogative. We have had so much reason to
fear usurpations of power on the part of the executive,
that we have not left him with that modicum of power
which is needed for good government. If he has to
face an adverse majority in the legislature, he is tied
hand and foot. Even when his own party is in con-
trol he must consult the representatives of the various
districts and pay the price which they exact for sup-
porting his measures ; and he is too often reduced to the
yet more questionable expedient of seeking assurance of
his renomination and re-election in order to have time to
give his policy a fair trial. Under such circumstances
he is repeatedly compelled to be a politician first and a
statesman afterward. However much he may desire
the advice of economists and even avail himself of their
services, he is often divested of the power to utilize
them; and it too frequently happens that the econo-
mists, in their encouragement of independent voting on
each national issue as it arises, deprive themselves of
that influence within the party councils which is neces-
sary for carrying any issue whatsoever to its logical test
and conclusion.

But things are by no means as bad as they recently
have been. On the contrary, if we compare the condi^
tions of to-day with those of twenty years ago, we see
in some places a very marked increase of economic meth-
ods and economic influence in the work of government.
Particularly true is this in municipal affairs. It was
there that the need for a good business administration
came most directly home to the citizens. It is there that
councilmen and aldermen have suffered restrictions of
their power and that real authority has been given to the
executive. It is there that the credit for good business

80

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

management and the discredit for bad business manage-
ment can be most clearly brought home to the offi-
cial with whom it belongs. It is there, also, that the
advice of economic experts counts for most. It is not
an accident that so much of the careful study of prob-
lems of finance and administration is to-day dealing with
matters of municipal government ; it is a consequence of
that increased centralization of administrative power
which gives the expert a fair chance. But the reform
is not likely to stop at that point. Whatever we may
think of imperialism as a sentiment or of national expan-
sion as a policy — and I was one of those who looked
upon their hurried adoption with regret — these are
things to which we are already committed. This policy
brings new problems of administration upon us as a
nation, and renders it more necessary than before to
study the art of national government. When we were
only governing ourselves we could leave Congress to
make what laws it pleased, and trust to the good sense
and political education of the American people to pre-
vent irreparable damage. But we now have to deal with
peoples who have not this good sense and this political
education. More than that, we have to deal with them
in the sight of aU the world, and in the face of hostile
powers who will be only too ready to make our mis-
government a pretext for interference. We can no
longer content ourselves with the laxness of method
which has characterized our dealings with the inhabitants
of our western territories.

The need of an efficient army will of itself make it nec-
essary to give more independence to the administration
and more opportunity to its expert advisers. The need
for a government of our new colonies which shall recog-
nize the principle of trusteeship rather than of spoHation
6 81

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

must conduce yet more strongly toward the same results.
The need of increased public revenue to meet our larger
administrative expenditures will render it indispensable
to subordinate the demands of the several districts to the
general necessities of the country. With no colonies
and a small army we could do what we pleased with our
revenue bills. With larger possessions and larger neces-
sities for defence, they must be framed by a responsible
administration on a sound economic basis.

Just how this change of governmental methods will
come about no one can venture to predict. That we
shall adopt the Enghsh system of cabinet responsibihty
seems unlikely; but that we shall adopt some system
which will cause the different branches of our govern-
ment to operate harmoniously is a foregone conclusion.
The alternative is national disgrace, if not national ruin.
Here is the opportunity for the younger economists of
the country. If their study is worth anything it will
give them a broader range of data on which to work and
a clearer perception of consequences for the future. It
will put them in a position of advB,ntage in giving advice.
The more responsible the government the more certain
is it to take such advice. I do not say that the oppor-
tunity to become advisers and leaders of national pohcy
should be sought by economists as their sole duty, or to
the neglect of their other public responsibihties. I do
not undervalue for a moment the importance of economic
theory. I have the highest conception of the work of
our economists as teachers of science. But I believe that
their largest opportunity in the immediate future lies not
in theories but in practice, not with students but with
statesmen, not in the education of individual citizens,
however widespread and salutary, but in the leadership
of an organized body politic.

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ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL
MORALITY

In the preceding paper, attention was called to the
fact that economists do not now exert in the world of
politics and legislation that influence which ought prop-
erly to belong to them; and certain means were indi-
cated, which, if used, would make their political power
greater than it is at present. With regard to the fact of
inadequate influence, there is Uttle room for difference
of opinion. The economists' lack of touch with the
practical affairs of government is universally felt. But
with regard to the means by which they can recover this
touch, now so nearly lost, there is far more diversity
of view. Not a few of our American economists
hold different, and to some degree antagonistic, ideas
with regard to the means to be pursued in order to in-
crease the influence of economic science on modem
pohtical hfe. The present paper is an attempt to weigh,
as carefully as possible, these divergent views with
regard to the methods which "the scholar in politics"
may properly pursue. It is an endeavor to expand more
fully the argument on those points in the previous dis-
cussion where the members of the American Economic
Association have felt themselves most doubtful.

It has been well said that modern political economy
contains two distinct parts, — often inextricably inter-
mingled in fact, yet always separate in principle, —

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

a theory of distribution and a theory of prosperity.
The theory of distribution shows how the public wealth
is divided among the different members of the commun-
ity. It shows the effects of a system of laws or a group
of conunercial conditions on the relative well-being of
the different classes concerned. It tries to predict how
changes in those laws or conditions will increase the
material comfort of some individuals and diminish that
of others. The theory of prosperity, on the other hand,
is occupied primarily with the good or evil of the nation
as a whole. It deals with aggregate results rather than
with individual ones, and concerns itself with the sepa-
rate parts only as they must be studied in order to
understand this aggregate effect.

The distinction between these two sets of theories is
not quite the same as that between " static " and " dy-
namic " economics of which we now hear so much. It
more nearly coincides with the old antithesis between
deductive and historical schools of economic study. It
may perhaps fairly be said to be an accurate statement
of a distinction for which the earlier members of the his-
torical school were feeling, but which they failed to grasp
or formulate in precise fashion, — a failure which reacted
seriously upon the influence of this school in matters of
economic controversy. Be this as it may, the distinction
is a real and permanent one. Men may agree absolutely
in their theories of distribution and disagree toto calo in
their theories of prosperity. Marx in his theory of dis-
tribution followed Ricardo implicitly ; in his theory of
prosperity he differed from him at every point. It was
just because he accepted so thoroughly one part of the
Ricardian economics that he was able to dissent so con-
sistently from the other, with a directness of opposition
bom of mutual understanding. It was because each

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ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

assumed so fully the existence of free competition, and

carried out that assumption so completely to certain of

its logical consequences, that this same power became a

demigod to the one and a demon to the other. In the

words of the poet : —

" Both read the same books, day and night,
But thou read'st black where I read white."

As far as a man's political economy takes the form of
a theory of distribution, it is not sure to be very closely
connected with his ethical principles, or even with his
poUtical ones. In framing such a theory he is occupied
with tracing consequences from observed facts. His
pohtical antecedents or his ethical prepossessions may
lead him to observe some facts more closely than others,
or to examine one part of his chain of reasoning more
critically than another part. But these variations, as
far as they exist, are errors, even from the man's own
standpoint, — errors which he is interested in correcting
as soon as they can be brought clearly home to him.
He can say, in the words of Dunoyer, " Je n'impose rien,
je ne propose meme rien : f expose," — I offer neither im-
positions nor propositions, but expositions. Nor do his
theories of distribution modify his ethics much more
than his ethics modify his theories of distribution ; ex-
cept, perhaps, so far as the habitual assumption of a set
of facts and laws leads to the habitual assumption of the
Tightness of those laws, morally as well as intellectually.

On the other hand, a man's theory of prosperity is
closely interwoven with his theories of ethics and of
politics. Moral and political standards are a determin-
ing element in our judgment as to whether a nation's
aggregate condition is good or bad. The habit of mak-
ing historical generalizations as to national welfare has
very important effects upon our moral and political judg-
ed.

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

ments as to the ordinary affairs of life. It is at this
point that the interaction between economics and poli-
tics, whether by way of mutual aid or mutual criticism,
is most constant. Only occasionally and incidentally
do our theories of distribution lead us to intervene in
political affairs by showing that certain lines of legis-
lation produce different results from those which are
contemplated. Daily and hourly does our theory of
prosperity lead us to such intervention, when we believe
that the aims of a certain group of moralists or pohti-
cians are destructive to the well-being of the nation as
a whole.

Just at this point, where the possibility of influence
is greatest, the difficulty which meets the economist
who strives to maintain a dispassionate and critical atti-
tude is also keenest. In his theory of distribution he
can readily remain a passive observer of facts. He can
measure and weigh the results of competition, as he can
measure and weigh the results of gravitation or of bio-
logical selection ; and he can guard himself against error
in fact or deduction by the same methods which are
used by the physicist or the biologist for the same
purpose. But when he comes to measure the aggregate
merit of the total result, he has a different task and
a far harder one.

It was the underlying assumption of the preceding
paper that even in this hard task the scientific knowl-
edge possessed by the economist enables him to come
nearer to its fulfilment than can his fellow members
of the community; that in this field of exceptional
doubt he should undertake to realize the noblest ideals
as a scientific man who stands above the clouds of preju-
dice, and therefore sees farther than those about him;
that it is his high mission to be the representative and

86

ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

the champion of the pennanent interests of the whole
community, in the face of conflicting claims from repre-
sentatives of temporary or partial ones.

This view of the mission and the duties of the politi-
cal economist has been challenged on three grounds :
as bad psychology, bad politics, and bad ethics.

We are told, in the first place, as a matter of practical
psychology, that no man can make his judgment as to
national well-being independent of his social antecedents
and his ethical training. If he has grown up among
soldiers, he will have one set of standards ; if he has
grown up among business men, he will have a second;
if he has grown up among literary men, he will have
a third ; if he has grown up among laborers, he will have
a fourth. Strive as he may to dissociate himself from
effects of education and environment, he can at best be
but partially successful. His political vision suffers not
only from near-sightedness, but from astigmatism. The
former he may perhaps correct; no power on earth can
enable him to correct the latter, or even to gain an
objective estimate of its influence upon his observations.
Robert Malthus was a disinterested man, and so was
Henry George; yet in neither case was such disin-
terestedness sufficient to protect them from obliquities
of moral vision which led to diametrically opposite con-
clusions as to the conditions of public prosperity. A
man may have the intention to be impartial, and may
be perfectly candid in the belief that he has carried out
this intention; but that only makes matters worse,
because this delusion prevents him from recognizing
the need of applying outside correctives to his judg-
ment, and often leads him to impugn the fairness of
anybody else who suggests such correctives. Why not,
under these circumstances, admit freely the difficulty

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under which we labor in making objective judgments?
Why not recognize from the first that each of us repre-
sents a locality or a class, and that the moral judgment
of each observer is sure to be affected and to some
degree distorted by his own personal prepossessions?
Such a course, frankly adopted, its advocates claim, will
keep the bad men from hypocrisy, the good men from
self-deception, and the large number of men who are
neither very good nor very bad from that mixture of
hypocrisy and self-deception which contrives to com-
bine all the evils of them both.

We are told, in the second place, as a wholly inde-
pendent line of argument, that even if an economist
possessed rare mental and moral quahties like those of
John Stuart Mill, which enabled him to sympathize with
all classes, he ought nevertheless, as a matter of practi-
cal politics, to identify his work with the aspirations
of some one class distinctively. The assumption by an
economist that he represents the total interest of the
community rather than the interest of one part or group
in that community exposes him to the suspicion of being
either a pharisee or a hypocrite, — either a man who
over-estimates his own righteousness, or one who pre-
tends to a righteousness which he does not possess. If
either of these titles is a just one, it is fatal to a man's
success as a political reformer. If it is once suspected
to be just, it will prove a heavy weight around his neck.
Even if a man believes himself to be wholly free from
either hypocrisy or pharisaism, it is a wise measure for
biTn to keep out of the company of hypocrites and phari-
sees. He will be a more efficient reformer if he claims
a little less for his mission and can get those lesser
claims recognized, than if he claims everything and
gets no recognition at all.

8S

ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

We are further told that whether he be considered
a hypocrite or not, he will be entitled a visionary, and
justly so. The general pubhc whose interests he repre-
sents is not a working political force. Its wants are so
vague and so remote that there is no means of getting
them recognized in the concrete work of legislation and
of government. You must appeal to locahties and to
classes. Locahties have their representatives, classes
have their organs. Each locaHty and each class has its
pubhc sentiment, which in one way or another is a hving
power in pohtics. This existence of a coherent pubhc
opinion and of a definite interest is a necessary condition
for the social reformer who would be more than a pure
theorist. Current opinion is his material, class interest
is his tool. No man, however great, can hope to accom-
phsh his results with neither tools nor materials ready
to his hand. Even if you beUeve yourself wholly dis-
interested you must appeal to classes and secure the
partial good which is attainable, rather than aim at
the greater good which you are from the outset fated
to miss.

They tell us further that this view of the matter
represents not only practical poUtics but practical ethics.
Life in a modem free community is an interaction and
interplay between the several members of that commun-
ity. Each individual is working for ends of his own,
distinct from those of other individuals. Each class
has standards and ideals of its own, differing from
those of other classes. Civil hberty is but a recogni-
tion of these differences, — permission to the various
members of the state to pursue their own several ends
under the protection of a common law. According
to this view, the man who would sink the interest of a
class in a supposed general public interest is but depriv-

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

ing that class of its own natural safeguard in the struggle
for existence. If it works for itself, it gets what it can
— sometimes more than it ought, sometimes less than it
ought; but in a reasonably well-ordered civil society it
takes its chances with the others. If, on the other hand,
a single group, in its zeal for the general good, omits to
pursue its own group interest, it causes a want of balance
between the parts, upsets the conditions of the game, and
contributes rather to its own annihilation than to the
predominance of those conceptions with which it has
identified itself. Let us have fair play; let us have a
fair chance for conflicting views to struggle one with
another, as a condition of progress for the whole society.
This is the cry among no small number of those who
think they have studied the conditions of modem prog-
ress most carefully.

Widespread and plausible as are some of these views,
I desire to take fundamental issue with those who sup-
port them.

The system of political ethics just outlined is an
outgrowth of our experience with two important insti-
tutions,— competition and representative government.
Competition has led people to see how frequently the
seK-interest of the individual, when given free play, con-
duces to the general advance of the pubhc. Represen-
tative government has shown how a full expression of
opinion by those who speak for the several parts or
classes in the community can be made to contribute to
an advance which inures to the advantage of all parts
and all classes together. In spite of all these facts, I be-
lieve that the theory of struggle and compromise as a nor-
mal means of progress needs restatement ; and that the
man who looks below the surface in the study of these
two institutions will be brought to conclusions directly

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ECONOMIC THEORY AND Jt'OLITICAL MORALITY

opposite from those which prevail in so much of the cur-
rent thought of the world to-day.

Does the history of competition give ground for the
view that a struggle between different parts for their
class interests works out an economic harmony through-
out the nation ? Not at all. It shows, on the contrary,
that struggles within each class, antagonistic for the mo-
ment to the apparent interests of that class, so conduce
to the interest of many other parts of the body politic as
to promise a generally beneficent result. No economist
of any reputation would hold for a moment that an
economic conflict necessarily works out a just relation
between the conflicting parties. What the champion of
competition holds is rather that this conflict under
proper conditions may become a means of affording pro-
tection and advantage to outsiders. It is not a contest
between classes, but a contest within classes, which he
seeks to perpetuate ; and he would perpetuate it because
he can prove, or thinks that he can prove, that it con-
duces to a common interest more wide and more lasting
than those which the individual classes, if organized iuto
trusts or trades unions, would seek to pursue.

It is popularly said that competition is only the form
which the struggle for existence takes in modern civil-
ized society. This is at once true and false, — true in
form, false in the suggestions to which it gives rise.
The fact is that modern civilized communities have so
regulated the struggles for existence that they tend on
the whole to the benefit of third parties rather than to
their detriment. Two cats struggle to eat the same bird ;
two bosses compete to employ the same workman. From
the standpoint of the bosses, the transaction bears some
analogy to the case of the cats. From the standpoint
of the workman, the transaction bears no analogy what-

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

ever to the case of the bird. The more cats there are
the worse for the bird, as well as for the cats ; the more
bosses there are the worse for the bosses, but the better
for the workman. When Adam Smith showed the
efficiency of competition as a means of regulating price
and of increasing useful production, he furnished a
powerful defence for the existing social order. He can-
not, however, for that reason, be fairly charged with
having been an advocate of the interests of the property
owner. The weight and force of his reasoning lay in
the fact that he showed the beneficent effects of such
free competition of property owners upon all people,
whether they owned property or not. He may have
exaggerated those good effects and underrated tlie evils
by which they were accompanied. This is a point which
I shall not now discuss. But his permanent and deci-
sive influence as a social reformer lay not in his identi-
fication of the views or interests of any class, but in his
discovery of a means for preventing the unnecessary
development of class antagonisms. The success of com-
petition, far from warranting us in the adoption of a
system of political morality and a theory of political
progress based on advocacy of class interests, proves
rather the advantage and even the necessity of sub-
ordinating those interests to a wider common good.

With the institution of representative government
the case is somewhat different. Here we have a pubhc
organization of localities and classes, and a recognition
of such classes in the actual work of government. It
would therefore seem as if the success of this system
were a powerful argument on the side of that theory of
pontics and of ethics which regards the good of the
whole community as best to be reached by a compromise
betw^eij the aims of different sections of the community.

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ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

But a profounder study of constitutional history leads
to an opposite conclusion. It shows that parliaments
and congresses, in the reaUy great periods of their his-
tory, have been valuable, not as a field of compromise
between local interests, but of information as to general
ones ; not for the consununation of private bargains but
for the creation of public spirit.

Down to the end of the last century the English
Parliament, as its name imphed, was essentially a place
for discussion. Representatives from different localities
met at Westminster to interchange views as to the state
of the nation. Each member reported to the others the
feelings and wants of his locahty; each received from
his fellow members enhghtened views as to the condi-
tion of the country as a whole, which he was able to
report at home and make the basis of practical action in
his section of the community. The essential function
of the early parhaments was the creation of a united
pubhc sentiment. They roused the interest of English
gentlemen outside of the sphere of their petty local ex-
igencies, and enabled them, by common action, to resist
the extensions of the royal prerogative to which, in the
absence of such common action, they must separately
have fallen victims. It is true that the Houses of Par-
liament had large functions in addition to this ; but they
all grouped themselves round this central work. Even
the right of the Commons to originate measures of taxa-
tion, so sedulously attacked by the kings, and so jeal-
ously guarded by parliaments, had its chief importance
not as a means of avoiding the imposition of burdens
upon the people, but as a means of compelling the
monarch to call representatives of different parts of the
people together for the authoritative presentation of
popular opinion. At the close of the last century, when

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

other countries adopted institutions modelled on the
Enghsh Parliament, it was intended that they should
preserve this same function as debating bodies ; and the
most glorious pages in the history of the United States
Congress are those in which public opinion was formed
and public spirit roused by speeches of such men as
Webster and Clay. Just as in the sphere of commerce
competition enabled members of the different parts of
the business community to get something wider than a
class view point and compelled them to work to a com-
mon end, so in the sphere of politics did representative
government enable and compel members of the differ-
ent geographical sections to get something wider than
the local view point, and to see what was the general
sentiment of the nation of which they formed a part.

But in the course of the present century our repre-
sentative assemblies have ceased to be places for debate.
The extension of telegraph and postal service has given
the different parts of the community means of informa-
tion more rapid, although in some respects perhaps less
trustworthy, than that which was furnished by their
congressional representatives in the olden time. The
press has taken the place of the legislature as a forum
for the formation of public sentiment. Parhaments and
congresses have become bodies for the making of laws
rather than for the making of opinions. That this change
has been accompanied by a loss in salutary influence of
legislative bodies is, I think, unquestionable. No longer
do the members strive to impress their several convic-
tions on the whole body of which they form a part ; they
strive rather to form a compromise in which the inter-
ests of the part which they represent shall have ade-
quate recognition. This substitution of compromise for
conviction as the ideal of legislative activity is perhaps

94

ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

the greatest and most pervasive evil under which our
political machinery" suffers. It shows its effect in the
demoralizing principle that the representative should be
guided in his utterances and his votes by the opinions of
his constituents, rather than by his own, — a principle
which, in spite of all protests, has come to be generally
accepted as a datum of practical politics. It deprives
the member of the legislature of the educational influ-
ence incident to his position. It makes him an agent
not only of his district, but of his party within his dis-
trict. It manifests its results in the debates on appro-
priation bills, where the members who stand up for the
general interest of the treasury are increasingly rare,
and those who make claims for the expenditure of
money on behalf of their locahties — and often on behalf
of private interests within their localities — become
constantly louder. It shows itself even in general leg^
islation, where the character of modern statutes as a
patchwork of private demands has become only too
notorious.

All this has gone so far as to produce a change in the
public estimate of parliamentary bodies. The glorifica-
tion or ideahzation of the legislature, so cormnon in gen-
erations immediately gone by, is now rapidly passing
away. In matters of municipal government we are
lessening the application of the representative system —
giving more power to the mayor and those persons
appointed by the mayor, and less to the representatives
of the several districts; because, with the amount of
business that is done in the ordinary municipahty, we
cannot afford to let the general interests of the whole
be jeopardized in behalf of the several parts. The same
tendency shows itself in connection with state legisla-
tures, whose sessions are now being made less frequent,

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

and wliose sphere of action is being narrowed by consti-
tutions and other instruments providing for a reference
of all important laws to the direct vote of the people.
It is not necessary for the purpose of this argument to
say whether this change be an improvement or not ; it
is at any rate a significant sign of the trend of the times.
The abandonment of the duty of debate as to the com-
mon interest, and the substitution of the work of nego-
tiation as to the private and partisan interests of the
several districts, have tended to convert the representa-
tive assembly from an object of pubhc confidence to one
of pubhc distrust.

The causes which have prevented competition in busi-
ness and representative government in pohtics from fully
safeguarding the interests of the community in the days .
just gone by are likely to be accentuated in the near
future.

Improvements in machinery and in business organiza-
tion during recent years have developed to such an ex-
tent that competition, in the old sense, is in many lines
a thing of the past. It can no longer be utilized with-
out sacrifice of pubhc as well as private economy. We
cannot have parallel railroads or competing water-works
without a loss, either from increased expense of plant or
diminished convenience in service. We cannot, in a great
many hnes of manufacture, have competition as we had
it twenty-five years ago, without disastrous fluctuations
in price and the danger of commercial crises due to irreg-
ular investments of capital. AU these facts are so
famihar at the present day that it is useless to enlarge
upon them. Business has become a trust, in a sense far
different from that which the accidental application of
this word has carried with it, — a thing involving a dele-
gation of power by the pubhc to the hands of a few men;

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ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

a delegation of power whicli these men can misuse to
the detriment of others without being immediately over-
taken by any legal or commercial penalty. That they
will themselves suffer in the long run from such misuse
of powers intrusted, is very probably true; but this
adverse effect is so remote and obscure that we cannot
rely upon it as a protection to commercial society in
the way that we could rely on every-day competition in
the smaller and more individualized business of fifty
years ago. The correctives to the abuse of individual
selfishness in the commercial world to-day are so much
less immediate and automatic than they once were that
very few persons now preach unlimited competition as a
means of promoting the general good. So marked,
indeed, is this reaction that there is danger of our having
too httle confidence in individual initiative in the imme-
diate future, and of regulating these trusts by an exer-
cise of pubhc authority which may prove in the long
run less wise than private enterprise itseK.

A similar change is taking place in matters political.
Our municipahties are giving examples of combined
action in the way of public works on a scale which would
have been regarded as impossible a century ago. Our
country as a whole is undertaking yet larger combina-
tions in the shape of colonial empire. What will be the
ultimate result of this last change of national character
it is far too early to predict. But one thing is certain.
It will necessarily be accompanied by a recognition of the
fact that public office is a public trust more fully than it
has been recognized in the past. A federation of states
of approximately equal strength may govern one another
on a principle of separate pursuit of selfish interests;
and although there will be some aggregate loss through
the preference of local interests to general ones, there is
7 97

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

likely to be at least a relative fairness when each mem-
ber of the federation is strong enough to secure its own
share of the plunder, and to protect itself from undue
imposition. But when we come to administer the affairs
of a weaker nation to wliich we do not and cannot give
pohtical autonomy, the evils of the old system become
so obvious and the need of ideals in pohtics becomes so
exacting, that even those who in their past public life
have scoffed at the conception of a higher law than their
own selfishness are, under the new conditions, compelled
by very shame to appeal to such a higher law. The more
completely our undertakings, whether private or public,
industrial or pohtical, take the character of trusts, the
more impossible does it become for those who are placed
in authority to represent personal or class interests with-
out gross violation of what we, in our every-day Hfe,
recognize as fundamental dictates of sympathy or of
justice.

