358 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
while its stabler elements belong to the permanent nature of man as human being. The 
former is the ever-present fact thrust upon our attention by each event of every passing 
aour, while the latter is found only in epoch-making periods of history. It takes a clear 
vision to discern in each new phase of human activity the human hope which inspires 
it, ‘¢ the increasing purpose ” which expresses the higher nature of man. But it is only 
shrough this insight that one can be protected from the assumption of evanescent ends 
in education. One who adopts a mere fad in education is little better in his profession 
shan is the quack in the profession of medicine. It is impossible, then, to make prog- 
ess on this theme till one has set up an end in education equal in dignity with the 
nature of the beings whose education is involved. 
Abstractly I consider that the end of education is to develop into actual perfection 
the possibility of each human being, 4. e., to develop or bring into actual matured exist- 
ance the ideal human being. 
But since this can be done only through rational processes, and since these rational 
orocesses include all the necessary activities of this present life upon the earth, the 
itting of one for these subsidiary processes or practical activities is a legitimate end of 
aducational effort. It is in this latter element of the educational idea that formal and 
so-called practical subjects find their validity. But since this element in the educational 
idea is so much more readily seen, and is really seen by so many more than ever get the 
vision of human perfection, it is likewise true that in our elementary education far 
greater attention has been given purely formal studies, or those which fit for practical 
life, than to those which tend to develop the human essence into the divine likeness 
which is its prerogative. 
I venture to state the end of education to be, then, the harmonious development in 
:he pupil of the powers belonging to the human being by virtue of his ideal likeness to 
:he divine, and the teaching to him of so much of the arts and sciences, history and liter- 
ature, as shall fit him to discharge acceptably the duties of life. 
At the age of fourteen the child will have accomplished only so much of this as his 
developing powers allow. 
Analyze powers and enumerate practical arts and sciences. 
My minor premise is to be found by an examination of the nature of the branches 
snumerated in the thesis : morals, language, number, geography, history of the country, 
writing, and drawing. A thorough analysis of each is out of the question in the time 
allowed me. I therefore examine them by groups, and look only at prominent charac- 
seristics. 
Of these subjects, then, language, writing, and drawing, considered in themselves, are 
purely arts, ¢. e., their end is skill, and the use of this skill, either in the further exten- 
sion of formal education, or in the ordinary forms of living. Writing, as generally 
saught in the schools, develops no esthetic sense ; language, whether for interpretation of 
-he printed page or for dexterous use of words in composing, has no ennobling ideas in 
itself ; while drawing must reach some of its finer forms to touch anything more than 
she sensuous side of life. Only when these branches are used in the expression of 
ideas whose origin is in some other field of thought, do they become so charged in them- 
selves with thought or feeling or motive as to become an individual factor in spiritual 
ievelopment. 
Of geography and history it is to be said that in their lowest stages—that of time and 
place—of event and fact, they are of the same technical character. It is only when 
geography rises to consider physical forces joined to human motives as accounting in 
rational way for even the simplest phenomena that this subject takes its place among 
the branches which develop spirit ; and history is dry bones only till motive for action 
gives meaning to its events. Of the entire list morals is the only one that necessarily 
finds its subject-matter in spirit-nourishing ideas. Mathematics not treated.