If it were true that each man's mental horizon were
bounded by his class interests ; if the man who claimed
to look beyond them were sure to be regarded as a
visionary or a hypocrite; if we were constitutionally
inaccessible to any political motives higher than those
of rational egoism, — this would simply mean that we
were fundamentally unfit for the task that is before us.
It would mean that the trusts which were placed in the
hands of our citizens by the new conditions of business
and of pohtics were of a kind which we could not fulfil.
It would indicate that the largeness of our problems
would ruin us morally and poHtically, as Rome was
ruined by her imperial problems two thousand years
ago. But I have faith to beHeve that this is not the
fate marked out for us to-day. I believe that the Amer-
ican people and the modern civilized world in general

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ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY

mil solve these problems, as they have solved other
problems which have come up in the successive phases
of their history ; that we shall meet the new collective
needs of industry and government with a true collectiv-
ism of spirit and purpose. Not with that superficial
collectivism or socialism which, like the individualism
which it strives to supersede, often makes too much of
mere political machinery, and believes that men are to
be saved by their institutions rather than their charac-
ters ; but with a public spirit which demands, as a part
of the national ethics, that men shall shape their course
on the basis of conviction rather than of compromise,
and that public discussion shall look toward a common
imderstanding rather than a bargain. Because the polit-
ical and commercial methods of the past have led to
compromise rather than conviction, or because the suc-
cessful man of affairs must be ready to compromise when
he fails to convince, let us not say that aU politics and
all commerce is but a tissue of compromises, and that a
political or commercial science which pretends to be
something broader and better than this is an illusion.
Let us as economists take the opportunity that hes
before us, in the face of new conditions for whose treat-
ment the old methods are proving themselves inadequate.
Let us employ our understanding with regard to public
needs as a means of evoking public spirit. Let us use
whatever special knowledge we have with aU the breadth
of purpose which it is in our power to attain, and make
ourselves, as becomes men of science, representatives of
nothing less than the whole truth.

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

During the last hundred years there has been a dis-
tinct progress in the study of legal and political institu-
tions. The methods of investigation have become more
scientific, the results more sound and more permanent.
But in the study of moral sentiments, and of the ethical
framework of society, the advance has been far less
marked. The ethical science of to-day, in its assump-
tions and its processes, bears a strong resemblance to
the political science of a century ago. It is the aim of
these papers to apply to the investigation of morals those
modes of analysis which have proved most fruitful in the
study of political institutions; and to see whether the
advance in method which has actually been accomplished
in the study of politics cannot be achieved in ethics also.

Down to the beginning of the present century, the
students of political science were pretty sharply divided
into two classes. One group started from the assump-
tion that there must be somewhere a sovereign unlimited
in authority. Another, and in the eighteenth century
a more influential group, started from the assumption
of an absolute right of individual liberty. Each con-
ception was abstract and metaphysical rather than his-
torical. For the time being, the representatives of hberty
made more impression than the representatives of sov-
ereignty, because practical men in the eighteenth century

100

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIKKTCE - — -,-.

were resisting the abuse of authority on the part of
absolute monarehs, and were quite ready to accept any
theory of politics which seemed to justify such resist-
ance. The signers of the Declaration of Independence
based their theories on their practice, not their practice
on their theories. They assumed that all men had equal
and inahenable rights to hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness ; but they would have been far from ready to
push this assumption to the logical conclusion which the
anarchist would draw from it. They believed in liberty,
because more hberty, under the existing conditions,
seemed a desirable thing, and absolute sovereignty an
undesirable one; not because they were prepared to
carry their avowed principle to its extreme development.
In the same way those who were most vigorous in
asserting the centralized authority of a sovereign were
governed by practical considerations in so doing. When
Bentham averred that law was the expression of a sov-
ereign will, and that whatever the sovereign commanded
was law, it was because he saw the confusion which
would result if the judges attempted to take any other
ground.^ He rejected doctrines of liberty and natural
rights, because doctrines of liberty and of natural rights
produced bad legal decisions. Bentham himself was
anything but a partisan of absolute monarchy. He
recognized clearly enough that, even in states where
the sovereign might theoretically command anything he
pleased, such an exercise of power would in practice
often produce a revolution.^ Bentham's fault lay not

* The Fragment on Government was an answer to certain theories
broadly stated by Blackstone, and concerned itself directly with the im-
possibility of carrying out those theories in judicial practice.

2 Bentham failed to recognize that nullification, rather than revolution,
is the practical check on the power of the sovereign, and that the habitual
obedience to a determinate superior, of which he has so much to say, is

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,,,THE BDUeATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

in his views, but in his method. He formulated a meta-
physical standard of sovereignty which was useful for
certain purposes ; but he was unable so to set the terms
of that standard as to avoid its apphcation in cases where
it was worse than useless.^

There was one man in the eighteenth century who
held nineteenth century views on the relation of liberty
and law. This was Edmund Burke. But even in the
case of Burke, these views were the result of intuition
rather than of reasoned judgment. They appear in the
form of flashes of insight, and not as a consistent scien-
tific system.^ It was left for John Stuart Mill to lay
the groundwork for the development of such a system.
It was left for writers like Morley, who combined the
views of Darwin with the political knowledge of Mill,
to carry this development to its logical conclusion. To
them, and to the whole school of modern historical
investigators, liberty and sovereignty are not incom-
patible. To such men, liberty is not a mere postulate
of logic, nor an assumed state of nature, but a political

an obedience within limits. K the sovereign transgresses these limits,
" passive resistance " follows ; and this phrase, however much ridiculed
by a certain school of jurists, marks a historical fact of the utmost im-
portance. Compare A. L. Lowell on The Limits of Sovereignty, Essays
on Government, pp. 189-222.

1 Actually, Bentham did a great deal to prevent his legal system from
being carried to dangerous extremes. His doctrine of utilitarianism taught
men to judge of the law without reference to what the sovereign had
commanded. Sir Frederick Pollock, in his History of the Science of
Politics, has pointed out that the English doctrine of absolute sovereignty
is greatly modified by tlie English practice of resisting a policeman, and
that on the continent of Europe, where their theories are less absolute
but their policemen more so, the net result is much less favorable to free
development than in England.

2 It is a great merit of John Morley to have brought out these points
in Burke's writings with a clearness which would probably have surprised
Burke himself.

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

institution which forms part of a national life. They
trace authority and liberty to one and the same cause,
— the necessity of self-preservation for the social organ-
ism. Authority exists because the peoples that recog-
nized authority have lived, while the peoples that
insisted on anarchy have perished. Liberty exists be-
cause the peoples that allowed authority to be despotic
perished from the rigidity of their political organism,
while those who were able to find a place for individual
freedom as a part of their scheme of authority learned
to adapt themselves to new conditions, and continued to
hve where the others died. It is a lesson of history
that a nation must combine discipline and freedom in
order to reach the plane of modem civilized life.

Substitute moral authority for legal authority, private
judgment for personal liberty, and it will not be hard to
apply the parallel to ethics. Here too we find a conflict
between the champions of an abstract moral sovereignty
inherent in the church, and the champions of an equally
abstract liberty of judgment inherent in the individual ;
the latter being to-day stronger than the former, because
the practical men of to-day want to do their thinking for
themselves, instead of having others do it for them.
Yet those who assert the right of private judgment as
a principle, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred shrink
back in horror from the moral anarchy which would be
produced by its logical application. The theory of an
absolute and unbounded right of private judgment, occa-
sionally postulated by Protestants of every shade, but
consistently carried out only by extremists like Pro-
fessor Chfford, is in fact a purely abstract assumption,
as unhistorical as Rousseau's natural right to liberty.^

^ A carious example of inconsistencj of political and ethical theory is
furnished in the first six chapters of Austin's Jurisprudence, where an

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

There has never been a case where a large body of
people really carried the postulates of Protestantism to
their logical conclusion. The nearest approach to it
perhaps occurred in Greece in the fourth century before
the Christian era, at the very time of the downfall of
the vitality of Greece as a nation, and in intimate con-
nection therewith. The right of private judgment can
be admitted as the right of civil liberty can be admitted,
as a privilege of those peoples and those individuals
who will not exercise it destructively. But the man
who makes it a starting-point in his logic has apparently
no means of so limiting its application as to stop short
of moral anarchism.

On the other hand, those who make authority their
starting-point or postulate have no means of stopping
short of despotism nor of avoiding the practical conse-
quences which despotism involves. The Catholic theory
of ecclesiastical sovereignty may be more logical than
the Protestant theory ; but in the attempt to apply that
theory the Catholic church has repeatedly obstructed
progress, moral as well as material. The efforts of
enlightened Catholics in the direction of reform, whether
successful or unsuccessful, have served to show how
strong is the resistance to such reform which their
philosophical system offers. Nor is the difficulty of
combining authority and progress confined to those who
have written and acted in connection with the Roman
church. It is one which besets every thinker who lets
the collective judgment of society overshadow that of
the individual. It is one from which neither Hegel
nor Comte could wholly free himseK.^ Each of these

absolute doctrine of sovereignty in law is brought into contrast with an
equally absolute doctrine of private judgment in morals.

1 Compare Mill, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, pp. 68-74.

104

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

writers was thoroughly imbued with the idea of prog-
ress. Each sought to trace in history a continuous
onward movement, and to make the presence or absence
of such movement the standard of good or evil. Yet
each was hampered by his own conception of authority
as residing in society and not in the individual ; for the
morals which society would at any given time prescribe
were those of the present, not those of the future. The
man who would be the instrument of moral good must
be for the moment, according to the definition of Hegel,
immoral in thought, if not in act. He could only help
society to continue doing right by himseK doing what
society considered wrong. When Lassalle asked how
there could be any reform without a revolution, he
asked a question which, from the Hegelian standpoint,
was unanswerable.

Yet it is a question which every nation must answer
both for its politics and for its morals. In the exist-
ing stage of civilization it is inadmissible for a people
either to be stationary or to be revolutionary. In the
former case it will be left behind. In the latter case
it will be wTecked. There must be some workable means
of reconciling authority and liberty. It was because the
English first wrought out a practical reconciliation of
this sort, however unsystematic, that England took the
lead in European political development.

The application of Darwinian methods to the study
of morals has opened the way to a theoretical solution
on the same lines as the practical one. To a consistent
Darwinian Lassalle's question presents no insuperable
difficulty. To the Darwinian neither moral authority
nor moral liberty is based on a metaphysical standard,
but on an historical one. Each is justified in so far
as it preserves the race that holds it. Authority, in

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

morals as well as in law, has grown up because without
submission to such authority a race inevitably perished.
Liberty has grown up because, if the authority was
carried to the point of despotism, progress was wholly
impossible ; and the race without progress perished as
surely as the race without authority, even though it
took a longer time to do it. In the mind of a Dar-
winian, repression of error is not necessarily or generally
a clear gain to society ; for the repression of all error
necessarily involves the repression of all change, and
the toleration of a score of errors does less harm than
the prevention of a single piece of permanent good.
Individual cases of error are seK-destructive, individual
cases of good self-preservative. That system has the
best chance of long-continued life which allows the
highest degree of individual variation without destroy-
ing authority as a whole.^ "When an organism, a spe-
cies, or a nation has ceased to vary, it has ceased to
grow; and any such total cessation of growth is worse
than a dozen instances of growth which is useless or
misdirected.

The man who has accustomed himself to make sur-
vival a test of right has much in common with the
upholders of authority on the one hand, and with the
upholders of hberty on the other. He unites the logi-
cal vantage ground of the Cathohc with the practical
vantage ground of the Protestant. Yet comparatively
little use has been made of the survival test in dealing
with questions of moral judgment. The science of
ethics has been regarded as a branch of psychology
rather than as a branch of history or of sociology. Its
study has been divorced from tlie study of law. "We
have accustomed ourselves to think of law and morals

* Morley, On Compromise, pp. 26&-281.

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

as subjects wholly separate. We have been taught to
look to our feeling, to our conscience, to our reason,
as sources of moral authority; to the courts and to the
legislatures as sources of legal authority ; and above all,
as a matter of cardinal importance, to keep these two
things sharply distinguished.

In the decision of most of the practical questions
which come up in every-day hfe, this separation is most
salutary. But in judging the past history of morals, or
in formulating theories of moral development, we are in
danger of carrying this habit of mind too far. The
practice of drawing a hard and fast line between law
and morals is something peculiar to the nineteenth cen-
tury ; and even in the nineteenth century it has not
been quite so universal as we have supposed. The
separation which we deem to exist as a matter of neces-
sity is more or less confined to our own time and to our
own country. There is less of it in Europe than in
America ; less in Catholic nations than in Protestant
ones ; less and less of it as we go farther back in the
world's history. Even in our own country to-day the
ruder communities show a tendency to revert to the time
when law and morals were not thus separate. The
justice of the half-savage tribes in earlier stages of
history finds its parallel in the justice of the vigilance
committees of the frontier towns. This savage justice
is based on something which according to modern con-
ception is neither law nor morals, — a body of tribal
customs, of which we can hardly say whence they
derive their authority. Their sanctions are of such
a character that we know not whether to call them
religious, legal, or ethical. These ancient customs are
certainly not law in the modem sense ; for they de-
pend for their force not upon any organized authority,

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

but upon the collective feeling of a community, every
one of whose members is ready to punish any trans-
gression. Yet they are equally far from being morals
in the modem sense ; for they are kept up, not by the
conscience of the individual, but by a system of organ-
ized terrorism, an ever-present lynch law, ready to be
put into execution upon the slightest provocation.

It is not necessary for our purpose to look in detail at
the process by which this body of tribal customs was
evolved. Much of it can be only a matter of conjec-
ture.^ But taking these customs as our starting-point,
we have the means of tracing with a fair degree of com-
pleteness the subsequent course of events by which they
were separated into two parts, out of which grew law
and morals respectively .^

First, with the development of military organization
the work of punishing infractions of the tribal morality,

1 Considering the date at which it was written, Bagehot's Physics and
Politics shows marvellous fertility in this form of conjecture, and his con-
clusions may be quite generally accepted as working hypotheses, in the
absence of anything better. There are certain parts of eariy law and mor-
als for whose history we have more definite evidences. McLennan, Primi-
tive Marriage, makes an attempt to trace the institution of the family
through successive stages from the time when the horde first introduced
the practice of female infanticide as the crudest and most obvious means
of limiting population. For the early development of property right the
detailed evidence is also fairly decisive. In the hunting stage we find only
rights of possession ; in the pastoral stage which followed it we find cer-
tain ideas of collective ownership of land and separate ownership of cattle ;
while with the agricultural stage the permanent settlement was marked
by the beginnings of indi^^dnal property right, contemporaneous perhaps
(though this may be fancifal) with the beginning of individual responsi-
bility in morals.

2 This separation, in the form here described, which is characterized by
Comte as " Military Polytheism," seems to have been peculiar to Europe.
The law of the Semitic nations has taken a more purely theocratic form ;
and the same result, though not without a struggle, was reached among
the Aryans of Asia.

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

instead of being the indiscriminate duty of every one
was gradually delegated to particular individuals. In
this stage we find certain customs enforced, no longer by
pure democracy and simple lynch law, but by some more
organized system of government, however imperfect or
arbitrary. In the next stage of development we find not
merely a determinate set of officials to secure compliance
with certain customs of the tribe, but a definite procedure
by which this compliance is attained. In the oldest sys-
tems or codes of law nothing is more noticeable than
the disproportionate space which is given to procedure.
These codes aim to state the method of obtaining redress
for a wrong, rather than the nature and content of the
right whose infraction constitutes a wrong.^ The law, to
put the matter in modern terms, was adjective before it
was substantive. The definition of the means of getting
one's legal rights was antecedent to the definition to
those rights themselves. The third and final step to-
ward the formation of law in its modern sense was taken
when the authorities, charged with the duty of enforcing
the various rights and customs, began to state definitely
which rights and customs would be enforced by them as
pohtical officers, and which rights and customs would be
left as a residuum, if one may so put it, for the authority
of the church or of reason, of rehgion or of ethics. In
this stage we have a gradual process of separation of cer-
tain principles whose infraction would be punished by
the organized force of the community, from the remain-
ing body of customs for whose violation the remedies
were less determinate and the procedure wholly indeter-
minate. The authority of this residuum rested primarily
on the feelings of the tribe or nation rather than on any
particular set of public officers.

1 The Twelve Tables furnish a good instance.
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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

In any growing legal system we find this gradual pro-
cess of definition, by which matters, previously left to
one general conscience and reason, are made determinate
parts of the law. Perhaps the best known instances
are to be found in the praetorian jurisdiction in Rome
and the equity jurisdiction in England, — two things
which have a close analogy with one another. The prae-
tor at Rome was a public ofl&cer with authority to sup-
plement, by his decisions, the law of the Twelve Tables
in cases where that law was not sufficiently explicit, or
where its direct application would work hardship. He
decided what was equitable by his ovtoi common sense ;
and this, when matters were simple, was hkely to be
pretty nearly the common sense of the more educated
part of the community. But, inasmuch as one praetor
might differ from another in his views of equity, it be-
came a matter of great importance for people to know
how this undetermined part of the law was going to be
administered. To meet this necessity the praetor, upon
taking office, would issue an edict, stating what he would
do in certain cases which were likely to arise. With
each successive election the forms of this edict became
more and more stereotyped; and in the more highly
developed stage of Roman law each praetor would begin
by stating that he would uphold the same traditions that
his predecessors had upheld, and would then perhaps
add a few new provisions to meet new difficulties that
might arise. What had been at first left to the praetor's
moral sense was gradually systematized, until it ulti-
mately became as explicit as the older system which it
had supplemented. The same history was repeated in
the equity jurisdiction of England, and it seems likely
to repeat itself in another form in the jurisdiction of
bodies like the Interstate Commerce Commission in the

110

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

United States, — bodies which in theory have not the
character or authority of courts, but which are designed
to give voice to the intelligent sense of the community
on matters at first thought to be extra-legal. The deci-
sions of such a commission, though not law in the tech-
nical sense, may gradually come to have the force of law
and to be recognized as such.^ All these things are but
instances of a general process of formulation of succes-
sive parts of what had previously been morals rather
than law. There has been, in other words, a continual
and progressive separation of those things which the
courts will enforce and for whose infraction determinate
remedies are provided, from those things whose enforce-
ment must be left to the sense of the community at
large.

Law, in this view, is created by a gradual delegation
of certain parts of morals to the political authorities for
enforcement. But it must not be supposed that the
residuum could remain unchanged while this process
was going on. The moral system was developed and
altered in its character as constantly as the law itself.
The separation and definition of those rights whose
infraction was punished by the government could not

1 The work of courts of equity may seem to be radically different from
that of commissions in two respects : first, that such courts had power to
execute their decrees, while commissions have not ; and second, that courts
of equity applied the moral sentiment of the community to remedy clear
cases of injustice, while commissions apply abstruse reasoning to the ex-
planation of complex ones. The difference is in either case more appar-
ent than real. A purely advisory body, under the settled legal system
of to-day, may have as much power as a court of equity in past centuries,
whether for the enforcement of rights or for the creation of precedents.
And the morality of the present day is so distinctively rational that a
new exposition of the effects of certain lines of action to-day may repre-
sent moral force just as clearly as did a new application of moral senti-
ments five hundred years ago.

Ill

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

possibly come to pass without radically affecting the
spirit of the remainder. So long as pubUc authorities
could give remedies for only a few among the many
evils under which we suffered, so long must right-
minded men do their own fighting. The vigilance com-
mittees of the frontier towns or the rough codes of
morals of school boys bring this state of things before
our sight in the midst of the existing civilization. But
with the addition of each new domain which law con-
quers for itself, the necessity for extra-legal force grows
less and less. The law-abiding spirit grows with the
growth of civilization, not because people are more
ready to submit to insult, but because they have new
means of seeking redress. The case of duelling is a last
remnant left from the time when law and morals were
not defined, and when large groups of offences lay on
the border-land between the two ; where the combatants
sought a remedy in extra-legal force, rather than in the
courts on the one hand, or in public opinion on the
other. Where duelling prevails to a large extent, it is
notoriously impossible for modem conceptions of law
to hold good ; and, what is still more to our present pur-
pose, it is equally impossible for modem conceptions
of morals to hold good.

There is a story that an Eton head master who ha-
bitually relied on the use of the rod, once expounded
Scripture as follows : " ' Blessed are the pure in heart.'
Mind that, boys. The Bible says it 's your duty to be
pure in heart. If you are not pure in heart I '11 flog
you." To modem ideas the absurdity of the story hes
in the supposition that the domain of morals can be
narrowed down to the limits of the master's rod ; but
to the ancient mind there would have been no such
absurdity whatsoever. To our ancestors of three thou-

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

sand years ago it would have seemed unreasonable to
suppose that any precept could have much force unless
it had the power of physical compulsion behind it.
When law and morals were indistinguishable, the
domain of moral precepts was coextensive with that
of judicial ones. The community appears to have re-
quired of its members conformity to certain definite cus-
toms, and to have punished with indiscriminate severity
all violations of any such customs. For every offence
there was a religious penalty threatened against the
whole tribe that permitted it, and swift physical ven-
geance was executed by that tribe on the offending
member, by whose action its well-being was thus endan-
gered. But when determinate remedies were provided
for certain violations of law, the duty of physical pun-
ishment was delegated to the government; and the
people were led to lay more stress on the religious
or ethical sanctions for those precepts to which the
sovereign could not in the nature of things secure
obedience by physical force. The moment this separa-
tion was made, it opened the possibility of widening
the field of moral authority. Public opinion was not
forced to limit its precepts to those matters where its
violation could be instantly punished. It learned to
depend for its power in no small measure upon the
superstitions or the reasonings of the individual mem-
bers of the community. When conscience and the
police were undistinguished, the sphere of the authority
of conscience was very different from what it became
when the two were separated. The people that relies
on its conscience as a means of enforcing public senti-
ment, and is able to maintain that authority stoutly
and strongly, can do hundreds of things impossible to
the tribe which can conceive of no law except one whose
• 113

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

infractions are repressed by violence. The history of
this development of moral authority, though less often
formulated than the history of law, seems hardly less
clear. In the rudest stages of society concerning which
we can secure evidence, the authority behind the moral
law seems to have been the fear of an undefined and
vague supernatural power, — magic pure and simple.
As society advances a little, a more personal shape is
attributed to these powers. To this stage belongs the
development of tribal and family religion, of the idea of
association of gods with men, of collective tribal respon-
sibihty, and of the honorific sacrifice, — the symbol, not
of expiation, but of brotherhood with tlie gods of the
tribe. In the period next following this the idea of sin
first makes its appearance. A crime is no longer an
offence against the gods of the tribe, involving aU mem-
bers of the tribe alike and punishable only by instant
death, but an individual act which can, to some extent
at any rate, be expiated. To this period belongs the
idea of expiatory sacrifice or atonement; the sin offer-
ing of the Old Testament, as distinguished from the
thank offering. With the sin offering there develops
a set of conceptions of infinite importance for modern
ethics. Hawthorne's favorite idea of sin as an educator,
however strained it may be in its appheation to indi-
viduals, is a most fundamental truth as applied to
nations. It is the germinating spot in the develop-
ment of the modem conscience and the whole system
of ideas connected with it. The conception of sin marks
the beginning of moral responsibility. The community
has ceased to judge the outward act alone, and takes
into account, however crudely, the intention of the man
who performed it. The conceptions of merit and free
will have their origin at this point. Inexphcable and

lU

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

irrational^ to the psychologist of to-day, whose view-
point is bounded by individual consciousness, they pre-
sent no difficulty whatever to the historian. Theories of
free will and of merit had the clearest historical justifi-
cation, because they were necessary elements in the de-
velopment of individual responsibility, without which
responsibility no progress from the oldest tribal system
of morals was possible.

During this stage sin was conceived as an individual
personal offence against a supernatural power. Just as,
under Oriental laws, any disregard of a despotic author-
ity was punished or expiated, so sin was punished or
expiated also. An act was regarded as sinful because it
offended some god ; and that was the end of it. It was
expiated in a certain way, because some god had pre-
scribed of his own pleasure that particular form of ex-
piation ; and that was the end of it also. The earliest
systems of morals are almost purely ceremonial, just as
the earhest systems of political law are almost wholly
occupied with procedure. But as a substantive civil
law developed out of judicial procedure, so in a similar
fashion a substantive moral law developed out of sacri-

1 For example, T. H. Green [Philosophical Works, 11, 319) speaks of

the free-will difficulty as a " question to which there is no answer because
expressed in terms which impli/ that there is some agency beyond the icill
which determines what that will should be." Schopenhauer, though he at
times comes very near to the historical method of treatment, ends by
wholly missing it. " Jedes einzelne Act hat einen Zweck, das gesammte
Wollen keinen." ( Welt als Wille, I, 106.) But perhaps the most marked
instance of failure to use historical methods in the treatment of this sub-
ject is found in Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics. His standards are
historical, but his explanations are not ; in other words, his psychology
is not brought into line with his ethics. Instead of saying that the com-
munity has taught free will to its members as a means of securing re-
sponsibility, he apparently holds that each individual develops theories of
free will as a result of his own uncertainty (p. 428 ; compare Schopenhauer,
•der Begriff der Freiheit is eigeutlich ein negatirer").

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ficial procedure. As this development progressed, the
content of the moral law became more important, and
the ceremonial at any rate relatively less so. The Mo-
saic code marks a point where this moral law had already
acquired large substance and stability. It is hardly nec-
essary to add that such a development of moral codes
necessitates a progress, partial or complete, towards
monotheism. Under conflicting lawgivers there could
not be one authoritative code.

It is not long before we come to a transition from the
stage where law derives its authority from God to one
where God derives his authority from being a lawgiver.
A community which formulates and obeys a set of moral
laws knows God primarily as revealed in those laws.
To a nation with a conscience the Gods of mythology
give place to the God of righteousness. From this point
it is but a short step to rationalism itself; to a time
when men begin to judge God by his own laws. A
people which had reached the stage of Jewish morals in
the time of Nehemiah could not wait very long before
developing the Pharisaic rationalism of the centuries
before the Christian era. The obvious inequalities of
justice that troubled them forced them to the doctrine
of immortality as the only means by which the goodness
of God could be vindicated, — not the vague immortal-
ity of the tribal religions, but a system of immortal
rewards and punishments, whereby the glaring injustice
of this world should be corrected in another.

With each successive stage of progress, the authority
of fear becomes less and less a determining factor in
conduct, the authority of conscience and reason a larger
one. It is no wonder that as moral conceptions widened
and were separated from purely legal ones, people be-
lieved this separation to be more fundamental than it

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

really was. The most astute reasoners, concerning law
and concerning conscience alike, mistook the exponent
of political or moral law for its ultimate source; mis-
took the authority on which the community rehes for
the execution of a judgment for the final power which
hes behind that judgment itself. It is no wonder that
systems of jurisprudence and ethics were formulated
which reasoned thus: "If whatever the courts say is
law, the courts can say anything, and it will be law.
If whatever the conscience says is morally right, the
conscience can say anything, and it will be morally
right." But the conclusion is in each case wholly
wrong. Neither the court nor the conscience has the
free will or independence here supposed. The form in
which the court exercises authority and the form in
which the conscience exercises authority are fixed by
the past history of the community. The courts cannot
declare themselves independent of precedent and work
out a new line of decisions apart from the moral sense
of the people and the traditions which have guided it.
The individual conscience cannot work out a new line
of judgments and a new system of right and wrong apart
from the traditions under which our ideas of law have
grown up. Behind the courts, behind the legislatures,
behind the church, behind the conscience, there is some-
thing larger and wider which has developed in the
progress of centuries, and which finds its embodiment in
national law and national character.

II

In a meeting between two armies, both strong, brave
and well equipped, the issue of the contest is usually
decided by superiority of discipline. That army which

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can best obey the general's orders, which is most fully
trained to act in effective masses, and which has most
thoroughly merged the individuality of the citizen in
the self-devotion of the soldier, is reasonably sure to
win. But though the question of disciphne seems to
decide almost everything, there is more than this behind
it. The highest and best of modem armies must have
something better than mere disciphne. With each gain
in the range of weapons, each gain in the numbers
handled, each gain in the complexity of the tactics, the
necessity for this additional something makes itself more
imperatively felt. Between forces otherwise equal, the
decision will rest in favor of the one where individual
thought and individual responsibility permeate the col-
lective thought and the machine-like precision with
which the orders are obeyed. As between the re-
pubhcans and the imperiahsts in the campaigns at the
close of the eighteenth century, as between the Germans
and the French at Worth or Mars-la-Tour, the issue was
not decided by numbers alone, by discipline alone, or
by generalship alone ; but by the possibihty of seizing
unexpected advantages of ground, detailed points of supe-
riority not foreseen in the plan of the battle or con-
templated in the general orders, for which one army was
ready and the other was not. It is comparatively easy
to train a body of soldiers to advance in column toward
a perfectly well-defined object. It is harder to persuade
a regiment or a group of regiments to advance in line
without mechanical support behind them. It is hardest
of all to teach the officers and the men of a company to
advance individually. Yet at critical moments this last
possibihty must decide the fate of the engagement. To-
day more than ever before victory depends not upon
intelligent generalship and implicit obedience alone, but

lis

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

upon the independent activity of the company officers
and the independent bravery of the men.

And to-day more than ever before the superiority in
morals rests with the nation that depends, not on its
authority alone and not on its generals alone, but upon
the individual responsibility of the subordinate leaders
and upon the power of the men in the ranks to preserve
their direction. In morals as in war we must have, in
the first place, discipline, authority, self-devotion, sub-
ordination of the individual to the whole. Nothing will
take the place of that spirit which enables and compels
the soldier to march right straight to death for the sake
of plain duty. But as the times are now, we must also
have a power of the individuals to decide upon their duty
for themselves; to see what needs to be done without
orders, and to take their own chances in doing it. We
must have our collective authority supplemented by in-
dividual responsibility, individual judgment, and indi-
vidual sense.

Discipline and self-devotion are underlying principles
of all ethics. The nation that does not have them goes
to pieces irreparably. Judgment and sense are the dis-
tinctive characteristics of modern ethics. The nation
that does not have them is left behind in the race of
historical progress.

But is it possible to have a thorough exercise of judg-
ment and sense without a loss of discipline and self-
devotion? Will not the development of the one, in
morals and in tactics, inevitably lead to the destruction
of the other? Is not a man selfish as soon as he begins
to reason out the consequences of his action? Is not
all heroism impulsive heroism? Is not all calculated
conduct in the last analysis selfish conduct? Can we
have both the heroism and the calculation, the collective

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end and the individual judgment? We must not un-
derrate the real difficulty which lies at the root of these
questions. We must not overlook the fact that in the
passage from centralized authority to individual liberty
there is danger that the underlying discipline, absolutely
essential to all, should pass away. It is the hardest
problem that a nation has to face, thus to decentralize
its moral authority without at the same time losing it
altogether. But by nations as well as by armies, this
problem must be faced and solved. Under modern con-
ditions, that nation which can farthest push its ration-
alism without allowing it to degenerate into egoism —
which can farthest push its individual freedom without
losing its collective strength — is the one that must
prevail in the long run, and the one whose moral system
has in it the element of permanence.

The old principle of tribal responsibility secured dis-
cipline at the expense of independence. It secured
effective authority over conduct, but it prevented such
conduct from being rational, at least in any unforeseen
emergencies. It secured compliance with the letter of
the moral law, and sacrificed its spirit — if, indeed, in
those rude days, it can be said to have had a spirit. The
substitution of individual responsibility for collective
responsibility, the development of the conception of sin
and of merit, and, above all, the recognition of intention
as an important element in morality, made a radical
change in this respect. People were taught to assume
the existence of a choice between good and bad conduct,
and to use their reason in directing their conduct to
more or less rational ends. This freedom — or perhaps
we should say this assumption of freedom — made it
necessary for standards of conduct to become either
much better or much worse than they had been pre-

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

viously. If the standard of the community, under the
new system, remained unselfish and far-sighted, the use
of freedom and intelligence was a clear gain ; if on the
other hand the first use of freedom was to overthrow
discipline and unselfishness, the gain was many times
outweighed by the loss. The attempt to substitute
moral responsibility for moral compulsion was Hke the
attempt to substitute free labor for slave labor. If the
freeman would work at aU, their work was better than
that of slaves ; but there was always a danger that they
would use their freedom as a pretext for doing no work
whatsoever.^

When it was believed that the gods punished the
tribe for the sins of its members, this behef was not only
effective in practice but substantially true in theory.^
But when the priests attempted to modify this belief
to suit the development of individual responsibility, and
taught that the gods punished the individuals for their
own sins, the formula lost so much of its truth as to
lose nearly all of its effectiveness. That the gods
always rewarded the good man and punished the bad
man, was not true, in this Hfe at any rate. The future
life might set matters right; devout men, in all ages,
believed that it would; but the future Hfe was not
a strong enough motive to make the bulk of the com-
munity moral. Its remoteness rendered it ineffective
with one class of minds, its uncertainty with another
class. On the races of antiquity, the general effect

1 In actual history, fatalism has gone hand in hand with slavery,
rationalism with property. The troubles of Greece in developing ra-
tionalism side by side with slavery, and those of Russia in developing
emancipation side by side with fatalism, show the diflBculty if not the im-
possibility of ignoring the connection.

' The belief differs from Darwinism only in the process by which it is
reached and the form in which it is stated ; not in the substance itself.

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of reasoning about conduct was distinctly demoralizing.
The Athenian public was substantially right in its
estimate of the work of Socrates as affecting social order
at Athens. The course of events proved the truth of
the public judgment; and indeed the successors of
Socrates, by the form which they gave their philosophy,
vitually confessed the correctness of this judgment.
For the loss of popular belief in the gods, they offered
nothing which could serve as a substitute. They might
talk of the honestum and the utile and the interaction
between the two, and show that nothing could be useful
or advantageous which was not honorable and rational ;
but they got astonishingly little hold on the masses of
mankind. Rationalism, to those tribes that had been
brought up under the older mythologies, meant self-
ishness; selfishness meant disruption of all authority,
followed by revolutions and barbarian invasions. Those
who had any effective moral restraint left when their
mythology was gone, were very few in number. Plato,
and nearly all his contemporaries and successors, were
careful to restrict the study of ethics to the favored
class of citizens who would get the most benefit from
the development of the state, and who could therefore
take this collective development as an end. Wise under-
standing of justice was to be the prerogative of a few
philosophers and statesmen who were to be maintained
by the rest of the community. Courage was to be the
distinctive virtue of the soldiers who were to carry out
the decrees of the philosophers and statesmen. As for
the rest, let them practise self-restraint, let them learn
to mind their own business. This was the sum and
substance of ancient philosophy ; authority over the
many, collective egoism, if we may so call it, for the
few. But we all know how it turned out, — that

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE

the many would not be thus repressed ; would not mind
their own business ; would insist that if it was useful to
the community for Socrates to drink all night, it was
also useful to the community for the " base mechanicals "
to drink all night; and the Macedonians came in and
conquered.

The Romans did somewhat better with their rational-
ism ; for the Romans had what the Greeks had not,
a well-developed system of legal ideas, and certain habits
of action and feeUng which carried the influence of
those ideas beyond the narrower sphere of law. When
their mythology went away there was something left
besides philosophy. The ideas of this period are em-
bodied in the great work of Lucretius, De Rerum
Natura — in some respects the most modem poem of
classical antiquity. It reflects the state of mind of one
who attempted to be seriously and soberly a rationalist
and at the same time a reverencer of authority. It
reflects the hopeless conflict between the old moraUty
founded upon a mythology which the author could no
longer believe, and the new morahty founded on Grecian
philosophy which offered relatively weak motives for
good conduct. The two could not be reconciled ; yet
the hard effort at reconciliation still continued, and
by its persistence showed a vitaHty in Roman morals
and Roman religion and a possibility of development in
Roman thinking which the Greeks, with all their acute-
ness, had failed to attain. It showed a possibihty of
maintaining some of the discipUne of the old Rome
with some of the freedom of the newer philosophi-
cal thought. To understand this state of things more
clearly we have only to look at the New England
thought and New England feeling of the last hundred
years. How many men have we known whose minds

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were in a hopeless conflict between two duties that they
saw and felt, — the duty of believing iu the authority
of the traditional religion on the one hand, and the duty
of exercising their sense independently and fearlessly on
the other. How many persons have been clouded by
despondency in the hopeless attempt to reconcile these
two co-ordinate obligations, to follow traditions which
their sense could not accept, and to use their sense to an
extent which must burst the bonds of old traditions.
How many times in New England history has the
experience of Lucretius been repeated ; and how many
men who could not put it into poetry have put into
action the despair of the conflict which breathes through
the hues of his verse.

Wherever this conflict persists — wherever the con-
servatism of feeling among the best men of the nation is
not swept away by the flood of rationahsm — we have
a field for the work of religious reformers, and for the
new systems of ethical ideas incident to such reform.
It is extremely difficult to find words to indicate the
nature of this work and this change of ideas, or to
characterize, without risk of misunderstanding, the com-
mon element in the influence of Buddha and Confucius
and Mahomet and Jesus. We are hampered by a psy-
chology which treats the individual as self-determined ;
by crude theories of inspiration, and yet cruder theories
of reason and reahty, which have prevented the develop-
ment of a terminology to suit the needs of the case.
The religious reformer, in distinction from the philoso-
pher, appeals primarily to the emotions rather than to
the reason of those whom he addresses. Perhaps it
would be better to say that he appeals to unconscious
reasoning (if we may do violence to psychological
usage) rather than to conscious. He avoids the absurdi-

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ties of the older mythology so far as they have pre-
vented, that mythology from keeping a lasting hold upon
the people ; he creates a new theology having its evi-
dence and its warrant in the feelings and conduct of
those who adopt it. It may be open to criticism on the
narrow set of data accessible to contemporary philoso-
phers, as early Christianity was open to the criticisms
of Celsus ; but when Celsus claimed that Greek philoso-
phy was better than Christianity, he overlooked the
fact that Greek philosophy could not take hold of the
masses of mankind and influence their conduct, while
Christianity could ; and so in their several places could
Confucianism and Buddhism and Mahometanism. It
is one of the most important facts in any scientific
study of psychology that in Httle over a thousand years
the whole civilized world could pass from the dominion
of tribal mythologies, based on tribal war and tribal
responsibility, to broader theologies, based on individual
responsibility, on moral sentiments, and on national if
not on human brotherhood.

Nowhere is the difference between Christianity and
tribal religions brought out more clearly than in the
course of the rationahsm of modern Europe, as distinct
from that of Greece or Rome. The process of religious
criticism, wliich wrecked Greek piety and Greek morals
in little over a century, has gone on for the last four hun-
dred years without any such destruction. The active
questionings which the ancients would have confined to
a few philosophers are now the common property of the
masses; yet those masses are probably on the whole
more unselfish and more law-abiding than ever before.
Though we cannot avoid anxiety for the future we have
at least no cause to condemn the past. That which to
the ancient world proved a speedy revolution has to the

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modem world not yet lost its character of a reformation.
The protestantism of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies has paved the way for the utilitarianism of the
eighteenth and the materialism of the nineteenth, with-
out the downfall either of social order or of practical
morality.

The leading conditions which distinguished the ration-
alism and the ethical development of the last four cen-
turies from those of the ancient world fall under three
heads : the separation of law and morals which made it
possible to change the theories of conduct without dis-
solving the foundations of social order; the institution
of private property, which had trained people to work
for a remote end intelligently and without compulsion ;
and the feeling of sympathy and human brotherhood
which found so large a place in the Christian doctrine
that it withstood alike the perversions of that doctrine
and the attacks which attempted to undermine its
influence.

Where moral authority and legal authority were but
slightly distinguished, any change in the one was sure
to endanger the other. But when the two stood apart
in men's minds we could alter our theories of conduct
without wrecking the whole structure of civil society.
It was owing to the separation of legal and moral ideas
that the work of Luther could stand, independently of
that of Gdtz von Berlichingen. Protestantism could
appeal to the masses without making its success or fail-
ure dependent on the success or failure of the Peasants'
War, and without causing the excesses of the fanatics
of Miinster to be paralleled in every town that rejected
the old faith. The separation of church and state, in
short, allowed the defenders of social order to range
themselves on the side of moral progress.

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Of no less importance for rational conduct was the
institution of private property and the training which it
had given. Property taught people to do disagreeable
things for a remote reward, and thus made them more
capable of directing their efforts toward a distant
moral end. It prevented freedom from degenerating
into inefficiency and vice. It also did far more than
this in a wholly different direction. It taught people to
see in how many ways their own interests were to be
sought in promoting those of others. When trade was
thought to be a kind of robbery, there was no sin more
unsparingly condemned than the desire to make money.
But as time went on, it appeared that legitimate trade
was not robbery but mutual service ; that a man could
habitually do well for himself by doing well for others ;
and that where the superficial observer saw only a con-
flict of interests, the really far-sighted business man
could find a mutual harmony. It taught men, in other
words, how often rational self-interest and rational
unselfishness might closely coincide.

But the most vital point of advantage of modem
rationalism lay in the existence of a kind of unselfish-
ness wliich Christianity had been the chief agent in
creating. This unselfishness was a feeling to which the
moralist could appeal, either as a source of individual
action, or as a basis of public sentiment. The church,
in building it up, had paved the way for its own
reformation. It was this feeling which gave power to
the Protestant appeal to the Scriptures, because it
enabled them to awaken a quick echo in the hearts of
their readers. It was this which caused those Scriptures
to be interpreted more and more by the light of reason,
until Christian morality became at last frankly utilita-
rian, making happiness a standard of right. So univer-

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sal has been the tendency to accept this standard, even
where the theology under which it had grown up was
more or less completely lost, that philosophers of the
most divergent schools, like Kant and Mill, have not
hesitated to treat it as a self-evident ethical principle.
But the course of events in the last few years is
beginning to show that it is not thus self-evident.
Utilitarianism, as a habitual working hypothesis, is giv-
ing place to rational egoism, both among philosophers
and among the mass of mankind. This change brings
us face to face with the dangers which proved too much
for ancient morality and ancient freedom. We can no
longer rest content with that philosophy which would
treat altruistic happiness as a self-evident standard, and
make such happiness the ultimate criterion of moral
right. Such a theory of ethics is no better than the
crude theories of law which prevailed a century ago.
Nor can the effort of Spencer to strengthen utilitarian-
ism, by showing that enlightened selfishness and enlight-
ened unselfishness tend to coincide, be deemed a whoUy
successful one. It is chiefly significant as a confession
of the popular hold which egoistic ethics has secured.
It is not because utilitarianism coincides with egoism
that we are to accept it ; but because utilitarianism as a
habit of mind in the nation means liberty and progress,
while egoism means destruction. Utilitarianism is to be
defended historically, as the form in which organized
society can permit and prescribe the exercise of private
judgment without moral suicide. It derives its author-
ity, not from general grounds of natural right, but from
the fact that the community is preserved by the exercise
of private judgment, and finds it best that this private
judgment shall be based on utilitarian standards. These
standards are not necessary moral elements in every

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moral system, as Mill would have assumed; but they
are characteristic and distinctive elements in the higher
civilization and the higher morality of aU the nations of
America and Western Europe for the past hundred
years.

How comes it that this utilitarianism which has in
modern times by common consent been made a standard
of morals and a criterion for the exercise of private judg-
ment was aU but unknown to the world of classical an-
tiquity ? It was because the religions of the Greeks and
Romans had not educated them, either as individuals or
as nations, up to a point where sympathy became a com-
mon feeling and an admissible assumption. Just as in
constitutional law the possibility of hberty is dependent
upon a law-abiding spirit in the community, upon a legal
education which permits the exercise of individual re-
sponsibility, — so in the case of morals, the possibility
of private judgment is dependent upon a spirit of sym-
pathy in the masses of mankind, whose historical devel-
opment is due to Christianity. Proclaim liberty on the
South Sea Islands, and the inhabitants will run amuck.
Proclaim private judgment to a band of robbers, and
they will at once exercise it in a manner which the com-
munity could not tolerate for a moment. Civil freedom
is dependent upon the legal education of those who hold
it ; freedom of judgment, in like manner, upon the moral
education of those who hold it. Modern America and
modern Europe have been able to carry private judg-
ment further than has ever been done before, without
loosening the bonds of cohesion of society, because
modern America and modern Europe work on the basis
of such previous religious training that utilitarianism
can be taken as a common standard and as an almost
self-evident motive on which mankind can agree. Under
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a religion which preached only law and not love, only
power and not altruism, as did so many of the ancient
mythologies, the exercise of private judgment meant
anarchy and destruction. A few, like the Stoics, could
conceive of a general or collective utility ; more, like the
Epicureans, could develop a rational egoism and at least
make some effort to practise it ; but to the great majority
of those educated under the older religions, the failure
of these religions meant the substitution of an irrational
egoism. It is because we have this historical basis of
sympathy on which to work, that we can develop liberty
of judgment in morals as we have developed liberty of
action in law. It is thus that, with the fall of so many
of the older moral sanctions, the whole system, though
endangered in the apprehensions of the more conserva-
tive, has not fallen, and still shows vigor and strength.
In the Christian precept of love, and in the education
which that precept has given, we still have something
which can take hold on the hearts of mankind ; some-
thing which can enable them to exercise their judgment
without making that judgment entirely selfish, or losing
it in the hopeless maze of philosophical discussion. It
gives them something to work for and to fight for, which
still appeals to their sympathies; something more tan-
gible than the social utility of the Stoics or of Leslie
Stephen. It enables the moral battle to break up into
regiments and companies and skirmish lines, without
cowardly retreat or short>«ighted self-seeking. If our
minds have been educated to feel the happiness of others
as a strong motive, we need not make shipwreck be-
tween the vagueness of the Stoic's ideal on the one hand,
and the demoralization which has attended that of the
Epicurean on the other. We have something suffi-
ciently strong and tangible to appeal to the mass of

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mankind, sufficiently rational to be made a basis of indi-
vidual responsibility and individual judgment, and in
virtue of both these qualities bound to stand where other
systems fall.

But, the rational egoist will object, is not all reasoned
action selfish action? Are not all motives selfish?
When you calculate the results of a course of conduct,
do you not in fact present the different motives as they
appear to you, and choose the strongest of them ? And
if you apparently choose an unselfish motive, is it not
that you have been so trained that your own individual
happiness is affected by the feelings of others ? This is
an argument which has overwhelming weight with many ;
an argument which has deceived, to a greater or less ex-
tent, almost every thinker who has approached this sub-
ject as a pure matter of individual psychology and has
not looked at it from the wider standpoint of the sociolo-
gist. But if this reasoning is sound it proves too much.
If a man always obeys the strongest motive, this strong-
est motive being determined by his own happiness at the
instant, it is his own happiness at the instant which
affects his action and nothing else.^ The reasoning of
the rational egoist destroys his own theories of morals
as well as those of the altruist ; for it makes far-sighted
conduct as illusory as unselfish conduct. In a certain
sense it is true that every man is always affected by his
own happiness at the instant ; but it is also true that his
happiness at the instant can be affected by other people's
happiness, just as much as it could be by his own happi-
ness at some future instant. The claim of the rational
egoist, that all motives are, in the last analysis, selfish,

1 Strength of motive and quantity of happiness are as incommensur-
able as a linear mile and an acre. Strength of motive is a matter of pure
intensity ; quantity of happiness involves both intensity and duration.

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would only be practically true of a community in which
self-consciousness was developed to an enormous degree
and sympathy not at all ; but such a community would
have gone to pieces long before there was any time for
it to apply the finer theories of rational egoism.

It is probably true that as civilization advances the
conflict between rational egoism and rational altruism
grows less and less. To a savage untrained in habits of
law or of sympathy or of reasoning, the antithesis be-
tween selfishness and unselfishness is an absolutely
irreconcilable one. Develop him to a higher level of
education, and they become less and less antagonistic.
Let hiTTi be thoroughly trained, a man of fine sympathies
and far-sighted judgment, and he will see as a matter
of reason that we are members one of another ; will see
that by pursuing selfishly his own course to the dis-
regard of others he would do as the individual soldier
would do, who should selfishly pursue his safety by
running away in the battle, — would injure his own
safety as well as the safety of the whole army and the
general issue of the conflict. He will see that only by
helping one another can we intelligently carry out the
system which should help ourselves.

But we must beware of relying too implicitly on this
harmony of interests. Such rationalism and such fore-
sight, for the majority of people at any rate, are far re-
mote ; and the danger inherent in rational egoism is that
it will make them put the selfish reasoning in advance
of the clear vision and high education which alone can
make such reasoning innocuous. It is this which gives
force to the famous passage of Burke, that many men of
thought prefer to preserve ancient prejudices, rather than
to trust everything to reason, lest haply short-sighted
reasoning should destroy all things and wreck the whole

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nation itself. It may be true that intelligent selfishness
and intelligent unselfishness tend to come closer and
closer to one another and may ultimately coincide. Yet,
with human institutions as they are now, the connection
is not always clear; and with human foresight and
human intelligence as it is now, there is not one man in
a thousand, perhaps not one man in a million, that can
trust his intelligence to take the place of unselfishness.
There may come a time when the whole community will
see that rational conduct means readiness for self-devo-
tion ; but this time has not yet arrived. For the present
we must not rely wholly or primarily on rationahsm, but
largely on tradition and feeling. It is the force of per-
sonal love and personal magnetism and the various un-
selfish impulses which tend to keep men together, that
is strong enough to be made the basis of a moral author-
ity by which the community can live.

The really serious danger which we have to fear is,
that by too quick development of a system of rational
egoism as the ultimate aim of morals, we may expose
ourselves to the fate by which Greece and Rome fell,
and from which we, by our Christian traditions, have
thus far been able to save ourselves. The importance
of a sound science of ethics lies in the fact that it will
enable our minds and our consciences to work together
instead of separately. It may be true, as LesHe Stephen
says, that a theory of motives is not itself a motive.
But it is one of those truths which are more than half
untrue; for it is unquestionable that the absence of a
theory of motives tends to weaken, on the part of the
individual and the community, those motives which are
left unexplained. If in our own secret hearts we cannot
find logical grounds for those feelings of unselfishness
in which we have been trained, and those acts of self-

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sacrifice to which we have become habituated, or if we
are afraid to analyze our grounds too closely lest haply
the test may prove too much for them, it is inevitable
that these feelings should grow weaker, these acts less
automatic. What is of even more importance, we must
transmit them weaker to those about us and to those
after us. If the community will save itself from the
destruction of the rational egoist, it must find a rational
theory that is not egoistic. It is this which makes the
application of the methods of political science to morals
most imperatively necessary. The effect of no small
part of the psychology of the present day is immoral,
because the science is based upon an assumption which
is immoral in many of its practical effects, — the assump-
tion of independent workings of individual minds. Only
when we analyze the conduct and character of individuals
as part of the general history of a race, only when we
cease to take superficial phenomena of consciousness as
ultimate data of science, only when we have learned to
explain private judgment in morals as we explain consti-
tutional liberty in politics, can we hope to understand
either our own conduct or the conduct of nations.

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Among the ta&hy deniands wMcli are made upon our
schools and colleges at the present day, none is more
universally voiced than the demand for a fuller course
of political education. And for this there is good rea-
son. With the growing complexity of modem life, the
difficulties of social organization and government are in-
creasing. With the growing pressure toward speciaHzed
training for varied spheres of usefulness, the danger that
we shall sacrifice the general basis of higher education
which will enable us to cope with these difficulties is
also increasing. It is not enough for our schools to fit
men and women to be parts of a vast social machine ; it
must prepare them to be citizens of a free common-
wealth. If our educational system fails to do this, it
fails of its fundamental object.

But in thus recognizing the importance of training
for citizenship, there is danger that we shall make mis-
takes as to the particular kind of training which will
secure the results desired. A true political education
is a very different thing from much that passes current
under this title. To begin with, it is not a study of
facts about civil government. A man may possess a
vast knowledge with regard to the workings of our
social and political machinery, and yet be absolutely
untrained in those things which make a good citizen.
This distinction is of special importance at the present

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day, because these topics have so large a place in many
of the schemes of education which are now being urged
by social reformers. We hear on every side calls for
more teaching of sociology and politics and civics and
finance, and aU manner of studies intended to inform
the young American concerning the mechanism of the
political world in which he lives. I shaU not undertake
to judge the value of these studies from the pedagogical
standpoint. I shall not try to estimate whether the un-
doubted advantage which they possess in awakening
interest is more than balanced or less than balanced by
tlie danger of cramming which connects itself with their
use. But when the plea is urged, as it so often is, that
they constitute a necessary and valuable training for
citizenship, we are justified in making a direct protest
Except within the narrowest limits, they do harm rather
than good. As ordinarily taught, they tend to fix the
attention of the pupil on the mechanism of free govern-
ment rather than on its underlying principles. They
exaggerate the tendency, which is too strong at best,
toward laying stress on institutions rather than on
character as a means of social salvation. They tend
to prepare the minds of the next generation to look to
superficial remedies for political evils, instead of seeing
that the only true remedy lies in the creation of a sound
public sentiment. I would not underrate the value of
knowledge of political fact to the man or woman who
is first well grounded in political ideals. But the en-
deavor to cram with facts as a substitute for the de-
velopment of ideals is at best an inversion of the true
order of education, and may easily become a perversion
of its true purpose. For the sake of a plentiful and im-
mediate crop of that mixture of wheat and chaff which
is known as civics, we run the risk of unfitting the soil

136

POLITICAL EDUCATION

for the reception of that seed which should result in
the soundest and best growth of which the field is
capable.

Nor is it right to conceive of political education as
being primarily a training in those scientific principles
which regulate the activity of governments. It is true
that the teaching of science is a far higher ideal than
the teaching of facts, and that the pupil who has re-
ceived this training enjoys a position of inestimable
vantage in judging social events of the day. But it is
also true that the study of political science is an ex-
tremely difficult one; and that if we depended for the
success of our political education upon the truth of the
abstract doctrines of politics which have been taught,
the outlook would be dark indeed. One political sci-
ence, and only one, has reached a high degree of ex-
actitude. This is jurisprudence ; and just because it
is an exact science, people have ceased to pretend that
it is easy, and do not attempt to teach it in the schools.
Next to jurisprudence in exactness comes political econ-
omy, certain parts of which have been developed in the
hands of experts to a satisfactory stage of clearness and
precision. But that which is taught as political economy
in the majority of institutions is very far from having
this scientific character. And what is true of the cur-
rent teaching of political economy is, I think, true in
even higher degree of the various branches of sociology
and politics, as they are presented in the classrooms of
the present day. As a rule, the teaching of sociology
is better when it is called by the plain name of history,
the teaching of politics better when it is made an inci-
dent in the unpretentious study of geography. Under
the old-fashioned name of history or geography, the
description of social phenomena arrogates to itself less

137

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claim as an exact science than its enthusiastic devotees
desire. But the really essential elements in science are
truthfulness and precision ; and I fear there can be no
doubt that the substitution of the new names for the
old has been accompanied by a loss in these respects.
Next to an education in political facts without ideals,
I can imagine no worse training for the future citizen
of the country than an education in political principles
without exactitude.

It must constantly be borne in mind that the training
of the free citizen is not so much a development of cer-
tain lines of knowledge as a development of certain
essential qualities of character and habits of action.
Courage, discipline, and loftiness of purpose are the
things really necessary for maintaining a free govern-
ment. If a citizen possesses these qualities of charac-
ter, he will acquire the knowledge which is essential
to the conduct of the country's institutions, and to the
reform of the abuses which may arise. If he does not
possess these qualities, his political learning and that
of his fellow-men will not keep the state from destruc-
tion. If he has not the courage to exercise his political
rights in the face of possible intimidation, no amount
of acquaintance with constitutional theory will save his
vote from suppression or prevent popular government
from becoming a mere shadow. If he has not the
discipline to subject his will to the restraints of law,
no amount of knowledge of the beneficent effects of
these restraints will save the people from that revo-
lution and anarchy which invite tyranny from within
or conquest from without. If he does not possess a
measure of political idealism and disinterestedness of
aim, no amount of knowledge of the needs of the coun-
try and the ways of meeting them will lead to the f or-

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POLITICAL EDUCATION

mation of an active public sentiment, or prevent the
institutions of the nation from degenerating into a more
and more rigid formalism.

If there is one thing which distinguishes the great
writers on politics from the petty ones, it is the recog-
nition of this overwhelming importance of character and
public opinion, as compared with the particular institu-
tions in which that character and public opinion may
choose to embody its organized activity. Unfortunately,
their words on this matter do not always find ready
hearing. The details of the organization are so much
more visible than the underlying spirit which gives it
life that everybody looks at the former, and few have
the sense to see the latter. Every one knows that Aris-
totle divided governments into monarchy, aristocracy,
and democracy. Very few know that Aristotle said
that there was a more fundamental division of govern-
ments into those which were legitimate and those which
were not ; the former being based on the consent of the
governed and acting in the interest of the whole, while
the latter were based on the authority of a class and
exercised in the interests of that class. Every one
knows that Rousseau's Social Contract was a powerful
means for the promotion of democracy in Europe, and
identifies his name with the doctrine that majorities
should rule. Few know that Rousseau protested against
the abuse of this doctrine with which his name is thus
connected ; that he said emphatically that the majority
of the people was not the people and never could be ;
and that he only called for the determination of the
public wiU by majority votes as being a better means
than any other which had been devised of approxi-
mating to that real public sentiment which, after all,
was the only legitLtnate power. Let us not adopt a line

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

of education wliich shall emphasize in the minds of our
children those details which were trivial in Aristotle
and those which were pernicious in Rousseau. Let us
rather impress upon them their responsibility as mem-
bers of a body politic in the formation of tliat sentiment
running throughout the whole body, wliich is behind
the laws of a free state, and without which all law
becomes either a mockery or a means to the tyranny of
some over others.

But what is this public sentiment, about which so
much is said and so little understood ?

" Man," says Aristotle, " is a political animal." Many
attempts have since been made to reinstate this propo-
sition in an improved form, but on the whole none is so
good as the original. The instinct for forming com-
munities which shall be the unit and centre of action
is a distinguishing mark of the human species. In the
formation of these communities, the thing which holds
them together and marks them out from those about
them is not so much a distinction of physical character,
or even of mental quality, as a distinct system of politi-
cal ethics. A man under the influence of this code of
political ethics imposed by the community will do things
which may seem to militate, and sometimes actually
do militate, against his self-interest as an individual.
Under its influence he will encounter personal danger
to promote public safety. He will submit his passions
and desires to the restraints of irksome discipline.
Hardest of all, he will often perform disinterestedly as
a trustee in behalf of the community those powers
which the voice of that community has intrusted to his
charge.

On that feeling which gives effect to those political
virtues we have bestowed the name of public sentiment

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POLITICAL EDUCATION

It may be said to perform the same functions in the
world of political morality which the individual con-
science performs in the wider domain of personal moral-
ity. And just as codes of private morals are unmeaning
or formal unless there is a sturdy conscience to give them
effect, so legal regulations and police discipline are but
a vain reliance unless public sentiment stands behind
them and comes to their aid. We may carry the anal-
ogy one step further, and say that just as in private
morality there is an alternative between self-government
by one's own conscience and the compulsion of external
authority, so in public morality there is a similar alter-
native between self-government by public sentiment and
the tyranny of a dominating power.

It will be readily seen that public sentiment, as thus
described, is a very different thing from much that
passes under that name. If a large number of people
want a thing, we not infrequently hear it said that there
is a public sentiment in its favor. It would be much
more correct to say that there is a widespread personal
interest in securing it. The term " public sentiment " can
only be applied to those feelings and demands which
people are willing to enforce at their own cost, as well
as that of others. The desire for better municipal
government on the part of the man who is not wilUng
to labor for that end, the effusive patriotism of the man
who hopes thereby to lead other people to enter upon a
war of which he may celebrate^ the glories and enjoy the
fruits, the denunciation of trusts by the man who has
tried to do what they do and has not succeeded, can
never be regarded as expressions of public sentiment
in any true sense. They are but instances of the seK-
ishness, the vaingloriousness, and the enviousness of
large sections of the community. There is perhaps

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

nothing which more severely cripples economic reform
than a failure to distinguish between a disinterested
condemnation of that which we should despise in our-
selves no less unsparingly than we denounce it in others,
and the interested outcry of those who object to an evil,
real or alleged, simply because some one else happens
to be its beneficiary.

There is just as much need for the training of this
public conscience or public sentiment, by whatever
name we choose to caU it, as for the training of the
individual conscience in the affairs of private hfe. In
fact, there is all the more need for such training, because
the functions of the public conscience are less perfectly
understood and the matters with which it deals are
much more complex. In the practice of ordinary per-
sonal virtues a man or woman cannot go far astray with-
out being brought up with a round turn by social
disqualification, if not by the police or the reformatory.
But in matters which concern the public interest, the
transgressor, under our present system, is often entirely
safe from the condemnation of the law, and largely so
from any active exercise of social disquahfication on the
part of his feUow-men. The greater the complexity of
our social phenomena, the less clear are the applications
of some of our standards of personal morality in their
conduct, and the more does this education of public
morality become an indispensable thing for the com-
munity that would preserve its integrity.

The means for this education have not kept pace with
the need. In some respects we have actually gone back-
ward. Grand as is the work which is done by the
courts of the present day, it is doubtful whether their
function as public educators stands where it did a cen-
tury ago. Partly on account of the increasing difficulty

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POLITICAL EDUCATION

of the cases with which they have to deal, partly on
account of a theory of legal authority which dates from
the beginning of the present century, our judges have
contented themselves more and more with the apphca-
tion of precedents, and have been less and less con-
cerned with the elucidation of reasons which should
appeal to the non-technical mind. Add to this the fact
that the performance of jury duty, once an all but imi-
versal educator in the principles underlying some of the
most important branches of the law, has now become a
burden which men seek to avoid, and we see how the
judiciary has been largely shorn of those educational
functions which in the history of the human race have
been even more important than the purely technical
duties of the ofiBce.

A still more serious retrogression has perhaps taken
place in the educational influence of our pubhc orators
and debaters. It is hardly more than a generation since
the utterances of political leaders in and out of Congress
were a mighty power for the shaping of public opinion.
Calhoun and Clay, Webster and Lincoln, formed by
their speech the sentiment of large bodies of men on
matters of public duty. We may differ in our judgment
as to the rightness or wrongness of the conclusions
which they drew. The man who agreed with Calhoun
will disagree with Lincoln. But, now that the clouds of
strife have passed away, all can agree that Calhoun and
Lincoln alike appealed to something higher than per-
sonal interest, created something with more cohesive
power than a mere enhghtened selfishness, — that each,
in short, was inspired by a lofty ideal of the public con-
science, and helped the whole American people to real-
ize that ideal. To-day, on the other hand, it is almost
proverbial that the effective speeches are those which

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

voice a prepossession already felt, and give a rallying cry
to partisan or personal interests. The system of district
representation has gone far to make legislation a series
of compromises between the interests of the several parts
concerned, rather than an attempt to meet the needs of
the whole. So far as this change has taken place in our
legislation, it has become inevitable that the debate by
which such legislation is preceded should be not so much
an attempt to discuss the interest of the whole and to
subordinate thereto the interests of the several parts by
an appeal to self-sacrifice, as a skilful conduct of a ne-
gotiation where each speaker represents his sectional
demands, which he strives to enforce by liis superior
adroitness as one among many players in the game of
politics.

It is a common saying, and on the whole a true one,
that newspapers have taken the place of orators as the
educators of public sentiment. That the change has
been attended with some advantages, none but the blind-
est pessimist would deny. The average citizen learns
more facts through his newspapers in a day than he
learned from his public speakers in a month. Materials
for judgment are thus brought home to him far more
promptly, and on the whole, I am inclined to think,
rather more truthfully, than they were under the old
regime. But whatever advantages the modern news-
paper offers, it does not, with some honorable exceptions,
recognize the duty of educating public sentiment as a
paramount one. From the very circumstances of the
case, the daily newspaper is under a strong pressure to
emphasize what is ephemeral as compared with what is
permanent; to throw into high relief what is crude
rather than what has been thoroughly digested ; to make
more use of that which is sensational than of that which

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POLITICAL EDUCATION

is sedative. Too often it is compelled by pressure of
necessity to subordinate everything else to partisan ends.
Even where the editor himself has a high ideal of the
possibilities of his vocation, he finds himseH hindered by
a lower conception of journalistic duty which prevails
among the public at large. Whatever the reason, and
wherever the blame, we cannot rely on the average news-
paper of the present day to furnish that training in dis-
interestedness which is the essential basis of a really
powerful public sentiment.

All these facts increase the responsibility which is
placed upon our institutions of learning. The more
inadequate the means for forming a disinterested public
opinion in other ways, the more urgent is the need that
our colleges should make this one of their chief functions.
It will not do to have our higher education a purely
technical one. However completely the citizens of the
next generation may be fitted for the exercise of their
several callings, our Constitution will not be safe unless
they are also trained in the principles which enable them
to govern themselves and their fellow-men.

It is an interesting thing to see how the higher educa-
tion of different countries reflects in its organization and
character the political institutions of the nations con-
cerned. In France and in Germany, where the citizen is
part of a public machine, university life is occupied with
an almost purely technical training, which fits each man
for his place in that machine. In England and America,
on the other hand, where the citizen is regarded primarily
as part of a governing body, we have had a system of
college education less closely adapted to technical needs,
but more efficient in the creation of public sentiment.
England and America have a system of Hberal education
in a sense which France and Germany have not, — an
10 145

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

education whose liberality consists not in the superior
quantity of knowledge, but in the relation of that knowl-
edge to civil liberty.

How shall our colleges continue to give the education
which is liberal in this higher sense, — education in
the virtues of the freeman as distinct from those of the
slave ? In the answer to this question is bound up the
whole future of the American college as an institution ;
not only its form, but perhaps its very existence.

Its course of study, in the first place, must deal with
subjects which are non-professional. The student who
begins at too early a period of his education to occupy
himself with matters pertaining to the gaining of bread
and butter is from that very fact in danger of losing sight
of his broader privileges and duties as a citizen. The
moral influence of having the student's mind fixed, dur-
ing some of the most plastic years of his mental fife, on
things whose value is independent of their money-making
power for him individually is a thing of incalculable
value.

In the second place, the course of study must deal
with things which are permanent and not ephemeral.
The man who would govern a nation and lead its public
sentiment must not be swayed by the misjudgments and
distortions of the moment. There is no power which in
the long run has more commanding influence over the
people than the power of a strong man to adhere to fixed
standards where weaker men are unbalanced and unset-
tled by momentary confusion. It is this quahty of per-
manence, I believe, more than any other, which has given
to classical literature its commanding pla^e in the edu-
cational systems of countries hke England and America.
I would not confine the term " classic " to the literatures
of Greece and Rome ; but I would insist with confidence

146

POLITICAL EDUCATION

that the education of free citizens should be grounded in
the study of those works which have proved their great-
ness, not by the appeal to a single generation or even to
a single country, but by living long enough and spreading
far enough to serve as a permanent basis of thought amid
the shifting views and ideals of different communities.

In the third place, it must deal with large affairs
rather than small ones. In some of our modern methods
of work there is a real danger that this need may be dis-
regarded. Controlled as our studies are by persons who
see in every brilUant scholar a possible candidate for the
degree of doctor of philosophy, there is a tendency in
some quarters to substitute thoroughness and minute-
ness of detail for breadth of view ; and to use, in those
general studies wliich are intended to enlarge the mental
horizon, methods of training which are more fit for those
who would pursue them for technical purposes. It
cannot be too strongly impressed on the teaching force
of the country, in these days of speciahzation, that a
liberal education has in view purposes different from
those which control the specialist, and in some degree
opposed to them. Original research, of which so much
is said, is a valuable thing in its place ; but it wiU not
do to have the citizens of our republic regard the muck-
rake as the chosen instrument of higher learning. I
would not undervalue for one moment the importance of
hard and thorough work; but unless our teachers can
find methods of securing this work on broad lines instead
of narrow ones, the collegiate education of the country,
in its older sense, is bound to pass away, because it will
no longer be fulfilhng its distinctive function in the
training of the citizen.

But by no means the largest part of the education in
public spirit which a college ought to give is to be sought

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

in its course of study. There is an equally important
education given by the students to one another, and re-
sulting from the spirit of the place. On this we must
rely for the development of loyalty and seK-devotion
and those moral elements which are necessary as a basis
of public sentiment in a self-governing community. This
fact has an important bearing on the choice of studies
to be taught in the college course. For the right selec-
tion of studies attracts the right kind of student material.
The school which is purely technical, which enables its
graduates to get large salaries at the sacrifice of breadth
of character, inevitably attracts, as the years go on, those
persons to whom money-making is the prime object.
The school whose course is crammed with things of
momentary rather than of permanent interest attracts
those persons who value the superficial or transitory
rather than the profounder things of life. The school
whose methods of instruction are microscopic rather
than telescopic attracts the minds that are narrow instead
of broad. But with a course of study arranged in-
dependently of preparation for professional life, dealing
with the things of all time more than with the interests
of the moment, and aiming to give all possible breadth
of intellectual interest, we are reasonably sure of attract-
ing a student body capable of educating one another
in disinterestedness, in stability of purpose, and in that
sense of proportion which goes with largeness of vision.
Nor is the influence of such students confined to those
who are immediately associated with them. A few suc-
cessive classes of this kind can build up a system of tra-
ditions and of sentiments which are hard to explain to
those who have not come under their influence, but
which, to those whose privilege it has been to feel their
power, constitute the profoundest element in the political

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POLITICAL EDUCATION

education furnished by a college course. This influence
is not confined to any one department of college activity.
It is manifested alike in the classroom, in the society,
or on the playground. It carries those who feel it out-
side of themselves, and makes them part of a college
life whose freedom trains them for the freedom of the
larger national life into which they are just entering.
Taking our boys — and in the present generation our
girls also — from different sections of the country, it
makes them acquainted with their fellow men or women
in a broader and more national sense than is possible
in the secondary school, and under circumstances which
contribute to the development of wider ideals than are
possible in a system of technical training. May the
time be far distant when these elements in our college
life shall be crowded out by the pressure of professional
studies, or weakened by schemes of education which lay
more stress on the things which lie immediately before
us as individuals than on those which fit us to be mem-
bers of a free commonwealth and makers of the world's
history I

149

HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE PUBLIC
WELFARE

In these days of progress and reform, when no institu-
tion is allowed to pass unchallenged, the higher educa-
tional system of the country must be prepared to prove
its usefulness if it would expect a continuance of pub-
lic support. What does it do for the community ? Is
it worth what it costs ? Which parts are most valuable ?
These are questions which must be squarely faced and
satisfactorily answered.

I think that there are three distinct ways in which
higher education helps the community, and by which it
proves its right to exist. First, it makes our people
better workers in their several occupations. Second, it
makes them better members of the body pohtic. Third,
it makes them better men morally and spiritually. And
I also believe that those good results of higher education
which are least obvious and least easily measured in
dollars and cents are the very ones which have most
fundamental importance to the nation as a whole.

How does education make a man a better worker in
his profession? Partly by teaching him to do in the
school or the laboratory things which he would after-
wards be compelled to learn more slowly in practical
life, whether on the farm, in the shop, or in the office.
This is what is known as technical training. Partly by
teaching him, in his school or college days, theoretical

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HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE

principles which in the experience of practical life he
would not be likely to leam at all. This is the idea of
scientific training. The distinction between the two
ideals is a radical one. The former aims to save the
time of the student and to put him as quickly as pos-
sible into a position to do his work and make his money.
The latter aims to increase the range of the student's
conceptions, and to give him command of theories which
will enable him to advance the methods of the business
which he undertakes.

The advantages of purely technical training are so
obvious that very few people are blind to them. In
fact, those who object most to the cost and the results
of higher education as a whole are the very ones who
wish the amount of technical training to be increased.
" What is education for," they say, " if not to make a
boy a worker and to save him the necessity of learning
his trade after he leaves school ? " In spite of this fact,
however, the general tendency of education in this
country has been to become less technical and more
scientific, — less occupied with exercise in details and
more with teaching of ideas. A hundred years ago the
young man who desired to enter a profession prepared
himself in the office of some lawyer or doctor, or in the
study of some minister. There he learned the way in
which things were done, — how to collect a note, to
write a prescription, or to compose a sermon. When
professional schools were established in connection with
our universities, in the early years of this century, they
at first aimed to do on a large scale just what individuals
had been doing on a small scale. They tried to give
instruction in the details of a man's life-work. But as
time went on, it was found that they could do more good
to their pupils in other ways. Not by telling the student

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

how to do particular things could he be made a good
lawyer or doctor, but by teaching him those principles
of legal interpretation and of scientific physiology which
should enable him really to understand the cases that
might arise, and to use the books which bore upon those
cases. A similar development, though less marked, has
taken place in many of our best schools of technology.
No longer are they places for shopwork, but places for
the training of thinkers ; of men who may not know
how to do the specific things which wiU first be wanted
of them, but who are in possession of that general knowl-
edge which will enable them to learn more thoroughly
the real bearings of any new problem as it arises. They
have become less technical and more scientific.

The student who goes out of a school of the more
modem type seems for the moment less well equipped
than his rival who has studied in an office or in an old-
fashioned school of the strictly technical character. He
does not know the daily routine of the business. He
cannot turn his hand and his tongue from one thing to
another with the quickness which the technically edu-
cated man possesses. But as time goes on this disad-
vantage ceases; and soon the balance shows itself on
the other side. For the man who has devoted his
school life to the learning of details of office work or
shop work soon finds that he has a great many things to
unlearn. No college can anticipate accurately the con-
ditions of actual practice. The man whose hand has
been trained to meet one specific set of conditions is
sometimes worse off than the man who has not been
trained at all. Far better equipped is he whose educa-
tion has been really scientific, and whose mind has been
trained more fully than his hand. Has an important
process been developed anywhere? His knowledge of

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HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE

books, if it is worth anytliing, will enable him to find it
out as soon as possible, and to understand it as fully as
possible from descriptions and suggestions. He will
thus be in condition to make progress in the line of
work that he has chosen. His assurance of immediate
attainment of a third-rate position may be less than that
of the man who is educated only in technical details;
but his chance of ultimate attainment of a first-rate
position will be indefinitely greater. This is no mere
theory; it is supported by the testimony of large em-
ployers in different parts of the country and different
lines of industry.

But the chance of gain to the individual is not the
only thing to be considered in estimating the relative
value of scientific training, as compared with that which
is purely technical. Its advantage to the nation as a
whole is inestimably larger; for it is upon this higher
scientific training that national progress is largely de-
pendent. The man who has been educated to be a
creature of routine generally clings to old methods ; the
man who understands the theory of his business can
develop new ones. The gain to the nation in having its
industry progressively directed and conducted is some-
thing which cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
It is a primary condition of national efficiency. It is
just because America enjoys pre-eminence in this respect
that she holds her present place among the nations of
the world.

But it will be a mistake to suppose that the profes-
sional skill which our people receive from the best scien-
tific training constitutes the country's whole gain from
collegiate education, or even the major part of it.

A man is something more than a mere producer. He
is a member of tiie body politic, living in constant and

153

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

complex relations with his fellow-men. The right ad-
justment of these relations between man and man is a
more difficult and important thing than the development
of technical skill. National education, if it is to be
really national and not individual, must prepare the way
for this adjustment. It must teach people not only to
make the most of themselves, but to do the most for
others. They must learn how to communicate their
ideas so that others will understand them, to arrange
their labor so that others can enjoy its fruits, and to
take part in the work of government so that the
conununity as a whole shall be directed by poUtical
intelligence instead of political ignorance.

In order to insure clearness of communication, our
higher education must teach proper use of language.
Without such power over the means of expression, a
man's thoughts are of no profit to any one but himself.
He becomes a theorist in the bad sense of the word, — a
person whose ideas cannot be made to help others. It
is just because of deficiency in precise expression that
theoretical training has been so often brought into con-
tempt. The Greek word from which " theory " is
derived means " breadth of view." In this sense the
more we have of theory the better. But a man who
makes his real or alleged breadth of view an excuse for
his inability to tell other people about the details which
they want to know becomes an intolerable nuisance.
Nay, he may often become a self-deceived impostor ; for
the man who cannot put his thought into language
which others will understand is generally not sure of
understanding it himself.

In contributing to this clearness of communication, we
have use alike for education in Enghsh, for education in
other modem languages, and for education in the classics.

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HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE

If we had to choose between the three, there is no
question that English is the most important. It is the
knguage in which our work is done. The man who is
a master in its use possesses a power of control of those
about him which can be obtained in no other way. He
has an unrivalled command of synonyms which give
exactness to his thought ; for there is no language
which is nearly so rich as English in words to designate
the different subjects of modem interest. But this does
not mean that it ought to be taught to the exclusion of
everything else. Every one recognizes that we have so
much need to use French and German that no man can
be called fully educated who fails to have some knowl-
edge of both these languages. Our national problems
may perhaps be solved by English alone ; our inter-
national relations involve the knowledge of many other
tongues besides.

The reason for the study of the classics is at first sight
less obvious. The time spent upon them is so great,
and their tangible usefulness seems so small, that many
people regard the whole matter as a waste of labor.
Such reformers would have our schoolboys read Homer
or Cicero in translations, and would have the time for
grammatical drill spent upon Enghsh sentences instead
of Greek or Latin. The chief difficulty with this plan is
that we have at present so few teachers who are compe-
tent to give good instruction in English except through
the medium of Latin or Greek. Over and over again
have I heard men argue for the extension of Enghsh
teaching in place of the classics, when the speakers
showed by their diction, their grammar, and their rheto-
ric, that they had not the least conception of what good
Enghsh expression really was. No man thinks that he
can teach Latin without having studied it. His knowl-

155

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

edge of Latin may be defective in a great many ways,
but he at least knows his deficiencies. On the other
hand, there are thousands of men in the country who
have never thoroughly studied English, but who would
be iusulted at the suggestion that they did not know it
well enough for all practical purposes, including those
of instruction. The marvellous grammatical system of
Latin or of Greek, coming to us in a foreign language,
arrests our attention and makes teachers and scholars
feel that it is something to be seriously studied. When
we have a body of teachers who are ready to teach Eng-
Hsh with equal seriousness, and are able to suppress
that vastly greater body who handle it mechanically or
carelessly, then, and not till then, shall we be able to
talk of superseding the classics in our educational sys-
tem. Under present conditions they remain vitally im-
portant to the welfare of the country as a means to
accurate expression and clear thought in the communi-
cations between man and man.

Nor is it enough that our educated men should be
able to communicate their own ideas. They must also
have the necessary intellectual basis for understanding
the ideas of others. A body of men of whom each is
interested exclusively in his own separate pursuits is in
no sense an intellectual society. As a means to the
highest progress of the whole body, the student of litera-
ture must know enough of science to be inspired by
scientific achievements; the expert in science must
know enough of literature to feel the benefit from the
best works of poetry and fiction. If there is any one
characteristic which distinguishes the liberally educated
man from his fellows, it is that breadth of view which
prevents him from being absorbed in his own pursuits,
to the exclusion of the wider range of human interests.

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HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE

But this is not all. Our students must learn not only
to communicate ideas to others and to receive ideas from
others, but also to adapt their work to others' wants.
They must know how to suit their products, whether
material or intellectual, to the needs of those about
them. A well-arranged college course provides for this
in two ways. It does something toward this end by the
teaching of political economy and sciences allied to it.
By showing the places which different men hold in the
busiaess organism, it enables many of us to avoid mis-
judgments and mistakes which might render our best
work futile. But there is an indirect way in which a
college course contributes more surely toward the same
result. By allowing the student the choice of serious
studies in a wide range of subjects, it enables him to
make experiments which help him to decide upon the
line in which he is best fitted to serve his fellow-men.
The man whom nature intended for a doctor, but whom
fate has driven into a lawyer's office, does not find out
his mistake until years of preliminary work have made it
irrevocable. The farmer who is spoiled by trying to be
a minister, and the minister who is spoiled by trying to
be a farmer, have both gone so far in their ill-chosen call-
ings as to be in many respects unfitted for the career for
which nature designed them. But if the student has,
during his college course, studied physiology and consti-
tutional law side by side, or has had the chance to make
experiments alike in providing for men's bodies and in
saving men's souls, he can see far more clearly where
his talent lies, and can let the experience of a suigle year
determine rightly what otherwise could only be decided
too late for repentance.

A college course, if properly directed, must also train
its students in the obligations of citizenship. This func-

157

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

tion is more important in America than anywhere else.
An American does not fulfil liis whole duty if he is only
a skilful specialist, or even if he is a good business man
and nothing more. He has a broader duty as part of a
sovereign people. He must know the constitution of
the country and the spirit of its laws ; not in that per-
functory way which is obtained by the acquisition of a
few facts, but by a severe training in those principles of
ethics and politics which are needed for the preservation
of a free commonwealth. He must understand the in-
direct effects of legislation no less than its direct and
obvious ones. He must be familiar with the political
history of his own nation and of other nations beside his
own, in order that he may be a leader who will enable
his fellow-men to look beyond the passions and preju-
dices of the moment, and help them to see what is the
probable bearing of the issues, as they arise, on the
future welfare of the community.

Rightly to accomplish this, the college must give its
students something more than mere training of the in-
tellect. Much as intelKgence is needed in the conduct
of our business and our politics, we have learned that
intelligence alone will not accomplish everything. The
higher education will do little toward making more
efficient citizens unless it makes at the same time broader
and better men. It must so inspire those who come
under its influence that they shall apply, in the conduct
of the larger affairs of the community, those principles
of morals which are recognized as obligatory upon us in
our relation to our families and our neighbors.

AU intelligent study of science, whether it be physics
or biology, psychology or history, should train a man in
that respect for law which is the best antidote to capri-
cious self-will on the part of the individual. The stu-

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HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE

dent learns that he is in the midst of an ordered world.
If he has the root of the matter in him, he thereby gains
increasing respect for that order, and readiness to become
himself a part of it. It was the idea of the best of the
ancient philosophers that virtue consisted in placing
one's self in harmony with the universe. To him whose
idea of the universe is narrow, the conception of such
harmony will be narrow also. The one broadens with
the other. And if, with this enlightened study of nat-
ural and moral law, there is combined at the same time
the restraint of a healthful discipline and an enforced
regularity, the student becomes gradually fitted for the
highest duty of citizensliip, the acceptance of self-
imposed burdens in the interest of a general system of
moral government.

And there is a yet higher form in which this ideal
may be realized. The duties that are a burden, how-
ever cheerfully performed, do not represent our full-
est character development ; nor is the man who does his
work in that spirit the most efficient contributor to his
country's moral welfare. Far better is it if the per-
formance of civic duty can be the result of an inspira-
tion which makes it a joy and not a task. The teacher
who is fitted for his calling has the opportunity to im-
part this inspiration through the study of great works
of hterature and great deeds of history. There may be
other ways in wliich his contribution to the well-being
of the community is more direct and obvious ; but there
is, I think, no way in which he can really do so much
toward bringing out what is best in a nation. The boy
or man who, at the most impressionable period of his
life, lives in company with heroes, whether of history or
of fiction, has every chance to realize his own possibili-
ties of heroic devotion. Of course this privilege, like

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

every other, can be abused. There will be some who
will become dreamers instead of heroes, — who will take
the enjoyment furnished by the past, and give nothing
in return. But fortunately, the atmosphere in our bet-
ter colleges is not favorable to the dreamer. It offers a
strong stimulus to work. This work may not always be
directed on the lines which teachers, or even parents,
would most approve. It may manifest itself on the foot-
ball field or on the river with far more spontaneity than
in the classroom; but as long as those who seek their
glory in athletic sports are subjected to rigid training
rules, we need have little fear that the power directed
into these channels will prove a total loss. That a
university, as to-day constituted, gives opportunities for
waste of time, none can deny; but that such waste is
habitual I believe no one who has studied the facts
would be disposed for a moment to admit. If what
has been said in the preceding paragraphs is true, those
very parts of our collegiate education which are less
immediately practical, and which seem to give the most
opportunity for misdirected energy, are the ones which
have their highest usefulness in the preparation for the
citizenship of the commonwealth.

160

THE DIRECTION OF AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

Of the many distinctive features of American life
there is none which more forcibly strikes a keen
observer than the habit of private munificence in the
foundation of universities. Other aspects may seem
more noticeable to the man who looks only at the sur-
face, — our material prosperity, our fertility in mechan-
ical invention, our progress in business organization,
our achievements in applying, on a large scale, the
principle of political equality. But none of these things
has the fundamentally distinctive character which is
possessed by our system of university endowment.
Each is but the reproduction on broader lines of things
which the Old World has done before, and still is
doing. Our system of higher education has character-
istics of its own. The European observer has been
accustomed to see colleges that were founded under
ecclesiastical control, and colleges that were founded
under political control. He finds in the experiences of
older countries a counterpart, more or less complete, to
the early history of Harvard and of Yale, of the Uni-
versity of Michigan or the University of California.
But he can find no parallel in Europe to our great
movement of the last forty years toward the private
endowment of free educational institutions, — that move-
ment which has resulted in the establishment of Cor-
11 161

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

nell, of Johns Hopkins, and of Chicago ; that movement
which has, by its indirect influence, modified the char-
acter of other institutions, so that the old denomina-
tional and partisan control has become in many cases a
thing of the past.

It is now more than thirty years since this series of
foundations began. Their extent and their success
have more than realized the expectations of the most
sanguine. The number and magnitude of private gifts
to higher education increases year by year. The insti-
tutions founded by these gifts have had careers of great
prosperity; and each, as it in turn attains its majority,
can point with satisfaction to the honorable realization
of the general purpose with which it was created. But
the specific direction which has been taken by these
institutions has been in many respects different from
what was expected. It was confidently predicted that
the results of these endowments would show themselves
in one of three ways : either by an increased populariza-
tion of learning, which should make the university thus
founded a vast lyceum; or by a development of new
facilities for technical training, which should equip the
student to make a better living by modern methods
than he could by old ones ; or, by the establishment of
more numerous places for the endowment of scientific
research and discovery, where a relatively small number
of specialists should be encouraged to prosecute, in
learned isolation, those studies whose results should
form a basis for the progress of mankind.

Not one of these three ideals has been realized. On
the contrary, the education furnished by the colleges
and universities under new methods of endowment has
been singularly like that which was given by many of
the older institutions. Not that the new universities

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

have slavishly patterned their methods and courses
upon those of their predecessors; but that all institu-
tions, new or old, ecclesiastical, political, or springing
from private endowment, have been compelled by force
of circumstances to approximate toward a common type
more or less independent of the wishes of those who
established and controlled them.

That this process has been on the whole a salutary
one I think there can be no doubt. Whether the
founders of these several institutions foresaw the gen-
eral lines of their future history — as in some cases they
undoubtedly did — or whether they builded better than
they knew, the type of the modern American university
has in it profounder capacities for public service than
would be furnished by any lyceum however broad, by
any group of technical schools however practical, or
by any aggregation of scientific specialists however dis-
interested in their devotion to their several pursuits.

It is the purpose of this address to discuss these three
conceptions of a university: as a popularizer of knowl-
edge, as a training place for professional experts, and
as a home of scientific specialists ; to show wherein the
modern American university type differs from each and
all of these three ; and to indicate the reasons why the
type which has thus developed itself is a natural out-
growth of the profoundest needs of the American
people.

The conception that the American university reaches
its highest usefulness in popularizing knowledge is a
favorite one in many quarters. Those who look at the
matter in this way reason somewhat as follows: It is
the function of a university to give knowledge of sci-
ence and art. The exigencies of the American people,
its democratic government, its theory of equality of

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mankind, require that such knowledge should be as
widely diffused as possible. The public schools are
able to do this during the early years of life and in the
more elementary branches of instruction. The univer-
sity ought to do this, and to find its widest scope of
usefulness in doing this, for persons in more advanced
years wishing to continue liberal studies on a higher
scale. Those who hold this view think that the uni-
versity, within its own limits, is a place where any
man can pursue any subject of learning which he de-
sires ; and they further believe that it should go outside
its own limits, and furnish lecture courses which will
bring within the reach of the whole community the
results of most modem investigations in science, in art,
and in history.

Each of these conceptions has in it much that is
noble. Each is good in its own place. I would not
for one moment undervalue the zeal of those who strive
to supplement the deficiencies of early training by
attendance on courses of lectures at the univereity or
under its auspices; but I should be disposed to warn
them and to warn the public against overestimating the
value of education which can be obtained in this way.
Speaking broadly, lectures do a great deal less good
than is popularly supposed. Very few men or women
gain as much real mental benefit by hearing a lecture as
they gain by reading a book. The personal magnetism
of the lecturer carries the members of his audience with
him, and leads them to believe that they possess the
real knowledge which they seek ; but this belief is too
often a delusion, worse than useless in its results. In
reading a book or a magazine the serious student can
stop and think over the difficulties as they arise, in
order to be sure that he understands each proposition

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

before he passes on to the next. It is true that he has
not the advantage of making inquiry of the author
concerning his own special difficulties ; but the superior
chance of making inquiry of himself many times out-
weighs the inferior chance of making inquiry of another.

It is a misconception to regard the university of
to-day as being primarily a centre for the diifusion of
learning. That work of diffusion is mainly done, and,
on the whole, better done, by the printing-press. What
a man is anxious to communicate to the public speedily
he now puts into a newspaper or magazine ; what he is
ready to communicate to the public deliberately he puts
into a book. In either case he lays down his points
just as clearly as he possibly can. If the reader cannot
follow them, it is either because the subject is too diffi-
cult for him, or because he lacks the power of concen-
trated attention which is necessary for mastering any
abstruse subject whatever. So far as lectures mask the
difficulties of the topic treated, or lead people to expect
others to do the work of riveting their attention, instead
of relying upon themselves for this prime necessity, so
far they are likely to prove a positive harm. The true
function of a university is the creation of knowledge
rather than its diffusion. It must be a centre of
thought where old and young, leaders and followers,
are working together in a common line, learning those
principles and making those discoveries which are trans-
mitted to the public through a variety of agencies, of
which the lecture platform is but one, and in no wise
the most important.

Widely different, and in some respects sounder, is
the position of those who regard the university as a
group of schools for technical training. These men
recognize the force of all that has been said concerning

lfii5

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

the necessity of class work and the value of hard study
by men organized in groups. They hold that this
classroom work and study should be so ordered as to
give the utmost advantage to those who are fitting
themselves for various lines of professional life. They
would have matters so arranged that in the briefest
time possible a man might become an able lawyer, or
engineer, or physician; they would, in short, offer
facilities whereby a man should learn to pursue each
important calling — commercial, manufacturing, or agri-
cultural — by the best scientific methods. In this way,
we are told, the efficiency of the citizens of our republic
would be greatly increased, the time of preparation for
their lifework would be kept within reasonable limits,
and their productivity, whether in earning a living for
themselves or in serving those about them, would be
raised many times above its present basis.

All this is doubtless true ; yet it does not represent
the whole work which a university ought to do, and
perhaps not the largest part of it. Consistently carried
out, this plan tends to fit a man to take his place as
part of a social machine ; it does not educate him to be
a fully developed citizen of a commonwealth. In fact,
its effect in the latter respect may be positively bad.
Education which is too exclusively technical exagger-
ates the tendency, already too strong at the present
day, to measure things solely by their commercial value.
Anything which tends to exalt professional skill as an
ideal in education, and ignores the need of wider ideals,
both in intellect and character, fails to train a race of
freemen. I would not for one moment depreciate the
work of a good law school or a good scientific school, of
a good medical college or a good agricultural college ;
but I would insist most emphatically that a college of

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

American citizens must be something more than any
of these, or than all of them put together.

The third of these partial or imperfect conceptions of
a university is that of a place exclusively devoted to
scientific research. Those who hold this view have
much that is right and noble in their ideal. They
understand that the creation of knowledge is a greater
and more difiQcult work than its diffusion; and they
recognize the duty of the university to assume this
work, with all the difficulties which it involves. They
also have the merit, doubly important in these days, of
insisting on non-commercial standards. They would
inculcate the pursuit of truth for its own sake, inde-
pendent of the question of its economic productivity to
the student. They advocate and develop one of the
noblest parts of university life. But, in spite of all
this, they are far from having grasped the full concep-
tion of what universities can do for the country. The
scientific specialist, so long as he remains a specialist,
is something less than a whole man. A university
whose teaching force is composed of such specialists,
and which stimulates the development of such special-
ists throughout its student body, is imperfectly fulfil-
ling its functions in training the coming generation for
the responsibilities of their life. It is simply a peculiar
kind of technical school; exceptional in its character,
indeed, because it teaches its students to make dis-
coveries instead of to make money, but, nevertheless,
occupied with the training of a particular class rather
than with the education of the body politic. Valuable
as are the services of that class, and important as it is
to endow the research of those who are serving the
public in non-remunerative lines, we cannot regard
the scientific specialist as the consummate flower of

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American oducation, any more than is the specialist in
law or in medicine, in engineering or in theology.

The most profoundly important work which falls to
the lot of the American citizen is his work of guiding
the destinies of the country. It is at once his greatest
privilege and his heaviest duty. If we train the mem-
bers of the rising generation to do this well, all other
things can be trusted to take care of themselves. If
we do not train them to do this well, no amount of edu-
cation in other lines will make up for the deficiency.

The founders of our nation saw that free men must
have the knowledge necessary to enable them to use
that freedom to the public advantage. The American
public school system owes its origin to this perception.
It was intended to give our citizens the intelligence
necessary for the performance of their political duties.
As the degree of enlightenment necessary for the fulfil-
ment of those duties has increased, the scope of public
school education has also widened. But we are grad-
ually coming to perceive that we need a change in the
quality of our training even more than in its quantity.
Mere intelligence on the part of the voters, however
great, is not sufficient to secure wise administration of
the affairs of the country as a whole. Each change in
industrial and political methods makes it clearer that
they must have also a sense of trusteeship; and the
training of this sense of trusteeship is at once a more
difficult and a more important thing than the develop-
ment of mere political intelligence. Without this sense
we can have no public sentiment, in the true meaning
of the word. Without it we may perhaps be capable
of dealing with small things, but we are helpless in the
presence of great ones. Without it we find ourselves
each year less competent to handle either our industrial

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

or our political problems in the interest of the common-
wealth as a whole.

The task of creating this sense of trusteeship is so
great as to require the co-operation of many agencies.
But there is no one part of our national life where there
are so many opportunities for its development as in our
colleges and universities. Their members are still at
an impressionable age. They are living in communi-
ties, each of which has its traditions, its collective
sentiment, and its loyalty which carries the individual
outside of himself. Here, if anywhere, we have free-
dom from that excessive commercialism which domi-
nates most other departments of American life. Here,
if anywhere, we have the opportunity for the study of
those things which are broad instead of those which
are narrow, of things which are permanent instead of
those which are transitory. Here we have, as it exists
nowhere else, the opportunity to make men acquire the
habit of thinking and living in an atmosphere purer
than that of their own selfish interests.

It is impossible to say in detail exactly what studies
and arrangements of the course will best conduce toward
these ends. Different men and different localities re-
quire a certain degree of difference in the education
which is required to train them in public spirit. It is,
however, possible to lay down certain general principles
which are of service in this respect, and whose impor-
tance is gradually being recognized by leaders of higher
education; who, starting from widely divergent stand-
points, are gradually coming nearer one another in
principles and in practice.

It must be recognized, in the first place, that a large
part of the education which is obtained by the students
of the university is that which they themselves give to

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one another. This is true to a large degree in matters
of intellect. It is true to an overwhelming degree in
matters of sentiment and public spirit. However great
may be the value of the instruction obtained in the
classroom, and of the facilities which a college offers by
its libraries and its laboratories, it is probable that only
a small minority of the students fiads its chief profit
from this source. The thing which makes college life
of the greatest value to the citizenship of the country is
that the men and women who come under its influence
get a larger acquaintance with different types of char-
acter and with different lines of human thought, as
exemplified by living people. Book learning alone
tends to have a narrowing effect on the intellectual
vision. In order that it may become a means of char-
acter building, it is of the utmost importance that it
should be pursued in the midst of a community with
collective interests and activities, which take its mem-
bers outside of themselves. Those collegiate authorities
who deem their responsibility to be ended when they
have provided books and apparatus, lectures and classes,
take a fatally incomplete view of their duties. Upon
them rests the further responsibility to do all that they
can to preserve the traditions and sentiments in a place
of which they themselves are the permanent population,
amid shifting generations of students. Upon them
rests the responsibility for the preservation of standards
of public order in the community about them ; for the
maintenance, as far as lies in their power, of athletic
purity and fairness in the dealings of each university
with its rivals; for the fullest development of those
religious sentiments of reverence and self-devotion
without which churches are powerless, and creeds are
but empty forms.

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

In order that our collegiate courses should thus
furnish means of mutual education, their studies must
be so arranged as to attract the kind of students who
are capable of giving this education to one another.

For this there is one prime necessity, without which
all else is useless. The course must be one for workers
and not for idlers. It must furnish hard tasks, not
only for the effect of those tasks upon the individual,
but still more for their effect in making the college
a place for students who are not afraid of difiBculties.
Poor as was the curriculum of our colleges at the begin-
ning of the century, it had this cardinal merit, that it
admitted no loafing. The men who lived for four years
in its atmosphere might obtain a narrow conception of
learning, and go forth into the world scantily provided
with practical equipment for the details of life; but
they had obtained that habit of determination in the
face of difiBculties which does more than everything
else to make a body of men powerful in their several
spheres.

The problem is no longer so simple as it was in the
days of the early New England colleges. Modern
educators have given us new methods of teaching;
modern life has given us a new range of interests;
modern technical training claims its share of the time
of the student in his collegiate years no less than in his
years of professional study. We must see to it that
we offer our students the benefit of all these things,
without sacrificing those fundamental characteristics
which made the colleges of the earlier generation great.
Our course must be sufficiently modern to attract liv-
ing men and women, yet it must not deal with things
so exclusively modern that it is a distraction instead of
a means of cohesion. It must deal in proper proportion

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

with the classic literature of different nations, not
simply because of the effect of those classics, whether
ancient or modern, in forming the judgments of the
students themselves, but for the sake of attracting a
student body which cares for something profounder
than the novel or drama of the day, for something
wider than the present in literature, in art, and in his-
tory. Our course must deal with matters sufficiently
practical to prevent the students from feeling that they
have wasted their time ; but, on the other hand, it must
avoid the far greater danger of becoming so exclusively
practical that it does not teach theory. It must admit
of a sufficient degree of specialization to allow those
students for whom time is money to share in its advan-
tages as a basis for their professional careers; but if
this specialization goes so far as to make the course
attractive only to those students whose interests are
special rather than general, and to confirm them in
their withdrawal from the broader aspects of life in the
college and in the world, so far does it defeat our
purpose of training citizens in public spirit.

Finally, in the later years of university life, when
the foundations of general interest have been laid, and
specialized work of professional preparation has become
the dominant aim, we must see to it that the students
are educated in broad aspects of professional action
rather than narrow ones. It is a mistake, on every
ground, if a school makes its work a mere anticipation
of the teaching of the office or the shop; for in after
life the things which it thus teaches generally have to
be learned over again, while the things which it thereby
fails to teach are generally not learned at all.

In thus emphasizing the broad instead of the narrow
sides of professional study, and the importance of train-

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT

ing in theory rather than training in practice, I do not
for one moment mean to depreciate the value of the
work which is done in laboratories, in individual inves-
tigations, and in all those things which make a man
master of the applications of the science or art which
he is studying. But they should be regarded as appli-
cations rather than primary objects. The laboratory
should be a thought-shop rather than a workshop. It
should be an auxiliary to the understanding of prin-
ciples rather than a preparation for the doing of details.
So soon as the man values the shopwork for its own
sake, rather than as a means of education, he starts
on the wrong road. One of the ablest and largest
employers of labor in the transportation industries of
the country has said that there is no evil so hard to
correct as that overvaluation of mere mechanical work
to which some of the misdirected professional schools
conduce. Nor does the harm stop with the individual.
It affects his attitude toward his fellow men. It tends
to make the professions of our country mechanical in
their worst sense, reducing their members to the level
of parts of a machine, instead of raising them to their
responsibilities as independent members of a body
politic.

There was a time, not so many years ago, when these
great principles seemed in peril of being forgotten;
when there was danger that general training would be
sacrificed to technical training ; that breadth would give
place to specialization ; and that, in the furtherance of
the education given by professors in their classrooms,
we should neglect to consider that wider education
given by the students to one another. But with the
problems which have been forced upon us as a nation,
we have come to consider more seriously the means

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

which are needed to meet them ; and the result of that
consideration is showing itself in the direction of uni-
versity development to-day. Without sacrificing their
thoroughness, the older colleges have expanded their
sphere of interest Without sacrificing their character
as public institutions, the state universities have allowed
new sentiments and traditions to grow about them.
The recent private foundations, under wise and able
leadership, have striven with marked success to select
what was best in either type, and to add their own con-
tribution thereto. Now, as never before, the leaders
of college education in this country, while differing in
the detail of their methods, are animated by a common
purpose. It is not enough for them to popularize learn-
ing, to train professional experts, or even to furnish
laboratories for scientific research. All these things
they do; but all these things they use as a means to
the greater end of training the citizens of the republic
to assume the new trusts and obligations which the
future has in store. Not in the promotion of different
churches, not in the development of different sections,
not even in the elevation of different callings, do our
universities place their ideal ; but in the service of one
learning, of one country, and of one God.

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FUNDAMENTAL KEQUIREMENTS IN
SCHOOL EDUCATION

Fkom the time of De Quincey onward, it has been a
familiar thought that good teaching aims at two distinct
objects: the imparting of knowledge and the evoking
of power. Only when it combines both these achieve-
ments can a school system claim to have accomplished
its purpose. It should give its pupils, before they go
out into practical life, sufficient knowledge to enable
them to move intelligently among the men and things
which surround them, and sufficient power to use that
knowledge in the various emergencies which are likely
to arise.

The old educational system was almost entirely occu-
pied with the production of power. Whatever knowl-
edge it imparted was incidental, and was confined
within very narrow lines. Every boy or girl was ex-
pected to learn the three R's, — reading, writing and
arithmetic. If the school children of past generations
pursued their studies faithfully, they found themselves
equipped with these three tools of trade, and with little
else. If, in the course of their efforts to learn to read,
they had caught some knowledge of history or science
or literature, this was a fortunate accident, in which
they had the advantage of most of their fellows. Even
if they went on from school to college, the same narrow-
ness of training was continued. Their time was de-

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

voted chiefly to classics and mathematics, with a little
metaphysics, — all valuable as exercises for the mind ;
all capable, in the hands of a good teacher, of helping
the student to obtain power of expression for his
thoughts; but all conveying very slight knowledge of
literature, still less of art, and none of modern science."

Within the last fifty years there has been a reaction.
Our discoveries in the world of nature have been so
important that they have secured increasing recognition
of their results in school courses. This widened study
of modern science has been attended by an increased
attention to modern literature also. The pupils have
been given the opportunity to know things which were
worth knowing, and to read things which were worth
reading. This movement has resulted not only in the
addition of new subjects of study, but in a radical
change of method of teaching the old ones. Arithmetic
or geography, as now handled, is a very different thing
from what it was fifty years ago. It is full of illustra-
tion adapted to the needs and interests of each child. It
is rendered pleasant and easy instead of hard. These
tendencies have made themselves felt alike in the col-
leges and the high schools, the grammar schools and
the kindergartens. In place of a curriculum designed
for mental discipline, through which all were compelled
to pass, we have an educational system intended to
give knowledge and the enjoyment connected with the
acquirement of knowledge; taking account of the vari-
ous tastes of children in the successive stages of their
progress, and branching, at a comparatively early date,
into an elective system, whereby each student can choose
those subjects which he most needs or appreciates.

There can be no doubt that this reaction from the
excessive narrowness of the old-fashioned courses of

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

study has been in many ways a salutary thing. We
may, however, fairly raise the question whether it has
not gone too far; whether, in meeting the increased
demands for knowledge, we are not sacrificing the
assurance of training in power; whether a generation
of children which has been taught to read a few inter-
esting works of literature and to know a number of
important facts in natural science, but which is not
over-strong in arithmetic and is distinctly weak in
spelling, is quite so well educated as it claims to be.
In asking this question we do not cast ridicule on
modern methods of teaching. Some of those who are
to-day propounding it most seriously are the very men
who twenty years ago were most active in the introduc-
tion of these methods. Just because they understand
the need of a really liberal education, they feel the
necessity of seeing that this education shall be placed
upon a solid basis. They are not arguing against giv-
ing modern classics, especially those in our own lan-
guage, a full recognition side by side with ancient
classics, nor against letting modern science take the
place of ancient philosophy; but they are arguing for
such care in the introduction of these changes and in
the pursuit of these studies as shall prevent them from
becoming a mere distraction and shall allow them to
remain a discipline.

There is good reason to raise a voice of warning
against one-sided absorption in modern educational
ideals, to the exclusion of everything else. We are in
the presence of a combination of causes which produce
a real danger that our teachers will lay too much stress
on knowledge and too little on power.

In the first place, the pupils, with few exceptions,
enjoy being taught knowledge, and do not enjoy being
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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

taught power. The teaching of knowledge satisfies
their curiosity; and anything which satisfies curiosity
is a pleasure to the average child no less than to the
average adult. The teaching of power fatigues their
mind; and the average child dislikes mental fatigue
almost as much as the average grown person. There is
an apparent spontaneity in the study of facts, especially
when it is varied to suit the immediate tastes of the
children. There is an apparent irksomeness in the
study of principles which are intended to give future
power. It too often happens that the active and enter-
prising teacher, who desires spontaneous manifestations
of life on the part of his pupils, is thus led to give
undue preference to the less important part of his work.
In the next place, the teacher likes to see tangible
results; and the imparting of knowledge gives those
results. When a pupil has mastered a fact, this can
be made evident immediately; while it takes days and
weeks to be sure that he has mastered a principle.
Moreover, the teacher, unless he be a very exceptional
person, is likely to overestimate the amount which he
has achieved when he has taught the child a few facts.
He thinks that he has trained the attention of the
pupil, when really he has only given that pupil things
which he liked, and made him less capable rather than
more capable of attending to things which he does not
like. Many a student in our modem schools has been
simply stuffed with the sugar plums of education. By
offering a child a pound of candy you can very rapidly
increase his weight by one pound, and can produce all
the external symptoms of a vigorous appetite ; but any
sensible man or woman knows that the weight thus
gained is transient, and the appetite thus evoked worse
than illusory.

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

Uufortunately, there are a great many people who
are not sensible in judging educational effects ; and
these people aid and abet the teachers in their desire
to show tangible results in the form of gratified curios-
ity and acquired knowledge. The parents are pleased
to have the pupils interested in their studies. The
committees are pleased to have the pupils acquainted
with so many facts of modern life. Not until the value
of studies is tested by their effects upon working
efficiency does the public find how imperfectly it has
measured the relative importance of different kinds of
education.

This test begins to come as soon as pupils pass from
schools of a lower grade to those of a higher. It is too
often found that the studies which have aroused the
greatest immediate interest and attention are bad rather
than good as a preparation for further pursuit of school
work. The high school feels this in taking students
from the common school ; the college feels it in taking
students from the high school. While the teachers
who have charge of the pupil at an earlier age are
pressing for variety of studies and knowledge of many
kinds, those who have charge of these pupils in sub-
sequent years are disposed to insist on the necessity of
stricter previous training in a relatively small number
of fields. They see that much which is regarded as a
variety of intellectual stimulus is really a sort of in-
tellectual dissipation; and they say that those pupils
alone are prepared to go on with higher studies who
have learned to do hard work without the artificial
stimulus incident to such dissipation.

It is quite possible that the teachers in our colleges
are wrong in lajdng too much stress on the preparatory
side of the high school course ; for the majority of

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

pupils in high schools do not and cannot enter college.
It is in like manner possible that the high school teachers
are wrong in insisting that the grammar school studies
should be arranged with a view toward preparation for
high school needs ; for only a part of our grammar
school pupils can ever hope to attend the high school.
But it is quite certainly an error to go to the opposite
extreme ; to say that the grammar school course must
be so arranged as to give the maximum development
and enjoyment to the grammar school pupil, and that
the high schools must arrange to fit their work upon it ;
or to say that the high school course must be adapted
to the general needs of high school pupils alone, and
that the colleges must take as a preparation for their
students the thing which proves best for those who
are not going to be their students. We may as well
recognize the fact that there is a real conflict of inter-
ests, in each grade, between the pupils who are not
going any further and those who are. If a pupil,
whether in the grammar school or the high school, is
near the end of his course of study, he doubtless needs
to get a good deal of descriptive science at that point ;
because if he does not get it then, he probably never
will get it at all, and in this age of the world no one
can be called educated who has not some general knowl-
edge of science. But if some other pupil who is laying
the foundation for years of subsequent study is thus
allowed to substitute descriptive science for arithmetic,
or algebra, or trigonometry, according to the stage of
development which he may have reached, it is not
simply a waste of time ; it may readily prove a positive
harm. Many a boy has suffered actual injury by study-
ing too extensively into the phenomena of force before
he has mastered the mathematical principles which

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

regulate them. His apparent knowledge of fact, com-
bined with a real ignorance of underlying principle, has
produced in his mind such an inversion of the true
order of things, and destroyed so much his power of
really reasoning about those things, that it proves a
handicap for many years afterward. Nor is it in theoret-
ical studies alone that these difficulties and losses are
felt. Leading employers of labor in the more complex
branches of mechanical engineering tell me that those
students who have allowed their laboratory practice to
degenerate into shop work, and who have treated their
experiments in the scientific school not as means of
mastering principles, but as things valuable in their
own sake, have almost fatally undermined their power
of rising to the higher walks of the profession.

In like manner it is of great consequence that the
pupils in every stage of school life should have as
much knowledge of literature as our teachers can give
them ; but if those who are expecting to pursue literary
studies in connection with their professional work —
whether in the ministry, the law, or the field of journal-
ism — allow their enjoyment of books to interfere with
accurate study of expression, and with that mastery of
language which can only be obtained by hard work over
individual words, we have purchased a small gain at
an incalculable price.

Ruskin has said — nor is he alone in saying it — that
the apparent culmination of the art of a people is the
beginning of its decadence. When a school of artists
begins to branch out into the full enjoyment of its
powers, it indicates that the underlying development of
power is drawing near to its close. This analogy holds
good, to a large degree, in the life history of each indi-
vidual. That stage of education where the boy or girl

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is allowed to reap the largest tangible fruits in the
way of enjoyment of science and literature seems to
be, in nine cases out of ten, precisely the time when
hold on concentrated power is being relaxed instead of
tightened.

An illustration from another field of education, which
is not officially recognized as part of our school system,
will serve to make this point clearer. The inexperi-
enced trainer who attempts to develop a football team
usually begins by teaching his men an extensive knowl-
edge of the game. He shows them formations which
they can employ and tricks which they can practise.
Those formations and those tricks will cause them to
win against inexperienced opponents. But after a few
days of that kind of play they will find that they have
reached the limit of their development; that they can-
not go on, and are almost sure to fall back. On the
other hand, the experienced coach or captain will, in
the first days of his season, teach his men to play foot-
ball, — clean, straight, hard, uninteresting football. Not
until a few days before the final trial will he teach those
details of formation which to the student of the game
are matters of such surpassing interest. So well known
has this principle become that the success or failure of
a team during its season is dependent on the observance
or non-observance of this principle. The teaching of
details must be reserved for the culminating stage of
training, instead of being advanced to the prepara-
tory one.

It will perhaps be said that these suggestions are
vague and general, and that they need to be made
much more specific before they can be put into practice.
I acknowledge the justice of this objection. What has
been thus far said is intended to afford a point of view

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

rather than to present a detailed scheme of education.
But there are certain practical consequences that follow
the adoption of this point of view which are sufficiently-
clear to be formulated in detail.

One of these has already been plainly implied. If
the views thus far advanced are correct, we must, in
the educational scheme of the future, look forward to
a separation of groups of students, not so much on the
line of their different tastes as on the line of probable
duration of the educational course. I am aware that
this idea is not in harmony with the general tendency
of the moment. That tendency is to have the students
divided into groups according to their different mental
tastes. In those colleges which have the elective sys-
tem this idea is completely carried out. In the high
schools it is being developed to a considerable degree.
There is a demand in certain quarters for its introduc-
tion into the grammar schools. But the difficulties and
the evils attendant upon this movement have become
so manifest that voices are being everywhere raised in
protest against its further extension. It is seen that
the apparent tastes of the pupil, at any rate in the
earlier stages of his education, are a very unsafe guide
in determining what education he really requires. I
am inclined to think that different kinds of pupils in
our secondary schools need not so much an opportunity
to pursue different groups of studies as an opportunity
to pursue the same group in different ways; the differ-
ence being determined by the question whether the
course in any subject is intended to be a finishing
course or a preparation for something more thorough.
In the former case it will need to be made as extensive
as possible, with a view of imparting the necessary
minimum of knowledge. In the latter case it will need

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to be made as intensive as possible, in order that the
student may attain that maximum of power which shall
enable him sucessfully to use and apply the knowl-
edge which he will subsequently acquire. Take a
concrete instance from our experience in teaching law
to college classes. It is extremely desirable that our
graduates, as they go out into the world, shall have a
general knowledge of legal principles and their applica-
tions to problems which confront the citizen. It is
possible in a course of two or three hours per week to
give the student this general knowledge. To the man
who does not expect to be a lawyer this is invaluable.
But to the man who looks forward to the law as a
career it has surprisingly little use. The whole matter
has from the necessities of the case been so superficially
dealt with that no foundation is given for the closer
and more thorough study which is required of the
specialist. To reach the needs of these two distinct
sets of men we have to arrange two courses of instruc-
tion, — one broad and relatively superficial, the other
narrow and profound. Such a separation doubtless has
its inconveniences ; and it may well be that these incon-
veniences are greater in the schools than in the colleges.
But I think there can be no question that it would be
salutary in its effects, both on those who were complet-
ing their school course and upon those who still had
years of study before them. And if it is thus salutary,
its adoption as a principle will in the long run produce
economy rather than waste.

In the next place a very heavy duty rests upon those
in charge of our high schools and colleges so to arrange
their examinations that teachers in the earlier stages of
the educational system will be helped rather than hin-
dered in their efforts to insist on the necessity of train-

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

ing for future work. Entrance examinations should be
made tests of the power to go on with what is before
the pupils rather than tests of acquirement in what is
behind them. With the pressure that is placed upon
our common school teachers to secure immediate results
— pressure coming alike from their pupils, from their
own ambitions, and from the outside public — the very
least that the authorities in schools of higher grade can
do is to lend their aid in resisting such tendencies.
Above all things, let us not yield to the fallacy that a
great amount of knowledge can be allowed to make
good a deficiency of power as an indication of fitness to
proceed further. The boy or girl who knows many
things superficially and nothing systematically had bet-
ter be advised to go out into practical life at once.
The subsequent school life of such a boy or girl is
likely to be illusory in its benefits. The college course
which attracts such persons operates as an incentive to
waste of time. Students of this type are the ones who
bring upon our colleges the reproach of inefficiency;
and those colleges who, by their methods of admission
and instruction, lay themselves open to this reproach,
are guilty of the gravest dereliction of their duty.

In whatever studies we may select for our school
course, we should lay emphasis on training in principles
rather than on attention to details.

Modern educational authorities insist that teachers
should be as concrete as possible in all their statements,
and should enforce them by illustrations which will
appeal to the imagination. This concreteness has great
value in its proper place ; but it may sometimes be car-
ried too far. In many cases the illustration is the one
thing that remains in the mind of the child, and the
principle which it is intended to develop is lost sight

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

of. The pupil's natural tendency to lay stress on
accessories and incidents is so great that it needs no
artificial encouragement. I can testify personally that,
though I spent nearly a year in the study of Arnold's
Latin Prose Composition, the salient facts which re-
main in my mind are that Balbus built a wall, and that
it makes no difference to Balbus whether he drinks
wine or water; while the methods of translating these
things into Latin have passed wholly out of mind. I
can also state from experience that three men of my
own age, who compared their recollections of Green-
leaf's Common School Arithmetic, all remembered that
A. Atwood can hoe a certain field in ten days, and with
the assistance of his son Jerry can hoe it in seven days,
and with the assistance of his son Jacob can hoe it in
six days ; and that the further question was asked how
long it would take Jerry and Jacob to hoe it together;
but what the answer was to that question, or what were
the means by which the answer was obtained, were
things of which they professed no recollection.

The true function of the concrete illustration in arith-
metic or in any other study is like that of the concrete
experiment in physics. Whether it is a help or a
hindrance to teaching will depend upon the spirit in
which it is used. Attention to the detail of the illus-
tration is good up to a certain point ; beyond that point
it causes the illustration to be remembered for its own
sake, and not for the sake of what it proves. A mere
difference of emphasis, repeated fifty times a day, will
make all the difference between good teaching and bad
teaching. Many a time have I gone into a primary
school and heard the question, " Two apples and three
apples make how many apples ? " In dealing with the
subject of the sentence the stress upon apples is allow-

186

FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

able enough ; but in the predicate the legitimate thing
to emphasize is the phrase "how many," and any
departure from this emphasis is bad teaching. It leads
the child to think too much of the apples and too little
of the number. The temptation to make this mistake
is strong, because the child cares more about apples
than it does about numbers; but the consequence of
this misdirected attention is a diversion from the under-
lying principle involved. The real teaching is not
nearly so great in amount as the apparent teaching, nor
so good in quality. This is a fact which the teacher
often overlooks, and which is also overlooked, I am
sorry to say, by some of the authorities in our normal
schools.

In these days of material progress and of specializa-
tion in detail there is more need than ever of emphasiz-
ing general principles. Plato was not wholly mistaken
in his theory that the idea, the concept, the law, are
the really fundamental things, and that the specific
details which come before our eyes have their chief
importance as manifestations of some underlying law or
concept. It is setting a high ideal before a teacher to
insist that he shall realize the meaning of this truth;
and even if he has realized it in his own mind, it is
a difficult thing for him to impress it upon the minds
of his pupils. This represents the highest development
of the art of education. Mark Hopkins in the past
generation realized it in almost unrivalled fashion;
William Graham Sumner exemplifies it conspicuously
among the teachers of the present day. To be thus
clear and concrete, so that the student shall understand
what you say, without letting your concreteness with-
draw his attention from the general principle, is an
extremely difficult combination to attain. But it is

187

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

a confession of weakness if our school authorities let
themselves be daunted by this difficulty. It is a grave
mistake if our teachers allow themselves to be content
with second-class work because first-class work is so
much harder. It is an absolutely fatal error if we
shut our eyes to the existence of the best because this
represents a higher good than most of us can readily
attain.

Those who hold these high ideals of education must
be constantly on the watch for new means and methods
which shall add to the range of the pupil's power with-
out degenerating into mere acquisition or intellectual
dissipation. "More kinds of ability" must be our
watchword, if we are to resist the ill-judged demand
for more kinds of knowledge. One of the most impor-
tant among these modern methods is to be sought in
manual training. This is as yet in its infancy; but
already the graduates of manual training schools on
both sides of the water show by their proficiency in
subsequent work the admirable results of the system.
The Boardman School at New Haven is only a few
years old; but its graduates, in their careers in the
Sheffield Scientific School, have already proved that
they have been trained in principles, and can master
principles better than most of those whose work has
been with books alone. If we insist that manual edu-
cation shall be really a training, as its name implies,
we can avoid the danger, always near at hand, that it
shall be allowed to degenerate into a dissipation. It
is of the utmost importance to make, at as early a
stage as possible in the introduction of this education
of the eye and hand, that distinction between the de-
velopment of power and the imparting of knowledge,
which is so important in matters intellectual. When

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION

we have once recognized that precisely the same antith-
esis exists in matters of hand work which has been seen
in matters of brain work, we shall be able to utilize the
new methods on lines conservative instead of destructive.

Finally, I believe that one of the most important
applications of this idea of power-training is found in
its extension to the moral side of education. We hear
a great deal in these days about preparation for citizen-
ship, and much effort is made to instil into the pupils
the knowledge necessary for the performance of their
civic duties. All this is good as far as it goes ; but we
must remember that in this particular field of education
every American pupil is preparing to graduate into a
high school which is coextensive with American poUt-
ical and social life. The whole activity of the citizen
is a course of higher education in morality — an educa-
tion which may be rightly directed or wrongly directed,
used or misused, but in which the citizen is engaged as
long as he lives. If this is true — and there is no
question of its truth — any attempt to make informa-
tion take the place of discipline is a menace to our
national life for a generation to come. As a prepara-
tion for the school of national politics, ten hours of
training in civics are not the equivalent of one minute
of training in order and obedience. It will be fatal if,
in our anxiety to develop the one, we should lose sight
of the paramount necessity of the other.

Let us then, in our capacity as teachers, never forget
the importance of power as compared with knowledge.
Let us not allow the public overestimate of details to
blind us to the paramount necessity of training in prin-
ciples. Let us arrange our courses and our examina-
tions with a view to prevent, rather than to increase,
the danger of intellectual dissipation. In all the de-

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

partments of our life — the intellectual, manual, and
moral — let us be true to our primary duty of educating
not only men and women who know the truth, but men
and women who have strength to pursue it and determi-
nation to stand by it under all conditions.

190

THE USE AND CONTROL OP
EXAMINATIONS

Every practical educator knows that an examination
has two aspects, — one looking toward the past, the
other toward the future. It is a means of proving the
student's attainment in that which has gone before; it
is also a means of testing his power for that which is to
come. It protects our schools against waste of time in
the days which precede it, by setting a mark which the
pupil must reach. It protects our colleges against
waste of time in the days that follow it, by giving us
a basis on which to group our classes and arrange the
tasks which are imposed. It is at once a measure of
proficiency in what has been previously learned, and
of power for what as yet remains unlearned.

Unfortunately, these two qualities do not always
coincide. We have all had experience with pupils who
have been faithful in the performance of their duties,
and have acquired that kind of knowledge which
enables them to pass a well-conducted examination
creditably, but who do not possess that degree of
mental training which fits them to go on toward higher
studies side by side with those whose acquirements may
be less, but whose grasp of principles is stronger. Pro-
ficiency in subjects studied during the few months
previous to the examination is largely a matter of
memory; and it not infrequently happens that such

191

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

memory is most highly developed in those very pupils
who have done comparatively little real thinking for
themselves. This difficulty may be lessened by skill in
arranging the examination; but, strive as we may, it
can never be wholly eliminated. On the contrary, it
is a thing which is increased by many of our modern
changes, both in courses of study and in methods of
examination.

In many of the older subjects of study the difficulty
hardly exists at all. Take mathematics, for instance.
In this group of sciences proficiency in one grade is
almost synonymous with power to go on with the next.
There may be a few children with minds so peculiarly
constructed that they are accurate "lightning calcula-
tors, " and of very little use for anything else ; but such
children are the exception and not the rule. In gen-
eral, the boy or girl who has mastered the simple
operations of arithmetic is competent to go on with
the more complex ones ; while the boy or girl who fails
in these simple matters shows corresponding unfitness
for what is more advanced. Similarly, knowledge of
arithmetic as a whole is a test of fitness to study
algebra; knowledge of algebra a prerequisite to ana-
lytical geometry; knowledge of analytical geometry a
necessity for the student who would go on into the
differential calculus. What is true of mathematics is
also true of grammar, and of those older forms of
linguistic study which were based upon grammatical
drill as a foundation. With proficiency in the elements
advanced class-work was made possible and profitable ;
without it the pupil wasted his own time and that of
his fellows.

But with new subjects and with new modes of teach-
ing this necessary sequence is less marked. In study-

192

THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

ing literature, or history, or descriptive science, even
by the methods which are regarded as most modern,
there is no such connection between attainment in what
is past and power over what is to come. It is not
certain that the pupil who remembers the answers to
the questions which are asked in most of our literature
examinations thereby proves his fitness to read with
profit the works which are to follow. It is not sure that
power to remember the facts of history which are taught
in elementary classes connotes a corresponding power
to use those facts in advanced studies. It is even less
probable that the results of a course in descriptive
science pursued at an early age show any indication of
power to pursue this subject farther. I do not wish
to be understood as objecting to modern methods of
science study. For those who are not going to carry
these matters to a point where power in scientific
research is needed, they are a very valuable means of
general information. But for that minority which does
need to develop power in research such premature
acquirements are often a hindrance rather than a help.
One of the few men in the country who combines high
attainments in theoretical and practical physics — a
man eminent alike as an investigator, a teacher, and
an inventor — is authority for the statement that you
cannot make a really good physicist out of a boy who
has been put through a full course of descriptive science
before he has studied the mathematical principles which
underlie it. I do not know whether this broad generali-
zation can be proved. I am inclined to think it an
over-statement. But the fact that such a statement
can be made by a responsible man shows that there is
no necessary connection, but rather a conspicuous ab-
sence of connection, between acquirements in elemen-
13 193

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

tary science as now taught, and power to go on with
that science into classes which do work of a really
advanced character.

Side by side with this change in subjects, there has
been a change of methods of examination. Two genera-
tions ago a large part of our tests were oral. To-day
the increased size of the classes has necessitated the use
of written examinations. That the change has been on
the whole a salutary as well as a necessary one I do not
question. In an oral examination the personal element
is so strongly accentuated that it is almost impossible
to have a guarantee of fairness in its administration.
However good may be the intentions of the examiner,
he cannot always keep himself free from his own pre-
judgments ; while the absence of any permanent record
to which appeal can be made prevents us from applying
a corrective to the wrong impressions of the moment.
But the effect of the change has been to make the
examination more exclusively a test of proficiency in
what is past and to render it less available as a measure
of power for what is to come. In the oral method, if
it was well conducted, the examiner found some branch
of the subject with which the pupil was familiar, and
there proved or disproved the thoroughness of his
knowledge. By so doing the examiner could find out
what the pupil really thought about the subject rather
than what he more or less mechanically remembered.
But the written examination, even in the best hands, is
apt to be a proof of the range of a student's proficiency
rather than of its thoroughness. In the majority of the
subjects on which we have to examine, it is almost
impossible to construct a paper which will test the
student's reasoning power as adequately as it tests his
memory. It too often becomes a mere inquiry as to

194

THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

the extent of the pupil's knowledge. Whenever this
is the case, it loses the major part of its value as
a measure of fitness for anything which is to come
afterward.

The evils thus far described are felt in all examina-
tions, no matter by whom they may be conducted. But
they show themselves with peculiar force whenever the
student passes out of one school or one stage of his
educational work and into another. In rising from
class to class within the limits of a single institution,
the pupil remains under the charge of a head master,
who can, to a large degree, correct the evils inherent in
the examination system. He can direct his subordi-
nates to base their scheme of promotion on records of
special work and other matters outside of the scope of
the examination itself. He can so arrange the course
of study that entrance to higher grades depends upon
merit in particular lines rather than on general pro-
ficiency or faithfulness. When, however, the student
passes from the control of one authority to another
independent one, it is very hard to carry any such policy
into effect. The difficulty is seen at its worst in civil
service examinations, where a candidate's entrance into
government employment is made to depend upon tests
of past acquirement which can, at best, very imper-
fectly indicate his fitness to serve the country in the
line which he has chosen. I would not for one moment
undervalue the good which has been done by the adop-
tion of the examination system as a basis for appoint-
ment in our civil service; but I believe it to be
generally admitted, even among the friends of that
system, that its value depends upon its effect in elimi-
nating the grossly incompetent, who rely on political
influence alone, rather than upon its accuracy in deter-

195

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

mining the applicant's probable usefulness as a public
servant.

The same difficulty exists, though in less degree, in
the transition from one grade of educational institution
to another. It is felt in the passage from grammar
school to high school, from high school to college, and
from college to professional school. In going from
grammar school to high school, or from college to pro-
fessional school, the difficulty is to some extent lessened
by the fact that there is often a common board of con-
trol which makes co-operation and consultation easy
between the authorities of the two parts of the educa-
tional system. In the passage from high school to col-
lege, on the other hand, the evil is felt most seriously
because of the complete separation of control and the
remoteness of location which so often makes a system
of personal consultation impossible.

It is in this application that the problem of examina-
tions gives rise to the most acute controversy. How
shall we order our tests of the student's proficiency in
what is behind him in such a way as to assure ourselves
of his power to go on with what is before him ? How
can we arrange to give to the school the necessary free-
dom in its methods of instruction, to give the college
the assurance that its pupils will be well prepared for
their work, and to give the students themselves, as
they pass from one grade to the other, the certainty of
reasonably fair treatment? This is the question which
is before us. With so many conflicting requirements,
it is no wonder that there is divergence of opinion with
regard to the proper answer.

Three distinct methods have been devised for meet-
ing this difficulty : —

First. To make the range of examination questions

196

THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

wider, so that the student shall have every possible
chance to show what he knows.

Second. To supplement the written examination
paper by other tests, such as certified note books,
objects produced by previous work, etc.

Third. To depend on certificates given by the teachers
who have previously had the candidate in their charge ;
thus taking the work of entrance examination out of
the hands of the college authorities and relegating it
to the preparatory schools.

The first of these methods has a certain amount of
merit. A skilful examiner can make a paper so broad
in its scope that a candidate who knows anything what-
soever about his subject will find some topic on which
he is at home. He thus reduces the element of chance
and renders real help to those candidates who under-
stand one part of the subject better than another. But,
unfortunately, this increased range of inquiries may
prove almost as helpful to the undeserving candidate
as it does to the deserving. The multiplicity of ques-
tions gives a great opportunity to the coach who makes
a specialty of preparing candidates for a particular
series of tests instead of educating them for their life-
work. Knowing how wide a range of topics the ex-
aminer must cover, he can predict, with reasonable
certainty, some specific things which the paper is likely
to contain. The chances are that his pupils will do
well on these questions for which they have been
specially prepared; and thus the deser^dng but unskil-
fully prepared candidate, even though he makes a better
absolute showing under the system of long papers than
he did with short ones, finds his relative position even
worse than it was before. Moreover, the inevitable
hurry and confusion incident to the attempt to deal

197

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

with a long paper hurts the deserving student far more
than it hurts his competitor who has been skilfully
crammed for this particular trial. These evils are
clearly exemplified in the English civil service exami-
nations. The amount of time and thought which is
spent on the preparation of papers for these examina-
tions is very great indeed. There has been an honest
effort on the part of those in charge to get the very
best aspirants for the public service of the British
Empire. Yet, in spite of all these things, it has be-
come proverbial that success depends upon skilful
coaching far more than upon intellectual merit or good
general training. What is true of the English civil
service examinations is true in only less degree of many
other European examination systems; and the same
evils are making themselves felt in this country wher-
ever we approximate toward the English practice.

The plan of accepting certified note books to supple-
ment and correct the results of examinations is essen-
tially a compromise. It has at once the merits and
defects which are incident to a compromise system.
But the arguments which can be urged in its behalf
can for the most part be urged even more strongly in
favor of a frank adoption of a certificate system as a
whole. There is something quite illogical in accepting
the pupil's record of his own past work, and not accept-
ing the master's judgment as to the efficiency of that
work; for, unless the master is a clear-headed and
honest man, the record is practically worthless, and if
the master is thus clear-headed and honest, he can
decide far better than any examining board the degree
to which the pupil has profited by lectures and experi-
ments. When once a subject presents such character-
istics that the examiners confess their inability to judge

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THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

of the student's work by the paper which he writes
under their direction, it certainly seems a rather unnec-
essary waste of time and strength for them to insist on
having any paper at all.

The third method — admission to college on certifi-
cate instead of on examination — has many advocates.
I shall not here attempt to discuss its merits and de-
merits in full. It is a subject which would take for its
full analysis more time than we now have at command.

It is unquestionably true that a good preparatory
school teacher can, in nine cases out of ten, judge of
the fitness of his pupils to enter college far better than
any college examining board can possibly hope to do.
It is also true that the right of admission by certificate
allows such a teacher a freedom in the choice of
methods which is of great advantage both to him and
to his pupils. In spite of these facts, it has disadvan-
tages which have prevented some of our leading insti-
tutions from adopting it, and which cause the present
trend of movement to be away from the certificate
system rather than toward it.

In the first place, to take the most obvious objection,
by no means all of our secondary school teachers are
good ones. A large number cannot be trusted to give
certificates. An equally large number — and a more
difficult class to deal with — are not so good that we
can safely trust them, nor so bad that we can safely
refuse to trust them. Under these circumstances the
colleges have only shifted the seat of their perplexities.
Instead of selecting their students by an examination,
they select the teachers whom they are to trust by a
process less automatic and more invidious than any
scheme of examinations.

In the second place the abandonment of an exami-

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nation system by the colleges takes away an impor-
tant stimulus for keeping up the standard of admission
requirements. The competition between masters of
different schools in preparing their pupils to pass
examinations has the same sort of mixed effect that
competition has in any other form of business. It
causes methods to be adopted which are not always of
the very highest type ; but it at the same time brings
out an amount of initiative and energy in teachers and
pupils which can be attained in no other way. Even
the college authorities who admit by certificate say
frankly that they would be very reluctant to have that
practice become universal. They are free to confess
that the influence of those colleges which require exami-
nations is the thing which keeps our best schools up
to that standard which enables other colleges safely to
admit their students by certificate.

Finally — and this is the decisive argument for the
retention of the old plan — those colleges which insist
on examinations think that they get a better class of
students by that means than they would by any other.
They get those boys who do not shrink from a trial of
intellectual strength ; boys who welcome the chance to
measure their power with that of their fellows in enter-
ing college, as they will inevitably be called upon to
measure it if they seek first-rate successes in later life.
We all remember the fable of the choice between the
doors : on the one hand, " Who chooses me shall get
what he deserves ; " on the other, " Who chooses me
must hazard all he has." The certificate system at-
tracts those who would go to the former door; the
examination system calls to those who are willing to
venture the latter. We all know the two types and
their relative merits.

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THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

If each of these alternatives thus proves unsatisfac-
tory, is there not some possible combination which may
be suggested?

I venture to believe that such a possibility exists, and
that it may be found in a classification of collegiate
requirements into different groups, susceptible of sepa-
rate treatment.

If we look at the requirements for admission into any
of our larger colleges, we shall find that they naturally
fall into three classes: first, those subjects which are
required because the student must know them in order
to have the power to go on with his subsequent studies ;
second, those which are required because the college
authorities believe them to be desirable means of attain-
ing such power; and third, those which are required
because the men in the secondary schools desire them
and ask for the moral support of the colleges in pro-
moting their study. As a notable example of the first
class we may take mathematics. In our scientific
schools, and to a less degree in all our colleges, some
knowledge of mathematics is an absolute necessity for
the successful pursuit of studies included in the course.
The pupil must know a certain amount of algebra in
order to study trigonometry; he must know a certain
amount of trigonometry in order to be able to pursue
successfully the arts of railroad surveying or of bridge
design. The same characteristic holds good of most of
our language requirements. Every student, whatever
he desires to make of himself, needs to understand
something of the use of the English language, because
without such use all his communications of thought, if
not his underlying thoughts themselves, are sure to
lack precision. Any benefit which is expected from
complex ideas by a man or woman who does not know

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how to express them, is likely to prove illusory. And
every student who is to pursue foreign literature in his
college course must first have a knowledge of the ele-
ments of the language in which it is written, because
without such knowledge he will waste his own time
and that of his fellows.

Side by side with these requirements which are indis-
pensable come others of a more auxiliary character.
Not content with requiring a knowledge of English
expression, the colleges prescribe the reading of certain
books in English literature. Not stopping with the
test of power to read and parse individual passages in
Latin, the colleges prescribe a certain quantity of Latin
reading as essential to the purpose in hand. They also
require with each year an increasiqg knowledge of
modern languages, not because the student is neces-
sarily going to use both French and German in his
college studies, but because no man is regarded by
them as fitted for higher education imless he has a
certain reading knowledge of both these languages.

There is also a third group of studies required not as
a necessary basis for subsequent work but as a part of
the general scheme of secondary education in the coun-
try, to which it is desirable to give fair recognition.
So many men in our schools desire to teach history,
and can teach it well, that they wish this subject to
be recognized in the college requirements; lest, by a
failure to recognize it, its position in the schools should
be degraded. What is true of history is true of a
great deal of that descriptive science which has so large
a part in our school courses at the present day. It is
put in the scheme of requirements for admission to col-
lege, not so much because of a direct need of the college
student, nor even because of its indirect bearing on

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THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

meeting such a need, as because of a desire on the
part of the colleges to co-operate with the secondary-
school teachers by giving due emphasis to all those
things which they desire to include in their course.

It is obvious, however, that the attempt to put all
these different classes of subjects on the same basis
is quite illogical. The student who by a fair and
sound test is found radically deficient in studies of the
first class has no business to go on further. No pupil
who is ignorant of arithmetic can study algebra without
injuring himself and his fellow students. No pupil
who is ignorant of elementary algebra and geometry
should be allowed to go on with the scientific school
course, no matter what may be his attainments in other
lines. In like manner, a knowledge of the essentials of
English expression and of certain fundamental points
in those other languages which the student is likely to
use in his college course is a matter of vital necessity.
No amount of acquirements and attainments in litera-
ture can logically be allowed to make up for a deficiency
at this central point. It is on these subjects that the
case for college examinations is strongest. This is the
point at which any deficiency of preparation on the part
of the candidates will hurt them most. It is also the
point where an examination system is most feasible;
where cram counts for least and power for most; where
the school teacher with high ideals of education has
least reason to complain of the requirement that his
pupils should be examined by an independent authority,
because no method of education which falls short of
meeting this test can possibly be considered good.

On the second group of studies — those which are
auxiliary to the attainment of this power — greater lati-
tude can be allowed. I should be in favor at once of

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putting all examinations on the extent of knowledge in
these auxiliary subjects into the hands of a common
examining board, in which different groups of educa-
tors were represented. Whether it would be wise to
go one step farther and introduce the certificate system
in subjects of this group, is a matter which I should
hardly like to prejudge at present.

In the third group of studies the certificate system
could be allowed from the very outset. It is just here
that the arguments for that system are strongest, for in
this group the possible variety of methods is greatest,
the difficulties of examination most unavoidable, and
the reasons strongest for preferring the teacher's judg-
ment to that of an independent examiner or examining
board.

If a phrase is needed to describe the principle on
which this whole system of division rests, I should for-
mulate it as follows: Divide our requirements into
three groups of subjects: first, prerequisites for power
to go on with collegiate study ; second, attainments aux-
iliary to such power ; third, attainments chiefly useful in
the general scheme of education. Let the tests of power
as to what is to follow be in the hands of those who are
to have charge of the student in the years which are to
follow. Let the tests of attainment on what is behind
be in the hands of those who have had charge of the
pupil in the years which are behind.

This combination would have the advantage of reduc-
ing the number of our college examinations — in itself
an extremely desirable thing — of preserving a standard
of quality which schools would compete with one
another to reach, and of allowing at the same time
the utmost possible latitude in the methods employed
by different teachers to bring their pupils up to that

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THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

standard. On the other hand it would be attended
with certain dangers and difficulties. The chief objec-
tions which are likely to be thus raised may be stated as
follows : —

First. The attempt, which has been more than once
made, to lay special stress on tests of power rather than
on knowledge — for instance, sight reading of Latin
and Greek authors, translation of English into Latin,
etc. — has disappointed the expectation of its advocates.

Second. In the inevitable uncertainty attending the
results of entrance examinations — due partly to luck,
partly to the personal equation of the examiner, and
partly to the varying physical condition of the candi-
dates — the substitution of a small number of decisive
examinations for the very great number now existing
will cause some candidates to be unjustly rejected who,
under the present requirements, atone for their defi-
ciencies in some lines by indication of ability in others.

Third. The necessary withdrawal from the examina-
tion scheme of large parts of the work in history,
descriptive science, or English literature will serve to
give these subjects an apparently inferior position, and
will result in their neglect in those schools which desire
to prove their success on the basis of the showing made
by their candidates in college examinations.

Let us take up these points in order.

The first of these objections is, I believe, historically
well founded. It is, however, based on the experience
of a time when neither teachers nor examiners knew
their business as well as they now do. Latin prose
composition, as taught in the schools of a generation
ago, was simply a piece of mechanical drill on certain
fixed phrases, without any infusion of the spirit of the
language. The examiners, themselves trained for the

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most part in these same defective methods, set papers
which were not real tests of power, and encouraged
cramming of a bad sort. The same thing may be said
of most of the examinations in sight reading of classical
authors They furnished no measure of that kind of
power which is required by the college student in his
subsequent use of the Latin or Greek language. Many
of these papers depend far more upon the quick com-
mand of a vocabulary, at times when the candidate is
specially nervous, than upon knowledge of linguistic
structure. In the easy Latin or Greek which is gen-
erally given out on these papers, the candidate who can
remember the vocabulary can guess at the structure far
better than the candidate who knows the structure can
extemporize the vocabulary. Nor can this difficulty in
the sight paper be wholly avoided by notes which give
the meaning of a few words, for those words which
help one boy may prove useless to another. The partial
failure of sight papers to accomplish their end proves
chiefly the defectiveness of the means, and little or
nothing as to the attainability of the object.

Of course it may be freely admitted that it would
require great ability to carry out the proposed plan by
right methods instead of wrong ones. It would per-
haps be a number of years before we should know what
furnished, on the whole, the best means of testing the
student's power. But I feel quite confident that noth-
ing which has hitherto been done indicates that the
question could not be fairly well solved in a reason-
able time.

The argument concerning the dangerous fewness of
the papers under the proposed plan deserves careful
consideration. Any one who knows the uncertainty
attending the results of examinations in general, and

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THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

of written examinations in particular, will be reluctant
to reduce the variety of chances given to the student to
prove in different kinds of papers his probable fitness
for any course which he desires to undertake. Yet I
believe that the dangers which arise in this way would
be more than offset by the safety due to an increased
care of reading which the substitution of the few papers
for the many would render possible. If we should
further extend to teachers of proved ability the oppor-
tunity to recommend, at the risk of their own reputa-
tion, for provisional admission to our freshman classes,
pupils to whom the new system seemed to have done
injustice, we should have in our hands a check which
would not be greatly liable to abuse, and which would
help to protect deserving students from the conse-
quences of ill luck.

The objection regarding discrimination between
studies is perhaps the one which will be most strongly
urged. Yet I believe this objection to be based on
what is in the long run not a fault but a merit.

It is natural enough that a master in a secondary
school who has special ability in teaching descriptive
science, whether in the form of physics, biology, or
history, should wish for the opportunity to prove what
his pupils can do in collegiate examinations. He will
urge that if they are not given this opportunity to be
examined, they will neglect the subjects in such a way
as to do injustice to him and harm to themselves. It
may seem hard to tell him that the apparent force of
these arguments of his is based upon an over-valuation
of the usefulness of his work to boys and girls who are
going to college. Yet I believe this to be the truth;
and if it is truth it should be told plainly.

I am not underrating the importance of these things

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in the scheme of secondary education. The pupils who
are going directly from the high school into practical
life need a somewhat extensive and therefore somewhat
superficial study of natural science and human history.
Most of these pupils must get their knowledge of these
subjects then if they are to get it at all. But for those
who are going to pursue these studies afterward, such
preliminary acquaintance with history and with science
does not take, with any complete equivalence, the place
of language or of mathematics. History and natural
science are studies which mark the culmination of an
educational course, and which, if over-developed far
before the close, have a tendency to weaken rather than
to strengthen the student's powers of application. If
by giving undue importance to these things in the
examination system, we add an artificial stimulus to
their pursuit by boys or girls who are afterward going
to college, I believe that we delay the advent of a
reform in our school system which is of vital impor-
tance to us all. That reform will consist in the separa-
tion of our classes, both in the grammar schools and in
the high schools, into groups that are about to finish
their school days and groups that are preparing to
advance further.

In almost all our previous groupings we have tried to
classify pupils on the lines of their different tastes, real
or supposed. There is a great deal to be said in favor
of a different system, which should classify them on
the basis of the probable duration of the studies. It is a
false idea to assume that those things which are taught
to the students whose courses near their end are thereby
cheapened or made inferior in value; and it is a yet
worse mistake if, in the effort to avoid such cheapen-
ing, we put them into a place where they did not really

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THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS

belong. Our system of secondary education has reached
a point of achievement where it can stand on its own
merits. Those in charge of it recognize that they have
outgrown the stage where their best usefulness was
found in being mere preparatory schools. Let us eman-
cipate ourselves from a set of ideas which are but the
remnant of a state of things which we have now out-
grown. Thus, and thus only, shall we obtain the best
preparation for college, and the fullest development of
the value and freedom of our secondary education.

14 209

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

Thikteen years ago my honored predecessor traced
in his inaugural address the changes which two centu-
ries had developed in Yale's educational methods and
ideals, and showed with clearness what were the corre-
sponding changes in organization which would best fit
her to apply these methods and approach these ideals.
What has once been done so well we need not undertake
to do again. Let us rather proceed to a detailed con-
sideration of the problems which now confront us in the
various departments of college and university life. Let
us formulate the questions which press for solution.
Let us study the good and evil attendant on various
methods of dealing therewith. Let us see, as far as we
may, what lines of policy in these matters of immediate
practical moment will enable us best to meet the de-
mands of the oncoming century.

These problems are for the most part not peculiar to
Yale. The questions which present themselves to the
authorities here are in large measure the same which
arise elsewhere. But the conditions governing their
solution are different. We may best understand the
work which Yale has to do if we study the problems in
their general form, as they come before the whole brother-
hood of educators as a body; and then try to solve them
in the particular form which is fixed by the special cir-

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YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

cumstances, past and present, which have made Yale
University what it is.

Fifty years ago the duties of college administration
were relatively simple. There was at that time a cer-
tain curriculum of studies, chiefly in classics and in de-
ductive science, which the public accepted as necessary
for the development of an educated man. These studies
were taught by traditional methods which compelled the
pupil to perform a considerable amount of work whether
he liked it or not. The student body was a homoge-
neous one, meeting in the same recitation rooms day by
day. The classes readily acquired a spirit of good fel-
lowship and democracy. Outside conditions favored
the maintenance of this spirit. Differences in wealth
throughout the community were less conspicuous than
they are to-day. College education was so cheap that it
fell within the reach of all. Most of the students were
restricted in their means. The few who possessed
much money found comparatively little opportunity
for spending it in legitimate ways. Rich and poor
stood on a common footing as regarded participation
in the social ambitions and privileges of college life.
The intellectual education which such a college gave to
the majority of its students was but an incidental
service as compared with their education in sterling
virtue. The institution which could furnish this double
training met fully the requirements which public
opinion imposed.

The first of the disturbing elements which entered to
complicate the problem of college education was found
in the development of professional schools. Down to
the early part of the present century, professional study
was largely done in private, in the office of some suc-
cessful lawyer or doctor or in the study of some experi-

211

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

enced minister. Even when schools of theology, of law,
or of medicine were established, they at first occupied
themselves largely with teaching the same kind of things
that might have been learned in the office by the old
method. But about the middle of the present century a
new and more enlightened view of technical training
arose. It was seen that a professional school did its
best work when it taught principles rather than practice.
Instead of cramming the students with details which
they would otherwise learn afterward, it was found
much better to train them in methods of reasoning
which otherwise they would not learn at all. This study
of principles, to be thoroughly effective, necessarily oc-
cupied several years. There was a strong pressure to
introduce the elements of these professional studies into
the curriculum ; and a demand that when once they were
incorporated in the college course they should be taught,
not in a perfunctory way, but with the same standard of
excellence which was achieved in our best professional
schools.

Meantime, apart from these changes in the method of
technical training, the sphere of interest of the culti-
vated men of the country was constantly widening.
The course of college study which satisfied an earlier
generation was inadequate for a later one. The man
who would have breadth of sympathy with the various
departments of human knowledge could not content
himself with classics, mathematics, and psychology. He
must be familiar with modern literature as well as
ancient, with empirical science as well as deductive.

If we had at once widened the college curriculum
enough to correspond to the increased range of human
interest, and lengthened the period of professional study
enough to give each man the fullest recognized train-

212

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

ing for his specialty, — if, to quote the old educational
phrase, we had taught each man something of every-
thing and everything of something, — the time of univer-
sity education would h'ave lengthened itself to ten or
fifteen years. Its complete fruition would have been a
luxury out of reach of all but the favored few. The
difficulty could be met only by the adoption of an
elective system, — a system which ceased to treat the
college course as a fixed curriculum for all, and gave
an opportunity for the selection of groups of studies
adapted to the varying needs of the several students.

The introduction of these methods of university
education, necessary as it was, has been nevertheless
attended with serious dangers and evils.

In the first place there is apt to be a change in the
mode of instruction which, while good for the best
students, runs the risk of proving bad for the ordinary
ones. The old method of handling large classes in a
fixed course of study under the recitation system re-
quired all the students to do a modicum of work, and
enabled the teacher to see whether they were doing it
or not. The divisions were adjusted and could be con-
stantly readjusted with that end in view. The time of
the instructors was so far economized by the narrow
range of subjects taught that their attention could be
properly concentrated on this one point of keeping the
students up to their work by a daily oral examination.
But with the increasing number of things to be learned,
the variation in the size of classes, and the demands
which the best students now make for really advanced
teaching, this supervision and concentration is no
longer possible. The instructor who is teaching small
groups of selected men who have a particular interest
in his subject, is forced to content himself with what is

213

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

little more than a lecture in teaching the larger groups
of ordinary men to whom the subject has only a general
interest. A lecture system of this kind is beset with
perils. It is something of which we have to make use,
because there are not enough first-rate men in the
country to teach all the subjects of study which this
generation demands, in classes of size small enough to
adapt themselves to the recitation system. The choice
in many lines of study lies between having recitations
with fourth-rate men or lectures from first-rate ones.
I never met a good teacher who really approved of the
lecture system, or who did not prefer small classes to
large ones. But these really good teachers are just
the men that we wish to bring in contact with as many
students as possible. If we refuse to let them lecture,
we either confine the benefit of their instructions to a
few, or increase their hours beyond the possibility of
human endurance.

Another evil connected with the elective system is
the loss of esprit de corps. In a college like West Point
or Annapolis, where a homogeneous body of men is
pursuing a common scheme of studies, with a common
end in view, and with rigorous requirements as to the
work which must be done by each individual, this
spirit is seen at its strongest. The place sets its
character stamp upon every one, — sometimes perhaps
for evil, but in the vast majority of cases for good. An
approximation to this state of things was seen in our
American colleges during the earlier years of their
history. In many of them it is still maintained to a
considerable degree. But the forces which maintain it
are far less potent to-day than they were fifty years ago.
The community of interests is less, the community of
hard work is very much less. If this college spirit

2U

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

once passes away, the whole group of qualities which
we have known by the name of college democracy is in
danger of passing also. For the increase of wealth in
the outside world is a perpetual menace to old-fashioned
democratic equality. If we have within the college
life not only differences in things studied, but differ-
ences in enjoyment between rich and poor, we are at
once in danger of witnessing a development of social
distinctions and class interests which shall sweep away
the thing which was most characteristic and most
valuable in the earlier education of our colleges. Not
the intellectual life only, nor the social life only, but
the whole religious and moral atmosphere suffers de-
terioration if a place becomes known either as a rich
man's college, or, worse yet, as a college where rich
and poor meet on different footings. What shall it
profit us, if we gain the whole world and lose our own
soul ; if we develop the intellectual and material side of
our education, and lose the traditional spirit of democ-
racy and loyalty and Christianity ?

That there will be an advance in thoroughness of
preparation for the special lines of work which our
students are to undertake is a thing of which we may
safely rest assured. That there shall be a similar
advance in the general training for citizenship in the
United States is an obligation for whose fulfilment our
universities are responsible. The Yale of the future
must count for even more than the Yale of the past in
the work of city. State, and nation. It must come into
closer touch with our political life, and be a larger part
of that life. To this end it is not enough for her to
train experts competent to deal with the financial and
legal problems which are before us. Side by side with
this training, she must evoke in the whole body of her

215

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

students and alumni that wider sense of their obligation
as members of a free commonwealth which the America
of the twentieth century requires.

The central problem, which we all have to face, and
about which all other problems group themselves, is
this ; How shall we make our educational system meet
the world's demands for progress on the intellectual
side, without endangering the growth of that which
has proved most valuable on the moral side ? And it
is the latter part which demands the most immediate
attention from a college president, not necessarily be-
cause it is more important in itself — for where two
things are both absolutely indispensable, a comparison
of relative values is meaningless — but because the
individual professors can, and under the keen competi-
tion between universities must, attend in large measure
to the excellence of instruction in their several depart-
ments, while the action of the university as a whole,
and the intelligent thought of the university adminis-
tration is requisite to prevent the sacrifice of the moral
interest of the whole commonwealth.

There are four ways in which we may strive to deal
with this diflQculty : —

First. By relegating the work of character develop-
ment more and more to the preparatory schools. Our
acceptance or non-acceptance of this solution deter-
mines our attitude toward the problem of entrance
requirements.

Second. By striving to limit the occasion for the use
of money on the part of the student. The necessity
for such limitation constitutes the problem of college
expenses.

Third. By endeavoring to create a body of common
interests and traditions outside of the college course

216

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

which shall make up for the diversity of interests within
it. The most widely discussed, though possibly not
the most important, point under this head is furnished
by the problem of college athletics.

Fourth. By so arranging the work of the different
departments of study that the variety inherent in the
elective system shall not be attended with intellectual
dissipation ; providing the chance for economy of effort
on the part of the instructor and the assurance of syste-
matic co-operation on the part of the pupils. This is
the problem of university organization.

The plan of relegating the responsibility for character
development to the preparatory schools has at first sight
much to commend it. It relieves the college officers of
the most disagreeable part of their duty, that which
pertains to matters of discipline, and enables them to
concentrate their attention on their function as teachers.
It meets the demands of many progressive men engaged
in secondary education, some of whom long for an ex-
tension of their professional functions into new fields
of activity, while others, justly proud of their success
in the formation of character under existing conditions,
desire the additional opportunity which is given them
if they can keep their oldest boys a year or two longer
under their influence. The larger the university the
greater becomes the pressure in this direction.

But with conditions as they exist at Yale, I cannot
think it wise to yield to this pressure. If we take a
year from the beginning of the college course, that year
will be spent by most of the boys either in a high school
or a large academy. In the former case we approach
the German or French system of education; in the
latter the English. A compromise between the two,
whereby a boy finishes his high school course and then

217

THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

takes the additional year at an academy, is hardly
admissible on any ground ; the single year is somewhat
too short to give the intellectual influences of the new-
place to which the boy goes, and far too short to give
its character influences. I cannot believe that any one
who has watched the workings of the French or German
system would desire to see it adopted in this country.
The passage at an advanced age from the discipline of
the lyc^e or gymnasium to the freedom of the uni-
versity, however well it may work in its intellectual
results, does not produce the kind of moral ones which
we need. The English system has wider possibilities;
and for England it does extremely well. But it is
essentially a product of English conditions, — that is,
of aristocratic ones. It is an education for a privileged
class. In America, on the other hand, we wish our
higher education to remain democratic. We should
not be satisfied with a system which excluded from its
benefits the large number of boys who come from insti-
tutions, public or private, which are situated near their
own homes, and prepare only small groups for college.
And even to those who are fortunate enough to come
from the best preparatory schools, the loss in college
life would often outweigh the gain in school life. A
system of influences whose operation terminates at
nineteen or twenty fixes a boy's moral and social place
too soon. For the young man who has grown to the
full measure of his moral stature at this age it is good ;
for the one who matures later it is distinctly bad. In
our every-day experience at Yale, as we watch the inter-
action between school estimates and college estimates
of character, we can see that whatever postpones a
man's final social rating to as late a day as possible
lengthens the period of strenuous moral effort, increases

218

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

the chance of continued growth, and is of the largest
value to the boys and men of the best type.

The abandonment of the responsibility for forming
character would have its disadvantages for the univer-
sity no less than for the students. A boy's loyalty will
remain where his moral character has formed itself.
The devotion and sentiment of the Englishman play
not so much about Oxford or Cambridge as about Eton,
Harrow, and Rugby. Universities which derive their
prestige and their wealth from the past rather than
from the present may perhaps endure this deprivation.
Not so the American college or university, which looks
for its strongest support to the loyalty of its alumni.

"With the desire of secondary school teachers to ex-
tend their work I have the strongest sympathy. To the
idea of co-operation between universities and schools,
whereby each shall arrange its teaching with reference
to the other's needs, I am fully and absolutely com-
mitted, and purpose to do all that I can to further it.
A university fulfils its true function only when it thus
seeks and gives aid outside of itself. But I believe
that the chance for this extension, this co-operation,
and this leadership is to come through the freer inter-
change of thought and interchange of men between
school teaching and university teaching, rather than
through a transference of subjects from one to the
other. I believe that with the conditions as they exist,
the true policy for our university with regard to
entrance requirements is to find out what our secondary
schools can do for their pupils, intellectually and
morally, and adapt our requirements to these condi-
tions. Detailed questions as to what specific subjects
we shall require must be subordinated to this general
principle of requiring those things, and only those

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things, which the schools can do well. To know
whether we can substitute French or German for
Greek, we must know whether any considerable num-
ber of schools teach French or German in such a way
as to make it a real equivalent for Greek in the way
of preparation for more advanced studies. Unless we
keep our minds on this principle, we shall be in per-
petual danger of receiving students who have been
crammed for their examinations rather than trained for
their work.

The second of our leading problems is the question
of college expenses. Though the increase in this re-
spect is less than is popularly supposed, there is no
doubt that it is large enough to constitute a serious
danger. It is far from easy to see how this danger is
to be avoided. It is all very well to talk of returning
to the Spartan simplicity of ancient times, but we can-
not do it, nor ought we to if we could. We cannot,
for the sake of saving the cost of a bathroom, return to
the time when people took no baths. Nor can we meet
the difficulty by furnishing the comforts of modern
civilization and charging no price for them. If the
university could afford to do it for every one, it might
be well ; but to do it for some and not for others works
against the spirit of democracy. It may readily become
a form of pauperization. This same danger lurks in
the whole system of beneficiary aid, as at present given
in Yale and in most other colleges. To avoid this
danger, and at the same time give the men the help
which they fairly ought to have, we need not so much
an increase of beneficiary funds as an increase of the
opportunities for students to earn their living. Aid in
education, if given without exacting a corresponding
return, becomes demoralizing. If it is earned by the

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student as he goes, it has just the opposite effect. This
holds good of graduate scholarships and fellowships no
less than of undergraduate ones. There is no doubt
that in the somewhat indiscriminate competition of dif-
ferent universities anxious to increase the size, real or
apparent, of their graduate departments, there has been
an abuse of these appliances which, unless promptly-
corrected, threatens the future of the teaching profes-
sion with an over-abundant influx of inferior men.

The true policy in the matter of expenses and bene-
ficiary aid would appear to be as follows : —

In building our new dormitories and other appliances
connected with the daily life of the students, we should
strive to use the kind of intelligent economy which any
but the richest man would use in building a house for
himself. We should construct them on the standard
set by our homes rather than by our clubs. In this way
we should create a general level of average expense in
the college life which would attract rather than repel the
boy who has to make his own way. We should indeed
welcome beautiful buildings, given to the university as
memorials of affection; but we should strive to have
them so designed that their beauty may be a means of
enjoyment to the whole community.

Tuition should be remitted with the utmost free-
dom to all those who maintain a respectable standing.
Such tuition should be either earned by service or re-
garded as a loan, — a loan without interest, if you please,
or at any rate at a purely nominal interest charge, and
payable at the option of the holder, but in its essence a
loan, — a thing to be paid ultimately, unless disease or
death intervene. By establishing a system of such re-
payment we could give aid far more universally than we
now do, could perhaps lower the tuition fees in general,

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and could avoid a system of fraud which is at present
practised somewhat extensively on our colleges.

Every scholarship in excess of the tuition fees,
whether for undergraduates or for graduates, should he
distinctly in the nature of a prize for really distinguished
work, or a payment for services rendered. I am aware
that there are great practical obstacles which oppose the
carrying out of this view, and I do not feel sure how
quickly Yale will be in a position to put it into effect ;
but that it is a desirable ideal and goal there appears to
be no doubt whatever. Remuneration rather than pau-
perization should be the principle underlying such aid.

Above all things — and this is a matter in which
we need the co-operation of persons outside as well as
inside the university — the utmost study should be be-
stowed on the possibility of utilizing the powers of the
students in such a way that they can be of service to the
college community and the world at large, and thus earn
the aid which is given them. The problem is a most
difficult one ; too difficult even to be analyzed in the
brief space here available. But the amount of pro-
gress made already, in the few experiments which have
been seriously tried, leads me to believe in an almost
unbounded opportunity for ultimate development of this
idea.

Our third group of problems is connected with the de-
velopment and preservation of common student interests
and student life outside of the immediate work of the
classroom.

Of all these interests, the most fundamental are
those connected with religious observances and reli-
gious feeling. Yale is, and has been from the first,
a Christian college. All her institutions show tliis
throughout their structure. This was the dominant

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purpose in Yale's foundation ; and the work and
thought of the children have conformed to the wish
of the fathers. What changes time may bring in the
outward observances, or how soon it may bring them, I
know not. The question of compulsory attendance on
religious exercises is one which is seriously discussed
by the faculty, the students, and the graduates ; nor
can we predict the outcome of such discussion. But
this I know : that it is approached by all, young as well
as old, in a spirit of wise conservatism and reverence
for past usage, and that no change will be made unless
it shall surely and clearly appear to those in authority
that we are but modifying the letter of a tradition for
the sake of preserving its spirit.

Even in matters of far less fundamental importance
we may, I think, wisely preserve this same spirit of
conservatism. An ancient university has a great ad-
vantage in the existence of a body of time-honored
usages and traditions. Some of these it inevitably
outgrows as time goes on. But a large majority serve
a most useful purpose in binding the students together
by bonds none the less real because so intangible.
Such college customs and traditions we should main-
tain to the utmost. Even where they seem artificial or
meaningless we should be careful how we let them go.
It is not inconsistent with the spirit of progress to value
them highly. Edmund Burke was one of the most
liberal and progressive men of his century ; yet Burke
was the man who set the truest value on those forms of
the English constitution which, as he himself avowed,
were rooted in prejudice. The constitution of Yale
to-day, with its strange combination of liberty and priv-
ilege, of prescriptive custom and progressive individ-
ualism, has not a few points of resemblance to Burke's

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England. I can avow myself a conservative in the
sense that Burke was a conservative ; with him, I
should hesitate to cast away the coat of prejudice and
leave nothing but the naked reason.

Another group of cohesive forces which strengthens
the influence of a university upon its members is con-
nected with college athletics. The value of athletic
sports when practised in the right spirit is only equalled
by their perniciousness when practised in the wrong
spirit. They deserve cordial and enthusiastic support.
The time or thought spent upon them, great as it may
seem, is justified by their educational influence. But
side by side with this support and part of it, we must
have unsparing condemnation of the whole spirit of
professionalism. I do not refer to those grosser and
more obvious forms of professionalism which college
sentiment has already learned to condemn. Nor do I
chiefly refer to the betting by which intercollegiate con-
tests are accompanied, though this is a real and great
evil, and does much to bring other evils in its train. I
refer to something far more widespread, which still
remains a menace to American college athletics, — the
whole system of regarding athletic achievement as a
sort of advertisement of one's prowess, and of valuing
success for its own sake rather than for the sake of the
honor which comes in achieving it by honorable methods.
I rejoice in Yale's victories, I mourn in her defeats ; but
I mourn still more whenever I see a Yale man who
regards athletics as a sort of competitive means for
pushing the university ahead of some rival. This is
professionalism of the most subtle and therefore most
dangerous sort. I know that the condition of athletic
discipline in a college makes a difference in its attrac-
tiveness to a large and desirable class of young men,

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and rightly so. Whether a victory or a series of vic-
tories makes such a difference, and increases the num-
bers that attend the university, I do not know and I do
not care to know. The man who allows his mind to
dwell on such a question, if he is not tempted to violate
the ethics of amateur sport, is at any rate playing with
temptation in a dangerous and reprehensible way, I
am glad to believe that our colleges, and our nation as
a whole, are becoming better able to understand the
love of sport for its own sake. The growth of this
spirit through three generations has relieved English
universities of some of the problems which to-day con-
front us in America. To the growth of this spirit we
must ourselves trust for their solution here. I am
ready heartily to co-operate in any attempts that other
colleges may make to lay down clear rules for the prac-
tice of intercollegiate athletics, because the absence of
such co-operation would be misunderstood and would
give cause for suspicion where none ought to exist.
But I cannot conceal the fact that the majority of such
rules can only touch the surface of the difficulty ; and
that so far as they distract attention from the moral ele-
ment in the case which is beyond all reach of rules,
they may prove a positive hindrance to progress. If we
can enter into athletics for the love of honor, in the
broadest sense of the word, unmixed with the love of
gain in any sense, we may now and then lose a few
students, but we shall grow better year after year in all
that makes for sound university life.

Last in order of discussion, though perhaps first in
the imminence with which they press upon us for solu-
tion, are some of the problems of university organiza-
tion, on whose proper treatment depends that economy
of effort and utilization of financial resources which is
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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

necessary for the efficient working of the institution as
it stands and for its growth in the immediate future.

Yale's organization differs somewhat fundamentally
from that of most other American universities. It is a
group of colleges whose property is held in the name
of a single corporation, but whose management is, by
tradition and in some slight degree by legal authority,
located in the hands of separate faculties. In this
respect Yale is not without points of resemblance to
Oxford or Cambridge. I shall not try to discuss
whether this system is on the whole a good one. It
is here, and we cannot for the present change it. Like
all other systems, it has its advantages and its disadvan-
tages. The advantages are those which are possessed
by local government everywhere, — an independence of
initiative; a loyal spirit among the members of the
several faculties which is the natural result of such
independence; a sort of natural grouping of the stu-
dents under which a common set of rules can be made
for each department, and the evils of too great freedom
may be avoided. The independence of initiative has
manifested itself in the development of new methods
of instruction, like those of the Sheffield Scientific
School in the past, or the Department of Music in the
present. The loyalty has been exemplified over and
over again in the readiness to work for salaries even
more conspicuously inadequate than those which have
been paid at other universities, by men who seek their
reward in the possibilities of future greatness. This
history of disinterested effort for future rather than
present reward has repeated itself in each department
of instruction. The effect of the grouping of the stu-
dents in separate departments has shown itself in the
preservation of that esprit de corps which Yale has

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YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

succeeded in maintaining, I believe, to a greater degree
than any other university of the same magnitude.

On the other hand the system has the disadvantages
which everywhere pertain to a scheme of independent
local government. There is sometimes a difficulty in
carrying the whole university sharply forward into any
definite line of policy, however strongly it may be
demanded. There is yet more frequently a lack of co-
ordination in courses ; the work of each of the separate
parts or schools having been originally devised with
reference to the needs of members of that school rather
than to those of the university as a whole. And finally,
there is a certain amount of duplication of appliances
which involves some actual loss of economy and makes
the impression on the public of causing even more loss
than really exists. Especially severe does this loss
seem to some of the most zealous members of the pro-
fessional schools, who believe that by combining the
work of their opening years with that of the later years
of the Academic Department or Sheffield Scientific
School, they can serve the University and the cause
of learning with far more fulness and freedom than
at present.

Reform under these circumstances can only be the
result of unconstrained discussion and intelligent nego-
tiation. The best possibilities lie not in the exercise
of authority but of diplomacy. The effort to impose
a prearranged policy is likely to prove futile. We
cannot insist on an external appearance of harmony
without losing more than we gain. To say that the
Scientific School ought to have a four years' course
because the Academic Department has one, or to insist
that the Academic Department should withdraw from
the teaching of natural science because the Scientific

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN

School has made such full provision for it, serves only
to retard the movement toward co-operation. The
president who would succeed in establishing real
harmony must occupy himself first with providing
the means to lead men to a mutual understanding,
rather than with predicting the results which should
follow.

Foremost among the means which we must use is free
and unreserved discussion of principles. Even within
the departments such discussion has been by no means
so universal as it might have been. In more than one
of them there has been a tendency, both in matters of
administration and of educational policy, to rest con-
tent with a compromise between conflicting interests,
rather than a reconciliation of conflicting views. A
typical result of this policy has been seen in the course
of study in the Academic Department, where for many
years the so-called elective system was really not a
system at all, but the haphazard result of competition
between the advocates of different lines of instruction,
— a thing which all unite in desiring to reform. With
a reasonable degree of diplomacy and patience the task
of reform in cases like this should not prove a hard
one.

Still less adequate has been the interchange of ideas
between the different departments. Under the old sys-
tem the several faculties have had no organized means
of discussing subjects of common interest, or even of
learning one another's views. The establishment of a
university council for such interchange of thought is an
imperative necessity. What will ultimately prove the
best form and constitution for such a council can only
be a matter of conjecture. For the present, at any
rate, such a body is likely to be for the most part

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YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

deliberative in its functions. Whatever else such a
body may do or fail to do it can prevent many of the
misunderstandings and cross purposes which arise from
imperfect information, and can thus contribute to the
successful transaction of all business that is possible by
preventing attempts at the impossible.

In the second place, we must so use those funds
which are at the disposal of the central administration
as to make it an object for men in the different depart-
ments to co-operate at those points where the absence of
such co-operation does most harm.

As far as elementary teaching is concerned, the waste
from having the same subject taught in two or more
departments may be more apparent than real. It in-
volves no very great loss to teach elementary chemistry
in two independent sets of laboratories if both labora-
tories are always kept full of students. The waste
comes in thus teaching advanced chemistry where there
are relatively few students and where there is much
need of specialization. Under such circumstances the
existence of separate laboratories tends to prevent
proper division of labor. Under such circumstances
duplication is a waste and co-ordination a necessity. If
the material appliances for higher education are not the
property of any one department, but stand in relation
to the university as a whole, the instructors of the
different departments tend of their own free will to
co-operate with one another in the higher instruction
in their several branches. Under proper management,
institutions like the Peabody Museum or the Win-
chester Observatory tend thus to systematize instruc-
tion at the point where such an effect is most needed.
With a very moderate increase of endowment, properly
applied, I believe that the same sort of harmony can be

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attained in many other lines of instruction. Among
the achievements of my predecessor in office there is
none so wide -reaching in its effects as the development
of a large university fund which, without threatening
the independence of the several departments, can be
used to provide means for promoting unity of action
where such unity is indispensable.

In the English universities the teaching is in large
measure done by the several colleges, while the exami-
nations are, with few exceptions, the affair of the
university. It seems probable that the development of
Yale in the future may be just the reverse of this ; the
several colleges taking charge of the examinations and
of those more elementary studies whose control natu-
rally connects itself with the control of examinations,
while the distinctively teaching appliances come, to a
constantly greater extent, into the hands of the univer-
sity authorities. Under such a system we should have
a well-ordered scheme of local government, where each
department could make its own rules, prescribe the
conditions of entrance and graduation, and be subject to
the minimum of interference from without; but where
at the same time the instruction would be so ordered
that students whose course lay under the control of one
faculty could yet enjoy to the fullest possible extent
the teaching provided by another, and where, as the
subject of study became more and more advanced, the
distinction of separate faculties or colleges would dis-
appear altogether.

Such are, in brief outline, a few of the problems
which we have inherited from the past. It would be
indeed a large burden had we not also inherited from
that past an inspiration yet larger. Yale's seal bears
the motto, "Light and Truth;" Yale's history has been

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YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT

worthy of its signet. Never have there been wanting
torch-bearers to take the light from the hands that re-
linquished it. In this place, hallowed by the deeds of
our fathers, all words of formal acceptance of the duties
which they have left us are meaningless. It is a God-
given trust: may God bless the issue I

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